She seems very bitter and nasty in this game, i've completely lost interest in her character at this point, and yes i romanced her in Origins..
Honestly blame the poor writing in this game on Bioware, she's just evil for the sake of being evil, spymaster or not..
This caught me off guard too but in my case I missed one conversation in Haven and that was apparently the deciding factor in her slide into psychopathy. My decisions affecting her is fine, but having such a major thing decided because I didn't see her at Haven one time seems a tad unforgiving.
This is exactly why I was against her becoming the divine. Not that I really cared about the chantry to begin with because I don't, but how can you be the divine if you can just slit someone's throat in cold blood? Not to mention AGAINST my orders. I am the inquisitor and she disobeyed me. She got one thing right though, she was always just a tool to do the dirty work behind the scenes, which is useful in huge political conflicts. She's just not divine material.
Inquisitor: "Oh, hey Leliana, don't mind me! I met you like ten minutes ago, so I will refrain from interfering with your affairs, which clearly don't involve me yet btw, and just kindly keep my trap shut instead of being an obnoxious busybody. Ok? Cool."
~ 50 hours of real life time and several months ingame later ~
Leliana: 
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Well done, Bioware. Well done.
Both conversations have a logical impact on her personality, I think. I don't think they were meaningless for her.
For me, the problem is that they based it on only two comments made by your inquisitor.
IMHO, I think they should have given players more opportunities to influence her. (maybe 4-5 conversations, and asking for 3-4 correct choices respectively).
I also got a hardened leliana in the end, and it was difficult for me to accept it (specially, because I tried to confort her and tell her that she didn't do anything wrong after moving to Skyhold, although I ultimately agreed that soldiers know they are risking their lifes).
I'm not going to complain about it, however. It would have been nice to have more chances to make her realise that she need not be so heartless, though.
The only thing that bugged me about this is that she acted like I had personally pushed her to be ruthless, when I had not. I had in fact told her our people were not expendable, and in that initial Haven conversation I had simply not interfered. That was it. I'd left her to her own devices, her own choices and now she blames me?
People aren't perfect. Sometimes they choose to blame others for their own shortcomings. Sometimes we have a bigger effect on people than we might realise. We don't own other people. We can try and influence them. We may or may not be successful. As a game, this has to have specific flags that are either triggered or aren't, which somewhat out of necessity takes the reality out of the situation, but as far as trying to inject the illusion of reality back in again - under the constraints of the game mechanics - I find it very refreshing to have characters who will do things I don't want them to do, and who might say things I disagree with. If I dig down deep enough I can 'game' the system and choose the 'right' dialogue option at the right time and get the outcome I want, but without knowing how to game the system the first time around it was refreshing and wonderful and great to see that a character had a mind of her own, that she was flawed, that she went down a path that I did not expect, that her thoughts and feelings interacted with my actions and words in ways I could not have predicted.
More of this type of thing, please.
Leliana in Origins constantly lied to you and admitted she liked killing people and despite supposedly being repentant of her past never truly owned up to it and ends up doing it all over again for someone else.
So yeah her characterization in Inquisition seemed pretty consistent to me.
Leliana's Song told me all I needed to know about her.
Both conversations have a logical impact on her personality, I think. I don't think they were meaningless for her.
I agree on the second conversation, but the first one? Definitely not. How can the decision of someone she has known for literally 10 minutes have any kind of impact on her? I mean, I could have lived with it if you were to be "punished" later on for pushing Leliana to kill the traitor, but getting the same result for staying quiet (rightfully so, because the Inquisitor has no idea what's going on) is just complete and utter BS and horrible writing.
Nevertheless, I agree that more choices should have effected the outcome instead of just two, one of which is totally random.
More of this type of thing, please.
What? More of this type of completely inconsistent and nonsensical writing? Interesting.
What you people seem to be forgetting is that the Inquisitor is NOT the Warden, and you can't assume that everyone who plays DA:I has played Origins in the past, Dragon Age isn't Mass Effect.
