Noble or commoner human

They deserve to die for being complicit in the starvation, murder and sexual assault of an untold number of people, including children.

So did the elves, but for some reason, you're okay with them doing that. 

I disagree with that because it's not even about Bioware not having the guts to go all in, but the reality is they probably can't do that unless they want the rating to be bumped to A and again, as I said earlier, it would affect the sales negatively. You can just say what you mean which seems to be that because you don't like something you don't want it to be in the game. 

I thought I was making it perfectly clear this whole time that I don't like half-ass, bigot-coddling bullshit and I DO want it gone from the games, one way or the other so this is not the "gotcha" that you seem to think it is. I'm entitled to say what I want gone from the games just as much as I am entitled to say what I want added.

There are two options I'm willing to accept 1) handle the subject matter properly or 2) don't handle it at all. Which one BioWare picks is up to them, I'm not interested in discussing the practical concerns of either approach.

That's the way. If you pretend you won, then you might fool enough other people into believing it, and then it'll be real.

If you won't answer the question, then you're actually just proving my point, which is that you're dredging up ancient history to try to justify modern bigotry, and saying that people deserve to suffer and starve and be displaced and ghettoised and oppressed for shit they didn't do.

Also, don't throw around terms like "hypocrisy", when you don't know what they mean. Refusing to engage with you about Red Crossing or whatever other ancient crime of the elves you were planning to dredge up in order to justify your fanatical hatred of a fictional race is not hypocritical, because it's not relevant to my argument about addressing the systemic injustices occurring in Thedas now. It's only relevant to you because you've adopted the frankly absurd position that people should suffer for ancient wrongs committed by their ancestors, or even (in the case of the mages) for ancient wrongs committed by people wholly unrelated to them.

But you only apply that logic to elves and mages. You totally ignore and refuse to acknowledge the historical wrongdoings of the Chantry and Orlais, even though Orlais violently invaded Ferelden with the help of the Chantry extremely recently, within Loghain's lifetime. That's hypocrisy.

No, see, the fundamental premise that underpins my arguments is that BioWare games fail at being "morally grey", completely and utterly. Consumers being suckered in by bad-faith arguments that would get tossed out of a high school debate doesn't make a game complex, it just says something unfortunate about the consumers.

That's the thing though. According to the World of Thedas it's not always a choice. Unwanted children are given to the Chantry (Lily for example). If your logic here is "guilty by association" then you could say the same thing about mages and that actually proves the templar's point. Might as well blame all the mages for the actions of the Tevinter Imperium while we're at it. 

It is a while since I played but whatever you decide to do is not technically an Annulment, since that is what Gregoire was waiting for. He had sent to Denerim to get permission from the Grand Cleric there and the reply had not yet arrived. So you can persuade him to let you take a look before the Annulment is enacted,saving whoever you can, or suggest you go in an kill everything that moves as a lost cause. Naturally if you choose the first option then you are trying to save people. Having never taken the second option, I assume that the main difference is that you end up killing Wynne. What happens to the children she is guarding in that case?


In DA2 your mercy extends to just 2 mages. Nevertheless this comes after the cut scene showing the Templars killing everyone in their path. There is no suggestion that sparing those two mages is going to extend to anyone else who hasn't become an abomination by now. By the time you get to Orsino, it is fairly certain that all the mages inside the Gallows have been killed, including any children. It is after all the reason Orsino finally loses his reason, which at least makes some sense on the Templar run considering Meredith is there confronting him. Regardless, when you choose your side after the Annulment is declared, if you side with Meredith then you are giving your support to killing every mage in the Circle, even if not all die by your hand. However, you do not really have to confront that reality because the majority of the deaths take place off screen.

There is nothing morally grey about that decision.  Even Sebastian, who is probably the only surviving member of the Chantry at that point, realises that what Meredith is proposing is both illegal and illogical.   The person who is responsible for the atrocity of bombing the Chantry is sitting right there in front of Meredith.  He even admitted his guilt.   Every bit of blood magic we have encountered in the city up to that point has been committed by apostates outside the Circle.   At the time of the bombing, the majority of mages were meant to be locked in the cells at the Gallows (although for some reason the Templars decided to release a whole load of them in contradiction of what we had previously been told).   Nevertheless, no one from the Circle was actually implicated in the bombing; Anders even exonerates them by making it clear he acted alone (or with Hawke's help).   So calling an Annulment of the Circle is a monstrous injustice.

Hush now, don't bother panda with logic. It ruins the narrative he wants to tell. 

Lily was also making plans to run away. Nothing's stopping priests from leaving if they want. I'll concede that Templars have been leashed by an addictive substance, but that only excuses not running away, it does not excuse literally everything else they do, and I'm not just referring to the "corrupt" ones, the system is abusive at its core.

And to be clear, I do not "deny" that Anders may have killed people that might conceivably be called "innocent", I have made the calculated decision to not care about that, because nobody who brings this point up ever does so in good faith. What upsets people isn't that Anders kills "innocents", they don't give a single flying fuck about the innumerable innocent mages, elves or innocent anyone else who died due to the abuse or negligence or exalted marches of the Chantry, so clearly they don't care about "innocents" at all. What actually upsets them is that Anders acted at all, instead of waiting for the people stepping on his neck to just miraculously stop of their own accord.

It's the same old song, no matter what the context,  fictional or real. Whenever oppressed people fight back in any meaningful, effective way that actually works, they get criticised. There's never a "right" way to rebel, or protest, or defend themselves. The only "moral" thing an oppressed person can do is die while waiting for their oppressors to change their minds.

Oppressors are not entitled to infinite time to change their minds, and the oppressed are not obligated to be patient. If some of the people Anders killed might have eventually one day been swayed by reasoned debate, tough. They already had plenty of time, and anyone who argues otherwise is just transparently attempting to reinforce oppression. 

Yes Hanako, well done, because I support ending current oppressive systems by any means necessary, I obviously also support killing people for ancient atrocities their ancestors committed, that's totally the same thing and not an incredibly fucking stupid comparison at all.

Talk about a bad faith argument. Anyone who disagrees with you only think one certain way that discredits them.
Well, what about me? I am upset that Anders kills innocents, yet I don’t think the way you are describing. I have repeatedly talked about caring about the mages, elves, and other innocent groups. It’s not that difficult: I’m opposed to innocent people suffering. I’m just opposed to actions that cause other innocents to suffer, and do not have a twisted view that anyone who is a part of a group is guilty of the crimes committed by someone else in that group.
Also why bring up the Exalted Marches, when those were centuries ago? If elves can’t be held accountable for the atrocities their ancestors caused, the same applies to humans.

Considering how you brought up an ancient atrocity as a justification, you seem to support exactly that.
But here, I’ll answer your question while addressing this: you act like there haven’t been modern instances. The mages have tons of apostates that have killed countless people. The Dalish have shown that they will kill people who have done nothing to them (that’s even the first choice in the Dalish origin), there have been city elves that have killed lots of innocent people like the one woman in Kirkwall with the poison gas or Briala’s faction, and so on.
By your logic, any member of these groups should be killed because they are guilty by association.