Don't pay attention to the above unless very interested, what I want to know is this:
If human, is he going to become mortal? Like, will he be prone to disease, pain, and ultimately death? I don't want to torture a being who is supposedly eternal and not susceptible to physical pain and decay. Are there any hints about that? Am I supposed to make a choice blindly?
He's more likely to turn into a demon if he can't control his human emotions
He's more likely to turn into a demon if he can't control his human emotions
I don't think that's a problem, since as a spirit he's devoid of contradictory human emotions, and as a human he can't turn into a demon.
My issue is mortality. It would be cruel to impose it on someone immortal. If that's what we're imposing, that is.
As a mortal, he can certainly be killed.
Improsoned, starved to death, raped, tortured, etc. But if Leliana can handle, then perhaps Cole can
I guess it makes sense he can be killed. But will he age and die naturally?
Leliana isn't losing eternal life, she had a short one to start with.
It's up your individual Inquisitor and their morals and priorities, really. The Cole Human vs Spirit choice is perhaps the only one in the game doesn't have a right or morally good answer. Both have have their advantages to Cole developing as an independent being and both have their downsides.
Personally, I just flipped a coin.
He may become physically mortal eventually (what with him possibly learning to eat and being curious about sex)
That's what got me worried initially. Our char mentioning (as a joke?) that he might start eating...
If one is eating, then the whole body functions, and it's going to deteriorate and die. What irked me is that our char seemed so happy about an idea of Cole starting to eat. C'mon, that surely is a bad thing, can't you see that you're happy about possibly making him mortal!
It's up your individual Inquisitor and their morals and priorities, really. The Cole Human vs Spirit choice is perhaps the only one in the game doesn't have a right or morally good answer. Both have have their advantages to Cole developing as an independent being and both have their downsides.
I'm stuck in a dilemma. I dislike his silly solutions to "helping people" as a spirit, but human Cole... meh. I watched the cuscenes and he's too genuinely human.
This reaction stems from me knowing a few people with personality disorders. They can't transform into normal people at the drop of a hat, mostly not ever, and they're human! So it feels really unrealistic how Cole suddenly starts gaining insights into human nature.
I wish he was presented as a full-blown spirit who somehow learnt his new insights into human nature from people around and realized "forgetting" was a silly strategy most of the time. But there's no choice like that. Either a silly spirit or someone whose psyche actually "became" human. 
No, he is not Pinnochio, he becomes more human in a mental state (he can learn and understand more conplicated things) but not physically, he will always be a spirit.
Your words are like honey to a hungry sweettooth 
Is there any proof of that, though? A hint? I'd love to know for sure.
That's what got me worried initially. Our char mentioning (as a joke?) that he might start eating...
If one is eating, then the whole body functions, and it's going to deteriorate and die. What irked me is that our char seemed so happy about an idea of Cole starting to eat. C'mon, that surely is a bad thing, can't you see that you're happy about possibly making him mortal!
Making him more human is an interesting experiment, but Cole will always be a spirit at heart.
All Cole cares about is being the embodiment of Compassion. He has no interest in truly becoming part of human society, regardless of his state.
Yeah I agree. No matter how "human" he is, he'll still be the embodiment of Compassion. Which in itself can bring about danger for him, especially if/once he'll lose touch with his spiritual powers.
As a spirit he's free to do what he loves unopposed.
No, he is not Pinnochio, he becomes more human in a mental state (he can learn and understand more conplicated things) but not physically, he will always be a spirit.
Cole explains that his body is and always was fully human. In his "default" state and as more of a spirit, he doesn't have physical needs because of his connection to the Fade -- it's implied this may/will change on the more-human path. (And honestly, I'm not keen on how some characters rather make fun of him for that, especially in the light of the fact that he is in huge pain at least for a while, or assume that of course he's going to become sexual and straight.)
I wish he was presented as a full-blown spirit who somehow learnt his new insights into human nature from people around and realized "forgetting" was a silly strategy most of the time. But there's no choice like that. Either a silly spirit or someone whose psyche actually "became" human.
