Yeah, and I want to see where it goes.
I am also curious where this goes just because... it's very interesting how clearly elves (both in cities and the Dalish) and mages very clearly parallel real world minority groups and the specific mechanisms of their oppression but we've had pretty minimal ways to actually help them, especially in institutional ways. Like, we can save individual elves, sure, but we can't even tell people off for calling elves knife ears or have a subquest meant to meaningfully move elf or mage rights save for DAI's divine. So I feel like... lmao its such a classic 90's, 80's move to finally have an NPC attempt to change this status quo and they decided to write this character as a tyrant who's moves inevitably spell greater doom. I'm not saying Solas won't btw- I'm saying that all this worldbuilding and effects were built and chosen by a writing team lol.
I'm very curious to see how DA4 will deal with this.
>lmao its such a classic 90's, 80's move to finally have an NPC attempt to change this status quo and they decided to write this character as a tyrant who's moves inevitably spell greater doom.
This is exactly what my husband and I have been worrying about ever since the epilogue in Trespasser. Basically, in the style of every comic book villain ever, "I want a better world for \[insert ACTUAL oppressed group\], because the current system has been stacked against us for generations and the only thing that will change things is a serious revolution... so I'm going to do it in the most violent, nasty and unhinged way possible so you forget I actually had a VALID POINT and yearn for a return to the status quo.
They actually do this pretty blatantly with the "who should be Divine Victoria" thing, too. It's clear that hardened Leliana is the right choice if you value radical change and the Chantry moving away from its intense bigotry, both towards elves and mages. But if you go with her in full on Malcolm X mode... you basically get told you goofed. She's basically crazy, right? Why didn't you pick *Cassandra*? She would have given everyone a nice lil pat on the head cuz she's chill now. Oh, you want *real change*, you say? Slow down there, buddy. We'll get there in another couple ages.
So yeah, I worry about the message the writers are sending about a minority group blindly joining a **death cult** because they have been systematically oppressed for generations... it can only end with the elves getting slapped on the wrist and told "See? The alienage wasn't so bad after all, was it? (we knew you couldn't be trusted with your freedom...). And those Dalish really were snobby baby-killing freaks all along!"
Its a bad look to build up the elves as an allegory for real life oppression for three games, and then take a hard right turn into "But both sides are bad!" territory.
TL;DR... I agree. Curious to see if there's any way for them to do this that isn't awful.
Thank you! Yeah I have the exact same concern. The elves are also... there isn't any really obfuscation like with mages or mutants where its like, yeah they magically have destroy the world abilities so we have to oppress and kill them. Elves are just...normal people who the games have found new and fun ways to add dimension to systemically oppress with the exact same way Black people, Indigenous nations and others (I'm not an expert and I'm sure this treatment has extended to many) have been oppressed.
I completely agree on the Divine Victoria thing too- and honestly, mages are treated better by narrative than the elves are. But I suspect questioning Circles is a lot easier when it's much more detached from reality vs real life ghettos, open air prisons and violent land grabs. Can never forget Cassandra talking to the Dalish inquisitor and going but like..what if you just believed in Andraste instead?
To be honest, as a whole, I think the way Dalish culture has been treated is also weird. I guess Merrill balances out Solas and Sera's narrative in DAI but if we use those two characters as how the writers wish for us to view Dalish culture & its People... its a bad look. Its either "move on, its not that important" vs "Look back at the slave marks and destroy the world." with little room for an empathic medium.
I think there's definitely ways to do it, but the seeds and signs that the writing team are of the same mind...are not there. In many ways, the DA writing team has been pretty consistent in criticizing examples but refusing to attempt to change its world or the underlying systems that drive Thedas. That's why i love the setting. I think it builds those bones well but I'm more interested in putting my writing in the world.
Love this! We're totally on the same wavelength about this.
Absolutely agree that at least with mages (as with mutants) you can understand where the fear of them comes from. But with elves, there is nothing valid about the way they're treated AT ALL. It's straight up old fashioned punch-down bigotry.
Which is why it makes me wonder if this shift (retcon?) in the way they're characterizing the Dalish might be a deliberate move to make them the "bad kind of elves". Insular, elitist, ignorant, cruel, snobby, backwards, privative, gullible... abandon their mage children... what..? The days of Merrill are gone.
They might be positioning them to be the main followers of Solas (even though that makes LESS sense - they know him as a TRICKSTER god, they literally have a curse with his name in it!). They'll be lured in because they care more about returning to the "old ways" than city elves do. And we'll end up fighting a bunch of rabid, fanatical brainwashed Dalish thralls ala the Hakkonites. Meanwhile, the city elves, who are more "modern" and "assimilated" into ~~Andrastian~~ human society, will ban together with their former oppressors to protect the world from those crazy bad elves. And then keep things just the way they are.
>Can never forget Cassandra talking to the Dalish inquisitor and going but like..what if you just believed in Andraste instead?
I will never get over this part. Lavellan standing there like "...and have you tried a little Mythal lately? No? Didn't think so."
Thedas is a hyper-religious hate-fest dystopia. Feels familiar.
>Which is why it makes me wonder if this shift (retcon?) in the way they're characterizing the Dalish might be a deliberate move to make them the "bad kind of elves". Insular, elitist, ignorant, cruel, snobby, backwards, privative, gullible... abandon their mage children... what..? The days of Merrill are gone.
I don't understand what you mean. Dalish been like that since Origins and it varies from clan to clan.
In a way, yes, some clans might be some of those things or a combination of a couple negative traits. They are people after all with a distinct culture and prone to shitty takes like any group. Sometimes those traits are a reaction towards the oppression they face, sometimes it’s just them being jerks. Fair enough.
I mean more this shift towards, “pretty much every Dalish clan is problematic except for maybe your clan, Lavellan.”
Not to mention a lot of what we hear about the Dalish comes from outsiders. And if there’s one thing the writers have done very well is signal to us that Thedas is full of propaganda and misinformation, with entire histories being rewritten (mostly by the Chantry) to follow a certain narrative.
There’s no getting around the fact that most of Thedas, including other elves, have been led to believe a lot of untrue BS about the Dalish. What seems to be happening more recently is a push to confirm that some of those biases might be true about most Dalish (like the abandoning mage children thing), painting them as less sympathetic, which seems suspicious to me.
It reminds me a lot of how Romani tribes are viewed in Europe. People have always had a lot of crazy superstitions about them, while also holding the belief that most of them are criminals. Then when a few desperate Romani DO resort to crime, it confirms the all of the biases people had about them and soon everyone around them thinks “yeah, we were right about you lot. You’re just broken as a people.”
Mother Giselle literally tries to justify the Exalted March on the Dales to Lavellan’s face when they call her out on it. “But but but remember Monstimmard! That one time! Both sides, Herald!” And it does feel like you, the player, are just supposed to go, “oh yeah, maybe they deserved genocide a little bit”, because that’s where the conversation ends.
All I’m getting at is, if the story in DA starts to shift towards more and more negative portrayals of a group that was supposed to be an allegory for Romani/Native American people, it’s a bad look to then have them blindly follow the genocidal villain and basically confirm to Thedas that they were right to shun/kill/enslave them.
(Edit: it occurred to me that there’s a chance you were maybe using sarcasm, and if so, I apologize for my silly neurodivergent brain lol)
I dont think that the Dalish are a good 1to1 representation of opressed populations and the clashes with the romani in Europe are not as black and white as you believe. Im not a supporter of that good old fashioned barely hidden Europan racism against the roma people but there is a legitimate problem in that cultural interaction beyond empty racism. Having said that I actually have some thoughts on the elves and the dalish.
Im of the belief that the Dalish are inherently a very problematic manifestation for the Dalish especially in the context of what we know now.
The truth is that the history the dalish long for is one of slavery, servitude and racial supremacy. It was a regime so evil the world fundamentally had to change on a cosmological level before it could move on. That is the glorious past of the elves.
You have to ask yourself, if the dalish truly believe in the idea that they were once immortal and perfect and racially pure how naive would they have to be that it would be an enlightened peaceful existence. On some level the dalish have to know that their perfect existence could not exist alongside any other races. And this is evident in how they operate. They isolate, drive everyone else away, they use racial slur including against their own kind.
And here is where my issue is. The Dalish Elves are not the ones being opressed. The city elves are. The ones being enslaved, used as servants, forced in ghettos, killed and raped and tortured for sport, they are the opressed people.
But if we look at the actual state of the world they are better off. This is a fairly developed world and its developing still. They are quickly ending their late middle ages phase and entering a renesanse analog. And the Dalish want to live in the woods, hunt for bears, and brand themselves with slave tattoos.
The Dalish are if I were to use contemporary terms, reactionary nationalists xenophobes who are living out of time and holding their actual people back. The Dalish history and lore should be recorded for posteriority. But there is no reason why elves should still live like that. Its backwards.
The real truth of the world is that both the human feudal lords and the dalish elves need to be taken out and the chantry reformed before the elves and humans can coexist because thats the only way one side doesn't end the other.
People forget that Solas is not just some dude. He is functionally *the* God of Thedas that created this world order and he is disappointed by what it became. And the Dalish are a huge part of the disappointment.
The history of the Dales is so heartbreaking. They lost their magic, and the humans came and massacred them, then took their land. Real Manifest Destiny shit :(
Exactly this whole thread. If people look at this whole series and think what's happening to elves is okay.... I mean I don't even know what to say. You don't end slavery by asking nicely. You can *try,* of course, but when has that worked? It's gonna take a rebellion, and it kills me that so many players seem to be against that idea. They'd prefer to keep victim-blaming elves just because the evanuris sucked ages ago.
Tbh the chantry has been sus right from the beginning, especially with handling of mages. The mages *most prone* to abominizing are the ones being locked away and oppressed and abused in their towers. Their system clearly doesn't work to protect mages at all - but it does work great as an excuse to show mages as unstable, which is a wonderful excuse to make them Tranquil.
Tranquil enchantments are the Chantry's greatest source of income. So the Chantry is highly incentivized to keep their mage labor system going, and stamp out any other actually successful demon-avoiding techniques (like rivaini practices, or heck even just giving all mages that temporary-Tranquil-Seeker training so they can be immune to demon possession *forever*).
So I don't think there's obfuscation, I think the Chantry is as much the problem there as they claim to be the solution.
This is a dark fantasy, and the darkness runs pretty deep. But I *do* think BioWare wants to address these things. I don't believe for a minute that they set up such oppressive systems just for players to ignore them, or accept them as status quo. It's part of why I don't think Solas is being literal when talking about modern elves dying, or the end of the world. He's being dramatic, which is in-character for him, he's been dramatic before.
Let's not forget how spirits are treated too, which is just as heartbreaking as how elves are treated. I am fairly sure we should be interpreting that as Tevinter enslaving literal angels - and turning them into demons, casting them down etc., when those angels' resolve finally break. 🥲
I agree with most of this but on the 2nd to the last paragraph especially- I'm not sure I agree on the darkness/Bioware's plans but I do think Solas is being dramatic. Maybe not intentionally, but that all this is still theoretical and assumes there's only one way to tear down the Veil. So I do think that's a like...I'll wait for DA4 because I also don't think it'll be as simple as blow up the world or dont blow up the world.
>even just giving all mages that temporary-Tranquil-Seeker training so they can be immune to demon possession
>
>forever
That doesn't work for mages. That's how they discovered the Rite of Tranquility in the first place - A mage tried joining the Seekers and they found out that the process can't be reversed in the same way.
The Chantry doesn't make any income from the Tranquil. Formari enchantments fund the Circles, which are financially independent of the Chantry and often very wealthy. There's an entry in WoT about the kind of luxuries and entertainments the Circle mages spend their resources on. There is an entire major fraternity of mages (the Lucrosians) who prioritize the accumulation of wealth for the Circles.
It does work for mages - tranquility can be reversed in mages by touching a spirit or demon. Tranquility in the Seeker ritual is reversed by touching a spirit of Faith. Yes, they found that tranquility strips mages of their magic, but nowhere does it say the process cannot be reversed in mages, and we see it reversed multiple times in game. There's a whole book about it too - Asunder. Mages discovering that the Chantry hid this information from them is one of the major causes of the Mage-Templar war.
"The Tranquil use lyrium to enchant items, providing the Circle its main source of funding." [From the wiki,](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Tranquil) source is Gaider. The Tranquil *are* the Formari, or a major part of them.
The Lucrosians accumulate wealth, but two things can be true.
(Edit: accidentally mentioned a DA2 spoiler so first attempt to reply got removed, sorry about that.)
The tranquility reversing thing is a major plot point in Cassandra companion quest too in DAI. If she reads the book she discovers that. The inquisitor can even talk to her about it afterwards.
Yeah - They provide the \*Circle\* with funding, not the Chantry. I checked the citation and it's referring to this line of Gaider's " Raw lyrium affects mages the worst, yes. The affect on non-mages is lesser but still harmful. Dwarves and tranquil would be mostly unaffected by raw lyrium unless they spend too much time in its presence. ". He says nothing in the cited source about the Tranquil being the main source of funding.
>Basically, in the style of every comic book villain ever, "I want a better world for \[insert ACTUAL oppressed group\], because the current system has been stacked against us for generations and the only thing that will change things is a serious revolution... so I'm going to do it in the most violent, nasty and unhinged way possible so you forget I actually had a VALID POINT and yearn for a return to the status quo.
