169 réponses à ce sujet

[stonerbishop]

As for the uncomfortable part, Shianni does get raped in origins... so.. 3rd party illusory mind rape? Meh. The city elf origin still bothers me, but in a good, make me think about it being terrible way

[o Ventus]

Feminist lies. Men are likely to be raped just as women are, you only hear about the female rape hysteria more because that's what the feminist mainstream is willing to report.

It's not because of any kind of media attention, it's because men are "taught" (for lack of a better term) for the most part to be more self-dependent and able to help themselves. It's seen as weak and unmanly to "complain about getting laid" (actual comment).

[Han Shot First]

As for the uncomfortable part, Shianni does get raped in origins... 

 

Leliana does as well, though it is in her backstory. It's sort of portrayed I suppose in the Leliana's Song DLC, though I think that one she's sort of telling a tale and changing/altering details for the audience. (it differs significantly from the story she tells the Warden)

[Shelidon]

I have to admit that I just finished this quest, after doing a whole completionist playthrough on the mages side, and it felt so weak... On the mages side you get to explore a dark future, you find your companions corrupted by red lyrium, Leliana almost died, and then when they really die to let you go back... that is some powerful stuff.
On the templars side you have this blurry thing, you are actually discouraged from exploring (oh how I hate that) and you only get to eavesdrop what your companions are saying. Except for Cullen, who is imprisoned and is gesturing as if he's saying something but is not actually saying anything. I don't feel the threat, the "evil" inquisition is such a parody, drowning puppies and such. The option depicted as a first stub sounds much better and have some power, comparable to the stunning storytelling you get if you pick the mages side. Just my opinion, though. I have heard people actually preferring the templar side...

[DKJaigen]

Well if this is true they wasted a perfectly good plot.

[Ryzaki]

I have to admit that I just finished this quest, after doing a whole completionist playthrough on the mages side, and it felt so weak... On the mages side you get to explore a dark future, you find your companions corrupted by red lyrium, Leliana almost died, and then when they really die to let you go back... that is some powerful stuff.
On the templars side you have this blurry thing, you are actually discouraged from exploring (oh how I hate that) and you only get to eavesdrop what your companions are saying. Except for Cullen, who is imprisoned and is gesturing as if he's saying something but is not actually saying anything. I don't feel the threat, the "evil" inquisition is such a parody, drowning puppies and such. The option depicted as a first stub sounds much better and have some power, comparable to the stunning storytelling you get if you pick the mages side. Just my opinion, though. I have heard people actually preferring the templar side...

 

Yeah we'll have to differ on that. Alexius whining about Felix was not stunning storytelling to me. I just wanted to set him on fire.  That's not even getting into the stupidity of the time travel.

[stonerbishop]

Yeah we'll have to differ on that. Alexius whining about Felix was not stunning storytelling to me. I just wanted to set him on fire. That's not even getting into the stupidity of the time travel.

Plus, choosing mages = no Ser Barris

[Zjarcal]

I'm glad it was cut cuz it sounds hella dumb, but it would've been delicious if it had been kept in to troll the people who were begging for Leliana to be a romance option, give them a game over screen and corrupt their save file, that's how powerful Envy demons are, snap.

[Shelidon]

Yeah we'll have to differ on that. Alexius whining about Felix was not stunning storytelling to me. I just wanted to set him on fire.  That's not even getting into the stupidity of the time travel.

I understand your point. Still, I can't find anything to criticize in Champions of the Just because I feel like there's nothing there.

[Shelidon]

Double post. Apologies.

[stonerbishop]

Also, Fiona us an idiot

[Adanu]

I wouldn't say you only hear about it more because of the "feminist mainstream," but instead just because men are less likely to report it.

Like women, men too face negative consequences of gender roles, and in this case, it's that men can never show certain emotions, least they cease to be considered men at all, losing all societal value .

I wish people understood that more, because it's really terrible. Imagine a lot of this stuff that the modern feminist movement is going through, only you weren't allowed to even talk about it. I barely even want to write this post talking about how no one talks about it, and should probably try to end this post with a fart joke to retain some manly aloofness and indifference.

Try avoiceformen.com, The Mens Rights Movement is working to change that.

[Ryzaki]

I understand your point. Still, I can't find anything to criticize in Champions of the Just because I feel like there's nothing there.

