168 réponses à ce sujet

[Heimdall]

Loghain was a cool concept, but his implementation was awful.

1) We're told almost ad nauseum, but never shown, that he's a some brilliant respected military hero and tactician, all we get is a brief display of the devs lack of understanding of medieval warfare at Ostagar.
2) Aside from a short easily missed conversation at Ostagar, the Warden never interacts with him until endgame and there's little to no chance to actually build up a relationship with him as a villain.
3) His motivations are vaguely defined at best for the majority of the game and as a result of the aforementioned lack of interaction he just becomes a faceless force to fight against, his actions nothing but paranoid and irrational.

In short, the Loghain people have built up in their heads through finding out more about him is a great deal more interesting than Loghain, the villain we actually fought throughout the game.

[Marshal Moriarty]

Yes, but that is completely artificial! Opposing them because of direct insult/action against yourself is so on the nose, that it feels ultimately very fake and staged.There is simply no way to have a villain who *everyone* will oppose for legitimate reasons, without resorting to cardboard villainy (i,e he wants to blow up the world or rape, mug and murder everyone he ever sees ete etc). To be an effective counterpoint to your character, the villain will be acting under some motivation and have some agenda, which it is possible your character may share!

 

Forcing you to be in opposition because he strangled your auntie for the greater good, or pinched your last jaffa cake in order to save the universe, Is just old hat. Its an endless procession of tired old cliches, which always result in a perfunctory and tiresomely familiar plot. As was endlessly pointed out when the game was released, the game's story being cliched and weak was no real surprise - because whilst Bioware are good with characters and certain set piece events, they have never really delivered a satisfactory main story, As indeed neither has Bethesda, nor any other WRPG developer (New Vegas being probably the least worst example - and even that does indeed employ the direct action against you by the enemy cliche).

 

The more choice the player has over who they are and what they believe, the less able the writer is to create a plausible scenario where he will have objection to and even at the most basic level, any interest whatsoever in, the main enemy's plans and motives.

 

Case in Point: Bethesda's main stories in their Scrolls and Fallout games. Most people never finish them, because they just don't care, and feel like their character wouldn't care.

[Ashagar]

It depends both fallout 3, new vegas and skyrim I finished but Oblivion while I love the game but I yet to beat the main plot, keep getting side tracked by faction and side quests and the knights of the nine in various playthoughs.

[Marshal Moriarty]

To be exact, it is perfectly possible for you to play a character who (at least in your understanding of who you are) has no interest in saving the Empire in Oblivion, doesn't care about finding his father in Fallout 3, and has no real motivation in seeing who controls Hoover Dam in New Vegas etc etc.The game tells you that you care about these things, or at least the main quests act on the assumption that you do and have at least a passing interest in what happens. But that conceit is rarely shared by the player, who just wants to explore and forge their own path in those worlds, and couldn't care less about the overarching plot, because either it hasn;t been executed well or their character simply isn't the sort of person who gives a tinkcer's cuss about any of that (to name but 2 reasons).

 

To take an example from Dragon Age itself, take the issue of Bhelan in Orzammar. I think its well established by now that most people support him because it leads to a 'better' ending (I'm playing Devil's Advocate here slightly, as I support Harrowmont usually). By doing this, they commit a startling act of hypocrisy, supporting a man who has killed his king, taken his throne, blamed someone else for the deed and done it because he thinks he *must* do it etc etc. Which is what Loghain did. So they have no problem with this when it is Bhelan, but they are (according to the game anyway) implacable foes of Loghain for doing the exact same thing. The only difference is that Loghain acted against them directly. And the game even undercuts and exposes what an artificial reason this is, by allowing the Dwarf Noble to still support Bhelan as king because you can agree with his platform even though he moved against you. Yet you can't do the same with Loghain - because you just can't. The best you can do is recruit him after confronting him when you told the assembled nobles of all the reasons they absolutely should not support him. Despite the fact that a quick tour of this forum will show that a great many people *do* agree with the things he did.

 

Bethesda's games are particularly railroaded, with various characters being invulnerable to death, and who don't die or even care at all if you fire Fat Man nukes at them for a hour. New Vegas at least does away with that stupid mechanic (which Bethesda then put right back in when making Skyrim), but it still doesn't solve the central problem that if the player doesn't care about the main plot or enemies, then forcing them to do so only compounds the error.

 

Bioware's games are no exception to this, being successful *in spite* of their main plots, not *because* of them.

