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Pick posted:Then set aside the examples and answer the question like I've asked: When your friends are going to do something harmful to themselves and potentially others and cannot be dissuaded, do you continue to support them, why or why not? No, I'm not going to ignore all the context in the game to answer a question that doesn't matter. My original point was that Merril's character makes no sense, as her personality is heavily at odds with her actions and goals. All the lore surrounding mages and demons is the reason, so I'm not going to ignore it and answer that question because it had nothing to do with my point. I really don't get how you can honestly think this stuff isn't significant to Merril's character when nearly everything she does involves it. You can't ignore the lore when it comes to mages because the lore determines how they live their lives. Come on, didn't I already explain how in the wall of words on the last page? VVVV Yeah how silly of me to focus on the lore when the entire plot line revolves around it! Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 20:31
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Pick posted:Then set aside the examples and answer the question like I've asked: When your friends are going to do something harmful to themselves and potentially others and cannot be dissuaded, do you continue to support them, why or why not? That is the crux of Merrill's arc and it's why the arc is interesting. Would you rather face the inevitable at her side, optimistically, or disparage her and try to play damage control, or refuse involvement entirely? The game gives you the choice!
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Sep 29, 2013 20:34
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Except the question isn't really about Merrill specifically, it's about what you do when your friends are pursuing obviously (if only to you) destructive goals. Why is that so hard to answer?
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Sep 29, 2013 20:36
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^^Kraken the comparisons he made are lesser but his point is that these are choices people make where whether you support them or not they will make them. Merrill being your best bud with you supporting her will make the same dumb decision as Merrill with you going 'this is dumb you are dumb'. The point is that the character had the agency to follow through on its own goal, much like Anders did. Which seems to be the reason everyone hates them, because they want to be able to choose to murder whoever they feel like because they as the player know something dumb is going to happen. The lore as presented in game in the codex makes out abominations as a huge threat, and makes everyone scared of them. They are also written by the Chantry, as with all information provided on Blood Magic. Meanwhile what we have seen in game in DAO was that the only time blood magic really goes wrong is when the practitioner is under a ton of duress. The creepy mage in Warden's Keep never lost control in hundreds of years, the only time he did was when he was under significant threat. The Wardens themselves have said that blood magic is useful, and the Grey Warden doesn't go through any negative effects (despite needing to make a deal with a demon). You can argue it is because bio ware is bad at making it as bad as it should be, but it could also be evidence that hey, not every blood mage has issues with being possessed. When it comes down to it, Hawke can have defeated a corrupted Magister, a dragon, a bunch of dark spawn, a huge Qunari... Merrill may not have been safe doing what she did, but she did understand that if things went wrong Hawke could stop her from hurting anyone. The tevinter imperium is interesting because while it is said to be all terrible and evil they still at least seemingly have their mages not become abominations, despite the fact that they are lore wise very likely to be blood mages. Hell, the dreamer is told to go to dltevinter because they are the best at teaching their mages how to not become demons. It is pretty obviously a theme that the only time mages are a risk is when they are being oppressed. Also, in gameplay and story terms, the Templars in DAO were ready to enact the right of annulment and kill all the abominations themselves, when there were like... seven of them. Abominations are scary and can be strong, but they obviously aren't like the codex books (written by the chantry!) Claim, since they claim a single one can wipe out thousands, yet a few templars are enough to take down an entire tower of them (disregarding that the grey warden and three friends can do so too, because gameplay vs. Story.) Edit: if you want to claim that only what is said in the lore is true, then there is a Maker despite no one knowing, the mages did corrupt the golden city, the darkspawn are biblical plagues on humanity because of the mages. Also all the eleven lore is true. And all the dwarven Because it is in the codex!!! Everything in the codex is colored by the opinions of people in the setting, who are pretty much under the thumb of a large and impressive religion. You can't trust anything in it, and the fact that everyone does is what made people dislike the tevinter guy on the dlc, who said the city was already black when they arrived, and they were tainted by it. Anything that is not shown directly to you can't be taken as fact. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 20:43
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Internet Kraken posted:
Except it really doesn't. Even the most apologetic Bioware fan should notice the disconnect is huge.
