She wasn't locked away to him, he makes that abundantly clear during the landsmeet and afterwards in dialogue if recruited.
He didn't usurp power from her, he only led the army. Did a decent job of it too.
If by "Decent Job" is letting the darkspawn take over almost all of country, Then sure did a very decent job.
I'll admit it's too bad that I have to read the Stolen Throne in order for me to understand why Loghain is the man he is in the games. If that was somehow integrated in Origins It would've prevented me from executing him.
I think that could perhaps be a factor for human noble origin (the "hero of Maric's rebellion" part that for a young Cousland could be more than just story he read somewhere), but for anyone else? The Warden doesn't really know more than a player does, so if the player doesn't see a reason to spare Loghain, why should the Warden see it? 
Look in a history book and tell me when anyone besides a Grey Warden has ended a Blight or where anyone who's not a Grey Warden thinks they can. The fact is, no one in Thedas believes otherwise, and everyone in Thedas is correct in that a Grey Warden is needed. You can try to break the mold all you want, but your view is accepted nowhere.
Uh huh.
I can't, but neither can you tell me why only grey wardens can in the context of history.
So, a skeptical commander who has not seen any sign of an archdemon, dealing with the very group that nearly got the entire surface infected with the blight from his personal experience, and had also seen that same group work with the country that occupied Ferelden for a century, and nearly got his best friend and his king killed, has only their word to go on, and the fact that history has shown us that only the wardens have stopped the blights, but they refuse to say why only wardens can.
Even Cailan was skeptical of their ability to end blights. Not in their legend but in that only they could do it since he was planning on killing the archdemon with his father's sword.
If by "Decent Job" is letting the darkspawn take over almost all of country, Then sure did a very decent job.
I let most of the blame fall on the bannorn for that one. The ones who felt a civil war was more important than uniting to defeat the darkspawn, which Loghain was calling for at the Landsmeet.
Defeating the darkspawn is a higher priority than trying to take advantage of the power vacuum left with Cailan's death. Not every noble who rebelled against Loghain and Anora were idealists like Teagan.
Uh huh.
I can't, but neither can you tell me why only grey wardens can in the context of history.
I don't need to. Fact is, they are the only ones who ever have and always be the only ones whoever will. The people don't need to know why, to know that it is. I'm sure next to no one in Thedas knows why they always fall to the ground, but no one ever expects to jump and never come back down.
So, a skeptical commander who has not seen any sign of an archdemon, dealing with the very group that nearly got the entire surface infected with the blight from his personal experience, and had also seen that same group work with the country that occupied Ferelden for a century, and nearly got his best friend and his king killed, has only their word to go on, and the fact that history has shown us that only the wardens have stopped the blights, but they refuse to say why only wardens can.
That would make you an idiotic commander, not a skeptical one, because this would be the sixth possible archdemon seen in Thedas, and to say, "This time it'll be different," is stupid, imo. Dumat himself was killed several times before the Grey Wardens existed, but people are going to just assume this time it'll be different? Right. This compounded by the fact that when an archdemon dies it explodes, would make one not want to take chances. They want the archdemon dead, permanently, and the only thing that has ever and will ever done that is a Warden.
Even Cailan was skeptical of their ability to end blights. Not in their legend but in that only they could do it since he was planning on killing the archdemon with his father's sword.
No he doesn't. He doubts that the Fifth Blight is even a true Blight, and only because an archdemon WASN'T seen. "Isn't that what you're boys are here for Duncan," doesn't sound like someone who thinks he can take on the archdemon alone, this being in response to Duncan bring up the fact that an archdemon might appear.
That's a legitimate criticism of the game. I imagine that there was an expectation that the audience couldn't or wouldn't want to follow a complex political story, plus you are limited by the points of view of your PC and companions. But even what we see of Loghain casts him in a muahaha vein that is hard to see past.I'll admit it's too bad that I have to read the Stolen Throne in order for me to understand why Loghain is the man he is in the games. If that was somehow integrated in Origins It would've prevented me from executing him.