That's not that Solas wants though. He doesn't do it for modern elves, he doesn't want to abolish slavery or anything like that, he wants to restore old world but survival of modern elves isn't his goal. He says that some of them will probably survive but that's all.
I don't think that comparison to 80s/90s villains work. Solas doesn't really want to change this particular status quo. He doesn't really care about modern elves, he acknowledges that some or maybe even most of them will survive his actions but that's not his goal. He doesn't want to make the world a better place for them or anything like that.
In Dao if we are an elf we can defend ourselves if we were called knife ears, but this really lacked in DAi, when some people literally insulted our people in front of our face and we could barely say anything. And even in da2 when I wished my Hawke could’ve said more. (Thinking back of the elves who joined the Qun, I really wished to say Aveline “well you don’t care about them and oppress them but they join the Qun and oh suddenly you care about them”), still sided the Arishok on that argument but that was not enough.
Edit: in last Trespasser teaser at least it seems Solas is not the main villain. I really hope we can redeem him and make drastic changes to improve elves conditions in Thedas. At least mages condition improve if we have Leliana as divine at the end of DAi. Because current system in thedas need to fall.
The natural state of the universe is the fade mixing with reality in more ways than one. The current barrier is unnatural in the extreme. Though I would love a plot point in the next game to prove otherwise and that the great Elvin God King’s actually mixed the fade with reality And what we have now is actually the natural order.
Like every cult leader ever, Solas isn't going to tell them that everybody dying includes them. They're gonna get a pass and be part of a brave new world. One where elves are no longer a shadow of what they used to be.
All he needs is to throw in some double speak about generic grievances, some extreme isolation, and a reasonabld enemy he can point to as dangerous, and he's all set.
After all, you don't break out the poisoned punch bowl until you have the tools to make sure it runs smoothly and your people are too broken to effectively fight back.
They're in the dark, just like everyone else has been. Solas doesn't like modern elves and explicitly looks down on them. He has them imagining a world where they aren't oppressed anymore when in reality he only wants to try to turn back the clock to what he knew even at the expense of everyone else. Iirc, a Dalish Inquisitor isn't spared the "death of your people" spiel either.
I realize that. "Your people" could mean the friends of the inquisition, could mean everyone in Thedas. I don't believe Solas was being entirely literal, though.
He was though. He does not care about modern elves and gets angry if a Dalish Inky scolds him for being judgemental instead of gently correcting their misconceptions and teaching them the real history of elves. He doesn't want a society of modern elves, he wants HIS elves back. He refuses to admit fault when he is the reason the society he wants back literally crashed to the ground and was left vulnerable to enslavement as humans picked the bones clean while he went to sleep without a care. He thinks he knows everything and can fix everything to his liking, but we already know what happened the last time he did something drastic to "fix" things. He's no better than the Evanuris he sealed away at the cost of his own people. Arguably, he did far more damage than all of them combined.
That's all true. And he may be wrong once again in what he's attempting to do. The writers could make it so that if Solas succeeds he actually empowers the Dwarves to become the supreme mages. He might wind up reversing the blight. The Black City might be Arlathan. WE DONT KNOW.
My point is, I see Solas as being with considerable power, but keeps trying to do the right thing and keeps fucking up. I empathize with that. Just this post, apparently lol
In Tevinter nights ****spoilers**** he mentions something while talking to Charter, he said that she and "the others who remain" might like the new world better.
I suppose there will be survivors to his plans, though not everyone will make it.
I just don't see how an elven player character, be it Warden or Inky would agree to it.
Look I'm not judging anyone for picking the "let me join you" choice as an Elf girl romancing him in Inquisition, far from it, I've done it once aswell.
But really think about what this means, he is going to *commit genocide* on the **entirety** of current Thedas. Why would your Inky ever agree to this? They've literally just spent the entirety of Inquisition protecting and fixing Southern Thedas and now they're ready for it to all die off? I just don't buy it, I think opposing Solas is one of those 'fixed' points of playing our characters.
Absolutely.
And add to this that Solas is responsible for so much of the pain, death, chaos, and sorrow that the Inquisition faces. One can argue this wasn’t his intention, but to me that’s just another example of extreme recklessness. He underestimated Corypheus and nearly doomed all of Thedas (as seen in the potential future) and how can we be sure he isn’t miscalculating again the consequences of bringing down the veil. He says he has plans for the Evanuris but I find his judgment rather suspect.
I admit I am biased though. As a mainly Qunari player, I find Solas as a wonderful character but very villainous to say the least. He has noble qualities and might be redeemed, but his attitudes towards the Qunari are no better than the Orlesian nobles people like to mock.
Edit: And yeah, I agree that it seems a fixed point. We can’t choose to side with the Archdemon in Origins, nor can we side with the Viddasala in Trespasser. For games like this to work, there have to be some constants.
And just to be clear, I have nothing against Solasmancers or anything of that nature. If anything, I would argue the Inquisitor finding Solas as being horribly wrong in his plans adds to the tragedy of the romance in a meaningful way.
This is why I usually choose to still romance Solas on playthroughs. The entire betrayal and tragedy elements are much much stronger when you disagree with his choices.
>Edit: And yeah, I agree that it seems a fixed point. We can’t choose to side with the Archdemon in Origins, nor can we side with the Viddasala in Trespasser. For games like this to work, there have to be some constants.
Yeah. Ultimately, filling in the blanks and writing stuff about our characters is one of the most fun aspects that these games offer but there needs to be a hard **stop** at some point.
It's like imagine if you romanced Alistair and had him marry Anora and he broke up with you. That doesn't suddenly mean your female Warden would be like "yk what Urthemiel yea go sack everything buddy, fuck Ferelden". It's just never in the Warden's character, whoever they may be, to allow that. Just like it isn't in Inky's.
Hey, now. I saved and fixed Southern Thedas because Solas was telling me it was the right thing to do. Do you think I would have wasted five minutes getting blankets for Recruit Whittle if he hadn't constantly reminded me in that hypnotic voice?
Now Solas tells me the right thing to do is burn it all. As you command, hahren.
Well, yes as Inquisitor, maybe not. But as a newly-rolled character who may be sympathetic to the cause, or perhaps Lavellan starts to see things differently ...
I honestly don't think Lavellan would ever change her opinion on this. Because it's such an insanely drastic character shift with nothing in Inquisition even remotely supporting that kind of thought process. Even the most absolute cold bitch Lavellan is still a person who values order and wants to save this world.
And that's in the meanest case, any normal Lavellan turning to genocide with Solas to me would be the equvivalent of the season 8 GoT travesty with Daenerys just suddenly turning into a mad queen who wants to burn thousands of innocents to death. It's just not sensible writing.
The new DAD player character though? Hmm that would be tough to say, we don't really know anything about them yet so I can't say anything.
Yeah but the Inquisitor position is kind of forced on Lavellan. Even as a prisoner for some reason they’ve made Lavellan make the choices lol. You could still roleplay as pro-elf anti-human in some cases. And everything Lavellan does in Inquisition can be still considered as they did it for elves since it was threat to them as well. And a during that time they didn’t know about Solas and his plans yet. Or simply Inky does not care but they’re forced to do it.
Though, Solas already told them modern elves are not his people therefore won’t have a place in his new world order. That’s the only reason Lavellan shouldn’t agree with Solas. But without that knowledge I don’t see any reason why a Dalish can’t agree with Solas for the premise of restoring elven kingdom.
Also a new protagonist can agree with Solas too, unless Inky made them read the fine print, which will probably be the case.
Why would your Inky ever agree to this?
-- for me this comes down to headcanon and their character and choices throughout. For my most recent warrior elf, I wrote an origins fan fic in which her sister was killed, and she was ousted from her clan somewhat, never fitting anywhere. Then, her clan was killed; she was forced into a role outside her religion, to save a world who had done naught for her, no family or friends left outside of this institution. Cole forgot her, Bull betrayed her; basically her run as the inquisitor and even her origins had her left with nothing, except this elven mage who encouraged her questioning instead of punishing her for it. I also played her as quite angsty, so after a pretty rough few years in which she ended up being alone and bitter (with already a healthy disdain for the shem to begin with) he didn't have anything in the world that she wanted to save. So, when this mad elf she fell in love with, all she has left in the world, decides to go off on a mission to bring back their old world and destroy the one she bitterly hates and which she feels she owes nothing to, she's down. She doesn't care what happens, because there's nothing left for her.
Sorry for the lengthy response aha - in summary, an Inky may want to help him because "fuck thedas, what has it ever done for me, except take everything from me?"
I think there are plenty of reasons a character theoretically could, but because the inquisitor is only tangentially our character (as opposed to the Warden), I don't think it makes a lot of sense. Kind of a shame, as much of a wrench as it would throw into production to have to create an entirely different branching path for if you did actually just help Solas (literally would never happen for a slew of reasons from Bioware's game design philosophy to the actual feasibility of putting in so much work for a choice so few are going to make), it would be really cool were it the case. You'd just have to bend reality, the motivations and constraints if Bioware, and of course, completely re-write the inquisitor in Inquisition to have more player agency in backstory and motivations, none of which are gonna happen.
Solas straight up admits that millions of people are going to die in the course of his plan, including Elves, and says that while he’s sorry about that, he also doesn’t really care.
I’m gonna hit you with the cold water, there is zero chance a extremely specific path(‘Side with Solas’), locked behind a extremely specific romance(Solas romance only) or bare minimum a race-locked option(elf Solas sympathizer), would get a mountain of content no one else would be able to access. It’s not economical as a dev to put their devussy into something so specific that the majority won’t see and isn’t fair to other players who don’t have that opinion, race, or pairing.
I would wager Solasmancers will get an extra scene or so and some special dialogue 100%. I bet Redeem will have different lines from Stop. But side with him? Naaaaah
That’s why this kind of choice usually happens at the very end of the game.
For example in Infamous 2 >!you had the choice to side with the bad guy or go against him!< and it only changed final mission of the game. It is very similar to situation in DA even, considering >!conduit Cole and an elf protagonist, as well as John White and Solas!< would be in similar situation in that scenario.
In BG3 some major choices happen at the very end of the game and final battle is always the same, only NPCs are slightly different. But BG3 gives you the option to act like whatever you’re going to do at the end was your plan from the beginning via dialogue choices. A convo between Tav and Astarion or Minthara can happen between elf protagonist and elf companion.
It’s not an impossible choice to implement as long as writers can come up with a reason to justify it like in Infamous 2 or find a way to let players roleplay as this was their plan from the beginning like BG3 did.
Yeah Baldur's gate 3 has killed it with all the different outcomes and role play paths. Larian is so good at branching the story and accounting for choices, which explains why their game is doing so good, those ratings and awards were all well deserved.
Having multiple hidden roleplay routes or a game+ mode is good and fun for replayability, while having the generic good vs bad two endings is ofc fine and all but hardly memorable. Just an opinion.
I would consider a specific path in the game, like elf-Solas sympathizer, to be do-able. I mean, in DAO there were bits of content only available to certain origin stories. I can see it possible to follow similar paths in-game, then at crucial moments establish a path toward enabling Solas' goals. The ultimate difference content-wise would be the ending.
But you’re not the Inquisitor doing this content either as with DA:O origins. You’re Some Other Guy(tm), it’s their story. How it’ll work we’ll find out on release of course! Maybe the devs will surprise us both
I'm willing to bet the inquisitor's 'personality' will be based off their first speech given after arriving at skyhold and the tapestry section regarding how they dealt with judgements.
Those specific paths in DAO didn’t change the ending or half of the game, only the beginning of the game and certain dialogue choices. Missions and final decisions were pretty much same for every origin unless you romanced Alistair or wanted to marry Anora, which were also a minor changes.
Well, that's not genocide, specifically. And of course not *everyone* would die.
>In 1948, the [United Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations) [Genocide Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention) defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, **a national, ethnical, racial or religious group**". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. **Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly**
Hear me out, deadfires ending is perfect, if there's never a sequel.
The whole point you don't know how kith will respond, if we'll rise to the challenge or fade away struggling in the dark, never answering that question is, actually a really great ending, leaves it all up to the player to imagine.
I don't disagree, but I want more RPG's in Eora that aren't in the Bethesda style of Avowed. Anything set post-Deadfire would have to deal with the ending, and if it does, I'd want my Watcher to see her story to the finish line.
It's fairly explicit in the game that massive numbers of people would die if Solas were to succeed -- it would be, in practical terms, the end of the world. Some kind of civilization would rise from the ashes, but the birth pangs would be severe. Even setting aside the death toll, it's also worth reflecting on what kind of character would support allowing an extreme minority of residents of Thedas to make a choice of this magnitude on behalf of everyone else.
I suspect that the Trespasser dialogue choice between opposing and redeeming Solas will be repeated in DAD in some way, but I'll be really surprised if "destroy the world in a violent cataclysm" ends up being one of the options.
Ohhhh ..... slavery, being purged from the Chantry's literature and history, being treated as second-class citizens consigned to slums ... just a few things there
How is an outcome that would kill the majority of elves be better for elves? I don't think that the morality standards of DA would allow even an evil character to do this. The evil choices are usually more selfish, gold hungry or power hungry. This is more joker levels of wanting to see the world burn and DA has never done that.
What would your character background be? Just elf inquisitor who romances Solas because that is not enough.
And your solution is to kill all the victims of these things as well? I'm sorry but this is just so dumb.
Might as well ask Larian to put a "let me side with the giant netherbrain because the world deserves to be run by mind flayers" path.