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Sep 29, 2013 20:46
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Lotish posted:Except the question isn't really about Merrill specifically, it's about what you do when your friends are pursuing obviously (if only to you) destructive goals. Why is that so hard to answer? It's not hard to answer, it ignored my point about Merril's character being flawed so I didn't bother. But if you really want an answer, fine. I'd try to appeal to my friend with logic and hope I can convince them to look at their situation from an objective perspective. Obviously they have reasons to believe what they are doing is right, so I'd address those individually. If my friend is giving up everything and saying they are going to live off painting, I'd ask them what their plan was. How were they going to make money off this? How are they going to learn about it fast enough to make a living? Do they know if they even have the talent to handle this? It's a big risk, and hopefully I could convince them to reconsider. It's hard to deal with a friend that can't see why they are making a mistake though. Usually there is a lot of emotion involved. It's a pretty general question and hard to answer outside of a specific context. I can say this though; in no way is pursuing a career in painting comparable to summoning eldritich horrors to do your bidding. Here's the only way I can think of the put it on the level of what Merril does; All your life you've been taught to draw with pencils in a specific style. Somewhere, you here about painting instead, and you think it could really make you successful. However, the art of painting is incredibly dangerous, and if you make one mistake you could not only kill yourself but also unleash a terrible canvas monster that goes on a destructive rampage. Your friends and family tell you to forget about painting, just focus on drawing, there is nothing to gain from risking your life and others to be a painter. ...This is stupid as hell and I'm sick of talking about this elf. But you see how it's really dumb to make that compairson in the first place? Don't tell me I'm being to literal either, because all that stuff about hurting yourself and others is important to Merril's actions, as is the fact that it should of been taught to her since she was young. EDIT: You know what? Maybe I am being to literal, because I can just answer the question in a better way; if my friend is going to do something that they have been told since their childhood is incredibly stupid and incredibly dangerous, I'm not going to be their friend. They are clearly deeply troubled and should probably get mental help if they are so unreceptive to what others say. If what they are doing is dangerous to others, I'm going to tell the authorities rather than let them just go on with it. EDIT 2: I've probably put more thought into this than Bioware did. gently caress 
Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 20:50
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It's also worth noting is that you have about a decade to convince this friend to change their mind. If not then it's their mistake to make and learn from it. If somehow this painting mishap has the potential to get a lot of people kill you call the police.
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Sep 29, 2013 20:54
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Also, while salt pette and dragon stone or whatever Anders makes you get sounds like bomb supplies once you know it is a bomb, you have no reason to assume it is as a character. Hawke isn't exactly a scholar. And it makes sense (sort of) that he wouldn't turn Merrill over to the Templars, since either he or his sister would then be mages that had close association with a blood mage. Hawke as a character has no reason to objectively know these people are screw ups until the point where they do screw up. Though I support the idea of being able to kill whoever turns against you in the dream permanently. gently caress you Isabella, turning against me for the promise of a ship. I have half a million gold, I can buy you fifty ships!
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Sep 29, 2013 21:06
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Internet Kraken posted:EDIT: You know what? Maybe I am being to literal, because I can just answer the question in a better way; if my friend is going to do something that they have been told since their childhood is incredibly stupid and incredibly dangerous, I'm not going to be their friend. They are clearly deeply troubled and should probably get mental help if they are so unreceptive to what others say. If what they are doing is dangerous to others, I'm going to tell the authorities rather than let them just go on with it. The fact that you can't just ignore Merrill when you first meet her is strange. I mean, she is literally doing something so unimaginably wrong that, in the setting, the only person who would be okay with it is a radical mage who probably an apostate. Everyone else should, by all rights, either run screaming to the Templars or try to murder her. Apostate blood mages are utterly anathema to the people of Thedas that aren't already criminals, and even then, they're not exactly trusted.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:11
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KittyEmpress posted:Also, while salt pette and dragon stone or whatever Anders makes you get sounds like bomb supplies once you know it is a bomb, you have no reason to assume it is as a character. Hawke isn't exactly a scholar. But he couldn't have asked an alchemist or whatever when the objectively insane wizard asks him to mysteriously collect strange ingredients?
