Dragon Age 2 - Spoilers Catch All Thread

LarryC wrote:

Thrask demonstrates and embodies what Templars and the Circle are supposed to be - kind, but brutally firm, and for very, very good reasons. He's the kind of templar who'll be your friend and confidante, but who you can trust will kill you if you happen to turn abomination. It's a little hard to go against him in such an extreme fashion and still be for Templars.

From the very beginning he's hiding his daughter, and by the end he's fine with kidnapping, obvious displays of blood magic and necromancy. You could argue that force of circumstance has led him to this, but I think Knight-Commander Greagoir is a better examplar of a templar and can't imagine he would make such choices.

On a side note, last night I finished my mage play through and sided with the Templars: the apostate mage who annulled the Circle. In my mind the end game actually made more sense than it did when I sided with the mages as a rogue or warrior. Orsino is desperate precisely because he is cornered and staring death in the face. Meredith turns against the Champion precisely because of her fear of an incredibly powerful and influential apostate.

The Templar ending also gave up a few more interesting dialogues, Fenris for example talks about how even in Tevinter there are templars who are there to do exactly the sort of thing we were about to do. Merrill surprised me in that I managed to persuade her of the necessity of the annulment, even though she was a staunch rival. Meredith's suspicions of the corruption of Orsino is also addressed and when the First Enchanter claims that he's never used blood magic Meredith correctly points out that spells like the ones he was using don't just appear out of thin air. And in the end the Templars all bowed to to me, which I have to say I found strangely moving.

MyLadyGrey wrote:

I agree that having Meredith unraveling without the idol's influence would have made her behavior more interesting. Maybe the writers were trying to make the crisis more Hawke's fault by including the idol?

I think they were for sure, and the story would have been stronger without it. But, none of Meredith's actions seemed unreasonably out of character to me. She always seemed, to me, capable of doing the things she was doing--the reveal of the idol just signaled that there was no turning back for her.

Orsino's transformation struck me as the punctuation mark put on a life of hopelessness--Meredith's right, pushed to far the mages will turn to those extremes, but then it's the Templars who push them to that extreme, and a noble death is cold comfort.

I think they were trying to make the situation more complex by saying that it's not exactly Meredith's fault. She was completely reasonable prior to acquiring the idol, and the acquisition of that idol was completely within her jurisdiction as a templar. If Meredith acted so insanely of her own accord, then the final encounter just ends up being the usual fight against the big bad who was incontrovertibly evil. Meredith isn't. She's insane, but that's not her fault. I regretted Hawke having to kill her, given her usual heroic nature.

Sonicator:

I think that that would have been more applicable and truer, had Meredith been cast as a villainous individual. She wasn't, IMO. She defended the templar order in Kirkwall, stabilized it in uncertain times, did a more than able job as Knight-Commander, and resisted and fought against outliers like Alrik. She's admirable, strong, and totally heroic. It's only when she begins to lose it that she begins to be unreasonable, and she only suffers a total break at the end. Up until that point, most of the things she did were still morally justifiable. Contrast this to Bartrand's rapid and complete descent.

spankyboy:

I played the Mage ending both ways. It felt more put-together when you side with the Mages as an apostate, particularly if you don't use blood magic yourself.

LarryC wrote:

I think they were trying to make the situation more complex by saying that it's not exactly Meredith's fault.

They failed. It would have been more complex if Meredith's action were her own.

LarryC wrote:

I think that that would have been more applicable and truer, had Meredith been cast as a villainous individual.

She was the main villain. I lost count the amount of times everybody mentioned that this was mostly Meredith's fault. What makes her interesting as a villain is she has a point. Until it gets explained away that instead she is just "evil" and you must kill her.

Also this was my criticism where I first posted here. Full circle

Nietzche:

Up until she decides to annul the Circle, she has a point. She lost that point there. There is no logic in annulling the Circle for the actions of a mage not of their number and beyond their control. There is no complexity if this was her action. She would have been just like every other unreasonably, unthinkingly "evil" villain ever made. She just seems to have a stance because many of her actions were reasonable - except for that one. If that were her own action, it would have put the lie into every other action she's ever made.

Having her fall under the idol's influence indicates that her unreasonable actions were not clearly her own. This shows a more moderate character outside the influence of the idol. Under this line, she's a heroic character who's unfortunate enough to have fallen under the influence of a malign artifact. She's a "villain" who isn't really a villain, as opposed to a villain who turns out to have always been an unreasoning, hateful villain all along.