[Positronics]

Crap! Loghain was more incompetent than we thought! Why would he explicitly tell Calain not to fight in the battle if his plan was to leave him to die? Silly Loghain, that's not how you kill people!

Loghain publicly advised him not to fight so he could have an excuse later on, then made a hammer-and-anvil battle plan with the King and didn't follow through with the hammer, leaving his King to rot on a rope. That is called regicide, buddy. He despised Cailan, and knew with the King's bravado, Cailan could easily be nudged into a mess that could be made to look like an accident. He didn't want the Chevaliers to bolster the Fereldans, supposedly for petty reasons, but in reality it was because they would have boosted the King's force and could have been an independent observer that announced word of his betrayal. He started poisoning Eamon -before- the battle of Ostagar, proving it wasn't a change of heart moment. When did he make the deal with Uldred? It must have been long ago. Who knows what would have happened if Howe's lackeys had reached Ostagar? And he hated Cailan for having an affair with his daughter. The King rules, the Teyrn follows. Loghain didn't respect that. He had been planning the King's downfall for a while.

 

You might be able to try to justify Loghain's betrayal by metagaming and saying "Oh, they would have lost the battle anyway because the developers say so" (I've heard that line time and again, but never seen it. I call bullshit until I see it. Where do they say this?)

 

But that excuse, if true, isn't justification at all.

 

#1 Loghain would have not known the outcome of the battle with certainty, as the writers would.

 

#2 Even if Loghain's forces couldn't destroy the darkspawn horde, he still could have broken through and allowed much of the King's army to escape. This tactic has been repeated on several historical battlefields, to free besieged forces and allow them to breakout. 

 

#3 He is sworn to the King. You are a dishonorable POS if you're not willing to die in battle for your King. You don't make the call, he does.

 

If Loghain is in it for Fereldan and its people, why did he abandon their main force to die? Shouldn't rescuing the King's army have been his top priority? It wasn't though. Seeing Cailin dead was his top priority.

[Marshal Moriarty]

A wise king doesn't just ignore the council of his War leader - a man who won the country its independence and without whom, he wouldn't be king of an anthill. Also consider that Orlais has a track record of not leaving in peace after Blights are over. They've done it in the past, and it is perfectly possible they may have done so again.

 

Cailan refuses to listen to either Loghain or Duncan (who wants to wait for reinforcements from Redcliffe). By bringing the army out onto the valley floor, it left them with their backs literally to the wall. If they had tried to retreat from there, the darkspawn would have slaughtered them anyway, along with any relief force that tried to intervene. The horde was huge, and the 'oh if the Archdemon shows up, then the wardens will see to that' attitude was reckless.

 

Insisting on meeting and fighting in the Wilds like this is idiocy, They should have hung back and properly scouted the force as it advanced north, so they knew what they were dealing with. Which is what they would have done, if Cailan had just listened, Loghain still intends to do this (Morrigan and Flemeth mention that Loghain likely views the horde as something he can employ his old guerilla style tactics against like he did with Orlais), but his time is caught up in suppressing the Bannorn (who choose a spectacularly bad time to engage in political sqabbbling - maybe deal with the darkspawn horde first, eh guys?)

[Wrath_Of_Deadguy]

IMO, the most effective villain Dragon Age has had so far was the Architect. He had the moral ambiguity, the intelligence, and the will to use the player to serve his own purposes... however, since one of the possible outcomes is alliance, he doesn't really even count as an antagonist in many playthroughs. Your destruction is not a necessary component in his plans, which- again- makes him substantially less threatening than the hammy, out-and-out evil Mother. However, he stuck his meddling fingers in the player's business a whole lot more than any other villain has so far, although it might just be that Awakening was a shorter narrative and the same number of appearances presented as a higher degree of involvement because they were more closely spaced. Still, this is the sort of character I really would like to see Bioware use as a template for their next main antagonist in DA.

 

All of the elements are there- charisma, guile, power, even a degree of sympathetic guilt over his past deeds. He just needs to be placed on a more oppositional footing... and given the possibility of an alliance outcome in his first appearance, it isn't inconceivable that he could start off working with the protagonist and then later betray them when their goals no longer align. He's a really, really hard critter to hate despite his utterly creepy methods, and if the number of people who spared him is any indication he's quite capable of convincing a player that he really is working for the greater good even if that later turns out not to be the case. He'd be a much more subtle and sympathetic touch than most other villains of his ability, and it's distinctions like those that turn effective villains into great ones.

