Will or should DA4 return to the darker roots that DAO had?

In the second episode of the series, Daredevil tortures one of Kingpin's goons. The man is tied up and helpless and Daredevil repeatedly asks Claire Temple where to cut him to inflict pain. He also violently interrogates a bunch of other people later, but that's the clearest example of a Marvel show having the sympathetic series protagonist straight-up torture someone for information (while a medical professional helps.)

Like I say, it put me off the show, but I can see why some people didn't want to keep watching after that.

That's why I, uhm, have a strong distaste for Weekes, especially as the lead writer. He can't stand if his characters come off as unlikeable (Mordin and retcon of the genophage; overprotection of Solas). Yeah, Tali is nasty racist, but his darling is just poor misunderstood soul with genocidal plans, sure. And judging by near preachy handling of Qun and Aqun-Athlok and other pc stuff, I'm "looking forward" to DA4 and Tevinter "revelations".

The problem is as the games have progressed we've left medieval fantasyland and reached early modern fantasyland.

Medieval fantasyland is a wars and kings kind of place. It's chock full of big characters imposing their will on the world. It's great for visceral kick to the gut moves, and because it's comes with the implicit expectation these are more primitive times it doesn't bother examining them in any detail. It's not a very changeable place either, except when it comes to replacing kings. It proclaims this is how things are and doesn't brook awkward questions about why and whether they could not be. Very good for conveying a bleak, unrelenting impression.

Early modern fantasyland still has its wars and kings, but they're now sharing the place with at least one full political system, philosophy and science/magic. Everything is changing. You still have your darkness and horror, but they don't get to pass unquestioned with a nod and a wink. Your oppressive practices will be challenged and examined and your nameless demons will be whipped off to the academy for dissection. No matter how dark the setting, a story cannot achieve the same bleak effect when its also poking these concepts with a pointy stick to see how they squirm.

Bad news. Next stop is Tevinter. A land full of people who like explanations and appear to be headed for change. You may well see very dark concepts, but it's unlikely they'll be treated with the simple acceptance that lets them achieve the same bleak, oppressive atmosphere Origins could.

Well, going by current public mood, it seems going dark for the sake of it would be the smart move. Traditional high fantasy like the Lord or the Rings is out, but the dark, twisted fantasy like Game of Thrones is insanely popular.

GoT has never been shy about any dark themes. It even goes overboard on some things like incest and pedophelia. But it's the most popular show on television. I almost feel as if BW is trying to distance themselves from GoT out of fear that people will say they "copied" it.

Wait, didn't Bioware get criticized by some people for going with what's popular? You know, trying to "copy" Skyrim? 

Additionally and importantly, neither A Song of Ice and Fire nor Game of Thrones became popular because they were dark: they earned their popularity and acclaim by being a well-written deconstruction of fantasy tropes. Dark for the sake of dark tends to be more often than not just shock value slog. 

And let's be honest... ASoIaF started out as a fresh deconstruction of tropes before becoming a parody repititous tropes by book 4. Dark fantasy, while popular, actually tend to be of extremely questionable quality.

The writing and themes of DAI are actually dark. It was a demons running amok, hole in the sky apocalypse. My issue with DAI was the visual presentation of this narrative.

The narrative is saying "It's the end of the world!", but then you get to the Hinterlands and it's beautiful. The birds are chirping. The Fennecs are doing whatever they do. Bears are roaming. Dragonflies fluttering about. It looked to be about 72 degrees F and sunny. How lovely. What lovely weather we're having for the Apocalypse.

The narrative was dark. The visuals and narrative did not connect. The visual presentation did not reflect the darker themes of the narrative.

And ofc music helps to set a tone, but I hardly ever heard any.

And then they show that day getting destroyed. The Hinterlands is pretty when you enter it and only gets better as you resolve the issues in the region.

That was kind of the larger problem with Inquisition though: After Corypheus reveals himself the sense of threat he and the Breach poses deteriorates steadily to the point where the final battle feels like a mop up operation rather than a climax.

And technically you could argue that the "too late" point was supposed to be the intro where the Breach started belching demons in the first place.

What's that old Baldur's Gate quote from Nietzche?

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

I'll speak from an elf perspective on this.
Inky lost their clan through a table mission. If you are believer of the Maker, you have your faith tested when you find out you didn't have divine help after all and neither is the anchor on your hand. You suffer Blackwall's lies and betrayal, Bull's betrayal if you didn't save the Chargers. You are constantly fighting negative entities (demons) who could have a corrupting influence over you, eventually. You are a leader and are responsible for sending hundreds or thousands to their deaths during the time of the Inquisition. You have first hand experience on many battlefields. You witness things that no person should ever suffer through, the stench of death, of blood, hearing cries for help, screams of agony, things that any former soldier with PTSD will tell you such things will eat away your soul. And now the two empires that you have helped are now scared of your power and demand that you break up your organization. Ungrateful that they are. A person could stay good through all of this or they could be corrupted by their experiences and turn into the very monster that they have been fighting.
Bioware could have a good thing going here if they were smart enough to capitalize on it. In Trespasser you are presented with the option to save Solas from himself or fight him. There is also the comment in the dialogs that you want to help him. Now with that last part, not only in Dragon Age 4 will you have to fight Solas but also the corrupted Inquisitor as well.

Same. I really want to infiltrate the Inquisitor's new organization and destroy it from within. My Inquisitors are cool and I wish them all the best, but it would be extremely fun to betray them.

Plus, having Charter and Harding as antagonists would be amazing. Terrifying, and amazing. In my wildest dreams of a spy-DA4, I imagine a slow, looming threat of discovery (backed by Harding's arrows), that hangs over the new protagonist for the entire game. Mildly panicking each time they find a clue to my true allegiances.



(this fever dream fantasy also includes a frankly excessive amount of sylvans, and way too many Last Court cameos, but that's neither here nor there)