Kaidan Is Actually So Smart. He Knows A Lot About Arms, About Warfare, About Survival Techniques.

Kaidan is actually so smart. He knows a lot about arms, about warfare, about survival techniques.

He knows a LOT of lore, probably more than some native Nords themselves do.

Kaidan enjoys reading books.

He wants to learn. Despite his prejudices against magic (which are not only funded in his Nordic upbringing but also abuse), he is so curious and eager to see the College, to see Saarthal.

And I for one think if he gets painted as some pretty beefcake with no brains at all, that it is the same image Rosalind, his ex, had of him. That everybody has. (Looking at you Lucien 👀)

The first time I played New Vegas I got SO emotional about the courier. They're someone who has no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers. When they're shot and buried alive there's no one who asks where they went. Everywhere you go they're remembered only as a courier and mostly as a job and a package. They never begin to remember things, but it doesn't seem to matter because it's like the world doesn't remember them either. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead and have been for quite some time. They leave Doc Mitchell's house wearing a pip boy they've never seen before and the suit for a vault they've never heard of. Their life was saved by Victor, not because anyone saw it fit that they survive but because they could be useful in recovering a package. Their life was saved by their potential usefulness to House and nothing else. I think that's why I like the main plot of finding Benny so much. Jessup remembers them, sorta, but he mostly remembers being cheated. When you finally reach the Tops that "What in the God damn?" Feels so deserved, it feels like someone is ACTUALLY seeing, remembering, and recognizing the courier as a person. How are they alive? No person should have recovered from all of that. This is also part of why I love Ulysseys so much, he doesn't know them personally but he knows them in the way that a neighbor does. He knows parts of them even they don't, because that's the role he's been forced into: a living memory. Someone who remembers nothing and can only move forward and someone who must remember everything and wants more than anything to move on.