Every so often, you make a tabletop gaming related purchase you simply flat out regret. You realize that...

This wasn't as terrible as it could have been; we know so little about everyday Qunari life that it could have been true despite this being clearly aretroactive thing. The most we have "against" it was a single conversation Sten has with exactly one party member in DA:O. That's definitely enough for me to think it was a retcon, but not enough to be a massively discordant thing within the setting.

Now Tevinter suddenly being anti-gay DOES come completely out of left field since none of the other nations or games have any real prejudice or even noting that homosexuality for either gender is even unique enough to be remarked upon.
The explanation for it (that they were obsessed with ensuring each family line had an heir) is god-awful thin writing too thanks to SEVERAL succession and "needing an heir" disputes appearing all the way back since the first game and yet somehow none of these other nations gave a flying fuck about your sexual orientation; it was clearly a badly inserted plot about not trying to change your children if they're gay added in by a writer (and I strongly suspect I know who) who quite frankly had neither the skill to pull it off nor subtly to make it interesting.

The prevalence of gay people, if nothing else, is definitely the default of the fanbase and not the developers (or at least not the developers alone). If you'd actually visited the bioware forums or any similar place around the time of the games and ESPECIALLY the Mass Effect series you'll find that people always, always, ALWAYS super duper fixated on the romance aspects of things, always asking for it to be more in depth and for more options and more than anything asking for MORE GAY OPTIONS, EVERY CHARACTER SHOULD BE A GAY OPTION, WHY AREN'T THERE MORE GAY OPTIONS.

Yes, yes, I know (you) specifically didn't but (you) are not the entire fanbase or even the majority. No, not even your friends are or any other too tiny sample group you'll pick up as anecdotal evidence. The simple, undisputed fact is that by and large the bioware fanbase demanded more gays. And they got them.

Bioware just did what they realized would boost sales.

You sound like my best friend. He picked up the core book for Anima five or six years ago at a used bookstore, and when we all looked through it we decided nobody had time for that. He still suggests it every time we look to start a new game, and he gets shot down every time.

Fucking Eoris Essence.

The thing reads like a non-native speaker wrote it and, while the art is amazing, the whole world is so complex that it's hard to get in any new players without shoving the book in their faces and wishing them luck. It actually looks like some fun once a group learns the game though.

Yes, we do know about qun. Through entire Origins, this is hammered into us:
> Your individuality and desires do not matter.
> You don't decide your place in life, Qun decides it
> You take it without question and perform your assigned role in society
> And you do it forever - you won't become a merchant if you were a farmer.

How did Qun become an LGBTQ+ religion full of transexuals? That's a good question, the answer to which is "The writers are hacks".

That's fair.
And honestly, I'm not adverse to stuff like that at all, I just hated how shitty the writing for it was. It wasn't handled well or with any finesse, though DA:I was a rather clumsy effort in a number of ways aside from that so perhaps it's unsurprising.

That would be Dragon Age 2, which is when the Qun religion was actually beginning to be described as the bizarre Islam-Confucianism-Buddhism fusion that it is. Sten's dialogues from Origins were SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN so as to provide as little useful knowledge as possible because the aim back then was to make the qunari be a sort of generic "exotic and mysterious people from far away". Nobody predicted it'd be so elaborated upon.

You cannot possibly have gathered that from them alone unless you're some kind of psychic.

Yeah, I wouldn't QUITE go as far as to say that I regret paying for it, because I paid like 40$ at the kickstarter and got literally several dozens full lengths books for it including all the 1st edition material (and if nothing else, the art is gorgeous), but after so many years of wishing for a second edition some aspects of it were definitely a little bit underwhelming.

user, I've replayed DAO three or four times. Do you want me to quote specific Sten dialogue? It's time-consuming, but I can do it.

...

I think that's sort of the main draw of the game, right? I GM this game and people can get excited if you just run it like the combat game it was meant to be. I let my players talk out of most things if they want, but they're a mercenary group and they want to get paid.

