peopleofthedas | Random DA things

Random DA things

I love this game like burning. After I'd been playing on the PS3 for several months, I bought a shiny new laptop for the sole purpose of having it for the PC and I'm now playing it on BOTH the PC and PS3, because it's JUST THAT AWESOME. *draws hearts* I have four working laptops now, because of the three I had before, none would run DA.

The following rantishness is from looking at the game from the POV of a character within it, not from the POV of a player who understands why things have to go a certain way in order to position the player character to proceed down a certain path and become the big hero.

There. Now.

Okay, have you noticed that Duncan is a manipulative, evil bastard? I was crushing on him so hard at first, but my human wardens and my newest City Elf warden just want to punch him in the face. Alistair may be all starry-eyed over him, but oh my god.

My human wardens. First, while her father lies dying at their feet, Duncan promises to get her and her mother to safety only if her father agrees that she'll become a Grey Warden. She doesn't get a say in this, and her DYING FATHER is being blackmailed into it on the lives of his wife and child!

That's a pretty big strike against poor old Duncan.

Second, it turns out that this thing that Duncan blackmailed her dying father into agreeing to will get her killed, either immediately upon joining, or within just a few decades -- when she will descend into the deep roads and fight monsters in the dark miles below ground until they kill her. RAWR.

Third, POOR SER JORY. OMFG. He's got a pregnant wife at home! but does Duncan even try to talk sense into him?! No! He's all, "oh, he pulled his sword, I HAD to kill him," but you notice that Jory looks about as threatening as a kitten up a tree until Duncan draws his sword and advances on him? Because I sure noticed that. Doesn't even once try to reason with him, or explain things to him further. No, he just tricks him into leaving his wife and child, then stabs him to death when Jory expresses some dismay at Daveth's gruesome and untimely death!

Also, creepiest group ever, the way Duncan, Alistair, Jory, and your Warden just back slowly away while Daveth chokes to death. Jeez, guys, maybe it wasn't even the blood, maybe he just swallowed wrong! Somebody could at least TRY to help him!

The human origin is definitely the worst (for Duncan's character, I mean) of the ways I've played through so far. But the City Elf is also kind of grim, as I realized when I played through the opening on the "I am a selfish asshole" setting and discovered that if things go a certain way, your pal gets carted off to prison to be executed and Duncan's all, "hey, I only need one warden. Too bad for him."

I feel sort of guilty for still crushing on Duncan, even knowing what a bastard he is.

Are there any "Duncan is a manipulative evil bastard" fics out there for a girl who both crushes on him and wants to punch him in the face?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of these days I'm going to play through the entire thing on Evil. So far I haven't been able to. I do something bad to see what happens, and then I can't stand it and I have to go back to the last save point and re-play it so it's not so evil. But I'm determined! I just can't decide which origin to do it with first, since I may not be able to make myself do it a second time.

The problem is that most of the evil choices also don't really make sense. They aren't even really that "pragmatic." The Anvil of the Void is the only one. Choosing the werewolves? Everyone would be happier in the compromise ending. Corrupting the ashes? WHY? The cultists are crazy, they contribute nothing and they drop better prizes dead than alive. Why would anyone pick them? I had a horrible time playing my M!Cousland. I couldn't figure out the character's motivation the whole time. My husband used to joke, "Because fuck it, that's why." (He particularly liked it when I killed Alistair, who argues for his life. "Why am I killing you Alistair? Because fuck it, that's why").

This. 100% this is why I've not managed to do an evil playthrough yet. Unless I'm willing to write my PC off as a psychopath, there's simply no logic to the "evil" choices.

There are always going to be people who take those options whether they make sense or not. They just get satisfaction from playing that way. We have always said in the UK lrp scene that the game is split between sandcastle builders and sandcastle kickers. A lot of the nonsensical evil options are for kickers.

