Tevinter Nights - Spoiler Thread

One of the most intriguing aspects of the story, at least for me, is actually finding out what has happened in the past that has led to things being what they are, and to find out all the things that actually motivate people like Solas, Flemeth or other ancient beings that may still be active and work towards certain goals, and so on.

So even if the ending of DA4 is a foregone conclusion... I fail to see why I wouldn't enjoy it?

Also... why would a 'foregone conclusion' for DA4 be "everything is a disaster, shit is so wack, this is not a life worth living, people are dying en masse, abominations and demons everywhere, your loved ones all die hahahah", if the Veil indeed is undone?

Maybe the trick is in the way HOW it is undone? Clearly, the Future Redcliffe was exactly what you described above... and nobody, including Solas, wanted the Veil to shatter the way it did in that dark future. So there are many possible variants to "the Veil coming undone" that doesn't allow us to conclude that, at the end of DA4, what awaits us is just bleakness and chaos. In fact, even Solas kinda seems to have a faint hope that it's not going to be this way this time - and he's the guy who has destroyed the world once, yet at the same time he's saved enough of it to continue.

You may be right. I was just saying that the part about her being moved seemed to have been retconned. Then again Bioware has had a bit of trouble with her location, since during DAI she is in the Black Emporium. 

The Streets of Minrauthous:

So another story told from a first person perspective which I did not get a good read on the protagonist character...don't really remember their name...ah yes Neve. But it was still better then Luck in the Garden.

I do rather like the idea of a demon being buried under the...Streets of Minrathous. The whole strategy of the Venatori was rather interesting too, allowing Minrathous to be destroyed in its entirety only to rebuild it from the ground up. Talk about posioining the well. Also the idea of Fade Touched metal still being a thing obviously caught my eye, and the effect it gave the swords in the story. I have to say I hope this is indictive of how they will handle crafting in DA 4...

Why would it be a terribly dull story? One of the most terrifying things for many societies or humans in general is change (even if the change is either necessary or will lead to something better than established status quo) - so why would it be dull to see people dealing with such world-changing events, or dealing with consequences of a major paradigm shift?

I mean, look at our world. 2-3 centuries of advanced technological civilization led by scientific discoveries... and we're still reeling from us figuring out that the universe is largely NOT how we imagined it to be for so long.
Is it dull? Doesn't it bring conflict and deep existential questions? Aren't some group reacting with hostility to it, when for example, yet another thing they've deemed awful for so long - like who someone is allowed to love - turn out to... actually not be awful and they were wrong, and in fact they were awful to people for no good reason?

Dragon Age has already been sort of laying groundwork to that, with pushback against Inquisition (or discoveries in Trespasser) being is that they are threatening to buck the good old status-quo and revealing truth about many matters some people would prefer buried. The Veil dropping may as well be viewed as facing the truth as well as a new opening - a forward step in evolution for that world as a whole, which of course will bring many new (and some old) challenges. People are people and adjusting to new reality isn't an easy thing, even if the world without Veil turns out to be not that bad on its face.
I won't. In fact I'd be pretty happy to see if it were our goal.

I fail to see how you can think that this will play out so simply, though? Or that Solas is simply unaware of a saf(er) way to undo the Veil, while he may simply see it as extremely unlikely, for one reason or another. He HAS been singed badly enough in the past to - and I quote him - 'not be much of a gambler anymore'.

This is when a lot of it comes down to his personal issues. There's a lot that can be discussed here, but the gist of it is that Solas has been betrayed and broken by events in the past, including things that have happened before the Veil has been raised. The one thing he repeats almost as often as "I saw it in the Fade" is "I don't trust anyone, even my friends".

His trust and faith in himself, in friends, in people in general, has been damaged - in this regard he's a mirror to Leliana, whose personal quest in DAI is (I'm pretty sure) deliberately designed to echo his personal struggles, given their similarities. And we can either leave her struggling, harden her to a merciless killer or show Leliana that she can't lose herself, lose her morals entirely, and help her trust people again. Solas likely has two revelations before him - he can't do this alone. And he will have to trust others to help him and fight for the world he wants to believe in, in ways he finds acceptable.

As for "being completely unaware"... er, how many times Solas actually has to help us to get the hint? Sometimes it's so glaring it feels like he's putting giant glowing arrows with a blinking text "Look at it! This is important for your mission!!!" on stuff he wants us to know in order to get to know him or stop him We can argue how conscious it is, but the reality is that if he WASN'T aware of these things, he simply wouldn't bother with Inquisitor or Inquisition the way he does - or in fact act sometimes as if he wants to make Inquisitor his successor.

