My Inquisitor would get annoyed with Sera because she’d keep complaining about the little people while I’m trying to save all of Thedas from an immortal demi-god mage. Look, let’s just shiv Corypheus, then we can go around giving the aristocracy swirlies okay??
1 Like
Just add a small bit where Weisshaupt sends you a letter or something saying ‘oh you found Blackwall? That’s great we thought he was dead’ and if you ask Blackwall about it he starts visibly sweating
“Does Sera place her solidarity in her culture or her class” is an instant story hook and they never progress it :C
If you never saw Sera’s concept art (and only turbo-nerds will) you’d never notice - I only found out about it (and also Overwatch’s Mercy, who was originally a Black man) because I follow a lot of marginalised people who are also into game design
1 Like
There is actually a few instances with this! Not as direct as a letter, but there’s a lot of times where Blackwall subtly slips up about the Wardens.
That’s a peeve: Companion dialogue being so character specific for your 3-NPC party and only triggering rarely, meaning that if you want to see it all you gotta run around in circles or, more likely, youtube it.
Wrath of the Righteous’ toybox mod giving you a toggle for out-of-party banter interjections is a gift. I hate missing out on really cool character moments because I have a core party for gameplay purposes and it benches 75% of the cast in the process.
3 Likes
I rate Cole highly because having him around compliments Solas’ story beats with how they interact and subtly communicate.
Cole knows the BIG SECRET from the very start so all their shared dialogue/moments are coloured by this and I love it.
I replayed it only a week ago, but maybe it’s time for another run soon…
2 Likes
What I mean is, it escaped me even after I looked at a concept art.
(This isn’t because I see white as default or anything, but because I don’t even think of skin color in fantasy as a socially marked characteristic in the way it is in real life. Warcraft’s egalitarian attitudes towards skin color within a race* have spoiled me, and I missed the real life implications of Sera, a fictional character, having her skin color changed between initial idea and execution.)
* Race in the fantasy sense of the word. Thanks a lot, Tolkien.
1 Like
Also I’m going to drop something controversial.
Vivienne is not a bootlicker, nor is she a hypocrite for being a pro-Circle mage.
At first she might come across that way if you never delve into her personal questline, but the truth is that she was almost possessed during her Harrowing, and the protection of the Circle is what ultimately allowed her to safely overcome it, which radically altered her viewpoint as a character going forward. The world absolutely hates Mages, and the Circle protects them from the normies as much as it protects the normies from the Mages.
Yes, her Circle was the top 1%. Montsimmard was a top place to be as a Mage, and her experiences heavily colour her view of the Circles as a whole. But she also acknowledges when you delve into her dialogue that places like Kirkwall are a disgrace that should have under no circumstance ever happened. She isn’t blind to the suffering of mages in Circles, but open rebellion and anarchy in the Templar-Mage War isn’t the way to get the change she desires to see other Circles elevated to the standards of Montsimmard.
And Vivienne is right. All the civil war between Mages and Templars did was amp up the already astronomical level of loathing the normies have for Mages, and see them as nothing more than a threat to their very livelihoods. The Templars are already more highly regarded (unless you side with Mages, in which case they become Red Templars which is Really Bad) in the eyes of the population and have the clear head start in PR. The Rebellion, while sympathetic and one I agree with, isn’t doing Mages any good if their goal is to stop getting lynched for being a Mage.
Vivienne is against the Rebellion because she believes it causes more harm to Mages as a whole than it can achieve. Now every Mage is declared an Apostate to be exterminated, even the ones who never did anything wrong. Vivienne loves Mages and is trying to establish a Circle that actually protects them, not abuse them, and standardise Monstimmard’s practices to stop another Kirkwall.
I do in fact stan Viv
1 Like
She wants to protect mages but thinks that the way to do it is to put The Right People in charge of the system which inherently treats mages like time bombs and represses them, instead of overhauling the system and building a better one
She is a liberal
3 Likes
Vixi’s comprehensive Dragon Age ranking of all companions & advisors!
S-Tier: Solas, Morrigan, Dorian. Dog. Sten.
A-Tier: Cassandra, Blackwall, Iron Bull, Varric(Both games). Nathaniel Howe. Shale, Alistair.
B-Tier: Cole, Sera, Josephine, Leliana(DAI) Aveline. Carver. Fenris. Loghain.
C-Tier: Vivienne, Cullen. Anders(DAO:A) Bethany. Isabella. Justice. Sigrun. Wynne. Leliana(DAO).
D-Tier: Anders(DA2) Merill, Velanna. Oghren(Both DAO and DAO:A) Zevran.
F-Tier: Sebastian.
Temporary major companions(dlc) list:
S-Tier: Finn.(Witch Hunt)
A-Tier: Renn(The Descent)
B-Tier: . Valta(The Descent) Sketch(Leliana’s Song).
C-Tier: Ariane(Witch Hunt) Tug(Leliana’s Song). Silas(Leliana’s song).
D-Tier: Tallis(Mark of the Assassin) Runic Golem(Golems of Amgarrak) Brogan Dace(Golems of Amgarrak), Jerrik Dace(Golems of Amgarrak).
https://thenib.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/radical-centrism-101-2-c1c.jpg
The Mage-Templar War
The Right People In Charge in her vision being other Mages, not Merediths.
