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therealdragonnerdagain · 7 years

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This is a retired gaming blog, blah, blah, blah. But I wanted to post this.

So I was playing Skyrim (Vilkas is a crappy follower -- Farkas is better) and for some reason, I started thinking about how I made that Loghain post about two (?) years ago and how Dragon Age fans misunderstood it.

I remember having some fans attack me, astonished and self-righteously outraged that I was "defending" a racist slaver. Meanwhile, other fans approached me in a friendly manner, shocked that I had apparently killed Loghain in the game even though I pitied him. These two groups were both under the impression that I liked Loghain, which was . . . utterly baffling to me.

It occurred to me that these fans must've been very young, because they were still thinking with a very black and white mentality. To them, pitying Loghain was equal to liking him (except it's not) and explaining why he did what he did in Origins was somehow the same as condoning his actions (again, it's not).

If I recall correctly, the purpose of my post was to recount Loghain's sins in a list where I explained why he committed each one through codexes, letters, and info I'd gathered in the game (working with Howe, Anora's schemes, etc).

Also, keep in mind that I always tended to write such posts after having taken my meds and right before going to bed, so they were often incoherent, drowsily written nonsense.

So ironic that I was accused of ableism while too out of my mind to write a decent post due to a medication for my MENTAL ILLNESS.

So ironic that I was accused of racism and condoning slavery, only to have my accuser turn around and make racist insults at me.

But whatever. Back to Loghain.

I think Alistair summed it up best when he said that people like Loghain and Anora think they're the only ones who can get anything done. Loghain thinking he was the only competent and trustworthy person in all of Feralden is half the reason Feralden nearly burned to the ground.

Yes, I pity Loghain. But, no, I don't like him. He's an asshole and I've never had a playthrough where I spared him (especially since I played elves so much).

I pity Loghain because he has PTSD and his wild paranoia was sad to watch. He truly believed Cailan was going to marry Celene when he clearly wasn't (something Inquisition and The Masked Empire only further proves -- Celene is queer, power-hungry, and in no way willing to marry a man) and if you take Loghain back to Ostagar, he rants and raves about Cailan's "betrayal" wildly. It reminds me of mentally ill people I knew personally.

So, yes. I pity Loghain because he is a broken soldier. And how could anyone have helped him? Thedas doesn't "do" mental illness well. As I mentioned on another post, Cullen is probably the first templar in (recent) history to open a rest home for broken soldiers.

What was more, Loghain had too much power. There was no one to stop him in the heights of his paranoia. Even Cailan couldn't do anything because he needed Loghain's help against the darkspawn.

Also, Anora would probably never speak to Cailan again if he sent her father away. I believe Cailan really loved Anora and was never going to marry Celene. Eamon (so high on having the king's ear) kept telling Cailan to find a new wife, and Cailan kept telling Eamon to mind his own business. So Eamon's letters, combined with the complete businesslike letters from Celene about an "alliance" both led Loghain -- in his feverish brain -- into believing his son-in-law was casting Anora aside, when nothing was farthest from the truth.

If you pay attention at Ostagar, Cailan is clearly annoyed by Loghain but can't be rid of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he suggested having Loghain retire to a chantry somewhere, only for Anora to become upset with him until he called it off. Remember, Anora practically worshiped her father.

Also, yes, I enjoy understanding the reasons why Loghain did what he did. That's because I'm a writer and I enjoy knowing the entire story. That does not mean I condone Loghain's actions.

I recall fans sneering on me for talking about gray morality and how the Gray Wardens were called GRAY WARDENS because gray morality is the entire theme of Dragon Age.

The fans were sneering on me because they thought I was using "gray morality" to excuse the elven slave trade. Only I wasn't. I never said it was right or necessary to sell the elves off to Teviner. In fact, it was completely unnecessary (when is slavery ever necessary?). And given the fact that my favorite Gray Warden was Kalian (and my second favorite was Mahariel) it was downright infuriating. (Kalian's father almost gets sold.)

Also, it wasn't Loghain that sold the elves. It was Howe, as theorized in another post of mine. Howe led a massacre against the elves after Tabris killed Vaughn, and when that wasn't enough to cow them, he used bio warfare and slavery to be rid of them. In fact, he did just about everything that has been done historically to people of color in real life -- why in FUCK would I excuse or condone this???

