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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 19:38:56 GMT
nd it still wouldn't begin to make up for any two of the Blights. Only the Chantry says the Blights were caused by Modern Mages. (in the sense that since the creation of Tevinter is modern) A lot of lore reveals lately have actually indicated something more Titan and Elfy related. That's why I don't want this game to explore all of Northern Thedas. Just stick to Tevinter, Par Vollen, Seheron, and maybe the Anderfels. People think Antiva and Rivain should be in it too, but that should be next game. Tevinter, Seheron, Weishaupt, and Antiva considering all the crow artwork. Nevarra is technically geographically close, so they may play a part. I think being able to get as far as PAr Vollen, considering it's a Qunari stronghold (my gist) is a bit far for any of us to go. If we saved it and Rivain, which are close to each other geographically, it would seem almost a small DA5 game. But I'm not holding my breath for DA5. I want them to wrap up everything of importance in DA4 in case it fails or simply because I think DA5 should really break into a new place on the planet. Weishaupt is a gigantic but mostly empty castle fort, unless something has changed. So it doesn't really take up the same spot in resource consumption as a real city would have. So I've expect/hope to see 5 major cities and 5 bigger maps less full of people: - Minrathous,Tevinter
- Seheron, Seheron
- Antiva City, Antiva
- Nevarra City, Nevarra
- Dairsmuid, Rivain (as a possibility)
- Weishaupt, Anderfells (all the desert we need to see)
- Arlathan
- Crossroads place
- 100% Fade Place
- 100% Dwarfy Place, cuz we need some dwarf love. (ambassadoria is more of an extension of Minrathous, so I'd rather Kal Sharok)
(real imaginiative names they got going there for the biggest cities.).The only drawback of Nevarra is that it would cut out my "our sea ship is a base of operations" hopes. We would at least have to temporarily abandon said boat to go there, unless we somehow finangle an eluvian onto our boat. ... looking at the map more, I am a bit confused as to whether Antiva has any real estate along the Venefication sea *clicks around* it technically does, but all of it's named cities are along the Rialto Bay area. So if we have a boat as a our base of operations, I wonder how they could remove Rivain. So lets see how many full blown major map locations we got in Inquisition, not including DLC - Redcliffe and the Hinterlands with an town and an abandoned fort and some ruins and an old thaig underneath
- Mythal's temple and the Arbor Wilds
- Crestwood, the town of crestwood, old crestwood, underground caverns, and a fort
- Exalted Plains and Orlesian war ruins and a Dalish Clan and that lost to time Red Crossing thing. and a Swamp full of creatures.
- Emerald Graves (drawing a blank. There was a resistance group and rhinos with endless guard and a haunted chateau?)
- Storm Coast and a cult and ...water
- Emprise Du Lion and Sarhnia
- Fallow Mire had a dead village and a ruined fort
- Western Approach: The hot desert place with Grey Warden forts and an old but large elven ruin
- Hissing Wastes: the nighttime desert place that has um... Dwarven ruins
- Forbidden Oasis: That other hot desert place that you brought all those shards to.
That's 11 major maps. this doesn't count the additional locations like Haven, Skyhold, The Winter Palace was quite extensive, Val Royeous, Black Emporium, and places we went for resolution of companion side quests as well as several small maps within the bigger maps I didn't mention and/or recall. Oh yeah, the Nightmare Fade map was pretty huge.
