One thing I would like to see BioWare steer clear of in ME:A that DA:I had in spades was the complete 'humanification' of the setting. What I mean is how DA:I practically drained the 'other' element out of Thedas in favor of focusing on the 'feelz' and human issues; and by human issues I am including the Dwarves, Elves and Qunari as well.

 

Compare DA:O/DA:A to DA:I, in the first game and its expansion we got to see and interact with Sylvan, Werewolves, Golems, Awakened, and various demons and spirits. Even the animals of the first game had a unique spin on them; Mabari possessed near human level intellect, and dragons were incredibly cunning, being capable of even using cultists to protect their nests.

 

Flash forward to DA:I and all of those elements are missing, Sylvans get a crappy Plants vs. Zombies themed mention in a random letter. Werewolves and Golems are nowhere to be seen. Awakened aren't even mentioned at all, despite the possibilities that they could  provide the narrative, and the Spirits/Demons of the game are all (save for two very, very human characters) are just mindless monsters that want to kill everything on sight, like simple Rage Demons. The game doesn't even bring up the fact that Pride demons are on the same levels of humans in terms of their intelligence and scheming; nope just mindless "Rhaw! Smash!" monsters. The animals don't fair much better either; Mabari are reduced to stupid packs of wild dogs that attack anything on sight, and Dragons, the namesake of the series, are transformed from cunning creatures with an alien intellect into a bear with wings and a breath weapon. 

 

 

I would like to see ME:A stay as far away from this 'humanification' as possible; especially since it is a science fiction setting and has even less excuse for everything being human centric than a medieval fantasy does.

I agree with a lot of what you say, though I think that ME1 had a good balance of aspects that were wondrous and alien (like the Thorian or Rachni) and elements that were clever representations of real-world political issues (such as secularism and the hangar preaches, genetic modification, corporate intrigue etc.) - the latter is 'humanification' done right as opposed to done poorly.

A good example of it being done poorly is with the geth in ME3. ME1 and ME2 did a good job of representing the geth as an alien intelligence, an alternative form of being but also simultaneously hinted that they had evolved several more 'human-like' elements (such as Legion's seemingly illogical reverence of Shepard and the heretics learning to deceive). ME3 threw a lot of this out and had Legion and the other geth aspiring to be identical to organics. This was a shame as not only did it unravel their mystique, originality and alienness, but it also suggested that groups with very different ideas and ways of seeing the world have no way of coexisting until one side adopts those of the other. This ran completely contrary to what the geth had been struggling for as mentioned in ME2: to retain their unique and different way of being but to nevertheless make peace with the other races.

Adding cutscenes makes the war table a resource sink. If that becomes a requirement the whole thing's going to fail the ROI check.

If the cutscenes are simplistic and only deployed for a small number of operations then it shouldn't be much of a drain on resources and in return it would add much more flavour and scope to the game world.

There are a few positives that BioWare could take from DA:I and apply to ME:A. For a start, Calpernia is a more complex, compelling and morally grey antagonist than ME3's main antagonists who all turn out to just be indoctrinated reaper stooges (TIM was a great character in ME2 but his ME3 incarnation is just moronic). Also, their conservatism over squad mate deaths in Inquisition was the right move: in ME2, all of your squad mates could potentially die which had a detrimental effect on ME3's development whereas with future DA instalments, the writers can invest more time into writing detailed stories for returning characters without having to invest effort into developing dull replacement characters to cover instances in which those characters died.

One other concept that should be carried forward is the War Table, though drastic improvements need to be made. This would mean better integration of it into the game world with dialogue and cutscenes, and of course ensuring that no contradictions between war table info and info gleaned from other sources in the game exists (see Sebastian the simultaneous Prince and advisor).

The war table was a great concept that was poorly executed. If a similar concept is used in ME:A, it needs to be more interactive and better integrated into the world (e.g have short cutscenes play to actually show you certain events and have more in-game character dialogue relating to these events). In DA:I it was too static and for the most part felt divorced from the rest of the game.

