Poll: Dragon Age: Templar-Mage War.

[Misterian]

Okay, if the next Dragon Age game will presumably involve allowing you to take part in the Templar-Mage war, would you pick a side? if so, which?

me personally, I'd want to side with the Mages.

That might be me speaking as someone who's played through Dragon Age Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age 2, as a Mage through and through, but I remain fairly convinced that Mages are the victims more-so than the cause of this conflict.

Most of the Templars (especially in Dragon Age 2) talk about Mages like they're criminals or monsters even when they know they're dealing with Mages that have obviously have done nothing wrong, and some of the rules they place and enforce on Mage don't even make sense, like forbidding any contact with family members? why is that even here? how is something as trivial as sending letters to parents gonna cause demonic possession?

which brings up the reasons the Templars even police Mages in the first place.

First off: Demon possession, sure it's smart to prepare if any Mages decides delibrately consort with them is a smart idea, but that should be enough. But why act like Mages could be possessed at any time even when you're in the same room as them? If those Templars have been watching Mages for so long, you'd think they'd be able to tell when they're possessed when they start trying to kill people, why can't that be enough?

second of all, blood magic, speaking as a mage who went with the Blood Mage specialization, I find the whole thing about Blood Magic being evil rather laughable. First off, doesn't the creation of Phylacteries involve blood magic? isn't that being a little hypocritical? Also, the Grey Wardens have used blood magic as part of the Joining process, so it's blood magic that, in retrospect, saved the people of Thedas from the Blights. So what evil that involves Blood Magic is solely caused by mages that choose to use it for evil, nothing more.

But enough about my opinions on the Templar-mage conflict, what are yours?

 

[Auron]

Well I'm possibly skewed being an Elf Mage in the first and a Mage Hawke in the second... But the Templars, from my angle, are just nazi assholes who take every chance they can to control and bully the Mages into submission, unnecessarily so because of old legends no one is sure about. The discipline the Mages practice is important because of the Demons but there would very likely be way less incidents and problems if the Templars would let them organize themselves and just helped them instead of trying and effectively controlling them.

 

[Windcaler]

It would really depend on the individual character Im playing. I can think of some that would be totally for the templars, others that would be totally for the mages, and some that wouldnt want to choose a side.

For me personally, I think how things were in DA:O were the best. Mages need to be watched but they shouldnt be imprisoned like with what happened in Kirkwall. There needs to be a healthy medium and being forced into either one side or the other like we were with DA2 is just lame. I dont want to have to choose one extreme over the other if I dont feel either extreme is right

 

[wintercoat]

As I usuially have several playthroughs with characters that react to different events in wildly differing ways, I'll most likely end up with at least one playthrough where I'm on either side, or no side at all. I'm hoping that you can take a neutral stance, but considering Bioware's insistence on a black/white morality scale, I doubt it.

 

[Doom972]

Neither, if it'll be a possibility. Too many templars are overzealous and a desparate mage is likely to use blood magic (and so would anyone else in their place). I'd prefer to try a new system where mages won't be oppressed but still watched - maybe by an order of mages who are deemed trustworthy by the rulers/chantry.

If I'll absolutely have to make a choice between the two, it'll probably be the mages.

 

[darth.pixie]

Speaking as someone who only plays a mage? Neither. Templars are overworked, junkie zealots who fear knowledge of all kind. Mages, as per the DA2 standard, are time-bombs of blood magic who are only studying what they are because they have no choice or to be able to unleash fireballs on people who oppressed them.

Just kill them all and start again.

 

[Vegosiux]

Well call me crazy, but I think the Circle in DA: O was actually working out quite well, or at least wasn't any more fucked up than the rest of the world. Sure Irving and Gregor constantly taking stabs at each other came across as if they're mortal enemies, I'd seen them more along the lines of "vitriolic best buds", and it was quite clear that Gregor really, really, definitely did not want to annul the Circle when it got messed up, except as a truly, really, last resort.

Then DA2 came along, took the concept and one-upped it then ran like it stole it, in order to force a conflict that while it might have been brewing, was brought about by the scripted killing of any person reasonable enough to be able to prevent it. It came across as forced, as not something that would happen naturally without the powers that be (i.e. writers) shoehorning it in.

