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zevranunderstander · 2 years

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dragon age inquisition pissed me off because it had a good premise. or, it could have had a good premise, but like, they really made the worst choice for everything ever. for two games, mages were oppressed by the templars and now, with the end of dragon age 2, this turned into an actual civil war. the protagonist could have had the choice between 2 origins, mage or templar, and would have to navigate the conflict in a way with a band of people from both sides where the templars have to realize how they are actually in the wrong. this could have been a cool way to show how maybe templars are indoctrinated into a specific ideology, too and humanize them in a way that is not the “both sides have pros and cons” way. or the story could have been about a mage underground who wants to join in the fight. they could have been really bold and told the story from the templar’s side, where you play as brutal enforcers of the law and are faced with how you are probably not a good person. but instead of anything interesting they chose a neutral, super-powerful, for some reason religious organization as the main characters. which, well, it could be worse, but it’s such an impersonal position in the conflict.

then, they decide to start the game with peace talks between both sides, which means that they skipped towards the end of the conflict and the game actually takes place in a stage of the war where the conflict isn’t all that extreme anymore. which, again, not the ideal choice, but that is still something you can tell a story with.

"at least dai is about the conflict they built up for two games, though, right?”

*well*, for one quest you can choose, if you want to side with the mages or the templars (in a situation where it makes NO sense to ask the templars) and sometimes you have encounters with hostile mage or templar npcs (like in all other dragon age games). Oh, and the side you don’t pick in that one choice, that really only serves as flavor and gives you *one* different quest, gets corrupted by some random demon man that crawled out of a DLC no one played and who for some reason is the villain in a game that should have been about the civil war happening right now.

the idea that there is a threat that forces mages and templars to work together, despite being mortal enemies right now could have been so interesting, too? the world is ending, but does that mean the mages have to go back into servitude because the templars refuse to work with them otherwise? you are the fucking inquisition, in this game there could have been a plotline about disbanding the templars. anyways, the plot isn’t really that the world-threatening evil guy forces both sides to find a solution to the conflict, the plot is that a world-threatening evil guy appears, while there happens to be a conflict off-screen (and sometimes, for flavor, even on-screen) the villains goals have NOTHING to with the civil war either. like, i didn’t even remember his actual motives, I had to google them.

The. villain. could. have. been. Anders. Imagine if it was Anders. Like, imagine that journey. You meet him in a dlc as a grey warden who believes in the good in people, somehow and you see him become more bitter and angry over the course of dragon age 2, where you play a full game watching him become the person that blows up a church and starts a civil war. and now he’s the villain of this game. Like, it’s lowkey ridiculous to me that he doesn’t even fucking appear onscreen. Like, you are telling me the guy who blew up a church for his rights just went into hiding instead of becoming the face of the mage rebellion, lmao, okay.

Even if they went with the setting of Inquisition and set the game after the peace talks, I would do it in a way where Anders led the mage rebellion for a while, gained a huge following, but now, as there are peace talks happening, Anders is seen as too extreme, by both the templars and his own people, because now that negotiations are happening they don’t want to be seen with the Guy That Literally Blew Up A Church. And like, the mage rebellion splits in two and is weaker than before and the templars want to use this weakness to continue the war without having to agree to a treaty. Anders then leads the more radical mage-rebellion group that doesn’t cave in at the first mention of peace talks and some of them are in it for the freedom, like Anders himself, and some are in it for revenge. And you are playing as someone who is supposed to deal with them. Like, I want to empathize that this shouldn’t be a game where you are unquestionably the Good Person in the conflict and I really would not want the final fight to be one where Anders goes full Abomination Mode™ as you fight him (and if that was an option that would be one of the worse endings for the game). Like. A game where you have to evaluate if you want the war to go on to support Anders’ side or if you want to end the war, despite the mages only making a fraction of the progress they could have made. Even if Anders wasn’t the villain there could have been a billion good villains. you know who would have been a great villain? Cullen! Cullen could have regretted siding with Hawke, after he lost everything and was thrown out of the templar order and now comes back as some unhinged mage-killer, literally i made that up in 2 seconds. The actual inquisition could have been the villain for all I care!

