Lucanis Dellamorte - Official Companion Thread [Spoilers]

That's what I thought, short (as opposed to tall and gawky), nimble, agile... a perfect killing machine. Good character design is good character design, and I don't question it, ever.

It starts to get iffy when I keep hearing the "short king" of it all, like I'm starting to imagine I'll hear it 50 more times since now and launch, and I can't shake the feeling there's more behind it that's not as organic or genuine. Why are you trying to drive this point (a simple physical characteristic) so hard? How many times do we have to hear that Harding is a redhead through terms like "our Ginger Queen! (Slay!)? That's right, we don't... so why are you trying to make "fetch" happen? We get it, he's short. Now, what else is going on?

It's almost like someone went: "this guy is too handsome, too smooth and confident, it's unrelatable" (and let's be honest, frowned upon in 2024) - so they had this Eureka moment, to make him a "short king", making sure to sell him as such, because then idiots on the Internet will love and embrace it and run with it. Am I reading too much into this? Possibly. Time will tell... 🤔

Here are a few shots of Louis Smith, Olympic gymnast and winner of Strictly Come Dancing in the U.K. How about this for Lucanis? He is 5 feet 10 inches, so a decent enough height but short compared with some athletes and basket ball players. Still, he could lose a couple of inches and still be impressive.  Flavia his dance partner is not tall.

Don't forget he also lacks social skills. If anything I think they are trying to put us off Lucanis because otherwise he might be too popular. By contrast they are really pushing Harding, Taash and Bellara. Davrin has a griffon and Emmrich has a skeleton (if you are into that sort of thing). Neve gets introduced early on so she has that advantage. Bet you anything we have to wait to recruit Lucanis. Anyway, only another week and we'll find out what he sounds like. Mary Kirby had better be right about his VA because if he has an annoying voice that will really disappoint me.

I'll be happy if the Crow doesn't sound like Puss in Boots again... Zevran's voice ruined him for me right away. Well, everything else was not to my liking either but that voice was ugghhh.

MEA companions were dull for me as well for thr most part. But DAI is my favorite cast of companions overall, yet DA2 is my fav in the series for story and protagonist. So DAI is not a low bar for me. MEA is my low bar to pass and I'm not even confident DAV does better. I'm fairly convinced DAV will not surpass previous DA companions for me except for the few I actively dislike like Ohgren. We'll see. We barely know anything about the companions yet. I liked Neve from her short story. So there's that. How she's written in the game might be different though. Lucanis has huge heartthrob potential going by his short story but might not be my type.

Low expectations all around and marketing just makes me even more suspicious somehow. They need to dial it back a bit. It's the pull push mechanism at work for me. They harder they try to sell the companions without telling us anything about them the more it puts me off.

It's not "too handsome, too smooth" marketing, it's gen Z marketing. How do you do, fellow kids, look at this short king and this ginger queen, what a girlboss!
It's just marketing towards a demographic. The problem may be that their old audience (that's me) really doesn't appreciate that, and their target audience may be on the out as well, and also not really invested in the franchise. If BW is looking to seize the moment, they may end up appearing too woke and rizz for the contemporary gamer. Attitudes change, and DA:V just might have been in development for a bit too long.

We'll see.

It's all so silly, because Zevran was quite a bit shorter than a human Warden and it was never talked about and no one really cared either. I'm not sure why this physical trait matters so much.

Short men representation?
Look, short men, you have game if you're short, well, if you're very handsome, built like a sexy dancer and a badass assassin too, that is. Feel better??

BW likes memes, so I demand to be able to sing perception check to Lucanis 

Haha, yeah, me too, I particularly like this one, great animation: 
Since I'm currently replaying DA:I I've also had this song on repeat in my head during In Hushed Whispers, as my tortured future!companions get kicked around by time-bending rift demons, meanwhile I leave the fight every five seconds to loot that body...

But since BW can't shut up about how short Lucanis is, I want my every other dialog option with him to be somehow pointing this out.

Lucanis: We must work together and assassinate that magister!

Rook: Ok, but he's pretty tall, so what do you want me to do, give you a lift?

or

Lucanis: This Solas guy let out ancient elven gods! This is going to be a crazy ride!

Rook: Have you checked if you're tall enough to be allowed on this ride?

That one is my favorite too! The art is really good - I just love it.