I don't think it's impossible to do all of these places justice. you just gotta make them count in the sort of way DA2 made places count. We won't need to go to some random orlesian noble's castle to resolve a quest, because surely there is space available in one of these major cities to allow the event of the Fate of the Seekers Resolution. Just as Cole resolved his human/spirit quest in the Hinterlands. It has been something I have been wondering lately: The Magister's Sidereal did certainly discover something blighty, but the Dwarves claim that they discovered the Blight in the Deep Roads and it was with them for awhile...but the Blights didn't happen until after the Magister's breached the Golden City not the other way around. So much like a Christopher Columbus situation the Magister's would certainly seem to have 'introduced' the Blight to the surface and somehow it was they who corrupted Dumat which then led the first Blight against...everything...above and below ground...and then maybe gave the Darkspawn their compulsion to find the rest of them. Of course all of this could be coincedence and the events are seperate but at the very least it seems the 'Golden City' was blighted. As far as where we are going...I am with you both. I would prefer them to focus on just Tevinter, Seheron, and stretching it to the Anderfels (but more because I really like the Anderfels rather then any specific story need)...but everything we have seen so far indicates that Tevinter, Nevarra, Antiva, and the Anderfels will be at least a part of it...I personally doubt Rivain but we have seen artwork and TVN is indicitive of that. But I think either for purposes of LS or because this could easil be the last DA game that they must cast the knife as wide as possible. Edit: Its also just as possible that some of these areas, like Antiva, could just be for an "Origin" story only. Also I find the addition of Nevarra to this really weird, I mean its a zone I want to see but I associate it more with the South then the North.
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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 19:41:48 GMT
Hanako Ikezawa Come on, build a wish list with me. It's fuuuuun. 1. Minrathous,Tevinter 2. Seheron, Seheron 3. Nevarra City, Nevarra 4. Kal Sharok shall take this City spot. 5. Weishaupt, Anderfells is a pseudo city with surrounding countryside. 6. Arlathan will be like the Emerald Graves with way more elfy stuff all over it. Maybe an abandoned city bigger than Mythal's temple 7. 100% Fade/Crossroads Place So whatcha want? I got 3 spots on my arbitrarily ten spot list. Minrathous/ Areas in Tevinter (maybe the Silent Planes?) Vyrantium Ventus Seheron Kal Sharock Weishaupt Arlathan Forest Fade.
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 19:51:01 GMT
I see the Warden Fortress and its surrounding countryside as a sort of more organized/civilized Western Approach. some guard post/forts? Maybe a supporting but still proper town-not-quite-city at the base of it to furnish it with supplies? and then mountains and caves galore.
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 19:51:48 GMT
Ventus just got burned to the ground so wouldn't the equivalent be Old Crestwood with Qunari crawling all over it?
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Post by Noxluxe on Sept 20, 2020 19:54:56 GMT
Only the Chantry says the Blights were caused by Modern Mages. (in the sense that since the creation of Tevinter is modern) A lot of lore reveals lately have actually indicated something more Titan and Elfy related. Oh, I don't personally think the Tevinters created the Taint they found in the Black City either. But terrible catastrophe is a totally predictable outcome of brute-forcing your way unto a higher plane of existence and trying to confront God, and they did it anyway, entirely because they thought it'd grant them power and there was nobody in a position to stop them. Not to potentially benefit their people, not to avert what seemed like a greater threat. They just felt their power over the people slipping a little, and risked the world's destruction to get it back. They're definitely responsible for the results of those actions. And there's no reason why another hypothetical magocracy wouldn't eventually release just as much or worse havoc, assuming the world survives the past magical disasters long enough for one to try. Which doesn't exactly seem likely. None of which is reason to personally blame any individual currently living mage, obviously, but it's still true, and should be taken into account when considering the objective threat of mages in general to society. Specifically to its existence. Of course, the continent-spanning empire and treatment of non-magical humans and elves as livestock didn't help either.
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Post by midnight tea on Sept 20, 2020 19:56:16 GMT
Just an observation. If Solas is being truthful about which ancient elven god he is, then he is the platonic ideal of an unreliable narrator. As much fun as it is debating Thedas history and politics is (and it is), it behooves all of us to take anything Solas said with a salt mine or two. I'm not saying he lied, but I'm also not saying he didn't. #PSA #hessexybutheisnttrustworthy #lovinghimwilljustleadtoheartbreak #stillwannabang It is therefore fortunate that Solas isn't the only source of information to what has happened in the past We still don't know much, but so far things we have found in, say, Trespasser that are wholly independent of Solas (Vir Dirthara library, findings in the ancient lyrium mine, etc) do seem to confirm things he claims have happened, including the fact that he is Fen'Harel and that he was a leader of the rebellion against Evanuris and not some chaotic!evil trickster god who locked elvhen gods somewhere for the lulz, which was basically propaganda fed to people by Evanuris and their supporters.
