[Spoilers] Depiction, or lack thereof, of slavery in the Tevinter Imperium during the events of Drag

Reading through your post I have a couple of thoughts. The first thing that comes to mind here is that Thedas after the Veilguard is effectively a incubator. Yes you are right a lot of things have been through both tremendous and incremental change throughout the game. But at least in the context I was meaning a lot of this context is...well still cooking. At least imo a bit on the brillaint side some of the story space in this game, while the vast majority of it was tying off plot lines in this game and then dealing with the plot of this game, some was devoted to expanding and teasing future lore and plot developments. So in essence while the status quo has changed in a lot of way sand the political apple tree has been shaken loose, in the end some of this stuff is still changing, the change will happen later. 

Which again reminds me once more of that show I referenced in the other thread. Babylon 5, for the weaknesses of season 5, did do one thing well...a couple of it. One of the philosophical moments of the show was when Citizen G'Kar said that 'life can be broken into moments of revelation, or moments of transition.' Veilguard was the moment of revelation, it was Thedas's Shadow War, now we are back to dealing with moments of transition. If they can keep it up and keep up this quality of writing makes me very excited for the next games. 

To a certain extent, by and large, Origins, 2, and Inquisition was pretty much the same way. The 'Status Quo' had to be preserved against the Big Bads who were very eager to change that status quo. Afterall revolutions are fun and all but often positive change and growth is only brought about by a relatively stable system. 

I was curious to see what arguments you would bring to bear here, and its the usual bugaboos. 

The Qunari act pretty much how they have always acted and maybe they stretched the lore most with the Qunari (or at least a very specific Qunari) at the end of the day this is who they have always been. Remember Sten in Origins was so brainwashed by his cult's religious preferences that the first thing he did when he lost his 'soul' was to go nuts and murder an entire family. The Qunari have been shown to have a violent nature time and time again and the Tamasarans seem to stoke those flames in those they choose to be warriors of the Antaam. Then these warriors are taught to fight and nothing else...then for centuries they watch the Priesthood/ Ben-Hassrath stumble about in the South with no success in sight, frustrated by having their leash held and just the occasional bitter war against Tevinter but no serious conflict...they snap. They snap because they have had no one to really fight in centuries and their only purpose that they have been bred for and raised in is to fight...and then they are told if they lose their weapons they no longer have a soul. So yes, how the Qunari acted in Veilguard is very consistent. 

But they do touch on these relationships. Bellara goes into the contradiction herself and talks about how much human prediduices might lead to them having problems with the new information and hating on Elves more. Davrin mentions that he is in no rush to spread the mention of this new information because of those same reasons. So there is a difference between how you may view the blind preduidices of the masses and how individuals view one another. 





And Tevinter being a slaver Empire, the only one in Thedas technically, is brought up apart of the story and is explored. Its not as big of a focus only coming up as the main plot of one plotline but to say its not there, or inconsistent, again makes me question if these reviewers or websites or commentators have played the game when they can miss such obvious thematic moments. 

Edit: To cut to the chase while the gampleay may be a bit different here and there still find this game 99% consistent with the tone, spirit, themes, story, worlbuilding, and character of the previous three games. Like there was pretty much one codex entry in the entire thing I felt was pushing things. 

In Inquisition too. Calpernia I believe wa ssupposed t ohav ebeen a former slave bfeoe rleadin gthe Venatori and joining Corypheus.

You're missing the point again. As I said before it's about world building, and the disconnect is when you had all the people talking about how slavery is everywhere, and you have the Codex in previous games talking about how the Tevinter empire would surely crumble financially and otherwise "if not for the endless supply of slaves from all over the continent. There, they are meat, chattel. They are beaten, used as fodder in the endless war against the Qunari, and even serve as components in dark magic rituals" that they aren't really seen when wandering around Tevinter. There's a bit in the story but for a world built and run on slaves, they're very absent when exploring. 

But you know, there's plenty of places I can go to talk about Bioware and not too many places where people can come together to support each other in the fandom so I'll leave it there. 

Ports. Construction. Around whatever official guards are around or businesses. On errands going places rich people won't go. Slaves were everywhere in Tevinter and they've been established as being notoriously downtrodden and treated poorly (in general)

Does the story of DAV deal with the subject of slavery in anyway?

It's a distasteful topic so I won't go into detail. I'm going to be very quick and move on, however slavery in Tevinter is NORMAL in that it is legal and widespread. It doesn't stand out because there's so many of them, it's a typical practice.

Okay, slave labor is cheap labor. Only rich people have them for their household because paying for labor in your household is a very luxury concept. Otherwise it's a boon for any project or business to have slave labor. Now there are kind hearted people, but going by economics the less upkeep you can spend on your slave, the more you profit from that transaction, the bigger the difference between a slave and a normal worker, and that will extend to food costs, medicals, freaking overworking. So people working through sickness, extremely tired etc and that's just the normal practice not going into whatever magical shenanigans happen in Tevinter. So they wouldn't be casually sweeping the docks looking at peace right?  And in the codex's right, specific horrific practices happen to them - sacrifices for blood magic, front line meat shields etc etc.

There's a parallel with slavery themes and real life also because western consumerism exists largely to take advantage of cheap overseas labor and sometimes slave labor. People who work in appalling conditions is what our societies are built on. May have been a good opportunity to make a more impactful point or theme but they seem to largely have missed the opportunity.

There is a mission with that specific plot point and how to deal with slavery is one of the more interesting choices you get to make in the game.

But it doesen't count because it's the Venatori doing it or something.

Actually I forgot to that Neves entire plotline also involves rescuing slaves so that is technically three and maybe 4 plotlines that touch on slavery.

slavery is one of the few universally agreed upon evils in the world. So the only people who tend to support it are bad guys...or ignorant guys.

Nice, a DLC, chinese third person action adventure game console slop, gambling slop, gambling slop, and more gambling slop.


The Dumb Three has stated Manifesto or written one? or it's something we 'deduce' because he's bad and slavery must've be included in one of many bad things he would done?

recurring theme.


If things just is, then show us that thing is.

The critique is that people don't even notice that thing is, and feel that the thing isn't "Is".

(Of course, (again!) ignoring the fact that there are Codex(es) from Dorian/Mae about how Slavery isn't just "is", but a "problem" - if things just IS, then half of Shadow Dragons ideology is just moot, isn't it?)

*spits tea*