Personally with the amount of blood mages they should have annulled much earlier. Even with a good knight-commander the only course left after Anders act was annulment. That was the purpose of Anders act to cause this.

Indeed, Nietzsche. The case for declaring Kirkwall's Circle as beyond redemption can certainly be made, but Grand Cleric Elthina was nowhere near making that decision and it could only be done on her authority, not Meredith's. In the mage playthrough I mentioned above, the persuade option that I used on Merrill was that Anders had forced my hand in that unless the Templars purged the mages with a semblence of mercy and restraint, it would be done by the mob.

Nietzsche wrote:

Personally with the amount of blood mages they should have annulled much earlier. Even with a good knight-commander the only course left after Anders act was annulment. That was the purpose of Anders act to cause this.

None of the blood mages came from the Kirkwall Circle. They were all apostates. So was Anders. He never set foot in the Kirkwall Circle. He was from the Ferelden Circle.

Annulment is a course of action a Templar Knight-Commander takes if, and only if, he feels justified that the Circle is irrevocably compromised. Nothing any Circle mage has done to that point has indicated any need for actions even close to annulment. In fact, after her own Templar engineered a breakout, most of the mages who escaped fled to their families and came back quietly after they were sent for. Emile came back quietly once he was found. Huon turned out to be a blood mage, but he was an apostate at that point, and the mage girl who turned abomination was a refugee from Ferelden, who was also an apostate at that point.

At the point of crisis, Meredith and Orsino were arguing over mage privacy. Meredith was asking to search the tower top to bottom. Orsino resisted on the grounds of privacy. Threatened with annulment, he eventually capitulated.

Anders is not a Circle mage. I think it's important to establish that the Circle had no knowledge of his activities and could have done nothing to prevent it or police it, especially since they were under strict lock-and-key. The first responsibility should have fallen to Hawke, not the Circle, and after that to Meredith herself, for not bringing Anders in even though she fully knew who he was and who he ran with.

It is not the responsibility of the Circle to police and bring in apostates. That's the job of Templar. If any order needed to be massacred for being compromised, Meredith should have started with her own organization. It was rife with corruption, abuses, rebellion, and fundamental subversion, what with templar turning into abominations themselves.

The Circle was not compromise here. The Templar were. That is why most of the problems were with apostates, not with Circle mages. The strongest problem the Circle mages posed lay only with the Resolutionist faction, and that was external to the Kirkwall Circle.

LarryC wrote:
Nietzsche wrote:

Personally with the amount of blood mages they should have annulled much earlier. Even with a good knight-commander the only course left after Anders act was annulment. That was the purpose of Anders act to cause this.

None of the blood mages came from the Kirkwall Circle. They were all apostates. So was Anders. He never set foot in the Kirkwall Circle. He was from the Ferelden Circle.

Not quite. IIRC the group of Blood Mages you meet/fight in the cave outside of Kirkwall were escapees from the Kirkwall Circle. You have to kill their leader and some of his followers. Outside the Templars demand you turn the rest over. If you refuse, you have to attack the Templars.

Later, one of the Mages you let escape shows up, tells you they had always planned on killing you anyway and attack. This is during one of the secret meetings between the Templars and the Mages.

And remember those Mages that Orisio asks you to track down? The ones sneaking out from the tower at night? Yeah, Kirkwall Circle Blood Mages too.

Anders is not a Circle mage. I think it's important to establish that the Circle had no knowledge of his activities and could have done nothing to prevent it or police it, especially since they were under strict lock-and-key.

I would argue the mages knew Anders. He had a resistance going that funneled mages out of the circle. Read between the lines Orsino and Anders worked together as clear as day.

Also who's idea was to have a circle IN THE CITY?

Nietzche:

He was part of a pre-existing underground movement that was sneaking mages out of the Kirkwall Circle. It was not clear to me that he was head of that movement, or that he and Orsino worked together at all. I don't know whose idea it was to have a Circle inside Kirkwall.

tanstaafl:

There was only one Blood Mage. The rest did not use blood magic. Grace eventually betrays both Thrask and Hawke, but again, they were of the Starkhaven Circle, not the Kirkwall Circle. The locals generally did not practice blood magic unless they were apostates.

The ones sneaking out at night? You happen on them in Hightown and the templar fight with them. I did not observe them using blood magic.

