Meet me in Minrathous

I would love, if the lady would be a pc concept. An anti slavery faction sounds interesting.

But... is it sure, that it is red lyrium? To me, it looks like the other city lights from the trailer and that other pic, where you see the floating building. I'm not convinced, that this has anything to do with red lyrium.

You know I hope the hoods look as good as that hat does.

I'm still hoping the sacking of Ventus can serve as the inciting incident at the start of the story given its prominence in the narrative and a few other desires.

If we do get Minrathous hopefully they do it justice. It's the oldest and largest human city on the continent. Kirkwall for all its fault was a city with a character. Denerim and Orzammar had a real feeling of being a place people live. Val Royeaux, my apologies, the marketplace of Val Royeaux was an insult.

Antiva City, or Antiva in general really, shouldn’t be in this game. It should have been the focus in the next game, since now it’s just going to be squandered like the Free Marches were.

I was referring to it as us seeing one city and one countryside and Bioware going "That's enough for Antiva. No need to go there more." like they did with the Free Marches after DA2. It's not an isolated thing, since they've done that with various cultures in Mass Effect too, where one planet and then no need to explore others of theirs. 
With DA4 seemingly exploring half a continent, there is no question some are going to get the short end of the stick if they do. And ones like Antiva, Rivain, and Nevarra are far more likely than ones like Tevinter or Anderfels. 

I want to see all of those places to but....I also want to see flying cows. They allegedly exist up there, and my curiosity has been piqued ever since Dorian mentioned in in passing: "Ah yes. Everyone outside the Imperium always seems to be fascinated by it. Probably why they come up with so many ridiculous tales. Flying cows over Minrathous? Madness! All right, so that one’s actually true. But the cows didn’t have wings."

Granted there's the logical part of me says that Dorian was most likely exaggerating, but there is a childish part of me that just wants so badly for it to be true. I want to see flying cows! And whatever Dorian was referring to about grapes, feathers, and templars up north.

Cassandra: We hear odd stories of Templars in the Imperium, Dorian.
Dorian: All true.
Cassandra: I haven't even told you what I've heard.
Dorian: Doesn't matter. All true. Particularly the part with the grapes and feathers.
Cassandra: Oh. I was leading towards that one actually.

I don't think any of us are questioning whether it is possible to do this in theory. Hell, Bioware were doing fully realised cities back in the old days of Baldurs Gate. What we are questioning is if they would give the amount of time and resources to doing a decent job of it.

The district of Val Royeaux that we got was perfectly acceptable as a small part of a whole provided you stayed down at ground level. However, it was disappointing when you consider that Val Royeaux is meant to be one of the largest cities in Thedas and when you looked out from the upper level all you saw was some generic mountains, which was odd in itself considering Val Royeaux is on the coast. I wouldn't have minded so much not seeing the White Spire, Grand Cathedral and Royal Palace on the horizon if we had actually got to visit them but we didn't.

So, to he honest, why say we were visiting Val Royeaux at all? It would have made more sense to call it another part of Halamshiral; hence the only real landmark found in the locality is the Winter Palace found outside of the city walls and which we did visit. Calling that district Val Royeaux just did seem like it was a travel guide tick list and we could mark off having visited the capital city of Orlais, even though it was a shadow of what it should have been.

This is why, whilst initially getting excited by the concept art, I am feeling a bit of trepidation that the only shots of Minrathous we have been shown so far have been set in the same bit of the city, making me wonder if that is the only bit of the city we are going to see. Meanwhile, the consensus seems to be that all the daylight shots of a city on the coast are of Antiva City. To my mind they could equally show other parts of Minrathous, since that city is located on an island and if that were the case it would give me hope that Minrathous is going to be realised in all its glory. It would also make sense then that the palace we see is surrounded in some sort of magical aura. However, it is been pointed out the similarity between the architecture in the screen shots and that shown in the short story that is meant to be taking place in Antiva, which did seem to suggest that all those shots were of Antiva City.  I believe that the artist has even labelled them "Antiva City" in his own blog.

There is the added concern that the game was originally going to have single and multi-player elements, so many of the screen shots may have been related to the multi-player campaigns that are now not going to happen.   So unless the locations are folded into the main plot we may never now get to see them, at least not in DA4.

It is true we don't necessarily have to visit all these places in one game, assuming there is going to be a Minrathous to visit beyond DA4. However, you would at least expect to see these major features on the skyline, with the promise you might get to visit sometime in the future.



Not necessarily. That is why I talk of spending time and resources on fleshing out the city. Also I wouldn't base it off the Hinterlands. That was meant to be largely a wilderness, so I didn't actually expect it to be heavily inhabited and lots of of different things to do. However, size-wise, a city the size of the Hinterlands would be about right for Minrathous. Then have zones with their own individual character, inhabitants and sub-plots. I refer again to earlier games by Bioware, in particular how they dealt with Athkatla in Baldur's Gate 2.

There were several stories in Tevinter Nights that were based in Minrathous. In the course of them we were taken to the docks, the seedier slum areas, a market district; a noble's house, an upmarket apartment for entertaining overlooking the central public gardens, which we also visited; the sewers and the Catacombs; the Archon's Palace. This was all very interesting but I shall be disappointed if I discover that, just as with Val Royeaux (visited in both Asunder and Masked Empire), we only get to see the capital of Tevinter through the pages of stories rather than experience it for ourselves. I'd rather not go to Minrathous at all than just one or two districts the size of the market in Val Royeaux, however pretty they look.

Well, mostly I sort of doubt we’d repeat the same location in more than one game for starters. Though it’s always possible. Given what we’ve been shown, I’m worried we’ll just get a single neighborhood of the city like Val Royeux.

Personally I don’t think we need to have Minrathous as a single massive open world zone. I’d be content with a few tightly designed zones within the city as long as each was interesting and hit most of these locations between them.