You kinda missed what I said there, didn't you? My point was that if you squinted you could argue that nothing QUITE contradicted what we learned in DA:I about the Qun, but for a single conversation he had with Leliana and none of the other women in the party. Presumably you know the one I'm talking about.
But yeah you are correct; Gaider once explained outright that while the Qunari lands were not perfect utopias nor joyless hellholes (and in fact were rather boring for every day life folks much like every day life is boring for everyone) he admitted deliberately to making their way of life EXTREMELY restrictive.
He said you can change who you are and what you want to be (because if you are constantly at conflict with yourself you are not doing your job well and thus failing the Qun), but that it wasn't easy to do and most people never tried. In addition the gender restrictions were another way to show how rigid they were about certain things, clearly a way to show how their culture was imperfect like any culture, just in a different way.

Trying to make it a haven of equality is indeed against the grain of how he wrote them in the prior games, where it IS true that everyone was equal but only in the sense that they all had duties to the Qun and thus were equally worthless as individual people.

that anons crazy, must not have payed attention
all 4 things you said were pretty much the same thing said in a different way, and i remember sten pretty much saying something like one of those anytime the qun came up or whenever he thought something was stupid, or really anytime he talked about anything

David Gaider answered a LOT of questions about the Qunari well before DA:2 came out and it helped clarify many of Sten's statements, such as why they have no confectionaries.

But yes; thematically they're the "big tough guy" race every fantasy setting has, but he wrote their culture to be extremely alien to us deliberately.

As many often point out, Bull's real name literally means LIAR. Also, he says 'this is what Krem would be called'

At no point does he say "Krem would also not be put into a pit and stoned to death"

In any case, it actually makes sense to me the Qun would have an attitude like this. Sten cannot into women being warriors because, no, women are not warriors. If that woman wants to give up being a woman and become a man, then yes, it is fine they become a warrior. Because they are not a woman anymore, they are a man. And should expect to be treated exactly like one.

I always thought it was just that one dudes father that was anti-gay. When you consider Tevinter is basically Rome, them being anti-gay makes sense, sort of. Rome was VERY anti-gay. They just had different... interpretations of what being Gay meant.

Fucking another dude was not gay. BEING fucked by another dude WAS gay and was abhorent. The only thing gayer than that was eating pussy, which was the gayest thing you could do.

I don't normally jump on the "SJWs are ruining our games" bandwagon but 7th Sea 2nd ed was one of those few times when I had a hard time ignoring some of that stuff. It's less about the extent of the inclusion and more about the crudeness of it. Some parts feel pretty natural (I mean, the setting was always more gender equal than our own world's 17th century, all the way back to 1st ed) but many of them were clearly made in a sort of bored, mechanical find+replace like mindset like the ratio of female to male NPCs can somehow by itself make a setting more progressive. Hell, some of it seems to have been treated so automatically the EDITING fucked it up (the best example I can think of is Captain Reis, which is still described in the fiction as a man but which the new Pirate Nations books decided out of the blue is now actually a woman).

Speaking of the Pirate Nations books, am I the only one feeling that they went slightly overboard with this trend? I mean, Allende is a woman now, Reis is a woman, the new leader of the BoTC is a woman, all three of her lieutenants are women... It gets into a kind of ironic full circle where you begin wishing you'd finally read about a male pirate for a change just to break the stereotype...

Oh, that in Master Red, from the Vesten League council. That he was turned into a woman doesn't bother me, what does is that it was so very clearly done as a sort of asspulled fan appeaser. FYI, Master Red was repeatedly described in the 1st edition as an ugly, perverted, horrifically dull old man. Turning him into a lady would've been fine, but they also had to state that this "Mistress Red" is a confidant, charismatic, powerful woman...

One final tiny gripe I have with the whole trend (but in fairness, that was prevalent in the 1st edition as well): I can't create a good Thean equivalent of Julie D'Aubigny, one of history's greatest swashbucklers, because much of her charm goes away in a world where gender equality is the norm.

Pretty much. I actually read both editions of Blue Rose and believe it or not, they treat the issue with more finesse than the new 7th Sea. It might be a game that markets itself on being feminist fantasy but at least it understands that there's more to even *trying* to be progressive than just randomly pointing at a bunch of iconic NPCs and going "Okay, you, you, you and you are now women, you and you are black, you're gay, NEXT".

