Dragon Age Inquisition: Snake was Right, y'all gonna Love this Game

[Overcast]

Mage stuff has always been on the neutral ping of my moral center. In 1, due to the betrayal being a sort of sorcerous internal struggle I was on the side of not really killing all the mages.

In 2 I was in a much harder area. I didn't hesitate to kill my friend the terrorist, but when forced to look at which side I had to choose between Templars and Mages I had to realize I was already facing off with blood mages and demons. I was never with Anders when it came to total mage freedom, and these were not people ready for a stable removal.

So Templars.

In Inquisition it will mostly depend on how the Circle is dealing with their split from the Templar. They have to impress on me they are capable of enforcing their own, because if they are no better at keeping shit together than when under Templar supervision then I may as well consider this expiriment a failure.

Still supporting the Qun though, never seen a big ass demon outbreak in the Qunari, and hell the last Qun Mage I saw set himself on fire before he would be given his own freedom. Thats fucking powerful.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Krylo

I diagree entirely. Across the last two games the Templars and Chantry have basically taken a bunch of people with bombs wired into their chests, push them into corners, and then act surprised when they go off.

Actually, I'll agree with Greed on this one: I went into Inquisition fully anticipating a lop-sided pro-Mage story like in DA2, but characters like Vivienne really actually fleshed out the conflict into shades of grey and I find I'm not incredibly fond of either side of that conflict this time around.

Mind you, I still prefer the Mages over the Templars because fuck odious restrictions on personal freedom based entirely on stereotypes, but this game at least tries to present the other side of the coin. I'm not sure whether I ultimately prefer the shades-of-grey over DA2's rather bold stance on an unambiguous conflict against oppression, and in the end Inquisition seems to have this weird thematic focus on nearly every organizational structure, outside of the ironically-named Inquisition, falling apart at the seams.

I'm still impressed at how much I'm loving just about everyone in the main cast. I'd honestly say Leliana -- one of my favorite characters in Dragon Age Origins! -- is one of my least favorite characters in this cast. And it's not even that Leliana has necessarily gotten much worse, per se, it's more so that Bioware's really stepped up their game with writing these characters. Even Sera, who I was fully prepared to be inclined against, has proven to be deceptively awesome if you can look past her strange behavior (personality disorder?) And, while I don't agree with Vivenne on most things, she's basically a less self-loathing version of the Hawke I envisioned when playing DA2, which is cool to witness.

Iron Bull, of course, is awesome, but y'all already knew that.

Also: Varric has a couple of lines in his dialogues where Bioware is hysterically using him to defend DA2 against haters: Be sure to ask him what Kirkwall's really like when you're lounging around in Haven. (I suppose if you don't love DA2 as much as I do you'll just find it over-defensive.)

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Actually, I'll agree with Greed on this one: I went into Inquisition fully anticipating a lop-sided pro-Mage story like in DA2, but characters like Vivienne really actually fleshed out the conflict into shades of grey and I find I'm not incredibly fond of either side of that conflict this time around.

Sure, but Greed said over the last two games the mages fucked shit up on their own.

But that's just factually untrue. Uldred broke the circle in an attempt to earn freedom. The Ferelden mage tower is/was one of the more liberal of the mage towers, and it still felt incredibly like a cage in the mage origin story, and with the events of Kirkwall having not yet happened, dissolving the circle through peaceful means seemed entirely impossible.

It's easy to sympathize with Uldred and the other blood mages, and they were some of the least forgivable malificarum in the DA series.

And, most importantly: They didn't fuck shit up on their own. They turned to blood magic, and, more importantly, demonology, BECAUSE of the templars. They fucked shit up because of their relationship with the Chantry.

This is the case of all but one abomination/blood mage we see in the entire game. Jowan learns blood magic without being tempted, but there's no evidence he trafficked with demons to do so (it's heavily implied he learned the basics by reading the books Irving took from the library--Jowan is terrified of even the IDEA of demons, and far too incompetent to broker a deal for blood magic without losing himself). His dabbling, indeed, is said to come from a place of fear over the harrowing, over him being a shit mage and needing an edge.

I guess you could count the fact that he's incompetent as Connor's teacher as mages fucking shit up on their own, but that's really stretching it, and, again, Connor was only taught by the worst apostate of all time because of the way the chantry and templars treat mages: Isolde didn't want that for Connor, and so enter the death of nearly everyone in Redcliffe.

Moving to DA2, well, we've hashed over how every mage gone abomination was about to be murdered/slaved/sex slaved by Templars or others in previous threads.

This is what I meant by the Chantry and Templars constantly cornering them and being surprised they explode. OF COURSE they're going to reach out to demons repeatedly when placed in the situation the Chantry places them in. And until DA:I about halfway through locking yourself into helping the mages you never really SEE Tevinter, which IS a cautionary tale, and the mage companion (Dorian) you get doing it is the thing that really grays it (Viv is just kind of self-loathing and a bit of a bitch, Sera's right about her), when he points out that helping the mages is kinda how Tevinter happened--inch by inch--and, says his homeland is a cautionary tale. It doesn't excuse oppression but it's something to keep in mind.


