Role of Inquisitor and Inquisition in DA4

I hate to say it, but I have to agree. That or go missing - more so if a third party were responsible, rather than Solas himself. 

I'm guessing they'll play a small role. Maybe recruiting the new protagonist in the prologue and explaining the Solas problem. Then go away in order to keep eyes off the new character, because having the Inquisitor/inquisition around would probably draw too much attention.

It’d be more terrible, not interesting.

Not just taste, but it would go completely against how I and many others played the character. So then suddenly becoming some moral grey bastardization is terrible not interesting.
Also morally grey characters can be just as boring if not more so than good.

I was mostly referring to the Inquisitor in your post rather than the Inquisition, since the latter yes obviously like all organizations can have bad eggs in it. I don’t think Trespasser is a good example though, since it pummeled people with the Idiot Ball to make the plot go a certain way and we couldn’t even contest it (for example I would absolutely take Josephine’s advice and tell people about the Qun invaders from the beginning).

I suppose a possible twist could be that Solas does succeed in performing his ritual but once again screwed up by not correctly seeing the consequences, so the world survives but we now have a bunch of angry elven gods running amok. New PC can either kill Solas while he is vulnerable and good riddance or let him live so he can help clear up the mess he created, after which he is banished to the Fade behind the newly created Veil. (Romanced Inky has option of joining him there). I mean the artwork shows at least one "evil god" on the rampage. Where did they come from if not escaped from his prison?

I suspect this is going to be what happens. After all he hasn't had a single plan go right so far, instead always just making things worse. 

If they go this route, I want to hear from some of the Evanuris to get their perspective. Especially Sylaise and June since they don't seem that bad. 

Clearly he had spent too long as the Ambassador to Orlais and it did something to his brain. However, the hatchet job they did on the Wardens generally in DAI explains his rather peculiar speech about them. I've repeatedly said that in order to include them in the way they did, with Clarel being in charge of the Wardens across the south and us having to find out what was happening with the Wardens from Ferelden by searching out Blackwall, meant they effectively ignored the entire plot from DAA. Also, Teagan wasn't the only one who was a complete idiot. What about Clarel and every Warden bar one in DAI?

I'm hoping the writers redeem themselves as well as the Wardens by doing a better job with them in DA4.

In my opinion the Grey Wardens actions were completely in character for them. Alistair says it in the very first conversation you have with him: he wouldn't necessarily call the Wardens "heroes" because they will do whatever is necessary to stop the Blights.

I think Clarel's plan was something that I would expect the Wardens to do. Maybe the not the demon summoning bit but instead of sitting on their hands for hundreds of years waiting for another Blight they were actually going to do something preemptive to stop the Blights from ever happening again. It's strange that the Wardens haven't tried to do something like that a long time ago considering they know where the Old Gods are.

Like I said before in the Twitter thread I think the Inquisitor found out about Solas' in Tresspasser so that inquisition agents would be hunting Solas in the next game. So there'd be a neutral organisation not tied to any nation like the siccari, ben hassrath, etc. involved. Whether the standing army was dissolved or absorbed by the Chantry, the spy network still controlled by the inquistor and the new people they've been discreetly recruiting have already been hunting Solas in the comics and books.

I'm sure we will continue to see inquisition agents acting in da4.

I suspect we won't see the inquisitor in person for most of the game. “what happens when you don’t have power” and “what happens when the people in charge aren’t willing to address the issues” doesn't really jive with 'regularly meets with one of the most influential people in the South and in the sourthern Chantry'.

If I had to guess how the inquisition and the inquisitor will be used in da4?

At first we'll probably be running into inquisition agents in the field, feeling the Inquisitors presence that way, while running our own missions (maybe already looking into Solas for our own group, maybe about red lyrium/venatori, maybe qunari, or ancient artefacts, etc). Then we'll probably make contact and start receiving information from key agents like Charter, Harding and Varric. Also Dorian, but since it's possible to not recruit him his information (while still probably about helping stop Solas amongst others) will probably be more Lucerni faction/Tevinter focused, so we might meet him earlier. That information will start to inform our missions. The sorts of intel we recieve and missions outcomes the Inquisition agents we talk to encourage may differ based on whether we selected redeem/stop, and who drank from the Well of Sorrows in DAI. Or atleast the way they talk about it. As we approach the endgame we'll probably finally meet the Inquisitor. Perhaps they'll then lead inquisition forces into battle whilst our team sneaks through to our objective. Perhaps they'll accompany the party into the field temporarily like Valta. Or both, or something else entirely.