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Sep 29, 2013 21:13
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DA2 is the best because it kinda sorta might let you make a choice and then completely ignores it.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:14
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Ravenfood posted:Can we be clear? Not just stupid and incredibly dangerous to the person involved, but to literally everything around the person. If my friend (who was, by the way, doing this incredibly dangerous thing 10 years ago when I literally first met them) is still planning on doing it 10 years later, fuuuck that I am OUT, and I am calling the police. But you are (or your family is) an apostate. Your sister was an apostate, your dad was an apostate, you had apostate cousins, it was apostates all the way down. Carver even makes comments about the whole family hiding from templar due to Bethany (and you). Two out of three reactions to Avelines husband are 'great, a loving templar' and the last is 'we don't have time for this let's go god drat it' the hawke family does not like Templars, which is why Carver becoming one is another in a series of douche moves. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:18
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Also, according to Legacy, your dad was a blood mage.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:22
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KittyEmpress posted:Also, while salt pette and dragon stone or whatever Anders makes you get sounds like bomb supplies once you know it is a bomb, you have no reason to assume it is as a character. Hawke isn't exactly a scholar. And it makes sense (sort of) that he wouldn't turn Merrill over to the Templars, since either he or his sister would then be mages that had close association with a blood mage. I did not know we were collecting bomb ingredients until Anders destroyed half of Kirkwall. I completely missed the reference. And Sela Petrae is only obvious in hindsight. So there is absolutely no reason to expect Hawke to know what Anders is up to, none at all. Especially if you don't play a mage. We might dislike that we cannot stop him from destroying half of Kirkwall, but then you could not stop Kreia from killing all the Jedi Masters you convinced to come out of hiding. No reason to hate on a characters just because your character was duped into helping them doing something dumb. And you can deal with Anders as you please! Forgive him or kill him, total player agency!
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Sep 29, 2013 21:26
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And if that's not enough, I'm sure someone has made copycats of them in the Sims.  e: Yep, and ahahaha holy poo poo Carver: 
Pick fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:29
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Torrannor posted:I did not know we were collecting bomb ingredients until Anders destroyed half of Kirkwall. I completely missed the reference. And Sela Petrae is only obvious in hindsight. So there is absolutely no reason to expect Hawke to know what Anders is up to, none at all. Especially if you don't play a mage. We might dislike that we cannot stop him from destroying half of Kirkwall, but then you could not stop Kreia from killing all the Jedi Masters you convinced to come out of hiding. No reason to hate on a characters just because your character was duped into helping them doing something dumb. And you can deal with Anders as you please! Forgive him or kill him, total player agency! I'd say if it was within the realm of your character's expertise, you should be able to at least call him out on it. A not very smart Warrior Hawke might not find out until it's too late, but a properly specced Mage Hawke could figure something out. You know, like CRPGs have been doing for ages?