 

XD worst of a bad situation for me really. Plus Barris makes up for it. I love everything about him.

 

Meanwhile the mages have Fiona...who I'd throw in a volcano if I could. Not really a hard decision.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Fiona is better than Ser Barris. 

[Shelidon]

the mages have Fiona...who I'd throw in a volcano if I could.

On that we can easily agree, my friend.

[stonerbishop]

Fiona is better than Ser Barris.

People at work are looking at me funny because I laughed so hard

[Ryzaki]

Fiona is better than Ser Barris. 

 

[Hanako Ikezawa]

People at work are looking at me funny because I laughed so hard

 

A woman who is stuck between a rock and a hard place and makes the only decision she can is better than a man who betrays every oath he took and spinelessly follows the guy who just assaulted the person he was there to protect. 

[Ryzaki]

Oh god rock and a hard place. And only decision she can!

 

I can't breathe.

 

I'm dying.

[stonerbishop]

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Oh god rock and a hard place. And only decision she can!

 

I can't breathe.

 

I'm dying.

She had two choices: accept help from the only people offering or the death of those she is in charge of. 

 

Meanwhile what is Barris' excuse? Let me answer that: he doesn't have one. 

[Ryzaki]

She had two choices: accept help from the only people offering or the death of those she is in charge of. 

 

Meanwhile what is Barris' excuse? Let me answer that: he doesn't have one. 

 

 

 

Dean_the_Young wrote...

 

She wants to be a rockstar revolutionary, but doesn't have the chops or the skills for it.

 

To start, she doesn't provide a goal or endstate to motivate or unify the mages behind her. Rather than set out a persuasive ambition and narrative that convinces a clear majority of the mages to agree with her  viewpoints, the mage rebellion only kicks off because of a context that made many of those present fear imminent death if they did not declare resistance. From the start a critical mass of her movement was either uninterested or fixated on short-term survival, and not aligned with her vision.

 

Not only could she not define what the movement was for, but she could not unify movement either. Shortly after her leadership, the mages scatter and schism. I'm not doing her much of a favor by believing that she was uninvolved with the renegade mages in the Hinterlands. But that's just it- she was uninvolved, neither preventing or correcting the rise of a nakedly mage-supremacist movement in her own ranks. The Templar atrocities and crimes against the people in the area can at least be understood (but not pardoned) of the crimes of conducting a war and effecitvely a ruthless counter-insurgency campaign, but the mage conduct of setting little people aflame for funny looks doesn't even advance that argument. When one of the greatest political fears of Thedas is that mages outside of the Circles would seek mage supremacy and care only about themselves, Fiona's rebellion did just that. Instead of policing themselves to present themselves as noble revolutionaries deserving of sympathy, Fiona would not and could not reign in her movement to stick to an overarching strategy.

 

Some of this might have been mitigated had Fiona had some plan, had made preparations that might have enabled a mage victory regardless, but she didn't. She doesn't, and never had, the forces to militarily beat the Templars. She wasn't even intending to stage a rebellion for the purposes of subsequent negotiating leverage. Fiona's planning never seems to have extended beyond '**** the Divine,' '???', 'FREEDOM!' planning. There was no stronghold set up for a resistance if they were going to huddle up in a single place (bad idea), nor a pre-existing support network to hide the mages and smuggle them about if the intent was to avoid fighting (which she could have been working on for years). She's bitter that she has no allies... after helping evict a major nobleman of a sympathetic monarch who unnecessarily offers her sanctuary, and failing to set up deals or ties beforehand.

 

After being faced with the consequences of her poor planning that even a modestly aware revolutionary strategist should have seen coming, her poor decisionmaking continues with the Tevinter/Venitori alliance. Or so she likes to describe it as- an alliance is an arrangement against relative equals, and Fiona breaks a major Andrastian taboo (and political kryptonite to the hemoraphaging mage reputation) by selling her own people into slavery in the name of security.

 

Please, let that settle in a bit. The mage rebellion, a revolt against an oppressive security state that trades mage freedom for security, effectively ends itself by trading freedom (including, or rather especially, the freedom to own the consequences of their actions and choices) for the safety of servitude. Being a prisoner never forced to work but who could face illegal abuse or be killed unjustly? Unacceptable. Being a servant with even fewer legal rights, even less recourse to more infamous abuse, and likely forced to serve in the most active military of the world that views even your blood as a tool of value? Well, it's a dangerous world out there!