Yeah, buying all 1e books instead of pirating them is worth 40 bucks. But I went as far as preordering a hardcover. At least art is good.

You would probably hate me. I find gender and sexuality so fucking irrelivant to a character when I design a campaign NPC, I decide who they are and what they are first. Then I decide their gender with a 1d2. Then I decide their sexual orientation with a d8 (1-7 for Kinsley 0-6, 8 is Asexual). Gender fluid doesn't exist because fuck you magic people can just reassign when they want with gender change so it's even less relevant.

I can accept it despite thinking it's a retcon because the only evidence we have against it is the single convo with Sten and all prior warrior qunari being male, which is somewhat poor evidence considering all Warrior qunari in both games looked EXACTLY THE SAME as each other, first looking all identical to Sten right down to his Roman nose, then looking all identical right down to the paint pattern on their bodies. The Arishok was the sole exception.

I was aware of the Roman thing, but the dialogue you have with Dorian suggests that his views are quite common in Tevinter, that you could be gay as long as you kept it quiet and married a woman anyway.
Compare to Orlais where the fact that Empress Celene was fucking Briala was not scandalous because they were both women but because Briala was an ELF.

That's because the Olesians were and are fucking degenerate filth and this is why everyone hates them. St. Louis spins in his grave like a drill

I really went deep into that game. Got 2 other books for it too and the card game (which we play sometimes). I could only get one group to play it but given the complexity this system has I had one condition: know your spells/abilities. Sadly that was too much and the game turned into constantly searching the books.
Sometimes I read it for inspiration but I have the pdf-s for that..

Not him, but that's fine with me. If you want to play your games as super happy everyone is equal land that's fine by me, and it makes a lot of sense too. I think what he's objecting to is just hamfistedly switching up existing characters to try to match some kind of minimum 'quota' required to be seen as progressive.

FantasyCraft, I was promised a fixed 3.5... It's still the same garbage with clearer rules on building stuff.

Michtim: Fuzzy Adventures. Hamtaro meets David the Gnome. Sounds like a fun side game. Tranny hamsters EVERYWHERE! Euro inclusivity is almost as bad as burger inclusivity.

Fantaji. It's just Fate. With prettier art.

That's a legitimate concern. Especially considering DA was originally billed as 'gritty' fantasy, trying to be GoT before GoT was a super megahit.

Remember, 'this is the new shit'

I kept the male Reis (I used the updated setting with extensive house rules) since they talked about him being a man right there in the core book. Gave him a first name too, which as far as I know was missing from 1e 7th Sea.
But in the defense of the SJW invasion....Wick doesn't give a fuck.
He's not a warrior for anything and clearly has never fought for anything that doesn't involve his fucking ego.
Having met the man in person twice and been GMed by him both times and read his shit extensively, so can safely say that he's on the equality train because he thinks it'll win points and sell shit.

So I just ignore shit I thing makes no sense and retcon all over his setting just like I always did with everything that he helped write that I ever played.

You see that strange reverse attitude in Bubblegumshoe. I don't know why it stood out to me so much but they have a page where they describe the 4 iconic characters that are used for examples throughout the book and, like, I don't care none of them is white or that there are more girls than boys or whatever, what bothered me was that each one got MAYBE 3 lines worth of description and in all cases half of them were taken up with just describing the character's race and sexuality. In what kind of bizarro world is implying that someone's color is every bit as definitive of their personality AS THEIR ACTUAL PERSONALITY less racist than ignoring it?

(I suppose you could also make that /pol/ bingo accusation that "if you feel the need to mention characters' sexualities and colors that means you're actually not truly progressive yourself because you're subconsciously still thinking that the default person is a white male! Huh!", but that's a depth I try not to sink to)

Any non-pdf I've bought.
It's just a waste of money.

>Having met the man in person twice and been GMed by him both times
Wow...uh...that must have been special.

