Underrated by whom? Most people seem to find the Arishok the high point of the entire game.
Perhaps underrated might be the wrong term, because I only consider him underrated as compared to Loghain, who I see held up very often as the ideal complex antagonist. Though that probably has as much to do with DAOs popularity relative to DA2s as it has to do with the characters themselves.
What if we have Villain Protagonist, and that N7 guy from the trailer is our Hero Antagonist? 
I think I'd really dig a teammate that betrays the player character because they believe it is the right thing to do depending on how they are written.
I'd prefer that they are unhappy about the decision because it is a betrayal of trust but it is something they feel they have to do it because they consider it to be the right thing to do.
Bonus if how they feel about the betrayal depends on their relationship with the player character: if they dislike the player character then they do not feel bad about the betrayal but if they like the player character then they do feel bad about the betrayal.
Inquisition has a character that fits almost every single critera you mention.
What if we have Villain Protagonist, and that N7 guy from the trailer is our Hero Antagonist?
The issue with these suggestions is that villain and hero are concepts that are very open to interpretation, and that to restrict us to what the writers would consider a villainous character would involve very limited roleplaying options. Besides which, there are plenty of people who would potentially disagree on whether the character is a villain. Moral relativity and all that.
Loghain is designed to pull you into the notion that despite great wrongs, there is also great good and so you are sympathetic. It's an image of a conflicted, pragmatic, character. The good does not wash out the bad, the bad does not wash out the good.
Arishok is essentially just a glorified cop (and I'm not in any way comparing him to actual cops beyond his apparent role relative to the story). It's a super plastic fantasy version of the enemy, and you are supposed to be sympathetic towards on the basis that he seems to have done little to anything wrong in the first place.
The second one is ok I guess but it's certainly far more common in media, and it's not remotely as ambitious or engaging as Loghain. Loghain >>>>> Arishok. Even though you realize and see the terrible things Loghain has done, you also see some of the good things and understand the logic on some level that he is trying to defend Fereldan. You realize that even though he has hateful aspects to him, he has caring and empathetic aspects as well.
Moreover, Arishok has done plenty wrong, his presumed amorality and apathy is designed to make him seem "above" conflicts, but he is part of an organization that has many problematic and evil elements that are a matter of principle, not even dependent on necessity, although the portrayal does not focus explicitly in the course of the story on this and you see him in, so what the story is really trying to get you to buy is that someone who has a super clean "image" is in fact in the moral clear.
And yet, I mean saying that the Arishok "handled" the situation well is absurd, his entire story in Dragon Age 2 is essentially that he is looking for an artifact, he shows no skill or interest or ability to find it, relying heaviy on others the entire time, basically never moving from his chair, making grand intonations, and whining about how everyone around him is selfish or insular when his entire society is designed to fuel purely the needs and interests of the top people in that society, before finally having someone else just happen to find the thing he's looking for, whine about the other person needing it, start a fight with everyone around him who had little to do with his particular problems or needs, and then finally, after all that, flop over and die in a duel anyway, failing at essentially every single task he had commited himself to.
Ineptitude doesn't even begin to describe the Arishok, he was far too incompetent to be anything other than a sideshow ultimately. And whether his intentions were malicious or good isn't even central to address when the amount of suffering he caused due to sheer lack of talent and ability in achieving his narrow objectives was probably a greater scale of evil than Loghain's intentional evils, which is quite a feat when you consider the scale of Loghain's evils.
TLDR: Arishok is more like typical type "image of good" but has and/or causes lots of problem. Loghain is multifaceted, lots of bad things, but also good things to draw you into a more even analysis.
It's a good thing that no one here is claiming the Arishok handled the situation "well." That would be strange.
It's a good thing that no one here is claiming the Arishok handled the situation "well." That would be strange.
Really DA2 is a story about a whole bunch of people not handling the situation well.
There were some personally expressed opinions that Arishok was actually somewhat compelling, compared to Loghain even perhaps, which is false. Moreover, it's not particularly close in comparison....
Or there was one person claiming they found the Arishok to be underrated in comparison to Loghain, which is opinion.
Which is what "personally expressed opinions" means, and an opinion which is factually false. They are somewhat substantially, chasmly apart.
I wasn't really bothered by the Arishok, compared to many fictional characters I come across.. but as Sardaukar was saying, it's a case of everyone in DA2 handling everything not well, which isn't particularly inspiring...
It's not supposed to be inspiring, so mission accomplished on their part.
And in an admittedly futile attempt at bringing a modicum of reason back to the discussion, you do not determine the validity of arbitrary opinion. You have the power to determine your own disagreement with someone else's opinion, but not the authority to to declare it actually "false."
