cailantheirin:

i think bioware were very very good at portraying grey morality (the werewolves/zathrian’s clan, loghain and anora, duncan killing jory, the arishok, whether to spare the architect, bhelen/harrowmont, larius/janeka) before they started actively trying to portray it

idk lmao the above mentions didn’t feel forced?? and they worked. like zathrian was in the right originally, now he’s not, but can we slaughter an entire dalish clan? but these werewolves are innocent – but they’ve killed people for revenge when they weren’t involved? and it was SO GOOD. and loghain was so good, lmao you do need the context of some books to understand but still, and so was anora, they’re both trying to do what they see as right even if that goes against the player, duncan has to kill jory but does he? it’s not a good thing, but he does it and he’s a good guy!! what’s going on here?? OOH GREY MORALITY.

is the arishok and the qun bad?? yeah, but it took years before he finally flipped. did the invasion kill innocent people?? yeah it was SHIT. but the chantry had been doing exactly the same to the qunari and they couldn’t leave. the architect fucked up and he’s obviously dangerous but can he learn from starting the fucking blight not to experiment on anymore dragons?? he helps you, he sends the messenger, what his intentions are can’t be described as anything but good – since they’ve apparently changed since the calling, thanks, utha – but he’s also a sentient darkspawn emissary and a magister?? bhelen and harrowmont and larius and janeka speak for themselves and i have typed enough. but!!

bioware did good things w/ grey morality before!! or at least having two sides of something with compelling reasons or arguments. sparing loghain comes to mind Again. but they were good at it? idk what went wrong. they tried so hard to force the mage/templar elves/everyone moral complexity thing but it didn’t work because they spent literally two games setting it up as a system of oppression that the player should want to get rid of and then suddenly backtracked when it got too much for them