I cannot defend BioWare regarding SJW stuff anymore. That's it.

I see people are still confused by the concept of a priest knowing more than a soldier.

Except that was never really the case. 

In a less modern society people pretty much had to do whatever to survive, it wasn't about maximising attributes or putting people in the best roles. Go back some centuries and armies were made up of starving peasants.

At the age of 12 a person's future prowess in battle cannot be determined. At age 12 your character traits are nowhere near fully realised.

We could accept Iron Bull's word for it, it's just a story after all. But I believe I said a few pages ago that it doesn't do well to look too closely at Qunari culture/lore and all this is pretty much why

This is just revenge for all the femshep jokes. Seriously, I have no sympathy for gamers who scream oppression after the barrage of sexist jokes that plagued the old BSN. That said, BW does need to remember the first rule in storytelling. Tell a good story and don't preach.

I agree. People 'are what they are', but the Qunari still have a process to determine 'what that is'. And this can include re-determinations, though they may be more rare than than the rest of the world and established to a specific 'class' to do it.

Krem would ultimately have no say once in the Qun.

The change in lore made is just that in elaborating the Qunari, we find that there's constant assessment of the status of Qunari in what they're supposed to be. That 'one Qunari' isn't to think about what they are meant to be, but Tamassran
s figure it out. Outsiders see this as Tamassrans essentially ruling the Qunari (or even matriarchy), but the Qunari do not view it as that, but instead the Tamassrans themselves fulfilling their role in being their purposeful 'part' of the Qunari.

Qunari children are assigned role in their early teens. Before that, they are just more educated than others in the world to not have the care about where they should individually beyond. There is only the Qun. In early teens they are assessed and assigned. 

I would not be surprised that if we see Qunari society in DA4+, we see that Qunari children are raised in their own sort of gender neutrality. Which like some argue about the Qunari, reflects something of a progress that the rest of the world might (or might not) be better with. But like every region and people of Thedas, it also includes that which we may consider flaws about the approach, or even chilling and overtly harmful parts - especially, obviously, how the Qunari are much more brainwash-happy than any other people.



So, about Sten. His confusion is about a biological and social female being a warrior and insisting that this is acceptable. He would consider the biological gender to be what applies, until it doesn't, and then the social gender is what applies. What DAI also adds is that a biological female may be a social male and then appropriately be a warrior.
But how does the Qunari allow such a change? They make a role for it, and probably act like it was always that way. Aqun-Athlok is that role. So your role is now to first be female, and then when assigned later role, you are assigned male, so soldier/sten/whatever.

The point is that there's a place for all things, and it turns out that when explained, the Qunari have more places for things than we might have assumed by speaking to the Qunari version of a grunt. It doesn't mean Sten didn't know these things, in-universe, but that he wouldn't have cared to tell a non-Qunari such detail. We are basically not enlightened like them and so it is like speaking to a dumb child.


They did try to humanize the Qun, but I actually think they made movements to try to humanize all of people on Thedas, more than previous games, in the effort to counterbalance the revelations of Thedas as such a fragile world with it being a world that may be worth saving. Not just that region or this region of the favored region, but all of it. Inquisition wasn't just about stopping an invasion in your homeland or homecity (yes technically it spills over, but it wasn't *about* that), but about securing the continued existence of this, uh, cosmic realm or whatever by stopping the Fade rifts and Elder One. The continued existence of even Tevinter and, sigh, Par Vollen.


I don't really see the contradiction in the lore here, but neither did I exactly see that with the gender of Asari in MEA. What I saw was an expansion in lore, minor retcon at most, and maybe done in a tactless way and indeed done to reflect supposed progressive politics of the day. Not terrible, not game ruining, really not worth some rant videos and posts I've seen about it, but there, and its something, sure.


The Qunari would still be friggin monsters if something stepped out of their bounds of gender and insisted on doing so. Its just the line of gender identification was made a squeeky bit more wide than we were originally set up to presume. And in terms of larger lore importance, it illustrates that the role of Tamassrans is to make even the most restrictive of ideologies 'work', and this is one way to do that. I indeed don't think this is made to somehow convince us to love the idea of joining the Qun, but rather to better 'humanize' them and also understand how a population can even handle joining or lifelong living in it. As we find in even the most repressive regimes IRL, people find a way - either or both personally, or in loopholes in the society (for example, how homosexuality somehow has its blind eye in most conservative Islamic countries, as long as it doesn't cross anyone important or hit into the very particular scriptural or political or cultural rules for how to do things).