That said, I still feel that the game, at every turn, told me that I was 10000% right for choosing mages. The mages approach you peacefully, requesting help, and only turn to Tevinter due to, again, fear of the Templars and a magister literally tearing apart the fabric of space and time. Meanwhile the first time you see the Templars in action it's the Lord Seeker cold clocking a chantry mother who had gone to him for protection. And not only that, but the Templars were a sworn police force. When you see rogue apostates in the Hinterlands and hear about them hurting people, yeah it gave me a little pause, but then the Templars do the same thing. And there's a vast difference between a desperate criminal attacking and stealing from innocent people, and someone acting as part of a larger organization that is SWORN TO PROTECT THOSE VERY PEOPLE just straight up murdering the shit out of them with full backing of their organization and for things as egregarious as holding a stick.

And really, the quest line for recruiting the mages is very interconnected to the rest of the story and, even if I didn't feel all that up there, it still made me feel like 'god damn it's a good thing I took care of this now'.

But really all I'm saying is that for all its shades of greys about the dangers of mages, DA:I Also just turns around and makes the Templars out to be shades of black. At least any that didn't already join the inquisition instead of roaming around killing mages.

[Overcast]

I can't read your spoilers but without any solid evidence that the mages aren't able to do what I imagine is capable self enforcement. Which isn't perfect, because nothing is, but is passable I probably will end up supporting mages. As much as I'd like to go back and put a collar on all of them, it is just a bit late to start.

[Krylo]

You don't really get to see what them self governing is like unless you recruit them as equals (it is possible to recruit them and further oppress them).

But all I'm trying to say is ignoring the social climate in which mages are strapped to a bed and fed laxatives and then accusing them of repeatedly shitting the bed, is, while technically true, missing the point. And hoping that if we just strap them to the bed harder that they'll shit it less is kind of ridiculous.

The qun option works because they're just surgically removing the mage's digestive tract and replacing it with a colonoscopy bag and nutrient drip before strapping them to the bed.

It's effective, but would you treat bed messing with non-consensual major surgery that leaves its patients vegetative?

[Kim]

well i mean the examples of evil mages in DA:I all pretty much herald from Tevinter, where the mages are in charge, which doesn't really condemn fereldan mages as much as make clear that mages can be evil if they have full and total control of the government and culture, and even then they aren't evil as a rule but rather there are evil mages among them.

that said: DA2: Legacy and DA:I both seem to abandon the whole mages as a metaphor for queerness thing DA2 had

also

I banish you and your tribe - with as many weapons as you can carry - to Tevinter.

i love this game

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Kim

i love this game

That really was an excellent dialogue choice.

Though my favorite thing so far is "So we're saving the world through bullshit now?"

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Sure, but Greed said over the last two games the mages fucked shit up on their own.

Yeah, I definitely don't agree with Greed there. In Origins and DA2 I very much believed that everything that happened with Mages was a direct result of Templars antagonizing them into positions that empowered the very demons they were so terrified of. Like fighting a fire with a flamethrower.

I'm not as far as you and Kim (the few spoilers I did glance at seem a ways further into the game) so maybe my perceptions will change down the line, but it was surprising to hear from Vivienne that the vast majority of Circle towers were pretty lax compared with Kirkwall. Though I don't really understand her subsequent insinuation that Mages who lived relatively comfortably shouldn't be outraged for fellow members of their class who are oppressed simply for being Mages. When Vivienne starts insisting that all Mages should feel terribad because Anders was a terrorist and that means they're all somehow culpable it's pretty awful to hear, perhaps even more so from her than from my self-loathing Hawke in DA2 because at least Hawke was genuinely tormented by it all, Vivienne doesn't even seem emotionally disturbed about the acts of terror but demands the shackles anyway due to some twisted conceptualization of 'justice.'

I do like Cullen, though. Glad he's on the right side this time.

[Overcast]

No, but then again I also don't have the chance to instigate a culture where shitting the bed is the cultural equivilent of cutting your dick off. At the end of the day we are just trying to protect their hypothetical dick. Dat Qun.

Side question to the crew, I tended to kill Anders in most of my run throughs, even when I was dating him because I either hated that he forced me into this position when I shouldn't be the guy making these fucking decisions(Rogue, why am I so important in Kirkwall), because he wasn't in control and had doomed everyone here to walk the hard road to freedom, including me(Mage, I wasn't ready for this), or because I thought he was insane in general(Fighter, bitchyoucrazy).

Am I the only one who tended to stab him? My boyrfiend appears to prefer letting his crazy ass live.

[Krylo]

I'm 50/50. I never liked what he did, but I felt like executing him was the easy way out. He just made things a lot harder for everyone, mages included. Why should he get to just saddle everyone else with that?

Make him live in the world he created and help rebuild.

On the other hand, man I ain't got time to deal with this shit right now, and considering the innocents he killed I can't say killing him is unjust, so you know, it's the fast and clean option.

So depending on my character.

Also, I had one play where I clearly just agreed with him 100% and in that case I was more annoyed by the lack of forewarning or discussion than that he did it.