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[Hanako Ikezawa]

 

 

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The Inquisition's power is not absolute: it must earn its place among the forces in conflict. Sister Leliana understands this well, and has called on an old friend, Lady Josephine Montilyet, to be the Inquisition’s ambassador in the halls of the influential. The eldest daughter of a noble Antivan family, Josephine is a rising star among diplomats, skilled at forging alliances with tact, grace, and carefully cultivated favors. She is a consummate planner who understands that resurrecting the Inquisition will require support and goodwill from Thedas's movers and shakers. Fortunately, the ambassador enjoys a challenge, and she sincerely believes that the Inquisition is the best way to halt the chaos sweeping Thedas.

 

Interview

Spoiler

[DRAGON AGE]: Josephine is a new character to Dragon Age series. What can you tell us about her?

 

[SYLVIA FEKETEKUTY]: Josephine is a people person. She’s optimistic, she likes finding solutions, and needs barely any sleep to work at full capacity. She misses the view of the sea from her bedroom in Antiva City (though she only brings that up with friends).

 

[DA]: What was your process when developing her character?

 

[SF]: When I came up to DA: Inquisition from the Mass Effect 3 team, the idea for Josephine’s character was basically one word on a whiteboard (“Diplomat???”). When our lead writer, David Gaider, handed me the character and told me to go, that word was enough to get me started. I tried to think of what kind of diplomat would work well with the Inquisition. Why she was the best fit for the role, how the heck she ended up there, how she would bounce off other characters, etc...

 

[DA]: Was it challenging to start from scratch, or did you enjoy the experience?

 

[SF]: I enjoyed it, but it was daunting. One of the characters I wrote in Mass Effect 3 was Liara. Fans had gotten to know Liara from ME1 onwards, so I was able to do some fun stuff by pulling from the history players had with her. Josephine, however, I made up from scratch. The freedom was great, but in the back of my mind I was anxiously asking myself “Does her characterization work? Will people enjoy talking with her? Do I know what I’m doing?!”

 

[DA]: What was the end result?

 

[SF]: I received some great feedback from the rest of the writing team early on that helped me a great deal. I fell in love with Josephine by the end—especially once I heard her voice actor reading lines for the first time. It was like she’d finally become a real person.

 

[DA]: As a noblewoman, she seems to bring a different set of skills to the Inquisition. What is her primary area of expertise?

 

[SF]: Diplomacy. Josephine has worked for years as an ambassador in the royal courts in Thedas. She’s very familiar with Orlesian politics, which comes in handy. She’s an excellent mediator and speaker. Crucially, she knows just how hard it can be to change people’s minds, and how much someone’s ego is tangled up in being “right”. Josephine prefers to gently steer people into agreement whenever possible, but she’ll take a stand when needed. There’s occasionally an iron fist beneath that velvet glove.

 

[DA]: How would you describe Josephine’s role?

 

[SF]: Josephine is the head ambassador of the Inquisition. She handles diplomatic disputes on the Inquisitor’s behalf, raising the player’s reputation and spreading the Inquisition’s influence throughout Thedas.

 

Or in less fancy terms: Josephine does a lot of work that’s very important, and also very boring. Keeping a huge organization like the Inquisition afloat takes negotiations and paperwork and endless politics, but Josephine lives for that kind of stuff. She prides herself on having the Inquisitor’s back (for example, making deals with the right people, or heading off power plays by other nobles) so the Inquisitor is free to make the decisions that actually shape the world.

 

[DA]: Any other considerations when creating Josephine’s character?

 

[SF]From the start, I knew she shouldn’t be a warrior. She’s surrounded by people who are excellent, highly-skilled fighters, and I wanted our diplomat to be different. Josephine’s handier with a pen than a sword, and much more useful negotiating than wandering the wilderness.

 

[DA]: What did you enjoy most about writing Josephine?

 

[SF]: Finding a voice for her, finding the ways she fit into the world. Writing the scenes where she becomes friends with the PC. Those can be tricky, but I love it when they come together. Working with Josephine’s voice actor and cinematic designer (the person who “directs” the conversations) was particularly great.

 

It was also fun to write a romance again. And because I know people will ask: You can try to win Josephine’s heart as any race or gender. I think we ended up with some fun moments whether you’re trying to romance her or just be her friend, but there’s one particular scene that I love.

 

[DA]: As a skilled diplomat, she must be difficult to win an argument against. Does she get along well with the other advisors?

 

[SF]: She has a good relationship with Leliana. They’re old acquaintances, and they both know the other is very good at what they do. That said, I think it is a relief for them to see: “Oh, our work styles mesh after all. Phew!” That’s not to say they always agree with each other, but they’re a good team.

