Just a BioWare Fan

Let me outline the point made again and again in the Dragon Age portions of the BSN that has spawned this post. “The sexuality of an NPC should be set, not something the main character influences. Knowing I can romance the same person with both genders ruins my immersion!”

My response? Quit meta-gaming. If you can’t do that simply restrain yourself and don’t romance the same character with both genders. Unless the companion in question makes his or her sexual preferences explicit, your player character does not know what they are. If you think that person should be straight don’t initiate a homosexual relationship and vice versa.

Then there’s the sub-argument that BioWare’s games are too player-centric in general and the move to variable sexual preferences is a further step in the wrong direction. All I can say in response to that is to ask why you’ve chosen to play an RPG if you don’t want to influence the game universe. Is that not what they’re for? Go play Halo if you want an exciting game with a good story with characters you can’t change.

As a little background, the BioWare Social Network contains about four million posts outlining one member or another’s feelings on the way that mages are treated in Dragon Age. They cover all sides, from whole-heartedly defending Templars and the Chantry to declaring that mages should rebel and take over as they are more suited to rule.

Personally, I’m invested in grey area when it comes to human freedom in Thedas. David Gaider recently posted about this very issue and made an apt analogy: “It’s more like a gun control issue—if there were people with guns that could go off and kill innocents by accident, and who couldn’t be disarmed without a lobotomy.”

That’s pretty much where I fall on the question of human rights when it comes to mages. I don’t ascribe nefarious motives or in-born weakness to them as a group. Each mage is a different individual, but one born armed and—without training—one who grows more dangerous over time.

We know, now, that Morrigan will play an important role in Dragon Age: Inquisition. From past experience, we can guess that Flemeth will also be involved somewhere. BioWare has set the two against one another, after all.

I’ve seen some vehement defenses of Morrigan, some folks who insist that she’s sacrificing her happiness for the greater good in fighting Flemeth (and having that pesky Old God Baby). Rather than derail a thread or three there I thought I’d post my thoughts here.

The first of them is, “Poppycock!” While some people see our acerbic hedge witch as altruistic and self-sacrificing I see her as cold-hearted and calculating. She has an agenda, all right, but you have to consider who she opposes as well as what she says.

It’s conspiracy theory time, boys and girls! I’ve come up with my own little pet theory regarding the fantastic news about Dragon Age: Inquisition that has now been released. We’re waiting an extra year but oh, the tradeoff!

We’re told that the extra year will be spent on such beautiful things as mounts, multiple player races, and wider exploration with partially interact-able environments. Should you not have heard this news, enjoy the squee of joy over letting your dwarf ride a pony for a moment.

Now that you’ve considered the excitement of playing elves (prettily redesigned once again) and weather affecting movement and combat, you might wonder at how BioWare convinced EA to grant them this extra year. This is where that conspiracy theory arises.

I wrote recently about my theory surrounding the genesis of the red lyrium with which we become disturbingly familiar over the course of Dragon Age 2. Because I’m so long-winded, I decided to stop speculating about the past and start spinning tales around what we do know and where BioWare might take us, as they have confirmed that they will in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

All of that last red lyrium post brought us around full circle to that idol that the Tethras brothers and Hawke find on the altar in DA2. Even presuming it existed when the thaig was abandoned, we know it’s far from inert. What we don’t know is whether it was corrupted when it was made or if it was subsequently tainted.

I see no reason to assume that lyrium requires direct, physical contact to absorb something as ephemeral as spirits. Even if it did, we cannot know how long the Profane have been lying inactive. The demon we meet there says that they hunger but it must have been a very long time since the dwarves drove the Darkspawn that deep. What they crave could, after all, be the spirits of the dead.