The plot of dai also fucking sucks and all quests except for Wicked Eyes And Wicked Hearts aren’t really that good and the gameplay sucks too etc. etc. but one thing i especially hate as a choice they made is the companions. yeah, they’re charming and cool, but NONE of them play an interesting role in the ongoing conflict the game keeps ignoring. the game really made a mage who is super pro-circles, a mage from a country where there are no circles and a guy who crawled out of the woods and has no opinion on circles that really matters your three mage companions. like, not a single rebel mage. and cullens writing just sucks, let’s be real, this man is never confronted with ANYTHING he ever did in his life and instead in this game, the writers want you to feel sorry for him due to a plot point they just made up? (also samson and cullen REALLY should have switched places in this game)

even aside from mages and templar characters. sera could have been the same person, but she’s super pro rebellion and actually doesn’t want the war to end until the mages have all the rights they deserve and that is the reason she clashes with the rest of the group so much. the iron bull could have been a mercenary who was hired to fight for the templars, but has second thoughts about it now. blackwall could have still been a deserter but a templar deserter. Varric of all people should be on one side or the other. Either he supports Anders and made up his mind that Anders was right or he completely denouces Anders and does not want his name associated with him at any cost. Instead, Varric writes books in this game and meets some girl no one cared about, while all of his friends are presumably fighting a in pretty drastic conflict.

and even the storyline they chose, the one that mainly focusses on lyrium, had so much potential and they, again, used 0% of it. first of all, you really can’t just end a game on the verge of a world-defining civil war and then start the next game like “actually, remember that one questline in the last game about a small statuette from the deep roads? THIS is what we will make the story about instead”, but even aside from that, red lyrium was absurdly scary in dragon age 2. da2 created so much horror with a tiny red lyrium statuette and dragon age inquisition asks the very relevant question of “what would happen if a generic demon man from a dlc no one bought would put this truly evil substance everywhere? like, everywhere all over the ground.” and the answer the game has to this question is pretty much “nothing, apparently”. like, the game evokes zero emotions with this, there is no real horror to what red lyrium does it’s for all intends an puposes a Stone That Turns People Evil™, and there is a guy who has an evil army of evil red lyrium zombies, which he made out of the armies of the (way more interesting) civil war that is going on. like, i genuinely find that choice offensive. they deadass took a better plot and made the characters into zombie soldiers for some RANDOM GUY, when they could have been having an actually interesting conflict.

i could go on about this forever, i just want to conclude that im super angry about this game

#myposts #dragon age #da #dai #dragon age inqusition #dragon age 2 #da2

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mtgstories · 7 years

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Review of Judgment (5-17-2017)

(Original article: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/judgment-2017-05-17)

WARNING: Spoilers below.

It’s quite the barn burner I’ve chosen to kick my reviews off with. In this week’s article by Doug Beyer and Alison Luhrs, we come to the climax of the Amonkhet action. Last week, we finally learned about what made Samut as heretical as Thalia. As the second sun approaches its final resting place, things look grim for our newfound heroine.

The story starts off innocuously enough. With our previous story also being pointedly Gatewatch-less, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Samut/Djeru plotline be the focus of this story. It is refreshing to see that the Creative team at Wizards is listening to the community; it would be relatively easy to tell more (or most) of this article from the viewpoints of our intrepid (and increasingly stale) protagonists, watching as they continue to fumble about a new plane, trying to piece together a mystery that Samut herself has been gnawing on for around a decade. The concession of the Creative team to the fact that, ultimately, it is the denizens of a plane that deserve to have the acting power in their own narrative is a breath of fresh air, especially after the events of Eldritch Moon, where the sole actions of Jace and Liliana delay the total assimilation of the plane of Innistrad by Emrakul (who is honestly my favorite alien threat in recent pop-culture).

Even on Kaladesh, the success of the rebellion is largely dependent upon the cooperation of five suped up mages who happen to show up, even if one of them is native Kaladeshi (Kaladeshian?) Chandra. Personally, I believe the rebellion would have succeeded without the interference of the Gatewatch, but hey, I suppose they need to feel important every now and then.