 

Meanwhile, while Josephine and Cullen respect each other, Josephine would always rather work towards a diplomatic solution while Cullen doesn’t always think it’s the practical choice. Josephine can get impatient with that attitude and the clash in their philosophies.

 

[DA]: At the end of the day, we’ve got to know: in a battle of fashion, who wins between Josephine and Vivienne?

 

[SF]: Wow, I feel like the last person on earth qualified to judge that! I’ll just say: Vivienne will wear the latest haute couture, no matter how outrageous, and make it look good. Josephine appreciates finely-made clothing, but when it comes to formal wear, she’s a traditionalist. (Of course, Antiva follows lots of Orlesian fashion trends, but Josephine’s not going to admit that. Hometown pride and all.)

 

Team Josie

Writer: Sylvia Feketekuty

Animator: Richard Boisvert

Voice Actress: Allegra Clark

 

Scribbles' scribbles

Spoiler

http://afragmentcast...ged/scribe-girl

 

by Aimo

 

http://al-norton.tum...718/my-princess

 

http://connorkenwayy...barely-uploaded

 

http://foxghost.tumb...s-scribbles-the

 

http://gmk9vii.devia...ilyet-523659496

 

http://hemiart.tumblr.com/

 

http://hyperbali.tum...ged/scribe-girl

 

http://josephinemont...t/90466094558/x

 

by Lycana

 

http://masyafs.tumbl...nk-smudge-on-ur

 

http://merhelv.tumbl...m/tagged/my-art

 

http://omikujii.tumb...quisition-since

 

http://orisoni.tumblr.com/

 

http://pheberoni.tum...py-but-ayye-new

 

http://psdo.tumblr.com/

 

By Queen Rinji

http://virak.deviant...02642#comments 

 

[Allan Schumacher]

It's a bit cuter I think

[David Gaider]

So... is Scribbles unarmed in this scene or is she holding a weapon we can't see?

 

Her chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Surprise and fear and ruthless efficiency. Surprise and fear and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Inquisitor.

 

And the comfy chair.

[Allan Schumacher]

Who else?

 

I feel really bad that I don't know all the people who help make these games.

 

Do not feel bad about this.  There's a lot of people.  I know this... one of my jobs on DAO was ensuring the Russian localization of the credits had its font issues resolved.  I had to watch the whole thing.  And pay attention....

[Allan Schumacher]

You actually had to pay attention to the credits? I offer my condolences.

 

Every letter.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'd imagine they would have done that work already. They are probably feeding on fan tears.

 

Or the marketing people had something come up and were otherwise not really able to deploy this?

 

Yes, it's probably not hard to do just this, but if something else was considered more important for today, it'd get pushed back.  It's a lot like most game features.  In and of itself many of them are not particularly hard or time intensive... but working on that thing means not working on a different thing instead.

 

I actually don't know how big the marketing group that takes care of the reveals are.  But I think if people feel there's an army of people organizing these things, there's a decent chance that's not the case.

[Allan Schumacher]

I did not expect that to be taken quite so seriously.

 

Internet's a tricky place.  It can be hard to tell if people think we're just being obstinately cruel/irresponsible simply to spite the fans.

[Allan Schumacher]

And how hard is it to just said "not happening" BEFORE ?

 

Because, to be perfectly honest, I complete misread the frustration as being playful - and it's possible other people did too.  Part of the issue is my own bias, because as a gamer I don't share the perspective of feeling compelled to know the information in other games that I am following.  I went around clicking like on a lot of the posts in this thread as I caught up just to have some fun with the fanbase, only to eventually come up and realize that my doing that likely makes me just seem like a giant ass to some.

 

David Hulegaard did eventually state that it's not happening.  Maybe they started to realize it then?

 

 

Note, then, that I take something more seriously and it's seen as surprising that I take things so seriously.  But that's because I course corrected as the tone of the thread seemed to be decidedly less fun/playful as it is.

 

But then we have to reconcile that I'm pretty certain that some of the stuff I saw as fun/playful actually was fun/playful.  So if we go all serious, then we're just a buzzkill and those people are left in the balance.

[Allan Schumacher]

You misunderstood me, I was asking, that, if the marketing isn't ready to show something, why don't they tell the fans before ? It's not like David Hulegaard doesn't talk to fans at all; he did shot down Scribbles reveal, but after everyone waited for 4 hours.

 

I can't speak for David, but I didn't know myself, and I guess my inexperience is that I thought that it's something that the fan base would have fun with and didn't realize people were actually getting genuinely upset.  So I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment that I misunderstood you.

 

I mean, you're literally asking for us to tell fans not to expect something that we never told them to expect.

 

In conjunction with what David Gaider said, it's possible that they didn't realize that they weren't going to reveal today until much, much later in the day.