And all I know is I was cranky at the game for not allowing my Hawke to say "You know what? I've had it with this shit, just do whatever the fuck you want. And Anders? Go to your room and think about what you've done. Now if anyone needs me I'm going pirating with Isabella or something."

 

[Karoshi]

I am utterly convinced that both sides are going to lose their shit and commit genocide. Blood magic everywhere, templars torturing people, and then you get to choose which pricks you gonna side with.

And then mages get a happy ending while sweeping the "wee bad blood magic" part under the rug and everyone shall live happily ever after. Well, everyone expect for the non-mage people.

If I could, I would choose neither side. If I had to choose though, I would go with templars, but try to implement a much more flexible and reasonable system than in Kirkwall. Ultimately the Mage Circle is a good idea, but since DA is full of bastards, it got horribly abused.

 

[endtherapture]

Neither one.

The mages were fine in Dragon Age Origins, but in 2 they became whiney annoying idiots who suddenly use blood magic because they're idiots.

The Templars were also fine in Origins, but in 2 they became annoying crazy people who just decided to kill everyone, become rapists and use giant evil magical swords to become anime characters.

Sick of both their shit, want it to end and get back to Dwarven politics, Old Gods and cool stuff instead of this stupid terrorism plot that Bioware is so keen on shoving down our throat.

 

[Tayh]

I'd side with the templars.
Magic is too overpowered anyway; my rogue is jealous.

 

[Misterian]

Well I'm possibly skewed being an Elf Mage in the first and a Mage Hawke in the second... But the Templars, from my angle, are just nazi assholes who take every chance they can to control and bully the Mages into submission, unnecessarily so because of old legends no one is sure about. The discipline the Mages practice is important because of the Demons but there would very likely be way less incidents and problems if the Templars would let them organize themselves and just helped them instead of trying and effectively controlling them.

My thoughts exactly.

In fact, Dragon Age's issue with Mages reminds me of the Mutant issue in the various incarnations of X-Men.


If nothing else, Mages and Mutants in the respective franchises have this much in common; just because they CAN be dangerous if they choose to be, doesn't automatically mean they WILL be dangerous.

I frankly find it astonishing that so few Templars even try to see it that way.

 

[Ishal]

I probably won't even play the damn thing. But mages all they way, because screw religion and screw the chantry.

I'd be the mage that other mages hate because I give them a bad name. I'd be the bloodiest blood mage ever. They'd have to create an entire new spectrum of red because of me. I'd have 10 templar thralls with me at any given time to fuel my magic.

Though honestly the writing just got terrible, so it doesn't really matter anymore.

I wanted to explore the Tevinter Imperium and really delve into the Black City and see if the shit the Chantry spew is actually true or not. That'll never happen though. Old Bioware who cared about lore and genuine RPG players would do that. But BioEAre? Not a chance in hell.

captcha: good riddance. yes captcha good riddance indeed. It's going to take an act of the old gods to get me to be interested in a bioware game again.

 

[RJ 17]

Okay, if the next Dragon Age game will presumably involve allowing you to take part in the Templar-Mage war, would you pick a side? if so, which?

me personally, I'd want to side with the Mages.

That might be me speaking as someone who's played through Dragon Age Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age 2, as a Mage through and through, but I remain fairly convinced that Mages are the victims more-so than the cause of this conflict.

Most of the Templars (especially in Dragon Age 2) talk about Mages like they're criminals or monsters even when they know they're dealing with Mages that have obviously have done nothing wrong, and some of the rules they place and enforce on Mage don't even make sense, like forbidding any contact with family members? why is that even here? how is something as trivial as sending letters to parents gonna cause demonic possession?

which brings up the reasons the Templars even police Mages in the first place.

