Dragon Age II: EA boogaloo

[CharlesPhipps]

Okay more to blow off steam from another thread on another board that's an rp fusion of Zelda and DA

But is there ANY time the Templars are as much a positive as the Mages are?

The games and fandom have a mage bias but Origins is pretty clear the Templars are probably right. It pretty much knows you're going to come down on behalf of the mages so it more or less undercuts every single Pro-Mage sentiment.

1. The mage they're going to make Tranquil is actually a Blood Mage.
2. The Towers are actually quite nice and more like a hotel than a prison.
3. The Liberators of the Mages are all led by a murderous psychopath who fucks the place up, gets hundreds of people killed, and turns it into a fusion of Earth and Hell.
4. We see what free mages can do with the zombie apocalypse happening in Redcliff because of a child being untrained.
5. Sir Gregoir is stern but obviously fair and reasonable.

Even DA 2 also underscores the thing.

1. A lot of mages really ARE murderous evil psychopaths who are happy to dominate regular people like Magneto.

David Gaider unscored it in "Dragon Age: Asunder" where one of the Templars says that if the mages DIDN'T have the Templars, they'd be murdered as children and burned at the stake.

Because the mages don't seem to realize that its not the Templars that hate them but the COMMON PEOPLE. Templars are actually LESS violent and hateful.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the whole Crucible plot is badly thought out and nonsensical from top to bottom.

Especially since the Star Child is either Harbinger, the thing above Harbinger, or something else.

How that ties to an anti-Reaper weapon makes it all the more confusing.

[Winter]

Ah, where exactly are you getting all that? The movie isn't even out yet, so there are only trailers to judge it by.

As I said via summaries from Wiki, TV Tropes and reviews from critics who have seen the film and are sharing their thoughts on it. And some from a few friends in Berlin where the film was released early who relayed the summery for me.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

"By all means, writers, let your story wander around the dank, twisty little passages. You may even permit that journey to come to a bad end. But without some light source, your story will be eaten by the Grue of Indifference."
— The dePlume Dimension, "Always Keep a Door Open"

[GloatingSwine]

I think the whole Crucible plot is badly thought out and nonsensical from top to bottom.

Especially since the Star Child is either Harbinger, the thing above Harbinger, or something else.

How that ties to an anti-Reaper weapon makes it all the more confusing.

One unexamined problem is that videogame narrative is best when the narrative challenges faced by the hero are related to and represented in the mechanical challenges faced by the player.

In Mass Effect the player's means of interaction with the world are dialogue choices and face shooting. The Reapers are portrayed in a way that makes neither the choosing of dialogue or the shooting of faces a relevant approach, so the player isn't actually mechanically involved in their story.

Hence the Crucible, a magic button that makes the bad robots go away with the player's only input being what colour the space magic that does it is.

[AlucardNoir]

[...] its blueprints were handed down from cycle to cycle. It evolved by intelligent design.

That's not an origin.

[GloatingSwine]

A plot point so bullshit no one asshole was sufficient to pull it out of...

[Independent George]

You know, we do have a nice little ME thread over here...

[GloatingSwine]

The games and fandom have a mage bias but Origins is pretty clear the Templars are probably right. It pretty much knows you're going to come down on behalf of the mages so it more or less undercuts every single Pro-Mage sentiment.

Certainly in the first game it's pretty clear that mages will inevitably have demons all up their business the moment the Templars look the other way. What with the Tower, Redcliffe, Honnleath and Warden's Keep turning into demon fuelled shitshows. Though they're not all blood mages, they are predominantly too stupid to live.

Also the mages in Kirkwall apparently think "turn into a demon monster" is a good way to pursuade people you can be trusted not to turn into a demon monster.


The only apostate mage who ever actually seems chill about it is Anders and then only in Awakening when he was cool before DA2 drives his character off a cliff into the vast sea of stupid that surrounds Ferelden. (Seriously, Chuck already talked about how Hawke is basically a passenger in her own life, but she should at least be better at choosing the people who hang around her, 90% of everything that goes wrong in Kirkwall happens because one of your party is a colossal idiot and yet Hawke seems unable to at least tell them to fuck off even if she can't actively stop them being an idiot.)

[CharlesPhipps]

Certainly in the first game it's pretty clear that mages will inevitably have demons all up their business the moment the Templars look the other way. What with the Tower, Redcliffe, Honnleath and Warden's Keep turning into demon fuelled shitshows. Though they're not all blood mages, they are predominantly too stupid to live.

Don't forget how it turned an elven orphanage into the Shining.

The books, which are all canon, also have a big huge bullet point which I think Chuck would find amusing. Blood magic, it turns out, isn't invented by regular mages but comes directly via brain-download from demons. So, the magic for dealing with demons that invariably results in demons getting free to wreck havoc and kill thousands of people is designed by demons but many Blood Mages seem to think they're the ones in charge.

Food for thought.

Also the mages in Kirkwall apparently think "turn into a demon monster" is a good way to pursuade people you can be trusted not to turn into a demon monster.

Paul Verhoven, yes of Robocop and Starship Troopers, grew up in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and talked about the stories he'd heard from his father of the nastiness involved from how people reacted. He said it influenced the cynical style of his movies where the people under dictatorships or corporations often had their worst attributes magnified. It led to a really good quote of, "Oppression doesn't make you a good person, it just makes you oppressed."

The only apostate mage who ever actually seems chill about it is Anders and then only in Awakening when he was cool before DA2 drives his character off a cliff into the vast sea of stupid that surrounds Ferelden. (Seriously, Chuck already talked about how Hawke is basically a passenger in her own life, but she should at least be better at choosing the people who hang around her, 90% of everything that goes wrong in Kirkwall happens because one of your party is a colossal idiot and yet Hawke seems unable to at least tell them to fuck off even if she can't actively stop them being an idiot.)

The most successful non-evil apostate mages of all times seems to have been the one who kept Shale enslaved and Ser Hawke Senior. The first guy just ran a distillery in the middle of nowhere with the town fine with him and the second was, well, Hawke Senior. Even then, the former may get his granddaughter turned into Satan because he left the proverbial gun cupboard unlocked.