@Roz said:
I am pro-mage rights 4 EVAR and literally feel dirty if I ever side with the Templars in any major way in the games, but I could still empathize with the fact that he was a slave who suffered horrific abuses and was mentally, emotionally, and physically scarred as a result, and who was trying to learn how to make his own choices after a lifetime of having no choice.
I didn't say it was impossible to empathize with Fenris; I said it was difficult.
Fenris was enslaved and experimented on by a Tevinter Magister. Everyone hates the Tevinter Imperium, so it was easy to externalize that hatred. But Fenris doesn't hate the Imperium; he hates mages.
His anger, to me, is akin to a generalized hatred for one class or another based on a particular choice, which I personally find stupid. Moreover, if you want to be a generally good person, you spend plenty of time trying to distinguish individuals from groups; for example, Saemus' and Ashaad, that whole quest with the saarebas, and the remnants of the Starkhaven Circle. Fenris' simplification of the issue seemed childish, which, perhaps in context, was fine or the writers' polemic.
In the end, I found him whiny and pointless, and I enjoyed killing him. How dare he speak out against my Merrill.
As for Squall: I don't have to like him to like FF8.