David Gaider stated on BSN (I believe the thread is gone now with the rest of the forums) that Loghain didn't even know what was happening in the alienage until you wave the slaver documents in his face during the landsmeet.

Loghain wasn't given a short stick by the plot. He was written wonderfully. He was written just well enough that you could pity him and hate him at the same time. And he felt very human. And very real. More real than Coryphshit, anyway.

Loghain had a full story arc with multiple outcomes. It's pretty much everything a fictional character in a video game could ask for. He wasn't given the short end of anything, in my humble opinion.

Even though Loghain wasn't directly (but was indirectly) responsible for the slave trade, he was still responsible for a lot of seedy shit. He was responsible for Uldred. He promised a man -- a slave -- his freedom, only to go back on that promise, which led to Uldred committing suicide by giving his body to a demon and wreaking havoc on the tower: the real Uldred was dead by the time the Warden arrived.

Loghain was also responsible for Redcliffe but couldn't be bothered to manipulate the Dalish into his control. No, they were already destroying themselves in a neat little plot about how the writers think white people aren't responsible for modern day oppression or whatever.

Anyway.

It's supposed to be ironic that Loghain depises the Gray Wardens and yet acts just like them, committing atrocities to do what is necessary (or what he THINKS is necessary) but not what is right. It's almost like the game was building up specifically for him to become a Gray Warden. Especially if you read the books, you can see what I mean. (The same kinda goes for Solas, though he's just a Loghain-expy anyway.)

My point is, fans of the game are too young to grasp its more mature themes, which reach beyond simple black and white ethics. Dragon Age: Origins is a world were nothing is black and white and nothing is supposed to be simple (again, not "condoning" slavery. Slavery is pretty simple: it's wrong). It's a world full of anti-heroes who do bad things to save the day.

Again, Howe wasn't doing something "necessary" in selling off elves, so I'm NOT talking about him when I speak about gray morality. I'm talking about Loghain, who firmly believed he was doing the right thing at Ostagar, even though he really wasn't. Loghain firmly believed that saving his troops and pulling them out would protect Ferelden, even if it meant sacrificing thousands of lives -- just as Solas believed sacrificing all those people on the mountain by tricking Corypheus into opening his foci was necessary to save his own people.

As a side note, it kind of pisses me off that Patrick Weekes wrote that segment for Solas where Solas talks about the battle at Ostagar being not so black and white. He tries to make it seem as if Loghain's actions could have actually been right in some way, but anyone who's paid close nerdy attention knows that Loghain was clearly WRONG. I believe this was done mostly to honor the player's interpretation but . . .

If Loghain hadn't barred the Orlesians from entering Ferelden, then pulled out his own troops, Ostagar would not have happened. Period.

During the first act of Inquisition, you can actually get in a fight with the quartermaster at Haven about Ostagar. It's another example of Patrick's Weeke's shitty writing, where he tries to get an emotional reaction from the audience by appealing to the player instead of the Inquisitor. He basically has no idea how to write for a video game and instead writes like this is a novel.

The Inquisitor has no reason to care so passionately about Loghain and Ostagar, while those of us who played Origins do. Yet the Inquisitor is so angry, they act as if they were there (because we were there) when they really shouldn't give a fuck. This is immersion breaking, also stupid, and Weekes uses this method to pull us into the story emotionally multiple times throughout the game: Morrigan's introduction where the Inquisitor is smiling at a dangerous stranger as if they know her, the popular and much loved Teagan being a jerk in order to play on our feelings (and again not the Inquisitor’s feelings), etc.

Loghain wanted desperately to keep the Orlesians out because the war against Orlais had left him paranoid and suffering PTSD. Orlesians raped his mother and killed his father. Orlesians mounted the heads of his family and friends on pikes. Orlesians made his life a living hell.

And it was so, so easy to blame everything on Cailan once he was dead, wasn't it? But I don't think Loghain was really even blaming Cailan out of power-hungry maliciousness: he actually believed Cailan was a stupid child (Calian's name even means child) and would forever see Cailan through the "father filter."

Loghain has a Fade nightmare that was cut from the game and buried in the game files. In it, he is trapped with child!Cailan in the Fade and is bogged down by guilt and anger. He will always see Cailan as a child and will hate himself for killing him, even while still hating Cailan.