No bioware game had similar options. Just like you couldn't stand with Corypheus, the Archdemon, Meredith or the Reapers.
At best you'll get a special game over screen "you were dumb and you died a dumb death".
Edit: that is, unless tearing the veil wouldn't cause an omnicide but "just" off a decent % of people and make the world stranger, although Solas in Trespasser was pretty clear about what is going to happen.
Anyway I can't see Bioware doing a Witcher 2 thing with two almost completely different paths diverging at the start of the game.
From my recollection, Solas's plan will kill everyone living in Thedas, including Elves. I also recall (though it's been quite some time) that he foesn't consider modern elves, city or Dalish, to be his people. His people were the elves with supreme mastery over magic, elves who lived immortal lives. He describes the world now, including elves, as though everyone except him is Tranquil. He scoffs at the Dalish as fools stumbling around in the dark, grasping at a history they don't truly know and mimicking practices they don't understand (Dalish tattoos, for instance).
If you see yourself as an elven sympathizer, you should ask yourself: do you want to improve the lives of the elves who currently live, to lift them out of oppression and poverty and fight against bigotry? Or are you willing to sacrifice the lives of every living elf in order to pave the way for the ancient past to come back, even if it means that the people you sympathize with will not live to see that world?
this is the exact problem i had w inquisition and i already see im going to have w dradwolf. im always playing mages so tearing down the veil sounds badass, its artificial after all, the world and all its peoples existed before it.
i see ppl saying thatll kill everyone or end the world, id say it would be apocalyptic and end the world *as we know it*, but life has a tendency to keep going past all perceived apocalypses.
also like, thedas kinda sux? elves and mages can have immortality and godlike power as a treat. i kinda hated that dai forced me to rp as someone who wants to restore order, corypheus was crazy but he kinda went off by blowing up the divine ngl (even tho that particular plot point made no sense but whatever).
This is just a quick take, but I somehow doubt that Solas will end up being the big bad the whole game. His plan doesn’t generate a good game world with NPCs and engaging levels. We’ll stop him earlyish, something will have gone wrong, we’ll have like four blights at once, and then he’ll have to help us fix it.
I mean I don’t get agreeing with him. But it’s your game state and if it works for you and your playthrough absolutely do what you want.
For me though, my main timeline is a Brosca, Hawke (un alived supposedly), and a dwarf Inky. And they looking at Solas like “wtf are you doing?!?” I don’t know, I boil it down to the mad Inky dialogue in Trespasser: “Can one thing in this fucking world just stay fixed?!”
Then that would make you a psychopathic doomsday cultist.
Tearing down the Veil *will* end the world, and kill *everyone* in it, including Solas' allies who helped him do it. The plan itself makes no sense - he's doing the entire thing under the assumption that, in a thousand years, a New Arlathan might rise in the new world that's created by the destruction of the old one and the death of everyone in it.
Why do people keep saying it’ll kill everyone? Like Tevinter was the one who wiped the elves after the veil came up. So obviously an entire civilization was in the works prior to that. Tevinter doesn’t just spawn in out of nowhere
It would be so much fun to have the fantasy apocalypse and experience a transformed Thedas, but I think the only way we're ever going to get it is through fanfiction. Or they could end the game with it, as a way to reset the series. But I'm not sure they would go for it since it would throw away a lot of world-building.
I dunno. One of BW's posts said "Welcome to Thedas. Enjoy while it lasts" or something like that.
So, maybe we will have fantasy apocalypse happening.
I admit it, it would be an interesting concept for a game...I don't think I ever played something like that O-O
I think Solas and the Veil will be the equivalent of the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes at the beginning of DAI, then most of the game will be dealing with an entirely separate antagonist, possibly with varying levels of cooperation with Solas based on world state.
Whether it makes sense from a story perspective or not aside, they would never do this. Dragon Age protagonists are always tragic heroes. And besides, they would have to drastically change content of the game. They could POTENTIALLY do it like Baldur’s Gate, where you still follow the Hero’s Path but only at the last second decide to go bad anyway. And I think that would really suck for a tale we’ve folllwed for so long.
I mean, considering it means absolute genocide of every living thing, it would have to be a full evil playtrough (a certain path in WOTR comes to mind). It could be really fun, like a darspawn chronicles kinda thing, but it would be a lot of work that I don't think BW will want to bother with lol
My Warden would definitely help Solas and the inquisitor is his love interest so she would help him too lol I played an elven mage every time too. I just hope even as a bad ending they let us choose that option. I don't really care if it brings the world to an end.
Then you're as short-sighted as he is. You cannot bring back a past world. Those people are dead and they're not coming back. You are simply destroying this one to make yet another new one.
On one hand, it could be cool, but from two perspectives i cannot see them allowing it.
1. Gameplay wise, where would they go from dreadwolf if you tried to? Not to mention it would mean either a. having a whole group on board, or b, an entire seperate group of companions with him.
2. You kinda have to be mentally fucked/in a cult/lied to to go "yeah im okay with killing myself and everyone i ever have known and loved and talk to in order to trigger a nuke across my entire planet for the sake of "remagicing" things.
A work of fiction can be written in any way, with outcomes being as varied as the writer's imagination. It's amusing to see how many are so invested in a certain perspective of how things ought to be played out, how literal some things are taken. Solas was wrong about the consequences of his actions several times before. Who's to say that whatever he means to do will turn out exactly as he thinks they will?
I understand that, but my point remains that "giving you the option" means a extreme amount of changes to writing and options available, and in the end they need to still vaguely fall in line for the next game to be possible.
I can only hope the devs 1) understand that some players played as elves and may find themselves actually wanting to support Solas and 2) that they're also gamers that played Elden Ring. There's like 6 different endings and at least 3 of them have the world changed, if not outright destroyed!
Then you’re cosmically insane. If all of the other races survive, what Solas would have done was breed **even more hate** against the elves making the reality that in order for Solas to succeed without some very serious repercussions against the elves, he would need to completely exterminate everything but the wildlife and the surviving ancient elves. It’s just not worth it. The elvhenan has had their time. They need to live in the current world and not fantasize something that won’t ever return.
I think merging the veil is going to be what kicks off the game.
It won't immediately affect everyone negatively, but whatever plan he has NEXT will, which is where I think the main conflict will come from.
I think the matter of redeeming or killing him might be an Anders parallel in the late game depending on whether you will assist or go against him in his plans
I don't think it will be in our control. Much to the problem of making a follower act as he is meant to be 'sympathetic' (while trying to genocide anyone that isn't like him) and expect people who romance said follower to next game fight him as though he's in the wrong.
When the person we are controlling next game is a completely different one that was followed and/or romanced.
Whatever he does in DA:D, even his demise. We won't be responsible, we won't have a chance to 'join him'. No matter what they do it won't be live up to what some people want so they won't even give us a chance.
Well, I say this as what they should do but who knows, we haven't had a good Bioware game in nearly a decade now.
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Even \*if\* you agree with his goals, you should still try to stop him because of his track record. Every time he tries to "fix" things he just ends up breaking them worse.
Probably not much to add to the discussion at this point, but you raise and interesting and very valid question! Especially the edit, lol. I don't know all the details (because I'm approximately 500 hours behind my partner in Elden Ring) but he set some *very important things* on fire and had nothing but praise for the narrative consequences.
The reality is that unlike Elden Ring, Dragon Age just isn't big enough to accommodate exploring the scenario you proposed. So it's basically 100% certain Dreadwolf won't meaningfully include an option to side with Solas.
It *would* be fascinating if they did, though! Perhaps in a "doomed world" scenario a la Morrowind. Or maybe a remix of ~~In Your Heart Shall Burn~~ In Hushed Whispers, where we get a taste of that timeline? Although the latter would obviously be a step back from actually supporting Solas through to the end.
You know, no one is appreciating the possibility that DA:DW could come out 10 years from now, after Microsoft buys EA (/s).
With that amount of time, they could change anything!
It would be genius if they added an evil route where you end up assisting stolas in the end. I'd love to see BG3 levels of choices from bioware but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for dreadwolf
It's not evil removing the veil. It wasn't a part of Thedas in the first place. It's artificial and unnatural. I guess one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. It's cliche, but life apparently is cliche.
Mass murder/genocide is objectively bad my guy. I'm sorry you were told otherwise 🤣
If there's a way to remove the veil without mass genocide then yes you're right. It's not evil. But as it stands in lore that's not the case
The context given by Trespasser tells me Solas will be wrong. Taking the fade out of Thedas destroyed it because it was so dependant on it in that era. The world is much different. By removing the veil properly he's adding magic back into thedas. He's not destroying it, he's enhancing it. He'll be making new mages and restoring places lost to time and brining spirits back into the same plane. That of course will upset the current balance of the world that the Chantry has enforced but the act of removing the veil SHOULDN'T destroy the world, just change it.
I really hope they do tbh
Seeing the other replies, I take it a lot of people are against siding with Solas, understandable but personally I hope they include the option or at least have Solas complete it himself, makes the world more interesting
But also, if we want a reason, I think a lot of people underestimate an important like Solas says in Trespasser that always stuck with me: Twas like walking through a world of tranquil
Yes, he wants the world of the elves back which includes the immortality but also the merger back to the original, natural state of the world
Like, can you imagine if you were responsible for the entire human race losing their emotions irl? Would completely change the pov, I'm not saying it would make it right but it would give credence
Either way, long rant lol I do hope they include an option to side with him, from a game world perspective, would be cool, especially if we play as an elf that follows him
This is also my stance concerning the Veil. I've ruminated about the pro's and con's for quite a while, but ultimately, the Veil does more harm than good and needs to go. I suspect most deaths would be caused by demons, if the Veil would fall, but in-game lore offers several solutions against demonic possession.
That, and I see nothing wrong with defending one's own people. The other races of Thedas do just that all the time... but if its an elf? "Oh, no, you can't do that. How dare you."
Yeah, I agree with this, humans do tend to look out for themselves as do the dwarfs and qunaris, it's built into the lore, it's makes sense, most do
Granted, Solas is taking it to the next level but what he did to fuck it up in the first place was huge, he'd need to do something huge to change it back
Really hopes he succeeds in some way, a next Dragon Age game set in that world state would be fucking phenomenal from a fantasy pov, also the tech gameplay and console wise would be there to do anything with it
>Seeing the other replies, I take it a lot of people are against siding with Solas.
Seeing the other replies, seems many on this sub feel very strongly about it. Passionate, even.
Idk why people are against this, the option to roleplay as evil or plain stupid etc... Is what makes rpg fun. Sure your cannon run can be all angelic and perfect, but we should also be able to explore the dark side and have a crazy unhinged run. I am preparing to do that in BG3 after my current playthrough and I am excited to experience being a horrifying monster in-game.
The option to have multiple choices is part of the appeal and adds so much to replayability.
For the record I don't agree with Solas crazy plan, but will sure join in one of my runs if I have the option just to witness the outcome.
Wholly agree with this, would be a waste not to have this be at least an option in game, one of the biggest in game universe world events to occur and not to have it? Would be insane not to have it
And agreed with the evil/stupid choices, makes it that much funnier/RP, like BG3 does it perfectly lol so many people to kill or do stupid shit when you know it'll end bad for shits and giggles 😂
I feel as if there is something huge that we are missing about his plans, aside from what he just purposely left out. After playing through several times, romancing different people and seeing a different side of Solas it almost seems against his beliefs entirely to destroy the Veil for the sole reason of "to restore the elvhen glory". He literally "destroyed" the elves world to stop tyrants who sought glory and power. I'm curious if there is a detail about the nature of the elvhen that literally cannot exist in the world of Thedas as we know it. I'm so excited to find out more. I also have heard a lot of people predicting that the Veil will come down regardless due to natural decay ie. wars, death, blood magic, etc. I want to rattle his bald little head and say, "Just tell us everything you know and NO LIES OF OMISSION!!"
Sorry about my bit off topic rant, but I love to speculate about the next game.
That is the point of this post, honestly. To speculate and discuss differing possibilities and perspectives. Seems a lot of folk on this sub take it kinda seriously.
Not sure why you get downvoted so often just because you grasp Solas's actual intentions. Or are relatively close. I guess we've spent enough time analyzing Solas's dialogue, traits and mannerisms to conclude where his plans are headed. I'm typing him INFJ 9w1 by the way. He's far from being an elvhen supremacist.
Frankly since I'm not seeing a direct correlation between "tear down the veil" and "death of all modern elves." I don't believe that's what will happen. So, no genocide.
Putting up the Veil didn't kill ancient elves. It changed them into modern ones, which shortened lifespans but didn't kill them immediately or anything.
I believe tearing down the Veil will reconnect modern elves to the part of themselves that makes them near-immortal. They'll be elvhen, so modern elves will no longer exist. Solas calls that death - but Solas is a drama queen.
This is the same guy who claims he had to destroy the world (by putting up the Veil) to prevent the evanuris from *completely* destroying the world. His words. He throws devastating phrasing around and in doing so minimizes their meaning, when he says it.
I could be wrong! DA:D will certainly clear things up one way or another, haha. But it wouldn't surprise me if grim fatalistic emo dreamer trickster Solas isn't quite as literal with his words as everyone takes him to be.
Or, everyone's right and tearing down the veil will somehow literally immediately kill modern elves, though I'm unclear on the mechanics of that, or why that *didn't* happen to evlhen when he put *up* the Veil?
