Breaking Canon

Hopefully they keep the Barrier and Guard system though. That way both sides have an option they like or at least tolerate.

I'm kinda in your boat. When it came to lore, I was much more adept at Mass Effect the Dragon Age. Much of my knowledge of the series is the more front-facing narrative. I wonder if having a narrator for the Codex (like Mass Effect) would give people - like myself - more incentive to grow accustomed to the backend lore.

As for having actions matter in new games, while I personally found it cool for the Mass Effect series, to me it only makes sense if the games are much more compact. A game with a core campaign that lasts 35+hrs, along with side quests, would make it untenable to transfer so much of that decision making over. I would also imagine it leads to decisions having LESS impact within their respective games, since you dont want drastic changes to the games story; due to potential ramifications in future titles. If decisions are to carry over, I think it's best done when they're applied to DLC or Expansions. Even then, I think only a handful of those decisions should play a part (per DLC).

That's actually why I think, in some respects, the Dragon Age series is better suited from a narrative design standpoint. New protagonists means you dont always have to drag every narrative element the player engaged with along the franchises various iterations.

The changes to the spell lore were definitely just a matter of game play. In the Core Rule Book for playing the table top game, the spell schools and variety of spells is still the same as for DAO, so it is clear it is not a change in lore but simply a simplification of the game play. Personally, I would prefer a return to DAO spell schools, specialisations and being able to have one for every seven levels you rise but I won't be surprised if they stick to the DAI way of doing things in the future.

As for actual lore changes, how much it annoys you depends on how much notice you pay to the lore in the first place. I know many people enjoy the game without getting too deeply immersed in the lore and don't really pay much attention to the codices, whereas I am a sucker for something to read and really take the trouble to find out as much as I can about the world I am playing in. I bought all the lore books before DAI but I am becoming somewhat less enthused about parting with my money in the future simply because the writers seem to change things if it fits the story they want to tell and justify the changes, if at all, with the unreliable narrator excuse.

Now I can accept that to a certain extent when it comes to ancient history but it does become rather more annoying when it was lore we were living in the present. It infuriated me how the lore was changed with the Dalish and the 3-mage rule and then my elf character is being constantly told what the Dalish way of doing things is when I know that wasn't the case in previous games or in any lore I had read up to then. A further explanation is that the Dalish have "grown apart" over the years when the whole point of their culture and the 10 year gathering of the clans is to ensure they preserve their culture consistently and keep each other informed of anything new they have discovered. It is the whole justification for their way of life. Neither the change in the 3-mage rule or the "growing apart" made any sense in the context of Dalish culture and beliefs but the writers apparently either didn't realise this or didn't care.

Another change that annoyed me, even though it is unlikely to impact on role playing my character, is the alteration of the name Qarinus to Ventus for no other reason than "some people" found in confusing with Qunari. Why not simply change the first letter to a K or C so it is spelled as it sounds? No, let's change it altogether, even though it was the name of one of the ancient kingdoms that was united into the Imperium and Dorian says how much their history and culture means to them, and then say it was changed as a result of a recent victory over the Qun. So, like the Dalish lore changes, this made no sense in the context of Tevinter culture. It was also odd that apparently no one knew about this up to DAI, even Dorian and Maevaris who were from Tevinter, but it was altered by the time of the comic series. What great victories had Tevinter had over the Qun in the last 5 years? Answer none.

I'd also like a satisfactory explanation for the collective racial amnesia that seems to have taken place since ancient times, so everyone was blissfully unaware of the existence of the titans or the war the ancient elves had with them or the fact the Veil was an artificial construct, among other things. The dwarves preserve their history in stone and yet none of this is in there. I realise it was heavily hinted in the Decent that the Memories may have been doctored but I'd still like to know why? How did areas like the one we found in the Decent go unnoticed in the millennia before the Blight hit the dwarves?

So, as I say, I was enthused about all the world building in the series originally but I every time they introduce something new like the above examples, just makes me feel it is not worth getting to heavily involved learning the lore. Now we have gone so long between games, it actually will bother me less if they do make wholesale changes next game because I think it would be better to treat it as starting from scratch. Luckily we are heading north into a totally different part of the world so it will not seem so glaringly obvious that changes have been made, names not withstanding, and I am also prepared to accept that anything we have been told previously, about Tevinter at least, was simply southern propaganda.

What's one more retcon in a BioWare game? This is a game set in a world where magic is viewed by great suspicion in several cultures, so much that its practicioners are outright jailed in some places, while warriors and rogues have magic-looking abilities (*SLAM-EARTHQUAKE!* *POOF!-INVIS...errm STEALTH*) that no one raises an eyebrow at. And hilarious decisions like replacing the heal-spamming mage with the barrier-spamming mage on top of that.

