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[SomeoneStoleMyName]

Corypheus's backstory is fantastic. He was also handled great up to and including Haven. But at one point Corypheus got butchered as a character with contradictory writing and personality. English is not my native language but I hope I've managed to get the point across. This turned out as a wall of text, so I apologize for that. Hopefully you are either bored enough, or interested enough in Corypheus as a character - to read all this. 

 

Before I proceed any further let me ask you something.

A child in Africa is abducted from his family at the age of 8. 
He is mistreated - taught to use firearms, and forced to kill people. 
His life is now one of survival, he is a child soldier. 

The question is now, is this child evil?

One of the things about good and evil not being universal truths - is because different cultures, or environments if you will, has different values, norms and morals. If 2 opposing alien tribes were seen fighting each other from a satellite on earth... how could we as a human observer, unbiased, decide which one of the tribes were right/wrong or good/evil? 

Point is, Tevinter society is not as much evil as it is culturally different. It is a "might makes right" society seen from our own culture, and from our own society in real life. Lastly, look at these two general cultural views on morality:

A: (Todays western society) The weak are the victims, the strong and powerful are "the bad guys". Lets (at least pretend?) make life better for everyone.

 

B: The strong are virtuous has earned their right to rule, the weak are to blame themselves for being weak. Life is cruel.

I'd definitely argue that B is more in touch with reality and the nature of humans, if not also life itself if you take a look at every non-human species on our planet. 

Conclusion A: We have a person born and raised in an elitist and social-darwinistic society like Tevinter. He is, as a result - who he is due to being shaped by this culture and upbringing. The way he looks at life, the strong needs to rule the weak. Strength and power is a virtuous goal. It is simply the way of life. 

Lets now go to the next part. He sought the Golden City, and was betrayed in doing so. Though I'm not sure if Corypheus was aware, he was in fact tricked there. So... the world - with players outside the visible "chess board", screws him over. He is then asleep for centuries. He wakes up a monster, to a world gone weak and decadent. Completely alien in comparison to the world he inhabited. Can you imagine yourself falling asleep in cryo and waking up in a thousand years? Only to see what values you have as a person being on its head? And worse, your country being reduced to, say, one city or county?

Conclusion B: Corypheus was deceived, turned into a monster, and wakes up to a world gone awry. Imagine yourself the anger and frustration YOU would feel if it happened. To top it off, consider the values you hold dear today. Consider them turned around. How would that make you feel?

Last part. MOTIVATION. Everyone is driven by it and Corypheus is no exception. His goals are clear, the writers on DA:I even spelled out his motivations for us as clear as they could:

Reach the golden city (as he was promised) take the power to become a god, and as a patriot to his home country - use that power to restore Tevinter to its former glory. This is why the mage quest line makes no sense! 

"omg look guys, in teh future everything is dark and evil and red, Corypheus is such pure evil!" As we could see, this future vision of Thedas went against Corypheus's own plans just to showcase evil for the sake of giving the player an objectified and dehumanized villain. It was against his character imo.

Final nail in the coffin for me was when we had no dialogue to converse deeper with Corypheus at the end. Because lets face it, that guy would love to talk all day if our Inquisitor tried to. But why were we denied this? No alternate "talk him down" ending or at least the attempt? No deeper and branching dialogue with Corypheus on a more intellectual or philosophical level? No "I will join you!" attempts? No nothing? One line? Really? After 100+ hours?

I realized the truth about Corypheus as I finished the game. Bioware's Solas+Mythal questline was the next level, and Corypheus being butchered as a character post-haven was simply due to one thing; Corypheus was needed as a stepping stone for the continuation of the DA story. His work was done. 

Corypheus had a fantastic backstory. Was great in DA2 and DA:I up to and including Haven. Then the personality contradictions started to happen as he was objectified, dehumanized and butchered. Sacrificed on the alter of narrative stepping stones. 

Leliana at the end of the game (paraphrased): "We defeated pure evil". WOW! Leliana suddenly lost any credit as a character with empathy or wisdom.  


Final words

Corypheus was a pious and powerful magister. Serving his country as a true patriot and enacting the will of his God. He was betrayed and woke up to a world gone wrong. Something which he tried to correct, with good intent. His god was silent so he himself sought to become one. In his final moments he cried out to Dumat in desperation but to no avail. David Gaider was done with this temporary tool that built the narrative stairs to the next part in the story. Sorry to sound dramatic but yeah.