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Sep 29, 2013 21:41
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Pick posted:Also, according to Legacy, your dad was a blood mage. More like according to Legacy your dad used blood magic for a single ritual. I don't think that was enough to classify him as a full out blood mage.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:41
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The Unnamed One posted:I'd say if it was within the realm of your character's expertise, you should be able to at least call him out on it. A not very smart Warrior Hawke might not find out until it's too late, but a properly specced Mage Hawke could figure something out. Why would a mage Hawke know this though? He isn't educated either way. He has no formal teaching, probably especially as a mage, because his family was not exactly the most open. She likely was taught as much as her parents could, and anything else she picked up along the way. Mages are only smart because they tended to live locked in giant towers filled with books, with nothing else to do to pass the day. Mages use magic to make explosives, not alchemic reactions. The church was likely the only school type thing in Lothering. I doubt they sent Mage Hawke to go learn from the sisters or the Mother or anything, or that even if they had that they would teach subjects such as chemistry or explosive making. Hawke legitimately has no reason to know what Anders was asking for, besides magic ingredients. If they had kept professions from DAO, having enough in trap making or something would be the proper tie in, but they didn't so... KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:46
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KittyEmpress posted:But you are (or your family is) an apostate. Your sister was an apostate, your dad was an apostate, you had apostate cousins, it was apostates all the way down. Carver even makes comments about the whole family hiding from templar due to Bethany (and you). Two out of three reactions to Avelines husband are 'great, a loving templar' and the last is 'we don't have time for this let's go god drat it' the hawke family does not like Templars, which is why Carver becoming one is another in a series of douche moves. Being an apostate and being a blood mage that consorts with demons on a regular basis are not the same thing. If anything, living with or being a mage only makes you more aware of the great danger posed by someone that does do those things. Unless you are roleplaying as someone who is unreasonably sympathetic towards all mages or is interested in blood magic themself, you have 0 reason to trust Merril right from the start. The same applies to Anders of course who is LITERALLY AN ABOMINATION  Pick posted:And if that's not enough, I'm sure someone has made copycats of them in the Sims. Maybe I've spent too much time in this thread today if I'm laughing at this but Carver's expression perfectly captures his character. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:47
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Ravenfood posted:The fact that you can't just ignore Merrill when you first meet her is strange. I mean, she is literally doing something so unimaginably wrong that, in the setting, the only person who would be okay with it is a radical mage who probably an apostate. Everyone else should, by all rights, either run screaming to the Templars or try to murder her. Apostate blood mages are utterly anathema to the people of Thedas that aren't already criminals, and even then, they're not exactly trusted. To go with the "would you let your friends do this?" analogy, it would be like my friend the nuclear physicist coming up and telling me that he's building a nuclear reactor in his garden shed, he's just taking the plutonium home in this sack right here, and could I help by going to grab some aluminium from the junkyard? The fact that Merrill knows enough to be able to do anything isn't a mitigating thing, it makes it worse, because it means she can get things happening. The sane response, to almost every plot step she takes, is to either report her to the authorities or kill her, given how obsessive she is about the whole thing. Not to forget, of course, that she's only our "friend" if we agree with her; when we meet her, she's just another demon-summoning blood mage.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:48
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Has there been any talk on how the Fade spilling out into the real world can take effect? Is this simply abominations roaming around the countryside ala Oblivion or can the land actually shift to whatever stimuli local monsters, citizens or what-have-you wish or bargain through the tear for? Like say spirits or demons make once desolate farm land fertile again but with predictably disastrous results on the flora and fauna -- or a peasant wishing to create their own kingdom regardless of how many sacrifices they make to fulfill that dream.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:54
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I think my actual largest complaint about companions is that there needed to be a third  axis. Because when trying to go for rivalry you go from "No Fenris, not all mages are evil come on stop being an rear end in a top hat" to "HAW HAW LOOK AT THE BABY CRY ABOUT HAVING BEEN A SLAVE."I want to make fenris a better person, not belittle and make fun of his suffering, game!
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Sep 29, 2013 21:55
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Crabtree posted:Has there been any talk on how the Fade spilling out into the real world can take effect? Is this simply abominations roaming around the countryside ala Oblivion or can the land actually shift to whatever stimuli local monsters, citizens or what-have-you wish or bargain through the tear for? Like say spirits or demons make once desolate farm land fertile again but with predictably disastrous results on the flora and fauna -- or a peasant wishing to create their own kingdom regardless of how many sacrifices they make to fulfill that dream.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:56
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KittyEmpress posted:I think my actual largest complaint about companions is that there needed to be a third This is why the real slider we need is a motivation one. Again, it's like the genophage in Mass Effect. They try to make the decision seem difficult and complex, but the you support it, of course it's because you're a smug evil racist. I normally friendship-path Fenris, even as a mage, because even though I don't agree with him, I'd say his unusual experiences make his perspective justifiable. Also it hurts me in my heart when he rejects my gifts  .