If someone claims that fire is cold or that the state bird of Washington is the Sri Lanka Frogmouth, then the time will come for words like, "false."
More importantly, you seem to be under the impression that I find the Arishok morally superior to Loghain, which is an inaccurate interpretation of my appreciation of the Arishok as a villainous character.
I wasn't really bothered by the Arishok, compared to many fictional characters I come across.. but as Sardaukar was saying, it's a case of everyone in DA2 handling everything not well, which isn't particularly inspiring...
Well he's an antagonist, they generally aren't inspiring.
I think the Arishok is an engaging character because he's driven by a complex set of behaviors. He's loyal to the Qun, has a set world view and attempts to solve problems according to that. He feels real.
Loghain is interesting, but the problem I have with him is that he appears to be driven by an irrational fear of the French. The retreat from Ostagar might make perfect sense but we're never given perspective on whether it does, despite our character being right there.
Well he's an antagonist, they generally aren't inspiring.
I think the Arishok is an engaging character because he's driven by a complex set of behaviors. He's loyal to the Qun, has a set world view and attempts to solve problems according to that. He feels real.
Loghain is interesting, but the problem I have with him is that he appears to be driven by an irrational fear of the French. The retreat from Ostagar might make perfect sense but we're never given perspective on whether it does, despite our character being right there.
The Arishok isn't an antagonist until he orders the attack though. Before that he's more like a looming threat for the city that seems to respect Hawke.
The Arishok isn't an antagonist until he orders the attack though. Before that he's more like a looming threat for the city that seems to respect Hawke.
Okay, fair. But my point is that he isn't really in a position to be inspiring. He's not an active agent, he provides opposition to the player and earlier he provides exposition, threat and quests. It's kind of absurd that he sits around in Kirkwall for however many years not doing anything but I think that's an issue with the plot rather than the character.
Okay, fair. But my point is that he isn't really in a position to be inspiring. He's not an active agent, he provides opposition to the player and earlier he provides exposition, threat and quests. It's kind of absurd that he sits around in Kirkwall for however many years not doing anything but I think that's an issue with the plot rather than the character.
a problem with DA2's plot?
Surely you jest
It's not supposed to be inspiring, so mission accomplished on their part.
And in an admittedly futile attempt at bringing a modicum of reason back to the discussion, you do not determine the validity of arbitrary opinion. You have the power to determine your own disagreement with someone else's opinion, but not the authority to to declare it actually "false."
If someone claims that fire is cold or that the state bird of Washington is the Sri Lanka Frogmouth, then the time will come for words like, "false."
More importantly, you seem to be under the impression that I find the Arishok morally superior to Loghain, which is an inaccurate interpretation of my appreciation of the Arishok as a villainous character.
Nothing as futile as your to preclude others from ever making those judgments, which is, in it's essence, a judgment, i.e. "I am the bearer of truth, none shall speak it but me."
Look, I'm some random person that's played a lot of games and read things and or whatever, and the truth is plain as day, Loghain is a superior character to the Arishok, period. I don't know why that's so difficult to deal with, but it's not me you should be targeting, it just is, it wouldn't matter whether I said it or not, whether other people see it or not, it just is, and will be, and nothing can really change that.
Rather than wasting your time trying to subvert that notion, or lash out at people that make such statements, you should proceed like Sardaukar, who is pointing out just why Arishok might be a problematic person, but also why it it's not clear case of "this character is fraustrating"
Your desire and insistence to monopolize questions of conduct or substantial "betterness," and to discourage or prevent others from doing so is frankly quite wrong, and frankly, altogether not terribly uncommon, especially as is increasingly the case, here.
A and I suppose why I've started to gravitate towards just using other forums...
And frankly also, not altogether quite uncommon....
Well like at any rate, it's impossible to give feedback on the matter without making these comparisons, if people want to insistently just keep their Dragon Age 2 Arishok like characters, then that is exactly what they will do. No one cares, but since people we're talking about why this one person is more engaging, it's been pretty clear that he has a lot more "gray area" to his character, whereas the Arishok is more one-dimensional..
But yes I suppose that's all there is to say on the matter.
I disliked Saren in the comics and book. He was pretty despicable in ME:1. But I loved his character, kind of a love/hate thing. I hope the villian in ME:A is like that
Nothing as futile as your to preclude others from ever making those judgments, which is, in it's essence, a judgment, i.e. "I am the bearer of truth, none shall speak it but me."
Look, I'm some random person that's played a lot of games and read things and or whatever, and the truth is plain as day, Loghain is a superior character to the Arishok, period. I don't know why that's so difficult to deal with, but it's not me you should be targeting, it just is, it wouldn't matter whether I said it or not, whether other people see it or not, it just is, and will be, and nothing can really change that.
