200 réponses à ce sujet

[Lady Artifice]

*Snipping one of the most awesome walls of text ever written on a forum*

 

Sheesh...

 

This.

[Silfren]

Sheesh...

 

This.

 

 

Thanks . . . I think.  LOL

[Lady Artifice]

Thanks . . . I think.  LOL

 

Oh, yes! This is the message I was going for:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Duelist]

Sucks for you OP, but this straight guy misses Hawke's pirate queen.

What can I say?

[KaiserShep]

Sucks for you OP, but this straight guy misses Hawke's pirate queen.

What can I say?

 

It always hurts a teensy bit to quickly hit Assassinate on her in this sequence, but girl hits like a freight train, especially when she's armed with Fiona and Bard's Honor.

[Duelist]

It always hurts a teensy bit to quickly hit Assassinate on her in this sequence, but girl hits like a freight train, especially when she's armed with Fiona and Bard's Honor.

It really did suck, especially since I gave her the exact same weapons.

But more than anything, I credit Isabela for making it possible for me to finish my mage and warrior runs.
Force Mage is fun but nothing dies fast enough for me and none of the warrior specs had anything on Assassinate.

(I do so miss Assassinate. Hidden Blades is nice but it's not quite Assassinate.)

[KaiserShep]

That's kind of my problem with the rogue in DA:I. The hard-hitting talents don't quite have that visceral thrill that Hawke's twin fangs and assassinate do, and I love me some Vendetta. Those saarebas don't know what hit them.

[Duelist]

Ahh Vendetta aka the f*** you Saarebas button.
It is satisfying as hell teleporting halfway across a battlefield to backstab some fool.
Even better still when Isabela and Varric show up at your back just seconds later.

I know what you mean on the rogue talents in DAI.
Don't get me wrong, it's addictive exploding all the things as an Artificer, Tempest is crazy OP and Assassin is my go to but there's nothing quite like having the "You die now!" button...except having three of them of course.

That said, I'm one of those weirdos who finds Rogue Warden lacking in comparison to Hawke.

[KaiserShep]

My canon Warden is a rogue, but the most I really got out of it was being able to open everything and get those little xp points everywhere. I would've thought that simply leaving trap detection duty to Leliana would be enough, but I rushed ahead so often that I'd just disarm them before she got the chance. Other than that, it didn't offer much more than a dex-based dual-wielding warrior, especially since warriors can also be archers.

 

Wait, I'm lying. The most to really come out of it was that the Warden got duelist training and a threesome with Isabela.

[Duelist]

Meh, I was never sold on DW warriors.

It was either full size weapons and talent spam or daggers and auto attacks.

Still, the threesome: a time honoured rogue tradition my Quizzy never partook in.

My canon warden didn't either since Morrigan said no.

[KaiserShep]

It was worth it for Isabela's comment to Leliana about making her sing after fighting the resolutionist mages.

[Duelist]

For my female warden, Zev asked Isabela if Hawks was as adventurous...then he turned us down. That b******.

[Endee]

*enters thread* *reads op* ... NOPE. *leaves thread*

 

Let it go, OP. Don't like the romance options? Then don't romance anyone. It is literally that simple.

[Machina Obscura]

*enters thread* *reads op* ... NOPE. *leaves thread*

 

Let it go, OP. Don't like the romance options? Then don't romance anyone. It is literally that simple.

Except that this is a forum and he has every right to talk about it. If posts about things that people should just let go weren't allowed, then there would be like 80 percent less posts. I think a lot of them are stupid, but that said, this is the right place for it. 

 

Also OP, as David Gaiter said, romances are tertiary optional content, so I doubt there will be much improvement, They do tend to give you mostly broody, angsty, or extreme options, but maybe that's what most people like. I certainly don't, but that's why i mostly skip it,

[Silfren]

Except that this is a forum and he has every right to talk about it. If posts about things that people should just let go weren't allowed, then there would be like 80 percent less posts. I think a lot of them are stupid, but that said, this is the right place for it. 