I think their problem is that their gameplay designers just don't talk to the lore team very often. Or they do and don't care. Or there's no time because crunch again.

I've come to treat every new Dragon Age game as a thing of its own that may or may not be similar to its predecessors. Sure, here's a little town named Redcliffe, just like the one in... no, wait, this looks kinda different. I don't pay attention to lore details anymore, it just got too convoluted without being interesting for me.

This is just my experience, so I can't speak for everyone, but bringing healers in DA:O and DA2, even if wasn't necessary, it made the game much easier. I vividly remember the Jarvia bossfight in Origins, or those arcane horrors and revenants on Sundermount in 2. Without Wynne and Anders, especially on higher difficulties, I had to micromanage much more. With them on board, I could almost run the game on autopilot.

I also liked the fact that you could only bring a certain number of potions and bombs with you in Inqusition, because in games I tend to drink up as many potions as I can in battles, and having to actually manage a limited number of potions made things more tense and interesting (again, at least for me). At the same time, I can agree I would have liked some minor healing spells in DA:I, in addition to Revival from the Spirit tree and Resurgence from the Knight Enchanter tree, like a slow health regeneration spell. Make it slower and last longer than the Health regen potion and I'd be on board with it. But anyway, yeah, I agree we're going to see healer mages again in DA4 in some shape or form.

I think you're referring the (in)famous "ludonarrative dissonance", a term that was all the rage in game-related online discussion between 2015 and 2018, now replaced by "dad-ification of videogames" 

It's something present in many games, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a problem, since gameplay and lore always need to find a sort of compromise and always end up diverging somewhat (but I applaud the effort of developers trying to reduce this divergence). DA:Origins, for example, sets even a single abomination as an incredibly dangerous foe, capable of destroying an entire village - and yet you kill scores of them without many problems in the Ferelden Circle of Magi's tower.

Or going to other games, all these descriptions of monsters in the Witcher's bestiaries that are supposed to be dangerous foes even for an experienced Witcher - and yet Geralt can just slash them down without many complications, even quickly if he drinks the right potions and such. Or bears being actually more dangerous and scary than dragons in Skyrim. It's everywhere, but it's not that much of an issue in my eyes, because, again, you need to find a compromise at some point between lore and gameplay, so I don't care that much. In fact, if it makes the gameplay better, actually go for earth-shattering swords and invisibility stealth flasks. 

As a writer myself I've gotta say I despise retcons in all their glory (or lack thereof) as to me it shows disrespect to the franchise, do the research & build based on that, yes, there are times things evolve & change, like a new leader can enact reforms, but to outright go, it's this now, sucks & to me shows serious laziness.

Bioware do this a lot with Dragon Age, moreso than any of their other franchises I believe & I also see them chasing current political (mostly left wing) trends & trying to crowbar them into the game (my opinion)

Following established canon is how you worldbuild & character build solidly & drive things forward.

That's my opinion on this.

The older I get, the less bothered I am by retcons in any piece of media. A lot of things that were true about myself when I was younger are no longer true about me now, and that’s a good thing. That includes things in my past; not because the events themselves get rewritten, but because my interpretation of them changes, sometimes dramatically, as I get more information.

Among other things, younger me was much more cavalier with throwing around “always” and “never” type statements. If those get broken later in my life, does that mean I retconned myself? No, it means past me didn’t see the whole picture. And this isn’t a “kids are dumb” thing, the same thing continues to happen even into adulthood. People are continuously getting more data over time, and their stories (whether nonfictional or fictional) grow with them.

I actually don't think that Darkspawn example would count as a retcon. There's plenty of scope for that to be true, without conflicting with the lore. There's already vague hints to possible other dimensions, and the lore says that the elven god Ghanilla Vanilla or whatever her name is created creatures via experiments.

Nearly the first thing Sten says to a female warden is something along the lines of "I don't understand, you're a warrior, but you *look like* a woman", and since none of the female characters ever claim to identify as men, we have no way of knowing how Sten would have reacted if they had. But regardless, Sten doesn't say "you are a woman", he specifically says "you *look like* a woman", meaning Sten was open to the possibility that a female warden *might be a man*.

The player is never given any opportunity at all to question Sten about gender roles under the Qun, or how he thinks women and men are defined, there's actually no concrete evidence that he bases it on biology at all.

And in any case, learning that the leaders Qun might be violating their own laws/mores when it suits them to do so (ie, someone with a vagina turns put to be super good at punching) is no more a retcon than the Chantry turning a blind eye to Vivienne swanning around Orlais because rich boyfriend. Hypocrisy isn't a retcon, it's just hypocrisy.

The first darkspawn were the Seven, so the time for darkspawn to be alien cloners from Dimension X has passed.

It’s certainly possible that the Blight - the corrupting force that gives the darkspawn life and empowers red lyrium - is otherworldly, however.