I let most of the blame fall on the bannorn for that one. The ones who felt a civil war was more important than uniting to defeat the darkspawn, which Loghain was calling for at the Landsmeet.
Defeating the darkspawn is a higher priority than trying to take advantage of the power vacuum left with Cailan's death. Not every noble who rebelled against Loghain and Anora were idealists like Teagan.
Yeah so Loghain begins to actively hunt the last two remaining wardens,almost destroying any chance for Ferelden... Exactly how was defeating the darkspawn at the top of his priority list?
Well, no. Loghain "actively" fought the banns who declared war on him, and "actively" tried to get allies as you see when you go to Orzammar. Putting a bounty on someone's head and agreeing to an assassin seems to be a pretty passive way of hunting them.
Yeah so Loghain begins to actively hunt the last two remaining wardens,almost destroying any chance for Ferelden... Exactly how was defeating the darkspawn at the top of his priority list?
He posted a bounty and went to fight the bannorn, who went to war against him first. He can't just march his soldiers south and fight the darkspawn while the other nobles are fighting him. Even if they left his forces alone, all his supply lines would go through their lands.
Loghain actively fought the bannorn, who chose to fight him first. The plan was to gather as many forces as he could quickly then fight the darkspawn, but the nobles decided to fight him, so he had to fight them first before he could fight the darkspawn.
Add in that the nobles who planned to take advantage of the power vacuum likely would have executed his daughter upon deposing her as queen, and Loghain's actions make perfect sense after Ostagar, even if, in the likely event you don't agree with them.
I don't need to. Fact is, they are the only ones who ever have and always be the only ones whoever will. The people don't need to know why, to know that it is. I'm sure next to no one in Thedas knows why they always fall to the ground, but no one ever expects to jump and never come back down.
See, I have a serious problem with the bolded part. Not just in relation to darkspawn, but do you really think no one wonders, hey, why do we fall down? If people didn't need answers to why things happen and not just that they do, well, you'd be living in a cave and worshiping the sun, believing that it travels around the Earth. You sure wouldn't have a car or running water or fancy PC/console or smartphone. If Thedas is something of a mirror of our world, then there are a lot of people wondering it.
So yes, knowing why things happen is incredibly important and the idea that the people of Ferelden should be willing to live in comfortable bliss of, "Oh, the Wardens will handle it because they always have" is problematic.
See, I have a serious problem with the bolded part. Not just in relation to darkspawn, but do you really think no one wonders, hey, why do we fall down? If people didn't need answers to why things happen and not just that they do, well, you'd be living in a cave and worshiping the sun, believing that it travels around the Earth. You sure wouldn't have a car or running water or fancy PC/console or smartphone. If Thedas is something of a mirror of our world, then there are a lot of people wondering it.
So yes, knowing why things happen is incredibly important and the idea that the people of Ferelden should be willing to live in comfortable bliss of, "Oh, the Wardens will handle it because they always have" is problematic.
Besides, if we decided to just say "Let the wardens handle it," we'd have a demon army rampaging through the south.
Loghain's withdrawal at Ostagar was quite justifiable. Some of his other actions are suspect, but Ostagar isn't among those.
Especially in returning to Ostagar, when you find the notes regarding Cailan being somewhat aware that the battle would be lost, and that the very same army people villify Loghain of abandoning them would have still been destroyed (maybe, to a lesser extent).
Honestly it would have been a different story had they actually used the fortress as a choke point to funnel the darkspawn into a mass killzone in the valley below.
