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Dragon age Inquisition will be ten years next year that is fucking wild and so weird and makes me feel so old lmao

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The hot take is this. The Old Gods start the blights in order to be slain and then transferred either in another body or beyond the veil in a "pure" form. The actual war is there to provide enough blood and corruption.

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He didn't win by fighting, he won by breaking the very system. Now to accomplish what he wants he has to rebuild. He's not good at that.

I love how conceited the idea of the DA4 protagonist is. Solas fought a pantheon of gods and won. He’s not even fighting against a huge pantheon of gods anymore. He’s probably just like sleepwalking easy baby mode through DA4. You’d hardly cause him to use strategy. If you think you beat him, he already won thirty minutes ago.

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Hey so er uh fuck Greg Ellis and good fucking day to all Dragon Age fans specially Cullen stans and specially trans Cullen stans

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We want characters to either be loved or hated. One of the best examples of that is Solas. Half the community wants to kill him, half the people want to marry him, and another part want to do both.

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corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart corrupted beating titan heart -

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>:(

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huehuehue give me all the darkspawn

Can’t wait to fight these monstrosities pulled from the darkest most horrifying creature design pit again!

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pfppfpfp tru

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I really hate to break it to you, but origins wasn't at all the first fantasy story was "spun around" and the opposite of "classic" tolkienesque high fantasy genre, where elves or mages were opressed, where "orcs" are intelligent etc. It all happened in fantasy long before, be it tabletops, books, comics or videogames (even other bioware games, too). Dragon age 2, however, was a very original fantasy story, it was very flawed, but also very challenging for us players. It really is sad that because of the amount of flaws it had, the game was pretty much a flop and writers didn't want to risk writing something similarly theirs anymore.

DAI was dull because they took a safe road, the villain wasn't fleshed out (god I hated what they did to one of my favourite characters of the franchise), we beat him pretty much evrytime we meet him; the ethical conflict surrounding mage rights (that was so fun and interesting to explore) and the war that was taking place are never truly explored in the game, it just ends, huh; where in DAO all companions (well, except maybe Sten and Shale, but they both are so well written and don't hold the same function as other characters, they're here for you to explore the world even more) were chess pieces in the grand scheme of things and therefore were fleshed out through motivation, and in DA2 the companions were always Hawke's equals, had their own lives, made decisions regardless of what the protagonist wants or stands for, in DAI, lots of them are just..there. Or not explored enough. Vivienne could be so much more. Dorian could be so much more (!). Sera could be so much more. Cole could be so much more. They all could make you experience the world and understand it's politics and social tendencies better. They could be there to make you disagree with them. Instead they're just sort of silent witnesses to whatever you're up to. Yeah, the approval system was there, but it never actually changed anything. It was also really easy to fix anything through dialogs. The main storyline is weak. There are elements of things that could be so engaging. Show me families seeing their dead sons and daughters coming back from the exalted plains. Show me a soldier having to kill his best friend twice. Show me what the elves living there made of all this, show me how they put it all together in their worldview, show me them being compassionate or repulsed by this war. Show me them exploring the ruins. Show me one of your party members slowly losing it because of all that red lyrium in Emprise du Lion. Make my inquisitor hear some echo of the Song. Show me what working in this mines truly was like. Put literally anything in the hissing wastes. Don't make the second half of the game exclusively a "let's learn some elven lore" adventure. Put in some goddamn deep roads! (Really I don't get why people hate them so much, it's like the best part of DAO).

I think ultimately, there was a huge tonal shift in DAI. DAO and DA2 explored things like addiction, mind control, self-actualisation, uncontrolled science, radicalisation, sexual violence, racism, sexism, cultural appropriation, forms of control, mental illness, colonialism and slavery, genocide, religion and fanaticism, all this and more sprinkled with political and economical discourse. And there was still time to add in themes of love, friendship, compassion, kindness and forgiveness. In DAI, everything is so much brighter (literally and figuratively). Everything is in the background, while the hero beats the bad guy triumphantly. Did you feel triumphant when you killed Orsino and Meredith?

I wouldn't say it's all bad or boring. There are pretty cool new things that I'd like to see in dragon age more. But it feels very different from other games of the franchise. To me, it was extremely noticeable through first hours through music. Remember Inon Zur's soundtracks? You would recognise dragon age right away. It had a distinct character and sound. DAI sounds pretty, beautiful sometimes, but so...generic. Nothing like dragon age.

So I’ve probably said this before, but I’ll say it again.

The reason Dragon Age Inquisition feels so much like a misfire is because it missed a lot of the point of the previous games in the series. Where Inquisition was a story about a Chosen One figure being the only one who can fight and stop this threat, the kind of story we’ve seen repeatedly and constantly in the fantasy genre, Dragon Age Origins and especially Dragon Age 2 were designed to deconstruct the familiar tropes of the genre.

