HighCastle

xelestial:

I didn’t know of the bug. I’ve always been able to persuade him to fight with me. But if you decide to let him run away instead of killing him or asking him to fight with you, I believe he still shows up to fight you. I chose to let him run away once because I didn’t want to force him to fight his people and I didn’t want to kill him and he still showed up to fight me…broke my heart.

I never played him all the way through on the romance friendship path besides messing around a bit with the console to experience some of the dialog, but I have played him all the way through on the romance rivalry path and all the way on friendship/no romance. I know he is like two different people and quite frankly I hate what becomes of him in friendship. He doesn’t feel like Anders anymore so much as a third person, merged from Anders and Justice.

I prefer the rivalry path I think though because I felt like I really tried to help him overcome Justice. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t and he ends up somewhat broken. Alternatively, you can also play rivalry, then at the end support the mages and run away with him, and there has been some discussion on the DA forums that in this scenario, he might be able to separate from Justice- since Gaider said he basically was able to, so long as he was totally willing. Which he isn’t, unless you go rivalry, and if you go templars in every scenario he pretty much dies in some way, so it requires supporting his cause but not supporting him and Justice’s method. It’s an opinion thing. I can see your point but I feel like Hawke tries to save him on the rivalry path and on the friendship path, promotes all of his actions and Anders as an abomination. It’s ultimately due to two totally different viewpoints, but still, like I said, it’s interesting to see it from the other side.

It’s definitely an interesting debate. I think the crux of this issue is whether or not you as a player or as Hawke supports Anders’ cause. I do. Most of that likely stems from my background. I’m hardwired to sympathize with people being oppressed. And the mages are barely better off than slaves. They’re not permitted to own property, to live anywhere but the Circle, to marry, to travel, to pursue a career, to basically do anything but study (Chantry approved) books and train the next generation. In Kirkwall they are systematically abused on top of all this, made Tranquil so they won’t protest any sexual advances from the templars. If apostates are capture in groups, a certain percentage are killed off simply as an example to the rest. These are horrific crimes, so at the end of the day I look at everything Anders is doing and say, “Yes. It needs to be done. Someone needs to act.”

I know there are people who point out that mages have the potential to destroy cities with their power. That’s true. However, locking them up and abusing them is not a good way to cope with the problem. Any study of human psychology or the prisonization effect will show this. Studies of prisons show us that those on the inside—rather than reforming—often learn from each other new ways to commit crimes. They find ways to hone their skills, and the impulse to commit crimes increases rather than decreases. How does this apply to the Circle? Well, it means the mages the templars are watching are probably becoming better at practicing and hiding blood magic. So not only is the Circle an abuse against the mages’ human rights, it’s also failing to work as the templars intended. This is proved with Uldred and how many blood mages he trained and kept secret in Ferelden.

The system is beyond broken, so I always stand with Anders on this issue. As for the merger with Justice, it’s a grey area, to be sure. But ultimately, I’m not entirely convinced it’s a terrible thing. And even if it’s short-sighted, the right way to help Anders hang onto his humanity isn’t to constantly tell him he’s a monster, which is precisely how the rivalry path plays out. Labeling theory or social learning states that we take labels that are applied to us an internalize them, thus reinforcing them. So if Hawke—the one person Anders loves and respects more than anything else—is constantly telling Anders that he did a horrible thing, that he is a horrible thing in some respects, that’s going to make him less equipped to hang onto any shred of his former self.

Now, I can totally see how Hawke as a character can approach this blindly, with the best of intentions. At the end of the day, though, I’ve got no real desire to RP that sort of character.

And now I’m going to table this before my blog becomes nothing but Anders. Again. ;)

(Source: impressioniste)