DA4: Inquisition involvement and our connection to them

When?

This is one of the reasons I’m hoping Solas is punking us. Playing the big showy villain to pull attention away from something quieter and more crucial.

It would create some variation between Corypheus and Solas — rather than being another ancient entity bent on destroying the world to restore his own, he’d be an ancient entity pretending that he’s bent on destroying the world to restore his own. And if you’re deliberately trying to provoke the Inquisition (or even the rest of Thedas), it makes sense to sound like the previous villain. You want the Inquisition to think you’re exactly the kind of thing they’re good at fighting, because that means they’ll try to fight you.

That's what struck me as odd. If Varric was heavily involved enough to promise the new hero he will be watching their back, then that will immediately alert Solas to watch them too. For Solas not to see them coming they need to be one step removed from the Inquisition at all times so he won't necessarily make the connection. However, we know how Varric is quite adept at watching people's backs in a small way, like Merrill and Anders in Kirkwall, without them necessarily being aware of it, apart from the lack of expected problems, so perhaps that is what he means. So we won't be dealing with him direct but he will nevertheless be instructing the relevant people to watch our back on his behalf, to the extent that he knows about us but we don't know about his involvement and thus neither does Solas.



I think it may be like DAO or ME2, where you have a mission which needs a crack team to work with you and you travel around recruiting them but the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity. You don't need a huge organisation but an elite squad committed to the mission.

You can do a deal with Vaughan instead of killing him (city elf origin only).   You can let the slaver take the alienage elves. You can corrupt the sacred ashes (thereby also killing Leliana and Wynne if they are in the party).

Not to mention the Dark Ritual with Morrigan. That may result in a "happy" ending for your character individually but you have no idea what the repercussions could be down the line with it. The fact that it turned out to be something of a damp squib doesn't make it any the less risky at the time.

Why? And what would be the point of having a whole new protagonist and characters?

That would rob the new protagonist of their finale with him though. Especially for new players, since it would be like “Why is this random person dealing with him after all that?”
It’s almost like going with a new protagonist halfway through a story is a terrible idea or something.

Also the idea of Inky being like TIM is just terrifying.

This kind of thing does give me a fair bit of fascination because I do agree with you on Hawke. All the set up was there for them to be Inquisitor but I don't have the same viewpoint about the Inquisitor. DA 2, to me felt vague enough where it was setting up a further role for Hawke in the sequel...but Tresspasser really wrapped up my Inquisitor's story rather nicely where I have zero interest in seeing them return and do wonder about how *neccessary* (or even wise) to see them return in DA 4. Maybe this is because of my experience with 2, but it is my opinion.

Meanwhile for others they took a wrapped up story, ripped the wrapping to shreds, used the inside to whore out a commercial, then left it rotting in a gutter. 

Clearly the only solution is to patch in a new ending to Trespasser where Solas kills the Inquisitor.

I don't know...Trespasser did alot of things, including wrapping up the fate of the Inquisition itself and the stories of the grand majority of our companions. But the Inquisitor themselves? At least with the base game we were left staring out into the sunset hoping for a better tomorrow or something like that. We had a celebration party and everything. But Trespasser basically revealed a new threat we should be dealing with...and in fact the Inquisitor is already technically trying to deal with Solas's threat through the shadow cabinet of close (ex)Inquisition advisors and affiliates. With a setup like that, I kind of expect them to come back in some form or fashion to deal with Solas.

If they didn't want that they should have done something similar to what they did with Hawke and Coryphaeus in DA2 (i.e. make the future antagonist seemingly die) or give them a severe physical impairment. And not just a 'lost arm' type of impairment, but more like 'the mark made the Inquisitor severely ill or infirm for the rest of their life'. Something that gives us an iron-clad definitive reason why the Inquisitor can't  physically come back. The 'lost arm' thing seems like something that can be worked around.

I like the Trespasser DLC, I really do and I appreciate that it was released. But as far as concluding stories go, it only did that to the Inquisition itself and several companions and not the Inquisitor themselves. And the Inquisitor is, y'know, the main character. I kind of expected some sort of ambiguous departure from the world stage or some sort of slide detailing how they lived the rest of their lives. Not a them still wearing formal Inquisition garb as they strategize how to deal with Solas.

The more I think about it, the more I think they should have ended the DLC right before we entered the final eluvian to meet with Solas. That way we can still technically end with us resolving the Qunari threat and choosing what to do with the Inquisition for the default canon ending. With an advisor questioning Solas's true motive if they still wanted to entice us. Or they could have hidden the Solas interaction behind certain criteria for an optional secret ending. I just think they could have ended the DLC better.