*nodsnods* And even when I can justify it for a character -- like, say I want my Warden to be lazy and self-serving -- it doesn't always make sense from an experience points perspective. If I leave Shianni and the other Elven women to their fates, I miss out on the experience points of killing those three. Maybe my Warden thinks it'd be great to get whatever power the slaver is offering, but if I take that route, I don't get the experience points for killing him. (Unless I get to kill him afterwards, which I don't know if I do. I may have to try that.) On my first playthrough I had a fairly low-level character at the end because I didn't do all the side quests and stuff, and it was damned near impossible to beat the dragon, so now I'm all, "how high can I level before I have to fight that sucker?"

Really, if you were *that* lazy and self-serving, you would have just run off to Orlais to eat cake.

The cake is a lie.

Yeah, I agree. The majority of the "evil" choices are pretty stupid. (And the "good" choices don't have consequences. I'd really love to see some stuff like watching a few peasants in Redcliffe die when you take a month to go to the tower for magi, just as it makes sense. Or have a few of the magi who were contaminated by blood magic become demons, as this too makes sense and would make Cullen look less crazy. I'd like real consequences for always doing the sweet, right thing.)

There are really only a few that I think make any real sense within the game itself: side with Branka, let Bhelyn rule, make Anora and (hardened) Alistair marry (or, alternately, make Anora + m!Cousland marry). Other than that, really, the only way doing things make sense is if you want a sociopathic character, or one who is super vindictive.

...then again, it is kind of fun to play at least once. I mean, honestly? Everyone needs to abandon Redcliffe at least once. Someone went to a lot of work in programming it!

My problem with the evil playthrough is that Bioware often seems to go with "evil=rude", and I can't make myself be gratuitously ill-mannered like that, even in game.

This is true also.

*nodsnods* I'm right there with you. I try and try and try to click that option, and just can't.

Yeah. It would be really interesting to have an evil character who was a charming bastard. The sort who smiled as they backstabbed. Oh well...perhaps someday. (It's one of my favorite archetypes.)

Yes! That's exactly what I want. I second this heartily.

When it comes to the PC's actual decisions - I think about half of them are actually pragmatic and half of them are sort of wtf illogical. Things like killing Conner and Isolde, nuking the circle tower and keeping the anvil - I think fall better into the morally questionable/pragmatic stuff.

Choosing the werewolves? Yeah that doesn't make a lot of sense. (Although I sort of hate the dalish and just choose to keep the werewolves just because I want a werewolf army.) Corrupting the Ashes - probably not, although I suppose an argument can be made, if you are playing a mage, that you're fighting a blight and that knowledge of something as powerful as blood magic is a necessity.

However, when it comes to the actions of other NPC's in the game, such as Duncan, Anora, Loghain, etc...(who I think all sort of fall into the catagory of pragmatic people making tough decisions in order for what they see as the greater good) then I think you get more shades of grey and more of the game bias between good vs bad pragmatism that was being discussed up thread.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't respond to the discussion about the game's "bias" because it just seemed like one of those things we don't agree about. Video games, even great ones, are narratives which means they tell the story someone wanted them to. In addition, many of the examples listed in the two sets did not correspond meaningfully to my read of the game.

Fair enough. Not everyone is going to see things the same way.

And while I do agree that the narratives of stories are going to tell the story the way someone wants, I think it's also possible to sort of step back and present the story and let the players make their own judgments. Bioware has done this to better effect in games like Mass Effect, where there are lot more and better crafted shades of grey decisions without the game pushing you in one direction or another according to good and evil.

And this is why I hope they do away with the morality scale completely, or at least come up with more options than "Ghandi" and "Genghis Khan".

To take an example from Mass Effect 2: The rogue Geth that you come across. They're corrupted, according to Legion. So you can either introduce a computer virus to "uncorrupt" them (lol what) or you can commit genocide.

IIRC killing them all is the Paragon thing to do. Which seems pretty arbitrary if you ask me. It's a hard enough decision without worrying about random extraneous issues like "will this affect my morality meter enough so that I can't resolve problems between my team mates."

You're right that sometimes the determination between what's Paragon and what's Renegade is extremely arbitrary. Like there are some decisions that are paragon decisions (such as saving the council and saving the arachnae queen) that strike me as totally freaking irresponsible and where the renegade choice is really the harder and more responsible one. The Geth example is a really great one, because you are presented with two totally horrible options (mind control or genocide), and it really doesn't fit well on a sliding scale of paragon vs. renegade.

