Ifan ben-Mezd | 'Silver Claw'

The only three oficial images of Ifan are the same one with different lights and shadows.  I have to say that Larian was quite careful to be coherent with the scar on the left cheek. [I’ve mirrored the images to fit, so don’t mind them if they seem not to be consistent, it was my own doing]

I remember that the first time I saw this image [any of the 3] I thought immediately in a wolf. I tried to understand how and why could that be possible, and I think that this effect is given by Ifan’s eyes, whose wrinkles and shadows around them, give him a wolf-like “eyeline” that makes his face so subliminal wolfy.

My wolf babe <3

Ifan and his past

When you play as Ifan, you acquire more information about his past and infer others.

Things we know:

Ifan was a crusader to the core. That’s his true nature.

Afrit saved him from running across the Elven City and killing himself with Deathfog.

Thousand elves died with the Deathfog.

Hundred died by Ifan’s hands. [Including the 43 contracts]

Some of the contracts he was hired for were related to kill mothers and allowing slaves to be sold.

Ifan regrets everything.

Ifan’s nose has been broken many times, quite often.

Things we infer: “The army of the lost”, meaning the people he could not save [and probably his victims as a Lone Wolf too], may be the group of voices he hears if he dies early in the game [here].  We can see that in that case, he keeps repeating the words that identify him as a Lone Wolf in a loop, showing what we always see when we play as him: he is stuck in his Lone Wolf mindset. However, through Rhalic, we see he wants to be different, he has a crusader core, always wanting to do the right things. 

Ifan Ben-Mezd Headcanons “A wolf never tries to hide what he truly is.”

This is so sad Glechou dumar are the words that Lone Wolves use to identify themselves.

If you play as Ifan, Rhalic brings Ifan’s memories in visions and describes the people that Ifan could not save [and probably his victims as a Lone Wolf too] as  “The army of the lost”, quite fitting for what we see here, specially if we take into account that Rhalic visions happen in the Hall of Echoes, where that army is.

but then it kind of sucks that you can’t play as ifan, bond with your companions, and experience the healing process from his perspective :\

I don’t know. Honestly,  I liked this detail, because it means that developers really thought two different sides of his arc. As Lohse I’m not seeing that (I didnt finish her run yet). I can see that you can choose her tags and it’s always a repetition of what she usually said as a companion. Ifan changes in that aspect sometimes. Sometimes you don’t have Ifan-tags of things that he said as a companion and were pretty related to him (like ending divinity. He leaves your group if you don’t promise him to end divinity. That’s a strong opinion of him).  

Besides, I think there is a nice narrative detail; putting aside all that typical speech that claims that we need to actively heal ourselves, it’s true that sometimes others, choosing to help, engage into our healing process. Without them, we may never start. 

Ifan, as a companion or main char, is all the time repeating he won’t forgive himself for the Deathfog, and is consumed by revenge. However, it’s as a companion when in Arx he claims to have compounded his mistakes. There is a bit, but not complete, self-forgiveness. Maybe it has to do with Hannag. As a companion, you let Hannag speaks her horror, and Ifan goes soft. He says that she was following order like him. And after forgive her life, you can embrace Ifan. He says he needed that. His crazy inner-wolf is soothed.  But playing as Ifan, you don’t have that. And Ifan goes crazy. If you kill Hannag, ifan CONSUMES her source. Like… WOW.  Ifan’s dark side is ruthless and cruel. His inner wolf is just crazy.

I tend to like the narrative of chars that are stuck in their life. Fist, because it’s not expected. We always see a hero falling from Grace (tragedy arc), or a disgraced character getting better in his life (the hero/redemption arc). It’s how char arcs work usually. Sometimes a char wants to heal, wants to go forward, wants to change… but can’t. This reminds me of Reyes Vidal, from Mass Effect. (A spy-like military that left Earth wanting to leave that life behind, wanting to stop living in the shadows… and he failed. He ended up pretty much doing the same in the new world). I think they did this with Ifan. Larian did it amazingly, because as a companion, Ifan is the narrative of a char getting over his revenge and healing. When you play as Ifan, using only Ifan-tags, it’s a stuck-narrative. And maybe it makes sense, when you play as Ifan none of your companions stop you, or challenge you, or embrace you (we all know how much Ifan needs that). Ifan life has been always surrounded by “friends”, but these are shallow friends, like his friendship with some of the Lone Wolves (Roost) or even with Tarquin. He has no problem to call him a “friend” even though they specify that this is all business. As a player, Ifan has no tenderness giving to him openly. 

Nobody is soothing his “savage wolf inside”, and Ifan is being devoured by revenge meanwhile. So, he follows that path to the end. (even in the end of the game, his tag is crazy: he doesn’t care what Lucian has to say, he want to kill him).

It’s quite interesting how Ifan is usually perceived as a super cinannon-roll (which indeed he is if he meets the player) ignoring his dark side.

When you play as him (1st image), and you just pick his options (Ifan-tag) you see the man is really out of himself when it comes to revenge. He even kills Garreth giving a shit about it (Man! Garreth was there for him all the time!). There is no place for reasoning when Ifan has no one but himself. In that case, he doesn’t develop as a char, he gets stuck. Pretty much what we see when he is our companion and dies: he ends up becoming a lost spirit, because revenge (and Deathfog) have consumed everything in him.

He only grows as a character when you play your char and you give him some sense and bonding whether friendship or romance (something he lost completely with the Deathfog).

This is key when we go to Arx. If he is our companion (2nd image), he rejects the Dwarven rich guy’s job deciding to stop being Silver Claw there. He killed the Lone Wolf right there. If you play as Ifan, this option of deciding to stop being Silver Claw is not there.  It’s not Ifan-tagged.

Ifan Ben-Mezd

Details we can gent from these:

Divinity world sucks at pronouncing his name. 

He values life over anything else. 

He can be a great asshole mockering/laughing a woman whose family was killed by him. However, I think this is an interesting hint of what kind of mental state he is when this game starts.