Starting a violent insurrection right after Anders only got every Mage branded for execution, which doesn’t end until the Inquisition steps in and appoints one of theirs as the Divine, which forces the conflict to be halted.
If the Chantry leadership wasn’t nuked by Corypheus, they’d be fighting that civil war until every Mage was exterminated because they decided to side with the Unabomber. They had zero good will among the population to pressure the Chantry to begin with, and then they powerslided into the deep end. Many Mages do end up becoming Abominations, which further fuels the hatred.
don’t get me wrong, i’m pro-rebel mage but I understand why Vivienne behaves the way she did. Her approach was ultimately the most realistic one long term, because nobody was going to budge to rebel mages.
1 Like
His voice wins me over.
Is that as in the one from the first game?
If so, his name is Barkspawn apparently.
1 Like
His voice is good, but his character is awful(he is not a nice person) and if you play as fem Hawke he has some serious “nice guy”/Incel vibes and gets incredibly aggressive.
If you romance him the entire plot with the romance is that he also wants you to be a trophy princess, and its treated as good.
Yes!
1 Like
It was going to be tough to beat Dog as a name but Barkspawn is up there
(I do have a substantive thing to say about the circle that ties in to my criticisms of centrism but I am currently pushing through anxiety to get my hair cut so it is paused)
1 Like
I spit on centrists. Vivienne’s ideology is just that the rebellion ultimately harms mages more than it helped them. The cause is just, but the execution backfired a great deal.
There’s even a war table mission about how the peasants are rising up to storm their nearest peaceful Circle tower and lynch every mage there, even if they didn’t affiliate with the rebellion. Anders signed the death warrant of every mage south of Tevinter, even the ones who didn’t want to fight.
2 Likes
Anders wanted that too. He wanted innocents to die, he needed it to cause the war to actually kick off.
He wanted it to be gruesome because he believed/believes that there needed to be conflict for the mages to be free.
Okay so I have to do the leftist meme here and bring in some theory into this fantasy discussion because it’s the main way the mage rebellion can be understood (my barber is fully booked until tuesday, F)
TLDR: the revolution is necessary and Vivienne is horribly misguided to think the previous system can stay around
tedious leftism
So the Circle as a system is designed to oppress mages, from a society that wants mages hidden away and under control - and if they aren’t under control then they are murdered. This makes Circle mages prime targets for demons, because of course you are susceptible to anger if you are held against your will by people who can and will kill you if you twitch out of line. Obviously you will be tempted by desire if the outside world is considered a luxury you are barred from, etc. It all feeds on itself, down to the Harrowing being a closely-guarded secret which has a death toll. Are you concerned about this thing that has, in all probability, killed someone you know? Well then, time for your entire personality to be permanently erased. A constant cycle of mages being terrified of demons and being incredibly vulnerable to those demons as a result, leading people to believe that they have to be chained and if they can’t be chained then they are killed, either literally or by being made Tranquil.
Add this to the fact that the Fade is barely understood (non-demon spirits are barely known about, so there’s no exploration of meeting spirits of Compassion or Solidarity) and you have a recipe for a perpetual underclass. Anders’s cause is, by the fiction of the series, clearly just - he has a spirit of Justice literally guiding him (later Vengeance, because that’s the correct response to injustice) and Kirkwall was always going to be the epicentre of a rebellion when something happened. That’s not me saying that, that’s the game spelling it out that it intends for this to be the case.
What Anders does is force the issue because either the system is overthrown or it continues - this is a really common discussion point in leftist spaces, who will generally agree that the current system has to change, and given the agents of that system will violently resist that change the only option is to overthrow it. The finer points of exactly how that revolution will or should happen is a hotly-debated subject but the underlying idea is the same - a revolution has to happen and it will involve violence, at the very least from self-defense.
Vivienne’s view - that the Circles still must exist, but can be reformed - is a centrist view. It is unworkable because the system itself cannot be made good in the way it has to - by design, it oppresses. Either her mage-led Circle returns back to the status quo with a new set of templars (becoming a ‘we have put some fresh flowers in your jail cell’ situation) or it collapses again, in the same way that when left-wing politicians get the reins of state levers what tends to happen is that the fight continues against those politicians because the state and the systems it perpetuates by design are the issue, not who specifically is working those systems.
Now, as in a real revolution the question comes to those who cannot fight but get caught up in the conflict. That’s where the Inquisition comes in. Remember, this is a society that has been raised on ‘the mages must be chained and if they cannot be chained they must be killed’. Fighting, and having enough strength that neither option is a viable choice, is the only way to break that assumption, because if the mages stopped fighting they would be chained or massacred. The role of the Inquisition is to provide that strength, so that the people who do get caught in the middle can survive. Only when you clearly say ‘you cannot chain us and you will not kill us, what now?’ can real change happen.
6 Likes
Hard agree. The various Circles of Magi were in no position to negotiate for better conditions–let alone an end to the violent oppression–while the Chantry/Templar Order held their chains. Similar to unions going on strike; you can’t bargain if the opposition is in the position of strength because appealing to the sympathy of the ruling class is historically shown to be an exercise in futility.
Nobody is just given rights, they have to take them. 
2 Likes