[DA]: “Average,” huh?
[PW]: I like to keep it simple.
[DA]: There’s a lot of ground to cover with Solas, so let’s start with him as an apostate—meaning he practices magic outside the Circle of Magi. Did he escape with the rest of the rebel mages?
[PW]: Actually, he was never in one of the Circles to begin with.
[DA]: Interesting.
[PW]: Thedas is a pretty big place, and unless you go around burninating the peasants, you may never come to the attention of the templars.
[DA]: Without the Circle to provide training, how did he learn to control his power?
[PW]: Solas is largely self-taught; while he can comfortably defend himself, he cares more about exploring the Fade than he does about hurling fireballs.
[DA]: What makes the Fade so interesting?
[PW]: Okay, so, the Fade—bear with me, this gets a little weird—the Fade is the spirit side of the Dragon Age universe. It’s this incredible place full of dreams and memories, imprints left behind by powerful emotions or events in our world. Solas has trained himself to do something a lot like lucid-dreaming. He goes to ancient ruins where the Veil is thin, goes to sleep, and actually experiences the history of places no one else has seen in centuries.
[DA]: Is that sort of vision accurate?
[PW]: Absolutely not. It’s based off people’s memories, right? Ask ten different witnesses at a crime scene to describe what happened, and you’ll get all kinds of conflicting information. Solas knows that everything he sees in the Fade is subjective and imperfect. It’s like a gigantic Wikipedia entry full of “[citation needed]” notes, but still, Solas has found some amazing things.
[DA]: In past games, the Fade has been a dangerous place, full of demons.
[PW]: Yes. Most people in Thedas think of the Fade as demon-land… and Solas believes this is part of the problem. If you go into a realm that by its very nature reflects the thoughts and fears of living people, and if all you’re ever taught in the Chantry is that the Fade is this terrible place that wants to kill or possess you, then when you get there, of course it’s like that.
[DA]: Solas doesn’t fear the Fade?
[PW]: I’d say he respects it. It’s still dangerous, but because Solas found the Fade on his own, he went in without preconceptions, letting him explore the area and befriend spirits without the black-and-white mentality that holds back mages trained in the Circle. While everyone else guards themselves, assuming everything in the Fade is a threat, Solas will find a brilliant unimaginable light, smile delightedly, and move in for a closer look.
[DA]: Does that extensive knowledge aid him in combat?
[PW]: On the battlefield, Solas’s expertise with the Fade lets him manipulate magic in ways that would never occur to most mages.
Off the battlefield, when Solas sees a giant hole open up in the sky with demons pouring out of it, he knows that he can help where Circle mages cannot. As a result, although there is no guarantee they won’t locked him up as just another apostate, Solas comes voluntarily to the Inquisition.
[DA]: Did you find his character challenging to write?
[PW]: Writing Solas had its moments, yes. I personally love characters who are intelligent, characters who don’t necessarily break the universe they’re in, but who make players reexamine their own assumptions and look at that world in a new way. It’ll be interesting to see who thinks he’s fascinating and who thinks he’s out of his ever-Fade-loving mind.
[DA]: One would assume that opinions vary among his fellow companions as well.
[PW]: Absolutely. Vivienne is as loyal a Circle mage as you’ll find, so having this scruffy little hedge mage pop in and say, “You’re all close-minded, you should be making friends with spirits,” causes her to get icily disdainful as only Vivienne can. Solas and the Iron Bull also spar over Qunari beliefs, as Solas believes in freedom of thought more than anything else, and the Qunari tend to be pretty rigid there. On the other hand, Solas and Cole get along rather wonderfully.
[DA]: Because Cole is a spirit?
[PW]: Yes; Cole is trying to figure out what that means, and Solas can answer a lot of Cole’s questions. The two of them have fascinating talks about what it means to be a spirit, usually with the rest of the party watching the two with these narrow-eyed “What the what?” looks.
[DA]: In addition to dealing with the world’s perception of mages, he’s also elven. How does he deal with that much adversity?
[PW]: Honestly, Solas hates people who look at him and just see an elf. He considers that kind of attitude part of the black-and-white dichotomy that has led to so much tragedy in the Dragon Age world. Templars versus mages, demons versus spirits, elves versus humans… it’s more complicated than that. Come to think of it, “It’s more complicated than that,” may actually be Solas’s battle cry.
