824 réponses à ce sujet

[Aran Linvail]

Sadly DAI its not like Baldur's Gate , where your companions can fight to death , Sera and Vivienne fighting , while my Inquisitor and Varric place bets on the winner , now that's something i really wish to see ...

[DanteYoda]

So the only time you can boot Vivienne is when she's recruited? Basically just say no do not accept her to the Inquisition. Hmm i guess any other playthroughs i will do this then.

 

 

Sadly DAI its not like Baldur's Gate , where your companions can fight to death , Sera and Vivienne fighting , while my Inquisitor and Varric place bets on the winner , now that's something i really wish to see ...

They do have fights with banter and you can side with one or the other or just break it up.

 

 

???

Don't we have a travelling botanist mage in Awakening. Not to mention Wynne. They are allowed to travel. There's probably hoops to jump through but we have examples of mages that travel.

 

Not to mention the whole having a meeting of mages in a city already pretty much screams that they have to be able to travel to go to the meeting in the first place.

Both were high level mages, Wynne was actually asked to be the leader of the circle mages.

[Sarielle]

 The rebellion happened, the result is whoever was crowned Divine, I just hope the next game(s) let this topic fall by the wayside because I feel the subject is now beyond exhausted. There are so many injustices in this world, I'm really not sure why this one is deemed by fans to be the ultimate infamy.

 

Likewise. It was interesting, at first. But surely there are other opportunities to explore morally grey areas in Thedas, and other issues that polarize characters.

[DanteYoda]

Eh? My Divine Vivienne epilogue side was full of blood and had her cramping down on everyone--mages included. So.... much..... blooooood....

 

The only one worse was Leliana unsoftened.

I got Leliana's blood down the hallways, which i thought the chantry needed anyway, so it pleased me

[Ryzaki]

Both were high level mages, Wynne was actually asked to be the leader of the circle mages.

 

And that disproves mages are allowed to travel how exactly? I already said it probably required hoops. I never denied that.

[Ash Wind]

I liked her actually, in that similar Morrigan, she's-kinda-a-byatch sort of way.

[DanteYoda]

And that disproves mages are allowed to travel how exactly? I already said it probably required hoops. I never denied that.

They had far more privileges than your standard pleb mages, they pretty much ran the show so their rules were their own.

[Ryzaki]

They had far more privileges than your standard pleb mages, they pretty much ran the show so their rules were their own.

 

And they gained those privilages by moving up the ladder.

 

Even the mage PC in origins was going to be one of the privilaged mages. Whether they were a city elf or an Amell.

[Barquiel]

That templar who guards the front door in the mage origin flat out tells you that the only way to get out of the tower is to jump out the window. That doesn't sound very privileged to me.

[Cadeym]

Mages have to pass the harrowing before they are ever allowed to leave the tower.

 

In the mage origin in DA:O you either have to turn your friend in or help him escape. The reason your friend wants to escape is because he knows he can't pass / isn't allowed to take the harrowing (or fears that he wont?) and will end up either dead or tranquil.

 

If you help your friend escape, then Duncan will have to save you from either death or tranquility. If you don't help your friend.. well then you probably agree with Vivienne here in DA:I

[Personette]

And that disproves mages are allowed to travel how exactly? I already said it probably required hoops. I never denied that.

 

"Allowed to travel" and "Allowed to spend a year with a small military unit after ~50 years of unwanted confinement" are not really the same thing.

 

Wynne did not want to live in the Tower. She resigned herself to it. And she was thrilled when, after a lifetime of putting the general good over her own happiness, she had the opportunity to get out for a bit. 

[KaiserShep]

Sadly DAI its not like Baldur's Gate , where your companions can fight to death , Sera and Vivienne fighting , while my Inquisitor and Varric place bets on the winner , now that's something i really wish to see ...

 

Pretty glad this sort of shenanigans doesn't go on in the game, because that kind of thing gets old really fast. DA2 is really the only one where I feel this would have made more sense, especially if you had a character like Fenris as part of your inner circle with the likes of Anders and Merrill, since Hawke & co. are all just random suckers living in a dingy city.

[Addai]

Please. Thedas is in the middle ages. 98% of the population are illiterate peasants who feed the rest. Universal education has been a thing for, what, 50 years now max in modern countries? 
 
Which brings me to what bugs me in this whole debate; it seems people are acting as if what is done to the mages is some kind of great injustice unequaled in Thedas, when it's, well, not. The vast majority of the population are, as I said, peasants, serfs who work their asses all their life to provide crops, or perhaps artisans who do the same to put food on the table. They are completely dependant on their overlords, and vulnerable to all the dangers of such a life; bandits, hostile wildlife, demons, blood mages, zealous templars, darkspawn, dragons, angry player characters, etc. 
 
