The Blanketfort (crying and throwing up) - The Official Solas Thread [Spoilers]

Well he did imply as much in Trespasser, particularly if he wasn't friends with the Inquisitor. He said:
"Briefly, I am the Dread Wolf. I fought the false elven gods, created the Veil and destroyed my people. I intend to restore them. Doing so, will likely destroy your world..... Live well while time remains."
To a friendly Inquisitor he adds the detail "As the world burned in the raw chaos, I would have restored the world of my time..."
Inquisitor: You'd murder countless people?
Solas: Wouldn't you to save your own?
If the Inquisitor says he never truly care about them, they were just a means to an end, he responds:
"You were people, you deserved better.... like all the rest I have used in one hopeless battle after another."
Also he says about the mark:
"Drawing you here gave me the chance to save you. At least for now."
All of these statements don't exactly give the impression that it is anything other than destructive.
Then in Tevinter Nights, when asking why Charter came to the meeting discussing him she says:
"Because you told the Inquisitor you were going to destroy this world. Did you expect us not to try to stop you?"
He responds: "It was a moment of weakness. I told myself that it was because you all deserved to know, to live a few years in peace before my ritual was complete. Before this world ended."
That all sounds very final to me whether you are basing knowledge just on Trespasser or also Tevinter Nights. There was no contradiction from Solas where the majority of people were concerned.   The only ones he envisaged surviving were a few elves, presumably ancient ones, which strangely enough also appeared to include Charter but not her human lover or the Dalish Inquisitor.   There was clearly more to Charter than we were told.

He was referring to the elves who would survive. He specifically says: "those like you, the elves who still remain, may even find it better". However, Charter recalls Tessa, her human lover and responds: "There are those I care for who would not." Solas smiled sadly and says: "I know that feeling well." He is clearly thinking of Lavellan here (because I think PW was basing his story on a world state where she was his lover). Plus he says to her in Trespasser: "I will never forget you." Which also seems to be saying she will die. There is no question about it, the majority of inhabitants of the world would die. If he was going to minimise the damage, why didn't he say so to Charter? Instead he waited until Varric showed up. Even then he is pretty dismissive because he says that people die all the time. There is no doubt in my mind, if Rook hadn't acted it would essentially have been game over.   The writers have had enough opportunities to correct this notion: in Trespasser itself, Tevinter Nights, the Missing.   If this isn't the case, then they are the ones who have misled us.   

None of these words can be interpreted 100% as meaning that all non-elves will surely perish - especially that we already know of places where modern elves feel better/thrive, while other races find unpleasant, but are otherwise alive: the Crossroads.
That makes no sense - why would PW base a canonic story on a relatively obscure quantum state?

Look, I'm a Solasmancer, and would like to see some sort of satisfying conclusion to Solas' and Lavellan's romance arc, but I don't think DA storyline is so preoccupied with Solavellan that a fairly important book (plot-wise) clearly setting up several canonic events for the entire game features a story that makes sense only in that quantum state. Nor that it should.
"I walk the Din'anshiral. There is only death on this journey. I would not have you see what I become."

"I'm sorry, Cole, but with your gift, I fear you might see the path that I must now walk in solitude forever. This fate is mine alone. Indeed, I would not wish it on an enemy, much less someone that I once cared for."

Whatever happens during or after the ritual, he expects something will happen to him that he wouldn't wish on an enemy - and that he'd have to suffer it alone. That means that he expects to never see Lavellan again - not that she surely dies.

(add to that the fact that this directly contradicts what he said to Charter, in that interpretation. Lavellan is an elf after all; one that Solas thinks is rather special)
Because that was Charter and this is Varric, at a completely different moment in time - and we don't know what happened between this period and even how many years have passed. 

And I'm not saying all of this to claim that whatever Solas does will not result in many casualties, even just from subsequent chaos, similar to when he "switched off" magic for a civilization reliant on it. He wouldn't be agonizing over what he has to do, if it was just some minor inconvenience. But:

A. He's the sort of guy who - if allowed enough space for his true character to shine - cares even about small groups of people and their well-being, so he'd be agonizing over a smaller pool of people he'd have to hurt than *the entire world*

B. Not everyone died after he's created the Veil. A civilization has perished, people how they were have ended (since he's cut most people's conscious connection to the Fade), but they didn't necessarily die - in fact, he's created the Veil specifically so the world and people in it survived and had a chance to rebuild. And I think we've already established that he does what he does not just for a small bunch of ancient elves.