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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 19:56:19 GMT
Ventus just got burned to the ground so wouldn't the equivalent be Old Crestwood with Qunari crawling all over it? Ah I didn't realize they had sacked it fully. I just thought they had taken the city but it was still in a kind of intact place. Anyways I also threw that out there as a one desperate place where I could imagine we'ld go. Somewhere to go battle the Qun. As a matter of course to the way I think this MAY work is that each one of these cities will have a region of their own, minus full wilderness locations like Seheron and the Arlathan Forests, but when I say 'Minrathous' the city will be the city which will be the head of a region that we will get to explore in. I do doubt this will happen but I have mused that each country we visit wil be its own open world map too so the only maps we will get is Tevinter, Seheron, Anderfels, Kal Sharock, Antiva, Nevarra, and the Arlathan Forest. Also I am kind of really hoping they heavily borrow from Andromeda and give each zone its own story.
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 19:59:32 GMT
o I am kind of really hoping they heavily borrow from Andromeda and give each zone its own story. I played it once, so your would have to remind me. But doesn't each location in Origins have it's own Arc? why borrow from a different series?
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Post by midnight tea on Sept 20, 2020 20:01:40 GMT
And this is one reason why I think Antiva and Rivain should be left alone until DA5. Both are at the end of the continent and famous for their nautical prowess, meaning they would be a perfect setting for a game that begins exploring the lands beyond Thedas. For example say DA5 had half the game in those two and the other half at the beginnings of a new continent, and then DA6 onwards would be exploring further into those new continents. Meanwhile Par Vollen not being explored in DA4 would be awful, since it's obvious a major plot is the Tevinter-Qun War so we should explore both nations. For someone who isn't even sure they'll play DA4 when it comes out, you seem to be completely banking on them not failing and going on to make a DA5 and DA6. And I'm saying as someone who will DEFINITELY play DA4 that I am pretty 50/50 on there being another game after it. So I want all the places that are in proper Thedas to have been visited that is within reasonable connection. As it is, you've reduced two of the locations. Assuming my list is accurate (which it totally isn't, but humor me) what cities would you replace the antivan and rivaini ones with? With eluvian network active and set-up in the narrative specifically to allow fast travel virtually *everywhere* I assume we MAY be holed in one big location for the most part (*cough*Minrathous*cough*), but we'd be able to travel to many different places - some may not even lay in Thedas. And if they are serious about live services for DA4 and longer tail of additional content AND if DA4 doesn't end with everything exploding (though I can see it happening even if this does occur) they may realistically provide us with DLCs with whole explorable cities in different parts of the world that we may have different adventures in, possibly for years to come.
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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 20:01:55 GMT
o I am kind of really hoping they heavily borrow from Andromeda and give each zone its own story. I played it once, so your would have to remind me. But doesn't each location in Origins have it's own Arc? why borrow from a different series? Well yes Origins is the other example of it too. Hell even Inquisition sort of followed this example...just Andromeda is the more recent example though Origins may have done it a little better? I'll have to muse on that.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Sept 20, 2020 20:09:48 GMT
Hanako Ikezawa Come on, build a wish list with me. It's fuuuuun. 1. Minrathous,Tevinter 2. Seheron, Seheron 3. Nevarra City, Nevarra 4. Kal Sharok shall take this City spot. 5. Weishaupt, Anderfells is a pseudo city with surrounding countryside. 6. Arlathan will be like the Emerald Graves with way more elfy stuff all over it. Maybe an abandoned city bigger than Mythal's temple 7. 100% Fade/Crossroads Place So whatcha want? I got 3 spots on my arbitrarily ten spot list. Tevinter: 1.Minrathous 2. Arlathan Forest 3. Silent Plains Seheron: 4. Seheron Par Vollen: 5. Qunandar 6. Deep Jungles (The ones Sten mention and have the pyramids) Anderfels: 7. Weishaupt Fortress 8. Wandering Hills 9. Kal-Sharok Fade: 10. Fade
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 20:12:39 GMT
Hanako IkezawaSo why do you think no Nevarra? And why do you think Par Vollen? how would we infiltrate it and why would we? we just want to beat them off the shores, not chase them down and wipe them out.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Sept 20, 2020 20:17:43 GMT
Hanako Ikezawa So why do you think no Nevarra? And why do you think Par Vollen? how would we infiltrate it and why would we? we just want to beat them off the shores, not chase them down and wipe them out. I think/hope no Nevarra the same reason I think/hope no Rivain or Antiva: no real reason to due to no connection to the plot. As for the Anderfels, between the dwarven and Blight stuff we saw they make sense. Plus if not now, when since they'll be isolated (unlike Nevarra which is in the center thus could connect to other nations thus games). I think Par Vollen ecause as I said the Qun-Tevinter War is obviously going to be a large part of the game. So I think we should explore both nations. Also I don't want to drive them from the shores or wipe them out or anything like that. As for how we get in, well we know the Qun is fractured a bit so I imagine some who are allies in stopping Solas will help us.