 

 

 

 

Well, there really wasn't much frustration during the event per se, more giddy expectation. It only turned into frustration when it turned out it wasn't going to happen at all. Some fans were massively disappointed and felt like if Bioware knew they weren't going to reveal her today, they could have said something so that people weren't refreshing the Dragon Age website every 5 seconds for a few hours.

 

This requires us seeing people shift from happy to angry, and as you say during the event people were waiting for news with enthusiasm - that doesn't convey the image to me that they are mandating that they better get news or they're going to be angry with us.  So no, I wasn't expecting people to be actually mad, for the reasons I detailed above.  And as stated, in makes the assumption that we knew in the morning that she wouldn't be revealed and it also makes the assumption that David's post didn't come shortly after they knew, either.

[Allan Schumacher]

Well, this is BSN, or it's new incarnation. You have to expect some people to get mad Allan. About anything really. Lol

 

I will always hope for it to not happen, however.  There's no reason it has to happen.

 

 

Plus the whole Follower Friday thing is still in the back of people's minds- with the whole not telling people to not wait around and get their hopes up for nothing.

 

Which is probably why nothing was promised or mentioned in the slightest until they knew for certain.

[Sheryl Chee]

Yeah, they certainly lightened up her skin tone, been tweaking the nose to I believe.

 

Her skin tone has not been lightened. In screencaps of the E3 trailer, she looks extremely dark because of the lighting. Her shot in the character reveal is taken in an sunny outdoor area that is much brighter.

[Allan Schumacher]

Josephine...nice! Did anyone guess the name right?^^

She is indeed beautiful!

 

I totally called it as Josephine!

 

 

I also imagined this being played:

 

[Allan Schumacher]

We should ask Allan. He's done the romance(and thinks quite highly of it) so he would know. That is if he can tell us. 

 

Just as a note, I know the romance from a plot narrative perspective.  I don't know the details of the scenes.

[Allan Schumacher]

JOSEPHINE, LET ME LOVE YOU

 

EDIT: Whoa she's confirmed a bisexual LI? YESSSS

 

plsdontracegatepls

 

Sylvia mentioned that you can try to win her heart regardless of race or gender.

[Allan Schumacher]

I really don't like her last name. Montilyet for me is an almost unpronounceable name and when I hear how its said, all I'm going to be thinking is "Well why can't it be spelled that way and not this way?" 

 

Other then that, she seems like she'll be a good advisor/fun character to interact with.

 

Mon-till-yay which comes across as pretty french sounding to me.  At 3 syllables, you'll probably get the hang of it pretty quickly I think.  Of course, depending on where you grew up maybe you're just not used to using some phonemes.

 

 

'et' often makes an 'ay' sound.  I mean, the french word for 'and' is actually 'et' and it's pronounced 'ay.'

 

Another common one in French is -er and -ez to make the 'ay' sound.  I think this is similar in languages like Spanish and maybe Italian as well, though I don't know.

[Allan Schumacher]

To be fair, I'm just trying to remember the pronunciation from what Sylvia shared.

[Allan Schumacher]

I agree ruthless doesn't fit, but her character should be consistent with a capable diplomat. She shouldn't turn into a stammering or worshipful fool around the Inquisitor, for instance.

 

This has come up a few times in this thread.  What makes someone think she'd be like this?

[Allan Schumacher]

I read some of her romance stuff and it was pretty cute adorable

[Allan Schumacher]

And Allan came around to tease us.

 

You were fishing for it IIRC <.<

[Allan Schumacher]

I'll never understand tumblr's obsession with making everyone Aryan.

 

I would bet more money on it being someone intentionally going onto Tumblr to stir up a hornet's nest.

[Allan Schumacher]

oh good! but still, it's kinda of a bad sign

 

I wouldn't read too much into it.

[Allan Schumacher]

After this evening, I am now officially on the Josephine VA fan wagon

[Sheryl Chee]

Sheryl is creeping this thread.

Hi Sheryl. I hope you're enjoying our squealing.

 

Yessss! I'm so excited about Allegra's announcement. She really made Josie come to life and I can't wait for you to meet her! 

[Allan Schumacher]

If I were a dev, I click the 'sign in anonymously' box when I logged in, so people couldn't stalk me.

 

<.<

[Allan Schumacher]

Yeaaahhhsuh and I'd love to get more info on that. 'Cause Spanish and Italian are reallllyyyy different.

 

I wouldn't overthink it too much.  Hoping for a detailed breakdown as to why people speak with particular accents, as opposed to them being used simply to provide some flair, is a risky venture IMO.

 

Unless a writer wants to interject to countermand this, my understanding is that the people of Thedas tend to all speak the same language.