That's not my impression at all. He is not a simplistic one-trick pony who hops around yelling "Forget! Forget! Forget!" at everyone who so much as stubs a toe. The only times he is shown using forgetting as a tool for healing is with the templar and with himself. In the former case, it's because he perceives that the man wants to forget, that he has suffered and changed enough, and that leaving both of them bound to this old pain is against his own nature. In the latter case, it's because his grief over his failure to save the original Cole is too much to bear. Both are perfectly valid choices. In every other case, he helps through words or actions.
He doesn't make Dorian forget his sense of betrayal and anger at his father. He doesn't make Blackwall forget his dead sister or his guilt at his crimes, nor does he make everyone else forget their anger at Blackwall. He doesn't make Cassandra forget she was touched by a spirit instead of the Maker, or the deaths of her brother and her apprentice, or the Lord Seeker's betrayal. He doesn't make Solas forget his Wisdom-spirit friend or his old guilt at what he did to his fellow "gods". He doesn't make Leliana forget her grief over Justinia and a romanced-and-sacrificed Warden. He doesn't make Cullen forget his double trauma of Kinloch Hold and Kirkwall. He doesn't make Varric forget his own Kirkwall-related hurts, or Hawke's death, or the problematic relationship with Bianca, or his guilt at being involved in letting Corypheus and red lyrium loose on the world. He doesn't make any of the people in the dinner cutscene forget their various little issues. And so on.
He never even suggests it. At times he encourages people to let go and try to move on, but that is all -- and in fact he expresses understanding that people may want and need to remember painful things. His tremendous empathy shows him not only even faint pain but also what will heal it, and while forgetting may be the answer in some cases, it is not a cure-all and can even be counter-productive.
I understand your dilemma -- it took me a day or three to brood over this choice after trying both outcomes, too. I think both paths have some very touching moments, and both are a bit bittersweet because one side of his being is weakened to strengthen the other. In the end, I went with the spirit path, in no small part because I dislike the humanocentrism of Pinocchio stories, of holding up our own form of existence as superior to everything else and the greatest prize that "lesser" beings could hope to attain. Different does not mean inferior. And I came to truly enjoy the notion of meeting him halfway, in a sense, instead of expecting him to do all the changing and learning on his own. You have to try harder and broaden your mind more to understand a spirit, but I think it can be worth it. Cole certainly is worth it. And the quiet grace of his spirit-path resolution, the way he opened up, reached out and transformed from that wholly shocking rage and bloodlust back into compassion incarnate, honestly brought tears to my eyes. It's among my top moments in this game for certain.
Plus, I like the fact that he has more options this way. He can return to the Fade, and he can choose to stay. He show himself and interact fully with people, and he can be the gentle urgent whisper that leaves you with a new sense of hope and happiness.
Well, why not be happy? Rather better than being immortal and watching all your friends die around you.
The longer he lives, the more people he can help!
And Cole conveniently erases memories that hurt him all the time anyway. Come to think of it, his forgetting ability starts to make sense. I still get abhorred by it, though. A blessing to him, but both blessing and a curse to everyone around.
Cole explains that his body is and always was fully human.
He says "I don't eat" when taken out to lunch on the same path. Might not be as fully human as he thinks. That sentence about having always been human was mysterious to me.
He is not a simplistic one-trick pony who hops around yelling "Forget! Forget! Forget!" at everyone who so much as stubs a toe. The only times he is shown using forgetting as a tool for healing is with the templar and with himself.
When I asked him how he deals with having to kill people (as a spirit), he said that he forgets killing them. I was shocked beyond words.
In another dialogue branch he said that spirits have short memory, so you might interprete that as not fully intentional forgetting.
In the Fade he said that when he left the Fade, he made himself forget. (Which is interesting, because why would he intentionally forget the Fade and who he was? Did he really "decide" to be human? Was it so awful there? Weird.)
Making others forget is his default action even when it isn't needed. If you refuse to take him into party, he makes everyone forget. If he leaves your party, he makes you forget him. I have to roll eyes at that, how does that even make sense! Noone is helped in those cases. Maybe the writers wanted to show off his abilities to people who lose him as a companion, you know, to make them regret it and reload? Haha. But what's done is done, he's making people forget left and right.