The notion that children are assessed and distributed roles is fundamentally flawed, btw. It doesn’t matter how much raising and observations the Tamassrans do. But whatever, it’s not important, just that the elaboration of roles assigned in childhood is as ridiculous as roles assigned at birth. Don’t know why they changed it. Anyway

Your assumption is that the female warden is a social female. Sten would not have been able to make that observation, especially considering some of the ways the character could be played. The good thing about Origins is the degree of freedom you get to play the character however you want and so you don’t have to play your character as a social female. Because of this the idea that Sten is confused because your protagonist is portraying herself socially as a woman is incorrect. Because it cannot be applied to all scenarios.

What can be applied to all scenarios is that Sten would have been able to see for certain is her biological sex when making that comment. Therefore he can only be commenting on her sex and not her gender role. 

There are so many things wrong with the concept. Firstly men may not hit puberty till about 14 which dramatically affects their personality and their physical capabilities. Secondly it has been suggested that personalities change significantly in the late teens even early twenties. Thirdly men sometimes have 2 growth spurts making their physical capabilities hard to judge till their early twenties, and on and on and on xD

Just fraught with ... I dunno. Not well thought out to me. 

There are only a few major roles and specializations are ongoing development. They're not likely to determine the (female role, female biology?) tallis should now be a sten (male role) because of a growth spurt. When reassessments occur, to this extent, its just that they're allowed to happen but they're rare. Its considered a waste to be caring so much for what one should generally be, just because of puberty. If you're so concerned about the concept of early assignment, tell that to Tevinter too, or Orlais, or Ferelden, which all have their versions of it (and them, to the extent of difference in born economic class, early access to education, etc). I'm not sure you'll find a Qunari that say they do everything perfectly always, but they do consider their approach more usefully superior.

What all games have been clear about is that the individual's opinion means next to nothing. And even the Tamassrans might do rather collective decisions, but I can't remember.

Female warden is addressed female by everyone and Sten isn't totally alone to not hear such things and the warden's lack of protest.

You're a girl, congrats.

Dragon Age may be more friendly to trans, non-binary, neutral, etc roleplaying in future titles, but it ain't there today.


1:15

Its HIGHLY unlikely that poor ol Human Noble would allow such female identity to be impressed upon themselves by a loving family.

I can find the same for elf, dwarf, its not hard. You're female and socialize as female and Sten doesn't understand how that is proper.




And Sten describes what one IS, not what one is RECOGNIZED. He doesn't agree with non-Qunari importance of uniquely self-defining so early. To him there's just already a system and we don't need to bother with charting our own way. That's it. Its literally not his role to figure the particular determinations, so what is, is just what is. The Qun will show him the way in all things, not just otherwise.

Remember Qunari philosophy is that everything has a proper order, and an improper chaos. Its not about something being intelligent or not, its about recognizing that if you're to be intelligent, you must be intelligent. They don't absolutely know the role of absolutely everything immediately, but its affront to the Qun to assert that one's role can be changed. It would only be the proper role of a rare biological male to be a social female, that doesn't contradict anything. The Qunari would freely admit they don't know it all - they only at least assert that the Qun provides the way to bring order to all.

Its in all other origins and throughout rest of game. I think we're at the laughable territory now so I'll be going.

I think there was retcon, but no more retcon as what happens to any fantasy series for all sorts of things. It adds on detail and sometimes that detail retroactively changes the context, but not the content of previous material. Sure Sten within DAO didn't mean what IB explains in DAI. But Stens words themselves, imo, do not actually contradict IB's words. This to me isn't the worst, its just not also the best because it can damage the integrity of older titles and therefore the series and franchise as a whole.
This isn't too bad for more vague subjects like the Fade, but Qunari and gender subject it was rather more concrete. (As with Asari and gender) I think Bioware should have at least been more smart and less 'splainin about the matter.