 

Lots of people are also mentioning Solas, but I have a harder time seeing him as an antagonist because of his character traits as displayed. He's not a leader; that alone would make him a poor fit for the role of primary antagonist in a series where your enemy pretty much needs to have armies at their command to present as a credible threat. He does, however, have guile and cunning in spades (hoodwinking an entire pantheon of gods is no mean feat), and I could easily see him betraying a player for what he believed to be some nobler purpose. Would he make a good villain? Maybe... but it would be a hard sell, to be sure. I think he's much more likely to show up in another role... much how Flemeth/Mythal, who many people- myself included- had pegged as a future primary antagonist, turned out to be at worst (so far) pursuing a parallel agenda unopposed to the player's goals as they pertain to the main plot of each game (although I'm certain Morrigan would disagree on that point). That doesn't mean Solas won't be someone certain choices lead us to fight... but as the core villain of the piece? I don't know.

[Innsmouth Dweller]

i don't want villain with braincells and/or unique PoV if i the game doesn't allow me to join him/her. if i'm leashed, i want to fight generic grotesque monsters like Archdemon

[RinuCZ]

The Inquisitor and their minions Cassandra, Leliana, and Cullen.

I would feel really uneasy fighting Cassandra. On the other hand, I can imagine pretty well how things would get out of hands under her Chantry (yep, she is Divine in mine world). She is passionate and thoughtful but her devotion can consume her.

 

I would prefer a villain based more in reality. Having rational reasons to do things s/he does. If there is more forces at play as it was in Dragon Age 2, the better. In our world, we are also unable to point out a single person responsible for a majority of bad stuff happening.

 

Evil-for-sake-of-being-evil villain makes the story way too predictable and it lacks the excitement from uncovering the truth.

[Catche Jagger]

Loghain publicly advised him not to fight so he could have an excuse later on, then made a hammer-and-anvil battle plan with the King and didn't follow through with the hammer, leaving his King to rot on a rope. That is called regicide, buddy. He despised Cailan, and knew with the King's bravado, Cailan could easily be nudged into a mess that could be made to look like an accident. He didn't want the Chevaliers to bolster the Fereldans, supposedly for petty reasons, but in reality it was because they would have boosted the King's force and could have been an independent observer that announced word of his betrayal. He started poisoning Eamon -before- the battle of Ostagar, proving it wasn't a change of heart moment. When did he make the deal with Uldred? It must have been long ago. Who knows what would have happened if Howe's lackeys had reached Ostagar? And he hated Cailan for having an affair with his daughter. The King rules, the Teyrn follows. Loghain didn't respect that. He had been planning the King's downfall for a while.

You might be able to try to justify Loghain's betrayal by metagaming and saying "Oh, they would have lost the battle anyway because the developers say so" (I've heard that line time and again, but never seen it. I call bullshit until I see it. Where do they say this?)

But that excuse, if true, isn't justification at all.

#1 Loghain would have not known the outcome of the battle with certainty, as the writers would.

#2 Even if Loghain's forces couldn't destroy the darkspawn horde, he still could have broken through and allowed much of the King's army to escape. This tactic has been repeated on several historical battlefields, to free besieged forces and allow them to breakout.

#3 He is sworn to the King. You are a dishonorable POS if you're not willing to die in battle for your King. You don't make the call, he does.

If Loghain is in it for Fereldan and its people, why did he abandon their main force to die? Shouldn't rescuing the King's army have been his top priority? It wasn't though. Seeing Cailin dead was his top priority.

Yeah... no. You see, you're making assumptions based on information that you like and ignoring the information that you don't. I'm sure Loghain could've saved the king, but the fact that he didn't doesn't mean he had been planning to quit the field from the very beginning. He doesn't tell his King not to go to battle in public, he gives such advice at a strategy meeting where there are 2 or 3 other people. One of whom is dead at the end of the battle (Duncan) and the another who is presumed dead (the HoF). He isn't publicly declaring his disapproval of the king's actions, he's giving his strategical advice (because, y'know, he's a general and a strategist). It was stated earlier that he poisoned Eamon in order to erode Cailan's base so he couldn't bring chivaliers into Ferelden.

Now you could argue that upon seeing the battle was lost, Loghain saw an opportunity to rid himself of a man he hated and took it when he could have tried to risk his army to save him, but there is no evidence that he planned Cailan's death.

[Augustei]

I do not wish to derail the discussion anymore, as the thread is about what kinds of villain are wanted, not how misunderstood or not Loghain is. I still maintain that the actions shown in the actual game support your interpretation and assume you feel differently. For the actual thread, I guess Loghain is an example of a good villain for you and not for me.

