Dragon Age News Thread

Copying a comment I posted elsewhere:
The fact such things [brothels] exist in Tevinter seems reason enough to me to at least have one as a visitable location, maybe even scare up a side quest or two. That doesn't mean we should be able to use the facilities, as it were. Perhaps as a non-citizens our PC wouldn't be allowed to anyway. But not showing them at all seems a bit too PC for my taste. Tevinter isn't a nice place, especially if you aren't an altus, and maybe not even if you are. They definitely shouldn't sanitize it to spare people discomfort.

Because I think we all want a fully fleshed out breathing living stinking city? And even in a realm where slavery is the bulk of the working class There are still brothels. For example, "Before the outbreak of the [civil] war, Nashville recorded 207 prostitutes." ~ Wikipedia, Sex in the American Civil War What if there is a whole portion of Tevinter population who do not want to have sex with a slave, because the idea disgusts them? Why would anyone devote costly slaves 100% to the boinking of anyone in an establishment when that's totally inefficient use of their time? Unless they're overly paid for their time, in the form of a Magister's Gentleman's Club.

To completely scrub the existence of such a place even from casual mention seems to be sanitizing the setting. I'm not asking for perfect medieval representation here, I'm asking they return to what was in their first two games that allowed for immersion and the ability to roleplay a hedonistic morally grey character. The only reason I accepted the total lack of a Brothel in DAI was because we're forced to play a Religious Figure and live in out of the way places and the only other city we get to visit is the high strung super gossipy Val Royeax and Redcliffe, which wasn't large enough to support a brothel. Well, of any size and note. I'm sure there were working ladies who were more call girls than the type to stand outside.

So, yeah, I hope they give me a city with a market district with shops and a restaurant, a brothel, a courthouse, four kinds of neighborhoods to represent the social classes, the slave pens, a port.... I'm drawing a picture of an ENTIRE city here.

But sure. LEt's just have a single market place and exactly two homes we can enter, with only one of them available if you side the Templars. That made everyone happy last game, didn't it.

Edit Add: Oh yeah, bringing me to my point. Lack of an immersive world setting could indicate, and worries me personally, the Pure Role Play opportunities will be reduced, just as they were in DAI. DAI was also a game that didn't have a very immersive world. Luckily for them, Origins and DA2 had already immersed me, so to me, DAI was riding on the coat tails of immersive world building of the prior two installments. But they've got to start being worried that folks playing DA4 won't have played the prior chapters and can't keep relying on handing you a novel via codexs to flesh out the world for you.

There's a difference between wanting a fully fleshed out breathing living stinking city and existence of brothels mattering from RP perspective or determining our character's morality. I mean, I'm not sure why you're turning this argument into 'there should be brothels, period, otherwise it'd be sanitizing the setting' when I'm not even arguing that point and focusing only on RP or character morality.

You're conflating two different things at this point. Because even if we get full Amsterdam's Red Light District, we can't be sure whether we'd be able to do any RP there or would the existence of it matter at all, other than 'make the world look like breathing living stinking city'. Ultimately it depends what the game focuses on - and it's not just a matter of limited budget or development time. Like I said somewhere else, one can't ignore the narrative framing of the whole thing.

And I'll end at that to not derail the thread again.

The stories could be great, and I still wouldn't want a brothel in the game for anything more than window-dressing, particularly in Tevinter. Why not one of those sexy bathhouses they showed in the comics, or backstage at a Tevinter theater?

There are going to be slaves everywhere because of the setting, but I'd prefer that we are not encouraged to participate in the particular flavor of degradation attached to sexual slavery and the trafficking of people. One game was enough. I'd rather play the person who helps a slave get back home, free, than one who perpetuates their situation.

Sex trafficking and sex slavery and that particular flavor of degradation is a great narrative hook, though. Particularly a story about someone who was nabbed by slave traders outside the Imperium's borders and trafficked to said brothel. Things like that happen to people in real life and I think it'd be a good story here.

And I want to be the person helping them, too, not "perpetuating their situation". Though, really, I don't have an objection to people being given that option. It'll be the same for me as when you can hand Fenris over to Denarius without a fight. I don't think people shouldn't be able to do that. I'll just be sitting back, silently judging your characters for doing so. lol  Which is the point. Its an interactive story. Having a character do bad things doesn't mean you endorse doing those things. Drama, irony, feels: there are a million different reasons people can choose despicable choices in game that are in no way whatsoever to promotion of those despicable choices in real life.
Honestly, I could always do without broodmothers, personally... lol That said, I'd definitely want ("want") to see them if we ever go to real war with the darkspawn. I agree if they sanitized them it would be unfortunate.

Though, imo, Envy was almost as bad as far as grotesqueness goes. *shudders*

Well, that’s a fair argument, and I raised a similar point in another thread.

But now I’ll take the discussion elsewhere.

Going to respond to this in the thread about this issue...

I did...!

... but I may have pushed for a Nug Café.

^ I'm not too into the whole nug thing, but that is fucking adorable. I'd love to see a crafty person make a tiny sweater for their nug plushie.

- Relevant to the recent "leaks"...

Emily‏ pentapod
One of the hardest things in 10 years working in games has been learning NOT to call BS every time someone posts a crazy "leak". Because...
..if you do that ONCE, even for the most batshit insane stuff, then every time afterwards you do NOT, it will be seen as "confirmation!"
Some folks deliberately post ridiculous stuff waiting for denials so they can "catch" devs this way and claim everything NOT denied is true
Plus, any topic that gets a dev response will spawn 10x more posts hoping for same, and suddenly there is no time to actually make games. 😢
It's unfortunate it works this way, but it is what it is. Another good thread about similar topics: LINK



[HASH]DAT
(Delete the hashtag when quoting - thanks!)

Both DAI and MEA had early survey leaks that were very accurate. This leak sounds like complete BS to me though.

My point is that you don't actually know, and no one can say with certainty, until the game comes out.