Pick fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:57
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The Unnamed One posted:I'd say if it was within the realm of your character's expertise, you should be able to at least call him out on it. A not very smart Warrior Hawke might not find out until it's too late, but a properly specced Mage Hawke could figure something out. It is not unreasonable to think that even a mage Hawke would not know that Sela Petrae can be used as an explosive. In fact, there was a quest in Act 1 of DA2 that involves a dwarf who wants the secret recipe for explosives from the Arishok, since qunari explosives are more effective than the lyrium based dwarven explosives. We could extrapolate that Anders somehow got hold of this formula after the qunari left Kirkwall, and that very very few people would recognize Sela Petrae as something dangerous. So it would in fact be unreasonable to expect Hawke to pick up what he plans, whose only education would be whatever his father could provide in the backwater part of Ferelden they were hiding.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:57
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All I want to know is, can we defect and join up with the Qunari? Or, lacking that, simply interact more with the Qunari? To me they were the most interesting thing about the Dragon Age setting and I really hope having one playable leads to them being explored more.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:59
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Crabtree posted:Has there been any talk on how the Fade spilling out into the real world can take effect? Is this simply abominations roaming around the countryside ala Oblivion or can the land actually shift to whatever stimuli local monsters, citizens or what-have-you wish or bargain through the tear for? Like say spirits or demons make once desolate farm land fertile again but with predictably disastrous results on the flora and fauna -- or a peasant wishing to create their own kingdom regardless of how many sacrifices they make to fulfill that dream. No one has any loving clue.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:00
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Crabtree posted:Has there been any talk on how the Fade spilling out into the real world can take effect? Is this simply abominations roaming around the countryside ala Oblivion or can the land actually shift to whatever stimuli local monsters, citizens or what-have-you wish or bargain through the tear for? Like say spirits or demons make once desolate farm land fertile again but with predictably disastrous results on the flora and fauna -- or a peasant wishing to create their own kingdom regardless of how many sacrifices they make to fulfill that dream. It could go either way. All Bioware has said so far is that it's causing demons and abominations to pour into the real world, which is obvious and says pretty much nothing significant. It could be INCREDIBLY interesting and the fade sequences could be bizarre and trippy. Or they could be really dull and just another dungeon crawl with some floating bookcases and a brown filter to remind yourself that this is a dream woooooooo how creative. If you recall the fade was like that in the first two games, so I'm not getting my hopes up.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:02
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Internet Kraken posted:It could go either way. All Bioware has said so far is that it's causing demons and abominations to pour into the real world, which is obvious and says pretty much nothing significant. It could be INCREDIBLY interesting and the fade sequences could be bizarre and trippy. Or they could be really dull and just another dungeon crawl with some floating bookcases and a brown filter to remind yourself that this is a dream woooooooo how creative. I think the fade won't be brown-filter lame in DA3. It could be lame in an entirely novel way, though.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:04
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Of the companion storylines in DA2 I did like Merrill's most. It's undercut by everything about Merrill outside of her personal quests, but the storyline in itself worked well for me. Merrill is not a complete idiot: she knows that blood magic is dangerous, demons can't be trusted, etc. and she is reasonably careful. In a decade of using blood magic she's never actually gone insane. She is trying to rebuild the eluvian because she hates that the Dalish are content to drift away into nothing. From her perspective her entire clan are stubborn fools who aspire to nothing (and she is right) but despite how they despise her, she is going to save them from cultural extinction anyway and recover their lost past. She's aware that it could all turn out badly for her, so she asks Hawke to stand watch and kill her if she becomes an abomination. She believes that's the worst thing that could happen, and is willing to accept the risk. Even if she dies it doesn't harm anyone else: the demon would never get loose, Hawke would defeat it. But she never expected someone to love her unconditionally and die in her place. That's not a bad story, and as Pick alludes to it's the only one that has any sort of application to real life. There are no mages and templars, your acquaintances don't surreptitiously ask you for bomb materials, no one comes around to buy their former slave; but you do know friends engaged in self-destructive behavior who can't be talked out of it because after all, it only hurts themselves, what business is it of anyone else?