Yes, Loghain hated Cailan, possibly because he was the child of Maric and Rowan, Rowan being the woman he loved. He believed Cailan was a little boy who wanted war and had miscalculated the battle, when in fact Cailan was pretending to want war to keep his troops in good spirits (Wynne confirms this). Cailan knew they were going to die at Ostagar thanks to Loghain -- this is why he sends you and Alistair to the tower. I think he might have even known Loghain was sabotaging the tower.

Again, all of this is mentioned in Return to Ostagar. Nothing about Ostagar was "morally gray" as Solas (and Patrick Weekes, who apparently doesn’t know the story) would have you believe.

And yet, while Loghain's actions were very wrong, he was also not the mad, evil, cartoony villain Alistair saw him as.

Loghain was a sick man who believed he was doing what was right: THAT is what makes this situation morally gray.

Also, Loghain's an asshole because he's racist. I recall one playthrough he called my Mahariel a wild elf, insinuating that she was worthless because she was Dalish. And even though he worked with the Dalish in the books, he and Maric never really treated them like people. The elves fought in the war to liberate Ferelden and then got all of nothing for it and went right back to being socially, religiously, economically oppressed (correct me if I'm wrong). Sounds a bit like the Revolutionary War, huh?

All those nobles at the landsmeet screaming about how Fereldens don't believe in slavery, as if oppression ends at whips and chains.That entire scene at the landsmeet was very realistic, actually. How many white people today think people of color aren't socially, economically oppressed and that oppression ended with slavery? They'v got freedom and don't even know what it is. But if it was suddenly taken away, they would know. Oh, they would know.

This grimdark crap is why I enjoy breaking the theme by playing a Warden who is not an anti-hero but a hero. Which means that Loghain always dies in my games because a hero would kill him, while a pragmatic anti-hero would make use of him.

The fact that Dragon Age: Origins is grimdark is what makes playing a shining hero so great. Dagna's line about the Gray Warden "It was a time of darkness, she was the only light" was perfect because of this.

I loved playing a hero who saved the day without resorting to pragmatism. I loved it simply because the real world doesn't work that way, and I wish desperately that it did; I wish that people could just be good for once.

I loved playing a hero and having Loghain realize my character was everything he should have been and everything he could not be. (Again, it's the same with Solas and a good, morally upstanding Inquisitor.)

That being said, I also believe a "good" Inquisitor would let Blackwall live. I believe the difference between Loghain and Blackwall is that while one has a chance to overcome his own darkness, the other does not. Loghain never goes on a killing spree again should you let him live, but he also has to live in misery the rest of his life. Frankly, I always viewed his execution as a mercy kill. And if you defeat him in combat, he pretty much asks you -- with a content smile -- to kill him.

The point I'm trying to make, what I'm getting at is this:

I suddenly understand why series with more "mature," thought-provoking themes like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have been dumbed down and watered down into childish, cartoony, bullcrap.

The fans are too young to get it.

That's not an insult. It's just the truth. We're all naive and inexperienced at least once in our lives. That's the very definition of youth.

Look at Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World. The first game -- while still a bit ridiculous, adolescent, and cliched -- at least has more mature, thought-provoking themes, situations that leave you questioning if you did the right thing. The second game is a bunch of adolescent whining, cringey cliches, and utter nonsense.

Dragon Age: Origins went from characters with depth, meaningful choices, and interesting npcs to Inquisition, the light-hearted, bubbly, bland, cliched, MMORPG/Skyrim wannabe, where your choices don’t matter and your own followers treat you like shit long after you’ve befriended them -- but only if you’re Dalish.

Mass Effect went from the same deal (mature themes, blah, blah, blah) to watered down . . . everything. Tactics, choices, any seriousness or depth was all replaced with button-mashing combat and campy comic book drivel (yeah, I went there). Though don't get me wrong: at least the combat for Mass Effect was fun across all three games.

It's like the writers went, "Fuck it. The audience wouldn't appreciate or grasp mature themes anyway!" and gave us a bunch of cartoonish, ridiculous shit.

I wish they’d stop. If young fans don’t get it, then they don’t get it. Why change your games when the audience is still the same?

#bioware critical #origins rant #loghain critical #dalish rant

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