Let you kill Duncan

[tinylewtgriffon]

I'm honestly siding with Duncan on this thing. Sure, it's too bad that Danith (or whatever) died and Jory became a coward, but seriously, if the GW are going to kill you if you don't, just do it! In I think all cases, Duncan saves your life, so you have to be greatful. He was reluctant to kill Jory anyway... :bunny:

[Alehazar]

I'm honestly siding with Duncan on this thing. Sure, it's too bad that Danith (or whatever) died and Jory became a coward, but seriously, if the GW are going to kill you if you don't, just do it! In I think all cases, Duncan saves your life, so you have to be greatful. He was reluctant to kill Jory anyway... :bunny:

 

The way I see it, Duncan is no better than Loghain; both men seem to believe that the end justifies the means. And they are both under the impression they are fighting for the right cause. It's simply a matter of personal preference or opinion whether or not you tend to agree or side with either one of them. Since Loghain does his best to see you dead, it is pretty hard to sympathize with him. But Duncan is willing to sacrifice everything and employ any means to stop the Blight. At the start of the Landsmeet Arl Eamon asks the gathered nobles whether "... we should sacrifice everything good about our nation, in order to save it?". Loghain is willing to destroy Ferelden in order to save it, as he cannot grasp the necessity of the Grey Wardens. Duncan is a lot like Branka, throwing all of his resources at the Blight, no matter the cost. If that's the attitude you need to adopt to be a Grey Warden.... I guess that Survival of the species tends to instinctively override any sense of moral value.

 

As for Duncan saving my life; as a Dalish Elf -and I tend to roleplay this to the hilt- I choose to let my character have a cultural dislike and strong resentment of humans. Since I'm diseased, it is my choice to stay with my clan and die (hoping one will show mercy and end my life when the suffering becomes too great) than to travel into the human lands under the guidance of a human. Since Duncan denies me my own choice I hate his guts ("You'll pay for this human!") and I also cease to have any kinship with the Dalish, as the Keeper decided to cast me out, even when I begged her not to.

 

As a Dwarf Commoner, I can see that leaving my sister is hard, but at least I can live a life on the surface where my brand has no effect on anyone up there; so while hesitant to live my sister, I am severely enticed by the prospect of a life where I'm no longer necessarily at the bottom of the hierarchy. So going with Duncan seems the best option. Opportunity awaits.

 

As a Dwarf Noble -it is my personal way of playing- I simply refuse to let the Orzammar politics dictate my actions. I'm a Noble, and I shall act as one; sailing on my own personal moral compass, to do what I feel is right, as opposed to doing things soley for my personal benefit. Joining the Grey Wardens is initially not my choice -when talking to Duncan in the throne room; "my place is in Orzammar". But after my Exile, Duncan offers me a new purpose: to become a Grey Warden and use my skills to protect and serve. So I'm both honored and grateful to be accepted into the Grey Warden.

 

As a Mage -Elf or Human- I accept the burden of my magic abilities and try to use them to help people. While I'm sad to leave the Tower, I will accept my new role as Grey Warden with dignity. My mage is humble and would have accepted the Knight Commander's punishment -I always help Jowan and Lily- if Duncan had not intervened.

 

As a City Elf, I very much dislike the humans, bordering on hatred; but usually this attitude changes along the way. Not all humans are the same (yadda, yadda) and while some are very despicable, a lot more are nice and polite.

 

My human noble is either dedicated to do what is right, or dedicated to her vengeance; so she's either grateful to Duncan, or she sees him as a mere convenience to survive so she can plan her revenge on Rendon Howe -in that last scenario the Blight is secondary to retribution.

 

So according to the Origin story I play, I'm either grateful to Duncan or I curse his name.

 

Most of my characters are shocked when he kills Jory and they always wonder why no one saw that Jory misunderstood what joining the Wardens would mean to his family life -and then subsequently decided not to recruit him; he doesn't have what it takes, he is not willing to give up his wife and unborn child to join. It seems cruel that while his intentions were noble, his failure to grasp the consequences of joining the Grey Wardens lead to his demise.

 

It would have been nice to have had the option to visit Jory's widow and tell her that her husband was a valiant man and that his love for her superseded his sense of duty; it's an image, while less heroic -self sacrifice and all- I find a kind of beautiful.