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Sep 29, 2013 22:06
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Internet Kraken posted:It could be INCREDIBLY interesting and the fade sequences could be bizarre and trippy. Or they could be really dull and just another dungeon crawl with some floating bookcases and a brown filter to remind yourself that this is a dream woooooooo how creative.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:09
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Pick posted:This is why the real slider we need is a motivation one. Again, it's like the genophage in Mass Effect. They try to make the decision seem difficult and complex, but the you support it, of course it's because you're a smug evil racist. I friendship almost everyone most play throughs, because it is just hard to be a bitch to pixels. I love choosing the ones that say things are bad ideas, but "woop, let's murder this mentally retarded person so Merrill will learn her ideas are dumb" just kills it for me. The only time I ever had Isabella disappear on me was because even though I was always mean to her, I kept getting friendship points for not being an rear end in a top hat to others.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:09
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Torrannor posted:It is not unreasonable to think that even a mage Hawke would not know that Sela Petrae can be used as an explosive. In fact, there was a quest in Act 1 of DA2 that involves a dwarf who wants the secret recipe for explosives from the Arishok, since qunari explosives are more effective than the lyrium based dwarven explosives. We could extrapolate that Anders somehow got hold of this formula after the qunari left Kirkwall, and that very very few people would recognize Sela Petrae as something dangerous. So it would in fact be unreasonable to expect Hawke to pick up what he plans, whose only education would be whatever his father could provide in the backwater part of Ferelden they were hiding. Supposedly there's an entire decade separating Hawke fleeing Lothering to Anders' terrorist act (though you wouldn't figure it out if the game didn't tell you so). In the meantime Hawke was able to get that bigass estate of theirs, and has a few favors from significant members of Kirkwall's society. I'm extrapolating as much as you about Hawke's development, but wouldn't it make sense that s/he would learn more about magic and alchemic reactions in this period, which would be reflected in the higher level magic that s/he can now perform? Anyway, I guess it's kind of a moot point, but having character abilities influencing the outcome of something is a cool feature that Bioware doesn't do a lot. (though DAII at least had the good sense of using your companions abilities to defuse situations sometimes, which is one of the legimately good things about the game). The Unnamed One fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 22:09
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The Unnamed One posted:Supposedly there's an entire decade separating Hawke fleeing Lothering to Anders' terrorist act (though you wouldn't figure it out if the game didn't tell you so). In the meantime Hawke was able to get that bigass estate of theirs, and has a few favors from significant members of Kirkwall's society. I'm extrapolating as much as you about Hawke's development, but wouldn't it make sense that s/he would learn more about magic and alchemic reactions in this period, which would be reflected in the higher level magic that s/he can now perform? It depends, because there isn't really anything that suggests alchemy and magic are similar, and learning one helps the other. Magic is just magic in Dragon Age, it isn't like Mass effect where magic is science. The easy explanation for what happens if Hawke isn't just learning for years is that he is having a life. Maybe he kills some gangsters, or makes friends in government, but nothing big enough to need narration on. Maybe she spends years in a drunken stupor, partying for years a a time, before getting to business. Basically, you drain the spirits of people around you because magic. You shoot fireballs because magic. You place runes that throw people who enter them backwards because magic. You don't control the air to superheat it and throw fires balls, nor are you distorting peoples brain chemistry to steal their 'soul'. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 22:16
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Promethium posted:She's aware that it could all turn out badly for her, so she asks Hawke to stand watch and kill her if she becomes an abomination. She believes that's the worst thing that could happen, and is willing to accept the risk. Even if she dies it doesn't harm anyone else: the demon would never get loose, Hawke would defeat it. But she never expected someone to love her unconditionally and die in her place.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:21