 

This is a deal so shortsighted that it's staggering. I, for one, am not inclined to blame the mages for selling themselves to the Venatori per-say. I still need a Templar playthrough to see if/when the mages knew what they were getting into, and if they stayed without magical coercion. But not knowing about the Venatori schemes is not a defense, because one of the big risks of mages is what they can inadverdantly get themselves into thanks to trickery (such as the demonic kind), and the Tevinter angle itself is sufficiently suspect that an ulterior motive should have been suspected from the start.

 

Fiona believes that Tevinter will protect her from the renegade Templar armies outside of her gate because... well, it's never clear exactly why she would think that. Because he said so, mostly. Did she really think the Templars forces who defy the Chantry and rampage in the borders of Ferelden will be cowed by the prospect of Tevinter reprisals? That the non-existent Tevinter army will stand between her and them? That uniquely Tevinter magic of a Magister and his retinue will do what dozens or hundreds of mages in the Hinterlands could not? If Redcliffe was going to fall to a Templar assault (an assault, it should be pointed out, that never came), then a Tevinter Magister's intervention is not a credible deterrent or defense. Not from defending against Templars, and certainly not from Ferelden's inevitable retaliation when the Arl is run out of his own castle. Tevinter not only would not fight a war with Ferelden for a city they have no supply lines to and no ability to keep, but they could not. The existence of an ulterior motive is obvious, even if not explicit, and the only obvious objective is the mages themselves. Alexius wants the mages, and wants them for reasons he does not think they would agree to if he told them, and Fiona sells them into servitude to him for a promise he could not keep if he was honest anyway.

 

There's more than a few parallels to the fears non-mages have about how Mages will inevitably resort to magical abuses or demons when desperate. Based on her willingness to throw away principles, break cultural taboos, and push down the surrounding mundanes in favor of the magi, it really does seem like the biggest reason Fiona didn't make deals with demons in Redcliffe was because an even worse devil in disguise approached her first. And considering that the 'disguise' part could just as well apply to the machinations of spirits... well, overall it's a utter failure of the argument that the mages could be trusted to not resort to desperate measures when desperate.

 

 

So, as a revolutionary, Fiona leaves a lot to be desired. She's not a rallying figure who leads by inspiring or convincing others to follow her. She's not a strong leader who can keep her subordinates in line and moving in a single direction. She's not a political visionary who could find common ground or strike bargains or alliances that people would be justified in having faith she would follow through with through thick and thin. She's not a competent military strategist who can recognize losing fights and adopt strategies that identify relative abilities and avoids being drawn into losing battles. She's not a careful conspirator who acts in advance, subtly crafting conditions to favor her efforts and ensure success before a confrontation even emerges. She's not a clever thinker who can identify tricks and traps and set her own while avoiding those laid out by those who would exploit and subvert her crusade for their own ends. She's not even a principled paragon who can inspire and gain ethical credibility by refusing to break her principles.

 

 

Any of those would at least be credible forms of a lead revolutionary. She is supposed to be an agent of independence and self-determination, but at every stage her ambitions rely on the acquiesence and protection of other, more powerfull people who could alter the rebellion's fate as they wished. First the Divine, then Ferelden, then Tevinter, and possibly the Inquisition, and then back to the Divine. All of these people had the ability to stop (and crush) her rebellion if they had wished, and the only reason she wasn't crushed was because they didn't want to (despite numerous deliberate offenses). Even in the most radically pro-mage independence playthrough none of the favorable results are a consequence of policies she has achieved or put into effect by influence or will, but rather a result of other people making policies for their own reasons. And if/when any of them refused to indulge her... she has no recourse, except to turn to yet another patron to do for her and her rebellion what she could not.

 

 

The fact that she's completely unapologetic about it? That she says she has no regrets and would do the same things again? That she doesn't even have the insight and humility to acknowledge her own shortcoming and failures and indicate an effort to improve herself accordingly?

 

Fiona isn't fit for what she tries to be. As a revolutionary, as a leader, as everything the mage movement needed to be a success rather than to just be. Instead she plays a major key role in getting a lot of good people killed for a cause she wasn't capable of carrying out on her own.

