I’ve gotten most of the way through Dragon Age: Origins at this point. I finally cleared Orzammar (the Dwarven city and a REALLY long series of missions for how little happens there) and seated my chosen king upon the throne (Bhelen, for those who want to know, but there’ll be more on that later). It was a bit of a slog, but I’m finally on my way to wrap up my side quests, to launch into the final bit of plot [well, it turns out I forgot about a whole bunch of stuff in Denerim that means this was the penultimate bit of plot I launched myself into, not the final bit], and then to start working my way through the DLCs. It wasn’t a bad slog, but it did often feel like it was never going to end. Maybe that’s because there’s technically two separate decisions you need to make and each one has its own string of supporting and side quests, but some of the exploration stuff felt like it was just going on forever with little to no benefit. It also didn’t help that I missed an important piece of gear and had to go back for it, which involved walking from the end of an area to the start of the area and then back again. Between that and how much back-and-forth I did while working through the Dalish Elves quest line, I feel like these are two of the most video game-y parts of the game. Which is too bad! Both of these quest lines actually had something to say (even if I didn’t much care for what the Dalish quest line had to say for the particular ending I chose) and I really wanted to like them. I’m not sure I can get over my distaste for the whole “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” thing going on in the Elf versus Werewolf conflict, but I think I can feel pretty alright about the Orzammar plot sequence.

In the Dalish Elf line of quests, your player character is initially recruited by the leader of the Elves to kill the leader of a pack of werewolves that attacked the Dalish caravan. He tells you that he can undo the curse if you procure the heart of the aforementioned werewolf leader and then pretty much refuses to tell you anything else other than the general location of the werewolves and that his warriors failed in their bids to retrieve the heart, so he can’t spare anyone to aid you. If you spend some time talking around the camp, though, you get an image of a leader who isn’t as polite and reason-oriented when it comes to the various conflicts his people have seen him in. Also that he’s functionally immune to aging like the Elves of old. This is all suspicious and the whole situation only begins to stink worse when you go into the forest and can have conversations with the werewolves (who he described as worthless beasts) most of the time. Only once you enter into their home are you forced to actually fight some of them as they defend against your invasion. Sure, some attack you while you’re wandering in the woods, but you can actually deescalate a lot of the encounters by saying you’d like to talk rather than fight. If you continue to insist you’d like to talk, you can eventually speak to the leader of the werewolves that you’re supposed to kill and learn that this Elven leader, Keeper Zathrian, is the one who created and maintains the werewolf curse and that this curse is the reason he is functionally immortal. From there, you can end up mediating in the conflict and though you eventually need to fight Zathrian if you want to break the curse, you can eventually beat him into submission and make him see reason while he’s at your mercy. From there, you can talk about how his rage has blinded him and how all he’s doing is creating more pain in the world just so he can make sure that someone out there, regardless of whether or not they might deserve it, hurts as badly as he does.

The game paints this ending as the best of all options, suggesting that revenge without limit will just prolong the pain, that you doom yourself as well as your enemies, and that a vile person forced to pay for one of the awful things they’ve done is worthy of respect once they acquiesce to doing what you’ve tried forcing them to do. I don’t much care for this statement since it paints what both injured parties suffered as equals–this Elven mage who lost his children to a racist and horrible attack from humans and this group of werewolves who were cursed to be this way since their birth (or because they were attacked by those already afflicted by the curse) and can just barely, through sheer force of will, contain the curse of rage that compels them to violence. Yes, the werewolves struck at Zathrian’s group of Elves, injuring, killing, and cursing many of them, but they tried to talk time Zathrian passed by and he ignored them. When you are made other by a powerful individual and reduced to an inhuman monster because of something other people did (ancestors or just another werewolf who lost control and bit you), I don’t think you can be blamed for reacting with violence when all attempts at peaceful negotiation have failed. The only person in this whole situation who ISN’T a victim is Zathrian and he’s the source of this. Sure, he dies as a result of releasing this curse (which is all he ever had to do in order to end the werewolf curse afflicting his people), but the game paints this as some kind of noble sacrifice. He was an abuser who got much less punishment than he deserved and I can’t stand the idea that the game tries to paint his decision as anything but the absolute least he could do, much less an act of redemption.