My own guess at it is that he's trying to have both options open. The guy tries to have contingencies whenever he can - even the Veil appears to have been a contingency, the last resort (he first led the anti-slavery rebellion to try and stop Evanuris) and it was only deployed when the gods did the unthinkable and killed Mythal, thus threatening to ruin everything.

So he's likely deliberately choosing the worst possible/most viable option just in case it's needed (which he clearly thinks it is, for now), like the Veil was in its time - it's our job to get the hint, follow the clues and prove that we and our allies have enough will and strength to carry the burden and make the better alternative a reality.

I would really really hate it if the 'good' result of the veil coming down was like the synthesis ending of ME3 . That just felt like a mass brainwashing rather than what they were aiming for .

According to words both in Trespasser AND in last book, the 'catastrophe' of some kind is coming either way. It appears to be what has he's hastened him waking up from Uthenera, despite being still weak, and giving the orb to Corypheus to unlock. And he seems to think that what he does will prevent that bigger catastrophe from coming, just like the Veil did all those years back.

Also - I'm entirely unsure why you think that the destruction of the Veil always means "elves rule and the rest eat shit and die"? I mean.. I'm fairly sure that Solas has fought his old Empire for the world to NOT be that, didn't he? I have my own theories about some things, but I'm not sure it's a place for it, so I'll just bring this: Solas isn't the only one who thinks that some sort of big change is something that will happen in near future - Flemeth does too. It's WHY she advises Hawke to jump into abyss and learn whether one can fly, or why she calls Inquisitor the herald of the new age (or OGB Kieran calls Morrigan 'the inheritor').


Also... wouldn't it be a 'catastrophe' for the world in which most of people are deathly afraid of magic... if magic returned in abundance, for example? See how it can't all be flattened to one, convenient 'this is all going to sh*t" narrative?

Anyway, the funny thing is that I don't necessarily think that the Veil itself will be destroyed. But the world will likely change in significant ways anyhow. And the message I get from BW seems to be this - screw the past and screw the present, let's take what works from both and build something better, together.

I confess I take what Solas says at face value. If he says bad things are going to happen and our world is ending, then I believe him. I'm not confident yet that everything Solas says, we are supposed to read between the lines. Some theories just seem way too far-fetched for me. 

Actually, he never says that he aims to restore the elvhen civilization, never mind 'numerous times'. In fact, he handwaves Dorian being sorry about Arlathan, says that empires rise and fall, that Elvehnan wasn't much different than Tevinter at its time and that it's pointless to be nostalgic or romanticize ancient elves (and if Dorian wants to make amends for past transgressions he should help free slaves of all races that live in Tevinter today).

What he says to us is that he wants to restore "his people" (and after Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts he slips up and reveals that 'his people' are actually... mages) and bring "the world of the elves" (the world with no Veil, thus more magic in it), which actually is not indicative of "elves will be back to the top of the food chain, while others will be subjugated or killed off".

Will that potentially end up with crash of current civilization? Heh... even the reveal that Solas has created the Veil has a high chance of completely unraveling current word order! That ship has sailed, Hanako. Things are being undone already.

But the truth about the world is obviously not everything there is, that's just an appetizer. And whatever he's preparing clearly means big, drastic changes coming with strange, magical rituals. Change, oftentimes, is hard and can still go very wrong - and sometimes change may be necessary, even if ways to go about it are questionable. This is why Solas thinks that choices left to him are awful, even if he still preserves hope that he'll be proven wrong about destruction of world as Thedosians know it.

I wonder if Elf PC's would be able to join Solas, it would be a bit tempting considering that the previous games have all been about upholding a status quo that the Elves suffer under, so a chance to really change things permanently is pretty tempting, even knowing that the cost will be unimaginably horrible for everyone else.

Well, if they were unable to join him in Trespasser, I don't find it that likely they'll join him now. Although who knows what may happen in the end - though I do mean somewhere closer to the end, whatever it will be.

from this point though it's weird that the choice was made with Leiliana far before we actually got there and she does her own thing regardless of what she wants.

This is my read of the situation as well though. He is Mr. "Fire arrow up into the air and wait all day for it to land". He is used to playing the long game.