 

Can she succeed in getting her goals regardless? Sure- through no power or influence of her own. A recklessly reformist divine, a like-minded Inquisitor, a sympathetic monarch, a host of people who wanted similar things she wanted but couldn't get for herself. Even fools can succeed if other people gives them what they want.

 

Fiona isn't an idiot. She's incompetent.

 

She always had choices. She just constantly made shitty ones.

 

And in the end she can't acknowledge she fucked up. Barris at least has the nerve to admit that.

[rigron]

The cut out version is INFINITELY more interesting than the version we got of that quest. Great, another game who suffers because of "uh, we are woman and we don´t like that", now we can only imagine how interesting and awesome would have been that mission, and no, I am not speaking about "yikes, sex scene with Leliana", I am speaking about being in a perfect/almost perfect ilusion of a demon who is preying on you without you actually realizing it, instead of the "muahahaha I am a big bad demon and I got you traped in the Fade, now please tell me everything I want to know, come on, please..." that we got.

 

Quote from that:

 

I normally wouldn’t discuss an early form of a plot (all of them went through similar revisions on a constant basis), or bring up a plot point which got dropped (which happens a lot), except that in this specific case it felt telling that none of us guys really thought much beyond the author’s intention, and the introduction of an alternate interpretation (gender-based, or at least it seemed such) proved to be an incredibly valuable discussion point that we might have missed if the dynamics on the team had been different…which made me think how much of it might get missed elsewhere. Thus I believed it worth mentioning.

 

Oh yes, you cut out what would have been remembered as the best quest in the entire game in exchange for making a demon who so far seemed inteligent look stupid and wasting an oportunity to make something real different that you haven´t done before. Yeah, incredibly value

 

Must've been some really sensitive women. Its a pity, What was cut sounds interesting. I wonder how many people would give into temptation and what would the consequence be?

And isn't all that more of a Desire demon thing?

 

Completely agree with you

 

About what´s in black: not really. Desire demons "seduction" is more a form to get their preys in a receptive state. See for example Kitty seduccing that little girl (Amanda?) in the Golem DLC of Origins: she adopted the form of a little cat ("Kitty") because the girl loves cats and that´s the more suitable physical aspect to make her lower her defenses to posses her/make a deal with her (in this case, posses her). Envy demons, as far as we know by Inquisition, can adopt any form (or at least any human form) and does it in order to impersonate, well, another person, normally someone with enough power to negatively influence other people, corrupting them. So it makes sense for Envy to adopt the form of Leliana, a good looking bisexual girl, in order to get the inquisitor to lower his/her defenses and involuntary reveal more aspects of his/her personality throught what appears to be a normal chat or by showing more of his/her personality to what he/she thinks is pretty woman interested in you.

[ThreeF]

I have to admit that I just finished this quest, after doing a whole completionist playthrough on the mages side, and it felt so weak... On the mages side you get to explore a dark future, you find your companions corrupted by red lyrium, Leliana almost died, and then when they really die to let you go back... that is some powerful stuff.
On the templars side you have this blurry thing, you are actually discouraged from exploring (oh how I hate that) and you only get to eavesdrop what your companions are saying. Except for Cullen, who is imprisoned and is gesturing as if he's saying something but is not actually saying anything. I don't feel the threat, the "evil" inquisition is such a parody, drowning puppies and such. The option depicted as a first stub sounds much better and have some power, comparable to the stunning storytelling you get if you pick the mages side. Just my opinion, though. I have heard people actually preferring the templar side...

 

I used stealth for that part, because it was very annoying to go through.  Cullen in saying something, btw, you probably had a bug or something, he asks whenever it's his turn to be interrogated and that he deserves it for helping a butcher  rise to power.

 

The good part about Templar quest is that i think it does a better introduction for Cole, in my first PT when I saw this guy, I just thought that he is some sort of weirdo and the whole conversation in the Skyhold about him being a spirit seemed very weak.

[Johanna]

I honestly wish David Gaider hadn't gone into specifics about what was cut and why; now, we just have a bunch of rando arseholes complaining about women ruuuuuuuuining the games industry.

For the record, I don't care either way. The thing with Hawke's dead mum about to get a honeymoon night whether she wanted it or not (safe to say not, yeah?) bothered me a lot more. A lot lot lot more.

But stop making all your qualms and complaints the fault of the sensitive~~~ women. It's so lazy and played out.