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 20:24:37 GMT
As for how we get in, well we know the Qun is fractured a bit so I imagine some who are allies in stopping Solas will help us. But why though. Why are we going there, we don't need to go there to resolve the Tevinter-Qunari war. It'd be better to focus on Seheron and drive them from THOSE shores.
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Post by theascendent on Sept 20, 2020 20:25:16 GMT
I can see the Grand Necropolis as a dungeon-based DLC, like Descent. Antiva City like the Jaws of Hakkon just focused on the city and helping them repel the Qunari invasion. Tevinter is the main setting, Seheron and the Anderfels as the secondary locations. Obviously a Fade interaction. Throw Kal-Sharok like Orzammar as they are near the Tevinter border. The Arlathan forest is a must and in the Imperium's borders. Three Tevinter cities, Minrathous, a city at peace (relatively), Vryantium a city under siege and Ventus/Qarinus a city conquered by the Qunari.
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Post by Davrin's boobs on Sept 20, 2020 20:26:54 GMT
so no water magic confirmed??? This Tekehu's booty is let me be a Sailor Mercury mage bioghur!!
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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 20:27:04 GMT
As for how we get in, well we know the Qun is fractured a bit so I imagine some who are allies in stopping Solas will help us. But why though. Why are we going there, we don't need to go there to resolve the Tevinter-Qunari war. It'd be better to focus on Seheron and drive them from THOSE shores. Or liberate it for the locals.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Sept 20, 2020 20:27:16 GMT
As for how we get in, well we know the Qun is fractured a bit so I imagine some who are allies in stopping Solas will help us. But why though. Why are we going there, we don't need to go there to resolve the Tevinter-Qunari war. It'd be better to focus on Seheron and drive them from THOSE shores. Get allies to face Solas Explore more history of the qunari Explore the history of the island and the ancient civilization there And so on.
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Post by Noxluxe on Sept 20, 2020 20:32:36 GMT
1) While I agree with part of what you're saying your argument would have more merit... if magic was as separate from the world as modern Thedosians think it is (thanks to the Veil) OR something people were able to switch on and off. It isn't. It's an integral part of their world that they have to live with. They can learn to control it, like forces of nature we can have a measure of control of via technology, but even pushing most of it away - like Solas appears to have done - doesn't eliminate it. The only full elimination (on individual basis at least) that is known so far is a process that cuts people from both magic AND emotions (Tranquility) basically providing strong evidence that the Fade and magic are INTRINSIC to even non-mage beings. According to Cole, Fade doesn't exist without people and it seems that people can't exist without Fade, given that it appears to be a source of their spirits and emotions. We even have basically a confirmation from Solas - who knows the Fade quite well - that it's the abundance of bad sentiment and fear, including that of non-mages, that cause abundance of misshpan spirits and notable lack of spirits embodying better qualities (samples: banter with Cassandra about existence of hunger demons or his banters with Cole) and thus far more opportunities for vulnerable mages to be prey to demons. In other words, while on surface level for many Thedosians mages and magic means bad things, those bad things happen not just because a rando mage can be possessed in a moment of weakness, but the whole culture of fear and ignorance around the nature of Fade and magic. 2) Nnnnnnnot really. First, scientists are human beings too and they can be flawed or blinded to ramifications of their discoveries up until it's too late OR they work for systems or people that either don't care or don't grasp many things from ethical standpoints... or find ways to justify their actions (I have a feeling Solas may have been one of such scientisis/scholars). We know this from our own history. Bombs WERE fired or are used both as a deterrent AND a threat to blackmail others, or make others back off from doing something about abhorrent violations of human rights. Nuclear reactors have melted due to breathtaking incompetence paired with either disregard or ignorance of known risk or safety norms. And, for example, Andrei Sakharov (basically forced to participate in Soviet nuclear program at gunpoint) only became a vocal opponent of building nuclear weapons after bombs based on discoveries and technologies he's developed caused first causalities and after Tsar bomba (which had its yield halved) has literally fried Severny and ignited all living beings 100km from center of explosion. Severny has been basically pushed away into irrelevance and hounded by the very system he has previously worked for (not necessarily fully willingly) AFTER they've made him develop technology for them that they were neither properly educated/smart to wield OR have thought they can control, OR were too short-sighted to understand ramifications. Aral Sea is another verifiable catastrophe caused by people who thought they know better, not that