*bad argument snipped*

This argument, ubiquitous as it is on the boards, is completely ludicrous. "People are suffering elsewhere" is not any sort of justification for imprisoning a whole class of people and all that comes with creating a subgroup whose abuse is covered and in some respects sanctioned by ideology. And only privileged moderns would think that working the land or pursuing a trade is like a prison sentence.
 

Plus, there is no guarantee that they would actually receive food, clothing or education nor any guarantee of the quality of such.

Yes, I'm sure the real Cole would have been surprised to hear he was living like a king in the lap of luxury.

 

**edit** And the mages rebelled because of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anders decried how terrible the Circle was, so he blew up a Chantry and led some mages to rise up. The Templars responded by tightening restrictions, which drove mages to rebel. Before that, though, Vivienne indicates that the Circles were generally lenient towards mages (<-- not to be confused with mage apprentices), and that Kirkwall was largely the exception/not the rule. Let me reiterate: the Circle only got bad because Mr. AHH THE CIRCLE IS SO BAD!! made it that way.

I was referring to the rebellion that led to Uldred's takeover of the Fereldan Circle.

[Korva]

Phat's not to say that mages don't suffer abuse because others suffer worse. But I'm honestly starting to be a bit tired of the obsession with this debate, both in and out of the story. The rebellion happened, the result is whoever was crowned Divine, I just hope the next game(s) let this topic fall by the wayside because I feel the subject is now beyond exhausted. There are so many injustices in this world, I'm really not sure why this one is deemed by fans to be the ultimate infamy.

 

I suppose it's partly because mages are special and powerful, so people are generally more inclined to identify with them than with dirty peasants who have nothing at all going for them in the "just like me/just like what I want to be" department. I certainly wouldn't want to play a serf or even a well-treated servant either.

 

At any rate, I think the Circle system is realistic for a setting like this, and definitely a cushy existence compared to the majority of non-nobles elsewhere ... if it works. The problem is the apparent complete and utter lack of accountability, which all but ensures that it often won't work, because people who have power like to exert that power. Templars, mages, nobles, player characters, doesn't matter. Add a society that tells you that all <group you have power over> are <convenient excuse why you should have that power> AND a world in which demonic possession and out-of-control magic are very, very real and ... yeah. Lots of potential for abuse, born from either power-tripping malice or plain fear if a Circle doesn't get lucky with its Knight-Commander. And of course the abuse is then poised to create a self-fulfilling prophecy before long ...

 

The templars as a whole definitely need a wake-up call and severe kick in the arse to return to what they should have been, i.e. protectors. Therinfal and the following war table missions are quite satisfying in that regard IMO.

[Elfyoth]

She have her softiness sides... But she is a ******, I MISS WYNNE!!! :'( 

[Iakus]

???

Don't we have a travelling botanist mage in Awakening. Not to mention Wynne. They are allowed to travel. There's probably hoops to jump through but we have examples of mages that travel.

 

Not to mention the whole having a meeting of mages in a city already pretty much screams that they have to be able to travel to go to the meeting in the first place.

Plus a mage who used to hang out in Honnleath, tinkering with a golem (before it killed him) and even married and raised a family...

[Boost32]

Even in Kirkwall if a mage prove he /she its trustworth, he/she can leave the Gallows, look at Bethany, she can foi to duke Prosper party and leave to investigate who is attacking her and her family.

[Ryzaki]

"Allowed to travel" and "Allowed to spend a year with a small military unit after ~50 years of unwanted confinement" are not really the same thing.

 

Wynne did not want to live in the Tower. She resigned herself to it. And she was thrilled when, after a lifetime of putting the general good over her own happiness, she had the opportunity to get out for a bit. 

 

I'm sorry that botanist was travelling with a military unit now? Do show me where.

 

That templar who guards the front door in the mage origin flat out tells you that the only way to get out of the tower is to jump out the window. That doesn't sound very privileged to me.

 

And you clearly never bothered asking Irving can you leave the tower. The rungs on the ladder do what they're told. Of course they say you can't leave because you haven't bothered asking the people who actually have the influence to allow you to do so.

[Giantdeathrobot]

 

This argument, ubiquitous as it is on the boards, is completely ludicrous. "People are suffering elsewhere" is not any sort of justification for imprisoning a whole class of people and all that comes with creating a subgroup whose abuse is covered and in some respects sanctioned by ideology. And only privileged moderns would think that working the land or pursuing a trade is like a prison sentence.
 