I am not someone who is that big into head-canon and/or roleplaying your character but here you are, a person who has just been thrown for a loop, with barely any idea how you got there and completely out of your element - then you see someone "you" don't know, like at all, conversing with one of her agents over something you are completely clueless about. What would be the most sensible thing to do in this type of situation? Asking what's going on or keeping your mouth shut, and since you can't do the former... what definitely isn't sensible is outright interfering without gaining insight of the situation. Not to mention that the cutscene as a whole can be easily missed, which did happen to a lot of players.
Overall it's just the wrong sort of significant choices.
People aren't perfect. Sometimes they choose to blame others for their own shortcomings. Sometimes we have a bigger effect on people than we might realise. We don't own other people. We can try and influence them. We may or may not be successful. As a game, this has to have specific flags that are either triggered or aren't, which somewhat out of necessity takes the reality out of the situation, but as far as trying to inject the illusion of reality back in again - under the constraints of the game mechanics - I find it very refreshing to have characters who will do things I don't want them to do, and who might say things I disagree with. If I dig down deep enough I can 'game' the system and choose the 'right' dialogue option at the right time and get the outcome I want, but without knowing how to game the system the first time around it was refreshing and wonderful and great to see that a character had a mind of her own, that she was flawed, that she went down a path that I did not expect, that her thoughts and feelings interacted with my actions and words in ways I could not have predicted.
More of this type of thing, please.
My decisions don't matter!
My decisions mattered too much
And then people wonder why the DEVs don't show their face on here.
You completely missed the point. As was already said before, it's not about decisions that matter per se, it's about decisions that matter in a believable and consistent way. Leliana turning into a cold-blooded psycho and basically putting the blame on the Inquisitor for no reason whatsoever, just because they minded their own business ten minutes after meeting her, doesn't fall under that category.
You're not seriously playing the real life logic card now, are you?
Either way, that most certainly wasn't the first time Leliana killed or ordered to kill someone who wasn't necessarily an enemy and it sure as hell wasn't the last time. Not to mention that the one she had killed wasn't exactly an innocent bystander. So no, considering Leliana's character and what she's been through before, there's absolutely now way that this should have been such a defining moment. And even if it were, blaming it on the Inquisitor when all they did was not interfering in her business when they barely knew each other? There's simply no legitimate reason for that train of thought - it's completely and utterly random.
The other moment, where you can tell her that soldiers are/aren't expendable is another story, though.
In the end you can sugarcoat Leliana all game (and you know, in situations/conversations that actually matter and have a background), tell her stories of flower fields and romantic sunrises and you are still stuck with her ruthless persona because of that one random moment right at the very beginning, where you didn't even do anything to impact or change her actions. That's bad writing, plain and simple.
Equally, you can spend the whole game having her murder inconvenient Grand Clerics and have tongues cut out and stuff, and that does nothing to harden her if you pick "right" in those two choices.
Leliana is one of my favourite characters and I think her evolution was handled very well. I think it could have gone without the player's 'input' though since that just makes her seem freakishly sensitive to suggestion. Like do not start swinging a shiny object hypnotically in her general area.
But anyone whose saying she became some monster out of nowhere isn't paying attention. Or is paying selective attention. The ruthless streak has always been there, the lady who loves outplaying people in the game has always been there. But, more importantly, her idealistic core remains true no matter how hardened she becomes. The reforms that she implements are proof of that. It just becomes a kind of ruthless idealism. She becomes the ultimate 'big picture' kind of idealist.
Equally, you can spend the whole game having her murder inconvenient Grand Clerics and have tongues cut out and stuff, and that does nothing to harden her if you pick "right" in those two choices.
Exactly.
But anyone whose saying she became some monster out of nowhere isn't paying attention.
And no one did. No one was saying that her becoming like that, generally speaking, didn't make sense. What doesn't make sense, as I elaborated in my last post, are the moments that ultimately lead to the two completely differing attitudes to life.