Ahh Fantasy Craft... I'm glad I only tried with a pdf version. It was okay for a few sessions, the magic of the new system but we quickly abandoned it

I won't glorify him in any way by saying he was the worst GM I've ever suffered under, because he definitely wasn't.
He was still a pretty fucking bad one though.

Riordan was pretty cool at least.
So was Michael de Chevin.
I kinda wished there was another cool Orlesian in DA:I to help combat the intensely negative image most of the games have given them.

Fantasy fiction outside of France (hell, most fantasy fiction IN France) hates the French. From this thread alone, consider 7th Sea's Montaigne, Dragon Age's Orlais and for that matter Warhammer's Bretonnia. The fantasy French can't get a break.

To be fair, that might have had more to do with the fact that Jennifer Hale was a superior voice actor to meet, but fem Shep got continually shafted in terms of romances

>I kinda wished there was another cool Orlesian in DA:I

Blackwall

Clearly.
It doesn't count if he sounds like he comes from Birmingham dammit.
Also, he is like...stupid good-looking under that beard.

I guess this can be described as "token majority". When most of notable characters in, say, Avalon are strong independant apachegender-to-female lesbians from NotPolynesia it just becomes boring and annoying.

Jesus fuck. Does he ever look like that in-game? I never saw that.

HE TAKES OFF THE BEARD!? WHEN DOES HE TAKE OFF THE BEARD!?

Suddenly Blackwall romance is even BETTER idea

Mind you, >taking off the beard

fags

>. I think what he's objecting to is just hamfistedly switching up existing characters to try to match some kind of minimum 'quota' required to be seen as progressive.
To be fair, da:I was just hamfistedly switching up characters period. They turned bann Teagan into the designated bad guy

Not precisely. Apparently that's his face texture underneath his beard in-game, but you can't in any way get him to shave the beard off. This is a fan mod that "erases" the beard texture for his face and then touches up the skin underneath to look more realistic (the stubble, the coloring), but otherwise those are indeed his facial features.

I gotta admit, him growing it makes a lot more sense; he looks COMPLETELY different without it.

Nope, it's a fan mod that "shaves" him but otherwise keeps the skin texture and facial features he has in-game.
Blackwell looks like a 38-year-old dad, but Thom Rainier was REALLY fucking good-looking apparently.

it's called a dilf, user. Bioware missed a trick. Chicks *dig* the dilf.

By complete coincidence, there's another thread up at the moment that opens with a pic of it .

To be fair, I knew very well The Anime Hack was going to suck balls. Normally I'd never have considered wasting money on that shit but morbid curiosity simply got the better of me and nobody would share it on any site, probably because nobody other than me was stupid enough to buy the file.

I don't know if it's a "disappointment" when you're expecting a clusterfuck but BOY HOWDY do I regret wasting money on that thing. You might think that 2.99$ is a fair price for 46 pages of content almost regardless of shittinness but Jesus, you have no idea.

Teagan didn't seem bad; his fears kinda ARE justified. In the first game you were fighting directly for Fereldan and he himself mentions fighting Orlais before.
He's not good or bad, he's just a patriot who does what he thinks is best for Fereldan and politically the Inquisition IS kind of sketchy as hell in some ways.

The main issue I have is how he physically looks completely different. He could be any random Fereldan NPC and without the voice I'd never know the goddamn difference.

See No wonder nobody in orlais recognized him. Especially if the want to see a grey Warden

Speaking of hamfistedly destroying characters, how about the damage done to the entire Warden order?

Eh

The Wardens were always sketchy, remember the reason there are so few of them is they got their shit slapped by the other nations once.

Yeah, people keep forgetting that for most of the population of the Dragon Age universe the Wardens are a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It just so happened that Dragon Age: Origins was all about them so we take it for granted that they're heroic and justified in their actions and all that, but that's NOT common knowledge.