Back to Amonkhet, the writing style starts off fluid and descriptive, a nice tempo and dialog drummed up that carries through the first segment. Lines from Samut and Djeru are natural and difficult to misinterpret, and the first author even manages to fit in a Chandraism (patent pending):

“Maybe he would ... ask her forgiveness - that was possible, wasn’t it? She managed to believe that for three entire seconds.”

The second segment of the story continues the well-wrought wordplay between Samut and Hazoret, easily the most characterized of the gods we’ve seen so far. We are given a hint that the gods, as they existed pre-Bolas, still exist, buried within, as we learned during Nissa’s battle with Kefnet. We also learn of the alternative roles the gods presumably held before the culture of Amonkhet was turned to the gladiator-like striving for eternal glory. It is interesting that even before Hazoret thought of herself as the chosen-daughter of Nicol Bolas, she was seen as the mother of the citizens of Amonkhet, or at least of Naktamun. After the Heliod-lead pantheon of Theros, it is intriguing to see the red-aligned god hold what we can assume is the highest position among the Amonkhet five (and even possibly the eight that were before).

The dialog between Samut and Hazoret is entirely believable, the tortured pleas of one longing to believe falling on the deaf ears of the indoctrinated. The least believable part of this segment is Samut’s utter shutdown following Hazoret’s dismissal. As a fiery warrior, it is strange to see Samut simply allow herself to be taken away, though perhaps in the presence of what we can assume is the speedster’s patron god, she was unwilling to actively dissent.

We come, finally, to the third segment, the portion that proves this was a two-person job. I’m not sure who wrote which parts of this story, but the sudden shift in writing style, and honestly, the increase in errors proves that the story changes ownership here.

As Samut is imprisoned within the gruesome sarcophagi alongside other dissenters, we have a shift from the consistent past-tense storytelling to a singular slip-up, as:

"I think we'll be the last," says the one to Samut's right. "The second sun is hours away from its zenith."

Sure, something that proofreading should have caught. But less than a dozen lines later:

They'll come in the morning. They'll take her to the arena. She'll finally convince Djeru, they'll leave alive, and the two will fight off the trespasser that ruined their world in the first place.

This paragraph jerks us unceremoniously into the future tense. Even if this was Samut’s inner monologue (which, if we’re following the style of the rest of the article, should be in italics), I would personally have still used the past tense, e.g. “They’d come in the morning, etc.”

The remainder of this segment feels rushed and barely structured; entire introductions and sharing of knowledge are glossed over in summaries of dialogue. When we finally do return to quotations, it is simply to restate facts that should have been included in the glossed over dialogue, and then, of course, to give the Gatewatch its limelight, as the group gets rightfully annoyed with Liliana and Jace for hiding Razaketh’s presence on Amonkhet. We end the segment with the arrival of the pantheon, summoning the dissidents to stand as the final trial for those who would ascend to eternity.

As we open on the final trial, we get some meaningless mind-talk between Jace and Nissa, I guess just to remind us that Nissa, a newly blue mage, is already better than Jace at controlling magic? The few lines of dialogue are instantly shown to be pointless as the cartouches immobilizing them simply fall off. Sometimes, less is more.

Another thing - the stands are supposedly filled with the Anointed. Just where did the remainder of Naktamun go? I’d imagine the Trial of Zeal is a very publicized thing, as none of the contestants leave alive, and everyone seems to know what happens there. Yet there appear to only be a bunch of mummies in the crowd. Odd...

The fight sequence is actually some of the better combat writings I’ve read in a while. There is a nice tempo and simplicity to the phrases, and the lack of complete sentences mirrors the rushed moves all combatants take part in. Yet another momentary tense lapse after Hazoret hears Djeru’s prayer:

The battle magic dissipates.

If the next two lines had been present tense, as well, I could have understood it as the artistic representation of blood-rushed senses returning to normal. As a single sentence, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Directly following that, a cringe-worthy use of “was” over “were”:

Around them was spatters of blood, the bodies of three initiates (head turned sideways, throat parted, thrown body discarded into the crowd).

Again, something I caught the first time I read the story, something any proofreader should have noticed, as well.