 

Perhaps you need to read again. I'm not saying it's a justification for what happens, and I said upthread the circles requires reform, especially corrupt Templars. What I mean is that it's really less of an injustice than countless other injustices we see in the series, but for some reason they are all swept under the rug of ''meh, it's a medieval land, **** happens'' while the fate of the mages is treated as the ultimate abomination (pun intended) when it's really nothing out of the ordinary. I am in no way saying what happens in the Circles is right, please take the zealous blinders off a bit.

 

I'd rather be in a prison and be a mage than live the life of a medieval peasant, that's for sure. Unless ones likes a life of back-breaking labor where you are only as ''free'' as your overlord thinks you are, where most basic commodities are scarce, where you receive no education, and where you are at the mercy of the myriads of dangers, supernatural and otherwise, that roam Thedas out of blood. Inquisition is, I think, more than enough of a reminder of how being a helpless peasant really sucks (think of Crestwood, the Hinterlands, Emerald Graves, the kidnapped townsfolk in Emprise du Lion...).

 

Korva is probably right, people are quicker to identify with the plucky, face-melting underdogs fighting against The System rather than, say, the Casteless who are condemned by birth of living a life of squalor, crime and poverty. Me, I've never had that much sympathy for them. Sure, the abuse they suffer is intolerable and needs to stop, but they are ubiquitously singled out in said abuses and all the others fall by the wayside.

[Ieldra]

I ... totally disagree. Mostly because I don't think RL me has all the answers, nor that my own values don't come with their own problems. I don't want to be pandered to.

Then make everyone fail - nobody has all the answers. I'd be perfectly fine with that. But being told I'm thinking wrong and the other guy has it right, I take that from experts in their field, but not from writers who, in quite a few cases, have less knowledge of the matter at hand than I do - as it pertains to real-world issues only of course. Where the specifics of the fictional world dominate the decision-making, rather than connected real-world values, there isn't usually a problem either way.

[ComedicSociopathy]

Plus a mage who used to hang out in Honnleath, tinkering with a golem (before it killed him) and even married and raised a family...

 

That was actually a special case. Wilhelm was technically an apostate who had left the Circle but was given unique privileges because he had helped Maric during the Ferelden Rebellion. 

[Emho]

DAI lacked any "urgency", so I had to pretend that what my little group of 4 were doing actually mattered.   

 

It didnt really matter if you never closed any of those dozens upon dozens of rifts, but for my own personal "role playing" I liked to pretend that they all mattered, and that we were actually saving the world one rift at a time.  I liked to pretend that there was some importance behind closing the holes in the sky that demons were coming out of.  

 

In this regard, Vivienne did not fit at all with my party.  I played the role of trying to put together a small hit squad of bad asses that were saving the world, while she constantly tried to attack and pick apart my party members.  She was poison to morale and was actively undermining me at every turn, and if I could have murdered her or had another party member permanently shut yer yapper I would have.  I let Solas murder those mages who hurt his spirit friend, I let Sera murder that noble who was trying to destroy Friends of Red Jenny.  I wish there was an option for Vivienne, maybe in a player made mod

[Wulfram]

I totally support a revolution by the Casteless, the City Elves and the Orlesian Serfs, along with the mages.  At least if circumstances allowed a reasonable prospect of success - the mages big advantage is that they do have the means to fight back.

 

Honestly, a big reason why that sort of stuff doesn't get much attention is because not many people go around saying that their treatment is justified.  Aside from the odd Loghain fan trying to excuse selling elves into slavery, but most Loghain supporters realise that's a step too far.

 

Also, people do take their lead from the games, which neglects these issues.  I find it distinctly annoying that Briala is left almost totally without the context of oppression that motivates the elves' revolt - it's played off like a lovers tiff, the whole Celene ordering a massacre thing is forgotten.

[Iakus]

That was actually a special case. Wilhelm was technically an apostate who had left the Circle but was given unique privileges because he had helped Maric during the Ferelden Rebellion. 

Are you still an apostate if they let you leave?

 

The letter from his widow to the First Enchanter indicates he was quite liked and well respected

[ComedicSociopathy]

Are you still an apostate if they let you leave?

 

The letter from his widow to the First Enchanter indicates he was quite liked and well respected

 

Well, if such arrangements were more common then I really wouldn't see how mages would have a problem with the Circle.

 

Pass my Harrowing, study for a couple years, help some random rebellion and Boom I'm allowed out of the Circle with no supervision or limits as to where or how I want to live. Can't argue with that.