The well-intentioned person corrupted by an artifact of apparent evil is literally the second-oldest trick in the book when it comes to fantasy, right behind corruption by way of some woman or monster lady's genitals. The plot leaves so little to the imagination about Meredith that the only interesting question to ask is "How/when/why did she get the idol?" Hardly as complex as an ill-described mental illness. I would have preferred if the endgame were a long, private conversation between Hawke and Meredith that let you decide what to do with her, rather than another stupid/pointless fight.

Larry I don't know if they were working together (I would bet on it) but they did know each other.

4xis.black, there is no reason to have both. Sure it's a fantasy game so you have to have the obligatory boss fight but a conversation with the enemy works out great, for instance it made Loghain far more human when I learn't his motives.

Sorry for double post

LarryC wrote:

Meredith isn't. She's insane, but that's not her fault.

I think that that would have been more applicable and truer, had Meredith been cast as a villainous individual. She wasn't, IMO. She defended the templar order in Kirkwall, stabilized it in uncertain times, did a more than able job as Knight-Commander, and resisted and fought against outliers like Alrik. She's admirable, strong, and totally heroic.

The Circle was not compromised here. The Templar were. That is why most of the problems were with apostates, not with Circle mages. The strongest problem the Circle mages posed lay only with the Resolutionist faction, and that was external to the Kirkwall Circle.

That's the job of Templar. If any order needed to be massacred for being compromised, Meredith should have started with her own organization. It was rife with corruption, abuses, rebellion, and fundamental subversion, what with templar turning into abominations themselves.

Wait you blame the templars for everything but do not blame Meredith at all. Which means you blame the idol for everything. How is the idol did everything a good story?

Nietzche:

I don't think anyone at the final meeting didn't know Anders, and certainly, Anders knew who everyone was. That doesn't that Cullen and Anders were working together between the lines.

Nietzche wrote:

Wait you blame the templars for everything but do not blame Meredith at all. Which means you blame the idol for everything. How is the idol did everything a good story?

I don't know that it is. How is "It's Sauron's fault," a good story? Or, "It's Satan's fault?" Or "It's X character's fault?"

Thing is, I don't blame. I'm not in the habit of looking for fault in individuals, especially in a story like this. As I've mentioned before, I was looking for factors, not faults, which is exactly how Varric was telling the story.

Is it Meredith's fault? The Idol's? Ander's? Take your pick. I'd have added a fair bit more factors to a long list, but I think Varric makes his point well enough.

4xis.black:

The end of Meredith is very LoTR-ish in that the idol was something like The One Ring, but I don't know that that necessarily made it a bad ending. I also like that the story detailed a main player very well. Is it bad that we don't have to imagine what Meredith is like? I considered it a major weakness in DA:O that we were not as acquainted with either Loghain or the Archdemon for large sections of the game.

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Mages are perfect. They are totally dedicated to love and happiness. Only the evil, nazi Templars make them bad. Therefore, all Templars and anyone who even looks like they may have ever thought a Templar was anything other than an embodiment of pure evil is stupid and just doesn't get it. How could I have ever thought otherwise.

Happy now?

I'm out.

I guess I feel like the Lyrium idol is sort of a placeholder for the One Ring, used as a superficial means of carrying the plot forward without particularly enriching it. The ring is much more interesting as an artifact. Every character with which it comes into contact fights a sort of moral battle with the thing, creating a bunch of opportunities for drama and characterization. Its history is well known, yet its nature is somewhat mysterious. All we know about the Lyrium idol is that it makes people crazy (perhaps because its only purpose in the storyline is to make people crazy). I never found myself particularly intrigued by the thing; in fact, I frequently found myself annoyed that every character with any knowledge of magic didn't have the good sense to destroy it immediately (haven't these people read Lord of the Rings?).

Did Meredith have an interesting relationship with the idol that touched on themes of honor, sacrifice, good vs. evil, insanity, etc...? Maybe, but we certainly were not treated to any of that. What we got was the easiest possible excuse to have a big battle that sort of waved its hand towards LoTR as a way of excusing the lack of dramatic substance. If you ask me, Meredith's fall from grace needed to be explored in far greater depth than it was, perhaps over multiple acts, for the ending to be anything other than a lame boss fight. I did not find the hushed whispers of templars and mages effective enough to add dimension to that situation. (The Qunari thing, I thought, was much better done; I respected the Arishok even as I killed him.)