The next bit has Djeru crying like a baby after Samut sort of saves him from being impaled (Gideon does a Gideon thing and manages to end up in front of the pair before Hazoret realizes), Hazoret rethinking her life choices (which is awesome and a great move, continuing to humanize the character that I’m sure will play a pivotal role in Hour of Devastation), and the Gatewatch standing around waiting for something to happen.

As the sky begins to darken and six of the seven mortals dash for the Luxa, we are given quite a treat - prophetical plot development! Not only that, it is given to my personal favorite member of the Gatewatch, Beefcake - I mean, Gideon.

The last few lines are simple, powerful, and sent a shiver down my spine the first time I read them. For a mortal who literally face-tanked Ulamog’s assault (I want the name of who signed off on that, by the way), being told, simply and directly, “You are no god” is an uber powerful way to foreshadow what I predict will be the downward spiral and ultimate doom of my favorite Planeswalker (minus potentially Ugin, if he ever does anything again). I love you, Gideon, but I love the Magic story more, and the death of its most noble hero is exactly what it needs.

I’ll end this review with arguably my new favorite one-liner, a fitting end to the story of Amonkhet:

The indestructible man felt only a bleak and empty horror.

#mtg #mtgstory #magic story #doug beyer #alison luhrs

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mllemaenad · 7 years

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Personally... I feel that WEaWH tries to remove itself from TME because it realizes that TME is fucking irredeemable garbage, and tries to make its WLW representation less appalling. So I'm entirely willing to overlook continuity errors for the sake of one relationship between women in the entire series that can go well.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. I’m not going to argue with you on the merits of The Masked Empire, as you’re entitled to like or dislike any media you choose, but I don’t think Bioware is trying to distance itself from the novel. I also don’t think their motive is positive representation, or that they’re seriously suggesting a happy ending. However, even if they were I would call the choice to reunite Celene and Briala without any serious examination of the issues that drove them apart … disquieting.

1) On distancing themselves from the novel.

To begin with the obvious, several of the Dragon Age novels provide not only context for the quests in Inquisition, but also promotional material maintaining audience interest between games.

It’s hardly an accident that Asunder is a prequel to In Hushed Whispers/Champions of the Just, The Masked Empire is a prequel to Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts (as well as giving you a roundabout introduction to Solas) and Last Flight provides you with some context on why Weisshaupt is just no help at all during Here Lies the Abyss.

They do kind of want you to buy all their stuff. And if you started with Inquisition and liked what you saw, they want you to run back and buy all the earlier stuff for context. Video game tie-in novels aren’t generally considered high art, so they’d need serious reasons to want to reject the novel as part of their canon. Just in case, I checked The Masked Empire’s Amazon page, and it’s currently got 4.4 stars – so it doesn’t look like something they’d be particularly desperate to ignore. They’d rather you bought it and gave them money.

To move more to the specific, the game references the novel constantly. In addition to devoting a whole main quest to resolving its plot, it also includes cameos from Mihris, Michel and Imshael, which really serve no other purpose than to provide a bit of closure to the people who read the novel and wondered what became of them. This is actually more than it provides for, say, the characters of Asunder: Rhys and Evangeline appear only in a war table mission, Adrian doesn’t appear at all – and who knows where Shale has wandered off to.

It also references the murder of Briala’s parents directly:

Cole: She’s still behind the curtains in the reading room, watching the blood pool on the floor.

Briala pulled the red velvet curtain aside. Her hands shook as she did. There was a pool of red on the floor of the reading room, staining the rich Nevarran carpet. It had spread almost to the curtain.

At the other end of the pool were Briala’s parents.

– The Masked Empire

If they really wanted to distance themselves from The Masked Empire, they wouldn’t put that in there. If they wanted to say that that this didn’t happen, they’d have retconned the story – or at the very least not mentioned it.

In fact, the choice of words is particularly distressing. Cole senses pain. When he says Briala is ‘still behind the curtains’ he’s emphasising that the trauma and anguish are still very much with her, making a reconciliation, particularly a reconciliation that utterly fails to address a thing that they have confirmed happened, even stranger.

I would say that one motive for their choice to reconcile the two characters is simplicity. I like parts of Inquisition, but honestly it’s over ambitious. They set up a series of continent-wide catastrophes, each one intensely political: the mage rebellion, the Orlesian civil war, the collapse of the Chantry.