 

Also OP, as David Gaiter said, romances are tertiary optional content, so I doubt there will be much improvement, They do tend to give you mostly broody, angsty, or extreme options, but maybe that's what most people like. I certainly don't, but that's why i mostly skip it,

 

Dude.  Nowhere in what you're responding to was the OP told not to post about it.  

[Althix]

Isabela isn't a sociopath.

she is suffering from antisocial personality disorder, have no doubt in that.

[Charcoal15]

For a moment I assumed this was a topic in Dragon age Inquisition, thanks for the laugh.

[Captain Wiseass]

Why would a straight guy romance Anders?

Profound confusion, or possibly a madcap misunderstanding.

 

"Anders, will you marry me?"

"Hawke, I'm a man!"

"Nobody's perfect."

[CaptainPatch]

I quite like the last two posts (Silfren and InfinitePaths)  [Shows you just how long ago I _started_ to write this post!@].  VERY lucid and well thought out.

 

On topic.  Consider: Just what is it that a religion does, in broad terms?  As I see it, it dictates to its adherents the "correct" way to live their lives and worship the deity(ies) of their choice.  "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not".  In this, the Chantry very much fits that model.  As far as I have seen, the simple fact that a religion's dogma fails to address a given issue is NOT the same as bestowing permission for members to engage in the non-discussed subject.  So the fact that the Chantry does not comment on homosexuality is NOT the same as the Chantry  "being fine" with the practice.  I very strongly assert the idea that the Chantry's failure to deliberately address the subject was a BioWare Marketing decision.  Being the kind of religion that it is, telling adherents in minute detail about what every little thing is Right or Wrong, it should have passed judgement on the subject.  Likewise, it didn't address the issue of gender superiority as to whether women should be subservient to men or vice versa (which nearly all historical religions have touched on at one point or another).  The ONLY gender dominance within the Chantry that I've seen is that the Divine is always a woman, thus mimicking leadership from an Andraste surrogate.  (But not being a Chantry scholar, there may have been much that contradicts this observation.)  Again, a Marketing decision by BioWare to not alienate a class of prospective consumers.

 

Back to Romance.  It is paramount that the Heroes are at a stage in their lives where they have a VERY demanding Mission.  Personal life must necessarily be relegated to the back seat.  "Settling down and raising a family" is pointedly put on hold indefinitely.  It's actually hard to even begin to contemplate the Happily Ever After stuff when you and everyone around you may die at any given moment.  So at best, DA is a "sow your wild oats" stage of the main character's life.  But unlike DA:O where everyone may die because of the Blight at any moment, in DA2 Hawke has several periods -- one of them quite extended -- where it would be easy for him or her to get into a "time to move on" mentality.  With Death hanging overhead, wham-bam love interests are quite fitting.  But once things have quieted down, "settle down and raise a family" starts to look quite appropriate.  So during the periods between Act One and Act Two, and again between Act Two and Act Three, I imagine that Hawke would have stopped with the wham-bam and shifted to Happily Ever After partner selection mentality.  In that light, just where are there any reasonable Happily Ever After candidates?  To be honest, in my opinion the ONLY marginally acceptable choice is Aveline, but she is scripted to marry Donnic.  Who else is left (from the perspective of either gender)?  Homicidally schizophrenic Anders?  Blood mage Merrill?  Good time girl Isabela?  Manic/depressive Fenris?  I suppose that from the female perspective choir boy Sebastian might make good husband material.  ( I am admittedly personally adverse to fervent religious adherence, given I am a staunch Agnostic myself.)  So overall, I am not too thrilled by the Romance choices BioWare has chosen to make available to me.

 

 

Profound confusion, or possibly a madcap misunderstanding.

 

"Anders, will you marry me?"

"Hawke, I'm a man!"

"Nobody's perfect."

[chuckle]  Is that a paraphrase from Some Like It Hot?