This isn't actually the one I was referring to but heres some of his posts in regards to it:
http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-17

http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-18

Bullshit alert. Where have the writers ever said that? I encourage you to replay Origins. Loghain clearly foreshadows his betrayal of Cailan. It was clearly pre-planned, as he had events in play that came to fruition immediately after seizing power, events that would have had him killed for treason had Cailan still been king. He thought Cailan was too gracious to Orlais.

Keep your bullshit fanfiction to yourself

[Orian Tabris]

Is it wrong that I want a female qunari companion that is a possible romance, AND a female qunari as the main antagonist in DA4? I just think it'd be so cool to have an evil - non-blood mage - saarebas with her mouth sewn almost shut. She should have almost black skin and yellow eyes that offset the skin colour.

[GenericEnemy]

I thought Loghain was a great villain, but as far as BioWare goes I still think Saren is my favorite antagonist. 

 

Mostly because he really felt like Shepard's rival more than anything else. A villain, no doubt, but an understandable and at times sympathetic one. He was trying to do what Shepard was trying to do in his own way, but ended up going so far over his head and didn't even realize it. Not to mention he was Shepard's equal in pretty much every way, and that was presented to us.

 

Great villain, while I don't want BioWare to retread old ground I think something in lieu of him would be fine by me.

[Orian Tabris]

i don't want villain with braincells and/or unique PoV if i the game doesn't allow me to join him/her. if i'm leashed, i want to fight generic grotesque monsters like Archdemon

 

This would be a great idea! You could side with the antagonist and be seen as a true villain, not like the elven Warden Commander to Amaranthine, or the Champion to Thedas, when it was really Anders or Meredith.

 

Of course, most of your companions would turn on you, and only the ones that like you enough or are able to be convinced will side with you. Then, the play character's main enemy could be one of the main NPCs that you work with.

[Hiemoth]

This isn't actually the one I was referring to but heres some of his posts in regards to it:
http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-17

http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-18

Keep your bullshit fanfiction to yourself

 

You did notice the first paragraph in the Gaider's first response there, right, where he states that they are his thoughts, but if there is no evidence of those actions in the game, it, according to him, debatable that it can be taken as the truth. Thus it cannot be used as evidence to counter things presented in the actual game, which is what have to discuss things on.

[The Mistress]

To be honest, I'd love a complex antihero as the 'villain' in the next game (preferably a person referred to in codexes explaining how they would 'help the world' as one name and finally revealed in the climax to be that same person... under a different guise). Perhaps it doesn't appear that they're 'evil', but in the end they turn out to be the main Big Bad all along... except they're actually almost succeeding in becoming a Good Guy through all of their 'bad' actions. A little like Loghain but with better fleshing out, with a touch of Solas added in (and I would prefer if it wasn't Solas this time around, so he could be kept for a future title). Someone that'll make you go, "Wait a second, did I just stop him from taking this world to a better place?"

Having a straight-played Good vs. Evil storyline like Inquisition is nice to have every now and then, but not occasionally or (God forbid) frequently. The previous two games had similar villains to each other and had a more low fantasy feel to it than Inquisition did, but the story lines for both (in my opinion) were far more interesting.

[In Exile]

This isn't actually the one I was referring to but heres some of his posts in regards to it:
http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-17

http://forum.bioware...mac-tir/page-18

Keep your bullshit fanfiction to yourself

 

Loghain was orignally going to be mind-controlled by the AD. That's why the plot is so screwy. You have things that were set-up with a mind-controlled Loghain in mind (e.g. Howe killing Papa Cousland, the betrayal at Ostagar) that get paved over in ways that are increasingly less palpable. 

[Darkly Tranquil]

Loghain was a cool concept, but his implementation was awful.
1) We're told almost ad nauseum, but never shown, that he's a some brilliant respected military hero and tactician, all we get is a brief display of the devs lack of understanding of medieval warfare at Ostagar.
2) Aside from a short easily missed conversation at Ostagar, the Warden never interacts with him until endgame and there's little to no chance to actually build up a relationship with him as a villain.
3) His motivations are vaguely defined at best for the majority of the game and as a result of the aforementioned lack of interaction he just becomes a faceless force to fight against, his actions nothing but paranoid and irrational.
In short, the Loghain people have built up in their heads through finding out more about him is a great deal more interesting than Loghain, the villain we actually fought throughout the game.