Per something Nietzsche said, the thing is you don't *have* to have a boss battle in a fantasy game. Ultima IV proved that like 20 years ago and other games have since. Hell, Bioshock 2's ending had no boss fights. There was a big battle, but no big bad boss; a notion I think DA2 would have benefited from. Really, I think because of how DA2 was designed, Bioware made themselves dependent on boss battles in this game because more and bigger fights are all the game is really capable of producing. The dialog engine doesn't have much in the way of layers to it, so having a major quest resolution purely through dialog probably wouldn't have been a particularly satisfying experience (as compared to, say, talking your way through the end of Fallout 1). To me this is what happens to an RPG when you strip out every component of character building save the stuff that comes into play in combat.

As for Meredith, I'll make one last point about her and the idol and let it go forevermore. Everyone is breakable. Meredith's strength and conviction are all well and good, but those qualities can also become a vice when you become completely and utterly convinced of your own infallibility. The notion that she could falter and become a twisted version of herself over the course of a decade is not remotely unbelievable, nor is it not in keeping with what we know about her character sans the idol. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the cliche goes, and as she takes on a larger and larger role, putting more and more responsibility for Kirkwall on her own shoulders (because when it comes down to it, she's the only one she trusts) the notion that she would break not only is believable to me, but even expected. She's strong, yes, but still as human as the next person.

To me the idol is there to give her super powers for an overdone boss battle that wouldn't have been nearly as necessary had the game not been designed as an action RPG. And even then I think there were more creative solutions on offer for the climax. Her actions provoking a sort of civil war between the templars over the fate of the mages -something that was already happening, albeit in a ham-handed way- could've produced some interesting battles without the need for giant metal monsters. Orsino unleashed as a 1st-class mage pushed to the brink could have produced a great battle without him turning into a giant flesh monster that would be more at home in Dead Space 2.

And, with that, I will shut up about it.

ubrakto wrote:

Per something Nietzsche said, the thing is you don't *have* to have a boss battle in a fantasy game. Ultima IV proved that like 20 years ago and other games have since. Hell, Bioshock 2's ending had no boss fights. There was a big battle, but no big bad boss; a notion I think DA2 would have benefited from. Really, I think because of how DA2 was designed, Bioware made themselves dependent on boss battles in this game because more and bigger fights are all the game is really capable of producing. The dialog engine doesn't have much in the way of layers to it, so having a major quest resolution purely through dialog probably wouldn't have been a particularly satisfying experience (as compared to, say, talking your way through the end of Fallout 1). To me this is what happens to an RPG when you strip out every component of character building save the stuff that comes into play in combat.

Yup. I think it was Tom who pointed out in the latest Jumping the Shark podcast that Bioware have basically stripped out everything that isn't combat in their latest games. The world just exists for funnelling you from combat scenario to combat scenario. It doesn't really fit the world though, and that's why you get this weird separation between gameplay and story; because combat is the only available interaction with the world, and the classes are so rigidly defined, there *can't* be any consequences for running around as an apostate mage, because the game never gives mages an option *not* to use magic.

Thinking about how Bioware's games have evolved, I realised there's more consequences for openly using magic on the streets Athkatla, the main city of BG2, than Kirkwall. In Athkatla, unlicensed mages get thrown into prison, so you're either going to have to avoid using magic on the streets, pony up the cash for the requisite bribes, or resign yourself to battling enforcers.

In Kirkwall, noone blinks an eye.

I can't help but find that sad.

I din't mean to imply that boss fights are necessary. I think Bioware do though. I like when the end fight is a bit on the easy side(anything but impossible) as in most game's I'm in it for the story by that point, and for the game to have a few ultimate fights that are optional.

Just finished it. My tragedy hero Hawke was very frustrated to fail again and again to save the day at every step of the way. Had his whole family wiped out (except the grumpy uncle, you never get what you ask for), escalated the Qunari attack he was trying to prevent by trusting Isabela, helped his psycho friend blow up the chantry, and when he tried to have everyone make peace, he pretty much ended up killing most of both sides (oh, did I mention the evil idol *he* dug up?).

Yet, the story worked extremely well for me. Reading all the criticism before playing, I was a little worried how everything would turn out at the end. I guess I was lucky the story stayed consistent with my motivations (and previous dealings in DA:O).

