I don't think saving the Chargers is a good choice.

Again, red lyrium reaches Tevinter no matter what. If you sacrifice the Chargers believing that you definitely won't be seeing red lyrium in Dragon Age 4, you might as well dash those hopes now.

The alliance with the qunari does net you useful intelligence on other Venatori operations, however. And it might feasibly yield unknown benefits in the future.

Sure, but that is metagaming. The Inquisitor doesn't know that the Venatori will get red lyrium another way.

Its too bad there wasn't an option to save the chargers and to deal with the Venatori before they throw their balls of fire at the dreadnought.

Yes. After many months of them already doing it. Meaning they shipped samples everywhere way before we show up

Kinda agree. I think the sort of person who would choose an alliance over people they've hung out with wouldn't have honestly invited IB into the Inquisition in the first place and this decision would never have been possible to exist to make.

But if you're playing an Inky who makes decisions based off sentimentality and gut feelings? Maybe you're intrigued, maybe you get this gut feeling he's not a bad guy, etc.

The fact that the Qunari expected the Inquisition to carry the price of the Qun's screw up speaks volumes about what that "alliance" would have entailed.

I steal the desired dish from the shitty restaurant.

I think Trespasser highlights how selective the Qun are with giving intelligence to the Inquisition and also that their story that the Viddasala was a rogue operative was ridiculous. If she was and you are in an alliance with them, they must surely have known a fair bit about what she was doing and therefore they should have warned their alliance partner of her activities, which would have been easy enough for them to do via their agent Hissrad (we might know him as The Iron Bull but that persona died with his squad). Instead they said and did nothing until her scheme was uncovered by Solas' agents and the actions of the Inquisitor. If you ask him about her, he claims to know nothing. She stated that her original investigation started the moment the Breach occurred in the sky and that was under orders from Par Vollen. In fact Bull being sent to make contact with the Inquisition was probably all part of the same operation. So essentially the whole thing was part of their plan to invade the south by covert means, something that has been going on for years and according to WoT2 is definitely a strategy originally proposed by Sten back when he was a junior officer, so clearly would be endorsed by him as Arishok.

Of course, the Inquisitor would not be party to this information when they made that original decision about Iron Bull and later the Chargers. Maybe the Hero of Ferelden left no record of their conversations with Sten. Maybe Leliana forgot her conversations with him. When Hawke uncovered the presence of the Qunari spy network not just in Kirkwall but elsewhere, those in authority preferred to stick their heads in the sand. When the old Arishok nearly conquered Kirkwall with the aid of elven agents in the city, apparently it raised no alarm bells with anyone in the south either or Leliana would have been more careful in her recruitment program for the Inquisition.

So on that basis, agreeing to recruit Iron Bull and his team in the early days of the Inquistion may have made sense as we needed all the help we could get and they came with the endorsement of leading nobles in Tevinter. Then when an alliance is proposed against a mutual enemy, again it may have made sense to keep going with it because they seemed to have sources of intelligence denied to our own Spy Master (something in itself that should have raised worries about the Qunari presence in the south). The problem is that the benefits of the alliance are confined to War Table missions. So you never really get the sense of how much difference this alliance makes in the overall scheme of things.

If not recruiting Iron Bull or sacrificing the Chargers (which are things recorded in the Keep) makes a difference further down the line, then the Inquisitor's actions will have been justified. I have to admit, though, that really if I didn't want anything to do with the Qun then I would have avoided recruiting their professed agent in the first place. After all, Bull says that his band are expensive to recruit. In the early days, we are not that flush with funds. Then when he proposes an alliance with the Qun, again if I was not interested, because I thought the perceived benefits were not good enough to warrant it, then I would have refused at that point, not gone ahead with the operation and then fail to deliver on the entire plan.  If the Inquisitor considers the benefits of working with the Qun are important to the overall battle against Corypheus, why would they jeopardise it in that way?     However, even if you say you are not interested the quest remains active and if you go to the Storm Coast with Bull in the party then it will trigger.   

So the writers are really trying to force you into that confrontation and then, to be honest, whichever way you play it makes the Inquisitor look bad. I do wonder though, if we were asked to make the same decision when it didn't involve Bull and the Chargers but just some random group of Inquisition soldiers, would people still have opted for their own people over the alliance?

Because he's a qunari spy? There a strong reason to not recruit him, stronger than recruit him, I can say, while I love Bull.

I felt the whole quest was contrived. And still makes my skin twitch when I end up having to play it.

Putting that aside, I always save the Chargers. Sod the Qun and the demands of it.

I agree with you here. As you say, if you don't do the quest it essentially leaves Iron Bull in limbo. That would be fine by me. I recruited his mercenary band despite his professed allegiance with the Qun not because of it. If down the line (in Trepasser) I am betrayed by him for the sake of the Qun, fair enough because I never expected anything different.

It is the fact that they leave the quest open, clearly emphasising you need to do this to complete his character arc that is so annoying. I always felt that the decision of whether to remain loyal to the Qun or abandon it should have been Bull's choice not mine. What is particularly noticeable is that he can disapprove of many of my decisions and so the quest doesn't even trigger but if I go and kill a dragon then suddenly I had enough approval for the sequence socialising with the Chargers to begin that leads to the offer from the Qun. Why should going on a dragon hunt make me any more suitable for a potential alliance?

So the whole plot arc seems very contrived to me.