"No Brothels to be in DA4" as per Mark Darrah Tweet.

I prefer Sten with his canon appearance although I do sometimes play with his qunari variants to change things a bit up. 
After hearing about the hornless qunari, it's an old headcanon of mine that Sten's the offspring of a human and a qunari. 

Yeah, I've seen very few complain about Isabella's redesign. I do shove a pair of pants on her but in the Deep Roads, even Varric has to wear a shirt. It's for immersive reasons. It's the same reason for why I changes the companion's clothes and bits of their appearance in-between acts. For my next playthrough, I'm planning on using this for her in the later acts:


While I'm on the subject, I'm planning on using this one for Fenris in the early acts. I like how it looks a bit mismatch. He's supposed to have been on the run so it works that it looks like he put it together with what he had at hand. Also looks a bit Tevinterish. 

It's easy to claim there's no actual retcon when all the information presented in the codex is suspect and all information delivered through characters can be tainted by their worldview. A cynical man would say something about the nature of their codex - that while it does allow Bioware to show how different cultures and time periods interpret things and events it also allows Bioware's to just change stuff on a whim throughout the series. But I'm not a cynical man and so I won't. Whether it is a retcon may be up in the air, but there is  there is inconsistency, and it's this inconsistency that drives that perception:

Sten: Why are you here?
Leliana: What do you mean?
Sten: Women are priests, artisans, farmers or shopkeepers. None of them have any place in fighting.
Leliana: I have no idea how to answer this...
Sten: It is not done. There is no more to it.
Leliana: Do you mean your people have no female mages or warriors?
Sten: Of course not. Why would our women wish to be men?
Leliana: What are you talking about? They don't wish to be men.
Sten: They shouldn't. That can only lead to frustration.
Leliana: Sten...no, never mind. Let's drop this.

This inconsistency is explained away either through debating the technical meaning of what constitutes a "man or woman" or a lack of understanding by Sten. Given the inflexibility of the Qun the former point is very suspect. Given that Sten asks "why would our women wish to be men" brings into question the Aqun-athlok. Given that you can dress your women in the party like your men and have them behave like men and Sten still makes that speech, it's very suspect. It can be explained away by Sten not fully understanding Qunari culture, it would just be a very unsatisfactory explanation.

But all that's moot, at the time of Origins this aspect of Qunari culture was very cut and dry through the speeches Sten gave. Then Inquisition was released and suddenly what was presented in Origins is no longer the way of things. People tend to headcanon away all the inconsistencies, though.

I doubt it. For it to be a thing Sten would have had to have been remarkably ignorant about a rather important part of Qunari culture, and while that is possible it is an unsatisfactory explanation. It's far more probable that the writers stuffed up in Origins regarding Qunari mages, and they changed things for Inquisition.

Except it's a strawman. Nobody (in the articles at least) was making anything close to this argument. 

Also - yes, history or story's context matters and showing violence doesn't mean endorsing it. But context in which violence in medium or its adverts is used or shown also matters. The argument addressed in article isn't that "violence is used!" but how much of it is used to sell the product or capitalize on a fact that it's a violent game (seemingly to try and spin controversy around it), rather than as means to tell the story or say something with it. Nobody I've seen is arguing that no violence, ever, should be used, only that it should be used responsibly, rather than gratuitously.

Qunari do not consider mages male or female.  They are "things"

Saarabas="dangerous thing" in Qunlat.

Aqun-Athlok strikes me as just an attempt to humanize the Qunari so they don't seem so "evil"

Whatever you say, MajesticJizz. Now how about you actually adhere to the wishes of the OP.

I want to come back to this tomorrow after I've rested. I want to give a better response as to why than just "I disagree" so bear with me. 

I didn't know the ability of creating your character was a BioWare exclusive thingy. Even then, it works the opposite way, that game which shall not be named will influence others, not MEA or DAI, heck - MEa isn't even considered a good example of a game to take inspiration from, and DAI barely gets remembered for anything than the infamous fetch quests, at times. Wasn't Ubisoft hiring people to make AC Origins side-quests that explicitly said they were aiming for the same polish level that 2015 game had it?

Reminds me of Star Trek TOS, where the Klingons look different from one episode to another because, it's said, the makeup folks simply forgot what they were supposed to look like. (Easy to do in an era when video recording was almost impossible.) Fanwankery says that they were different ethnicities. I guess we can make the same play ourselves.