First off: Demon possession, sure it's smart to prepare if any Mages decides delibrately consort with them is a smart idea, but that should be enough. But why act like Mages could be possessed at any time even when you're in the same room as them? If those Templars have been watching Mages for so long, you'd think they'd be able to tell when they're possessed when they start trying to kill people, why can't that be enough?

second of all, blood magic, speaking as a mage who went with the Blood Mage specialization, I find the whole thing about Blood Magic being evil rather laughable. First off, doesn't the creation of Phylacteries involve blood magic? isn't that being a little hypocritical? Also, the Grey Wardens have used blood magic as part of the Joining process, so it's blood magic that, in retrospect, saved the people of Thedas from the Blights. So what evil that involves Blood Magic is solely caused by mages that choose to use it for evil, nothing more.

But enough about my opinions on the Templar-mage conflict, what are yours?

I'll answer the question of the topic first before engaging in some light-hearted conversation on some of your questions.

For starters: I don't think you'll be given a choice as to which side you pick. More likely it'll be another role like Hawke's: a neautral party caught in the middle.

Now, let's talk mages. One thing you have to keep in mind is that pretty much every major disaster that has occurred in Thedas came about because of magic. The Tervintir Imperium, an empire ruled by magic, is supposed to be the most ruthless and brutally terrifying nation in the world. Why? Because of their flagrant wallowing in their magical power. The Blights, themselves, came about when ancient Mages tried to use their magics to enter the Golden City, only to have The Maker cast them out and give birth to the first Dark Spawn. In the world of Thedas, a mage's curse isn't magic itself, it's a hunger for power.

To say that the history of magic in Thedas is a dark and bloody one is a complete understatement. That is why all mages are treated with suspicion. That's why all "good" mages willingly subjugate themselves to The Circle, they want to be good people and don't want to give into their urges for power. Ever notice how every mage that steps outside the circle ends up falling (except for The Grey Warden and Hawke, of course)? Look at the chaos caused by your best friend who flees the circle at the end of the Mage intro for DA:O. And entire kingdom overrun by nightly raids of the undead. Your friend meant no ill will, but it's because of him and his inexperience that a demon was able to take hold of the prince and cause all that slaughter.

As for Blood Magic, indeed, it's easily the most powerful form of magic that the player characters can invest in (AoE DoT+Stun spell? Ummmmm, yes please). What makes it evil is the fact that you can only be taught how to use it by a demon, or by reading a demonic tome. You might have the best of intentions with what you do with it, but you still gained that power through a pact with a demon (see Meril's subplot in DA 2). That's why Meril was an outcast. That's why Blood Magic is forbidden. That, and the fact that you don't use traditional magical energy in order to cast Blood Magic spells, you need to suck the life out of others or yourself if you want to do it, making you a force of bloody death and little else. It's fine for us as players, just chug a few potions and you're good to go. But in the context of the story, you're basically murdering your comrades to brutally murder your enemies.

I think the Templars in DA:O were a much better example of their order than those in DA:2 that were led by a delightfully insane zealot of a Knight Commander. In DA:O, the Templars and Mages respected one another and got along. In DA:2, the Templars of Kirkwall openly abused the mages. Fereldin's Circle was an example of how things are supposed to work, a smoothly kept together peace between mages who don't want to do harm and the Templars that watched over them. Kirkwall's Circle became a vicious cycle of blood and death, the Templars persecuted many of the mages, leaving them the choice of "die or make a demonic pact to survive". Clearly the vast majority of the mages would prefer the demonic pact rather than death, and that turned them into abominations. Each instance only made the Templars crack down harder, which only caused more incidents to occur.

But that's why Mages are always feared, because at any moment, each one of them knows they can gain incredible power by accepting the promise of a demon. Even if they intend to use that power for good, look at the Healer in DA Awakening and 2 (Alders? Can't remember his name). He was possessed by a GOOD spirit, and yet he STILL became a total abomination that sparked a war that will likely kill countless people, innocents included.

And now the Circles have been broken and the mages are running amok. The only reason to sympathize with their plight is because of how we saw them treated in DA2, but Kirkwall was just one horribly flawed Circle and not indicative of how all the Circles were run. Now that the Mages are going unchecked, the Templars are standing against the destruction and chaos that they can cause.

And so even though Mage is my favorite DA class, if DA3 does give a choice, I'll likely pick the Templars as my first choice...even if I'm playing as a Mage.

