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

Ah yes, my friend, you are coming round to my suspicious way of thinking. I know he does make the odd mistake, like giving his orb to Corypheus to unlock, but this ritual was so important it is extremely peculiar that the location was accessible by eluvian and then his actual site was unguarded, although I have pointed out that perhaps the hostile demons were working for him. Where are all those elves that were said to be flocking to him? Where are his agents that were hunting down the location of the idol? Also, his agents working in the Inquisition? I've always maintained that the Missing seemed very suss and that Solas left a trail of breadcrumbs for Varric and Harding to follow. He was always just one step ahead of them. Very convenient I would say. Something doesn't quite add up, even if Rook's action with the ritual wasn't something he wanted or anticipated.

I really like having a new protagonist, otherwise I'd never get to explore new romances, 'cause me PC heroes ain't no cheaters!

Also, in general I like making new characters and making them feel unique in the world.

How about a double wedding! (I'm still fuming that I haven't got one yet and Hawke should have had one but then it got cancelled.)

The romance thing is easily circumvented.  We're not importing any choices from a pervious saved game.  We'll be using a Keep type thing that's in the character creator itself.  Just create an Inquisitor with no romance.  You can even have all of the other choices your (main) PC had, just leave off the romance part.

Personally, I prefer a more Mass Effect (leaving out Andromeda, just talking about the original trilogy) style deal where you have your character and all of their choices follow.  It gives me a nice sense of continuity.  I may have to rebuild a squad from (almost) scratch but at least I know my character.

I'd *love* to have some sort of (optional?) conflict between our old and new PC.

Maybe even turn one into an obstacle, or even downright antagonist 

I imagine we'll have to pick the "save Solas/strangle Solas" Trespasser choice at the start of the game, and that's that.
Rook will make the final choice, there will be new players who will have no idea who the hell the Inky is, and I don't think Inky will be a huge deal like Ciri.

If you'll recall I have been on this band wagon for years at this point. Solas's stated intentions never really made sense based on what we know of the lore and the back ground information of Thedas. Which either indicates A. bad writing. B. stupid characters. Or C. Great writing and brilliant characters. With BoWare they have enough good will I generally assume it has to be 'C' in broad strokes. Now that does not mean this has gone entirely to plan, like I do wonder if getting stuck in the Fade is apart of the plan or not...but as someone pointed out it does also remove him from the equation in order for his enemies to all fight one another. 

Yeah we have actually seen a suspicious amount of this trope of late across gaming pop up more and more. Morally grey kind-of-antagonists popping up in a character's heads/ dreams to try and influence a character's decisions for good or ill. I haven't played all of these and don't have as much experience with some as with others but...yeah we have seen the basics of the trope a lot. 

Odin in ACV- Probably the oddest one of the entire list, though maybe another one, but this was handled oddly. Odin in Vahalla was a remnent Isu personality that was hiding within the psyche of the Protagonist Eivor and trying to effectively, at least in the base game, take over their body and merge with them. At least this is what happened also with Basim. So each of the critical descisions you made in the game either got you closer to the outcome or farther away from it until you either defeated Odin's influence or it won out. Curious though in a post ending DLC seemed that Odin and Eivor had decided to make peace and also become more of a positive gestalt entitity and I will admit I guess there is some confusion in my mind of how much Odin 'took over'. But with Sigurd at times and certainly with Basim that was the definite insinuation that their Isu personalities overpowered their base personalities resulting in Basim leading a eons old revenge plot. 

Johnny Silverhands in Cyberpunk- The one I am the least familiar with and the game I am the least familiar with so maybe some of my assumptions would be wrong but his personality can essentially merge with Vs through cyber shannagans and even take over at some point and from what I gather can be another morally grey 'devil on your shoulder'. 

The Emperor in BG III- Pretends to be the Dreamguarding to you and protect you. In that guise tries to encourage you to take certain actions all in the name of 'freeing' the Dream guarding and protecting the party from the indluence of the Mind Flayers. In the end his true nature is revealed but in this case you have the choice to ally with him and take him up on his offer to help you defeat the Absolute...or not. 

