Das Tentakel wrote...
There was nothing Dark Age about Ferelden, even if some pre-release PR stuff used terms like 'Anglo-Saxon' and 'frontier'. Using walls made of undressed stone, copying a picture of woodcarvings in a medieval Norwegian church for interior decoration and picking a few Anglo-Saxon and medieval German personal names left and right does not make for a Dark Ages feel.
No, but the large base of utterly uneducated farmers, the government that has basically no grip on anything over the horizon, the extreme but disorganized religious presence (no evidence of an Inquisition or Seekers in Ferelden, for instance), the fact that there are birds nesting in the Great Hall of the king's palace and dropping bird **** everywhere (granted, that's from the books), that half the army consists of DOGS that live with their masters like family members, and pretty much all fancy clothing/stuff comes from another country . . . yeah. That's dark ages. I'm not talking just about architecture here, but about the general cultural state of the country.
For the rest, Ferelden is one of the Generic provinces of Fantasian Blandistan. But that was sort of okay in DA:O, as it serves as the normal default 'America with swords' place.
Granted, this is also true.
I wish I had seen what you apparently saw. What I saw was a somewhat loveless fantasy version of Stalinist Gothic architecture (1930s-early 50s) mixed with Art deco.
Some overtones of Brutalism, too. The thing is, those styles arose in times and places where a lot of stuff had been wrecked (or was being built/rebuilt) and there wasn't any grand unifying "culture". And why shouldn't the city look like it'd just been built within the past 10-20 years? Most of the places I've been where there's been constant cultural upheaval (such as, say, BERLIN) don't have a lot of historical stuff around because it ALL GOT WRECKED BY INVADERS. Instead, they have some functional but bland overall architecture which everyone ignores (just like Kirkwall), a government that feels very "pro tem" and not really in control of anything even if it's been around for quite some time (just like Kirkwall), a sizeable underclass consisting largely of immigrants (just like Kirkwall), and one or two large, hideous monuments to things nobody actually approves of any more, frequently salted with bullet-holes and/or bomb damage (again, just like Kirkwall. Heck, you personally get to destroy even more of what's left of the Imperium's monuments).
Gunpowder weapons were actually introduced during the high middle ages (13th-14th century), so I wouldn't take that as evidence that the Qunari are at, or even remotely near, a late 18th century level of technology.
If the Qunari had first invaded with said gunpowder weapons 10 years ago, I'd say fine. But they invaded THREE HUNDRED years ago with cannon. And CULTURALLY they exhibit French Revolutionary-era Marxist thinking. It's quite possible the only reason they don't use rifles is because of their utter dread of anybody getting their hands on gunpowder weapons . . . it's MUCH harder to steal a cannon than it is a rifle.
No offense, but I suggest a bit more reading. Sophisticated as Rome was, technologically its achievements had been surpassed by the late medieval period. As for Tevinter, the Rome/Byzantium analogy so far has been a pretty weak one. I haven't seen, outside the comics, any evidence for Tevinter ever being culturally, politically, economically or militarily comparable to either Imperial Rome or its Byzantine successor state. The only analogy so far is a comparable position as the 'once-mighty empire now fallen on hard times' and some very nonchalant use of Latin-ish names and a Greek title or two. Not much to rely on, really.
Culturally, they were NOT surpassed by the late medival period. It's one thing to invent something and have it in use here and there. It's another entirely to have the usage of that invention be widespread and commonplace. Europe was such a chaotic mess of warring principalities that there wasn't much widespread ANYTHING--you could go from one town to the next village and it'd be like traveling from the Renaissance to the Stone Age. Individual improvements (such as, say, the horse collar), do not make for an overall more advanced culture. I'd take having Roman BATHS over what passed for hygeine in most of the 15th and 16th centuries ANY day.
The MotA Orlesian stuff is all over the place, chronologically. As in, ranging from the 13th to the 16th century. And the bits from the Codex and Leliana sound suspiciously Louis XIV-XVI-ish. I won't commend on the rest, I am sure I will be amazed.
True, dat, I was thinking more of the books because they talk a lot more about Orlais (and more consistently) than we've seen in the games thus far. The overall social structure in Orlais is more Medieval than Renaissance, with their Chevaliers and their feudalism, but the
cities do seem to more resemble something between the 15th, 16th, and maybe even early 17th centuries.
Granted, there's not much reason why fantasy countries should exactly mimic historical development, especially in countries constantly at war/being overtaken by Blights/ravaged by mages/etc. Like I said earlier . . . when the culture is all broken up you can walk 20 miles and go from Renaissance to Stone Age. And back.
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but that's perhaps more a matter of 'inconsistent cultural style'.