I don't think it would be difficult to give npc inquisitor a combat role. Previous games are full of npcs with unique fighting animations different from the ones the pc and companions use, so it's no trouble doing it for the Inquisitor (if venatori mages can get unique casting from spell book animations an inq model can get one armed or with prosthetic animations*). And npcs don't need full ability trees and companions. Just appropriate hp, dps, defense stats and animations for the abilities they do use. (Of course if they don't follow along like Hawke or Valta, but go fight on their own/leading inquisition forces then we'd only see them fighting in cinematics anyway so it's even easier).

Presuming they do show up I hope they improve from how they executed Hawkes appearance by giving us control of their dialogue wheel. Depending on which Hawke I'd imported they could come off as either slightly off but within the margins of what I could explain away as the result of whatever had happened to them in the time since I'd last controlled them, to wildly out of character. Selecting whether a character had favoured diplomatic, humorous or aggressive responses (by however slighter margin) just is no substitute to actually choosing their responses. And I feel that the only way for a PC returning for a cameo to not suffer from OOCness is to have dialogue options instead of set dialogue.

I watched a video of Detroit: Become Human where the player controlled two characters during a conversation that seemed to work well. If the inquisitor doesn't show up until the later part of the game, the PC only has a few of conversations with them, and whether you control the inqs dialogue wheel is determined in CC at the same time as you decide whether you want to customise your inq or use the default inq** - then this shouldn't become too cumbersome. I wouldn't say you need to control them out of conversations though.


Not really predictions/guesses but things I'd just love to see:

1.
At some point the Inquisitor uses their status and their relationship with Solas to get him to look over here when he should be looking over there.

2.
I'd also love to see big consequences for the Well of Sorrows decision.

Some ideas: the inquisition agents we come across could be following different orders/in different places depending on whether the inquisitor is the well-drinker, where/ when or even whether we get some Intel relating to elven artefacts could depend on it, the well-drinker may find themselves compelled to carry out Mythal's plan at the end of the game, or who ever drank from the well might be Mythal's new vessel as Flemeth was. Because though a soul is not forced on the unwilling, when they drank they chose to bind themselves to Mythal's will.

(These are just some spitball ideas, other possiblities would be welcome)

It's a binary decision between 2 always alive characters, someone always drinks from the well, it's just a question of whether it's the inquistor or morrigan, so I'm hopeful we will see fallout.

I think these work better when the inquisitor is an npc. It's not that you couldn't do these plots with a pc inquisitor its just that you have to be careful about taking agency away from players and it'd be tough to make main plotlines optional (the imperial agent class story exists but there's no option to avoid getting brain washed, freeing your mind is what the story is about). There'd have to be a version of the story where the main character hadn't drunk from the well which would tend to result in the well-drinking consequences being less significant. Much easier to do big diverging dramatic consequences for npcs than for the pc in this case.


*I'd personally be disappointed if they got a magic hand that worked perfectly just a real one.

** So that new players who've never played the Inquisitor before can just get the default dialogue choices (chosen for minimal confusion much like the default keep settings) and not worry about trying to roleplay a character they don't know.

If I can't get to control them or if incorporating them in the game as a proper NPC takes too many resources, yes. This is what I would prefer. Same for Divine Victoria, whoever she may be. Although I might be amenable to showing a small cutscene where their face is never shown and they have minimal speaking lines. Probably giving orders or some such. If having them there physically is a must, I'd rather have too little of them as opposed to mishandling them completely. 

But yes, codex entries and letters is my preferred incorporation. Even if it is primarily because I have doubts they can actually portray them in-person adequately.