If her becoming ruthless or rather more ruthless had simply been the canon route, regardless of our choices, I don't think many would have had a problem with it. The same would be true if the moments that decide the outcome were more emotionally and narratively defining.
I very much enjoy the gist of Leliana's story in DAI. Please more of 'you didn't do this, and that has consequences too'.
But yes, the Leliana case and how it was specifically done.. was not the best. I don't think it should have hinged on just that one small convo. I don't like it.
But again, the gist.. awesome. Fits her, fits her circumstance, fits the newer themes Bioware games, etc.
If her becoming ruthless or rather more ruthless had simply been the canon route, regardless of our choices, I don't think many would have had a problem with it. The same would be true if the moments that decide the outcome were more emotionally and narratively defining.
Cool, then we have nothing to disagree about. Personally I just pretend that Darth Leliana IS the canon route. My Inquisitors stay quiet on that first conversation in Haven because they don't really have any right to intefere with how she handles her spies, she's the one who starts going down that road. Sans prompts. From there my Inquisitors answer the way I'd expect a leader of an organization that is trying to save the world would.
But anyone whose saying she became some monster out of nowhere isn't paying attention. Or is paying selective attention. The ruthless streak has always been there, the lady who loves outplaying people in the game has always been there. But, more importantly, her idealistic core remains true no matter how hardened she becomes. The reforms that she implements are proof of that. It just becomes a kind of ruthless idealism. She becomes the ultimate 'big picture' kind of idealist.
I agree hardened Divine Leliana fits with her general progression. It's a continuation of the ruthless spymaster persona we've seen for the rest of the game.
What doesn't fit so well is her behaviour in the quest itself. She doesn't seem ruthless in that quest, she seems deranged.
I get the feeling Leliana is only in the Inquisition because she wants revenge for what happened to Divine Justine and deep down doesn't have the heart for the Inquisition. That's why she seems more cold and distant compared to Origins.
I get the feeling Leliana is only in the Inquisition because she wants revenge for what happened to Divine Justine and deep down doesn't have the heart for the Inquisition. That's why she seems more cold and distant compared to Origins.
I agree.
She has the hopeful and idealistic element of herself, but at her base, she's a thug. She just doesn't want to be. But its what she is. So she lies, to herself and others, and we never know if any particularly 'positive' line we get from her is her playing herself or others, or what she actually thinks.
I do hope that if we get one more appearance of Leliana (a final one?), there is more chance of an upswing to her character. A realization of hope, not just a dimming of it (that we can slow down if we try).
I suppose the ending of DAI is kinda that..
Leliana is a weird character. The whole hardening\unhardening thing struck me as a gimmick, and the only thing it seemed to affect was whether or not she was up for a threesome. I fully expected her to like... stay dead... but nope. She's alive, well, and looks better than ever.
Overall I agree - this character was used in questionable ways and I REALLY don't like her co-dependence throughout the series, but it was still better than introducing someone new.
I actually loved Leliana's evolution. I disliked her intensely in Origins because I couldn't take the cloying, saccharine sweetness. At first, I thought it was because she could do no wrong, that she seemed incomplete as a character because she had no flaws and because she excelled at everything she attempted. After playing Leliana's Song, I realized that no, she really isn't the perfect angel she pretended to be in Origins, that she's human after all, and I liked her in that. I also discovered that I don't like artificial sweeteners. So yeah, I appreciated that her resentment, guilt, and bitterness over losing her best friend hardened her heart. I thought it showed her human side and made her a richer character. And I liked how, by reminding her that empathy and compassion aren't signs of weakness, she takes it to heart, and becomes a better person because of it. In my game, she sent the corrupt sister away with a warning. She wasn't the perfect angel she was in DAO, but her flaws were understandable, relatable ones. I may never love her, but I no longer actively dislike her. And that's something I *never* thought would happen.
Retour en haut
Since when ya can train peoples how to behave anyway ? She changed....deal with it and stop hammering the 'I was a good Hero' . 