It was EXTREMELY clear that sometime during writing someone asked;
>"Wait a minute...Taint and an ancient Darkspawn? Wouldn't the Wardens be all over this shit?"
>"......fuck. You're right. We gotta fix that."
And thus suddenly the Wardens are all bad guys according to everyone in-game to remove them from the picture.
Though it seems to me less that "Grey Wardens are bad" and more "Orlesians make poor decisions"; only the Orlesian part of the order (which isn't even the fucking majority) got involved in that blood magic shite, and like every other Orlesian political group in that game they are pants on head retarded about everything. Even that Tevinter guy points out how incredibly vague and shady his deal was and how stupid they were to just JUMP on without questioning it at all.

It's pretty damn clear to me that Gaider left Bioware due to all the interference with his writing; Dragon Age was his baby, and after years of conversing heavily with fans about it and answering questions he bails in Bioware literally as soon as he is done with DA:I, which in what I am sure is totally unrelated butchers everything else he wrote about the setting and ignores half of his writing for expediency's sake.

Sketchy? Absolutely. Murder happy little motherfuckers to the last.
Da:I wardens weren't sketchy, they were dumb. Which is very different. They were more similar to the not-wardens from the case than the wardens themselves

, In the books the Wardens do a lot of sketchy shit, it's true.
It's more that they all begin suddenly acting like dithering retards and that literally every NPC in the game suddenly has SUPER strong opinions on how Wardens are bad and cause problems despite knowing next to nothing about them until DA:I since they kept all that shit secret.

Like Varric claiming "he'd met some good Wardens, but a lot more bad ones". He's met FOUR fucking Wardens! Four! Five if Carver's around and you had him join!

I wouldn't call Blue Rose a "hidden gem", but I'd definitely go as far as to call it a "hidden actually-kinda-nice-looking-quartz-shard-you-found-on-the-beach". It's not spectacularly amazing but for how utterly horrible you expect it to be, it's really very okay if read with an open mind. Like you say, it's very unexpectedly subtle for being "The Feminist Fantasy RPG". You expect the mother of all SJW bombs but it's really very well thought out compared to, say, some of the newer stuff from Onyx Path.

I was about to say something about "if the best thing you can say about a game is that it's okay", but I suppose in this case that might be the point...

This. IK makes no bones about being a game focused on combat, and lets you build different kinds of characters who can still contribute to the main thrust of the game.

Exactly.
Wardens were always portrayed as morally ambiguous, but it's how they are suddenly retarded and suddenly everyone knows everything about them and holding strong opinions in it after two games of them keeping shit secret is kind of jarring and handwavy.

Exactly. It's not that Blue Rose is great when you expect it to be average, its that it's average when you expect it to be shit.

And sera (cute collective groaning) who a) meet the hero of ferelden b) was fucking in denerim dislikes the wardens. What the actual fuck?

I fucking know.
It was even worse for me because said Warden WAS A GODDAMN CITY ELF.

That's even stupider when you consider that not only would Sera have met the Warden, she likely would have at least known of him for years since the Alienage is not a very large community.

Considering how that city elf has little patience for retards she probably really did met him/her. Not that it was pleasant for Sera.

>Bretonnia

They are the best human nation, though. The Empire is a pit of snakes, Tilea and Estalia are nonentities, but Bretonnia is at least a heroic place. Life is shit for peasants, but the knights are in general more shining (if fanatical and feudal) than their counterparts.

Are you high? Or do you live in opposite land?

The Empire boasts a high standard of living and relative stability. Brettonia is a shithole to live in unless your one of the shithead nobles.

I enjoyed playing the City Elf Warden as "the World's Angriest Elf".
>Kidnap my cousin and fiancée? I'll murder your entire household, kill every guard in your palace and then murder you and your friends.
>Human king? Tell him to fuck off because two months ago you murdered an Arl's son.
>"What do you MEAN 'you people'?" is my first response to EVERY question I am asked.

This largely depends on what editon you're talking about, actually.
Kinda bounced around a lot as different things were said by different writers.

>high standard of living

A shitty life in a crap forest where you get eaten by beastmen, or a shit life in a crap town where you get murdered by cultists

>stability
Aside from all the constant civil wars and infighting between the dozens of factions. The hallmark of the Empire is literally that it's an unstable and constantly changing coalition barely held together. Bretonnia's way more politically stable.