It looks like some here were disappointed by the idol showing up, ruining the Meredith character, and turning the whole thing into a very videogamey boss fight ending, I can understand that, but I have to say I wasn't really bothered by it. As I played through, I guess I perceived Meredith as a relatively minor character, and the chantry's destruction as the climax of the story. The idol reminded me first and foremost that I played a part in putting these events into motion (and explains Cassandra's initial hostility towards the Champion). The main antagonist, to my character (a Hawke as neutral as it gets, desperate to patch things up between templars and mages), was definitely Anders.

If I really had to weigh in on that debate, I'd say idol or not, she would have given the order. Doesn't one of the codex entries mention it happened 17 (?) times in the last few centuries? Seems a little extreme but there's lot of precedent.

There's been a lot of talk about missing the Bioware of yore, and I've been definitely barking up that tree previously, but I've been pleasantly surprised by both DA:O and DA2. I didn't expect to have as many choices (and illusions of choice), and as much party banter. In that way I feel they have surpassed Baldur's gate 2. At the end of the day, I liked this DA2 a lot more than Mass Effect 2, which I enjoyed but felt that the companion quests (i.e. most of the game) were too compartmentalized. It felt much more artificial.

django wrote:

There's been a lot of talk about missing the Bioware of yore, and I've been definitely barking up that tree previously, but I've been pleasantly surprised by both DA:O and DA2. I didn't expect to have as many choices (and illusions of choice), and as much party banter. In that way I feel they have surpassed Baldur's gate 2. At the end of the day, I liked this DA2 a lot more than Mass Effect 2, which I enjoyed but felt that the companion quests (i.e. most of the game) were too compartmentalized. It felt much more artificial.

The way I see it is that I don't mind a game that doesn't give me choice or is totally linear, so long as what they're doing suits it. Tell me a good story and I'm happy.

What I see as the problem is a game that you're given the illusion of choice and then it's promptly revealed that your 'choice' didn't matter, and I'd say that player choice (in whatever form) is the foundation of RPGs.

For reference, from Bioware's own site:

DA:O[/url]]Experience complex moral decisions that have game-changing consequences

DA2[/url]]Embark upon an all-new adventure that takes place across an entire decade and shapes itself around every decision you make.

So they're not exactly playing down the choice thing.

Scratched...have you played the game yet?

I guess I need to state it on each page, no I haven't, and I appreciate that blinds me quite badly.

Sorry to call you out on that. I mean you have opinions that many others who played the game share and I think it's likely at this point you'll eventually validate that opinion when you do play the game, but it seems more because you've absorbed so much marketing and spoilers and discussion and not necessarily because of inherent design flaws in the game which may be there regardless. I don't mean to say you shouldn't participate in the conversation, but you're obviously raising concerns that you have as someone who hasn't yet played the game while the rest of the dialog in this thread is from the perspective of people who've experienced it. It just bothered me that you quoted django as saying how he was pleasantly surprised by how the game presented choice and the illusion of choice but then projected your own concerns on your potential future experience on to it.

Just so this post isn't a silly personal quibble, I'll offer my opinion on the illusion of choice in the game. First of all it's impossible to explicitly know the impact of choices without reading spoilers outside of the game, which is actually a good thing in my opinion because in Dragon Age: Origins in almost all the cases the choices were fairly binary and spelled out for you. Most of the choices in this game however are smaller scale and affect individuals more than entire groups, which I think is fine given the nature of the story. There are two major quests where the player has very little agency to affect the outcome and those are the serial killer and the finale. For the former it makes sense given the nature of the story being told, some circumstances should be beyond the player's control, but personally I found this story wasn't executed well and came across as a little silly. The latter however was a failure in the illusion of choice because it was clear there were minimal differences between which side to choose to support as the finale played out. I think that having an impactful player choice at the end of the game however is very difficult to achieve, especially if you're going to carry that through into a sequel. I don't think any game series has achieved that yet, Bioware are the only ones that are really trying that right now. The choice at the end of Origins is probably my favorite at this point, but that was more about the content than the player agency. It was a no-brainer for me to have Alistair and Morrigan bone down so I could live and resurrect an Old God.

Latrine:

I think it's a little unfair to say that there is illusion of choice in DA2 and actual choice in DA:O. In both games, the end-game combat sequences are identical. In both games, post-combat affairs differ depending on how you chose. If you sided with the templar, you get to be Viscount of Kirkwall. If not, you hide in the wilderness until all your companions leave you. That's a pretty significantly different outcome.