different to how the Sidereal Magisters knew better than anyone what they're doing when they have found a way (effectively: magical technology) to travel to the Black City and release the Blight (which may be something natural, but may as well be a mutated rersult of some sort of magical experiments). Also... the fact that Thedosians didn't yet reach the level conventional, non-magic technology to the level we have IRL on Earth doesn't mean atrocities caused by developing technology won't rival those of the Blight, because *we know* they can... I mean, in a sense they may never have wholly conventional, non-magic technology only in a sense that magic IS part of their world and their devices will always use magic or forces that don't exist here (somehow I doubt we are heading towards purging magic from Thedas). I mean... whether it's magic knowledge or technology or conventional technology... it's still technology. The way I see it, Elvenhan appears to be more similar to the world we inhabit today than modern Thedas is - we may not be immortal like elves are, but we live longer now than our ancestors and our technology appears more similar to theirs - quick modes of transportation, instant global connectivity thanks to Internet resembling Fade in a way, large population increasingly moving to live in big cities placed in far flung corners, etc. To quote Clarke, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' and our forefathers would consider our civilization as magical stuff of legends far surpassing puny notions of Atlantis or Lemuria. Elvenhan to me shapes itself not as a cautionary tale on the perilous nature of an exotic power like magic, but cautionary tale for a civilization much like ours - one that has achieved power to destroy itself, and has likely been destroyed after a small group of individuals has amassed too much power in their hands (and people have realized it and have tried to do something about it a tad too late), which is a risk we know very well from our world. Elves are US in this regard. It appears to be an artificial state of being - there is a properly fleshed out theory that Solas aims to return magic to all and 'everyone will be how they were' according to certain prophecy. 3) Also, no... we are not wholly identical to one another in a sense that not all of us have access to many opportunities and technology that other can to, say, extend life expectancy, alleviate health issues, neutralize disabilities or have access to tools that are not easily available to others. We are also at the cusp of an extremely dangerous time when those with resources would be able to further augment themselves technologically, or genetically, or have access to increasingly better living conditions and tools (or even effing AIR... it's been proven that increased CO2 in the atmosphere slows down thinking... holy hell, Spaceballs may turn out to be prophetic movie ahead of its time ), while some others may be condemned to faultier devices or dangerous modifications that will open them to similar ostracism or persecution IF we don't do anything about massive economic and social disparities still plaguing the world. Even with COVID - people who went through the disease are often finding themselves ostracized, and it's not fully unwarranted, because some people are - for some reason that isn't dependent on them - super-spreaders of the virus and can be contagious for as long as several months. So, while we don't have magic as a force that influences our lives ourselves, magic is still basically a stand-in for many things we ourselves deal with IRL. 1) All of which may be perfectly true, but none of which matters to Thedasians' actual options for handling the danger of magical people to everyone else. It's not in their power to seamlessly return the world to what it might once have been, at least to our knowledge, and simply thinking of magic as natural makes mages no less dangerous to others in practical terms. In fact, the idea would spur mages to consider themselves more inherently right than everyone else, and make it even more difficult to maintain any kind of coexistence at all. 2) I didn't say that technology isn't also dangerous, I said that the development of technology is notably more reliably safe because the process of achieving it requires serious time and thought and resource investment by intelligent people, which isn't necessarily the case for dangerous magic. The fact that we're within a hairsbreadth of destroying ourselves even with that advantage should tell you a thing or two about the dangers of magic all by itself. 3) Those are environmental factors, and you know it. The ability to cast spells isn't. I completely agree that technology will eventually bring us to the point of having to weigh a human beings' identical existential value against whatever enhancements in their bodies and minds make them superior or dangerous to everyone else. And the series provides a valuable lesson in the kinds of disasters we'll be looking at if we continue to just go "But we're all human, and all deserve the same..." bla bla bla instead of actually mapping out exactly what we're dealing with and treating it like what it is so we might have a chance to survive. Which obviously doesn't mean that we shouldn't protect the inherent sanctity and equal value of human life for as long and much as we can. But that alone simply won't save us when we're that far beyond the pale.