If you have superior position you use it.
finer tactical thinking is well beyond Cailan's abilities, and probably the BioWare writers as well, but I am willing to forgive their less egregious mistakes because they aren't medieval military historians
finer tactical thinking is well beyond Cailan's abilities, and probably the BioWare writers as well, but I am willing to forgive their less egregious mistakes because they aren't medieval military historians
It's one thing to forgive mistakes. I don't expect BioWare's writers to be historians, or anything close. But the Ostagar sequence is plotted and depicted such that, if we took everything at face value, all of the major participants - Cailan, Loghain, the Hero, Duncan, Alistair - are idiots. Loghain even achieves the dubious honor of being a double idiot: his conduct is idiotic if he is supposed to be taken as an honest loyal soldier, and it is also idiotic if he is supposed to be taken as a cunning regicidal schemer.
We can 'forgive' this error, but it still leaves us with the problem that everybody's an idiot. Playing in a world where everybody's an idiot isn't fun, at least not for me. It's especially not fun to have my own roleplayed character apparently be an idiot. I once tried to construct an explanation of the engagement that made sense, but eventually gave up on it because of the inexorable weight of the stupid.
With the actual story in such a shambles, arguing about the NPCs and their qualities is worse than pointless. Any opinion you might want to have about them is easy enough to validate. This, at least, is something Solas got right about Ostagar in Inquisition.
I definitely share frustration when it comes to scenes like Ostagar, I remember the first time playing it wondering where the Ferelden cavalry was, why they were charging out of an already poor position and such
I've since just decided we aren't supposed to look at it through the lens of military tactics, we are suppsoed to essentially look at it as a movie scene get the emotional undertone of the scene, the plot details, and ignore the inconsistencies with real life. Obviously not a very satisfactory answer for those who want sound strategy, but I'm sure there's a number of Total War mods that can slate that thirst
I definitely share frustration when it comes to scenes like Ostagar, I remember the first time playing it wondering where the Ferelden cavalry was, why they were charging out of an already poor position and such
I've since just decided we aren't supposed to look at it through the lens of military tactics, we are suppsoed to essentially look at it as a movie scene get the emotional undertone of the scene, the plot details, and ignore the inconsistencies with real life. Obviously not a very satisfactory answer for those who want sound strategy, but I'm sure there's a number of Total War mods that can slate that thirst
Again, tactics aren't even the foundation of the criticism here. The tactics are bad, but the tactics are always bad. And the tactics honestly aren't that bad, because articulation is anachronistic anyway. I'm talking about stuff like Duncan not telling anybody anything about how to fight darkspawn or Archdemons, about Alistair and the Hero deciding to spend all their time farting around in the camp instead of going up to the Tower before the battle started, about how the hell the signal was supposed to even work in the first place, about Loghain's bizarre wait combined with his alleged inability to see the battlefield...
These are plot issues, not knowledge or realism issues.
well some of these do sound like complaints about the tactics, like Loghain's hiding in an apparently completely isolated grove or something, or the signal fire...
I think that we were meant to take away certain messages and ideas from Ostagar and it wasn't "everything is Duncan's fault for keeping the secrets of the Order" it might very well be a plausible explanation, and I'd certainly say it is a factor, but the intent of the scene was to show the plan going awry due to the actions of the villain Loghian (that were later changed in DLC) and darkspawn strength, as well as playing on everyone's favorite cliches like a heroic last stand and "what could possibly go wrong"
I think people are focusing far too much on the battle at Ostagar. The problem with Loghain isn't that he fled the field. It's absolutely every single thing he does after, which is a combination of completely insane, outright treasonous, comically evil, self-defeating or all of the above.
Again, tactics aren't even the foundation of the criticism here. The tactics are bad, but the tactics are always bad. And the tactics honestly aren't that bad, because articulation is anachronistic anyway. I'm talking about stuff like Duncan not telling anybody anything about how to fight darkspawn or Archdemons, about Alistair and the Hero deciding to spend all their time farting around in the camp instead of going up to the Tower before the battle started, about how the hell the signal was supposed to even work in the first place, about Loghain's bizarre wait combined with his alleged inability to see the battlefield...
These are plot issues, not knowledge or realism issues.