 

Alehazar

[DarkeWolf]

Yes, it become clear towards the end of the game why the warden's have to drink the darkspawn blood to become wardens. so be patient till then.

 

Ok, so lets look at this from another angle. If Jory is too much of a coward to face the possibility of death, what good is he in a fight? If he's such a puss about a goblet of blood, whats he gonna do when he has an enormous dragon to face? Soiled shorts may be funny in a lockerroom, but on the battlefield they just mix in with all the other crap.

Alistaire said something to the effect of getting zapped into a frog while in the Wilds. Its too bad Morrigan didnt turn him into a chicken. Cause that's what he was, and then we could have at least fried him up for dinner.

 

The wardens have a saying. "We are Wardens. We make the hard choices. We make the sacrifices. We do the things that others shouldnt have to."

 

Dude, if this gets you so riled up, stop playing, now. I'm dead serious. If this is something that you're seeing and its getting you so pissed off, stop now, cause there's a lot more of it in here. Seriously.

[Alehazar]

Ok, so lets look at this from another angle. If Jory is too much of a coward to face the possibility of death, what good is he in a fight? If he's such a puss about a goblet of blood, whats he gonna do when he has an enormous dragon to face? Soiled shorts may be funny in a lockerroom, but on the battlefield they just mix in with all the other crap.

Alistaire said something to the effect of getting zapped into a frog while in the Wilds. Its too bad Morrigan didnt turn him into a chicken. Cause that's what he was, and then we could have at least fried him up for dinner.

 

From another perspective, Jory seems like someone who likes heroism, but does not want to do things he considers "reckless and foolish" (in the Korcari Wilds after the Dying Soldier is helped on his way). Also seeing the Darkspawn up close, fighitng them and getting sprayed by their blood may make any man queasy and apprehensive to drink the "blood of those monstrous creatures".

Still, all things considered, Duncan made a mistake in recruiting Jory. He should have seen or noticed that Jory lacks a whole lot characteristics and traits that are almost mandatory for a good candidate.

- Jory believes he can get recruited and still return to his wife once the Blight has been quelled; that should have clinched it already not to recruit him. During the Joining ritual it starts to dawn on him that he might die here and now, so he will never see his wife (and child) again, he simply loses it completely.

- Jory is hesitant and doubtful in his general demeanor and tends to question almost every course of action. In a safe and secluded place, that's all fine and dandy, but in the heat of battle that's going to get people killed.

- Jory did not seem to mind Morrigan or her alleged Witch of the Wild status; it was Daveth who completely lost it; Jory even responded to Daveth's lament "She'll put us all in the pot, she will": "If the pot's warmer than this forest, it'd be a welcome change!".

- Flemeth already hints that Jory is soon to die: when Daveth comments that they shouldn't be talking to her, because she's a witch, Jory remarks "Quiet Daveth, if she's really a witch do you want to make her mad?"

Flemeth responds: "Now there's a smart lad, sadly irrelevant in the things to come"; I'm paraphrasing.

 

So basically -in a nutshell- Duncana scr*wed up by recruiting Jory. Which makes it obvious that Duncan is merely human and capable of making mistakes.

 

Anyway this discussion seems to have outgrown the Modding Request section.

[Nocens]

I understand the need to play your character, and not every character fits into every plot. But a game is always made with a storyline in mind. In this case, to play a Gray Warden, someone part of an ancient order with mysterious origins that has fallen out of grace, as of late, and trying to save the world in spite of how some now loathe you and think of you as traitors. If you’re just a regular hero, it sort of doesn’t make any sense or doesn’t have a point anymore. There are plenty of regular-hero-games, but this one, you’re a Grey Warden in, end of story.

 

I was also struck by how cruel the initiation was, how harsh the recruiting was, but I thought it fit the world marvellously. Duncan seems to often have to do things in an underhanded way to get the best recruits. I get that. He was looking for the right people, regardless of who he had to step over in the process. With the world at stake, I can see how he can accept some casualties. It’s a game of great greyscales, and I love it. Loghain isn’t necessarily that much more evil than Duncan is. Your character isn’t always doing the ‘good’ thing, heck, so many places where I paused and thought, uhh, what now? If I do this, I’m sort of a b*tch, but if I do THAT… I’m sort of worse, argh!