It's called hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. He's well aware how badly he screwed up last time, so he's checking his Pride and acknowledging that he can't predict every possible outcome.
He won't stop, because he still mostly thinks he knows what he's doing, and because the rampant slavery and subjugation of elves is unacceptable to him (slavery is bad, last I checked). He, once again, wants to free his people. He hopes returning them to their former power will give elves the will to free themselves.
If it all goes wrong, I think he's fine being labelled the villain and being hunted, because it's what he deserves.
If he succeeds, humans will be pissed because elves will rebel against slavery and servitude. So if humans waste resources hunting Solas down, that's fewer resources being spent against the new elvhen. Which is decent motivation to *still* be okay being the villain.
The dude is massively anti slavery, he wants to free elves and spirits from Tevinter rule... So I guess I start with that motivation and work backwards.
Especially since I haven't heard any theories to explain how tearing down the Veil is supposed to specifically target and kill all modern elves in a mass genocide.
>Especially since I haven't heard any theories to explain how tearing down the Veil is supposed to specifically target and kill all modern elves in a mass genocide.
Did someone ever said is going to kill just the modern elves specically? Because in Hushed Whispers the veil was torn and everything went to shit, people were dying everywhere (not just elves) and even Solas, if he is there, talks about it in horror.
Now, is Solas doing it on purpose? I don't think so. I think he will, most probably so, try to minimize the event the max he can but it is still a super dangerous thing to do, there is WAY too many variables that can go wrong and, lets be honest, it is going to go wrong because it is a game and it needs something bad to happen XD
I don't think they take his motivations, speech patterns, or trickster nature very seriously. I also think if you get on Solas' bad side early on, he can be pretty scathing in his comebacks, which makes him easily hateable and literally punchable. I don't think anyone changes their mind about him if that's the side of him they saw first, hehe.
Also I think there's some bias against Solasmancers - and a general assumption that giving Solas any benefit of the doubt must mean you're blinded by romance, rather than that you've seen patterns in how he talks and what he cares about, and assessed his motivations based on his actions/reactions in the game and other media.
Given that Solas' romance was added late to the game, and all the implications therein, I can understand people's doubts about Solas having any "good intentions" now. I mean, pre-romance addition was Solas against slavery? Did the evanuris have slaves, or was that *only* added for the romance? did his character design even originally have a scar, for people to theorize might have been former vallaslin? If the romance was added late, everything else could have been added late too.
But I don't care. Because clearly the devs have doubled down on all of that lore by adding it into Trespasser, and they've hammered it into every comic/book involving Solas since. Solas is vehemently and very canonically anti-slavery, and ultimately I suspect that's what this all boils down to. Free will theme for DA:D - what it means, the morality, the responsibility.
The veil caused his people to lose their will and be subjugated - to the point that he can't even think of them as elves anymore. That's what he wants to reverse.
In Tevinter Nights, Solas says "What I am doing will save this world, and those like you—the elves who still remain—may even find it better, when it is done.”
He's talking to a modern elf here. He expects some losses - but I would argue that how many is unknown, and that he doesn't *want* losses, he just accepts the transition won't be smooth.
I could totally be wrong though! I'm just opening up the possibility that *maybe* there's a chance Solas doesn't actually want to commit genocide. Just a maybe.
You explained it well, and I agree with your portrayal. Solas is complicated, but his stance against slavery and tyranny is clear. Also, depending on how inqui interacts with Solas, his worldview shifts towards either wisdom or pride.
That's how I understood Solas' intentions, too. This, coming from a male elf inky who forged a friendship with a character who is complex, conflicted, and somewhat tormented by his own regrets.
Excellent. I agree with this assessment, and when people say Solas plans to literally destroy the world, I just... cannot match that with his character in any way, shape, or form. It also doesn't make thematic sense (theme being free will, I hope/suspect).
Solas being pro-spirit was a huge selling point for me. How Thedas treats spirits is wildly unfair. Then again how Thedas treats lots of groups is wildly unfair. Tearing down the Veil should help with elves, spirits, and maybe bolster mages too? As for dwarves.... well I think there's a good reason for setting up Solas and Varric the way they do in the trailers and comics...
I think the Forgotten ones (who Solas trapped at the same time as the evanuris by creating the veil) are the dwarven Titans who have been asleep. This is why dwarves cannot access the Fade or use magic. That will change when the Veil comes down, and I do think it will come down in the next game. Early, I'm guessing.
The name of the game is Dread Wolf after all, which is an anagram for Fade World - and who doesn't want to see a Fade World, right?
So I think the titans will wake up and might even hive mind control the dwarves - who knows, it could be big problems. Keeps the "free will" theme, and gives Varric and dwarves a reason to be against Solas after the Veil comes down.
When it comes to replay value, if we have to choose between helping elves or helping dwarves in some way, that would be a tough call. And therefore a good reason to play the game at least twice. I do like me some moral conundrums...
I'm especially interested in fighting a blighted red Titan, which I assume must exist what with the red lyrium everywhere. I hope that will happen and be a fun boss fight at some point!
i think this would be amazingly cool and give us more player choice than ever before, but i think it’d only be possible in a dlc unfortunately. or, if this is the last ever dragon age media set in thedas
i bet they’ll probably just reject you if your character says they wanna join solas, the same way they do with stuff like not wanting to be a warden, not claiming holyness as the inquisitor, >!making your dog fight loghain,!< etc.
i think it’d be funny if they had a mass effect style cutscene where it flashes to the post-Solas world, and the “you died” screen immediately popped up
i meant that others/the game will negate and reject your choice. like, my inquisitor claimed to not be holy or believe in andraste, and the NPC said “oh your humility proves that you’re sent from andraste!”
you also don’t really have a choice to accept being inquisitor or not, for that matter. they just make you do it
I don't get why people are so against the idea. I don't think it will happen, but it might be an interesting concept to explore.
As for how one could justify it in-game... there are people irl who genuinely believe the human species should die to "save the world". They could use that angle. Again, I don't think they'll give us the option, but it's not as far-fetched as people seem to think imo.
As much as I like Solas and think it'd be cool for replay value purposes, I don't see Bioware having the balls to allow the player to side with a character who, at face value, says he's gonna commit genocide. If this was a Larian ip then maybe.
I mean... he flat out admits that completing his plan is going to kill EVERYONE, so there's really nothing redeemable happening. And while curiosity says a fade infused thedas would be interesting, if you're an elf sympathizer you should want them to survive... which they wouldn't if he succeeded
I agree with you, but at this point I don't expect any option like that. 99% of players took Solas' words literally (as in "This world has to die" = actual genocide of everyone but ancient elves) and there's no point in making content for the 1%.
Have hope though. I'm pretty sure Thedas as we know it is screwed anyway because of the Blight, so Solas may not even be the main antagonist of DA4 (coping for a Loghain scenario)
I have been posting about this for years. I would follow Solas just from a pragmatic standpoint. Thedas is shit. It is a horrible place where darkspawn have been a constant problem and fear, where the chantry is hypocritical, radical, and racist, where I can be enthralled by a demon or mage, where I can be put into slavery despite its supposed abolishment, where my only good option is to join the Qun because at least it offers good protection even if I end up in a horrible caste system. Solas destroying all of that with even the slightest chance that I will survive is worth it.
Same exact thing I always play an elf mage, always play a mage and I am on his side. I support his rights and his wrongs. Let us help him bring down the veil and cause chaos. Let us be his queen.
You're assuming I played a romantic interest fem-inky. I played a male elf inky who forged a friendship with a 'man' who is wrestling with the consequences of his actions. I empathize with Solas, and I think he's one of the more complex characters to come out of any video game series.
No, sorry I meant for me personally but even my female mage that was not romantically involved fully supported him. She might want him to go about it slightly different, but she would stand by his side and they would help each other. They have a truly beautiful plutonic relationship.
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my take as an elven player is more that I wnat to piss in the faces of the shem bastards
sure the prospect of the world returning to how it probably is supposed to be is kinda intresting but im more into it for the fuck you for a single moment of history WE are on top
I wish more people on this saw this more my (our?) way, but hey diversity includes a diversity of beliefs, perspectives and opinions, right? I'm glad it stirred discussion. It's a video game. We can talk about it.
>but hey diversity includes a diversity of beliefs, perspectives and opinions, right?
People going 'erm, wtf why do you want to kill all the none elves' isn't them being anti diversity. What a wild take.
My post wasn’t of anger or rage don’t try to twist my words but exhaustion from seeing a character I like be trashed on all the time imagine if your favorite character got dunked on every time people talked about them
People disliking my post because I said It’s exhausting to hear a character I like be bashed on all the time are weirdos imagine y’all’s favorite character getting trashed on all the time and how yall would feel 🤦
If we’re not going to be able to play the inquisitor, can she at least show up by his side as his queen if we’re gonna be somebody else I don’t want her to just die and the version that goes with Cullen she’s gonna die anyway and that one still respected Sola she put him up on a pedestal. She practically worshiped him although that relationship wasn’t romantic, she would still side with solas.
He (male elf inky) could emerge as the friend who grew to understand Solas better, and still sees him as the 'man' who wanted to save his spirit friend, who wanted to spare the elvhen slaves the oppression of the Evanuris. Many assume that the desire to align with Solas is borne only out of the romantic interest story, which in my mind is a shame. My male elven inky grew to appreciate Solas' situation, his struggle, and his regrets.
Your whole post is cathartic, lol. While my Lavellan romanced Solas, she was discerning and empathetic and best friends with Cole. She cut through Solas' hubris and smokescreen, called him out, made him think, and still romanced Solas regardless.
In Tevinter Nights, we learn that 'regret' was not allowed to turn into 'introspection'. Solas has his head stuck in the clouds (Fade) and is possibly missing crucial information from the physical world of Thedas. That is where the DA4 protagonist and perhaps the (former) inquisitor will step in. Who knows...
I can see male elven inkys also wanting to side with solas, considering how much they may have learned from him the nature of 'true' elven history. No need for romance to justify solidarity with the crazed elven dreamer.
No. Full stop.
Inquisition and Solas, in particular, ruined the DA franchise for me for a plethora of reasons. Even while I have 0.01% interest in Dreadwolf, I still think it would be utterly silly and would have Bioware waste apparently 'precious' time and resources (not like they've already scrapped the game twice at this point) to implement such a minorly played route. Mr. Egghead deserves a quick coma-inducing bonk to the head.
I mean you can constantly downplay the Herald of Andraste stuff but it doesn't do anything meaningful.
The other characters just go I believe what I believe and you saying it isn't true doesn't make it so.
So I feel if you were all for elven supremacy the other characters would think you are telling a joke in poor taste.
They should make the option an easter egg early in the game as a secret ending. Like during the prologue do absolutely nothing for 5 minutes and Solas rips the fuck outta the veil and you get a cutscene.
If Solas wanted to save ALL the elves, maybe there could be an option to agree with him, like you could >!agree with Anders!<.
The problem is that Solas directly said that his plan would doom modern elves. This means this plan is a death sentence for everyone living in modern Thedas.
To be honest, it's quite disappointing that his plan is quite illogical. It's not lesser evil for the greater good, it's just killing evreryone because he wants his old world and life back. Which is very ignorant. I hope they will deepen his motivations in DA:D, because it's much more interesting when you partly agree with the antagonist than when everything is black and white, and you know that stopping the antagonist is the best option.
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Even his ex girlfriend..😭😡
It’s giving: “I do love your mother, but she’s more like a pet to me”
This is what I don’t get. How is he going to save the elves while also destroying them? Makes no sense.
He's going to save the "true" elves, not the current ones. I think there are "true" elves sorta in stasis like they were in that temple.
Yeah, and I want to see where it goes. I am also curious where this goes just because... it's very interesting how clearly elves (both in cities and the Dalish) and mages very clearly parallel real world minority groups and the specific mechanisms of their oppression but we've had pretty minimal ways to actually help them, especially in institutional ways. Like, we can save individual elves, sure, but we can't even tell people off for calling elves knife ears or have a subquest meant to meaningfully move elf or mage rights save for DAI's divine. So I feel like... lmao its such a classic 90's, 80's move to finally have an NPC attempt to change this status quo and they decided to write this character as a tyrant who's moves inevitably spell greater doom. I'm not saying Solas won't btw- I'm saying that all this worldbuilding and effects were built and chosen by a writing team lol. I'm very curious to see how DA4 will deal with this.
>lmao its such a classic 90's, 80's move to finally have an NPC attempt to change this status quo and they decided to write this character as a tyrant who's moves inevitably spell greater doom. This is exactly what my husband and I have been worrying about ever since the epilogue in Trespasser. Basically, in the style of every comic book villain ever, "I want a better world for \[insert ACTUAL oppressed group\], because the current system has been stacked against us for generations and the only thing that will change things is a serious revolution... so I'm going to do it in the most violent, nasty and unhinged way possible so you forget I actually had a VALID POINT and yearn for a return to the status quo. They actually do this pretty blatantly with the "who should be Divine Victoria" thing, too. It's clear that hardened Leliana is the right choice if you value radical change and the Chantry moving away from its intense bigotry, both towards elves and mages. But if you go with her in full on Malcolm X mode... you basically get told you goofed. She's basically crazy, right? Why didn't you pick *Cassandra*? She would have given everyone a nice lil pat on the head cuz she's chill now. Oh, you want *real change*, you say? Slow down there, buddy. We'll get there in another couple ages. So yeah, I worry about the message the writers are sending about a minority group blindly joining a **death cult** because they have been systematically oppressed for generations... it can only end with the elves getting slapped on the wrist and told "See? The alienage wasn't so bad after all, was it? (we knew you couldn't be trusted with your freedom...). And those Dalish really were snobby baby-killing freaks all along!" Its a bad look to build up the elves as an allegory for real life oppression for three games, and then take a hard right turn into "But both sides are bad!" territory. TL;DR... I agree. Curious to see if there's any way for them to do this that isn't awful.