Ducan's idiotic withholding of vital information seems to be a pretty basic and defining GW trait, which is probably why it's always taken them so long to end a blight. I'm only half-kidding when I say that.
Honestly, I think Duncan is in a no-win scenario. Refusing to tell the truth causes huge problems for everyone, but telling the full truth isn't viable either. You think the Wardens had a PR problem in Ferelden? How do you think it plays in the Bannorn when they announce that grey wardens are effectively darkspawn ghouls who hear the archdemon's orders in their dreams? This is a world where people let paranoia against mages get in the way of actually using magic to solve problems, so there's no reason to think that people wouldn't condemn the wardens once they knew the truth. Now, some groups in Ferelden do get away with not explaining themselves. In DA:O it was implied that templar lyrium was a secret, although it seems to be common knowledge in Kirkwall, and everywhere after the rebellion. Absolutely no one knows where the Seekers get their powers, but the Seekers get away with it. I think it's important to note that both of those groups are chantry-affiliated and one of them operates completely in secret, whereas the wardens have no religious affiliation, and they don't so much operate in secret as operate secretively.
If I were Duncan I would have told Cailan and Loghain that wardens can sense the presence of the archdemon, and then if asked why I would say "we just can." But it's understandable why he didn't. Also, someone asked why he brought all the Ferelden wardens to the fight instead of holding some in reserve. Personally, I got the feeling that "all the ferelden wardens" was like 12 people, so there's not much room between holding a reserve and not showing up at all. He probably also suspected that Riordan (or someone like him) would be skulking arond.
A few reasons.
Firstly 'The Stolen Throne' novel which covers Ferelden's civil war. Basically the situation in that novel is that a bunch of rebellious Ferelden nobles are moving around the country, striking at the Orlesians when they can and trying to turn more nobles away from the Orlesian Empire to their cause. When Loghain joins the rebels early in the novel, he is generally looked down on due to being a commoner. Yet he ends up being the dark horse that stuns everyone - unlike the rebel nobles who were largely inflexible in their strategies and had limited success, Loghain quickly turns the tide against the Orlesians and repeatedly proves himself to be the reason the rebellion succeeds through his brilliant strategies. But neither does he fit any 'perfect hero' stereotype - he is somewhat introverted/brooding and somewhat reluctant to begin with (which contrasts to Maric and Rowan's characters) but he eventually becomes very loyal and committed to Maric and the cause. Despite being the reason for the rebels' success, he does his best to remain in the background throughout the story, out of the limelight. In short, he is a dark horse without being obnoxious, arrogant or self-righteous, but neither is he a perfect knight in shining armour.
In DA:O, the most appealing thing about him is his complex personality and conflicts: most of us despised him at the beginning of the game, yet when you recruit him, it's possible to see the logic behind some of his decisions and the pain that these decisions caused him. I still believe that most of the things he did in that game were wrong and foolish, but speaking to him after the Landsmeet nevertheless had be reconsidering several things about him. My opinion of him improved markedly by the end of the game when he acknowledges the mistakes that he made and redeems himself by killing the Archdemon: everyone likes a redemption ending, and his willingness to end his own life to save the nation was touching and a wonderful plot twist by BioWare (who could have anticipated this event happening after the crimes that he committed earlier in the game?). IMO, there is no other antagonist that eclipses Loghain in the Dragon Age series, or in any BioWare game for that matter.
As for DA:I, I have yet to do a playthrough with him alive, so I can't comment on how he behaves during 'Here Lies the Abyss'. He's surely better than Stroud who was a walking plot device with no personality (basically Riordan 2.0 but without the same badassery).
As for DA:I, I have yet to do a playthrough with him alive, so I can't comment on how he behaves during 'Here Lies the Abyss'. He's surely better than Stroud who was a walking plot device with no personality (basically Riordan 2.0 but without the same badassery).
I just did it with him.