Seriously, by the end of DA2, I was sick and god damned tired of EVERY FRICKIN MAGE turning into a blood mage, a demon, or a demonic bloodmage. REALLY makes you start to understand why the Templars are needed in the first place. Maybe Kirkwall is just cursed, but you can't really call Meredith crazy for seeing Blood Magic everywhere...considering that damn near every mage in Kirkwall - even the archmage himself - turned out to be a blood mage.

 

[RJ 17]

Then DA2 came along, took the concept and one-upped it then ran like it stole it, in order to force a conflict that while it might have been brewing, was brought about by the scripted killing of any person reasonable enough to be able to prevent it. It came across as forced, as not something that would happen naturally without the powers that be (i.e. writers) shoehorning it in.

I'm one of the few people who apparently genuinely enjoyed the story of DA2, if you ask me it makes perfect sense. From the first moment I set foot in Kirkwal, hell, even during that cutscene where your boat is coming into Kirkwal, I got the impression that this was a dark city. A cursed city. The creepy loading screens only served to encourage this notion. That and the fact that it specifically says that so much blood and horror has infested that city that the Veil is particularly thin, allowing dark forces to slip through quite easily. This is why the mages were so prone to become blood mages. What really cause the shit to go down was Meredith forging that cursed idol into a sword. She had always been harsh, but that's what drove her zeal into official madness.

She inflicts harsher treatments, this makes more mages rebel out of necessity, which only brings even more brutal treatment from the Templars. The Templars go along with it because for god's sake, every rogue mage they come across turns out to be a blood mage or an abomination. They of course don't realize it's their leader's agenda that's leading to all this, they just know that they're fighting demons.

Really it's all because of that Deep Roads Expedition that the vicious cycle between Templars pushing and Mages rebelling started. In short: the impression I got from Kirkwal is that it was an eternally damned city. Bad shit will always happen there.

I do agree, however, that Fereldin's Circle is likely a much more accurate view on how the rest of the Circles are run. There's a contained animosity, but the mages and Templars both respect one another when it comes down to it.

Then there's of course the fact that it's widely accepted religious doctrine that mages are supposed to be bound to the Circle. Even mages themselves know this, and that's why if they want to be good people they willingly submit to the Circle. That's just how things work in the world of Thedas.

 

[Therumancer]

Okay, if the next Dragon Age game will presumably involve allowing you to take part in the Templar-Mage war, would you pick a side? if so, which?

me personally, I'd want to side with the Mages.

That might be me speaking as someone who's played through Dragon Age Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age 2, as a Mage through and through, but I remain fairly convinced that Mages are the victims more-so than the cause of this conflict.

Most of the Templars (especially in Dragon Age 2) talk about Mages like they're criminals or monsters even when they know they're dealing with Mages that have obviously have done nothing wrong, and some of the rules they place and enforce on Mage don't even make sense, like forbidding any contact with family members? why is that even here? how is something as trivial as sending letters to parents gonna cause demonic possession?

which brings up the reasons the Templars even police Mages in the first place.

First off: Demon possession, sure it's smart to prepare if any Mages decides delibrately consort with them is a smart idea, but that should be enough. But why act like Mages could be possessed at any time even when you're in the same room as them? If those Templars have been watching Mages for so long, you'd think they'd be able to tell when they're possessed when they start trying to kill people, why can't that be enough?

second of all, blood magic, speaking as a mage who went with the Blood Mage specialization, I find the whole thing about Blood Magic being evil rather laughable. First off, doesn't the creation of Phylacteries involve blood magic? isn't that being a little hypocritical? Also, the Grey Wardens have used blood magic as part of the Joining process, so it's blood magic that, in retrospect, saved the people of Thedas from the Blights. So what evil that involves Blood Magic is solely caused by mages that choose to use it for evil, nothing more.

But enough about my opinions on the Templar-mage conflict, what are yours?

I said the mages, but this due to the lack of enough information on the subject.

Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age 2, both presented entirely differant images on mages and the issues. Dragon Age 2 might be garbage on almost every level including the writing, but at the end of the day we still have to deal with it's lore.