In the former case, it's because he perceives that the man wants to forget, that he has suffered and changed enough, and that leaving both of them bound to this old pain is against his own nature.
Realizing his guilt made that man a better man. He even quit the templars, as far as I remember, to live differently. Now comes Cole and makes him forget everything, including all these realizations and his change, because these memories are tied to memories of his misdeeds. So who is that man now, a brutal murderer like before? If not, then he can easily slip back in his old ways now, because he wouldn't have reasons not to. Cole literally wiped his progression clean.
At times he encourages people to let go and try to move on, but that is all -- and in fact he expresses understanding that people may want and need to remember painful things. His tremendous empathy shows him not only even faint pain but also what will heal it, and while forgetting may be the answer in some cases, it is not a cure-all and can even be counter-productive.
In the end, I went with the spirit path, in no small part because I dislike the humanocentrism of Pinocchio stories, of holding up our own form of existence as superior to everything else and the greatest prize that "lesser" beings could hope to attain.
I fully agree. I don't really like human nature enough to consider it superior, it's full of flaws. It's just that in the human world I think Cole's ways of helping are misinformed. He would be better off helping demons. That doesn't mean he's inferior, he's simply not at home and can't adapt.
Plus, I like the fact that he has more options this way. He can return to the Fade, and he can choose to stay.
Returning to the Fade is definitely a plus. Getting him stuck somewhere would make our char a lot more responsible for that alone.
P.S. I can't believe I'm discussing a fictional character so seriously.
When I asked how he deals with having to kill people (as a spirit), he said that he forgets killing them. I was shocked beyond words.
He says "I don't eat" when taken out to lunch on the same path. Might not be as fully human as he thinks. That sentence about having always been human was mysterious to me.
Compassion made itself human to be what the original Cole wanted to be, in shock and grief over its failure to save him. It's ... an odd reaction, maybe, and mages are baffled that it was even possible for "our" Cole to do this since something like him is thought to be impossible. At any rate, I'm inclined to believe Cole when he makes this claim that he is physically human. I haven't read Asunder, but apparently he did sleep and eat and such before he learned that he's a Fade-creature instead of an actual human or a ghost of a human.
When I asked him how he deals with having to kill people (as a spirit), he said that he forgets killing them. I was shocked beyond words.
In the Fade he said that when he left the Fade, he made himself forget. (Which is interesting, because why would he intentionally forget the Fade and who he was? Did he really "decide" to be human? Was it so awful there? Weird.)
Making others forget is his default action even when it isn't needed.
If you refuse to take him into party, he makes everyone forget. If he leaves your party, he makes you forget him. I have to roll eyes at that, how does that even make sense!
(Had to split this for length, so sorry for the double post. Looks like I'm in "wordy rambling" mode.)
Realizing his guilt made that man a better man. He even quit the templars, as far as I remember, to live differently. Now comes Cole and makes him forget everything, including all these realizations and his change, because these memories are tied to memories of his misdeeds. So who is that man now, a brutal murderer like before? If not, then he can easily slip back in his old ways now, because he wouldn't have reasons not to. Cole literally wiped his progression clean.
That is not true. The templar remembers that he became someone he didn't want to be, and that he left as a result. Cole simply decided that he doesn't need to bear that specific crushing guilt of the original Cole's horrible death any longer. He has changed. It's enough. Letting someone who has changed continue to suffer just for some arbitrary sense of justice isn't automatically more valid than freeing them from that burden. That is another example of what I mean by having to think and try harder to understand this side of Cole. In the end, why should we expect to dictate that he isn't allowed to feel compassion for this man, especially since what happened at the Spire has bugger all to do with us? Why is human anger and a human grudge and the human desire to make people pay and suffer automatically superior?
Was that in party banter? I might not have heard that...
Him expressing understanding of why some people want or need painful memories happens at the victory celebration. It requires him to not have been in the party for the battle with Corypheus ... which is rather annoying because he's pretty much a mandatory companion for me yet the wasn't-in-the-party version of the conversation with him is a lot more interesting than the one you get if you did bring him along. Aside from showing that understanding, he also shows a first glimpse of grasping humor.