He's really complex, but he is definitely far better than Stroud.
He has become committed as a Warden to the warden cause, but he's also committed to not making the same mistakes Wardens have made throughout history. He's not really secretive so much as he is retrospective, and there is the tone that he isn't keeping secrets from the Inquisitor for the sake of keeping secrets. He pretty much makes it clear that he knows what the Wardens sacrfice, some sacrifices are worth it to end the blights, but other sacrifices are utterly unacceptable, and he fights tooth and nail to try and keep the wardens from being idiots.
In the Fade, the Nightmare taunts him about his failure to protect Ferelden and brings up his mistakes. His response is epic. "That all you got? You're not telling me anything I don't tell myself daily."
Look in a history book and tell me when anyone besides a Grey Warden has ended a Blight or where anyone who's not a Grey Warden thinks they can. The fact is, no one in Thedas believes otherwise, and everyone in Thedas is correct in that a Grey Warden is needed. You can try to break the mold all you want, but your view is accepted nowhere.
Hindsight's 20/20.
History makes out the Wardens to be this incredibly badass force of Darkspawn-focused warriors that can end the Blight by their very presence, a claim they don't try to ground in reality as we see at Ostagar through their neglect and bare minimum amount of effort in telling Cailan the Manchild that he thinks far too much of the Wardens.
But the reality is they're anything but uber-skilled invulnerable badasses. Certainly more skilled then your average soldier or knight, but not as great as people like Cailan make of them.
The world doesn't know why precisely Wardens are necessary. Only that they're devoted to fighting the Blight and have shown up in every Blight thus far, playing integral parts. Very few people outside of the Order know their secrets, and if we did the DR then I'd imagine even more people would question the idea of "why". In the previous ones, your average soldier could chalk up the Warden's death to injuries sustained in battle (you know, since they're going up against a giant dragon) -- hell, Garahel's corpse was thrown across the battlefield -- since this is a world with limited medical understanding.
I'll admit it's too bad that I have to read the Stolen Throne in order for me to understand why Loghain is the man he is in the games. If that was somehow integrated in Origins It would've prevented me from executing him.
I'd argue it is integrated, though not as well as it could've been. You just have to recruit him, because he's really the only person who could give you that perspective if you don't read the codexes on the Orlesian Occupation.
Bryce is dead, Howe's a slimeball who wouldn't give you the time of day, Eamon and Teagan were sent north, Rowan's dead, and Maric was hooked up to a Dancingian Ouroboros.
In case there are still people who have missed this compilation:
I just did it with him.
He's really complex, but he is definitely far better than Stroud.
He has become committed as a Warden to the warden cause, but he's also committed to not making the same mistakes Wardens have made throughout history. He's not really secretive so much as he is retrospective, and there is the tone that he isn't keeping secrets from the Inquisitor for the sake of keeping secrets. He pretty much makes it clear that he knows what the Wardens sacrfice, some sacrifices are worth it to end the blights, but other sacrifices are utterly unacceptable, and he fights tooth and nail to try and keep the wardens from being idiots.
In the Fade, the Nightmare taunts him about his failure to protect Ferelden and brings up his mistakes. His response is epic. "That all you got? You're not telling me anything I don't tell myself daily."
Loghain's actions and character in HLTA made me glad that I'd spared him, because the guy really got what it was to be a Grey Warden and was determined to do right by them, regardless of how much of a thankless job it is and how much the rest of the Wardens completely loathe him.
Likewise, his wilingness to sacrifice himself to save Hawke and the Inquisitor seemed far more genuine and moving than sacrificing him to the Archdemon in Origins. In Origins, he often seemed like a Death Seeker who wanted to die to atone for his mistakes, which would have been the easy way out.
Instead, you get the sense in Inquisition that he really did atone over those next ten years and his sacrifice comes across as more heroic, because he wasn't throwing his life away to make up for anything, but doing it to protect those he called friends and allies?
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