30 Days of DA: Favorite villain

[owlmoose]

Day Twenty-one: Favorite villain

There's really only one villain in the Dragon Age series, in the traditional sense of an overarching antagonist acting against the protagonist with intent, and that's Loghain Mac Tir. Some of the origin stories have their own villains who affect the main story (Howe, Bhelen, Vaughan, perhaps Bharat), as do some of the sidequests in both games, but overall Dragon Age does a really neat job of not providing us with clear-cut heroes and villains -- even the PC can avert the hero trope, depending on what choices you make, and I would argue that Dragon Age 2 doesn't have a classic antagonist at all.

I find Loghain pretty interesting and very well written, but he's not my answer to this question. Instead, I'll pick someone with an even more ambiguous position on the hero vs. villain scale: Meredith Stannard.

To date, I haven't played a templar-supporing Hawke, only a fence-sitter and a mage supporter, so I've only related to Meredith as an antagonist. One of the reasons I'm keen on doing a pro-templar run is to get more insight into her character. Knight-Commander Meredith fascinates me. For nearly two thirds of the game, she's little more than a name, an unseen figure in the shadows, and yet she's the driving force behind so much that what happens in Kirkwall. It gives her a menacing quality that never quite disappears, even when she does finally make her entrance during the end of Act Three. Very effective, so interesting. She is a worthy antagonist, and I look forward to learning more about her as a sort of ally.

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Comments

[sarasa_cat]

Now that I'm done with one DA2 play through, I had to come back to this meme question of yours!

I too have been thinking (meta-gaming) about how to construct an extremely pro-templar, pro-chantry Hawke purely so I can uncover different parts of the story, hers included, through different eyes.

Given how I played my mage-supporting "canon" run, I cannot say I ever fully understood the root of Meredith's motivations but only that she was a military despot with paranoid tendencies who, in the end (or earlier?) was corrupted by the idol. During that final set of battles at the Gallows, all I felt was the shear dread whenever Hawke had to stand next to Meredith because I knew she and Hawke looked at each other as mortal enemies and absolutely nothing between them would conclude well, especially if Cullen (through fear, apathy, or worse) ended up feeding Hawke to the wolves.

I look forward to learning more about her as a sort of ally.

Now that we know too much about her, it is interesting to think about where that breaking point occurs --- when would a pro-templar/chantry Hawke *stop* thinking of Meredith as an ally?

[owlmoose]

Right? That's a really interesting question. Would you see the cracks beginning to show in advance of the final battle, or would the way she turns on you come as a surprise? Although I think I want to play an all-out templar supporter just for the experience, I might end up being a fence-sitter like my first Hawke, who decides to throw in with the templars at the end.

Just checking; I may spoil at will now? ;) Or are you trying to stay somewhat unspoiled for different outcomes? I've heard enough about the pro-templar game that I wouldn't consider more info about it spoilery -- knowing about something and experiencing it as a player are two different things. (The Chantry, for example -- I knew it was coming, and yet it was still an effective shock and awe moment.)

[sarasa_cat]

For the official spoilage record: now that i've completed the DA games, I'm fully prepared for all possible spoilers merely because I want to meta-game my way through future play throughs just so I can see everything.