Dragon Age Inquisition
 

So I've been cautiously excited about Dragon Age: Inquisition. I actually still haven't finished DA2, mostly because it still makes me really grouchy. So, I'm pleased to find out that you can play as a dwarf, elf, human or qunari in Inquisition. Cool! I really disliked playing as human in DA2 because I care way more about elf liberation than I do mage liberation. When can I lead an uprising against the shems?! The elves look more like the look in the first game too.

The combat looks pretty neat too, like a combination of the first two games, with some neat mechanics to boot: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...quisition.aspx

And then this badass lady shows up

http://24.media.tumblr.com/112355f1f...9o3_r1_250.gif

OMG they finally fixed it so you can be a person of colour without looking like a white person dipped in tea!

That's an NPC, not a character creation screen. Prepare to be disappoint in 3... 2...

May I remind you what the black NPC (because you can't have more than one! Shock and horror) in DA2 looked like

http://25.media.tumblr.com/6ca46cb0c...oybjo1_500.jpg

And if you tried to make a dark skin Warden or Hawke, the skin was pretty blotchy. I've seen concept art for Inquisitors floating around that had a dark skin option, but yeah still cautiously optimistic. It'll be a while before they stop using the white human male Inquisitor for their trailers :/

I thought Isabella was supposed to be Spanish?

Yeah she looks rather Spanish.

My question is, why can't dwarves use spellcraft? I don't understand. Does magic relate to someone's height?

Then again, that would explain why all the evil wizards and witches in stories are incredibly tall....

Dwarves can't use magic in DA. C'mon, I don't even like DA and I knew that!

I knew that, but why?

At first I thought maybe the DA lore had them as a brutish race. But, that seems incredibly wrong to do so. Espiacielly after, reading an article about the new game, the designers seemed glad to bring the dwarvish back for dwarfed gamers. So then why would they have it that the dwarven race be impaired in what is commonly attributed to intellect, if their idea was to be inclusive?

I haven't played any of the games myself, so I dont know if it's for balancing reason. Saying the dwarves are more technologicaly advanced than other races and therefore, not a mage race. But, i'm not sure if that is the case. So, I thought to ask.

When asked why you're unable to really make a PoC Warden/why the game is so white, Gaider said that all people of colour come from Riviani. ALL OF THEM.

Isabela appears darker in the game, but she was really pale in the promo material which leads me to believe that this was a last minute "whoops we forgot to include a huge segment of the human population" change. Following Gaider's logic, Duncan and Isabela and Vivienne are all Riviani. Another developer in a tweet was joking about how on the new Frostbite engine dark skin can be rendered so much better, calling the old system racist, so I think the reason you couldn't really make or find black characters is because the game wasn't designed to have them at all. I'm hoping they change that this game.

In the game, magic is regenerated through a substance called lyrium, which the dwarves mine. In the codex the theory is that constant exposure to lyrium has caused dwarves to be unable to use magic. In DA2, however, you do come across a dwarf who used runes to freeze an ogre (same dwarf can enchant items for you). Its one of the things I hate about the game, no one freaks out that this dwarf can suddenly use magic.

In the first game, you meet a dwarf who's a total magic nerd and knows more about magic than a Mage Warden, magic in DA has nothing to do with smarts or intellect outside of stats. You're born a mage or you're not, its a lot like X-Men.

Dwarves have traditionally been non-magical. Not just is DA, but in most major fantasy series going all the way back to Tolkien. In early editions of Dungeons and Dragons, dwarves came with an innate magic-resistance and "couldn't" be mages.

They tend not to be magical, because of the type of human characteristics they embody:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveRaces

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...sAreAllTheSame

Essentially, hard-work, practicality, masculinity etc. - it's why they often come into conflict with elves: they're the red-neck coal miner to the Elf's hippy bohemian.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ElvesVsDwarves

I always get annoyed about fantasy's broad sweeping generalizations of race to be the end all be all. "Elves are aloof. Dwarves are stubborn. Period." Shadowrun had an interesting take in that dwarves and orks and shit could come from anybody. There wasn't a collective stereotype so it was at least more believable in that way. Still had plenty of problematic ideas when talking about race in the setting, though...

RE: Fantasy's broad generalizations:

Yep. It's actually goes deeper than that, with regard to the unfortunate implications behind most standard fantasy tropes.

You ever read Moorecock's essay "Epic Pooh"?

http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

You greatly overestimate my reading level.

The cliff notes version is that Tolkien's work is mired in the sort of befuddled Toryism of the British upper-class at the end of their empire. So while it's not aggressively fascist it is deeply conservative, particularly in how it chooses it's Heroes and villains.

Because Tolkien's work is so influential pretty much everything in the fantasy genre is effected by it.

It's why I flipped out so much about Game of Thrones early on: I thought it was going to be a normal standard fantasy, and thus would be REALLY problematic.

I was happily surprised when it wasn't.

I had to google Toryism, but the wiki didn't really help me. What does the fantasy genre get from it?

You know dwaves=masculine makes a whole lot of sense in Dragon Age. Dwarf women were the only ones in Origins who didn't have supermodel bodies (instead were stocky) and there weren't any women dwarves at all in in 2.

I remember getting pissed that Tolkien just had women dwarves look exactly like males dwarves, but now I just headcanon that at least half of the dwarves who accompanied Bilbo were dfab.

I spoke to a friend that lives in the U.K., and she summed them up as right wing beliefs, conservative voters. Then followed it up with "by and large, Tory wankers!"

Thing is, I've never considered the Dwarves a product of the right wing. In hindsight I consider the Elves more of a product of the right since they basically don't copulate (at least in Middle-Earth).

I meant "Didn't really help [me to connect toryism and fantasy]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Pooh

From the Essay itself:

Basically was an old upper-class british guy, and thus what he wrote subconsciously extolled his beliefs and virtues. Because he was so influential on fantasy - most of these beliefs have become tropes in nearly all standard fantasy stories.

It's not that Tolkien's beliefs were necessarily BAD, just that they were problematic because of his limited experience, and this means alot of standard fantasy tropes - like seeing race as an indicator of behavior and personality - are also problematic.

I'll have to take your word for it. I never read Tolkien sooooo yeah.

Which pains me, I found a tumblr post about how Tolkien put his favourite Macbeth headcanons in LOTR.

I have high hopes for this game, hopefully it doesn't disappoint like two did.

Holy shit though - Tolkien got better later on in life:

Oh man, Christians have to stop claiming Tolkien as a "Christian Writer"

Its no wonder. He was extremely devout, bffs with CS Lewis and its pretty common for religious themes to seep through an author's work whether intentional or not.

Also, whoa, didn't know he was anti-Vatican II. That places him as pretty hardcore Catholic.