Because other than Sir Barris who only appears in Inquisition he's the only interesting and likable Templar who hasn't died in previous games. Sir Otto got killed by the demon, that head Templar in Lothering likely died fighting the darkspawn horde in attempt to buy time for the refugees, that Templar investigator got killed trying to stop the serial murder who ended up killing Hawke's mother... Good Templars have tendency to die quicker than than a planet being attacked by Darth Nihilis.

What about Greagoir? Other than his radical agreement with Sten (made in the heat of the moment) on cutting out mages' tongues, he seemed all right. I'm surprised we didn't see him during Champions of the Just considering that the quest was based in Ferelden (his area of jurisdiction) - was he one of the generic lyrium monsters that we killed or something?

Is that Corypheus's head on a pike? Holy ****. 

Good call, I'd never noticed that before: mind = blown.

I think the reason that the group is diverse is simply because it makes things more interesting: having a wide variety of backgrounds, races and ethnicities represented is better for world building than having everyone from a similar background/ethnicity. It may be exceptional in relation to the population make up of Orlais and Ferelden (mostly white human serfs), but then the Inquisition is an exceptional organisation that draws the best from across Thedas.

I guess, you have a point.  But would Cass, Cullen and Leliana still support you if you were horrendous?  Or go grab that sword out of your hand and kick you out of Skyhold....

Due to the Inquisitor's unique ability in closing rifts coupled with the support of the people, your advisors would have no choice but to serve you, albeit reluctantly. They could have been like they are in the concept art that I posted above: mortified but unable to do anything about it.

Would have been awesome if BioWare had allowed this to happen:

Yeah, I agree that there are too few evil options in this game, particularly when we compare it to Origins in which the warden could commit various crimes against humanity.

Inquisition is a game where you play the unlikely hero that Thedas needs.  If you were evil then no one would follow you, invest money in the Inquisition, or die for your cause.

Not necessarily. When people are afraid, violent dictators often come to power. With the breach consuming the world and demons flooding the land, it would actually make more sense if the Inquisitor was a brutal despot as people are more likely to rally around an efficient extremist than a reasonable, cool-headed gentleman in such circumstances, particularly when those people are the fearful, superstitious peasantry of Thedas.

We have absolutely no idea what the Evanuris did that was so monstrous. We hear stories of massacres, genocides - in fact, rampant and repeated genocides of lab created life. It's a bit pointless to say that enslaving your own "race" - as if this was in any sense of the word a meaningful construct - versus enslaving a sub-group. Do you think what IRL slavery is made less immoral because we're all human? 

You misunderstand my point. When Tevinter enslaved the elves, they destroyed an entire culture - entire histories, ways of life, ways of thinking all largely lost due to the greed of an Empire. And this has happened in real history too in which entire cultures and ethnic groups were destroyed due to greed and racism. That to me is worse than elven or Tevinter elites having slaves from their own populations. Not to mention that the sheer scale of it would have been staggering.

It's true that we have absolutely no idea about the elven gods or ancient elven society: what we know comes from a few ambiguous scraps of evidence and the testimony of a guilt laden ancient elf. So why insist that they're far worse than Tevinter when we have almost nothing to go on?

Also what do you mean by these repeated genocides? Ghilan'nain wiping out animal species?

Wrong. It happened twice. First, in Arlathan. The lore states the Evanuris enslaved their own kind.

 

I consider this ten times worse than slavery in the Imperium.

False. The enslavement of an entire race has only ever been done by the Tevinter Imperium. What you mention in your post is the enslavement of one sector of the elven population by the Evanuris (which I strongly condemn), but the Tevinters also enslaved their own kind. It's interesting that you explain Tevinter mass-slavery using an economic determinist argument but then in contrast make a strong moral condemnation against slavery in Arlathan - seems somewhat inconsistent to me.

Oh, I don't think that Tevinter is completely blameless. It's just that enslaving one's conquered enemies is really not all that uncommon a practice.  Not that I support it, mind you. 

