Just a BioWare Fan

Everyday Temptations

In the days that followed Cullen learned the routines of his new home.  He found his way around the unfamiliar halls and came to understand that mages did not cook with fireballs or play catch with bolts of lightning.  What he’d been taught to fear was more a myth than a reality.

He saw children as young as five or six who had been brought in from all over Ferelden, taken from their families or turned over to a Chantry somewhere.  Few of them displayed the power do to much more than hurt themselves or break the dishes.  Most simply settled into the dormitory with the other novices.  The apprentices that watched and guided the little ones had long experience dealing with homesickness and tiny rebellions, from their own adjustments to life in the tower as much as from having seen them with each new child.

The newest Templars were usually assigned to the most senior enchanters, those who had been with the Circle for decades and whose stability was most proven.  Cullen was the youngest of the Order at the Tower and the first new recruit to have come for several years.  As a result he did little more for his first few weeks than walk the upper corridors with an older man.

I never liked Jowan in Dragon Age: Origins. From the very first run I looked on him with distrust. Everything he did proved me right. In part it was that greasy-looking hair; in part it was asking his supposed closest friend to help him do something dangerous and illegal then making her do all the work.

Factor into that his unwillingness to piss or get off the pot as far as the Harrowing was concerned, add that nasal, whining voice, and you get nails on a chalkboard. Jowan was precisely what the ritual of Tranquility was designed to control: a weak-willed mage who would turn to blood magic because he wasn’t talented enough to do anything useful. His only saving grace was that he turned out to know the ritual to get the Warden into the Fade to save little Connor from the demon that was raising the dead all around Redcliffe’s castle. I found him to be a weasel of the highest order.

Thus, I’ve written the sort of conversations my Amell Warden would have had with him, had she been able. This is, of course, tongue in cheek. First, a short conversation during the Templar confrontation at the beginning of the mage origin:

Recently we’ve gotten news that Patrick Weekes, newly freed by BioWare from his fantastic work in the Mass Effect universe, not only had moved to work on Dragon Age: Inquisition but that he would be writing the next in the series of books based around the games. Speculation on the BioWare Social Network has, naturally run rampant.

As I’d not read any of the books after the horrid mess that was Mass Effect Deception, I thought I’d suck it up and read lead writer David Gaider’s Asunder so that I could form an opinion on whether the projected April, 2014 release date for Dragon Age: The Masked Empire indicated anything about the release date for the next game.

The argument runs thus: The Masked Empire’s plot covers the Orlesian civil war that was just beginning in earnest as Asunder came to an end. Thus it would set the stage for the events of the Inquisition and would be released before the game.

My response, having finished Asunder all of ten minutes ago, is, “Poppycock!” What follows contains some serious ending spoilers so if you don’t want to know, don’t click through. I won’t spill all the gory details though because you really should read the book, particularly if you want to see Wynne and Shale again. It’s exciting, filled with lore tidbits, and it’s from David Gaider so you know it’s well written.

A Fitting Introduction

With gratitude toward his parents and his devotion to Andraste strengthening his dedication, Cullen had applied himself to his training and absorbed the lessons of his elders. Eight years of assignments in increasingly larger villages had brought him full circle back to the Chantry in Denerim where he was evaluated by the same people that had begun his training.

Along the way he had had occasion to help Templar Hunters find escaped mages. He had guarded children turned in by their families until representatives of the Circle could retrieve them. He’d seen fear paralyze the hunted and felt it pierce his own heart. But mostly he had waited.

He had stood in needless plate to stare across fields and contemplate dun-colored hills. He had guarded wooden chests in which naught but a few coins rattled, all the local farmers could spare to help those with even less. He had listened to the muddled, rambling stories of Templars who could barely raise their swords.

I’ve read from a few of the developers on BioWare’s boards that the Frostbite engine can produce realistic skin tones in the darker spectrum and that they intend to make use of that capability. First, let me say that I can’t wait. I like to make my PCs in a variety of colors but the old engine generally went from “glass of milk” to “badly jaundiced”.

[Sidebar: I adore that SWTOR lets me not only go from grey-white to ebony black but all the primary colors and combinations thereof. I have sky blue, deep green, blood red, and chalk white as well as my humans. It’s agonizing to pick for new characters, but an agony that I enjoy to the hilt.]

Dragon Age 2 did a little better but anything darker than a light tan tended to look odd. However, there’s been a lengthy and intermittently interesting debate about the inclusion of cultural elements from outside medieval Europe which has somehow devolved into a discussion of Africa, genetic phenotypes, and how Isabela can be black.