 

If you’re playing a character that doesn’t want to be that hero, or even that anti-hero (because there certainly are some choices you can make along the way that are everything but heroic), then you need to get that player into another game, it won’t fit into Dragon Age. Even back in the good old pen’n’paper days, most game masters I came across had a storyline in mind, somewhere they were guiding the player towards, and a lot of choices were taken away from the player (that wasn’t how I ‘GM’d’, but it was usually the case).

 

Dragon Age has options, you can take different roads at different points, but it still steers you along in a certain way. On the other side of the spectrum, you have games like Morrowind (love it!) and Oblivion (not so splendid) where you can run about doing whatever you like… but the price of endless options is every option being less well thought out, and clumsier and with less intent behind it. I, too, felt frustrated among the dwarves but inciting a riot? Might as well add the option of regicide, putting yourself on the throne, putting Oghren on the throne, putting whoever on the throne, and suddenly it’s a whole game just getting the dwarves to join you, and who knows how many more options the programmers have to add and how many voice acting hours, and how many programming hours, just because you derail at a point in the story where you already have two choices. At this point in the gaming industry, you get either the full on super-freedom games like Oblivion, where you sacrifice story and actual interaction with characters for freedom, the in-between-games like Dragon’s Age where you have some freedom but more story and more interaction with what you’re offered, and then games like Mass Effect 2 where choice is left behind but the story becomes very vivid and almost movie-like. Maybe one day you can run around and do whatever you like in a game and have voice acting and depth and turn any corner, meet any person, and make whatever choice you like, (kill both kings-to-be, be the king, make someone else the king, incite riot, leave them kingless, force them to help anyway, etc, etc, and every idea someone might have that they think better than what the game already offers).

 

As far as I’m concerned, Dragon Age offers the most pleasing compromise so far. I’m happy to create a character that will sort of fit into the storyline, and won’t emo-storm-off when things aren’t going his or her way (shame on you, Alistair!).

[DarkeWolf]

Guys/Gals, I just want to point out that this is NOT the spoilers section, and the OP clearly has NOT finished the game yet..........

 

My question is how in the HECK did Jory ever get Knighted? What, did he rescue a Bann's cat from a tree or something??

 

Duncan effing up by picking him.... Either that, or it goes to show just how desperate the wardens are getting for cannon fodder. The other guy, I can kinda understand. A rogue, sitting in jail waiting around for them to carry out his death sentence.... pretty much exactly like Duncan when he was conscripted. (much different reasons for why he was sitting in the cell, but I wont go into that.)

 

Its.....funny that you guys should compare duncan and loghain. Both of their characters started off a LOT differently. And both of them did indeed sour over the years.

[tinylewtgriffon]

Wait, I thought Danith tried to steal from Duncan, but conscripted him just before the guards came or something. Either way, Danith is the better choice because he understood the risks and said he was will to sacrifce anything to stop the blight. If Jory had manned up, he might have lived, then we could have offered him to the dragon instead (lol) :bunny:

[DarkeWolf]

Wait, I thought Danith tried to steal from Duncan, but conscripted him just before the guards came or something. Either way, Danith is the better choice because he understood the risks and said he was will to sacrifce anything to stop the blight. If Jory had manned up, he might have lived, then we could have offered him to the dragon instead (lol) :bunny:

Oh yeah, you're right, sorry...my bad. Still, it was a trait that they'd had in common. Duncan was a thief growing up. And part of why he was sitting in jail was he got caught stealing. The guy he was stealing from happened to walk in, and caught him. They got into a fight, and Duncan ended up being forced to kill him. So he was sitting in jail waiting to be sentenced for murder when the wardens recruited him. It turned out that the man he killed, was a warden.

and the ring that he was caught stealing was to be an engagement ring that was going to be given to the warden that conscripted him!

For the full story on that, check out a book by David Gaider, called "The Calling". However you may wanna check out the novel "The Stolen Throne" first, because that one tells more about King Maric, who is also in the first book I mentioned.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA offering Jory to the dragon!!! I LIKE IT!!!! Good one!

Tho...that Would mean having to put up with him for the whole game. Nahhhhhhhh

[tinylewtgriffon]

Well we had to put up with Alistaire...naw, I like him, I just didn't like some of his whining. I could have standed Jory, hopefully he would have manned up by the time we offered him lol. As for reading the books, I don't think I could. I mean, it's bad enough I read the Infernal City and am waiting for the next one, but hey, I'm a nerd, maybe I will lol :bunny: