Dragon Age 2 - Here be spoilers.

[Tannhauser]

I've kicked that derp-fueled, tatoo-wearing, marble-mouthed little blood mage to the curb.  EVERY mage says they can control blood magic.  They assure me in their most reasonable tones.  But when they bark their shin, or get de-friended on Facetome, it's NOW YOU WILL FEEL MY WRATH as they start to boil my blood.

I'm trying but I can't think of any blood mage that's had a happy ending.  Well, except me, I can control it.

[Koyasha]

Over the course of the series we actually know of three reasonable blood mages - Merrill, Jowan, and Avernus.  Jowan is perhaps the best example, since nothing he ever does that is bad is related to his blood magic.  He poisons the arl, which is something any servant would be able to do, and he didn't do the demon shit in Redcliffe.  And as far as we know he never even hurts anyone beyond brief incapacitation.  Everything bad that happens to him can, in fact, be attributed to other people's attitude toward blood magic, not anything he ever actually did with blood magic. 

Avernus makes some mistakes but, crucially important, spends a bloody lifetime doing all he can to fix his own mess.  Seriously, the man imprisons himself in a tower for well over a century with no human contact, just to keep the demons he unleashed from going rampant.  I mean, we're talking the kind of isolation that would break most people down to do anything just to have contact with people again, and he endures it for I'm not even sure how many years, just to make sure the demons don't run rampant and harm innocents.  He could have easily protected himself, let the demons wander off, then make his escape.

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[Bunk]

Finally finished, took about 40 hours or so.


Oh, minor gripe - could there have been just *one* cutscene where the bad person was about to kill an innocent person, and I didn't just stand there with my thumb up my ass while the victim died? How many times did they go that well? Game needed an interupt button to let me chuck my dagger between the bastard's eyes first.

[Koyasha]

Oh, minor gripe - could there have been just *one* cutscene where the bad person was about to kill an innocent person, and I didn't just stand there with my thumb up my ass while the victim died? How many times did they go that well? Game needed an interupt button to let me chuck my dagger between the bastard's eyes first.

That one really irritated me several times as well.

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[Khaldun]

[Sjofn]

I have a zero tolerance policy for blood mages. 

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best DA2 mod

[Rasix]

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[Koyasha]

[Sjofn]

I do not find Koyasha's list of blood mages compelling. I especially do not consider Avernnus a "good" blood mage, seeing as how he only stopped performing horrible medical experiments on his former comrades(!) because they all died. And then he sort of hopes you will PROVIDE HIM WITH NEW PEOPLE. He'll suck it up if you say no, but it's pretty clear he does not feel the tiniest bit bad about killing people For Science. Even if he fought beside them. Oh, and that big mess he was trying to clean up? That was a direct result of him being a blood mage that was cool with demons.  Merrill is a stubborn idiot dabbling with shit she does not, no matter how much she claims, really understand, so she gets no pass either. The mess with her clan wasn't entirely her fault, as her Keeper made some dumbshit moves herself, but Merrill was acting like a petulant teenager the entire goddamn time, and certainly deserves to shoulder some of the blame.

I'll give you Jowan, but only because he's such a worthless piece of shit, he couldn't figure out how to be an actual bad guy if he had five pride demons giving him step by step instructions.

The main problem I have is the PC can use blood magic and everything is hunky dory. Fuck, in DA2, you don't even have to sell out a little boy to learn it. This utterly trivializes what a big damn deal blood magic is supposed to be, and why it's so goddamn bad.

[Strazos]

I think my warrior playthrough will have a zero-tolerance policy for mages, especially blood mages.

And just for reference, I never gave Merrill her blood magic talents.

[caladein]

There's two mages that are 100% Guaranteed Demon Free: Morrigan and Velanna.  Pretty much every other mage you have a substantive interaction with in a Dragon Age game is a blood mage, spirit healer, or at some point goes "Yeah, this whole abomination thing sounds fantastic!".  If you're generically oppressed (or in a constant political knife fight), taking a chance on the the bag labeled "Vaguely Bad JuJu" is to be expected.

Specifically about Merrill though, she's trying to help her people and isn't being a raging xenophobe about it.  For bonus points she gets the For Science pass because she's shouldering the possible downside of her work herself.  She's the artist-scientist and I can't help but try and let her see her work through to the end, knowing full well that it almost certainly ends poorly (both because of the character and because that's the kind of game this is).

[Azuredream]

Bethany..?

[caladein]

Yeah, I thought about including her, but she goes splat over half the time.

[Khaldun]

The mage mythology in DA3 will need some refurbishing and rethinking, for sure. Maybe if the action goes off to Tervinter we'll see that Fenris is full of shit and that mages in charge and dealing with demons are actually a pretty wide mix of character types rather than Pure Evil. At the very least in Tervinter, most of them aren't abominations of the ugly-mutant kind, that would be a bit hard to hide when you go through the streets on your palanquin. Maybe what makes Thedas mages so vulnerable is that they don't know shit about demons or the Fade, that they don't really study it at all, so that when they do get a demon talking to them, it's insta-submission.

But honestly, they really did not do a good job here of making magic seem complicated in its implications. DA:O did a much better job in that respect.

[Merusk]

All of which is easily handwaved away by saying Varric was being biased in his retelling. Skipping parts, embellishing the sheer number of aboms/ time table in which the mages caved, whatever.  He's a dwarf and has no understanding of magic (I was surprised he could even enter the fade) and (from what I can tell) has been a lifelong resident of Kirkwall, which is one of the most anti-mage places we've seen in the series.  That's going to bias him some.

[eldaec]

Or they can do what bioware always do lately, hire new writers for the next game and tell them they can ignore anything they don't like or find inconvenient.

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Maybe what makes Thedas mages so vulnerable is that they don't know shit about demons or the Fade, that they don't really study it at all, so that when they do get a demon talking to them, it's insta-submission.

It's not insta-submission. Every mage goes through the Harrowing at the beginning of their career that is basically throwing them in front of a demon -- either they manage to resist, or they get slain on the spot by these supervising the trial. So every Circle mage you meet in the game has resisted at least one demon takeover attempt.

[Khaldun]

Right, but it doesn't seem to have done much for their long-term ability to resist. Though this ends up being one of the kinds of things that Hawke can choose to say a lot--that the behavior of the Templars in Kirkwall is putting the local Circle mages under extraordinary pressure and giving them an incentive to give in to demons and blood magic.

[Shrike]

The fundamental problem with magic in DA is that no one (except Flemeth and possibly Morrigan) really seems to understand it at the present point in time. So, it's all superstition wrapped in the usual bullshit divine right argument about who enslaves whom.

I think it's pretty clear that the Fade was corrupted during the period of the inital war between the Tevinter Imperium  and the first kingdom of the elves. From all the hints and some wading through flowery codex BS, I think it's safe to say that whatever magic the Imperium used on the elves sank their city into the Fade, thereby corrupting it and (probably) creating the darkspawn. Magic in and of itself isn't bad (cue Merril comments), but the way it is now makes it very risky to use. I think all the hoopla over that mirror of Merril's supports this. The Keeper informs you that it's really a gate and guess where it leads? Yep. So what comes through isn't good. Merril never makes the complete jump to this conclusion, but she does end up destroying the mirror (learning the hard way).

That's my working hypothesis about why things are as they are in DA and I tend to act accordingly--which is to kill or screw over self-righteous Templars whenever given the opportunity. Fuck a bunch of blood mages. Yeah, they can be nasty enough, but Hawke puts one down even with the mind control crapola and never has any real issues dealing with those that have gone off the rails. Hell, compared to Hawke's body count in DA2, the blood mages are mere pikers. Of couse, we know the mages are being stirred up by outside influences, but so is about everyone else in DA2.

[Koyasha]

I think it's pretty clear that the Fade was corrupted during the period of the inital war between the Tevinter Imperium  and the first kingdom of the elves. From all the hints and some wading through flowery codex BS, I think it's safe to say that whatever magic the Imperium used on the elves sank their city into the Fade, thereby corrupting it and (probably) creating the darkspawn.

That's a theory I don't think I'd ever heard and had never considered myself.  The Black City is Arlathan?  Fascinating theory, that.  I'm not sure I see a lot of support for it, but it's certainly something I'd like to consider when I look at things again.

It's true, every mage can confirm the existence of the Black City, but has anyone ever confirmed the existence of the Golden City before it?  No mortal we ever meet has been alive that long (maybe not even Flemeth, depending on exactly what she is), and I don't think that any spirit has ever mentioned it at all.

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Yeah, they can be nasty enough, but Hawke puts one down even with the mind control crapola and never has any real issues dealing with those that have gone off the rails. Hell, compared to Hawke's body count in DA2, the blood mages are mere pikers.

Yah, but that's the plot armour for you. Using the feats of the player's character as any kind of yardstick for what's hard to beat in the game world is only going to bring you to conclusion that nothing is even a mild threat, ever. Except the player's character himself/herself.

Meantime, Meredith makes an off-hand comment at some point how a mage turned abomination killed something like 70 people before it got killed. This is supposed to be quite horrible display of power and considering it's just single demon it pretty much is... but then Hawke kills more bandits during single evening stroll. So, well.

[Shrike]

I just used Hawke as an example since you kill about every damned thing you run across through the game. Still, when confronted with mind control you can either power through it (as Hawke) or call on Bethany to break the spell. The latter would seem to indicate any mage can deal with blood mage douchebaggery, if they've got the stones. Yeah, they're a menace, but any individual with above average ablity can cause all sorts of suffering and mayhem (Hawke, the Arishok, Meredith). It's not just the mages. The Templars and, by extension, the Chantry just use a variety of myths and circular reasoning to justify enslaving them. Hell, I sound like Anders. Still, I don't disagree with his basic position.

As for the Fade, there's nothing that comes straight out in the game and says, hey, this used to be Arlathan. It's a lot of little hints and comments. Still, after a couple of playthroughs, it seems to work in explaining things rather well. Like I said, it's a working hypothesis and so far it's holding up. Bring on DA3 and we shall see.

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Still, when confronted with mind control you can either power through it (as Hawke) or call on Bethany to break the spell. The latter would seem to indicate any mage can deal with blood mage douchebaggery, if they've got the stones.

Any mage who is supposed to support the precious main character, yes. In DAO it took special spell to protect from the mind control (Litany of something) and supposedly years of research to discover one in the first place. And it also had to be cast before mind control took effect, in order to work.

[Sjofn]

Meantime, Meredith makes an off-hand comment at some point how a mage turned abomination killed something like 70 people before it got killed. This is supposed to be quite horrible display of power and considering it's just single demon it pretty much is... but then Hawke kills more bandits during single evening stroll. So, well.

Bonus: That mage was her apostate sister. Which is part of why she is such a goddamn hard ass.

I like the "the Black City is actually Arlathan" theory. It makes some stuff make sense.

[Ingmar]

I think it's pretty clear that the Fade was corrupted during the period of the inital war between the Tevinter Imperium  and the first kingdom of the elves. From all the hints and some wading through flowery codex BS, I think it's safe to say that whatever magic the Imperium used on the elves sank their city into the Fade, thereby corrupting it and (probably) creating the darkspawn.

That's a theory I don't think I'd ever heard and had never considered myself.  The Black City is Arlathan?  Fascinating theory, that.  I'm not sure I see a lot of support for it, but it's certainly something I'd like to consider when I look at things again.

It's true, every mage can confirm the existence of the Black City, but has anyone ever confirmed the existence of the Golden City before it?  No mortal we ever meet has been alive that long (maybe not even Flemeth, depending on exactly what she is), and I don't think that any spirit has ever mentioned it at all.

The closest I've seen from a spirit that I can think of is the orphanage demon in DA:O who actually says there's no Maker at all.

[tmp]

I like the "the Black City is actually Arlathan" theory. It makes some stuff make sense.

There was a guy on the official forums who championed that theory hard some time ago. Got a reply from David Gaider eventually which essentially amounted to "ehh, no."

[Lantyssa]

Whatever elegant theory you come up with won't be as plain and boring as the one the writers intended.

[Bunk]

One minor thing this conversation reminded me of, that has bugged me since the first game - is it just me, or are abominations not less threatening than the original mage? If merging with the demon is supposed to make you more powerful, why do they suddenly lose all ability to cast spells?

If I'm a mage looking for ultimate uber power, I would think I'd be looking to be more powerful in magic, not to turn in to a lumbering "Hulk Smash!" idiot. I get that maybe some of them don't know what they are in for, but by the end of the game we've seen so many abominations, I find it hard to believe none of these mages have figured out what to expect.

[Job601]

If I'm a mage looking for ultimate uber power, I would think I'd be looking to be more powerful in magic, not to turn in to a lumbering "Hulk Smash!" idiot. I get that maybe some of them don't know what they are in for, but by the end of the game we've seen so many abominations, I find it hard to believe none of these mages have figured out what to expect.

Well, Merrill will chatter about how she's never seen an abomination even after she's personallly executed dozens of them, so apparently pretty much nobody can remember anything that happened when combat mode is turned on.

[tmp]

One minor thing this conversation reminded me of, that has bugged me since the first game - is it just me, or are abominations not less threatening than the original mage? If merging with the demon is supposed to make you more powerful, why do they suddenly lose all ability to cast spells?

If i recall right the only "true" abominations you get to meet are the "arcane horror" mobs. These guys do get to cast spells (they also teleport around the place like the other mages do) and can be pretty nasty if you don't spot them early.