 

Corypheus was ruined as a character in the latter half of the game, and Leliana calling Corypheus "pure evil" is a complete lack of wisdom or understanding over human nature. Whether this lack of wisdom stems from the writer or if it was intended for Leliana's character I do not know.

[lordsaren101]

Corypheus is not pure evil, he is jaded and misguided. Corrupted by centuries of slumber in isolation, driven mad with blight. His great mistake was abandoning Dumat and seeking to become a god himself. It is no wonder Dumat chose to ignore his pleas especially after he spent all of inquisition mocking his lord.

[TheLittleBird]

I agree, Corypheus reeked of wasted potential. He was sacrificed to create a generic "background evil" in the game, with (in my opinion) poor attempts at fleshing out the character behind this facade.

 

What I do want to touch upon specifically is this, though:

 

Corypheus was ruined as a character in the latter half of the game, and Leliana calling Corypheus "pure evil" is a complete lack of wisdom or understanding over human nature. Whether this lack of wisdom stems from the writer or if it was intended for Leliana's character I do not know.

 

Patrick Weekes has referred to Corypheus as being Leliana's "dark mirror" (I don't have a reference for this. If anyone can provide me with one, then thanks), which makes a lot of sense if you look at both their characters - they're burned believers. Now, if you look at it from this perspective, it makes incredible sense to hear what Leliana is saying.

 

Even moreso, though, you have to understand Leliana's perspective. Here's a burned believer, hearing about an ancient magister who breached the Fade for (or so the Chantry dictates) selfish reasons, was thrown into the blighted depths of the earth, caused that which Leliana had to endure at the Warden's side (e.g. the Blights), only to come back years later and declare himself a god who's going back to the Black City. During which he killed the Divine and crushed Leliana's faith.

 

If that's not pure evil to her, I don't know what is.
*hugs Leliana*

[Rolhir]

I agree that his backstory was great; however, he greatly suffers from Bioware not following the "show, don't tell" rule. Corypheus is powerful, intelligent, and evil according to other characters. What did he actually do to showcase that? Pretty much nothing. We never actually see anything that gives him depth or even anything that makes him personally the villain. He leads the attack on Haven...and that's pretty much it. Everything else was not his goal (i.e. the Breach explosion), done by his minions (Alexius), or done without motivation or reason (reopening the Breach; if it was gonna work, why didn't he just go in the last time it was open?). He's a great character when off screen, but being onscreen in DAI made him seem intimidating.

[BabyPuncher]

Corypheus did not have anything remotely resembling a great backstory. The only thing seriously altered from the template of the magisters going to the Black City which has been around since DA:O is him being upset at apparently nobody being there.

[ModernAcademic]

I think the writers simply made a mistake when they suddenly abandoned the original leitmotif -dragons, darkspawn, taint and Old Gods- to insert a new one -elven gods, Fade and old magic.

 

The Flemeth mystery was also ruined. Solas states Elven Gods had nothing to do with dragons. And here we have an elven goddess who shapeshifts into a dragon and wears dragonhorns as hairstyle. REALLY? 

 

If Bioware had striven to provide a suitable closure to the original theme of the franchise AND ONLY THEN begun a new theme in DA 4, Corypheus would have been developed as a proper villain. 

[BabyPuncher]

Before I proceed any further let me ask you something.

A child in Africa is abducted from his family at the age of 8. 
He is mistreated - taught to use firearms, and forced to kill people. 
His life is now one of survival, he is a child soldier. 

The question is now, is this child evil?

One of the things about good and evil not being universal truths - is because different cultures, or environments if you will, has different values, norms and morals. If 2 opposing alien tribes were seen fighting each other from a satellite on earth... how could we as a human observer, unbiased, decide which one of the tribes were right/wrong or good/evil?

 

Boy, is this one shallow and weak analysis.

 

[ModernAcademic]

Notice we still don't know what the taint is, who invented the Joining and how, why the Archdemons carry the souls of Gods inside them and many other mysteries that remain as loose ends.

 

And here we had the golden opportunity to ask Corypheus -or spy on him- so as to learn about all that...

[Killdren88]

It would have been better in my opinion that Cory wasn't the Elder ONe, but The Elder One's Herald to contrast the Hearld of Andraste, but he gets screwed over in the End by the Actual Elder One who has always played him like a fiddle.