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Post by Buckeldemon on Sept 20, 2020 20:45:58 GMT
Hoh, that's pretty... arrogant? You may have to enlighten me as to why you find my statement arrogant. I'm not trying to claim that people "don't get" nuance. Even though I'm inclined to passive-aggressively claim that some one the fandom don't seem to "get" how harmful a minor amount of shifted blame can be to marginalised groups, but whatever. Well, I'm not fond of the formatting either, so... shall we stop getting upset over it? The number listing you used is actually a pretty good method I like to employ, but mostly when I know that it doesn't confuse people. I take ages to write my posts, and even then I have issues expressing myself adequately. You cannot turn off your superiority apparently. Shall we call it a draw?
1) It might be just my observation but all these "for the umpteenth time" come across as annoyed about others "not getting" your point. 2) I'm not sure if it matters what word you use. There's the well-worn rape example. I guess we can agree that holding the victim responsible for a skirt deemed "too short" by whatever metric is off, right? Apart from the fact that even "modest" clothing (by whatever metric) is not a safe bet. 3) I got the impression that it is mostly disagreement with what panda said on your part. The point of his you were referring to did not seem to insult your intelligence, at least not as frickin' direcly as you did. At best, it is a case of veiled (his, aimed at Bioware) versus your apparent seething condescenscion.
4) Puberty-related excess of energy.
5) I merely mentioned it to show that -I think- my assesment of the situation isn't blowing things that could happen out of perspective. I start to get the impression that you fail to see a difference between caution and crippling fear. A bunch of templars running around like headless chickens does not come across as "reasonable" or "responsible", to use your favourite buzzwords. Neither is the local lynchmob, but whatever. Duped by liars? Oh, now you are getting ridiculous.
--- Anyway, I'm showing myself the door now. Discussion moved on and I simply cannot keep up with the frequency of posting in this thread.
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Post by gervaise21 on Sept 20, 2020 20:57:57 GMT
I really hope that Minrathous or Qarinus/Ventus are places that we can really dig into Sadly Qarinus is now a smouldering ruin thanks to the Qunari (see comic series Deception), so whatever was there to be seen has been lost. Luckily Minrathous has never fallen to invaders up to now, so the modern day Vints would have to be extremely inept for it to happen, so hopefully we may at least see this before Solas pulls the plug on it.
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Post by colfoley on Sept 20, 2020 21:00:18 GMT
I really hope that Minrathous or Qarinus/Ventus are places that we can really dig into Sadly Qarinus is now a smouldering ruin thanks to the Qunari (see comic series Deception), so whatever was there to be seen has been lost. Luckily Minrathous has never fallen to invaders up to now, so the modern day Vints would have to be extremely inept for it to happen, so hopefully we may at least see this before Solas pulls the plug on it. Given the descriptions I have seen of Minrathous lately 'pulling the plug' might be literal.