There's an amount more differences to story outcomes and content based on what you choose in DA2 than in DA:O. For instance, you don't get to actually choose between Werewolves and Elves until the very end of that questline, and after you choose, the consequences of your choice isn't that important until the final battle, where you then get Werewolf allies instead of Elf allies.

In All That Remains in DA2, you can't change the outcome of the questline, but you do get to change how it goes down depending on how you treat Gascard, who you have with you, and if you choose whether or not to accept his help.

I wasn't saying that there is an illusion in one game and reality in another, it's a spectrum in both. Many of the choices you make are addressed later in the game or in the series, but when a player choice gets in the way of the game design then the design wins out. For example it doesn't matter if your character dies at the end of Origins, you can still import them into Awakenings or other post Origins DLC and they'll be alive. The key is to balance these decisions so that the player's suspension of disbelief in the game world doesn't break and they don't feel cheated when there's a contradiction or things don't play out as they expect.

My problem with the end game of DA2 is that the choice they present is Templars or Mages, but regardless of which choice you make you end up killing the leaders of both factions and Circles throughout the land rise up in rebellion. This makes it clear that regardless of which faction Hawke chooses to support, events play out similarly enough so that it's easier to plot the sequel. The choice in Origins is not whether or not to kill the Archdemon, you have no choice about that and it must be done, it's whether you accept Morrigan's dark ritual or choose to have a Gray Warden sacrifice themselves. It's also clear here that in the future the Blight is ended and events are easily set up for DA2, but the game didn't ask the player to make a choice about that. Although it is disappointing that Morrigan's plotline wasn't picked up in DA2.

Latrine:

I don't consider it a weakness that non-player characters in DA2 have their own motivations, and that the big social events in the end play out according to the broad trajectory of events rather than riding on the decisions of a single person. It is usually that way in real life and I found it refreshing and fun. Hawke's decision to support either Mages or Templar does have consequences, just like your decision whether or not to accept Morrigan's offer also has consequences. It's just that in both cases, it doesn't change the tenor of the final battles.

I think much of the disconnect has to do with external expectations because of the nature of other games. Players have been conditioned and have the expectation that they are gods upon whose decisions hinge the fate of humanity. If they choose Mages, they expect the Mages to "win," and same for Templar. It doesn't occur to them that other players may be equally influential on the trajectory of events, and that their ultimate effect may be similar regardless of their choice. If this is a problem in game design, then I'm glad that Bioware chose to put this problem in one of their games, at least once, before they go back to the usual fairy tale fare.

No, it's not other games that condition an egotistical world view but this one. At every prior step almost every choice that Hawke can make has had some significant consequence. By Act 3 he's the Champion and is treated like the greatest dude around, almost as great as Commander Shepard. When the plot demands something occurs then Hawke is simply not presented with a choice, like in All That Remains. The problem is not what happened in the end game but how the game presented it using the communication tools it had established up to that point. I felt like the game tried to communicate a certain experience to me and failed because it did it inadequately, it's really just a feeling that the game narrative tool they employed didn't work for me. I would've been much happier if they didn't give Hawke the choice of which side to support and simply launched into the battles against Orsino and Meredith, that would've been more consistent with the design of the rest of the game. Otherwise they needed to rework the ending so that either the choice had more significant consequences or that the falseness of it was more plausible.

It's a strange viewpoint for me to see. I guess it's because many Westerners think that a choice must have external consequence on proximate events for it to actually be a choice. As in, it doesn't matter if you're against racism if nothing comes of it. It's really weird.

I also don't much see where Hawke's choices had all that much of a consequence. I mean, what choices was Hawke presented in the climax of Act 2, and how did those choices affect later events? You can't choose to side with the Arishok, even though I really wanted to. He seemed like a straight-shooter.

I don't find it incongruent that a guy like Hawke can be considered massively influential in Kirkwall and still not have much of an effect. Again, this is a completely realistic presentation. Viscount Dumar had more clout that Hawke and in the end, how much did he really do? Meredith is a power in Kirkwall. Given that she was committed to getting the Rite of Annulment done, how much of her vision came to fruition? In a milieu where a plethora of powerful personages are vying to influence the course of history, the most usual thing that happens is that none of their visions truly become real.

How far can President Obama really push for the complete disarmament of every civilian American? He can push as hard as he can, but I don't expect him to get anywhere.

How much of what happened in the expedition to Mount Doom did Gandalf plan to happen? Nearly nothing went right in that ill-fated trip, and he died.