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

OMG this plot bunny almost makes me like DA:I Leliana. A raven-spirited double-agent? Oh yes. Count me in.

Bioware; "we will treat every group of people with respect and avoid sensitive topics"
Rockstar :"you can sell innocent people to a cannibal tribe"
I want this kind of attitude from BW but it seems unlikely.

Should it? Yes.

Will it? No idea.

In real world

I don't want a game that is dark for the sake of it. I want it to make sense, sure. However, DA4 going to Tevinter would make more sense than ever to go for a more darker approach. But more than anything, I want it to go back to a "show, don't tell" kind of game. In DAI most of the darkest stuff was presented to you via text or you were just told about it. That to me removed a lot of the impact that otherwise could've had if only it was actually shown to you. I think that's why most people say DAI is not dark enough. It certainly had the potential to be, but they never truly commit to it. Finding out that the skulls used on the oculara were from tranquil was dark, but then 10 seconds later it's forgotten already. Having the Lavellan clan murdered is definitely dark, but that should've been an actual quest and not a war table mission which your Inquisitor doesn't even react to. Having a hole in the sky and demons pour out of it is certainly dark in theory but if you can't actually transmit that into visuals, then the dark element is lost. The fade rifts were always the same, demons would never venture out of that little invisible green circle, so people were never really in danger. You barely see any destruction or misery, everything is just.. so clean. Refugees apparently are starving and dying of cold, but you never see any of it. You only see the ocasional NPCs sitting around a fire that spawn in random locations. You never see the refugees getting caught in between the mages vs templars fights either. A good example of how they should've handled this is Lothering in DAO. You have all of those NCPs you can talk to and get a real sense of what the people are going through (an elven family that was robbed of everything they had, a boy that lost his mother, a merchant taking advantage of desperate people, etc.) That's not exactly super dark like rape, murder, etc. but still, the moment you enter Lothering you get a sense of desperation that you don't get in any of the maps in DAI.

So yes, DA4 should return to a more darker approach. Will it? I honestly doubt it. I'm certain we will see the ocasional dark storyline (Crestwood was actually good, although it could be better) but my guess is the maps will still be pretty as a painting even if there's a war going on on the background and we will never see things like the Broodmother or desire demons again.

I'm skeptical of the notion that DAI is less "dark" than DAO. I think that's more a consequence of Inquisition taking placing in large, sandboxy environments versus endless dungeons.

Think about the areas you travelled to DAO. A Paragon of Her Kind? Set entirely underground and mostly in the Deep Roads. Broken Circle? Set entirely in a tower filled with demons. Arl of Redcliffe? Half in the village, half in the castle filled with undead. The Urn of Sacred Ashes? Stuck mostly in a mountain temple with reavers. Even half of Nature of the Beast was set in an abandoned temple.

Now think of Inquisition, with its beautiful forests and hillsides. Certainly, some of the outside areas aren't very pleasant — the Fallow Mire is a pretty miserable place — but every environment has its own unique beauty. I effin' hate the Storm Coast, but I will admit it looks very nice.

I don't think it's a coincidence that people generally cite the main quests of DAI as their favourite parts. Those are set, for the most part, in linear "dungeon" paths: In Hushed Whispers, Champions of the Just, In Your Heart Shall Burn, Here Lies the Abyss, etc.

As the above post shows, there were certainly dark themes in DAI but the execution of them didn't make it come across that way.

The loss of Clan Lavellan is an ideal example of this. It all happens off screen and no one acknowledges it to you. When it happened to me almost the next thing I did after leaving the War Table room was talk to Josephine and she was complaining about the hardships her family was experiencing. The woman wears silks and her sister was studying art, so they can't be doing that badly. I'd just lost my entire family and she didn't even express sympathy towards me.

As someone else mentioned above, the whole business of the way the oculara were created was touched on and then forgotten. No one was even brought to justice for the crime. If you had a good imagination, as I do, then you do appreciate the full horror of the crime but the game doesn't seem to acknowledge it. I was so repulsed by what they did to the tranquil that initially I refused to complete the quest, only to find it was recorded in the Keep. So they forced you into being complicit, even if only to alter the Keep to show that you had completed it.

Leliana being hung by the hands in Hushed Whispers was another case in point. Clearly the writers have no idea how terrible a torture that is. Mind you a lot of Hollywood movies are equally guilty, particularly Lethal Weapon and Riggs being tortured in that way. If you are really hung by the hands for any length of time it is excruciatingly painful, the physical effect on the body will cause you to pass out and it is impossible to use your hands for anything for hours or even days afterwards. Yet Leliana is able to use a bow and engage in all sorts of heroics.

If you compared the original 2013 trailer (that Morrigan narrates) with the later trailers and the game, it is clear that visually the overall tone was lightened. I still live in hope that the second half of the game (that was left out of DAI) will deliver on the apocalyptic visuals and darker tone that the earlier trailer promised.

Yeah, I think this has less to do with Bioware not wanting to show the darker aspects of the world and is really more of a result of the game itself being limited in terms of dialogue options and how many lines they can afford the voice actors to give. War Table missions are mostly just flavor no matter how important they should be and I assume they thought stopping the Venatori in Redcliffe would be enough to satisfy people. It's also entirely possible that those plot points just got lost in a sea of other story stuff, which I admit isn't really a defense of Bioware's spotty writing and commitment to delivering on what they set up. 

But, hey, at least Sera of all people brings up your Clan in Trespasser and even gives some hope that some of them survived if you messed up the War table mission. Though to be honest since we never got to meet them I really didn't even care whether they lived or died. 

Hmm. Not to butt in, but I don't think books count. Example: I don't mind reading stories with rape scenes in them and other extremely dark things. But I wouldn't to 'see' the rape scene. Can you imagine the uproar if the event's in TME were actually in a game?

My point was: People perceive and enjoy different types of media in different ways. I did state that the above was just an example.

Yes, but it's an example that has little to do with what I was talking about. The issue was a portrayal of certain groups and implication that certain authors are supposedly afraid to do something that would be viewed as controversial by those groups. Whether it's a game or a book, it is written or led by the same author. Nevermind that the book itself was a setup for events happening in the game, with same characters featured in it.

Also - to go back to more general discourse, not really aimed at anyone in specific: I really dislike the idea that the game/book/whatever can only be considered 'dark' when it follows an arbitrary set of rules and somehow - because it's a noticeable undercurrent - a game that chooses to do something else for a change is readily dismissed as 'lighter' and therefore less serious or less mature. Ironically, I don't think it's a very mature way to look at things.