 

I personally just blame the Evanuris for starting a terrible chain reaction that affected the entire world in many different ways.  They were pretty awful people.

 

Elves being enslaved and downtrodden adds to the world IMO.  It makes Thedas interesting. Would I like to see things improve for the elves? Yeah.  But to me, an interesting story is more important than 'Humans are evil!' 'Free the elves!'  'Free the mages!' Etc.    If sweeping changes are to come, I'd like them to occur in ways that make sense, don't feel like a cop-out / deus ex machina / forced / too good to be true/ type of thing.  ( for example, that is what the wrap up to the mage/templar war and the Divine Leliana ending feels like to me).

 

And if no change ultimately occurs, and the elves remain downtrodden/enslaved, then so be it. As I said, it's an interesting part of the lore for me. 

Not all that uncommon? The enslavement of an entire race (in the form of chattel slavery) only appears to have happened once in DA lore, and that's the enslavement of the elves by the Tevinter Empire. You can pick and choose any event before that that inadvertently contributed to the (relatively) poor condition of elven society at the time, but at the end of the day, elven slavery can only be blamed on the intentional mass enslavement of the elves by the Tevinter Empire. The murderer is ultimately the one to blame and not the chance events and coincidences that led to the murder.

Wrong, because slavery was a common practice in Thedas by then.

 

The reason why there were so many elves enslaved byTevinter is not because "humans naturally mistreat elves". It's because the fall of Arlathan led to a surplus of elven population who was vulnerable and suscetible to be preyed upon by other civilizations.

 

Hence Tevinter enslaved them, as it does pretty much with every people it conquers.

 

This process is no doubt inspired by labor conditions in Antiquity. There were no contracts between masters and workers. There was no servitude before Feudalism. You were either master or slave. The Empires of Arlathan and Tevinter are a fictional version of this period in our History.

 

Make no mistake. If the Qunari fail to conquer the Imperium, it will enslave them as well. To Orlais and Ferelden, nations who came to be long after Tevinter began its process of decadence, slavery is horrendous. But to the Imperium, it's still a normal practice. 

 

Proof of that is that Alexius tries to enslave the Rebel Mages lead by Fiona using a perverse system of debt, in which the mages owe their safety and survival to the Magister and are thus submitted to indentured servitude to him for ten years.

 

Such system still exists in rural areas of the Third World and is (sadly) also a common practice, leading to periods of mass migration by desperate countryfolk to urban areas. In fiction, that's probably what Fenris did, and many other slaves from Tevinter, elven or not elven.

Slavery has existed in many forms amongst societies throughout time, including those of the ancient world, but the type of slavery wielded by the Tevinter Empire with the elves of Arlathan was a form of chattel slavery - the kind most open to abuse, as seen during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Your argument ignores the role of the ideology and agency of Tevinter leaders in driving them to mass-enslave an entire population. The Tevinter elite has long had a culture of ultra-competitiveness coupled with a lust for power: it's why their upper echelons are so corrupted by excessive blood magic. Far from being down to economic determinism, expansionism and mass-enslavement of elves as well as other humans appears to have been a means to fuel the desire for excessive wealth and power by the Tevinters.

Yeah, but Solas created the Veil to to stop the Evanuris.  

 

The psycho Evanuris are ultimately responsible for everything that happened to the modern day elves.

 

Yeah, Tevinter enslaved them, but the elves only became weak enough to be enslaved because of the depravity and infighting of their own leaders. 

Yes, but Tevinter still chose to enslave them (hundreds of years after the Evanuris) and so the ultimate blame must be placed at their feet. To place a larger or equal share of the blame at the feet of elven leaders hundreds of years earlier is a denial of Tevinter atrocities and the atrocities of any group since that has oppressed elves. It makes little sense for example to claim that the Evanuris were also responsible for Vaughan's gang rape in Origins!