[TEWR]

I don't have time right now to chime in with my thoughts on how Corypheus was wasted by the devs (great character, great backstory, under-utilized by them and written as a caricature) but I'm going to link people to my tumblr tag for the man where I talked about it recently.

 

See here. Feel free to quote me in this thread if people want to address things.

[AresKeith]

I don't have time right now to chime in with my thoughts on how Corypheus was wasted by the devs (great character, great backstory, under-utilized by them and written as a caricature) but I'm going to link people to my tumblr tag for the man where I talked about it recently.

 

See here. Feel free to quote me in this thread if people want to address things.

 

I like that the devs atleast acknowledge this also

 

 

It would have been better in my opinion that Cory wasn't the Elder ONe, but The Elder One's Herald to contrast the Hearld of Andraste, but he gets screwed over in the End by the Actual Elder One who has always played him like a fiddle.

 

 

[TEWR]

Ares, for posting the Kaz moment I wish I could give you a thousand likes.

 

And yeah, I'm glad they realized their folly but that's also the kind of thing that makes me condemn their writing because... how... do you not... see that when you're writing him in the first place? Not just how he wasn't made threatening enough, but everything about his character.

 

It's like Writing 101.

[AresKeith]

Ares, for posting the Kaz moment I wish I could give you a thousand likes.

 

And yeah, I'm glad they realized their folly but that's also the kind of thing that makes me condemn their writing because... how... do you not... see that when you're writing him in the first place? Not just how he wasn't made threatening enough, but everything about his character.

 

It's like Writing 101.

 

It looked like they wanted him to be more threatening after Haven but something happened

[X Equestris]

It would have been better in my opinion that Cory wasn't the Elder ONe, but The Elder One's Herald to contrast the Hearld of Andraste, but he gets screwed over in the End by the Actual Elder One who has always played him like a fiddle.

Honestly, I was expecting someone like the Nightmare to be the Bigger Bad behind Corypheus before Inquisition came out.

[Killdren88]

Honestly, I was expecting someone like the Nightmare to be the Bigger Bad behind Corypheus before Inquisition came out.

 

Sorta, yeah. I mean The Elder One was suppose to be a Mystery, but it was so obvious that it was Cory, and Bioware didn't even try to hide it.

[Kulyok]

Cory's story is amazing, especially with Calpernia's side quest. But for some reason, even the Architect got more character development than Cory. I wish it weren't so, but, yeah, I agree, we should've been given more.

 

I think the writers squandered the Haven opportunity. It's not "we need more Cory", it's "we need the existing Cory done better".

 

Look at Saren's dialogue on Virmire and in the Citadel - you are annoyed how he sets you up, he's a horrible person who kills his friend and mentor, he leads a drone army - and then you understand the indoctrination, and he becomes this tragic figure, and you finally get a chance to turn him to the... well. Not the light, but it was a satisfactory ending for me.

 

With the Architect, we had motivation, we had understanding of why he was doing this, we had a real conflict "Darkspawn are people, they have emotions, they can do good! But, wait, he started the Blight... and darkspawn are contagious... But you can't just kill them all, there must be a better solution! What solution, make everyone blighted? No!" - and the internal monologue goes on, and more importantly, you care.

 

With Cory, the writers give us nothing. Hi, here's a villain, he wants to be a god, because Evil. Sure, the writers spent hours in the interviews telling us it was a game about faith, and Cory was that guy who went to the Golden City and saw no maker and had a crisis, but you know what? THE GAME DOES NOT SHOW IT.

 

I sure hope the next villain is something more. Meredith, by the way, wasn't much of the interesting opposition, either. Even Orsino's story with his horribly senseless monster transformation was more emotional. 

 

I wish we got more villains like the Arishok, Loghain, and maybe someone like Solas, with several choices on how to deal with them. I wish we could have villains we could love and hate passionately, and most of all, understand.

[KaiserShep]

It would have been better in my opinion that Cory wasn't the Elder ONe, but The Elder One's Herald to contrast the Hearld of Andraste, but he gets screwed over in the End by the Actual Elder One who has always played him like a fiddle.

 

In fairness, Cory might very well be small potatoes compared to what empowered his endeavor in the first place.

[esh1996]

I wouldn't call Corypheus 'fantastic' by any means... But he wasn't truly awful either.