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Post by phoray on Sept 20, 2020 21:22:30 GMT
colfoley Hanako Ikezawa So the locations we've listed so far are (in rough proximity to each other): - Tevinter Locations: Minrathous, Ambassadoria, Vyrantium, Ventus/Quarinus, Silent Plains
- Qunari Locations: Seheron, Qunadar, Deep Jungle Pyramids
- Anderfells: Weishaupt, Wandering Hills, support supply city.
- Dwarf Specific: Kal Sharok and Deep Roads section
- Antiva City, Antiva
- Fade: Crossroads or 100% Fade scape
- Nevarra City, Nevarra
- Dairsmuid, Rivain (as a possibility)
16 areas but some of them I'm not so certain they will be resource intensive nor whether they get their own map. Then we need our base of operations as well.
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Post by Noxluxe on Sept 20, 2020 21:22:55 GMT
Well, I'm not fond of the formatting either, so... shall we stop getting upset over it? The number listing you used is actually a pretty good method I like to employ, but mostly when I know that it doesn't confuse people. I take ages to write my posts, and even then I have issues expressing myself adequately. You cannot turn off your superiority apparently. Shall we call it a draw? 1) It might be just my observation but all these "for the umpteenth time" come across as annoyed about others "not getting" your point. 2) I'm not sure if it matters what word you use. There's the well-worn rape example. I guess we can agree that holding the victim responsible for a skirt deemed "too short" by whatever metric is off, right? Apart from the fact that even "modest" clothing (by whatever metric) is not a safe bet. 3) I got the impression that it is mostly disagreement with what panda said on your part. The point of his you were referring to did not seem to insult your intelligence, at least not as frickin' direcly as you did. At best, it is a case of veiled (his, aimed at Bioware) versus your apparent seething condescenscion.
4) Puberty-related excess of energy.
5) I merely mentioned it to show that -I think- my assesment of the situation isn't blowing things that could happen out of perspective. 6) I start to get the impression that you fail to see a difference between caution and crippling fear. A bunch of templars running around like headless chickens does not come across as "reasonable" or "responsible", to use your favourite buzzwords. Neither is the local lynchmob, but whatever. Duped by liars? Oh, now you are getting ridiculous. Anyway, I'm showing myself the door now. Discussion moved on and I simply cannot keep up with the frequency of posting in this thread.
You know, what I try to do when I leave a thread in the middle of a discussion I no longer like to be a part of is promise to at least read the next response made by the other party, even if I won't respond to it. To make it clear that I'm not just cowardly and self-importantly trying to get the last word by running off immediately after making a post.
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Post by midnight tea on Sept 20, 2020 21:50:05 GMT
1) All of which may be perfectly true, but none of which matters to Thedasians' actual options for handling the danger of magical people to everyone else. It's not in their power to seamlessly return the world to what it might once have been, at least to our knowledge, and simply thinking of magic as natural makes mages no less dangerous to others in practical terms. In fact, the idea would spur mages to consider themselves more inherently right than everyone else, and make it even more difficult to maintain any kind of coexistence at all. While this happens in Tevinter, the exact opposite happens now in the South. Obviously, mages aren't powerful enough to dominate the whole realm and in some countries they are actually the prosecuted ones, or considered either 2nd class citizens or akin to dangerous things. There are also nations or groups which have more balanced approach (Avvars, Rivain, Nevarra to an extent) to magic that don't appear to explode in dangerous abominations every Tuedsay - the most well known explosions across DA titles happened in Circles that were supposed to contain mages safely. Instead, the oppression, abuse and fearmongering have basically facilitated the exact conditions that were established to be dangerous to people with magical talents. Clearly there are better options to handling the dangers of magic on the continent itself right now and they seem to at least partially lay in studying and understanding magic better, rather than basing approach to it on a whole lot of misconception, ignorance and downright untruths believed about magic in different parts of the world. Also, this is an issue we know well from our own turf. Whole groups of people think of themselves as better than others due to *some* arbitrary reasons, or due to rationalizations they find in some (often out-of-context) facts about reality that they spin to their advantage. Like, now we have a whole group of people that believe that ability to make loads of cash (or being rich or born rich) in our capitalist, economy-driven world, means that someone who is wealthy is inherently more right than poor masses - and since money is power, it may not be true that they are right, but they are certainly more powerful and able