I pointed out that life sucks for peasants, but it's no better for poor people in the Empire. Peasants in Bretonnia live poor and ignorant, but at least odds are good that if an orc band starts fucking up the area some knights will come to stop them, if only for their own personal glory.

You need to lay off that chivalrois kool-aid. Cities in thr Empire are bad because all god damn cities in the world were terrible before the 20th century. Most places in the empire are fine, unless you live next to fucking Silvania or deep in the dark forest or some shit. And you are allowed to build your own fucking walls and own weapons there.

Say what you want about Sera, and holy fuck we do, but she has one virtue. She isn't Vivienne. It's annoying how you have the option to boot Sera for being a self serving trouble maker but in the dialogue she at least get along with at least more than half of your companions. Vivienne's entire dialogue consists of verbally shitting on every one of your associates.

And the worst of it is that despite her over inflated opinion of herself she isn't anywhere near as irreplaceable as she believes.

Fiona is a more legitimate Grand Enchanter than she is.
Either Lilliana or Casandra make better Divines than she does.
Solas and Morigan know more about weird shit than she does.
Dorian knows at least as much about classical magic as she does
Lilliana, Varric and even Sera have more useful contacts than she has
Cullen, Casandra and Iron Bull are better at fucking up renegade mages
Cole and Solas know more about demons

It's especially galling for the Personal Quest that all the characters have. They all make requests, give explanations and ultimately shit gets done in a manner as between professionals and friends.

She tries to give you orders and then acts snooty when you ask questions about the job.

Vivienne is the only thing keeping me from having a proper Dragon Age Tapestry on the website. Turns out that "finished her personal quest" and "didn't become close friends" aren't compatible choices. Holy fuck, did they even test that shit? Did at no point it occur to them that someone might be the kind of completionist who fulfills all quests as a matter of course but still fails to fulfill the absurd requirements of getting her to like you (i.e. not being quite groveling ENOUGH when it comes to wholeheartedly and slavishly agreeing with every last single tiny retarded thing that comes out of her mouth?)

Vivienne is a strong, conservative role model, user. She's my favourite character in the game.

Each to their own I suppose.

But keep in mind that every one of her accomplishments at court was achieved by sucking duke dick and years of backstabbery.

Then along comes Morigan. Morigan gets to exactly where Vivienne was in a fraction of the time, with much less back stabbing and without whoring herself out.

Morrigan gets to where she is because she's a fan favourite, and she doesn't have to make sense. Same as Tali going from a nobody to an admiral.

It really doesn't help that fantasy tends to be written by englaboos who think the Scarlet Pimpernel was awesome.

Fuck that salty old polish aristocratic cunt.

I like it because she demonstrates all the limitations of the tower education system.

, , Solas gives her the best verbal shut down of in the entire game.

>Vivienne: So, an apostate?
>Solas: That is correct, Enchanter. I did not train in your Circle.
>Vivienne: Well, dear, I hope you can take care of yourself, should we encounter anything outside your experience.
>Solas: I will try, in my own fumbling way, to learn from how you helped seal the rifts at Haven.
>Solas: Ah, wait. My memory misleads me. You were not there.

Ironically, I think one of the biggest reasons Solas dislikes her is because she reminds him of himself when he was younger; intelligent, arrogant, and 100% absolutely sure that she knows what is best for absolutely everyone.
Hell, we even know he played politics once like she does now based on his comments at the Winter Palace.

>Solas: Your position in the Orlesian court must be frustrating, Enchanter.
>Vivienne: Darling, I have no idea what you might be implying.
>Solas: With your magic you are kept at arm's length, never able to play the Game to its fullest. Some part of you must always wonder if you could have gone farther had you not been a mage.
>Vivienne: Don't be absurd. Without magic, I doubt the Orlesian court would have interest in me at all.
>Solas: That must rankle as well.

Solas is fucking based and is the best 'wise wizard advisor' i've seen in a while.

Shame about THE ENDING

I actually liked it. It seems to come out of the blue but if you play the game a second time the sheer amount of foreshadowing that Solas is Fen'Harel is "how the hell didn't I see it coming?" incredible.