In Origins they present mages as more or less being normal people with magic, and corruption being something that happens fairly rarely assuming a mage can pass their trial. A bit of basic security, and magical lobotomies for those who fail the test and prove themselves vulnerable, suffices.

In Dragon Age 2, mages are presented as time bombs, who under any signifigant amount of stress will become possessed and turn into demons, during the course of that storyline, despite the existance of a mage order doing it's job pretty much every mage you run into winds up going full abomination, especially when the fighting starts.

Understand that Blood Magic, and the whole "possesion through the fade" bit are entirely differant issues. Blood Magic is banned black magic that comes from demons, and tends to lead to bad things, BUT has nothing to do with the central issue of mages becoming Abominations, after all as you might remember from "origins" they test everyone and turn anyone who fails tranquil, blood magic has nothing to do with it, though blood magic due to it's origins can be detected this way and result in a pre-emptive fail, and a trip to decapitation or lobotomized lala land.

The mages in Dragon Age have a definate "Warhammer 40k" vibe going, that is to say where without constant monitoring and reinforcement psychics WILL fall prey to the forces of the warp and chaos, and get possessed or go insano-psycho killer on everyone. Only the strongest and most stable even have a chance of being able to harness their powers and resist this, which is largely why The Inqusition hunts down down as preemptively as possible and sacrifices all but the most stable talents to The Emperor. The implementation is differant, but the basic idea is the same.

As things stood in "Origins" which was better developed, and closer to what I think the reality should be (especially as a mage fan) I'd pretty much leave the mages to self-regulate. I wouldn't make being an apostate legal, but I would put the control and policing up to The Tower and remove the Templars and their authority from the equasion, or at least to the extent they exist at the time of the game. It might be brutal, but that testing and lobtomization process is kind of nessicary, but beyond that it's easy enough to control.

If things become more like "Dragon Age 2" in the ongoing canon, then as much of a fan as I am of wizards, I have to say they are basically time bombs, and even the security inherant in the mage towers doesn't really work that well in the end. This basically means The Templars are 100% correct and if anything they are being incredibly tolerant since these guys are actually a demon horde waiting to happen.

When it comes to blood magic, I have mixed opinions of it. The origins are kind of nasty, as are what you generally have to do to get it (going by how you can learn it in Origins), but at the end of the day it seems to be power like any other, and can be put to any purpose. I'd argue that it should be controlled knowlege, and anyone who has it should be viewed with suspician and perhaps even made outright criminal if thy can't prove having learned it from an approved source, but otherwise pretty much let it go. Record it, put it in the tower library, and then if the need arises people can learn it with the permission of the order head, and be given proper paperwork and so on to prove where they learned it. That said, I do tend to agree that's the kind of thing not every mage (as rare as they are to begin with) should be allowed to freely walk around with, it does conceptually go well beyond what you can do through simply shooting fireballs or whatever.

 

[Azahul]

As of Origins, I'd have picked the mages. Being oppressed purely because of what they might do is like arresting everyone on earth because they might murder someone. Aaaaand then Dragon Age 2 happened, and it turned out every mage was indeed a Blood Mage, and that the Templars were consequently justified. Kill 'em all.

So yeah, Templars. Although I'm still pissed to this day that the second game made me kill those templars and mages that were working together. They kept threatening to murder Varric, who I had hardly had anything to do with, all in order to get me to... do what? I don't remember, but I do remember spending that entire sequence shouting at the screen "But I WANT to join you!"

 

[RatRace123]

Well in Origins, the mages do seem more victimized and though there is a danger of corruption there, most seem well aware of it and hate it just as much as the Templars.

Then came DA2, and the Mage party members we get are a blood Mage and a revolutionist.
And nearly every Mage we meet tries to kill us, even if Hawke is a Mage and/or supports the mages, and to top it off out of all the enemy mages we meet, most of them are blood mages.
But then again the Templars are also much more brutal and dictatorial, even to the point of essentially controlling Kirkwall.

So my answer to that question is... neither. And I wish there was an option for Hawke and co to just GTFO near the end of DA2 reflecting this.