To me Cole seems like a spirit of Blind Compassion. He reads minds, so why doesn't he read in them the embarassment that they feel when he's discussing someone's private life in front of everybody? How can a mind-reader be so clueless? Ok, I might be demanding a bit too much faithfulness to the concept from the writers of the game, but it's still valid
A lack of the writers fully thinking it through is likely the cause, yes. It happens a lot, with many different aspects of stories or characters. If I had to explain it in-world, I'd put it down to two reasons.
One, the pain he's trying to treat is "louder" than the embarrassment. Solas has a quote for Blackwall: "The healer has the bloodiest hands", meaning you can't heal a wound without knowing how deep it goes. Sometimes healing entails things that are painful but less so than not doing them would be: pulling an arrow out of the patient's body, ramming a needle into their living flesh to stitch a gaping wound, etc. It's probably the same for Cole. That doesn't make him, or a physical doctor, callous or uncaring. They try their best to make it easier on their patient, but they can't just ignore them bleeding out and screaming in pain.
Two, remember that for a good part of the game, Cole isn't exactly at his best. He's been through a lot and as a result is hurting, insecure, worried, can't hear things as clearly as he does when he reclaims his old nature. So he is still on the long and hard journey of figuring himself out after not only completely having forgotten himself, but also having been perverted into something he must not, does not want to ever be again. That's a hell of a lot of baggage ... it leads to mistakes, but he still never stops trying.
The more-a-spirit version of him is not only a lot more perceptive, but also noticeably more confident and calm, which to me implies he's less likely to fling himself at a hurt head over heels in a way that reveals/disturbs more than strictly "necessary". He feels more in control of himself, in a sense.
You give a person an advice, erase yourself from his memory, and he does it like a robot. But who is Cole to know if his advice is right? Someone who can erase the man's progress for the sake of giving him a temporary mood boost?
Which, again, is not something he ever does. It looks like you saw something in him you don't like and project quite a lot of negative thoughts onto him that have nothing to do with his actual actions. As for how he knows he is right, simple: he feels it. He sees both the hurt and what will heal it, and he feels people getting better as a result.
The fact that they want and need to remember, to remain who they are, doesn't cross his mind.
Untrue, unless you want to call him a liar.
He only reads what they want right now, immediately, and of course people often want to experience an immediate relief from pain!
Again, that is very much not true. A lot of his "treatment" is the opposite of what people "want right now". We see people want to cling to negative emotions, to blame themselves for things that aren't even their fault because that is easier than facing the scary truth of them not being in control, to hate themselves relentlessly and think themselves beyond redemption, to push pain away and ignore it instead of actually dealing with it. He goes against all that, over and over. He says things that are hard to hear, that people don't want to hear. Compassion is gentle and caring, but does have those "bloody hands" of a healer who knows better than to let a wound fester or a patient pretend it's all fine when they're trying to walk on a broken leg.
P.S. I can't believe I'm discussing a fictional character so seriously.
That is a good thing! If we couldn't do that, then games like this would be a failure. They're supposed to evoke thoughts and emotions.
IMO, really "getting" this character requires us to acknowledge his perceptions, opinions and inclinations as valid even if we don't understand them ... and can't ever truly understand them because we all lack the special senses and abilities that a spirit has. It requires remembering that (as I said) different does not equal not inferior, or goodness forbid wrong. It's a more demanding form of the same courtesy human already have to extend to each other to make society work. Does Cole make mistakes? Of course. But we can't treat him like everything he does is a mistake merely because it clashes with what we would do, at least not if we want to be fair.
So that is the question: can you see his perceptions and abilities as valid, if not always perfect? If not, if you see him as no more than a shallow robotic thing enslaved to the most simplistic momentary urges that he doesn't even understand any more than he understands the essence of his own nature ... then of course the character won't work for you. He'll feel wrong in pretty much every way because he's too different.
Cole is challenging. That is part of why I love him, as might be obvious from the length of this post. 
