2 réponses à ce sujet

[Wugger]

Amidst all the rage about not being able to pick your race or having to talk etc etc, the thing that annoys me most is the use of the place name Kirkwall.

I have family in the REAL Kirkwall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwall so whenever I hear the name used I just remember going there to visit my family, the radoactive beaches and the time me and my cousin set and old sofa on fire. It ruins immersion for me.

You'd think in a magical fantasy kingdom of magical wonder elves and dragons and stuff they'd be able to make up a new place name rather than rehashing an obscure Scottish town.

[David Gaider]

Gegenlicht wrote...
Pretty certain they picked a lot of the names from real maps or travel guides or whatever. The Anderfels contain names of a number of existing German towns and cities for example, Rialto, the capital of wherever Zevran's from again, is a city quarter of Venice and so on.

Edit: 
And mostly all of Thedas is inspired by the real world. Orlais is France, Ferelden is England, the Anderfels is Germany and so on. Hell, the history of the Elves bears striking resemblances to the history the Jewish people to some extent. Driven from their homeland, roaming the earth, ghettoized and generally treated as second class people.

We don't deliberately pick names off a map, if that's what you're suggesting. Sometimes the names we come up with happen to coincide with an existing place-- really, when you're making stuff like this up it's bound to happen from time to time, and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often than it does.

As it is there's nothing to associate Kirkwall of the Far Reaches with the Scottish town beyond them sharing the name.

Modifié par David Gaider, 12 juillet 2010 - 10:50 .

[David Gaider]

Shinian2 wrote...
Far be it from little old me to correct the lead designer, but don't you mean Free Marches? 

Damn. That's one of the things I'll do from time to time-- it's one of the place names that changed at some point (I forget why) and so I sometimes still call it by the old name. Far Reaches = Free Marches.