Tevinter Discussion Thread 2.0 - "Tevinter is coming"

I want Tevinter to be total Chaos ala Kirkwall. No restoring Order up in here!

Walter Black

I guess I meant more like.. Kirkwall couldn't be fixed. It was too messed up. And Tevinter should be too messed up to fix as well, considering it's rampant blood magic and slavery and unequal mageocracy. Where even supporting Dorian, good ol' slavery apologist Dorian, is an imperfect choice. The recurring theme is we end up shaping the political focus of entire countries so we're obviously going to put someone's butt on the Throne/Equivalent in Tevinter. Taking sides is great RP material, but I don't want the fact that we made a choice to equal immediate sunshine and rainbows.

I felt like the mage/templar war was handled too easily, taking a side shouldn't have ended it. It should have put it on pause. I feel like the underlyng issues were never really resolved. The Divine choice sort of tidies it up. Sort of, but almost all the choices feel a bit unbelieveable when it comes to "the masses." Guess it came at the cost of the other side failing miserably at everything and probably dying so it was weighty.

If you ever played ME3, I think It really got punched into me that every choice had a cost- short term and long term. And that usually that cost meant lives.

Not that I want there to be no happy ending. I'd like Bioware to find that perfect balance between Realistic Outcomes and Trying to Depress Us

That's what I mean. 

Total example, not expecting this to be the main options of DA4

Say there are three things:
End the Mageocracy and start a Democrtic Republic
End Slavery
Resolve Solas exactly the way you want

I want you to only be able to do 2/3 of those things, but not be able to do 3/3 good things. There needs to be a trade of values to achieve what is most important to your character. If you sink all your resources and time into perfecting Tevinter, then Solas has to die. No chance to redeem. But if you allow the mageocracy to continue, you can end slavery and watch your Quiz make out with Solas in their happy ending.*

*Not a Solasmancer.

Yea, I've got reasonably sick of "Social Change: the Fantasy Game" which has been the model for DA2 and DAI. I would like to see a general return to the style of DAO. Exploration mixed with some weighty moral choices but nothing that fundamentally reorders the fabric of society.

You can actually play DAI without throwing your weight behind a specific person for Divine. I don't mean just not doing the war table mission, either. Your choices throughout the game influence the outcome, but if, during the conversation with whichever person, you don't say you support them, then the option never comes up. In my first several plays of DAI, that's what happened with me and I got Leliana every time without actually supporting her bid; I told her I didn't agree with her vision. On another play, I specifically gamed it to try to get Cassandra on the throne, told her I supported her candidacy, and the option appeared on the war table.

I hope that the Origin of our Mage PC (human obviously) will begin in one of the Tevinter circles of Magic, seeing how magical education is handled in a civilized country, after completing our apprenticeship we then move into the byzantine political life in the Magisterium, which will probably foreshadow the main issues that we will be dealing with. The war with the Qunari, Old God cults, slave uprising, clash between the Altus and Laetans, Solas' schemes and maybe deals with the Ambassadoria. Those are some of the main issues I see upcoming.
After words, depending on our gender we get a mutually exclusive companion, our arranged fiancee/groom who was picked out by our overbearing and ambitious parents. This individual will be similar to the Bethany/Carver situation in Dragon Age 2. A major element of our personal story will be how we handle our betrothed. Try to get along? Mutually unappreciated? Long but eventually satisfying romance? Who knows. We meet our intended at a party which will be the ground zero event akin to Ostragar/Conclave. The story following that will hopefully be great.

The speculation that it will at least be heavily based in Tevinter is due to the final Trespasser scene where the Inquisitor stabs Tevinter on a map of Thedas. The scene is highly suggestive. In addition, the dialogue is referring to going to places and recruiting new people that Solas doesn't know about, and thus can't infiltrate. While that can obviously mean any number of places we haven't yet been to, the map-stabby-thing helps enforce that it's Tevinter or the surrounding region. There is also the indication that the Qunari are increasing their push against Tevinter. And finally, the tone of Trespasser and its epilogues suggest that we're pretty much done with southern Thedas.

But there is no official confirmation of any of this. The game has barely been confirmed, and that was just done with random tweets rather than a formal announcement (which I assume will happen when Anthem is nearing completion as the bulk of the BioWare Edmonton people are working on that).

Nothing official yet, but there have been a lot of hints;

In Inquisition;


In Trespasser;


In the Comics;



With how much they've been teasing Tevinter, it seems likely that we might go there eventually in the games.

True, outright banning of slavery in Tevinter might also prove to be disastrous, regardless of the noble intentions of those behind it.

Slavery is often suggested to be the backbone of their economy and provide the primary source of labour in the Imperium, so they'd need some time to transition into full-scale abolition. Doing it too quickly might risk economic collapse or igniting a civil in the Imperium between those who supported and opposed the practice (obvious real world parallel should be obvious).

And should if the Qunari decide to seize the advantage and come a-knockin' when Tevinter was at it's weakest, that would not end well for either them or the rest of Thedas (without Tevinter as the main bulwark against Qunari invasion).

I'd like to see us push progressive reform and get the ball starting on abolitionism in Tevinter, but not change the nation overnight.

Using an example from real world history, it took about 25 years between the end of the slave trade and the complete end of slavery throughout the British Empire. If Tevinter were were to go along a similar route, even if we were to succeed in convincing the Magisterium to end the slave trade, it might be decades before those currently held as slaves in Tevinter might earn their freedom.

Admittedly, that's not a nice prospect to think about, nor exactly the outcome we'd most want to see, but it might sadly be the most realistic outcome we could hope to get.

To be clear, I meant that getting everything you want in Tevinter means you get no choice in killing Solas.
Whereas if you sacrifice the needs of many, you get the option of not killing him.

But overall, I just want there to be Costs to Decisions. But I don't want it to be grimdark like the Witcher where literally all the choices just make you feel like you're damned either way.