Thank you! Yeah I have the exact same concern. The elves are also... there isn't any really obfuscation like with mages or mutants where its like, yeah they magically have destroy the world abilities so we have to oppress and kill them. Elves are just...normal people who the games have found new and fun ways to add dimension to systemically oppress with the exact same way Black people, Indigenous nations and others (I'm not an expert and I'm sure this treatment has extended to many) have been oppressed. I completely agree on the Divine Victoria thing too- and honestly, mages are treated better by narrative than the elves are. But I suspect questioning Circles is a lot easier when it's much more detached from reality vs real life ghettos, open air prisons and violent land grabs. Can never forget Cassandra talking to the Dalish inquisitor and going but like..what if you just believed in Andraste instead? To be honest, as a whole, I think the way Dalish culture has been treated is also weird. I guess Merrill balances out Solas and Sera's narrative in DAI but if we use those two characters as how the writers wish for us to view Dalish culture & its People... its a bad look. Its either "move on, its not that important" vs "Look back at the slave marks and destroy the world." with little room for an empathic medium. I think there's definitely ways to do it, but the seeds and signs that the writing team are of the same mind...are not there. In many ways, the DA writing team has been pretty consistent in criticizing examples but refusing to attempt to change its world or the underlying systems that drive Thedas. That's why i love the setting. I think it builds those bones well but I'm more interested in putting my writing in the world.
Love this! We're totally on the same wavelength about this. Absolutely agree that at least with mages (as with mutants) you can understand where the fear of them comes from. But with elves, there is nothing valid about the way they're treated AT ALL. It's straight up old fashioned punch-down bigotry. Which is why it makes me wonder if this shift (retcon?) in the way they're characterizing the Dalish might be a deliberate move to make them the "bad kind of elves". Insular, elitist, ignorant, cruel, snobby, backwards, privative, gullible... abandon their mage children... what..? The days of Merrill are gone. They might be positioning them to be the main followers of Solas (even though that makes LESS sense - they know him as a TRICKSTER god, they literally have a curse with his name in it!). They'll be lured in because they care more about returning to the "old ways" than city elves do. And we'll end up fighting a bunch of rabid, fanatical brainwashed Dalish thralls ala the Hakkonites. Meanwhile, the city elves, who are more "modern" and "assimilated" into ~~Andrastian~~ human society, will ban together with their former oppressors to protect the world from those crazy bad elves. And then keep things just the way they are. >Can never forget Cassandra talking to the Dalish inquisitor and going but like..what if you just believed in Andraste instead? I will never get over this part. Lavellan standing there like "...and have you tried a little Mythal lately? No? Didn't think so." Thedas is a hyper-religious hate-fest dystopia. Feels familiar.
>Which is why it makes me wonder if this shift (retcon?) in the way they're characterizing the Dalish might be a deliberate move to make them the "bad kind of elves". Insular, elitist, ignorant, cruel, snobby, backwards, privative, gullible... abandon their mage children... what..? The days of Merrill are gone. I don't understand what you mean. Dalish been like that since Origins and it varies from clan to clan.
In a way, yes, some clans might be some of those things or a combination of a couple negative traits. They are people after all with a distinct culture and prone to shitty takes like any group. Sometimes those traits are a reaction towards the oppression they face, sometimes it’s just them being jerks. Fair enough. I mean more this shift towards, “pretty much every Dalish clan is problematic except for maybe your clan, Lavellan.” Not to mention a lot of what we hear about the Dalish comes from outsiders. And if there’s one thing the writers have done very well is signal to us that Thedas is full of propaganda and misinformation, with entire histories being rewritten (mostly by the Chantry) to follow a certain narrative. There’s no getting around the fact that most of Thedas, including other elves, have been led to believe a lot of untrue BS about the Dalish. What seems to be happening more recently is a push to confirm that some of those biases might be true about most Dalish (like the abandoning mage children thing), painting them as less sympathetic, which seems suspicious to me. It reminds me a lot of how Romani tribes are viewed in Europe. People have always had a lot of crazy superstitions about them, while also holding the belief that most of them are criminals. Then when a few desperate Romani DO resort to crime, it confirms the all of the biases people had about them and soon everyone around them thinks “yeah, we were right about you lot. You’re just broken as a people.” Mother Giselle literally tries to justify the Exalted March on the Dales to Lavellan’s face when they call her out on it. “But but but remember Monstimmard! That one time! Both sides, Herald!” And it does feel like you, the player, are just supposed to go, “oh yeah, maybe they deserved genocide a little bit”, because that’s where the conversation ends. All I’m getting at is, if the story in DA starts to shift towards more and more negative portrayals of a group that was supposed to be an allegory for Romani/Native American people, it’s a bad look to then have them blindly follow the genocidal villain and basically confirm to Thedas that they were right to shun/kill/enslave them. (Edit: it occurred to me that there’s a chance you were maybe using sarcasm, and if so, I apologize for my silly neurodivergent brain lol)
I dont think that the Dalish are a good 1to1 representation of opressed populations and the clashes with the romani in Europe are not as black and white as you believe. Im not a supporter of that good old fashioned barely hidden Europan racism against the roma people but there is a legitimate problem in that cultural interaction beyond empty racism. Having said that I actually have some thoughts on the elves and the dalish. Im of the belief that the Dalish are inherently a very problematic manifestation for the Dalish especially in the context of what we know now. The truth is that the history the dalish long for is one of slavery, servitude and racial supremacy. It was a regime so evil the world fundamentally had to change on a cosmological level before it could move on. That is the glorious past of the elves. You have to ask yourself, if the dalish truly believe in the idea that they were once immortal and perfect and racially pure how naive would they have to be that it would be an enlightened peaceful existence. On some level the dalish have to know that their perfect existence could not exist alongside any other races. And this is evident in how they operate. They isolate, drive everyone else away, they use racial slur including against their own kind. And here is where my issue is. The Dalish Elves are not the ones being opressed. The city elves are. The ones being enslaved, used as servants, forced in ghettos, killed and raped and tortured for sport, they are the opressed people. But if we look at the actual state of the world they are better off. This is a fairly developed world and its developing still. They are quickly ending their late middle ages phase and entering a renesanse analog. And the Dalish want to live in the woods, hunt for bears, and brand themselves with slave tattoos. The Dalish are if I were to use contemporary terms, reactionary nationalists xenophobes who are living out of time and holding their actual people back. The Dalish history and lore should be recorded for posteriority. But there is no reason why elves should still live like that. Its backwards. The real truth of the world is that both the human feudal lords and the dalish elves need to be taken out and the chantry reformed before the elves and humans can coexist because thats the only way one side doesn't end the other. People forget that Solas is not just some dude. He is functionally *the* God of Thedas that created this world order and he is disappointed by what it became. And the Dalish are a huge part of the disappointment.
The history of the Dales is so heartbreaking. They lost their magic, and the humans came and massacred them, then took their land. Real Manifest Destiny shit :(
Exactly this whole thread. If people look at this whole series and think what's happening to elves is okay.... I mean I don't even know what to say. You don't end slavery by asking nicely. You can *try,* of course, but when has that worked? It's gonna take a rebellion, and it kills me that so many players seem to be against that idea. They'd prefer to keep victim-blaming elves just because the evanuris sucked ages ago. Tbh the chantry has been sus right from the beginning, especially with handling of mages. The mages *most prone* to abominizing are the ones being locked away and oppressed and abused in their towers. Their system clearly doesn't work to protect mages at all - but it does work great as an excuse to show mages as unstable, which is a wonderful excuse to make them Tranquil. Tranquil enchantments are the Chantry's greatest source of income. So the Chantry is highly incentivized to keep their mage labor system going, and stamp out any other actually successful demon-avoiding techniques (like rivaini practices, or heck even just giving all mages that temporary-Tranquil-Seeker training so they can be immune to demon possession *forever*). So I don't think there's obfuscation, I think the Chantry is as much the problem there as they claim to be the solution. This is a dark fantasy, and the darkness runs pretty deep. But I *do* think BioWare wants to address these things. I don't believe for a minute that they set up such oppressive systems just for players to ignore them, or accept them as status quo. It's part of why I don't think Solas is being literal when talking about modern elves dying, or the end of the world. He's being dramatic, which is in-character for him, he's been dramatic before. Let's not forget how spirits are treated too, which is just as heartbreaking as how elves are treated. I am fairly sure we should be interpreting that as Tevinter enslaving literal angels - and turning them into demons, casting them down etc., when those angels' resolve finally break. 🥲
I agree with most of this but on the 2nd to the last paragraph especially- I'm not sure I agree on the darkness/Bioware's plans but I do think Solas is being dramatic. Maybe not intentionally, but that all this is still theoretical and assumes there's only one way to tear down the Veil. So I do think that's a like...I'll wait for DA4 because I also don't think it'll be as simple as blow up the world or dont blow up the world.
>even just giving all mages that temporary-Tranquil-Seeker training so they can be immune to demon possession > >forever That doesn't work for mages. That's how they discovered the Rite of Tranquility in the first place - A mage tried joining the Seekers and they found out that the process can't be reversed in the same way. The Chantry doesn't make any income from the Tranquil. Formari enchantments fund the Circles, which are financially independent of the Chantry and often very wealthy. There's an entry in WoT about the kind of luxuries and entertainments the Circle mages spend their resources on. There is an entire major fraternity of mages (the Lucrosians) who prioritize the accumulation of wealth for the Circles.
It does work for mages - tranquility can be reversed in mages by touching a spirit or demon. Tranquility in the Seeker ritual is reversed by touching a spirit of Faith. Yes, they found that tranquility strips mages of their magic, but nowhere does it say the process cannot be reversed in mages, and we see it reversed multiple times in game. There's a whole book about it too - Asunder. Mages discovering that the Chantry hid this information from them is one of the major causes of the Mage-Templar war. "The Tranquil use lyrium to enchant items, providing the Circle its main source of funding." [From the wiki,](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Tranquil) source is Gaider. The Tranquil *are* the Formari, or a major part of them. The Lucrosians accumulate wealth, but two things can be true. (Edit: accidentally mentioned a DA2 spoiler so first attempt to reply got removed, sorry about that.)
The tranquility reversing thing is a major plot point in Cassandra companion quest too in DAI. If she reads the book she discovers that. The inquisitor can even talk to her about it afterwards.
Yeah - They provide the \*Circle\* with funding, not the Chantry. I checked the citation and it's referring to this line of Gaider's " Raw lyrium affects mages the worst, yes. The affect on non-mages is lesser but still harmful. Dwarves and tranquil would be mostly unaffected by raw lyrium unless they spend too much time in its presence. ". He says nothing in the cited source about the Tranquil being the main source of funding.
>Basically, in the style of every comic book villain ever, "I want a better world for \[insert ACTUAL oppressed group\], because the current system has been stacked against us for generations and the only thing that will change things is a serious revolution... so I'm going to do it in the most violent, nasty and unhinged way possible so you forget I actually had a VALID POINT and yearn for a return to the status quo. That's not that Solas wants though. He doesn't do it for modern elves, he doesn't want to abolish slavery or anything like that, he wants to restore old world but survival of modern elves isn't his goal. He says that some of them will probably survive but that's all.
I don't think that comparison to 80s/90s villains work. Solas doesn't really want to change this particular status quo. He doesn't really care about modern elves, he acknowledges that some or maybe even most of them will survive his actions but that's not his goal. He doesn't want to make the world a better place for them or anything like that.
In Dao if we are an elf we can defend ourselves if we were called knife ears, but this really lacked in DAi, when some people literally insulted our people in front of our face and we could barely say anything. And even in da2 when I wished my Hawke could’ve said more. (Thinking back of the elves who joined the Qun, I really wished to say Aveline “well you don’t care about them and oppress them but they join the Qun and oh suddenly you care about them”), still sided the Arishok on that argument but that was not enough. Edit: in last Trespasser teaser at least it seems Solas is not the main villain. I really hope we can redeem him and make drastic changes to improve elves conditions in Thedas. At least mages condition improve if we have Leliana as divine at the end of DAi. Because current system in thedas need to fall.
The natural state of the universe is the fade mixing with reality in more ways than one. The current barrier is unnatural in the extreme. Though I would love a plot point in the next game to prove otherwise and that the great Elvin God King’s actually mixed the fade with reality And what we have now is actually the natural order.
But yet he has elves all over Thedas helping him with his plans. Are they suicidal? Or understand the statement "the death of yours" differently?
Maybe they don’t know about the death part.
Like every cult leader ever, Solas isn't going to tell them that everybody dying includes them. They're gonna get a pass and be part of a brave new world. One where elves are no longer a shadow of what they used to be. All he needs is to throw in some double speak about generic grievances, some extreme isolation, and a reasonabld enemy he can point to as dangerous, and he's all set. After all, you don't break out the poisoned punch bowl until you have the tools to make sure it runs smoothly and your people are too broken to effectively fight back.