Here's a relevant Marethari quote:

"Although you hurt no one, these humans roused their nearby village against us. As everywhere, our people are not welcome here. We have stayed too long, and we must move on--quickly. Our clan could slaughter their entire village if we cared to... but at the cost of bringing their king's rage down on our heads. These people are simple and have simple fears. This is their land so we will go peacefully."

Other than the example that Revassan Lavellan gave, it's true that we don't hear about permanent Dalish settlements being raided, but as stated, that's because they never get to that stage - as the Dalish origin proves, angry villagers are willing to force them into conflict situations which makes it difficult to establish such settlements: their nomadic lifestyle is necessary for this reason. If only all human societies were as chilled as the Rivain!

If they were as powerful as the lore implies them to have been, Tevinter may not have been able to conquer and enslave the elves had they not weakened themselves first.

 

In a sense, humanity may have been able to rise to power because of the Evanuris's folly. 

Sure (though it was more likely Solas creating the Veil that led to the severe weakening of the elves) but the ultimate reason for their demise was Tevinter expansionism - they're the ones who swung the axe.

I don't think the Dalish are justified in their racist myths anywhere near to the degree the CEs are justified, and funny enough the CEs are seemingly less racist. Also, the Dalish live pretty privileged lives. The biggest difficulties of their nomadic lifestyle are self-imposed - they're nomands by choice. That's not to say they haven't had it bad. They have. I just don't see their treatment as being in any way justification to their mythical racism. 

The Dalish way of life is self-imposed because their only other options are either to live in extreme squalor under the human boot in the cities or to create their own settled communities only to be destroyed by human communities that already lay claim to that land. That doesn't make it a privileged way of life by any means - they still struggle within a hostile environment and a harsh life can breed harsh attitudes that have helped them survive. It's difficult for the Dalish to completely reject racism when the dominant human society around them is constantly hostile and prejudiced towards them. 

That's the line I'm talking about here. It doesn't mean what people think it necessarily means, because Abelas is a racist who predates the Veil. The "People" he knew where the Elvhen at the absolute height of their power. Their nation, broken by the creation of the Veil and weakened by decades/centuries/millennium of infighting could still have been the single greatest empire in post-Veil Thedas until Tevinter. 

 

I'm not saying the elves are at fault. That would be a silly conclusion even if the popular interpretation of what Abelas says is true. All I'm saying is that both narratives could be true depending on your perspective.

 

To Abelas, what the Tevinters ruined was a broken wreck of a once mighty society destroyed by its own infighting. 

To the Tevinters, what they broke and enslaved was the greatest empire known to humanity. 

 

Both can be true. 

But both narratives end in the same way: with Tevinter mass-enslaving the remaining free elves. Regardless of what civil wars the elves fought, it cannot be said that they were responsible for their own destruction when their state(s) would have endured had the Tevinter Empire not marched in and crushed it.

No, it wasn't a disease, and it wasn't mean to be an echo. It's a racist fantasy about the mongrel races infecting your perfect society. That's how the Dalish see it. They don't see humans as carrying a "disease" that infected them. They see humans as the disease. That's why they come up with this "live apart from humans". Active segregation from people because you think they're made of disease is so absurdly racist, not even IRL racists groups espouse it. 

One need only look at the hostile context that the Dalish exist within to understand why such myths are so pervasive within certain Dalish communities. As Duncan narrates in the intro to the Dalish, they live in a world that "fears and despises them". We hear of Dalish who are brutalised by human bandits, tortured by Templars and chased out by angry, superstitious rabbles simply for having a different way of life. Such a belief has existed as a means of ensuring survival by discouraging young elves from actively seeking out humans as sadly, such expeditions often end in tragedy.

We don't know what happened after the Veil collapsed. Abellas says the elves destroyed themselves, but apart from being vague, he's also an outspoken racist (just see how he treats the Dalish PC). What Tevinter did is a quite large unknown for us. 