I mean, Dragon Age 2 is pretty much explicit in that fact. The point and purpose of the ‘Varric as narrator’ device is that Cassandra has heard the tale of the Champion of Kirkwall and now wants to know the truth, wants to know about the person behind that myth. What she ends up getting is a tale of an ordinary person dragged into situations beyond their control and, by virtue of a little luck and some faithful companions, ends up being the one still standing at the end of it. Hawke is no Chosen One. S/he’s just a person who was in the wrong place at the right time and got to be remembered as a hero.

And even the Warden has this trait - the Warden, by virtue of the origins mechanic, could not be ‘the Chosen One’ either. We get plenty of information on the other origins that indicate that, regardless of whether we chose to play as that character, those origins still occurred. Howe still invades Highever and kills much of the Cousland family. Endrin’s middle child is blamed for the death of his eldest and sentenced to the Deep Roads. Brosca entered the Provings and ends up dying in Jarvia’s prison cells. All the origins happen, it’s just your decision tells Duncan where to go to recruit.

Origins itself was meant to deconstruct a lot of the standard tropes in fantasy. Here, the elves were beaten and down-trodden, long past the days of their ancient, glorious empire, where any arrogance on their part was purely meant as the only way they really can fight back with humanity - ‘we may have little, but we will take pride in that little.’ Mages are not the wise and respected advisors to some noble, but instead are locked up and shackled in a tower because the abilities they have are dangerous and deadly if they’re allowed to run free. The dwarves, often considered ‘as constant as the stone’ are a stagnant and dying culture, and the one dwarf we ever really meet who embodies the stereotypes is Oghren, who is a pariah among his fellow dwarves. Hell, in many ways, the qunari are orc-analogs, and instead of being the simple bruisers whose first instinct is to crush and smash and destroy, they’re highly intelligent, to the point that they have technology far beyond what the humans have.

Dragon Age started as a deconstruction and even examination of old fantasy tropes. On a personal note, that’s what made the series so interesting to me - instead of just taking a Tolkien-style world at face value, Dragon Age took those tropes and turned them on their head. In some ways, it was asking the genre to evolve, because as influential as Tolkien has been, we’re at a point where the fantasy genre isn’t really moving outside of these narrowly defined categories of what fantasy has been. And fantasy that doesn’t imagine moving beyond that? That’s a waste of the genre and ideas.

But Inquisition… Inquisition wants to play those Tolkien style tropes far straighter than they’ve been in the past. And it doesn’t reconstruct them first. It just acts like that classic interpretation of things has been in play since the beginning, even though it hasn’t, and, in multiple cases, actively set out to go against them.

Dragon Age began with a lot of deconstruction of the fantasy genre, in some ways asking ‘is fantasy going to stay where it is or grow and evolve?’ And if Inquisition is an indication, the answer is apparently ‘stay where it is.’ Which if you ask me, that’s a damn shame, because there’s a lot that can be done with fantasy, if someone would just take the chance. I hope future games will.

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A curious meaningless thing

Solas never refers to the Black City as the former Golden one. He just calls it black.

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Corruption, red lyrium and the Titans.

One thing that bothers me about the theory that the Old Gods are Evanuris is, well, that Solas states there’s nothing that links the elven lore to the OG. And yes, he’s probably not saying the whole truth, but I don’t think he’s blatantly lying, either.  It is said that darkspawn and red lyrium have always been in the deep roads. Long before the magisters entered the Fade. Some scholars also claim that it isn’t the darkspawn who are responsible for the archidemon’s corruption, but that the dragons lay underground already corrupted. Solas is very critical of the grey wardens’ actions. All that he says implies that killing the archdemons to prevent future Blights is a misinformed assumption, and that something more terrible could happen afterwards.  The OG started whispering from the Fade roughly 50 years after the fall of Arlathan. Centuries later, Dumat encouraged the magisters to enter the Fade. This resulted in the first blight, and Dumat’s ultimate death. After that, the whispering stopped, causing the whole religious crisis etc. Why did they stop? Was it because Dumat got slayed? Or was it because they achieved what they wanted? From now on, the Blights didn’t need any entering the Black city extravaganza. They just happened eventually.  All the archdemons (well, all the Blight archdemons) got slayed, but hey, Urthemiel can live on in Kieran. So if a soul of an OG can be transfered, can we actually talk about death? Where does an OG soul go after the archdemon’s death? From what we can learn about the “golden” era of Arlathan, corruption existed even before Solas separated the two realms. Andruil is said to have visited the Abyss and returned mad and corrupted, darkspawn invading her lands afterwards. The Forgotten Ones apparently lived in the Abyss. You know who else did? Titans. I present to you: - Exhibit A, the teaser image - Exhibit B, the fresque representing the death of a titan.  Lyrium is a titan’s blood. Red lyrium is corrupted lyrium. Red lyrium sings, whispers, and turns people mad. Imo, the singing and whispering are those of an old god, amplified and almost physically audiable due to the fact that lyrium is, well, pure magic. Red lyrium corrupts. What was first, corruption or red lyrium? Is red lyrium spoiled blood of a dead titan? Or was the titan corrupted somehow? To me, it seems that corruption is some sort of a primary evil that existed way back and was a problem even for the ancient elves (I really don’t want it to be just spoiled blood since Mythal have slayed several titans and were it true, caused the creation of corruption). It did no emanate of the evanuris, though the evanuris might’ve taken drastic mesures to stop it. Or indulge in it.   All this talk just to state that red lyrium is a wifi hotspot to connect to the archdemon.