[Captain Wiseass]

Yup.

[soft sugary thing]

On topic.  Consider: Just what is it that a religion does, in broad terms?  As I see it, it dictates to its adherents the "correct" way to live their lives and worship the deity(ies) of their choice.  "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not".  In this, the Chantry very much fits that model.

I'm thinking that just because the Chantry matches its real-life analogue in some ways doesn't mean it has to match 100 percent. Dragon Age is a work of fiction. If it's consistent and fathomable within its own world rules then saying it "should" be something else misses the point. 

 

Having the Chantry dictate sexual conduct might go against the story that Dragon Age's writers are trying to tell. There are already secular rules in Thedas governing such conduct, so it may be unnecessary, undesirable, or not part of the Chantry's role to impose their own even if perhaps their analogue would have in real life. Remember, this is a work of fiction. It's meant to show us the world in ways that it isn't already.

 

---

The romance choices are kind of, uh, what. It took me a long time to warm up to Isabela. I felt like a pedophile with Merrill. (Maybe I'm just that old.) Anders kept telling me how he'd hurt me, and Fenris was just too, I don't know. I always had Aveline in my party when I needed a warrior, so I never got to know him. Seriously, I'm looking forward to DA:I and hoping the LIs there are somewhat more stable.

 

Then again, where's the fun in that.

 

(Edited above for clarity.)

[Lavaeolus]

And lastly choir boy Sebastian that despite his extreme religious devotion, has no problem with homosexual affairs.

Isn't Sebastian the one heterosexual romance companion? I don't think he can be romanced by males.

[CaptainPatch]

Isn't Sebastian the one heterosexual romance companion? I don't think he can be romanced by males.

I never even tried to romance Sebastian.  I skimmed the "official guide" and missed the sentence where it states that he is solidly hetero.  Everything else in his section reads like Hawke can be either gender with no complications.  So, my bad.  (Just one of many, apparently.)

[Silfren]

 

I quite like the last two posts (Silfren and InfinitePaths)  [Shows you just how long ago I _started_ to write this post!@].  VERY lucid and well thought out.

 

On topic.  Consider: Just what is it that a religion does, in broad terms?  As I see it, it dictates to its adherents the "correct" way to live their lives and worship the deity(ies) of their choice.  "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not".  In this, the Chantry very much fits that model.  As far as I have seen, the simple fact that a religion's dogma fails to address a given issue is NOT the same as bestowing permission for members to engage in the non-discussed subject.  So the fact that the Chantry does not comment on homosexuality is NOT the same as the Chantry  "being fine" with the practice.  I very strongly assert the idea that the Chantry's failure to deliberately address the subject was a BioWare Marketing decision.  Being the kind of religion that it is, telling adherents in minute detail about what every little thing is Right or Wrong, it should have passed judgement on the subject.  Likewise, it didn't address the issue of gender superiority as to whether women should be subservient to men or vice versa (which nearly all historical religions have touched on at one point or another).  The ONLY gender dominance within the Chantry that I've seen is that the Divine is always a woman, thus mimicking leadership from an Andraste surrogate.  (But not being a Chantry scholar, there may have been much that contradicts this observation.)  Again, a Marketing decision by BioWare to not alienate a class of prospective consumers.

 

 