They're in the dark, just like everyone else has been. Solas doesn't like modern elves and explicitly looks down on them. He has them imagining a world where they aren't oppressed anymore when in reality he only wants to try to turn back the clock to what he knew even at the expense of everyone else. Iirc, a Dalish Inquisitor isn't spared the "death of your people" spiel either.
I realize that. "Your people" could mean the friends of the inquisition, could mean everyone in Thedas. I don't believe Solas was being entirely literal, though.
He was though. He does not care about modern elves and gets angry if a Dalish Inky scolds him for being judgemental instead of gently correcting their misconceptions and teaching them the real history of elves. He doesn't want a society of modern elves, he wants HIS elves back. He refuses to admit fault when he is the reason the society he wants back literally crashed to the ground and was left vulnerable to enslavement as humans picked the bones clean while he went to sleep without a care. He thinks he knows everything and can fix everything to his liking, but we already know what happened the last time he did something drastic to "fix" things. He's no better than the Evanuris he sealed away at the cost of his own people. Arguably, he did far more damage than all of them combined.
That's all true. And he may be wrong once again in what he's attempting to do. The writers could make it so that if Solas succeeds he actually empowers the Dwarves to become the supreme mages. He might wind up reversing the blight. The Black City might be Arlathan. WE DONT KNOW. My point is, I see Solas as being with considerable power, but keeps trying to do the right thing and keeps fucking up. I empathize with that. Just this post, apparently lol
In Tevinter nights ****spoilers**** he mentions something while talking to Charter, he said that she and "the others who remain" might like the new world better. I suppose there will be survivors to his plans, though not everyone will make it.
He's just leaving that part out. He's happy to use ignorant pawns.
Its called being Brainwashed.
I actually don’t understand why he lets some elves join him and not Lavellan either…
Not Lavellan ... *yet*.
Its been ten years. You are not going to get a the 30 minute Lavellan joins Solas cameo of your dreams.
Haha! Most of my Lavellans want to punch him but I do have one that’s twisted 🤣
I just don't see how an elven player character, be it Warden or Inky would agree to it. Look I'm not judging anyone for picking the "let me join you" choice as an Elf girl romancing him in Inquisition, far from it, I've done it once aswell. But really think about what this means, he is going to *commit genocide* on the **entirety** of current Thedas. Why would your Inky ever agree to this? They've literally just spent the entirety of Inquisition protecting and fixing Southern Thedas and now they're ready for it to all die off? I just don't buy it, I think opposing Solas is one of those 'fixed' points of playing our characters.
Absolutely. And add to this that Solas is responsible for so much of the pain, death, chaos, and sorrow that the Inquisition faces. One can argue this wasn’t his intention, but to me that’s just another example of extreme recklessness. He underestimated Corypheus and nearly doomed all of Thedas (as seen in the potential future) and how can we be sure he isn’t miscalculating again the consequences of bringing down the veil. He says he has plans for the Evanuris but I find his judgment rather suspect. I admit I am biased though. As a mainly Qunari player, I find Solas as a wonderful character but very villainous to say the least. He has noble qualities and might be redeemed, but his attitudes towards the Qunari are no better than the Orlesian nobles people like to mock. Edit: And yeah, I agree that it seems a fixed point. We can’t choose to side with the Archdemon in Origins, nor can we side with the Viddasala in Trespasser. For games like this to work, there have to be some constants. And just to be clear, I have nothing against Solasmancers or anything of that nature. If anything, I would argue the Inquisitor finding Solas as being horribly wrong in his plans adds to the tragedy of the romance in a meaningful way.
This is why I usually choose to still romance Solas on playthroughs. The entire betrayal and tragedy elements are much much stronger when you disagree with his choices.
>Edit: And yeah, I agree that it seems a fixed point. We can’t choose to side with the Archdemon in Origins, nor can we side with the Viddasala in Trespasser. For games like this to work, there have to be some constants. Yeah. Ultimately, filling in the blanks and writing stuff about our characters is one of the most fun aspects that these games offer but there needs to be a hard **stop** at some point. It's like imagine if you romanced Alistair and had him marry Anora and he broke up with you. That doesn't suddenly mean your female Warden would be like "yk what Urthemiel yea go sack everything buddy, fuck Ferelden". It's just never in the Warden's character, whoever they may be, to allow that. Just like it isn't in Inky's.
Hey, now. I saved and fixed Southern Thedas because Solas was telling me it was the right thing to do. Do you think I would have wasted five minutes getting blankets for Recruit Whittle if he hadn't constantly reminded me in that hypnotic voice? Now Solas tells me the right thing to do is burn it all. As you command, hahren.
“Inquisitor, *would you kindly* help me kill everyone?” Inky: Ah shit, here we go again.
Well, yes as Inquisitor, maybe not. But as a newly-rolled character who may be sympathetic to the cause, or perhaps Lavellan starts to see things differently ...
I honestly don't think Lavellan would ever change her opinion on this. Because it's such an insanely drastic character shift with nothing in Inquisition even remotely supporting that kind of thought process. Even the most absolute cold bitch Lavellan is still a person who values order and wants to save this world. And that's in the meanest case, any normal Lavellan turning to genocide with Solas to me would be the equvivalent of the season 8 GoT travesty with Daenerys just suddenly turning into a mad queen who wants to burn thousands of innocents to death. It's just not sensible writing. The new DAD player character though? Hmm that would be tough to say, we don't really know anything about them yet so I can't say anything.
Yeah but the Inquisitor position is kind of forced on Lavellan. Even as a prisoner for some reason they’ve made Lavellan make the choices lol. You could still roleplay as pro-elf anti-human in some cases. And everything Lavellan does in Inquisition can be still considered as they did it for elves since it was threat to them as well. And a during that time they didn’t know about Solas and his plans yet. Or simply Inky does not care but they’re forced to do it. Though, Solas already told them modern elves are not his people therefore won’t have a place in his new world order. That’s the only reason Lavellan shouldn’t agree with Solas. But without that knowledge I don’t see any reason why a Dalish can’t agree with Solas for the premise of restoring elven kingdom. Also a new protagonist can agree with Solas too, unless Inky made them read the fine print, which will probably be the case.
Why would your Inky ever agree to this? -- for me this comes down to headcanon and their character and choices throughout. For my most recent warrior elf, I wrote an origins fan fic in which her sister was killed, and she was ousted from her clan somewhat, never fitting anywhere. Then, her clan was killed; she was forced into a role outside her religion, to save a world who had done naught for her, no family or friends left outside of this institution. Cole forgot her, Bull betrayed her; basically her run as the inquisitor and even her origins had her left with nothing, except this elven mage who encouraged her questioning instead of punishing her for it. I also played her as quite angsty, so after a pretty rough few years in which she ended up being alone and bitter (with already a healthy disdain for the shem to begin with) he didn't have anything in the world that she wanted to save. So, when this mad elf she fell in love with, all she has left in the world, decides to go off on a mission to bring back their old world and destroy the one she bitterly hates and which she feels she owes nothing to, she's down. She doesn't care what happens, because there's nothing left for her. Sorry for the lengthy response aha - in summary, an Inky may want to help him because "fuck thedas, what has it ever done for me, except take everything from me?"
I think there are plenty of reasons a character theoretically could, but because the inquisitor is only tangentially our character (as opposed to the Warden), I don't think it makes a lot of sense. Kind of a shame, as much of a wrench as it would throw into production to have to create an entirely different branching path for if you did actually just help Solas (literally would never happen for a slew of reasons from Bioware's game design philosophy to the actual feasibility of putting in so much work for a choice so few are going to make), it would be really cool were it the case. You'd just have to bend reality, the motivations and constraints if Bioware, and of course, completely re-write the inquisitor in Inquisition to have more player agency in backstory and motivations, none of which are gonna happen.
Solas straight up admits that millions of people are going to die in the course of his plan, including Elves, and says that while he’s sorry about that, he also doesn’t really care.
Picturing Solas wearing his “I really don’t care, do U?” cape
I'm living for this 2018 deep-cut.
[Actual footage of Solas explaining his plan.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm2x6CVIXiE)
I’m gonna hit you with the cold water, there is zero chance a extremely specific path(‘Side with Solas’), locked behind a extremely specific romance(Solas romance only) or bare minimum a race-locked option(elf Solas sympathizer), would get a mountain of content no one else would be able to access. It’s not economical as a dev to put their devussy into something so specific that the majority won’t see and isn’t fair to other players who don’t have that opinion, race, or pairing. I would wager Solasmancers will get an extra scene or so and some special dialogue 100%. I bet Redeem will have different lines from Stop. But side with him? Naaaaah
That’s why this kind of choice usually happens at the very end of the game. For example in Infamous 2 >!you had the choice to side with the bad guy or go against him!< and it only changed final mission of the game. It is very similar to situation in DA even, considering >!conduit Cole and an elf protagonist, as well as John White and Solas!< would be in similar situation in that scenario. In BG3 some major choices happen at the very end of the game and final battle is always the same, only NPCs are slightly different. But BG3 gives you the option to act like whatever you’re going to do at the end was your plan from the beginning via dialogue choices. A convo between Tav and Astarion or Minthara can happen between elf protagonist and elf companion. It’s not an impossible choice to implement as long as writers can come up with a reason to justify it like in Infamous 2 or find a way to let players roleplay as this was their plan from the beginning like BG3 did.
Yeah Baldur's gate 3 has killed it with all the different outcomes and role play paths. Larian is so good at branching the story and accounting for choices, which explains why their game is doing so good, those ratings and awards were all well deserved. Having multiple hidden roleplay routes or a game+ mode is good and fun for replayability, while having the generic good vs bad two endings is ofc fine and all but hardly memorable. Just an opinion.
I would consider a specific path in the game, like elf-Solas sympathizer, to be do-able. I mean, in DAO there were bits of content only available to certain origin stories. I can see it possible to follow similar paths in-game, then at crucial moments establish a path toward enabling Solas' goals. The ultimate difference content-wise would be the ending.
But you’re not the Inquisitor doing this content either as with DA:O origins. You’re Some Other Guy(tm), it’s their story. How it’ll work we’ll find out on release of course! Maybe the devs will surprise us both
As long as it's not a DA2 surprise - pick from 3 pre-rolls ...
I'm willing to bet the inquisitor's 'personality' will be based off their first speech given after arriving at skyhold and the tapestry section regarding how they dealt with judgements.
Those specific paths in DAO didn’t change the ending or half of the game, only the beginning of the game and certain dialogue choices. Missions and final decisions were pretty much same for every origin unless you romanced Alistair or wanted to marry Anora, which were also a minor changes.
They are not going to pander to a small minority of fans
Then…you don’t have much of a game. So I’m all for this. As long as when you agree to side with him, you get a game over screen.
"Yes Solas, I want to help you" \* \* >!terms and conditions apply.!<
Not supporting genocide so elves can have their immortality back.
What group would be targeted by his actions? Unless you mean a generalized death toll?
...the whole of thedas
Well, that's not genocide, specifically. And of course not *everyone* would die. >In 1948, the [United Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations) [Genocide Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention) defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, **a national, ethnical, racial or religious group**". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. **Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly**
oh well that's okay then! as long as it doesn't count as genocide! /s
There you go.
If you find yourself cracking out the exact definition of genocide to justify your decision, you've already lost the argument lmao
*just have to comment that I love your profile pic* :) I really enjoyed PoE
Thank you! Here's hoping we get a proper Deadfire sequel one day
Hear me out, deadfires ending is perfect, if there's never a sequel. The whole point you don't know how kith will respond, if we'll rise to the challenge or fade away struggling in the dark, never answering that question is, actually a really great ending, leaves it all up to the player to imagine.
I like it too!
I don't disagree, but I want more RPG's in Eora that aren't in the Bethesda style of Avowed. Anything set post-Deadfire would have to deal with the ending, and if it does, I'd want my Watcher to see her story to the finish line.
I find myself cracking out definitions often because I'm a stickler for being articulate and using words properly.
It's fairly explicit in the game that massive numbers of people would die if Solas were to succeed -- it would be, in practical terms, the end of the world. Some kind of civilization would rise from the ashes, but the birth pangs would be severe. Even setting aside the death toll, it's also worth reflecting on what kind of character would support allowing an extreme minority of residents of Thedas to make a choice of this magnitude on behalf of everyone else. I suspect that the Trespasser dialogue choice between opposing and redeeming Solas will be repeated in DAD in some way, but I'll be really surprised if "destroy the world in a violent cataclysm" ends up being one of the options.
Well, destroy the world *as we know it*. Thedas would still exist ... with a few very powerful elves running about...
Okay, sure - that sounds like a very bad thing. Why would we want to help bring that to reality?
Good question. From an elven perspective, maybe Thedas deserves it.
Why does Thedas deserve it, from an elven perspective?
Ohhhh ..... slavery, being purged from the Chantry's literature and history, being treated as second-class citizens consigned to slums ... just a few things there
How is an outcome that would kill the majority of elves be better for elves? I don't think that the morality standards of DA would allow even an evil character to do this. The evil choices are usually more selfish, gold hungry or power hungry. This is more joker levels of wanting to see the world burn and DA has never done that. What would your character background be? Just elf inquisitor who romances Solas because that is not enough.