Each one probably requires its own game for a satisfactory solution. I realise they were probably going for something similar to the galaxy-wide political collapse in Mass Effect 3, but the Dragon Age games are at a serious disadvantage because they lack continuity of characters.

Mass Effect 3 had its own problems, of course, but for example – I think most people have fun curing the genophage for the krogan. But what they remember is Mordin Solus and ‘There’s a reaper in my way, Wrex!’ When it worked it was able to build on characters who were present across the series.

Inquisition is faced with trying to find resolutions for groups of people that have no direct connection to each other, and whom the protagonist has never seen before (even if they player has). This is hardly the only time their attempt to fix everything in a single quest ends up making no sense.

2) On positive representation

I’m afraid I don’t think what we get in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts is especially positive. I think it’s … kind of infantilising, really, and has a whiff of sexism about it. I mean – again, I’m not asking you to like The Masked Empire. But this:

“It would have been a locked suite in the palace for a few years, nothing more!” Celene kept her voice low, aware that Michel and Felassan had stopped planning and were looking their way. “It would have changed nothing for us.”

“Your hair still stinks of the smoke from the people you burned,” Briala said. “That is a change.”

The dead leaves crackled under Celene’s feet as she stepped forward. “How many wars can our empire survive in such a short time? I wanted my legacy to be the university, the beauty and culture that made us the envy of the world. Instead I may be known as the empress under whom Orlais fell. You have the luxury of mourning Halamshiral’s elves and holding my heart hostage. Sitting on my throne, I see every city in the empire. If I must burn one to save the rest, I will weep, but I will light the torch.”

Briala swallowed. “You’re not weeping, as far as I can tell. Nor are you sitting on your throne. She stepped away, her movements fast and jerky. “With your permission, Your Radiance, I shall go indulge myself in my luxury.”

– The Masked Empire

… is at least an argument between adults, with the details of what they believe laid out. Celene honestly believes that the empire and her legacy are worth 'a few thousand elven lives’: she believes that maintaining the strength of Orlais is worth thousands of lives in sacrifice, as is the vision she has for the country’s future. Briala is facing up to the fact that this is the bargain she’s made: stay with Celene and she might see an elven scholar graduate from the university – but she’ll likely also see elves burn every time there’s a crisis, because elves are the most expendable people in the empire.

Briala wavers throughout the novel, obviously, because there is genuine feeling between herself and Celene. But the discovery that this has all happened before, that this is not the first time Celene has shed elven blood to impress her rivals and gain power, and that her own parents were among the victims, brings her to a decision.

You don’t have to like it, but these women are serious about what they want and believe.

But in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts we get stuff like this:

Sera: Elves-elves-elves, but it’s really a pissing match with an old lover. Don’t know the rest but that explains a lot.

It’s hardly coincidental that they chose Sera to say this. Sera the commoner, who despises the nobility. Sera the Red Jenny, with contacts in every corner of Thedas. True, Sera’s background has led her to reject a lot of elven culture, but her biggest objection is usually to ‘moping’ about the past. This:

Briala thought for a moment. “Celene and Gaspard saw an army, but that would be fighting their fight. With the paths, I could get food to alienages where elves would otherwise starve. They would let me move ahead of an oncoming army and warn the target, or move behind them and attack their supply lines.”

– The Masked Empire

… sounds more like the practical stuff she favours: she’s said getting revenge would be a preferable option, and this is getting food to the poor, terrorising the nobility and giving little people a shot at being part of something bigger. But now we can’t take it seriously, because Sera has reduced it to a lovers’ tiff.

That isn’t meant as a criticism of Sera, to be clear. They do this when they want a mouthpiece. This is the equivalent of having Cole approve of Cullen.

And as for it going well, this is their epilogue slide:

Where once war raged, there is now a shaky peace. Orlais is resurgent, the empress a patron of arts and culture.

Many attribute this recovery to her lady love, though others wonder how long their reunion will truly last.

