Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

All the Dalish know its original meaning. It is the codex about Arlathan, as narrated by Gisharel, that first explains why they call humans shemlen and they only use it when referring to humans. Their term (in the games) for city elves is "flat ear" because they feel that living among humans they have become like them in culture not just in lack of longevity. However, in the games the Dalish do not regard the city elves are "forever lost" to them as the Keeper in Masked Empire does. They make it quite clear as far back as DAO that they are preserving their culture against the day that they have a homeland again that will be shared by all. The storyteller in our origin clan even suggests that should such a time come again, the city elves might even have something useful to contribute in teaching the Dalish how to co-exist peacefully with their human neighbours. It is why it infuriated me that the clan and particularly the Keeper in Masked Empire were depicted the way they were and it was implied that all the clans we had previously met in the games were in fact the exception rather than the norm. If you had played the Dalish origin as I had, this was ridiculous as the whole point of the origin stories was to give us an insight into the various cultures among the races we encounter. Of course it was necessary for PW to do this in the book so leaving them to be torn apart by the demon would not seem so heinous. However, it was then perpetuated by Solas in DAI when he suggests that Lavellan clan are unusual among the Dalish in taking an interest in human affairs. Which begs the question, if the Keeper of our clan was not intending using the information acquired for the benefit of all at the next Arlathven, why bother sending us all that way? I still wonder how a Keeper of a clan in the Freemarches that mostly kept out on the fringes of human society even heard about the Conclave, let alone thought it worth risking the life of a clan member to spy on it.

I have played the Dalish origin. It's constantly explained that many elves do not know much elvish, and that they speak a pidgin version of it, and it's clear that Abelas, Felassan and Solas are ancient elves who understand the world differently. Maybe shemlen does specifically refer to humans, but the whole reason they were "quick" was because they aged and died while the elvhen did not.

12 year old kids? Excuse them, but I'm fairly confident both DA and ME are rated M for mature. Anthem itself is rated T, now I think T is more like 15 to 17 year olds, not 12. So, what the fuck are they talking about?

I mean, Inquisition was supposed to be an MMO at one time... remains of that still exist in its combat form. So who the heck knows what they want to do and how many reboots more it'll need.

Wtf ? That seems very bad. 

Well, I wasn't very optimistic with Bioware's future, but there... If that's their real thoughts, the Bioware we have known is definitely dead. They definitely learned nothing from their mistakes and got everything wrong. Are they really going to compromise their brand with the mindset of attracting these kids ? 

Thank god I don't give a shit anymore if Bioware sinks ( and they would deserve it, because that's being obtuse at this point ) with other studios doing better RPGs than them nowadays.

* shrugs *

*pokes head in*

Ah I see the Chicken Little Brigade is back at it. Especially over some (fairly innocuous) comments. Companies SHOULD change and adapt with tech/ trends. Companies SHOULD listen to their playerbase as much as they can, new old, constructive criticism or praise.

Yes each of us is going to decide if bios future games are worth the purchase, but that does not mean we should conflate our biases with reality. And the reality is there is little evidence of BioWares impending doom and there is literally zero evidence on what 'Morisson' is going to be.

There's a middle ground between insisting that every comment portends the Definite Doom of All Good and pretending that an ever accruing aggregate of comments + actions don't signify a substantive shift in intention and direction.

You missed my point in that the word is explained to us in DAO through a codex about Arlathan and this is the version that is given by the Dalish because the source is Gisharel, the Keeper who wished to share his lore with the human scholars in order that they might appreciate his culture more (WoT2 explains why he did this). He says the following:

"The humans first arrived from Par Vollen to the north. Called shemlen, or "quicklings," by the ancients, the humans were pitiful creatures whose lives blinked by in an instant."

The Dalish always maintained the ancients were immortal. They know this is why they called humans shemlen because they weren't, so if this is how Abelas, Felassan and Solas understand the word then the Dalish got the meaning exactly right. What they misunderstood was the reason why the elves became mortal as they blamed this on contact with the humans rather than Solas raising the Veil. However, according to Gisharel, the elves first started to die of diseases the humans brought with them which was something they hadn't know before and thus why they seemed to regard the general loss of immortality as some by-product of contact with humans.

On the whole the Dalish get the meaning of the words correct but they mispronounce them, so they sound wrong to anyone who is familiar with the correct pronunciation. What Solas seems to regard the modern elves as is not shemlen but tranquil because the majority lost their magic along with their immortality. In fact the Dalish would agree with him since they also maintained that in ancient times all elves were magical, which turned out to be true. This is why they regard elf children with magical ability much closer to what they were originally and so value every clan member who has magic. It is also why the 3 mage rule as interpreted in DAI was a travesty as it flew in the face of everything we had previously understood about the Dalish attitude to magic and mages among their own people.

I think it is unfortunate that once the decision was made to make Solas a misunderstood hero rather than the out and out villain he had previously been depicted to be by the Dalish, then the writing team opted to go with the depiction of the Dalish that we see in Masked Empire rather than the more nuanced version of the first two games and the Core Rule Book.    Then they got round the differences with how they were previously depicted by having Solas say that the clans have been gradually growing apart so there is no typical Dalish clan or culture apart from the fact that they all still worship the Creators, who have now been renamed the Evanuris.    There is no consistency even in this though.    When we need a translation of the elven glyphs in war table missions, instead of asking Solas the self-professed expert on these matters, we refer to Cillian, a former Dalish First who latterly spent time at an old elven shrine to the Arcane Warriors.   Despite the fact that Cillian would have had the same understanding of elven as the rest of the Dalish, he was able to translate the old symbols perfectly.   According to WoT2 the same was true of the ancient text that was scavenged from the Temple of Mythal "Where the Willows Wail", with the odd word that could have several meanings, which was translated by elven scholars who could only have got their knowledge from the Dalish.     So on the whole the Dalish do seem to have a reasonably good understanding of their language in its written form.

while to be fair I am one to talk when it comes to this sort of thing you are doing an awful lot of discussing for someone not wanting to get into an involved convo... that said I appreciate your comment and your insight.

So to take your claims one by one:

That's fair. Though this is not BWs first MMO and apparently they were doing MP even before EA.
We do not know what form DA4 will take which of its components will be SP and which will be MP. All we have is some (pretty baseless) speculation from some journalists with questionable biases.
That is a very pessimistic take on a statement that was super vague and non specific.

Sure, that's an entirely fair take.

twitter.com/Zoober
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4 animation directors left bioware in last couple of months. So I assume nothing has changed since Schreier investigation.

Schreier's article mentioned that there were people who intended to leave the studio for whatever reason some time after publication, so it's neither unexpected nor a symptom of much other than the article was correct in that regard.

Don’t think that’s at all what he’s saying, he’s saying anthem is supposedly for both. Don’t see anything in there that suggests dragon age will be for older bw fans.