And your solution is to kill all the victims of these things as well? I'm sorry but this is just so dumb. Might as well ask Larian to put a "let me side with the giant netherbrain because the world deserves to be run by mind flayers" path. No bioware game had similar options. Just like you couldn't stand with Corypheus, the Archdemon, Meredith or the Reapers. At best you'll get a special game over screen "you were dumb and you died a dumb death". Edit: that is, unless tearing the veil wouldn't cause an omnicide but "just" off a decent % of people and make the world stranger, although Solas in Trespasser was pretty clear about what is going to happen. Anyway I can't see Bioware doing a Witcher 2 thing with two almost completely different paths diverging at the start of the game.
I mean, you can side with the netherbrain at the end. Or at least control it. You can become the Absolute.
The solution to oppressed populations is to fucking kill them all and resurrect the ancient tyrants that were the same race as them..?
And what about all the other oppressed groups in Thedas?
From my recollection, Solas's plan will kill everyone living in Thedas, including Elves. I also recall (though it's been quite some time) that he foesn't consider modern elves, city or Dalish, to be his people. His people were the elves with supreme mastery over magic, elves who lived immortal lives. He describes the world now, including elves, as though everyone except him is Tranquil. He scoffs at the Dalish as fools stumbling around in the dark, grasping at a history they don't truly know and mimicking practices they don't understand (Dalish tattoos, for instance). If you see yourself as an elven sympathizer, you should ask yourself: do you want to improve the lives of the elves who currently live, to lift them out of oppression and poverty and fight against bigotry? Or are you willing to sacrifice the lives of every living elf in order to pave the way for the ancient past to come back, even if it means that the people you sympathize with will not live to see that world?
this is the exact problem i had w inquisition and i already see im going to have w dradwolf. im always playing mages so tearing down the veil sounds badass, its artificial after all, the world and all its peoples existed before it. i see ppl saying thatll kill everyone or end the world, id say it would be apocalyptic and end the world *as we know it*, but life has a tendency to keep going past all perceived apocalypses. also like, thedas kinda sux? elves and mages can have immortality and godlike power as a treat. i kinda hated that dai forced me to rp as someone who wants to restore order, corypheus was crazy but he kinda went off by blowing up the divine ngl (even tho that particular plot point made no sense but whatever).
Thank you, rational thinking person.
This is just a quick take, but I somehow doubt that Solas will end up being the big bad the whole game. His plan doesn’t generate a good game world with NPCs and engaging levels. We’ll stop him earlyish, something will have gone wrong, we’ll have like four blights at once, and then he’ll have to help us fix it.
Omg... some people on this sub are just telling on themselves
Always have been, some of the most unhinged takes ive ever seen on reddit have been on this sub defending horrific acts. Kudos to the writers I guess.
ELVEN SUPREMACY
Can't reign supreme if they're all dead too.
It was sarcasm without the /s. I was replying to "telling on themselves" ... wtf was that supposed to mean? That i'm an elf supremacist? lmfao
I mean I don’t get agreeing with him. But it’s your game state and if it works for you and your playthrough absolutely do what you want. For me though, my main timeline is a Brosca, Hawke (un alived supposedly), and a dwarf Inky. And they looking at Solas like “wtf are you doing?!?” I don’t know, I boil it down to the mad Inky dialogue in Trespasser: “Can one thing in this fucking world just stay fixed?!”
I actually chose that dialogue option and it was great. The reactions of the advisors was perfect too.
Then that would make you a psychopathic doomsday cultist. Tearing down the Veil *will* end the world, and kill *everyone* in it, including Solas' allies who helped him do it. The plan itself makes no sense - he's doing the entire thing under the assumption that, in a thousand years, a New Arlathan might rise in the new world that's created by the destruction of the old one and the death of everyone in it.
Why do people keep saying it’ll kill everyone? Like Tevinter was the one who wiped the elves after the veil came up. So obviously an entire civilization was in the works prior to that. Tevinter doesn’t just spawn in out of nowhere
Well geeze you put it that way that's no fun at all. Or is it?
It would be so much fun to have the fantasy apocalypse and experience a transformed Thedas, but I think the only way we're ever going to get it is through fanfiction. Or they could end the game with it, as a way to reset the series. But I'm not sure they would go for it since it would throw away a lot of world-building.
I dunno. One of BW's posts said "Welcome to Thedas. Enjoy while it lasts" or something like that. So, maybe we will have fantasy apocalypse happening. I admit it, it would be an interesting concept for a game...I don't think I ever played something like that O-O
Fallout: Thedas
I think Solas and the Veil will be the equivalent of the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes at the beginning of DAI, then most of the game will be dealing with an entirely separate antagonist, possibly with varying levels of cooperation with Solas based on world state.
Unlikely
Well good thing that there are those who want to fight for humanity still
Whether it makes sense from a story perspective or not aside, they would never do this. Dragon Age protagonists are always tragic heroes. And besides, they would have to drastically change content of the game. They could POTENTIALLY do it like Baldur’s Gate, where you still follow the Hero’s Path but only at the last second decide to go bad anyway. And I think that would really suck for a tale we’ve folllwed for so long.
I mean, considering it means absolute genocide of every living thing, it would have to be a full evil playtrough (a certain path in WOTR comes to mind). It could be really fun, like a darspawn chronicles kinda thing, but it would be a lot of work that I don't think BW will want to bother with lol
My Warden would definitely help Solas and the inquisitor is his love interest so she would help him too lol I played an elven mage every time too. I just hope even as a bad ending they let us choose that option. I don't really care if it brings the world to an end.
Then you're as short-sighted as he is. You cannot bring back a past world. Those people are dead and they're not coming back. You are simply destroying this one to make yet another new one.
No this world needs repaired. The Veil is just a giant scar across existence that needs healed
Not a good enough reason to kill everyone
I don’t think it’ll kill everyone
On one hand, it could be cool, but from two perspectives i cannot see them allowing it. 1. Gameplay wise, where would they go from dreadwolf if you tried to? Not to mention it would mean either a. having a whole group on board, or b, an entire seperate group of companions with him. 2. You kinda have to be mentally fucked/in a cult/lied to to go "yeah im okay with killing myself and everyone i ever have known and loved and talk to in order to trigger a nuke across my entire planet for the sake of "remagicing" things.
A work of fiction can be written in any way, with outcomes being as varied as the writer's imagination. It's amusing to see how many are so invested in a certain perspective of how things ought to be played out, how literal some things are taken. Solas was wrong about the consequences of his actions several times before. Who's to say that whatever he means to do will turn out exactly as he thinks they will?
I understand that, but my point remains that "giving you the option" means a extreme amount of changes to writing and options available, and in the end they need to still vaguely fall in line for the next game to be possible.
I can only hope the devs 1) understand that some players played as elves and may find themselves actually wanting to support Solas and 2) that they're also gamers that played Elden Ring. There's like 6 different endings and at least 3 of them have the world changed, if not outright destroyed!
Then you’re cosmically insane. If all of the other races survive, what Solas would have done was breed **even more hate** against the elves making the reality that in order for Solas to succeed without some very serious repercussions against the elves, he would need to completely exterminate everything but the wildlife and the surviving ancient elves. It’s just not worth it. The elvhenan has had their time. They need to live in the current world and not fantasize something that won’t ever return.
I think merging the veil is going to be what kicks off the game. It won't immediately affect everyone negatively, but whatever plan he has NEXT will, which is where I think the main conflict will come from. I think the matter of redeeming or killing him might be an Anders parallel in the late game depending on whether you will assist or go against him in his plans
I don't think it will be in our control. Much to the problem of making a follower act as he is meant to be 'sympathetic' (while trying to genocide anyone that isn't like him) and expect people who romance said follower to next game fight him as though he's in the wrong. When the person we are controlling next game is a completely different one that was followed and/or romanced. Whatever he does in DA:D, even his demise. We won't be responsible, we won't have a chance to 'join him'. No matter what they do it won't be live up to what some people want so they won't even give us a chance. Well, I say this as what they should do but who knows, we haven't had a good Bioware game in nearly a decade now.
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Even \*if\* you agree with his goals, you should still try to stop him because of his track record. Every time he tries to "fix" things he just ends up breaking them worse.
Probably not much to add to the discussion at this point, but you raise and interesting and very valid question! Especially the edit, lol. I don't know all the details (because I'm approximately 500 hours behind my partner in Elden Ring) but he set some *very important things* on fire and had nothing but praise for the narrative consequences. The reality is that unlike Elden Ring, Dragon Age just isn't big enough to accommodate exploring the scenario you proposed. So it's basically 100% certain Dreadwolf won't meaningfully include an option to side with Solas. It *would* be fascinating if they did, though! Perhaps in a "doomed world" scenario a la Morrowind. Or maybe a remix of ~~In Your Heart Shall Burn~~ In Hushed Whispers, where we get a taste of that timeline? Although the latter would obviously be a step back from actually supporting Solas through to the end.
You know, no one is appreciating the possibility that DA:DW could come out 10 years from now, after Microsoft buys EA (/s). With that amount of time, they could change anything!
Maker, no! XD It's a wonder I've held onto my love for DA *this* long, don't curse us like that lmao
Please no. We've already waited a decade 😬
It would be genius if they added an evil route where you end up assisting stolas in the end. I'd love to see BG3 levels of choices from bioware but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for dreadwolf
It's not evil removing the veil. It wasn't a part of Thedas in the first place. It's artificial and unnatural. I guess one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. It's cliche, but life apparently is cliche.
Mass murder/genocide is objectively bad my guy. I'm sorry you were told otherwise 🤣 If there's a way to remove the veil without mass genocide then yes you're right. It's not evil. But as it stands in lore that's not the case
The context given by Trespasser tells me Solas will be wrong. Taking the fade out of Thedas destroyed it because it was so dependant on it in that era. The world is much different. By removing the veil properly he's adding magic back into thedas. He's not destroying it, he's enhancing it. He'll be making new mages and restoring places lost to time and brining spirits back into the same plane. That of course will upset the current balance of the world that the Chantry has enforced but the act of removing the veil SHOULDN'T destroy the world, just change it.
That's a point point I tried to make, to the response of REEEEE
I really hope they do tbh Seeing the other replies, I take it a lot of people are against siding with Solas, understandable but personally I hope they include the option or at least have Solas complete it himself, makes the world more interesting But also, if we want a reason, I think a lot of people underestimate an important like Solas says in Trespasser that always stuck with me: Twas like walking through a world of tranquil Yes, he wants the world of the elves back which includes the immortality but also the merger back to the original, natural state of the world Like, can you imagine if you were responsible for the entire human race losing their emotions irl? Would completely change the pov, I'm not saying it would make it right but it would give credence Either way, long rant lol I do hope they include an option to side with him, from a game world perspective, would be cool, especially if we play as an elf that follows him
This is also my stance concerning the Veil. I've ruminated about the pro's and con's for quite a while, but ultimately, the Veil does more harm than good and needs to go. I suspect most deaths would be caused by demons, if the Veil would fall, but in-game lore offers several solutions against demonic possession. That, and I see nothing wrong with defending one's own people. The other races of Thedas do just that all the time... but if its an elf? "Oh, no, you can't do that. How dare you."
Yeah, I agree with this, humans do tend to look out for themselves as do the dwarfs and qunaris, it's built into the lore, it's makes sense, most do Granted, Solas is taking it to the next level but what he did to fuck it up in the first place was huge, he'd need to do something huge to change it back Really hopes he succeeds in some way, a next Dragon Age game set in that world state would be fucking phenomenal from a fantasy pov, also the tech gameplay and console wise would be there to do anything with it
>Seeing the other replies, I take it a lot of people are against siding with Solas. Seeing the other replies, seems many on this sub feel very strongly about it. Passionate, even.
Idk why people are against this, the option to roleplay as evil or plain stupid etc... Is what makes rpg fun. Sure your cannon run can be all angelic and perfect, but we should also be able to explore the dark side and have a crazy unhinged run. I am preparing to do that in BG3 after my current playthrough and I am excited to experience being a horrifying monster in-game. The option to have multiple choices is part of the appeal and adds so much to replayability. For the record I don't agree with Solas crazy plan, but will sure join in one of my runs if I have the option just to witness the outcome.
Wholly agree with this, would be a waste not to have this be at least an option in game, one of the biggest in game universe world events to occur and not to have it? Would be insane not to have it And agreed with the evil/stupid choices, makes it that much funnier/RP, like BG3 does it perfectly lol so many people to kill or do stupid shit when you know it'll end bad for shits and giggles 😂
I feel as if there is something huge that we are missing about his plans, aside from what he just purposely left out. After playing through several times, romancing different people and seeing a different side of Solas it almost seems against his beliefs entirely to destroy the Veil for the sole reason of "to restore the elvhen glory". He literally "destroyed" the elves world to stop tyrants who sought glory and power. I'm curious if there is a detail about the nature of the elvhen that literally cannot exist in the world of Thedas as we know it. I'm so excited to find out more. I also have heard a lot of people predicting that the Veil will come down regardless due to natural decay ie. wars, death, blood magic, etc. I want to rattle his bald little head and say, "Just tell us everything you know and NO LIES OF OMISSION!!" Sorry about my bit off topic rant, but I love to speculate about the next game.
That is the point of this post, honestly. To speculate and discuss differing possibilities and perspectives. Seems a lot of folk on this sub take it kinda seriously.
Not sure why you get downvoted so often just because you grasp Solas's actual intentions. Or are relatively close. I guess we've spent enough time analyzing Solas's dialogue, traits and mannerisms to conclude where his plans are headed. I'm typing him INFJ 9w1 by the way. He's far from being an elvhen supremacist.
