Dragon Age News Thread

That's a detail--or at least a vivid simile--I could have gone without.



Edit: The clotting blood, to be clear. Although maple syrup isn't that far behind on my disgust-o-meter. And I can almost hear the Feds coming to revoke my residency card as we speak.

Mike Laidlaw ‏@mike_Laidlaw
For the benefit of my real followers (as opposed to the porn bots): I am on vacation this week and next. Expect… “punchiness.“

Sylvf ‏@sylvf1
OK but I've sent you a *super* important DM
(It's just about videogames).

Mike Laidlaw ‏@mike_Laidlaw
Received and responded, Feket-Actual.

You just reminded me of something that happened to me some weeks ago.
I write fanfics and also love to read them. I had just started a new story, when I decided, that I needed inspiration (to get into character while writing) and started to read some fanfics on AO3.
There I stumbled over a fanfic that had the same basic idea as the fanfic I was just writing.

Greed (from FMA) survives and goes to Xing with Ling and Lan Fan.

For a moment I sat there and thought about scrapping the chapter I was writing, but then I thought about the differences between our works:

their fanfic:
- is a one shot
- had only 3 characters, Greed, Ling, Lan Fan
- the story felt rushed, the so called "shipping" forced

my fanfic:
- I'm writing at the second chapter right now and have no idea how many will follow, at least 3-4
- alone in the first chapter I had 7 characters, Greed, Ling, Lan Fan, Edward, Alphonse, Major Armstrong, in the second 5 and idk how many I'll have to write in chapter 3
- I put this in the "slow build" tag and it will take me at least till the next chapter, till any "shipping" will happen. Until then I'll work on the relationships/interactions between the characters.

What I'm trying to say, even tho the other fanfic author and I had the same basic idea, we did different things with it

Is it bad, that I find that gif....cute?   It reminds me of Flubber.

I like to imagine Lyrium as Blue Gatorade as long as it doesn't taste like cough syrup 

Mike Laidlaw ‏@mike_Laidlaw
Onward to chocobo victory! As promised to my buds, @eplerjc and @ritzyfoxx.

Bah. To anyone who says "Oh, they made Isabela totally unsympathetic with the slavery stuff," I'd like to point out that Isabela was a pirate. A PIRATE.

Dismiss the quaint notions that people usually have about piracy, ie. a life of freedom on the open seas. Pirates are just bandits that happen to work on open waters. Murder and pillaging (and sometimes a little rape) are part of the job description.

And yes, pirates in RL were (and are) involved in slavery. Read about the Barbary Slave Trade some time. Some pirates even added to their crews by pressing captives into service.

The only thing I disagree with is the post-author's remark -- "I completely understand why this part of her story is considered controversial and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone’s decision to choose to ignore it in terms of their own personal canon." I also disagree with David Gaider on this, but I think his response is more an attempt at being tactful, especially since he's not involved with the franchise anymore.

All of this stuff regarding Isabela has nothing to do with any PC a person might create. A person's headcanon concerns only their own character and the world they have built with their choices. Isabela's past is not subject to a re-write just because someone feels uncomfortable by some of the events in it. If someone likes the character, then they take the steps to understand all of the character that we have been presented with, which includes everything in DAO, DA2, all of the comics, and World of Thedas.

There is analysis to be done for pretty much everyone, and players can work out their own reasoning with the content presented. Everyone's fave is "problematic" for some reason or other, but they all also have redeeming qualities that makes us want to like them. That is what is so great about Bioware characters to begin with.

^ To my mind, those are established facts about Isabela. She did those things, or things were done to her. When the devs created those things, your PC had nothing to do with it. If you wanted to create that sort of PC, that's on you and again I don't feel has anything to do with the Isabela that was established by the devs. If I were to create such a PC, I would take those things into consideration and mold the character around them, not discard whatever doesn't fit with what I was creating.

I suppose we just have a different interpretation of "headcanon" and how it applies to the game world. If that's the case, we'll just have to disagree on that.

You can think certain plots and lore elements are stupid, but they exist, and their impact is felt and shown in the game world, like with Fiona and her role in The Calling.

I think the whole problem with material from outside the games is when it appears to contradict what is in the games. So how far should we take the material from comics and books as canon and how much simply the author's own interpretation of the characters and the lore?

In the case of Isabella, in DA2 what I took from her story was selfish as she appeared to be on the face of it, even she drew the line at running slaves. That was her own personal line which she was not prepared to cross, even at risk to her own life (which she must have known would be the case when she released them). The comic seems to explain how this became her "line in the sand". This may partly be because in the minds of the writers, the characters always seem to need a specific reason for acting as they do. So it was not enough that Isabella, based around her own beliefs about personal freedom, was against trafficking slaves, but that she was actually feeling guilt about an action she took in the past when she was willing to transport slaves. This doesn't actually impact on the attitude of my Hawkes towards her in game because presumably she never admitted as much to them and the events of the comic, when she confesses her past to someone, take place after the events in DA2.

By contrast, I do use some information from Masked Empire, since the slaughter of the elves in Halamshiral took place before events in DAI and thus, by asking around people at Haven and Skyhold, I assume my Lavellan could have been made aware that Celene was responsible for this. What was disappointing was that the game didn't reference the events in Masked Empire more. We had Cole uttering little snippets that referenced the novel but this would make no sense at all to someone who hadn't read the book. Briala has a prejudice against the Dalish in the book because of how she was treated by the clan depicted, and Felassan encouraging her to think this is the norm, yet this wholly contradicts the way they were depicted in previous games, the codices and even the entry in the latest Core Rule Book, where it is made clear that the Dalish think they are preserving their ancient culture on behalf of both themselves and the city elves and if they ever have a future homeland, both will have a share in it. A far cry indeed from Thelhen's insistence that they are "poor cousins, lost to us forever".

I have a problem with some of the information presented in WoT2 compared with the characters as shown in game, particularly Dorian. The timescales in the book simply do not add up with what he asserts in game (although they do match better the story given for Alexius). Yet the account given for how Alexius came to choose Dorian as his apprentice really doesn't match the reason given in Dorian's biography. Then you have his conversation with Sera when she asks if he has ever known an elf who wasn't a slave and he agrees he has not. Yet in his biography, Alexius found him in a brothel in the elven slums. So am I to assume from this that he was lying to Sera or are the elves who frequent the brothels actually the slaves of the owner of the establishment? If the latter then Dorian should surely appreciate that the slaves are not necessarily indulging in sex of their own free will. Now before DAI it had been stated that whilst same gender liaisons are frowned upon in Tevinter between the nobility, they are actively encouraged with favoured slaves. There is no indication this is consensual on the part of the slaves, just that their masters think they are privileged in being singled out in this way. Yet when discussing the mortality of slavery, this particular issue is ignored even though you would think that Dorian must be aware it is the case, since it is something that affected him directly.

So in some ways I feel that novels, comics and source books are useful in fleshing out the universe, particularly if you are writing fan fiction or trying to establish a back story for your PC, but I certainly wouldn't take them as canon when it comes to playing the game unless you want to.

All we need now is a nocontext hashtag and it willbe 2013 all over again....

Well.... technically we got noncontext photo from some mocap recording and a Secret Red Book (and before that a screenshot of a white screen and an orange or blue gradient).... Something tells me DA devs went the route of visual clues this round

June ‏@junie_junette
I'm beginning to hate you.

Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah




Anchor654 ‏anchor654 
I just realized, is that a dragon footprint behind the wolf? 🤔🙀

Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah