Dragon Age News Thread

That's worse that just depicting the reality of historical revisionism. That means historical revisionism is just a cover for Rule of Cool.

The difference between most and all is huge. A few outliers to depict revisionism is fine, but if every Codex that can't be confirmed from multiple sources (the usual way of increasing confidence in the real world) is suspect, there's no firm lore ground to stand on.

Nightscrawl hit the nail on the head:

So there's no firm ground to stand on if there's no 100% factual information?

Welp, better burn all those RL history books then.

Again, this is just like in real life. It's rare for a single testimony or record to be considered a reliable source of information. Besides - it's not common for things that matter in DA to not be confirmed through multiple sources or evidence that goes beyond a POV of a single person or codex author. And looking for clues, truth hidden beneath lies, politics or common biases and connecting things to get a clearer picture is IMO one of the best parts of DA, at least for me.

Paul Dutton‏ @paulsdutton
MOCAP tomorrow. Directing 150 shots w two stunt talent. They'll be sore and I'll be tired!

Nick Sadler‏ @zenderquai

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Super Missy II Turbo‏ @tremblinglight
Hope you have an amazing time, Paul! Sounds like a blast lol

I love the soundtrack. I was just listening to it while I was working, and really put me in the right frame of mind.

1. But they already had Kieran and his model.
2. That didn't seem to bother them when they made DAO. Why is it different now?

It was nice when Thedas still had children and cats. Both seem to have kind of disappeared since DAO. 

I just think the lecturer lady meant that DA's history does not come from a word of god kind of codex, like a codex that seems to have been written by a single, unsourced individual that sees everything (sometimes including personal motivation) and is always 100% accurate. It's people writing the history in DA so you need to keep in mind they may be mistaken, have the wrong information, or be biased. From a meta perspective this means the devs could change the lore by introducing new information. The 'lore' of the real world is not considered unreliable just cuz new information could theoretically be discovered and change how we view something, there's this tacit assumption that it's a continuous process. For DA the majority of the lore is reliable just cuz the devs have 1) no reason to revise it 2) don't do so all willy-nilly cuz it'll just undermine the consistency/authenticity of their work. And when they do have to make changes it's easier to swallow because there's not a godlike narrator recounting the lore going ~record scratch~ "Ooooh no wait I lied," it's just flawed people doing the writing.

Thedas still has dogs though, that's better.

Yeah, I knew I was going to get this type of response. I don't really care that it's realistic.

It actually DOES work that way in terms of the fandom, because I've SEEN it. I've seen people using Varric as an unreliable narrator to make their own argument that certain things didn't happen, or were exaggerated, like templar abuses.

That was the larger point of my post, how the fans take something that could be fun and interesting and use it as a cudgel against other fans. I am so tired of that shit, so I stay out of those types of discussions.


At any rate, I'm done with the topic now. I should have known better than to voice my opinion about it. As I said, it "depends on the personal perspective of the player." I wasn't speaking for anyone but myself in saying that I didn't like this method.



Because it's a mod, not made by Bethesda and released as part of the base game.

There are interesting legal questions involving whether Bethesda (or similar company), in providing the tools (the Creation Kit as well as the game itself) is facilitating illegal activity. But I think in that circumstance you would have to prove that they provided these tools knowing that players would use them for illegal purposes, or with intent, which would be difficult. Yeah, there are a lot of questionable mods out there, but there are also a great many standard mods (weather changes, combat changes, bug fixes, etc), which is the purpose behind releasing the Creation Kit for players.

Besides, I'm sure Bethesda has teams of lawyers that have already given this due consideration, and would take action if problems were to crop up.

Once the game is out in the wild, no company has any control over what mods are released. Look at DAI and MEA. Those games have no official modding support whatsoever, and yet players have modded them. You think Bioware should be held responsible if a player wants to use the Coca-Cola logo and mod it onto the tank top casual outfit, or if a mod allowed the player to attack and kill Kieran?

Bethesda has a bit more control over some mods because they can curate which mods are allowed on their own servers for distribution. But they don't have control over the Nexus and their standards, or just a person releasing a mod via Dropbox. The Nexus likely has their own lawyers as well; they're not some hole-in-the-wall site. However, I do know that they try to keep in the good graces of the developers, so they try to abide by their rules. For example, Bethesda does not allow assets from previous games to be used in mods for other games, which is why the Skywind project to recreate Morrowind in Skyrim's engine has taken so long: the devs of that mod have to recreate assets from scratch. Knowing Bethesda doesn't allow it, the Nexus wouldn't allow the Skywind team to release the mod there if they broke that rule, or if found to have broken it, they would remove the mod.

I think the problem some of us had with that person praising Bioware's way of doing history is that it suggested that EVERY codex or piece of information in the game should be suspect. That is not how it works in the real world.

Take the Battle of Hastings. That definitely happened. It happened in 1066. It was fought between the Normans and the Saxons. It happened near the south coast of England just outside of Hastings at a place that is now known as Battle. That is definite documented history and no one in their right mind would dispute it. What is open to interpretation is how exactly King Harold died mainly through people using the Bayeux Tapestry as their source of reference and it not being clear which character is Harold at the time he is cut down. Essentially King William and the Normans weren't really bothered about how Harold died, the important part was that they won and it was a very significant moment in British history. It was also pretty significant for the native population as well. Hence the site of the battle not needing to rely on any written record.

Take a similar situation in DA universe, the Battle of the Valarian Fields. I use this example because a similar amount of time has passed since it occurred as with the Battle of Hastings in RL. It was a very significant moment in Thedas history. So we have a date -171 which no one seems to dispute but everything else is open to question. For a start off there is the location of the battle. Throughout DAO and in WoT1 it was suggested that the battle took place in a location near to Minrathous and this is the place marked on the large map. Shortly after the victory, Maferath tricked Andraste into going into a remote location in the adjoining hills where she was ambushed and captured by Tevinter forces. Then she was allegedly burnt at the stake in front of the gates of Minrathous as witnessed by the two opposing forces of the barbarians and Tevinter.

I say allegedly because it now turns out that this was some fantasy of the Chant. The first intimation of this came with the alternate history given by Genitivi, that has her being burnt in the main square of Minrathous, in other words inside the gates, somewhere that clearly the army of the barbarians would not have access to. However, it then turns out that Andraste wasn't anywhere near Minrathous when she was captured. According to the source in DAI which is also at the beginning of WoT2, she was captured at her stronghold in Nevarra. As the history makes clear, Andraste never really got anywhere near Minrathous or the heart of the Imperium. This is why the crowd was so sympathetic to her plight at being burnt because they had never had to suffer at the hands of the barbarian army. This version actually reinforces the idea that Maferath took a tactical decision to call time on the Exalted March before his army over stretched itself, particularly as the Battle of Valarian Fields was a near run thing and they came close to defeat. This is borne out by the Canticle of Shartan, based off the Dalish recollection of events, where it was the intervention of Shartan and his elves that saved the day. (Also confirmed by another Chantry scholar, Sister Petrine). At the end of the Canticle of Shartan it is suggested that the way was now open that led to the gates of Minrathous, which seems to confirm that the Valarian Fields were not immediately outside it as shown on the map. So why are the Valarian Fields shown up adjacent to Minrathous? There would have been numerous people on both sides who would know its correct location. Since the battle occurred 171 years before the establishment of the Chantry, the location would have been part of folk memory long before Drakon and his Divine came up with their own mythological version of events. Is this part of the reason he was so keen to destroy every other cult of Andraste, because they knew the truth of events and they didn't fit his own idea of history? Yet presumably Tevinter bought into this version as well. Again I ask why? It was no credit to the Imperium for it to be suggested that Andraste's army made it as far as the gates of Minrathous, when the reality was that they never did.

So I can accept there are varying reasons why Maferath may have acted as he did but not the complete revision of history that has occurred over the three games over where the major events of the campaign occurred. Battle sites tend to be constant for the simple reason that many people die and so people remember where they occur. They are often named for some site or city close at hand. It may be out by a few miles but not the hundreds of miles that separate Nevarra from Minrathous. So to my mind this depiction of the multiple versions of history is not realistic.

Ironically, I learned how to be skeptical of real world history in a college history class. The professor went to great lengths to teach us about what motivates revisionism and how established historical "fact" gets overturned and reintepreted every generation or so. Unfortunately, when this skepticism is taken to its extreme, it results in people like the Holocaust deniers.

We're in total agreement. But here's the problem -- I don't want to spend that much effort for a game. I don't want to have to sift through multiple testimonies to decide what is true and what isn't. That's what historians do for a living.

Now that's not to say that I need everything spelled out for me by the Sole Authority. I like stories where some things are left to the imagination of the audience. It's a delicate dance and I thought DA was doing it well, but now I find out that it's a bit more lopsided than I thought. I don't want everything to be left to my imagination.