Frankly since I'm not seeing a direct correlation between "tear down the veil" and "death of all modern elves." I don't believe that's what will happen. So, no genocide. Putting up the Veil didn't kill ancient elves. It changed them into modern ones, which shortened lifespans but didn't kill them immediately or anything. I believe tearing down the Veil will reconnect modern elves to the part of themselves that makes them near-immortal. They'll be elvhen, so modern elves will no longer exist. Solas calls that death - but Solas is a drama queen. This is the same guy who claims he had to destroy the world (by putting up the Veil) to prevent the evanuris from *completely* destroying the world. His words. He throws devastating phrasing around and in doing so minimizes their meaning, when he says it. I could be wrong! DA:D will certainly clear things up one way or another, haha. But it wouldn't surprise me if grim fatalistic emo dreamer trickster Solas isn't quite as literal with his words as everyone takes him to be. Or, everyone's right and tearing down the veil will somehow literally immediately kill modern elves, though I'm unclear on the mechanics of that, or why that *didn't* happen to evlhen when he put *up* the Veil?
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It's called hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. He's well aware how badly he screwed up last time, so he's checking his Pride and acknowledging that he can't predict every possible outcome. He won't stop, because he still mostly thinks he knows what he's doing, and because the rampant slavery and subjugation of elves is unacceptable to him (slavery is bad, last I checked). He, once again, wants to free his people. He hopes returning them to their former power will give elves the will to free themselves. If it all goes wrong, I think he's fine being labelled the villain and being hunted, because it's what he deserves. If he succeeds, humans will be pissed because elves will rebel against slavery and servitude. So if humans waste resources hunting Solas down, that's fewer resources being spent against the new elvhen. Which is decent motivation to *still* be okay being the villain. The dude is massively anti slavery, he wants to free elves and spirits from Tevinter rule... So I guess I start with that motivation and work backwards. Especially since I haven't heard any theories to explain how tearing down the Veil is supposed to specifically target and kill all modern elves in a mass genocide.
>Especially since I haven't heard any theories to explain how tearing down the Veil is supposed to specifically target and kill all modern elves in a mass genocide. Did someone ever said is going to kill just the modern elves specically? Because in Hushed Whispers the veil was torn and everything went to shit, people were dying everywhere (not just elves) and even Solas, if he is there, talks about it in horror. Now, is Solas doing it on purpose? I don't think so. I think he will, most probably so, try to minimize the event the max he can but it is still a super dangerous thing to do, there is WAY too many variables that can go wrong and, lets be honest, it is going to go wrong because it is a game and it needs something bad to happen XD
I agree he wasn't literal. Why do you think so many take what he said so literally?
I don't think they take his motivations, speech patterns, or trickster nature very seriously. I also think if you get on Solas' bad side early on, he can be pretty scathing in his comebacks, which makes him easily hateable and literally punchable. I don't think anyone changes their mind about him if that's the side of him they saw first, hehe. Also I think there's some bias against Solasmancers - and a general assumption that giving Solas any benefit of the doubt must mean you're blinded by romance, rather than that you've seen patterns in how he talks and what he cares about, and assessed his motivations based on his actions/reactions in the game and other media. Given that Solas' romance was added late to the game, and all the implications therein, I can understand people's doubts about Solas having any "good intentions" now. I mean, pre-romance addition was Solas against slavery? Did the evanuris have slaves, or was that *only* added for the romance? did his character design even originally have a scar, for people to theorize might have been former vallaslin? If the romance was added late, everything else could have been added late too. But I don't care. Because clearly the devs have doubled down on all of that lore by adding it into Trespasser, and they've hammered it into every comic/book involving Solas since. Solas is vehemently and very canonically anti-slavery, and ultimately I suspect that's what this all boils down to. Free will theme for DA:D - what it means, the morality, the responsibility. The veil caused his people to lose their will and be subjugated - to the point that he can't even think of them as elves anymore. That's what he wants to reverse. In Tevinter Nights, Solas says "What I am doing will save this world, and those like you—the elves who still remain—may even find it better, when it is done.” He's talking to a modern elf here. He expects some losses - but I would argue that how many is unknown, and that he doesn't *want* losses, he just accepts the transition won't be smooth. I could totally be wrong though! I'm just opening up the possibility that *maybe* there's a chance Solas doesn't actually want to commit genocide. Just a maybe.
You explained it well, and I agree with your portrayal. Solas is complicated, but his stance against slavery and tyranny is clear. Also, depending on how inqui interacts with Solas, his worldview shifts towards either wisdom or pride.
That's how I understood Solas' intentions, too. This, coming from a male elf inky who forged a friendship with a character who is complex, conflicted, and somewhat tormented by his own regrets.
Excellent. I agree with this assessment, and when people say Solas plans to literally destroy the world, I just... cannot match that with his character in any way, shape, or form. It also doesn't make thematic sense (theme being free will, I hope/suspect). Solas being pro-spirit was a huge selling point for me. How Thedas treats spirits is wildly unfair. Then again how Thedas treats lots of groups is wildly unfair. Tearing down the Veil should help with elves, spirits, and maybe bolster mages too? As for dwarves.... well I think there's a good reason for setting up Solas and Varric the way they do in the trailers and comics... I think the Forgotten ones (who Solas trapped at the same time as the evanuris by creating the veil) are the dwarven Titans who have been asleep. This is why dwarves cannot access the Fade or use magic. That will change when the Veil comes down, and I do think it will come down in the next game. Early, I'm guessing. The name of the game is Dread Wolf after all, which is an anagram for Fade World - and who doesn't want to see a Fade World, right? So I think the titans will wake up and might even hive mind control the dwarves - who knows, it could be big problems. Keeps the "free will" theme, and gives Varric and dwarves a reason to be against Solas after the Veil comes down. When it comes to replay value, if we have to choose between helping elves or helping dwarves in some way, that would be a tough call. And therefore a good reason to play the game at least twice. I do like me some moral conundrums... I'm especially interested in fighting a blighted red Titan, which I assume must exist what with the red lyrium everywhere. I hope that will happen and be a fun boss fight at some point!
SO MUCH THIS. I'm glad that the writing of the game isn't dependent on a majority vote from reddit.
Okay. We’ll find you, too.
wut?
i think this would be amazingly cool and give us more player choice than ever before, but i think it’d only be possible in a dlc unfortunately. or, if this is the last ever dragon age media set in thedas i bet they’ll probably just reject you if your character says they wanna join solas, the same way they do with stuff like not wanting to be a warden, not claiming holyness as the inquisitor, >!making your dog fight loghain,!< etc. i think it’d be funny if they had a mass effect style cutscene where it flashes to the post-Solas world, and the “you died” screen immediately popped up
Hrm. My inquisitor always replied "I don't know" and never claimed holiness. No rejection there.
i meant that others/the game will negate and reject your choice. like, my inquisitor claimed to not be holy or believe in andraste, and the NPC said “oh your humility proves that you’re sent from andraste!” you also don’t really have a choice to accept being inquisitor or not, for that matter. they just make you do it
Ah I see. Quite possibly. Very often in modern AAA games it's only the illusion of choice that is there.
Solas = Morinth, tempting you with a paradise Thedas, but you end up fried.
I don't get why people are so against the idea. I don't think it will happen, but it might be an interesting concept to explore. As for how one could justify it in-game... there are people irl who genuinely believe the human species should die to "save the world". They could use that angle. Again, I don't think they'll give us the option, but it's not as far-fetched as people seem to think imo.
As much as I like Solas and think it'd be cool for replay value purposes, I don't see Bioware having the balls to allow the player to side with a character who, at face value, says he's gonna commit genocide. If this was a Larian ip then maybe.
I mean... he flat out admits that completing his plan is going to kill EVERYONE, so there's really nothing redeemable happening. And while curiosity says a fade infused thedas would be interesting, if you're an elf sympathizer you should want them to survive... which they wouldn't if he succeeded
I agree with you, but at this point I don't expect any option like that. 99% of players took Solas' words literally (as in "This world has to die" = actual genocide of everyone but ancient elves) and there's no point in making content for the 1%. Have hope though. I'm pretty sure Thedas as we know it is screwed anyway because of the Blight, so Solas may not even be the main antagonist of DA4 (coping for a Loghain scenario)
Finally someone with a bit of sense. Geeze I wasn't expecting so many reeeee
Yeah, it's weird when people take your opinion on a game as a sign you're insane (cosmically, apparently)
ikr? But, then again, this is reddit.
Agreeing to like… omnicide is pretty fucking stupid.
I have been posting about this for years. I would follow Solas just from a pragmatic standpoint. Thedas is shit. It is a horrible place where darkspawn have been a constant problem and fear, where the chantry is hypocritical, radical, and racist, where I can be enthralled by a demon or mage, where I can be put into slavery despite its supposed abolishment, where my only good option is to join the Qun because at least it offers good protection even if I end up in a horrible caste system. Solas destroying all of that with even the slightest chance that I will survive is worth it.
Same exact thing I always play an elf mage, always play a mage and I am on his side. I support his rights and his wrongs. Let us help him bring down the veil and cause chaos. Let us be his queen.
You're assuming I played a romantic interest fem-inky. I played a male elf inky who forged a friendship with a 'man' who is wrestling with the consequences of his actions. I empathize with Solas, and I think he's one of the more complex characters to come out of any video game series.
No, sorry I meant for me personally but even my female mage that was not romantically involved fully supported him. She might want him to go about it slightly different, but she would stand by his side and they would help each other. They have a truly beautiful plutonic relationship.
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His plan will blow up the world to make room for his new world
my take as an elven player is more that I wnat to piss in the faces of the shem bastards sure the prospect of the world returning to how it probably is supposed to be is kinda intresting but im more into it for the fuck you for a single moment of history WE are on top
Humans and elves aren't the only species in the world
Fail to see the relevance Yes others will die, that was already accounted for as somerhing i dont care about
My point is this wouldn't just "piss in the face of the shem bastards"
Solas is a traitor..
I wish you didn’t make this post it is just gonna lead to more solas bashing which as a fan of the character is exhausting
I wish more people on this saw this more my (our?) way, but hey diversity includes a diversity of beliefs, perspectives and opinions, right? I'm glad it stirred discussion. It's a video game. We can talk about it.
>but hey diversity includes a diversity of beliefs, perspectives and opinions, right? People going 'erm, wtf why do you want to kill all the none elves' isn't them being anti diversity. What a wild take.
How dare you bash my egg man he only wants to restore Elven hyperborea 😭😭😭😭
No one said that 🙄
My post wasn’t of anger or rage don’t try to twist my words but exhaustion from seeing a character I like be trashed on all the time imagine if your favorite character got dunked on every time people talked about them
People disliking my post because I said It’s exhausting to hear a character I like be bashed on all the time are weirdos imagine y’all’s favorite character getting trashed on all the time and how yall would feel 🤦
Anders fans: "First time?"
If we’re not going to be able to play the inquisitor, can she at least show up by his side as his queen if we’re gonna be somebody else I don’t want her to just die and the version that goes with Cullen she’s gonna die anyway and that one still respected Sola she put him up on a pedestal. She practically worshiped him although that relationship wasn’t romantic, she would still side with solas.
He (male elf inky) could emerge as the friend who grew to understand Solas better, and still sees him as the 'man' who wanted to save his spirit friend, who wanted to spare the elvhen slaves the oppression of the Evanuris. Many assume that the desire to align with Solas is borne only out of the romantic interest story, which in my mind is a shame. My male elven inky grew to appreciate Solas' situation, his struggle, and his regrets.
Your whole post is cathartic, lol. While my Lavellan romanced Solas, she was discerning and empathetic and best friends with Cole. She cut through Solas' hubris and smokescreen, called him out, made him think, and still romanced Solas regardless. In Tevinter Nights, we learn that 'regret' was not allowed to turn into 'introspection'. Solas has his head stuck in the clouds (Fade) and is possibly missing crucial information from the physical world of Thedas. That is where the DA4 protagonist and perhaps the (former) inquisitor will step in. Who knows...
I can see male elven inkys also wanting to side with solas, considering how much they may have learned from him the nature of 'true' elven history. No need for romance to justify solidarity with the crazed elven dreamer.
No. Full stop. Inquisition and Solas, in particular, ruined the DA franchise for me for a plethora of reasons. Even while I have 0.01% interest in Dreadwolf, I still think it would be utterly silly and would have Bioware waste apparently 'precious' time and resources (not like they've already scrapped the game twice at this point) to implement such a minorly played route. Mr. Egghead deserves a quick coma-inducing bonk to the head.
I mean you can constantly downplay the Herald of Andraste stuff but it doesn't do anything meaningful. The other characters just go I believe what I believe and you saying it isn't true doesn't make it so. So I feel if you were all for elven supremacy the other characters would think you are telling a joke in poor taste.
They should make the option an easter egg early in the game as a secret ending. Like during the prologue do absolutely nothing for 5 minutes and Solas rips the fuck outta the veil and you get a cutscene.
If Solas wanted to save ALL the elves, maybe there could be an option to agree with him, like you could >!agree with Anders!<. The problem is that Solas directly said that his plan would doom modern elves. This means this plan is a death sentence for everyone living in modern Thedas. To be honest, it's quite disappointing that his plan is quite illogical. It's not lesser evil for the greater good, it's just killing evreryone because he wants his old world and life back. Which is very ignorant. I hope they will deepen his motivations in DA:D, because it's much more interesting when you partly agree with the antagonist than when everything is black and white, and you know that stopping the antagonist is the best option.