Bioware has attempted to provide us with a world in which
our decisions, ideally, matter to the outcome of the game, and appear to be
striving to move beyond providing merely the illusion of choice, and with it,
the tired formula of opting to be either “the good guy”, or “the bad guy”. Yet
why, in Thedas have they presented players with the demons of the fade and
blood magic, two major story elements that invariably reinforce these very same
dichotomies and illusion of choice?
I remember being so excited when Merrill seemed to have
somehow gotten around the “creatures from the fade that want to deal with
humans are invariably evil” clause, adding an element of complexity to the
narrative, and some very interesting implications for what the Fade was. And I
remember being just as disappointed, if not more so, with the inevitable
realization, nope, still an evil demon behind this in need of a good slaying,
but not before terrible things happen to Merrill and her loved ones to get the
point across – yet again – that you just don’t do deals with demons.
I was so excited because I had hoped that they had done
something new with the Fade, made it a more complicate and compelling place
rich with narrative potential. Perhaps, as a realm of thought, belief and
desire, the beings that inhabited it were actually what, consciously or
unconsciously, people believed them to be. That the demons in the game terrorize
the creatures of the material world because of the very metaphysical
assumptions those creatures make about them. Aha! I thought to myself, perhaps
the Dailish, not being part of the dominant human culture, had a radically
different cosmology surrounding the Fade (which it seems that they do indeed
have) and that thus the creatures of the Fade treat them very differently, and
manifest differently, than they do for humans. But no, just as Fenris sighs
bitterly when confronted with the eleven blood mage Huon who has just killed
his wife in the throes of his predictable delusions of grandeur: “It’s always
the same”.
Which brings me to the related topic of blood mages and
blood magic. Blood mages invariably fall into a similar category as demons in
the game, because with few exceptions if you find out that someone is dabbling
with blood magic, it will turn out that they will either turn on you, or have
terrible things happen to them and their loved ones. Except, of course, if you
chose to be a blood mage, in which case you can seemingly bleed magic with all
the barely contained glee of some demented medieval surgeon without anyone in
your party giving you a second glance.
Another reason I was excited about the doubt that Merrill
cast on the status of blood magic is that, if she had indeed gained it through
some none-demon’s-gonna-getcha-in-the-end means then perhaps this too was more
about cultural baggage than an aspect of the game world itself. As it currently
stands, the evils associated with blood magic seem to simply reproducing old
dichotomies of the mind being pure and the body impure. Wouldn’t it add a layer
of depth and intrigue to the story if this association turned out to be merely
yet another physical manifestation of the effects of beliefs on the fabric of
the Fade? You could then have many different kinds of magic with holistic and
novel properties, and interesting plot points involving the relationship
between the mind and the body. You could even bring in Feynriel, the Dreamer
mage, and account for how he can kill people in their dreams and where his
powers come from, perhaps even making him, in some ways, a representative of
the balance between blood magic and other kinds of magic, or of the body and
the mind.
In any event, I feel that in a game that has broken as much
ground as Dragon Age has, in terms of presenting gay and lesbian characters and
involving a world in which prostitution and other adult themes actually exist
to varying degrees as they do in the real world (barring the fact that almost
everyone is bisexual, which can be forgiven as a kind of fan service), it seems
more than a bit of a letdown to have story elements that are so persistently,
and predictably good or evil.
There is a lot of potential here Bioware. I hope you make good
use of it.
Modifié par Siderius, 25 août 2012 - 04:05 .
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