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Honestly, the whole Forbidden/Forgotten thing has always confused me. I’ve been playing/reading/overthinking DA for so many years now and I still get them mixed up. (And I’m not the only one: The Band of Three in DA2  get them mixed up and are like whatever those are, forgotten, forbidden, whatever, it’s horrible, let’s just run). I'm not sure if the forbidden are part of the forgotten ones, but they definitely knew them quite personally. In Masked empire, Felassan treats Imshael like an old pal almost, basically wiggling eyebrows at him and making promises. The codex entry that you quote is very interesting. An unknown calamity? How do you abandon one form for good in a world where the veil doesn’t exist? What does it even mean? And so far, the forbidden ones we have met could take physical form... There’s that one theory that I’ve seen spreding that the three eyes of Fen’harel are meant to represent the forgotten ones. Here’s crazy talk from me: Fen’Harel has six eyes, three for Gaxkang, Imshael and Xebenkeck, three for Anaris, Geldauran and Daern’thal. Fen’Harel and the Formless One are one.

The Forgotten Ones, and their pride

I just figured I will start posting speculations, theories and analysis of DA lore here sometimes, since I do need to get it out of my system. If you want to come along, you’re very welcome.

The first thing I wanted to talk about are the Forgotten ones. From the looks of it, the evanuris established some sort of divine right monarchy, where they, the direct descendants of the sun god, would hold all the power. We don’t know much about the forgotten ones, but the Geldauran’s claim is crucial in understanding their logic:  “There are no gods. There is only the subject and the object, the actor and the acted upon. Those with will to earn dominance over others gain title not by nature but by deed. <…>” Yes, it’s a piece on the evanuris, but it also shows how Geldauran views power. If the Forgotten ones were a rebel group, they were not here to free the people. They were here to claim power by power.  And ofc Geldauran mentions that the pride of evanuris will consume them. And we all know that pride isn’t a word that we should treat as any other. If Solas was somehow related to the evanuris, but ultimately repulsed by their deeds, he could’ve been a double agent. But ultimately, seeing how the rebellion was here to bend the system under their will, he betrayed both sides. Because a revolutionary doesn’t bend the system, a revolutionary breaks it.

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a friendly reminder

YOU MAGNIFICENT MOTHER FUCKERS.

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Dragon Age 4 Plot Summary:

Two moody elves. One bitchin’ piece of forbidden rock candy. Who will win?

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that’s like word by word what i speculated on youtube yesterday

the real question now is what is corruption? what is it’s nature?

Oh and Black city is totally Arlathan.

Calling it now: The next big reveal is the 7 Magisters only cracked the Black City and brought the darkspawn taint to the world because the Evanuris whispered instructions from beyond the Veil, hoping they’d set them free.

So the Blights are REALLY the elves’ fault, like everything else.

Another one: based on the teaser poster, we see the red lyrium statue enclosed in a large black circle with seven orbs around it; five dim, two bright. There have been 5 Blights, 5 slain Archdemons, with two to go.

Solas hates the Grey Wardens slaying Archdemons because he implies if all 7 are slain, something much worse will happen.

My guess is Solas sealed Evanuris in the Black City (hence tainted red lyrium) to suffer an eternity of torment; tainted and maddened but unable to die. But they can till use the magic of the Fade to “sing” heavenly music for those who can hear, mingled with the darkspawn taint. And darkspawn feel compelled to seek out and “awaken” Archdemons because the tainted Evanuris eternally compell them with their “song.” And the “Old Gods” that instructed the 7 Magisters to invade the “Golden City” was really the 7 Evanuris trying to trick them into freeing them.

Calling it now.

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The Forgotten Ones, and their pride

I just figured I will start posting speculations, theories and analysis of DA lore here sometimes, since I do need to get it out of my system. If you want to come along, you’re very welcome.

The first thing I wanted to talk about are the Forgotten ones. From the looks of it, the evanuris established some sort of divine right monarchy, where they, the direct descendants of the sun god, would hold all the power. We don’t know much about the forgotten ones, but the Geldauran’s claim is crucial in understanding their logic:  “There are no gods. There is only the subject and the object, the actor and the acted upon. Those with will to earn dominance over others gain title not by nature but by deed. <...>” Yes, it’s a piece on the evanuris, but it also shows how Geldauran views power. If the Forgotten ones were a rebel group, they were not here to free the people. They were here to claim power by power.  And ofc Geldauran mentions that the pride of evanuris will consume them. And we all know that pride isn’t a word that we should treat as any other. If Solas was somehow related to the evanuris, but ultimately repulsed by their deeds, he could’ve been a double agent. But ultimately, seeing how the rebellion was here to bend the system under their will, he betrayed both sides. Because a revolutionary doesn’t bend the system, a revolutionary breaks it.