Rather than wasting your time trying to subvert that notion, or lash out at people that make such statements, you should proceed like Sardaukar, who is pointing out just why Arishok might be a problematic person, but also why it might work.
Your desire and insistence to monopolize questions of conduct or substantial "betterness," and to discourage or prevent others from doing so is frankly quite wrong.
And frankly also, not altogether quite uncommon.
Sardaukar and I are in resounding agreement about the Arishok, just as we are about most things, with the possible exception of the degree to which realism is desirable in fiction.
As for the rest, I disagree. C'est la vie.
Sardaukar and I are in resounding agreement about the Arishok, just as we are about most things, with the possible exception of the degree to which realism is desirable in fiction.
As for the rest, I disagree. C'est la vie.
There's nothing to disagree about a fact.
Anyway, I don't really know what to say, what I know and see I know and see, if people are so resistant to that here or whatever I'm just going to find myself gravitating elsewhere in all probability... it's completely impossible for me to "see the truth" which is that Arishok is so profound and really all of Bioware was just leading up to but that in itself is just not true.
There's nothing to disagree about a fact.
And yet somehow I manage it, primarily through the assurance that you're grossly misusing the word, "fact."
And yet somehow I manage it, primarily through the assurance that you're grossly misusing the word, "fact."
Fact: n. (`fakt): personal belief or opinion
Well he's an antagonist, they generally aren't inspiring.
I think the Arishok is an engaging character because he's driven by a complex set of behaviors. He's loyal to the Qun, has a set world view and attempts to solve problems according to that. He feels real.
Loghain is interesting, but the problem I have with him is that he appears to be driven by an irrational fear of the French. The retreat from Ostagar might make perfect sense but we're never given perspective on whether it does, despite our character being right there.
Arishok is somewhat of an engaging character, driven by a complex set of behaviors, sure...
Loghain does have irrational fears, but lots of people have lots of irrational fears.
It's all weighed in the balance and scale of things, Arishok's irrational fears seem to extend to the world as a whole and most of the people in it, not necessarily limited to just the society or organization Dragon Age calls "Orlais."
^OMG who the hell are all these characters you two are talking about? Go argue this in the DA forums or something.
Fact: Mass Effect is 95% better than Dragon Age
Fact: No. Both Mass Effect and Dragon Age are compelling at various times for various reasons, but you can see even just in Dragon Age 1 the kind of investment in making the dynamics unique is beyond that of Mass Effect, which seemed to be designed from the get-go to be more of a popcorn romp.
Illustrating my point about people's assertions of facts....
Anyway, I will concede that despite Bioware having clearly shared universes across their games and relationships between characters and world ideas from one area to the other, rendering a DA discussion valid, since it's the ME forum it's certainly appropriate to discuss ME characters...
Sovereign Harbinger is a kind of an obvious contrast, but I've already put this here somewhere at one point. Sovereign was the "inexorable" enemy, the one where logic compelled certain acts (i.e. the nature of mortality or the cycle of the universe) compelling acts. You aren't weighing good and bad against good and bad per se, but simply asked to buy into the scale of logic.
However, since there is nothing really fundamentally logical about the dissolution of sentient life in face of sentient life's obvious desire for it, it's actually not really that but extremely irrational just kind of destroy the world type of thing.
However, Sovereign there was more investment in the notion that it was a kind of "greater good" than Harbinger, when it was clearly depicted as a mad killer robot thing out to get us all.
Saren was probably the most compelling since they made it clear he was indoctrinated, or, in other words, it was someone who at their core was a person like any other but was mind controlled against their will to do what he did. This meant you didn't desire to fight him as much (not that you couldn't conceive independent reasons), as much as the thing that kind of animated this situation. There wasn't really anything like him though again in the series, limiting the multifaceted to really just ME1 as far as ME goes.
it seems pretty clear that ME was conceived as a thoroughly straight Sci-Fi space opera-y romp, it wasn't intended to be taken super seriously all the time. Not that, like, Dragon Age isn't, or something, I don't really buy into this Dragon Age "Mature" and Mass Effect "Teen" or something in the slightest.
However, Dragon Age is.. well.. it's hard to rate because of similarities because of the chasmic changes between iterations, or problems within entires, but fundamentally, is still superior to Mass Effect.
But like Mass Effect is fine and cool though, 
I don't know why we suddenly have to be anti-DA whilist discussing ME or vice versa.
I used to be a lot bigger on ME, but DA actually ahd a somewhat comeback with Inquisition, we'll see if ME can follow suit, my hopes aren't high
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