– Epilogue (Inquisition)

I mean – maybe they’ll forget about this. They have been known to forget their epilogue slides. But it doesn’t read as though the intent was to write a strong and loving partnership. Rather it looks as though they are selling the relationship as tempestuous.

That’s one place where I am very uncomfortable. This is the revolt of an oppressed people, and the politics an empire. And there’s a sense that they’re saying ‘Oh, those women and their emotions! Today they love each other; tomorrow they’ll hate each other; the day after they’ll probably love each other again. You never know, with women.’

I appreciate that Bioware is fairly progressive, for a game company: the character choices, the romance options, the NPCs – they are trying to represent a variety of races, genders and sexualities. But it doesn’t mean they never fuck up. I mean, there’s a bit in Mark of the Assassin where Isabela tells Hawke that Gamlen has been sexually harassing her and two responses blame her (You find something inappropriate?/Break him. And wear pants.).

Given that they are already struggling to resolve a massive plotline in a ridiculous amount of time, I’m not surprised they fell back on this. It’s narrative shorthand, and that can be handy for desperate situations. But it’s still sexist shorthand, and I very much wish they hadn’t done it.

3) Removing The Masked Empire from the equation doesn’t solve the problem

I mean, it makes some of the bigger issues like Briala’s dead parents a little easier to miss, sure, but it doesn’t make the problems go away.

I appreciate that representation is important. I do. But romantic relationships between women are not the only representation issue at stake, here. There’s no single source for the elven people, of course, but it’s easy enough to see that Bioware has borrowed from the experiences of Jewish, Romani and aboriginal peoples living under empires and/or colonialism.

And have we ever established that it is shit to be an elf. The city elf origin story in Origins is an abduction/rape/murder combo. The Dalish clans in Origins and DA2 can be slaughtered. It’s terrifyingly easy to kill off clan Lavellan in war table missions, and even though this is the protagonist’s family the game doesn’t make a thing of it. There’s a whole side quest in DA2 about a serial killer who targets elves, and who keeps getting away with it because no one gives a shit. We are up to our eyeballs in codex entries on the treatment of elves.

And here we have Briala, the leader of a rebellion in Orlais – one of the nations best known for oppressing the fuck out of the elves and trying to destroy their culture.

Even without The Masked Empire this is:

a) providing only the most minimal description of the nature of her rebellion and what she hopes to achieve.

b)allowing her to be dismissed as primarily involved in a lovers’ tiff.

c) pairing her with a woman the game actually says massacred the Halamshiral elves.

d) using the massacre as evidence against her because she was sleeping with Celene, rather than as evidence against the woman who actually committed it.

That’s … all pretty shitty, even at the simplest level. The game doesn’t address any of this. It doesn’t even force the characters to discuss what happened before throwing them back together. It spends as much time tsking at Briala for destabilising Orlais as it does Celene and Gaspard. It loves the idea that they’re all as bad as each other – which allows the player to justify just about any ending.

And this is a thing they do repeatedly: they tsk at the mage rebellion as well. They seem to be very good at describing the sufferings of the elves, the mages, the casteless dwarves … but don’t approve of them actually doing anything about their oppression. At least not anything more forceful than writing a stern letter of complaint (for those lucky literate characters!) to the local lord or revered mother.

And so minimising the problems of Celene and Briala’s relationship, and waving a locket around (which, even out of context, does not seem like a forceful enough declaration of love to startle Briala) does … not strike me as very respectful of peoples who have suffered under empires, and who have had to fight tooth and nail for every sliver of justice.

It’s not that I want to exclude a healthy, positive romance between two women in order to have Awesome Revolutionary Briala. I just don’t understand why we couldn’t have both.

Couldn’t Briala show up with a new girlfriend? Do it properly: give her a codex entry and make her active and important in the quest. Show the two of them both being affectionate and working together for the cause. Make sure that at least some of the possible quest endings leave them alive, together and continuing to better the lot of the elves.

I can understand that you may not like The Masked Empire and may want to exclude it from your personal headcanon. That’s absolutely fine, obviously. But I do not believe that was Bioware’s intent in writing the the Briala-and-Celene reconciliation, and I still have serious issues with it.

#Anonymous #dragon age #dai #briala #empress celene #celene critical

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