Personally I would have preferred 'the Elder One' to be more of an idea that a actual being. Like a god, and belief in him has corrupted the Venatori and Red Templars. Atleast this is what I thought was happening the first time I played through the time travel mission on my first play through and we were first introduced to this 'elder one'. I was disappointed when he was revealed to be this thing, a mess of half darkspawn half magister which was never intimidating or interesting.

Also his weakness (kill the dragon then kill him) was stolen from Harry potter, Voldemort and his horcruxes. (And this is coming from someone who ISN'T a fan of HP)

[TEWR]

 

Also his weakness (kill the dragon then kill him) was stolen from Harry potter, Voldemort and his horcruxes. (And this is coming from someone who ISN'T a fan of HP) 

 

That's actually a trope that's been used for a while now. 

 

Soul Jar and all that. So it's hard to steal from HP what HP took from elsewhere, which was taken from elsewhere, and so on.

 

Writing can be rather incestuous by nature.

[esh1996]

That's actually a trope that's been used for a while now. 
 
Soul Jar and all that. So it's hard to steal from HP what HP took from elsewhere, which was taken from elsewhere, and so on.
 
Writing can be rather incestuous by nature.

Yeah, I know the idea in HP wasn't original, but it's all I could think of whenever the game was telling me to 'kill the dragon' so we can 'kill corypheus'. I was half expecting longbottom to come at the end and slice the Lyrium Dragons head of for me in a cut scene.

I wish DA:I could have been more clever in finding a away to defeat Cory and squeeze in an extra dragon fight.

[KaiserShep]

That whole jumping to blighted creatures business makes it hard to properly resolve, because it makes him ridiculously invulnerable. Hawke handed the old body's ass to him, and then he just walked off with a Warden meat suit. Even if Hawke killed that Warden, he'd probably just jump to one of the f*cktillion darkspawn lurking somewhere nearby.

[mat_mark]

I stopped reading after "the mage quest line makes no sense"

[Reznore57]

His background could go somewhere interesting , I mean he was a High Priest , the Gods went silent , people started to turn away from the faith...he's getting depressed.So Bam Golden City .

But then there's numerous problems , in DA2 DLC , we're told someone promised them the "Golden Light" , and as he leaves Cory says he seek "The Light".

In DAI , in codices , it seems the magisters came up with the idea of invading the city all by themselves , and Cory doesn't say anything about the Light anymore.

 

And then it's really falling apart , he says we only find "darkness and dead whispers , empty throne blablablabla."

So why does he want to go there AGAIN?

The place is corrupted to the core and the only thing he can come up with is "I'll go back there and this time I'm going to be a God somehow".

You'd think he would want to find out what happened exactly , or if someone told them to go , he would be busy trying to find out the betrayer ...or tear the place down.Or I don't know figure out what happened to the Old Gods , he was a priest afterall.

Nope , the dude go straight to the stupid plan , it didn't work the first time , surely if I go there again, it's going to work now.

 

I mean it's the same thing with the Grey Warden and the Demon Army.Or Florianne with the whole I'm going to follow the lunatic darkspawn.

[thedancingdruid]

Corypheus's backstory is fantastic. He was also handled great up to and including Haven. But at one point Corypheus got butchered as a character with contradictory writing and personality.

 

 

If by backstory, you mean Legacy DLC then, yes, I agree, his backstory was well established. If that's true, then the rest of your statement rings false.

 

Corypheus had one goal, to enter the Fade physically, in order to prove his power. It was supposed to prove to the Tevinter Imperium, as well as the rest of Thedas, I assume, their magical might. Corypheus, as well as those that performed the ritual with him, worshiped Dumat. They believed that with his aide, they could reach the Golden City. Even in Legacy, Corypheus says that the city was already black. They found only darkness. His goal from Inquisition has not changed or faltered. His character still wishes to seize the throne. What remains unclear...even if the city was Black when they found it, why didn't he just seize the throne then. Unless, his remembering of the events is incorrect.

[Ieldra]

I don't agree with the extended "analysis" in the OP, but I agree that Corypheus started out - at Haven - as more promising than I thought he would, and then descended into the worst type of stereotyped villain imaginable. Too bad. Before DAI came out, I thought he didn't have the stature for an antagonist called the "Elder One", and at Haven I came to hope that maybe I was wrong, seeing that he had potential. No such luck though: Like so often before, some writer at Bioware clobbered all subtlely to death.