Sephiroth in FF VII rebirth- A much more straight up black example of this where he is evilly just entirely trying to over power Cloud's personality and turn him into a puppet, but still influencing him through mind and action. 

In all of these cases though these grey relationships were coupled with a darker straight antagonist in their games, the Templar Order led by the King in ACV, whoever the baddies are in Cyberpunk, and the Cult of the Absolute in BG III. This gives these devs to have a 'frenemy' option in these other characters that we are free to agree and disagree with. So I do think it likely that some sort of 'happy ending' for Solas may be the least bit possible given all of this. 

Course the fascinating thing to consider is how are we going to get there in Veilguard. Given things and how this is likely to work broadly we're probably going to have multiple conversations with him in the game in order to try and change his view point...if such a thing is even in the cards...or let him argue his case to us as Rook. So if we do want to change his mind do we just go along with what he says and try and be concealatory and dipplomatic...or do we need to give him some tough love and just try and lay into him exactly how wrong he is? Afterall there is a piece of dialogue in Inquisition which seems very appropriate where you can basically tell him you hope to preserve the past and what not and he greatly approves. Perfectly benign and sensible statement in a way but given what Solas is trying to do actually not that good of a thing and the way he took it. And also just going to be curious to see where all this goes as well. Will we be able to convince him to be a team player? Will we be able to convince him to actually take responsibility for his mistakes? Like the wolf vs dragon fight is likely to happen no matter what but the circumstances of said fight could drastically change based on how we interact with the Dreadwolf. 


It is something to consider to especially given the forces and back stories at play. I certainly plan on playing Oliver as being initially antagonistic to Kara because it will be more then a little funny and well since he is a Tevinter native he probbaly has heard a lot of bad things about the Inquisition from his circles. So he'll be guarded. Should warm up eventually though. 
That would certainly be funny. Especially if Rook basically just goes in and surprises Solas with it. Could bring up a lot of drama. 

I think I'm still running with the backstory for my Rook that he is from the clan Solas had an unfortunate experience with after he woke up. Not that either of them are necessarily aware of that fact but it just amuses me. He also doesn't have vallaslin for reasons that I gave in a story I wrote, which you might find amusing. He was recounting this to a member of his group who ended up hunting a number of Crows who had kidnapped some Dalish children on behalf of an evil Magister who wanted them for his blood rituals (this was written long before Tevinter Nights came out and Crows were previously shown to be happy to work with evil Tevinter Magisters, as detailed in DW's comic series):

At the next Arlathvhen he learned that Fen'Harel was back but according to Lavellen he was up to something that could result in the destruction of them all.    So, he did have to revise his admiration of Fen'Harel somewhat.  In fact he is now pretty pissed with him.  (He's not that fond of Crows either which could be interesting to say the least).  Also they received word that some of the clans were heading back to Arlathan Forest. So, he decided to join them and find a way to stop Fen'Harel because he loves his clan and wants to protect them.   It seems as good a starting point as any.

Ah-ha!  Going through the gameplay video again, I saw something I missed the first several (hundred) times I watched it.  Rook right next to the same lamp the Dread Wolf is next to in the release date trailer.  Now we have an accurate size comparison.  And yeah, wolf boy is big. 

Hmmm, I just had a thought.

What if there's a moment late in the game where we have to sacrifice one of our companions - but Solas can take their place? Or it's the other way around?

First I would scream and curse at the writers for doing that. Then bye bye Solas, unless I have a particular reason to want to sacrifice the companion in his place. Seems a pretty shitty decision to me. On the other hand, if they volunteered that would be a different story. That would be their choice not mine, a bit like when I was all ready to sacrifice myself as the Warden but then Alistair asked to do it instead and convinced me to let him.

More likely the decision will involve sacrificing Rook or the Inquisitor in conjunction with Solas (again if it is their choice).