At any rate, I'm inclined to believe Cole when he makes this claim that he is physically human. I haven't read Asunder, but apparently he did sleep and eat and such before he learned that he's a Fade-creature instead of an actual human or a ghost of a human.
That makes a lot of sense! I read Asunder and remember Rhys thinking that Cole eats. Wow, this almost seals the deal for me. I wouldn't want to make someone mortal and susceptible to disease. Human condition is quite misearable, in my opinion, we can't avoid decay of our bodies and physical suffering.
Although I do believe that compassion is a direct result of one's own suffering. At least for a human. But I guess I can hold off of this belief for Cole and let him be just a spirit of compassion, without having suffered too much himself.
Btw, I wonder what your opinion on him would be if you read the book... I found out that his character was written by two different writers in the book and the game, and it shows. There's no shred of compassion in him as a book. I prefer to think that he was just extremely corrupt, but I think that his game writer changed his concept deliberately. And that was a great decision.
(And bloody hell, was watching these scenes on youtube hard. Seeing his pain at that utterly unprovoked hostile treatment -- and at being told he's not allowed to help those who need him -- was just gut-wrenching.)
Oh yes, it was hard, I agree. Cole still wipes himself from main char's memory even if not threatened, though. In the video I watched the char was regretful and begged him to stay, but he looked at her angrily, in a "You're so awful!" way, and performed a memory wipe. Well, maybe he thought he'd be detained? Or pursued? That would make sense.
But that's another point you convinced me in (on? of? sorry, English isn't native for me, and I feel like I can't find a correct way to say it, probably it's "of").
Another point about forgetting: it's not actually a bad thing. In fact, it's important -- both to avoid being utterly swamped by white noise and clutter, and to cope with bad experiences. Without it, we couldn't function. Part of suffering from trauma is it all coming back over and over and never going away, and that is horrendously painful. People forget all the time, they want and need to forget. Yes, remembering is also important, but I do wish the game had touched more on the fact that forgetting, too, is important and can be a great boon for those who can't find it on their own.
When we cope with trauma, we don't really forget, the memories fade, but not to the point of extinction...
The reason why I can't agree with Cole and forgetting (especially in the templar case) is because I went through therapy myself and now I have some preconceptions about how it works. Not a lot can be worked out by forgetting, the perception of events needs to be changed. It definitely did happen in the templar case. He developed a new philosophy of life and that helped him become a different man. In my experience, this kind of change is not guaranteed to last, you can roll back if your new ideas weaken and old ones start to seem truer. So in my experience it's about to which ideas you eventually develop a habit to hold on. If someone like Cole wipes both sets of ideas, the one that caused you trauma and the one that resolved it, what happens? I can only assume that you revert back to who you were before the event. In summary, in my understanding we don't just go on being who we are without a reason, we are who we are because of memories and our perceptions of those memories. Changing perceptions helps to change ourselves, but wiping everything clean would wipe how we changed, both in bad and good ways. Without memory and its perception the parts of us that depend on them cease to exist. They don't just "go on", they disappear.
This is why I find it extremely hard to see merit in Cole causing forgetfulness in the templar. I think his game writer assumed that we are who we are regardless of whether we still have ideas that made us who we are, but it's wrong in my experience. Sure, I never forgot something completely, it isn't possible, but still I infer what would happen by forgetting. Maybe I'm wrong, there's always a possibility. But my own experience in how changing memory perception can change us completely and how the mere weakening of new ideas and realization rolls us immediately back (I had many rollbacks), makes me believe we do need our new believes to hold on to.
Unfortunately, I realize that me and Cole's writer disagree on that point, and there's not much to be done about it. And it's because of this one disagreement that I have a problem with Cole and tend to interprete him as someone who can't really understand human nature and has only short-term relief in mind. That's the only way I can interprete him if I continue thinking like I do, and I doubt I will change my thinking about it, because it's based on experience, which is convincing to me.
In the end, why should we expect to dictate that he isn't allowed to feel compassion for this man, especially since what happened at the Spire has bugger all to do with us? Why is human anger and a human grudge and the human desire to make people pay and suffer automatically superior?