Honestly with the opening now it's looking like he was too straightforward and too honest about his plans. Things happened exactly as he said it would,mind you he himself probably feels extremely conflicted about what he's doing.

But with this comes a few oddities. Like was he being obtuse then? Or is it from a point of view sort of thing? Afterall we know all the races existed before the Veil went up so naturally the Veil going down won't be the complete genocide he was portraying. There will definitely be a culture shock which might result in the collapse of modern societies, but things will continue on from there.

From what Varric was saying as they were heading across Minrathous, the concern was with the amount of chaos it would unleash. He pointed to the demons that were already running riot throughout the city, then there would be the sudden influx of magic which might have adverse effects on the mental health of all the mages at the very least. In fact if it did restore the elves to the former selves what would that do? It wouldn't be the same as when he put up the Veil because that was holding things back, although from the memories in the Vir Dirthara it had some pretty devastating effects then too. In that case, it would seem elven structures suddenly started to break apart, some being left in the Fade, some in the Crossroads and some crashing back to earth. Now when Corypheus opened up the Breach again, it had the effect of removing gravity and splitting the landscape. (They never really dealt with the consequences of closing it again which should have obliterated everything around Haven but that's all in the past now). According to some of the concept art we can expect something similar in this game but whether that is because his ritual damaged the Veil in the Arlathan Forest or something else, like whatever created the magical anomalies in the Missing, remains to be seen.

Folks, keep in mind that the gameplay reveal we saw has been heavily edited to hide spoilers - that part is at least an hour long, and even those who saw that hour say that it was a truncated version of the intro.

And we already know that there are locations we didn't yet see - like Solas' hideout full of his murals. Don't assume that all we've heard in that gameplay reveal is all the information we'll get - either from Varric, or Solas (and whoever else is involved).

I'm like "I have stuff to doooo...." and then I just helplessly gravitate to BSN or Twitter, where algorihm pushes DA stuff on me 

A new bane of my existence - DA: FOMO

For the life of me, I've never seen a story where the plot twist is that the heroes find out there was no need to stop the antagonist. Rook and the rest of the party believes this ritual is going to kill a lot of people (regardless of what the scale is), but... they're just wrong.

It also seems a bit forced to attempt to inject "ambiguity" into lines such as "The return of my people means the end of yours".

Nevermind that when the Inquisitor asked "Why does this world have to end for the elves to return" or vowed that "You don't need to destroy this world", he never told them those fears are misguided.

And I do remember you mentioning Solas is rather straightforward about this when speaking to an Inquisitor with low approval.

I think the main problem with the veil coming down is the initial shock and wave of demons (and spirits who get turned in to demons b/c of the shock) that hits the world. Its like Fallout. Sure, the nukes didn't kill everyone, but they sure did a number on them.

Solas saying he's taken steps to mitigate the damage is all well and good and gives me hope for him on a personal level. But. Original plan was gonna kill 85% of people, and he mitigated it down to 70%... I mean, yay? But not doing it would mitigate it to 0%. So.... 

Now if he has a reason for needing to do this that involves his choice truly being the lesser of two (or more) evils, like he claims, then I am open to hearing it. I'll probably still try to find a third option cus I'm a video game protagonist, but I'll listen first. But he has to *actually* explain now.

Off-Topic, sorry!

In all the commotion, I nearly forgot.  A few of us have been thinking about a BSN FFXIV get-together.  If you're interested, come chat with us here: bsn.boards.net/thread/822/final-fantasy-thread

This goes for anyone else, too.  The more the merrier! 

Off topic of the current discussion but ...

Anyone else disappointed they're apparently abandoning the Keep? Like, all of the decisions are right there, they created the Keep so they wouldn't have to do game imports. Seems kind of silly to use it just for DAI, record all of DAI's "important" decisions, then decide nah not going to use it anymore. I get they're trying to do an offline game but the Keep doesn't require a constant online connection, just connected for the world state download. I also wonder how long they're going to continue supporting that site if they're not going to use it anymore.

Also, does it feel kind of like they skipped a game? I have this feeling that the plan was to do Dreadwolf which would focus on tracking Solas down and trying to stop him, then the end of the game was going to be what we saw as the beginning of Veilguard then the next game was going to be fighting the elven gods.