Orzammar, on the other hand, actually has some nuance to it. Sure, the decision on whether or not to preserve the Anvil of the Void, the thing used to create the fabled Dwarven Golems (by sacrificing a living person to inhabit the golem), is pretty cut-and-dried from a certain perspective, but there’s a lot of temptation to use it with volunteers only, like it was originally used, and a massive slippery slope behind that temptation. After all, the participants don’t really need to be willing for this process to work and there are specially crafted control rods that can force even the least willing golem to bend to your will. You could easily convince yourself that it is for the best, given how rough things are for the Dwarves and how much a single battalion of golems would change things not just for the constantly embattled Dwarven cities but also for the darkspawn invasion on the surface. It might even be morally good if you could get some mages involved to maybe expand it from willing mortals to willing spirits so you’re not starting to use it as a punishment for particularly bad crimes or political rivals if you run short of volunteers. It would be so easy and it would be so beneficial. But history repeats itself and the fact that each king candidate in this game would wind up doing horrible things with it is proof that power always corrupts given enough time.

And it’s not like either king candidate is a particularly good person, either. Sure, Harrowmont clings to ideas like “honor” and tradition, but those things are slowly killing the Dwarven people, creating an entire class of non-people (the Casteless), and eventually results in him raiding the surface for Humans and Elves to put into golems if he has the option. Bhelen, for what its worth, actually works to help the Casteless, offering them a path back into society in exchange for military service and abandoning the whole idea that those who go to the surface are no longer proper Dwarves, but he also lies, cheats, and even kills to get his place on the throne. If you play as a Dwarf, you know he is responsible for one of his siblings being killed or banished, for another one perishing in the Deep Roads, and you eventually suspect, regardless of your character’s origin, that he had a hand in his father’s death. He is devious, criminal, and ruthless, killing his political rival once he ascends the throne and all too willing to send people to become golems against their will if he has the option. Neither one of these people is a “good” person, but you can see what their policies might suggest about the future of the Dwarven people given that one wants to change nothing and the other is willing to do almost anything to improve things for ALL his people (except for maybe those who sit at the top, near him, potentially threatening his power). There’s no “correct” choice according to any strict morality that takes into account both the present and the likely outcomes of your decisions, but there’s definitely one that feels good right now but bad in the long term and one that feels bad right now and good in the long term. You’ve just got to decide which one you’re okay with and then sit with your choice, which is my favorite kind of storytelling. There’s no “clear” choice to make and you will never know, in the context of this game, if you made the “right” choice. All you can do is choose and hope you can rationalize it according to your morals.

I know that part of the reason I dislike the Dalish story line is because of my childhood trauma and that part of the reason I like the Dwarven storyline is because my entire life is a series of “good” decisions with bad outcomes and “bad” decisions with good outcomes (at least according to the system of morality I was raised in and believed for about two decades or according to how things feel now and how things will feel in the long term). I’m aware of my own preferences and bias here. I just also think that, if you’re telling a story that relies on your players making a choice, you need to honor the truths of the situation and people they’re making a choice about. You can’t paint a villain into some kind of noble hero if they spend their last moments doing the thing you basically forced them to do by mostly killing them and then reasoning with them. A person isn’t redeemed by their death. Even if they choose that death in an attempt to undo some of the damage they’ve done, all they’ve really accomplished is preventing more damage, not undoing the harm already done. I’m also aware that some of the most interesting choices and roleplaying comes from when your players are faced with a decision with no good options and unclear outcomes. It was just so stark to play through both of these sequences in only a couple play sessions (I’m writing this only four days ahead instead of a week, so I played it almost exclusively over my most recent weekend) and see the variety of storytelling (good and bad, in my opinion) within this single game. I’m going to have plenty to talk about with my book club when they eventually finish the game.