Well, he didn't feel compassion, he wanted to kill him, and if left to his own devices, he would kill him. So I think we're imposing more in case we decide to advise him to forgive in that case. But that's nitpicking and excuse me for it. I never thought that vengeance is superior to compassion, the whole scene, in my opinion, presents two ways to deal with it: to forgive like a spirit, because a human would be unlikely to suddenly change his feelings at will, and to allow oneself to experience anger and work it out without killing. Forgiving and killing are two extremes that a spirit would go to, since anger would corrupt him and turn him to killing, so I think the whole point of the human choice in that scene was to teach Cole alternative methods to cope with anger, methods that would allow him not to fall into a killing mode like a spirit would fall in to. An ability to feel anger and not be affected by it like a spirit. I'm still puzzled as to how easily that was possible in the game.
Him expressing understanding of why some people want or need painful memories happens at the victory celebration. It requires him to not have been in the party for the battle with Corypheus ... which is rather annoying because he's pretty much a mandatory companion for me yet the wasn't-in-the-party version of the conversation with him is a lot more interesting than the one you get if you did bring him along. Aside from showing that understanding, he also shows a first glimpse of grasping humor.
On which path is that, human or spirit? If spirit, that would be lovely, that is the kind of progression I hoped for the game to offer for a spirit path. In that case I'd make him a spirit without second thoughts! But this might be the human path, so I'm not getting my hopes up.
Just mention that a lot of times when he says to "forget" he is not telling them to forget what was bothering them but to forget who it was who helped them come to terms with it. So the person will think they came to that place on their own and thus be stronger for it, rather than knowing that some stranger walked up and started talking to them about their private thoughts, which would likely leave them very disturbed.
I haven't taken the more human path simply because I don't believe that being human is the ultimate form of existence, certainly in Thedas, and there are going to be far more conflicts with his true nature on that path. Also when I had Solas in my party with Cole, he said how Cole was a rare spirit in the world (because of his compassion) and how important it was for him to continue. I had to agree with that. There seems so little true compassion in Thedas that anyone or anything that exhibits it should be valued. When he showed such an anger and need for vengeance against the Templar, I thought we were going to lose that compassion if I allowed him to continue. How was I to know that he would try to use Bianca, it would jam, and it would resolve differently? So for me to take the human path, my character would have to have clairvoyance, or to put it another way, I would meta-game, which I do try and avoid if at all possible.
Just mention that a lot of times when he says to "forget" he is not telling them to forget what was bothering them but to forget who it was who helped them come to terms with it. So the person will think they came to that place on their own and thus be stronger for it, rather than knowing that some stranger walked up and started talking to them about their private thoughts, which would likely leave them very disturbed.
You're right.
When he showed such an anger and need for vengeance against the Templar, I thought we were going to lose that compassion if I allowed him to continue.
That was very disturbing, indeed. I thought that at that moment he was on the verge of losing himself.
How was I to know that he would try to use Bianca, it would jam, and it would resolve differently?
I guess it comes down to how we perceive the game. I knew that Cole wasn't going to kill him. Varric made it clear, and I expected a trick. Although I didn't expect his to use Bianca, I thought he'd outright tell him to work out his anger by attacking a tree trunk or something
You brought up a really good point. I've made him more spirit, and he's really happy. PLUS, he can be in the Fade which makes him nearly invisible all the time. And despite that he stated that he didn't want me to find Rhys & Evangeline, I did anyway and they wished that they could tell Cole that they were sorry. Then Cole was glad.I don't think that's a problem, since as a spirit he's devoid of contradictory human emotions, and as a human he can't turn into a demon.
My issue is mortality. It would be cruel to impose it on someone immortal. If that's what we're imposing, that is.
In Val Royeaux when asked if he wanted cheese he says he doesn't eat, he still have the power to hear peoples feeling, he will not change to a full human, there is nothing in lore that hint its possible.Your words are like honey to a hungry sweettooth
Is there any proof of that, though? A hint? I'd love to know for sure.
Retour en haut