Again, while I agree that the Chantry does fit the model of "thou shalts/thou shalt nots" of certain real world religious institutions, there is no need for it to be a line-by-line parallel.  For that I will refer back to my previous statement and say that where we don't see it in the lore, there is no need to assume it merely because there are strong similarities to be made to Roman Catholicism.  Despite the structural similarities--and the historical parallels--there are sufficient differences, some rather large, as to refute any assumption that the existing similarities mean that we should see in-line parallels throughout.
I've already said that I think that not addressing an issue is sufficient evidence that the institution has no opinion, and therefore doesn't care.  If the Chantry felt that homosexuality was counter to its principles, there would be a prohibition.  You yourself said that it fits the model of "thou shalts/thou shalt nots."  If we are to go with your logic, does it not stand to reason that not even mentioning something can be construed as being okay with it?  I fail to see the logic that suggests that "thou shalt engage in homosexuality" must be in place in the absence of "thou shalt not engage in homosexuality,"  in order for the Chantry to be said to not have an issue with it.  The lack of a prohibition can be reasonably said to be a tacit admission of acceptance.  If nothing else, it proclaims that the issue is not one which the Chantry feels is worth codifying, which, as I said before, sufficiently proclaims that homosexuality is not viewed by the church as being antithetical to its doctrinal theology.  If it were, then there would be a "thou shalt not" prohibition.

 

It may be the case that Bioware is toeing a specifically middle-of-the-road position as a marketing decision.  I can't speak to that.  I will say, however, that questions of homosexuality are addressed within the lore.  I can't remember lore specific to the Chantry, beyond there being no proscription against it, but there is lore on how various Thedosian locales view it, and never is anything approaching a systemically negative view suggested.  (There's some problematic issues here, which will get way off-topic, so I won't go into here).  So I'm not sure I accept your assertion that it was a marketing decision to leave the issue out of Chantry-specific lore.  I'm not ruling it out, but I do reject it if it stems from the argument that it makes no sense outside of such a decision for the Chantry not to have a position on homosexuality one way or the other.  That argument is fundamentally flawed, so I need better evidence.

 

Your assertions about the Chantry not having a position on gender superiority is inherently flawed for the same reason.  Just because real world religions do, and just because the Chantry is analogous to one of them, doesn't mean it follows that the Chantry would have or should have followed the same pattern--especially since, unless I am mistaken, the question of gender superiority is not always initially a fundamental characteristic of a religion*.  That said, it is actually the case that the Chantry favors women over men.  i don't have the lore available to me off hand, but I've seen it before, that there are hints that because Andraste was a woman, and because her betrayer was a man, that there is an inherent, albeit understated, assumption of female superiority.  It is, again, very subtle.  The most obvious implication is the matriarchal hierarchy of the Chantry, but even without that, the theology lends itself well to such a belief, and with it, that belief is definitely reinforced.  

On that last point:  I strongly object to your assertion that the matriarchal structure of the Chantry was a marketing decision intended not to alienate Bioware's women fanbase.  If you're going to make such a claim, you might as well say that the entire damned story was written with that marketing decision in mind.  You're taking your assumptions about the Chantry being analogous to a real world religion to an unreasonable degree at that point, because you are essentially claiming that because of your presumption that it does, or should, follow the same real world pattern in exactitude as a result, that every point on which it does not must perforce be purely the result of marketing.  I reject that, and I resent it, too.  There is no question that Bioware has taken steps to be more inclusive in trying to expand its fanbase and not to irritate subsets of its existing one.   But it does not in the least follow that because of that, that is the reason why we have the story we do, with a Chantry written around a female god/prophet.  

 

ETA: I meant to include this earlier, so I'll just tack it on as an addendum.  It's a given that my position is that you are overly fixated on the idea that entire swaths of storytelling are purely the result of a marketing decision.  I think it is unreasonable in the extreme to assert that anywhere that the Chantry deviates from what you presume to be inherent qualities of real world religious institutions, it can only have been a marketing decision, as if it would not otherwise make sense for the story to go in such a direction.  But beyond that, marketing decision or not, I have to point out that it doesn't matter what the reasons behind a story are - the story is what it is, as the lore is what it is, irrespective of what external factors brought it into being.  You seem almost to be saying that because (you believe) these deviations, or absences of lore, are purely the result of marketing, that we should proceed with treating them as if they don't exist, and act as if the Chantry follows these real world patterns as you insist they do.

[KaiserShep]

Isn't Sebastian the one heterosexual romance companion? I don't think he can be romanced by males.

This is true, but it's just so priestly that it's hard for me to count it.