Breaking Canon

Aww crap. And this guy is lead writer now? Oof.

Also, "If you change your lore based on trends then it isn't very good."? What the hell does that mean? Are changes evidence that the lore was always bad, or is the lore *retroactively* bad *because* they made changes?

And if the lore is retroactively bad because they made changes, then changing it was actually a good idea, because the original lore has now always been bad.

And if the lore was good before, but is now retroactively bad, then isn't that...

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN

A ret-con???!!!

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that when people in here say "ret-con", what they mean is "new information I didn't like".

I'd have to disagree with you on that. Remember that the revelation of people deforming truths runs on the assumption that you don't believe yourself divine. You have no evidence at all, and you might very well believe it, or choose to be chosen, as it were. 

Plus, there's the admission from the dev team that it was a soft retcon (weird paradox, it's like saying little bit pregnant). It was done to appease the on-line weirdos and people will defend it because "muh representation" rather than for any lore reason. It's a silly fad. And I think that's the real problem: You should never allow silly real-world fads to justify a world with lots of lore, especially when lots of people write stories in that space. 

Re: the DAO CC screen - I think some memories are a little foggy.

It's not about the player believing they are divine agent or not, that's just you deciding to follow the script or not. The player doesn't alter the events to suit their needs like the character around them do.

For example, right after escaping Haven, Mother Giselle says that the Herald was lost (i.e. died) fighting Corypheus and the Maker returned the Herald to them. The cutscene shows the character escape alive and you can point it out in dialogue to her. Mother Giselle dismiss the truth and what she says next mean that she won't correct people believing that the Maker resurrected you.

I played that part last night. The same can be said about the woman in the fade being believed to be Andraste, but it was a Faith spirit. Nobody is going to try to correct the mass about their misconception after the truth is learned. Nobody. There are also some ambient dialogues about "feats" the Inquisitor apparently accomplished that never happened.

Now imagine the event manipulations that was done in the past to push someone's agenda. We can start with Tevinter believing Andraste was a mage, but not the South.

Exactly, thank you. I wanted to make this point but I couldn't figure out how to articulate it.

Saying the Qun is "conservative" is like... conservative compared to *what*?

A lot of people in here talk like the white, (mostly) American, (mostly) Christian trajectory and perspective of cultural development and progress is the only one that exists, which is why we also get arguments in other threads like "There CAN'T be gays/elections/women in leadership roles/certain technologies, Thedas is MEDIEVAL, stupid!".

But even if we put aside the fact that Thedas is a fantasy world with magic and dragons (and therefore can have literally anything it wants), and its mishmash of ideas already doesn't actually line up to ANY period of Earth history, we know there are plenty of ancient and pre-agrarian societies that all had very different ideas about gender and sexuality and how things should be run. And any of them could have become the dominant perspective on the planet under other circumstances. Development isn't linear.

"It ruins the previous stories in retrospect" is just what toxic fans always say whenever they see anything they don't like. It's not a position that merits any respect, in my opinion.

When people say shit like that, it doesn't actually matter if [the new thing] actually alters or contradicts anything that was previously established, and alterations and contradictions are not automatically "ret-cons", and "ret-cons" aren't automatically bad, assuming they even exist (stories are malleable, and whether or not something alters/breaks "continuity" is really just a matter of personal perspective). They're just gonna call it a "ret-con", or say it sacrifices "artistic integrity" in order to "pander to the left", or some other bullshit reason that protects them from having to internally confront what it is that actually bothers them about it. When you look at what people pick and choose to become angry about, it's very telling.

The Qun having a sort-of-not-really equivalent to the concept of "transgender" just pisses people off. This discussion comes up over and over again as one of the Reasons Inquisition is Bad(tm), and they justify their anger by calling it a ret-con, but even if the concept of "Aqun-Athlok" didn't exist until Inquisition (which is probably true, BioWare very obviously loves to just make shit up as they go), it doesn't actually conflict with anything that was previously established. Sten never actually said that gender and gender roles were linked to biology, people just assumed that when Sten said "woman" he meant "biological female", and when their assumptions were contradicted, they got mad.

Similarly, when people want to dunk on Mass Effect: Andromeda, they looooooove to bring up that one tiny piece of ambient dialogue, not even a cutscene, about how not all Asari adopt the tradtionally "feminine" pronouns of other species, and they call it a ret-con. But Liara explicitly says in the very first Mass Effect game "I am not precisely a woman", and even though both of her parents are Asari, and are therefore both biologically female, she refers to one of them as her "mother" and the other as her "father", so the stage was already set for Asari to identify with the masculine and/or unisex pronouns of other species, but people still got pissed about it.

Now, as for why those two things bother people so much, I couldn't possibly imagine. 

EDIT: In fact, a lot of what Sten says about women, just in general, is unclear and/or inconsistent. He says, repeatedly that "women aren't fighters", but the Ben-Hassrath, which function as a sort of espionage/police unit, and includes Iron Bull, Tallis and Viddasala, falls under the purview of the Ariqun (head of the priesthood), not the Antaam (the military branch commanded by the Arishok). Despite being non-combat roles in a nominal sense, it's obvious that being a spy or enforcer would inevitably require some martial skill, so when Sten says "women aren't fighters", were we supposed to interpret that as "women aren't part of the Antaam", or "women don't fight at all, ever"?

Sten also says that individuals are tested and placed in the roles that their talents merit, so the only way for women to never be fighters is if women are never tested for their martial prowess, but women can be Ben-Hassrath, which will inevitably involve fighting, and if the Qunari aren't training and testing their spies in combat, then they're not very bright now, are they?

Sten also, also says, in a party dialogue with Zevran, I believe, that in the event of an invasion, every single Qunari would be expected to take up arms to defend themselves and their home. Well, as it happens, the three human female party members in DA:O, all of whom Sten disparages at separate points for acting outside the supposed dictates of their gender, are not in fact, career warriors. Leliana is a priestess, Wynne is an educator, and Morrigan is... I dunno, a vagrant? But they all left their usual roles temporarily, in order to defend their homeland from the Blight. By Sten's own stated logic, this is perfectly fine, and even required, so it makes no sense for him to have been criticising them in the first place!

Faced with these cold, hard facts, I'm sure everyone who's pissy about the Aqun-Athlok thing will change their tune, right? Because if the lore was always vague and inconsistent, then there's no reason to be mad about the addition of transgender qunari, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?

Yes, all that happened is that the qunari found a workaround to their rigid gender roles so that they didn't waste certain members of their society in positions that weren't to them. They're not actually more "progressive" because of the Aqun-athlok thing, whatever Patrick Weekes might think.

Of course, if they turn into the "free hugs for apostates" faction in DA4, that will be total bullshit. Tevinter Nights didn't exactly calm my fears on this subject.

Even if it doesn't, what it tells me is that the meat of the story is malleable. To be changed at whim. That's not a solid foundation for storytelling. Chasing fashionable trends and wanting to do things for the real world is a bad idea given what is being done. 

People will come up with dumb excuses. I'm sure Weekes will come up with something stupid. But it's just a retcon. I don't like stories where I can see the seams.