perpetually off-topic

I've been spamming some friends with messages recently, trying to get my head around some of my ongoing problems with Inquisition. Why the game can feel tedious to play. Why I don't like most of the companions, they're just kind of... there. Why I always feel unsettled and alone even in the big fancy castle I'm supposed to be in charge of. And then I hit on it (more than a week ago, but I needed some time to organize my thoughts and write this post).

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I still really want to do is something with the three vanishing Crow mooks in the Taliesin fight.

See, at Interested/Care (and if the Warden doesn’t say “Zevran belongs with me now.”) Zevran refuses to fight Taliesen, offers all the Crows the choice to walk away from this fight - and then walks out himself. Along with three of Taliesen’s assassins. One archer disappears, and the backup ambushers never make an appearance.

I feel like the ‘standard’ route where Zev stays is a more resolute one. For reasons ranging from being unwilling to give up his freedom to defense of a close friend/new love, he chooses to fight. He cuts ties with the Crows and his past in one fell swoop. He chooses, unequivocally, to move on.

But this semi-hidden route (it’s kind of tricky to keep romanced Zevran below 70 approval by the time you get to the Landsmeet. Like, the game's nearly over! And even then, there's a dialogue to get out of it) is more conflicted. It’s basically what happened to Rinna all over again, two people he loves more or less equally, pitted against each other by the Crows’ demands. That one unnamed Crow master in his past once said that his time would come, and here it is. A test of Taliesen's loyalty, at the cost of Zevran's life (I really don't think Taliesen's plan to make up an excuse would have ever gone over well, but the guy's already lost one lover so I can forgive him for being short-sighted).

When you recruit Zevran, he mentions that the only way to leave the Crows is death. When he leaves that alley, he’s saying, not in so many words, that is not the case - that you can leave the Crows and live to tell the tale. Walking away is an option. Not continuing this bloody cycle is an option. Not fighting is an option. (and he’s gambling on the Warden being able to deal with the rest of the assassins, but that’s a pretty safe bet. It’s the Warden.)

The offer to Taliesen comes first - maybe neither of the people he loves has to die and everything can be okay. Though he probably also knows Taliesen well enough to know he won’t take it. The offer to the other Crows, I imagine, is more of an improvisation, “well this feels like what I should say next” sort of thing. He probably hasn’t quite accounted for the fact that these newly ex-Crows have nowhere to go, half an idea of what to do with their freedom, are scared as hell that the rest of House Arainai (it’s probably an in-house contract) is going to come after them, and looking to him for directions since he’s done this ‘run away’ thing already.

Of course, from the Doylist perspective, all of what I'm picking at is probably just to keep the party from getting horribly massacred now that you’re down a party member. But it feels like, in that moment, the Black Shadow the Crows come to dread so could be born. Not through a rash of dead guildmasters (though that certainly makes an impact), but with Zevran offering the same mercy he was once shown - and by all appearances, some of the Crows taking him up on it. There’s probably a worse way to gather your party than in a dark alley after they were contracted to kill you.