What's best is that he's basically "Mysterious Wizard Person", but he pulls it off SO well that you don't even realize how mysterious he is until you think about how fucking vague his answers to absolutely everything he knows are.
>"All New, Faded For Her".
I fucking KNEW when I saw that goddamn title there was something I couldn't put my finger on. The wording was much, MUCH too deliberate.
Yeah, pretty much EVERYTHING Solas says, especially in party dialogue, takes on a different context in the game once you replay it.
To his credit, I don't think anything he actually tells you is a lie. He just leaves out some very important contextual bits.

>Yeah, pretty much EVERYTHING Solas says, especially in party dialogue, takes on a different context in the game once you replay it.

The mental chess game with Bull.
That alone is so full of double-meanings that it's almost ridiculous. David Gaider wrote ALL of his dialogue, and it shows.

Yeah, Solas is one of the strongest characters Bioware wrote recently. He's got a very complex, multifaceted personality and an enticing background, combined with fun dialogue and an engaging plot. I know some people were frustrated that they romanced him and he still wouldn't change his mind in Trespasser, but in a way it makes a lot of sense. Dude's a highly intelligent, incredibly motivated immortal. He spent the past several MILLENNIA being driven by this cause, do you seriously think you could make an argument to him he hasn't already considered? Or that you could change his mind just by being friends with him for what feels to him like the blink of an eye? It's a nice subversion of BioWare's usual "you can solve all your teammate's lifelong personal issues with three dialogues and a quest".

The only character I liked better in those regards was Mordin Solus from Mass Effect, and he had the added appeal of an excellent voice actor.

Oh, get this; he's not immortal at all.
Gaider when asked about Solas' Age said he was thirty-eight years old.
After the plot twist became common knowledge, then asked how old he was again and he STILL said "thirty-eight years old".
It puts his rebellious behavior in the past into context; he was basically this highly intelligent young Turk who thought he knew what was best for everybody in a culture ruled by people so close to being immortal that it made no practical difference.

I think what he meant by that was SOLAS was 38.

The Dread Wolf is obviously far older

>He spent the past several MILLENNIA being driven by this cause, do you seriously think you could make an argument to him he hasn't already considered? Or that you could change his mind just by being friends with him for what feels to him like the blink of an eye?

I think it's also some denial in his part.
If he admits that there might be another way then EVERYTHING he has EVER done in the name of his cause (some of which he quite clearly regrets doing) is, in his eyes, a lie.
He also has difficulty admitting when he MIGHT be wrong despite what an open mind he has; when you make Cole more "human" rather then spirit, he basically is totally flabbergasted and disbelieving that such a thing is possible (which he told you about repeatedly during the questline) and wonders how it could happen.

Think about it; a Spirit of Mercy, a creature literally BORN out of the Fade chooses to live free of the Fade...and it completely works and he's more stable then before.
That slaps his idea that "everything will be better once I get rid of the Veil" idea right in the face.

Dread Wolf isn't a god, and his name actually IS Solas. He clarifies this himself.
Dread Wolf was basically a nickname everyone ELSE gave to him as he basically led a rebellion against the established social order of his land. Eventually he owns the name, but he's not "Dread Wolf" and isn't an immortal god-kind, hence his very verbal distaste for even the idea of immortal god-kings.

I guess. Combat is usually a very small part of the games I run and play in - maybe 80% of each session is investigation, exploration, social stuff, that sort of thing, which is why IKRPG2e ended up disappointing me.

>"I find the idea of a god that does NOT feel the need to prove his power rather comforting, actually."

His view on The Maker.
Doesn't believe, but likes the idea because it's basically the opposite of what the "gods" he knew were like; people like Corypheus basically.

That combined with his reasons (HER) apparently suggest he led something of a peasant revolt.

I think it was more like "slave" revolt, but yeah, basically.
My theory is that he personally knew (and was in love with) one of Mythal's avatars (which is the ONLY one of the Evenuris he seems to not hate on) and when Mythal tried to better the lives of the slaves the others killed her.

What was about the chess game?
I couldn't follow the moves.