If you take Dorian to that conversation, Abelas specifically states that there was a war (of carrion on a corpse) and triumphalist Tevinter narratives suggest that the elven civilisation of the time was shattered by them and the people enslaved. We know for certain that Shartan played an important role in Andraste's war when he mobilised large numbers of elven slaves to fight the Tevinters. So we know for sure that mass-enslavement happened happened at some point, and unless the elves sold themselves into slavery en-masse, it's absurd to place the blame on them and not on the expansionist Empire next door that kept them as slaves. 

You're just reiterating my point.  Previous to DA:I, and thus previous to Abelas telling us what happened, the story was that the humans attacked Arlethan and destroyed the elven empire and somehow were responsible for the loss of their immortality.  Now we know none of those things are true.  So instead of the best the elves had to offer being powerless to stop an aggressive humanity, we now know that the elves are responsible for their own downfall, and humans just scraped up what was left.

 

It changes the narrative of the elves from 'inherently inferior' to 'made some bad decisions that cost them everything'.

The elves didn't wipe their own society out. Whatever Solas did by creating the Veil, there were still elven nations left and those were destroyed and their people mass-enslaved by a highly expansionist Empire that went on to colonise other human societies further south. It's laughable to blame elven enslavement on the elves and not on the Empire that enslaved them!

If I recall correctly, Alistair's claim that lyrium only enhances Templar talents was retconned. It's a rather absurd concept that mundanes are capable of performing holy energy blasts from nowhere - it has to be the lyrium powering it. Only the seekers are capable of using similar abilities without lyrium and that's due to their connection with spirits of faith.

Merrill also had a Welsh accent, so it might just be a case of different clans having different accents. But Merrill was only 4 when she was given to Sabrae, which seems a bit young for her to have held on to her original clan's accent. Or maybe it doesn't have an in-game reason, Gaider said he asked for Eve Myles specifically.

Yeah, though Merrill was also the elf most interested in the elven past and reclaiming ancient elven glory, so could be a link there. In DA2, a couple of the human NPCs also had Welsh accents such as Emeric (the Templar investigator).

The conservative magisters who resist Dorian's and Maeveris' attempts to reform Tevinter for the better. (The ones who assassinated his father, and other extremists who think like the Venatori, if not the Venatori themselves.) Also the Qunari who've redoubled their efforts to conquer and assimilate Thedas.

The problem is that this limits roleplaying. If both the Qunari and the Tevinter nationalists are antagonists, then pretty much the only people we'd be able to side with would be the Tevinter moderates. I think it would be great if we were able to side with the more extreme factions if we wanted to, for example, it would be great to roleplay a former elven slave who was brutalised and dehumanised by his/her Tevinter masters and who is now loyal to the Qunari cause as a means of striking back against the oppressors and liberating the rest of the slaves. 

Unfortunately, DA:I moved away from giving the ability to the player to control radical characters. The warden in Origins could make some really radical choices throughout the game including committing the Right of Annulment, massacring the werewolves or Dalish, killing Connor to ensure that the demon within him was defeated, abandoning Redcliffe to its fate, making a deal with Caladrius or sacrificing the elves in a blood ritual, preserving an anvil that could turn people into powerful soldiers devoid of free will etc. etc.  Of course, one still (usually) had the choice of selecting more moderate decisions in Origins, but in Inquisition, almost all of the choices made had to be moderate. The most extreme that the Inquisitor could get was arguing for mage freedom and making a deal with Imshael. The Inquisition was (bizarrely) basically an organisation of religious moderates with very little in terms of extreme elements: all of the extremists in the game were lumped together as antagonists.

Unless she changes her veiws on a lot of things, Calpernia's version of reforming Tevinter is probably incompatible with Maevaris and Dorian's. 

Agreed. Her absolute sense of Tevinter superiority and her desire to destabilise and lay waste to the southern nations to strengthen her own puts her strongly at odds with them. She may be anti-slavery (though even then seemingly only in principle - her organisation in practice used numerous slaves!), but she's still an ardent imperialist and nationalist convinced that Tevinter supremacy is a necessity.