I agree that his implementation in the game is poor, but that tends to be the case with most Bioware villains; we see them once at the start to establish who they are, then they disappear for 90% of the game before reappearing for a boss fight at the end with almost nothing in between. Bioware really need to find a way to better weave the activities of the villain into the plot so that the player gets a sense that the villain is actively working against them throughout the story. They kind of started to do that with Corypheus with his assault on Haven, but his threat pretty much peters out after that until the very end.

Putting all that aside, the only way to really discover what Loghain is about and why he's such an interesting character is to recruit him into your party and talk to him, and to read The Stolen Throne, otherwise you miss out on his backstory, which explains his reasons for what he does. Without that, he just comes across as a fairly generic power hungry traitor villain, rather than the tragic fallen hero he is meant to be, which is ultimately a failure of writing.

[In Exile]

I agree that his implementation in the game is poor, but that tends to be the case with most Bioware villains; we see them once at the start to establish who they are, then they disappear for 90% of the game before reappearing for a boss fight at the end with almost nothing in between. Bioware really need to find a way to better weave the activities of the villain into the plot so that the player gets a sense that the villain is actively working against them throughout the story. They kind of started to do that with Corypheus with his assault on Haven, but his threat pretty much peters out after that until the very end.

Putting all that aside, the only way to really discover what Loghain is about and why he's such an interesting character is to recruit him into your party and talk to him, and to read The Stolen Throne, otherwise you miss out on his backstory, which explains his reasons for what he does. Without that, he just comes across as a fairly generic power hungry traitor villain, rather than the tragic fallen hero he is meant to be, which is ultimately a failure of writing.

 

But even if you know all that, Loghain is still a comical idiot. His every move is insane, self-defeating, or otherwise almost comically evil. 

[Orian Tabris]

Why are people going on about Loghain when he was never the main villain in Origins? The main one was the Archdemon, Urthemiel. Loghain is closer to The Arishok than he is Corypheus, in that he was never the biggest threat to the Grey Wardens. He was closer to a rival than a villain, anyway. And rival does not equal villain.

[MissScarletTanager]

Before this topic devolves into another spat about Loghain, I'm gonna put in my two cents:

 

I want to see an average joe as the villain. And not an evil one; I want an average joe - like Hawke is and the Warden/Inquisitor can start out as - who worked for his power or such. And I don't want them to be evil, either. I want it to be hard to tell whether or not their and evil force, or whether the MC could be mistaken in their own actions. Maybe something happens and the villain believes THEIR way is the only way to save Thedas, while the MC and co believe it's THEIR different way. Kind of like Van in Tales of the Abyss, if anyone knows that game.

[In Exile]

Why are people going on about Loghain when he was never the main villain in Origins? The main one was the Archdemon, Urthemiel. Loghain is closer to The Arishok than he is Corypheus, in that he was never the biggest threat to the Grey Wardens. He was closer to a rival than a villain, anyway. And rival does not equal villain.

 

Because the AD had, really, 0 role in DA:O in between Ostagar and the endgame. Even Meredith featured more. 

[In Exile]

Before this topic devolves into another spat about Loghain, I'm gonna put in my two cents:

 

I want to see an average joe as the villain. And not an evil one; I want an average joe - like Hawke is and the Warden/Inquisitor can start out as - who worked for his power or such. And I don't want them to be evil, either. I want it to be hard to tell whether or not their and evil force, or whether the MC could be mistaken in their own actions. Maybe something happens and the villain believes THEIR way is the only way to save Thedas, while the MC and co believe it's THEIR different way. Kind of like Van in Tales of the Abyss, if anyone knows that game.

 

I get the idea behind the average joe as a villain, but Van wasn't very average. 

[Ashagar]

Because the AD had, really, 0 role in DA:O in between Ostagar and the endgame. Even Meredith featured more. 

 

Though to be if we went by activities Howe was more of a active villain than either loghein or the arch-demon, even more so if you did the human noble origins.

[Darkly Tranquil]

But even if you know all that, Loghain is still a comical idiot. His every move is insane, self-defeating, or otherwise almost comically evil.

I agree to a large extent. I like I said, his implementation was poor. It's been claimed (although I've never seen confirmation from anyone from Bioware) that at some point in development they had a plot in mind where he was supposed to have been "indoctrinated" by the Archdaemon, which would be the cause of his betrayal of Cailan and subsequent crazy villain heel turn, and that they had made a lot of content based on that premise and by the time they dropped that plot line it was too late to redo the content they had already made. That would make his Jekyll/Hyde transition actually make some sort of sense. If it's true, his poor implementation is the result of a change of plans midstream and the devs having to make do with what they had.