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Revenant Threshold posted:But she doesn't have a Hawke standby before he/she shows up. It's not like she went and thought "Huh, I should really have someone strong enough to kill an abomination-me if I turn" - a strong person happened to show up a considerable time into her quest and she just took it as being useful. Hawke being around is luck, not a result of forward thinking. Marethari clearly always had tabs on her, as proven by her pre-empting Hawke in this respect.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:23
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Considering that last we saw of Morrigan she was stepping to one of these elven mirrors that connect to the Fade, and DA2 has a quest about such a mirror as well, they are probably connected to what's happening with the Fade. Perhaps we need Morrigans help to get to the final boss?The Unnamed One posted:Supposedly there's an entire decade separating Hawke fleeing Lothering to Anders' terrorist act (though you wouldn't figure it out if the game didn't tell you so). In the meantime Hawke was able to get that bigass estate of theirs, and has a few favors from significant members of Kirkwall's society. I'm extrapolating as much as you about Hawke's development, but wouldn't it make sense that s/he would learn more about magic and alchemic reactions in this period, which would be reflected in the higher level magic that s/he can now perform? There is no reason for Hawke to dabble in alchemy, since he always relied on outsiders for these things (buying potions/runes). Which of his specs should give him insight into alchemy? They all seem very mystical energy focused. But even if he did study alchemy, the base point stands: Nobody outside the qunari is supposed to know how to make gunpowder. That is the reason the qunari ships with cannons wiped out the fleets of the rest of Thedas. And why they could overwhelm their armies. Until their enemies wised up and used mages as cannon replacements. So no, there is really no reason for Hawke to know what is up. We can argue how Anders knows about this, but it is simply not realistic that Hawke would recognize the danger of Sela Petrae.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:26
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Pick posted:Marethari clearly always had tabs on her, as proven by her pre-empting Hawke in this respect.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:26
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^^^ I screwed that up, I meant Merrill probably knew Marethari was keeping things under control prior to Hawke (and the player can infer this because she was keeping things under control after Hawke too). Merrill always had reason to assume there was a backup.Torrannor posted:So no, there is really no reason for Hawke to know what is up. We can argue how Anders knows about this, but it is simply not realistic that Hawke would recognize the danger of Sela Petrae. Anders was secretly a Qunari agent sent to cause as much havoc among the unbelievers as possible.  Promethium posted:[...] That's not a bad story, and as Pick alludes to it's the only one that has any sort of application to real life. There are no mages and templars, your acquaintances don't surreptitiously ask you for bomb materials, no one comes around to buy their former slave; but you do know friends engaged in self-destructive behavior who can't be talked out of it because after all, it only hurts themselves, what business is it of anyone else? Yeah, you explained it better than I did (I get kind of confused talking about this game since I've done it so much I forget what I'd said recently). That said, I think Fenris' has a better connection to real life than you're giving it credit for. We all know that person who is obsessed with a legitimate grievance done to him or her in the past. Something so bad that you know you can't really understand it, and you feel bad that you're annoyed by it, and you're not sure at what point offering sympathy is just enabling a victim complex. Unfortunately, Fenris' arc ends really, really, really, REALLY predictably. I actually think it would have been more interesting if Danarius died in Minrathous of, like, butt scurvy or simply never showed up. Pick fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 22:27
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Pick posted:^^^ I screwed that up, I meant Merrill probably knew Marethari was keeping things under control prior to Hawke (and the player can infer this because she was keeping things under control after Hawke too). Merrill always had reason to assume there was a backup. Edit; The magic of people with way too much time on their hands means it's on the wiki; Anders: Your Keeper did not deserve that death. Merrill: It was my risk to take! I never asked her to do this for me. Anders: She knew you didn't have the strength to resist the demon. That's why it picked you. Merrill: Why are you doing this? What can I do about it now? Anders: Make up for your mistakes. Most blood mages never get a second chance. Revenant Threshold fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 22:40
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