Dragon Age: Inquisition will have you fighting dragons, obviously

Friday, 30th August 2013 20:25 GMT By Stephany Nunneley




  1. TheWulf

    It would be nice if it wasn’t so completely black and white, though. Even Skyrim had at least Paarthurnax. This is where my worries for this game well up, and it starts to sound more like the usual kind of lowest common denominator-chasing fantasy that we’ve seen so many times before. Ermahgerd, must save teh wurld from teh corrupshun!

    Which isn’t exactly the most stimulating plot, ever. I still hate that, because it relegates everyone else in the world to subhuman troglodyte status, and the hero tends to act more like a genocidal sociopath and a kleptomaniac, whilst this is never realised by the people he’s supposed to be saving.

    I’m terrified that they’re going to go back to that.

    It’s such a one-dimensional fantasy experience. To a person who hasn’t been lobotomised of all imagination, there’s so much more you can do with a fantastic setting than ermahgerd save teh wurld. See, I’ve just realised that even Pokémon is better than that, and that makes me cry a little on the inside. A hugely over-commercialised IP for children is narratively more interesting than most fantasy games.

    I don’t know how to feel about that.

    It’s galling and frustrating because of all the things you could do in a fantastic setting, why save it? Even working with an organisation to make the world a better place would be more interesting than that, as there would be fun politics and ethics to tangle with in how far we should go, and what’s our right to tackle and what isn’t.

    Now, Dragon Age: Inquisition sounds like it might be a bit like that, but the trailer and the dragons and everything else is making it sound like a very one-dimensional experience. You know, dese are gud guys, dese are bad guys, bad guys cause da corrupshun, good guys gots ta save teh wurld from teh corrupshun. I’m not 5, I could appreciate a more complicated storyline, BioWare.

    That was my issue with Origins. The Good Guys were obviously so one-dimensionally good, and The Bad Guys were the just meant to be a one-dimensional foil, they never had anything of worth to offer to the game. The Good Guys were The Good Guys, and The Bad Guys were The Bad Guys. There was no grey area in-between, or no perspectives as to how it was more one seeing the other as bad.

    It reminds me of racism, to a degree, but it’s someone of a very racist mindset writing a world where racism is factual. So whereas the Us vs Them wouldn’t stand in an intellectual mind, it can work in a more low brow fantasy game. If you’ve ever talked to a racist and asked them about the people they have so much hate for, they’ll often tell you that they’re responsible for all that’s wrong in the world.

    For example, the back-and-forth hatred between Muslims and America is a damned good example. You have extremists on both sides who see the other side as the greatest evil this world has ever known.

    What an incredibly basic outlook to have.

    I expect writers to be better than that, but they barely ever are. This is why I was so cross at Dragon Commander, conversely. I was hoping for political differences, which I could uncover as just that. Instead, the game went out of its way to make my enemy seem truly evil. Even, at the end of the game, infecting my opponents with demonic corrupshun to make them ooh-ooh so evil.

    That’s depressing.

    Of all the things you could do with a fantasy setting, it keeps coming back to an Us vs Them kind of racism, where you kill them to save teh wurld. And often, in the story, Them are the greatest manifestation of evil. Bad, bad writing.

    I suppose if I were a very basic thinker, very right wing, very racist, then I could actually appreciate this. I’d have a more basic outlook in regards to the world, so I could relate to these fantasy settings. I can’t do it, though, I can’t relate and I can’t enjoy it. When a game goes out of its way to hit me with so much hate propaganda about the opposition, all I want to do is learn the truth about them. But the games in question never actually allow me to do that.

    So I lose interest and I stop playing. Again, I can see how this kind of thing could be a low brow, right wing racist’s fantasy. But it’s not mine.

    I long for an era of intelligently written fantasy.

    #1 1 year ago

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