So I agree. I really wish they'd just get rid of the morality meter completely, which is sort of a holdout from the darkside/lightside mechanics of Knights of the Old Republic, and just let the decisions stand on their own. Because they really do a great job of crafting a lot of shades of grey moments in those games and they don't really need to ruin it with the morality meters.

Or at least broaden them. One of my brothers wanted a cross for not just "paragon/renegade" but also "pro human/pro alien", the second of which I think works a lot better for ME. I mean, killing the rachni? That seems rather "pro alien". Killing the council? Pro alien. Etc. etc.

And, yeah, the paragon/renegade meters are so freaking annoying, as I feel like playing a person who is somewhat, but not completely ruthless, just can't get up enough points to do anything. Not fun.

(no subject)

sakuratea - 2010-12-09 22:23 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

sarahsponda - 2010-12-09 23:25 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

prisoner_24601 - 2010-12-10 01:08 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

zillah975 - 2010-12-10 01:20 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

sakuratea - 2010-12-10 03:07 (UTC) - Expand

In my experience Tabris has the most opportunity to be the most evil. Just that extra layer of screwing over the people who raised you and loved you by doing like what I did during the origin. And then when you sell them to the Tevinters, it's so much more evil if you're looking at YOUR ACTUAL DAD and saying "yeah, give me the cash."

There's really no logical explanation for any of that behavior, unless you just accept the fact that your player is an evil sociopath.

I actually couldn't finish my evil Tabris because it was just bringing me down so hard. The evilest character I managed to finish was my f!Cousland, because I couldn't figure out a logical explanation for putting her on the throne instead of Anora other than "She's a spoiled brat who thinks she knows better than everybody even though she clearly doesn't know anything about anything."

It really is. Or killing your own father to become more powerful (which you can do, too, as Tabris!)

Although as a mage, you can choose to anull the circle, which is pretty evil. And sell out Connor. I tried so many times, but only mages can actually feed his soul to the desire demon. ;)

I can kinda see anulling the Circle as a mage. Because if you really hated it there and hate everybody left, why do you care if they all die? There's a reason Morrigan approves of it.

It's kind of psychologically icky, but it's not necessarily sociopath-level of horror.

Maybe not...but it's still pretty vile. While they're not family, they're pretty close. And as Tabris, you might have hated Shianni and your father...

And Morrigan approves of every evil thing you do! She's no help! Then again, she also disapproves when you are evil. There's just no pleasing her...

Yeah, being evil really changes your interpretation of the game.

Like, I really started hating Alistair when I was evil. It was like, "gee, buddy, I just slaughtered the Dalish, sold Connor out to the desire demon, desecrated the ashes, killed a bunch of city elves, and kept the anvil. But, heck, as long as I keep giving you presents, I'm the love of your life." And, yeah, while I know that much of this is the nebulous *game mechanics*, it also really pissed me off that Alistair was fine (no disapproval) for killing the Dalish, and only -5 for killing the City Elves, yet will flip out if you kill Connor or Isolde. (Incidentally, I got to really like Zevran being evil, as he's the one to freak out when you start killing innocents or two-timing him for too long with Alistair.)

But, yeah, you do get a different feeling for the characters. And it's kind of fun to freak out the more pragmatic types. (Watching Anora's face when you tell her that of course you'll let Loghain live as he's "useful" is priceless, as is trying to argue with Loghain about why the dark ritual is a great idea, or how trying to kill the arch demon is a horrible idea and you should just run away now.)

I don't know why, but I have the world's hardest time trying to play the game in a sociopathic, girl's-got-no-morals sort of way. I imagine that if I brought along the right companions (Morrigan, Sten [at least sometimes], and maybe Zev), and invested enough skill points in coercion/persuasion, I'd be able to boss people around without worrying about mutiny.

I am considering a playthrough as f!amell (who has been very loud and demanding about being crafty, manipulative, and wanting to get OUT of the Circle through any means necessary) as my morally ambiguous Warden, but we'll see. I feel like it's much easier, though, to play through Mass Effect as an aggressive/evil character.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only