to manipulate reality to their advantage, to make themselves seem right. The solution isn't necessarily to just round them up and ban wealth, the solution is to spread wealth more evenly. Like... if approach to magic was different, we cannot tell if more people wouldn't find out that they have some sort of magical talent an the situations wouldn't be as lopsided as it is now. Thedosians may not have power to seamlessly return to the world as it was, but we have already seen at places that it's not like they have to live in reality as it is now as well. Cassandra and Seekers, for example, appear to be people that - through sort of reverse-Tranquility - seem to to have awakened at least some magical talents. According to Alistair Templars use lyrium not really to GIVE themselves powers, but strengthen powers that they already faintly posses (which is basically mass dispel). There's always a notion that those more powerful in magic will think of themselves as better than others, but - as pointed out - it's something that would happen anyway and seems to have both happened in magical world of elves (where Evanuris thought of themselves as gods because they were powerful) as well as among non-mages (where in the South they think of themselves as more inherently right than those that have magical talents). I disagree that development of non-magic technology is more reliably safe - I mean, it's difficult to compare IRL stuff 1 to 1 to stuff from fictional world that is subject to change, or vagueness, or future reveals, or even deus ex machina... Buuuuut I'd like to point out that we NOW have somewhat more safer methods and approach, but that's because we are informed by experience we have gathered in time when people just didn't think of ramifications as much as we do today. Yet, it's today that mistakes of the past seem to have piled up and achieved critical mass. People suffer due to many consequences of otherwise intelligent people investing their resources into stuff that have turned out to be absolutely disastrous. Using lead, asbestos, freon, radioactive isotopes... and right now we are eating, breathing and sinking in microplastics and the world is literally on fire in places, while other parts deal with other sides of extreme weather conditions. There's nothing inherently safer in our endeavors to learn about the world and bend it to our will and both in magic (as it is in the world that is presented tp us in DA) and in non-magic discoveries and inventions the big factor in how dangerous something is doesn't appear to be magic per se, but ignorance, fear, greed, short-sightedness and all kinds of humans shortcomings. We simply didn't go through a full-blown Apocalypse yet, like Thedas did, perhaps for the sake of writing a story that could perhaps explore a scenario where a civilization is so powerful it does destroy itself and the fallout has ramifications for generations to come, including the fact that some people can wield magic while some others can't, or have to work harder to do so. I've already pointed out that the ability to cast spells isn't necessarily inherent to people who are talented in casting spells. Even among mages there are those who can't cast or manipulate magic as easily as some others. Magic has an influence AND is influenced even by non-mages, as pointed out in earlier reply - the world of Thedas simply doesn't divide itself on people who have magical talent and those who don't, even if most Thedosians think that way right now. Everybody who can dream can still interact with teh FAde and even those who don't (dwarves) appear to have some connection to magic, given that lyrium is effectively one of its purest forms. Just because they are either linked to it differently from others, or perhaps something in them is suppressed due to events in the past, they are beings from magical reality too. They are, in fact, the only ones (save for Tranquils) who can create runes that give even non-mages magical or magic-enhanced abilities or inventions powered by them. So, both mages and non-mages are all part of the same equation, consciously or not, and magic is still part of their environment that shapes them and they shape it (the concept of collective consciousness rears its head across the text as well, so that's a factor too aside from 'mundane' cultural or sociological influence). IMO, so far the story appears to be heading towards portraying magic as a force of nature - yes, it's dangerous and it needs to be respected and approached carefully and honestly, but the problem lays in either not knowing or not understanding what it is, or seeing it only through the prism of power or danger. I agree here. But I think that, just like in IRL, the only way to map out exactly what we're dealing with has to come with deep understanding and intense research and truth-seeking, rather than power-seeking - and this appears to be something that a lot of places in Thedas are missing. Even in places like Tevinter, where magic is an object of reverence and intense study, it's mostly revered because it's viewed as power source and many of those who think they know what they're doing are in fact toying with powers beyond their ken to detriment of all, not unlike in many IRL situations.
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