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Hum no, there are fereldens with different pigmentations and features in the game and if the game is base on Europe, than the majority is not even "white".
LOL even such. No one is saying Asians or anyone else are bound by certain skin colors. If Fereldens looked like everyone, then no one would recognize that a Ferelden looks like a Ferelden.
And how does the Antivan look?
Obviously tanner or with certain characteristics that aren't mentioned in game. I don't know what features the people of Thedas would associate with being Antivan other than possibly being tanner. It was just an example. Unless you want to argue that the CC only allows features that people would consider "Ferelden." Highly doubtful I would suspect.
Obviously tanner or with certain characteristics that aren't mentioned in game. I don't know what features the people of Thedas would associate with being Antivan other than possibly being tanner. It was just an example. Unless you want to argue that the CC only allows features that people would consider "Ferelden." Highly doubtful I would suspect.
I see, so why they sound like someone from Spain? See the problem is that Antiva is based on what you would call "latin@" which is an awful word in itself, and people from countries with that type of accent do not have a fix type of pigmentation, just like any other country in Europe. There is a mix of a lot of cultures and people all over, you cannot separate them with a line base on pigmentation.
I would say that the way to recognize a Ferelden is by the way they dress, act and speak more than anything else. The book "world of thedas" seems to support this but I am not a dev so I do not know.
I see, so why they sound like someone from Spain? See the problem is that Antiva is based on what you would call "latin@" which is an awful word in itself, and people from countries with that type of accent do not have a fix type of pigmentation, just like any other country in Europe. There is a mix of a lot of cultures and people all over, you cannot separate them with a line base on pigmentation.
I would say that the way to recognize a Ferelden is by the way they dress, act and speak more than anything else. The book "world of thedas" seems to support this but I am not a dev so I do not know.
I wasn't trying to. You asked what features Antivans had. I said "I don't know other than POSSIBLY being tanner." The 'possibly' part being that's how I've come to recognize their traits seeing as how the game world describes them as that way. You can even see that in my previous post before the one you quoted; I wouldn't presume to separate particular people by hard line skin color. I only used the Antivan example because it is a common stereotype the same way people from Rivain are said to be swarthier than most.
I don't remember the appearance of the average Antivan ever being described in game, unlike the Rivaini. We have met some Antivan characters though...
You're getting the fact that Bioware likes to let players make their characters look however the hell they want mixed up with the fact that Hawke is supposed to look a certain way. It's pretty obvious that comment was meant for a default Hawke seeing as how the game doesn't recognize when you make your Hawke look like they could be from Rivain or Antiva.
Ferelden's don't look or sound any different than Free Marchers though...When she says you "have that look about you" it's probably because you're dressed like a turnip and smell like a wet dog. Your own countrymen even mistake you for a Marcher based solely on your clothes. From the characters we've been shown you can't distinguish between Antivans, Orlesians, Fereldens, or Free Marchers based on looks. Only on accent and maybe clothing.
Ferelden's don't look or sound any different than Free Marchers though...When she says you "have that look about you" it's probably because you're dressed like a turnip and smell like a wet dog. Your own countrymen even mistake you for a Marcher based solely on your clothes. From the characters we've been shown you can't distinguish between Antivans, Orlesians, Fereldens, or Free Marchers based on looks. Only on accent and maybe clothing.
how did the British distinguish from the Irish?
"The Rivaini have skin tones ranging from dark tan to ebony"
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Rivain
It doesn't actually say they're black though. Many races can have dark skintones, including Asians.
The thing that comes from a post of DG here in the BSN, so someone could have played the game, several times in fact, and never herad of that before. Really, I haven't found anything about ethnicities in codex.
I don't remember the appearance of the average Antivan ever being described in game, unlike the Rivaini. We have met some Antivan characters though... (...)
Again, it seems not, Rivaini are not described anywhere in the game, not their ethnicity and not in codex at least. Maybe is there a conversation that I can't remember where someone mentions it?
Yeah, I went with the extra margin for the total of ~5000 years for Thedas humans, given they supposedly came from Par Vollen 'many thousand years ago', for which there's no exact records.
The Inuits example is interesting to me in the sense, if you want to argue that today Inuits are dark skinned because they're recent migrants coming from areas farther south where the sun exposure had impact on their current appearance... then actually humans in Thedas mirror that -- they are said to be recent migrants from (sub)tropical areas of their world, and similarly didn't yet live in their new place for long enough yet to adapt to these new conditions. As such, the majority of them being white skinned is very arbitrary and not really grounded in "but but the limited sun exposure" -- they could just as easily be Asian and/or largely (and more sensibly) dark skinned, and it'd actually make more sense.
The Inuit are an interesting example of a people not, or to be more specific, less subject to environmental pressures because it may be that their diet ' sidestepped' the need for paler skin. One explanation (there may be others, and I am not entirely sure this is the one that explains all) is that their fish-and-meat diet contains enough vitamin D for them to ' keep' dark skin, rather than 'paling up' so they can synthesize enough vitamin D themselves.
It would also explain why the Inuit and some of their close kin in Siberia tend to be a bit darker than other East Asian populations directly to the south / southwest of them.
On the European side, things are also pretty complex, because recent DNA evidence suggests there may have been a 'whitening up' of a population of predominantly recent Middle Eastern farmer origin during the Chalcolithic / Bronze Age, the result of migrations from further north and east, the ripples of which also spread eastward and southward beyond Europe.
Ainu: Bearded, relatively light-skinned East Asians, but definitely not European.
The net result is a range of skin tones that on a global scale is roughly what you would expect, but with lots of exceptions and nuances.
Other than that, I'm with those who feel that Thedas is ' arbitrarily' white, because there aren't any in-universe reasons why Thedosians should be ' white', nor that it is possible to discern any sensible worldbuilding rules in this regard. I myself tend towards two reactions: ' why the hell don't they straigthen things out' (aka quickly expanding the lore and including + rationalizing stuff) OR 'Apparently anything goes, so why the hell not, three cheers for equal opportunity & all that'.
I tend towards the latter, even if intellectually I would prefer the first I guess.
Thedas just isn't a particularly meticulous case of worldbuilding, and expecting it to be otherwise is probably futile.
I think it'd be pretty easy to slip a certain amount of asian looking characters into the lore. We haven't seen enough of the world to say otherwise. We don't know that the people of Mont-de-Glace, for a random example, don't mostly look asian, because that region was settled by a different tribe back when humanity arrived in the area.
Tougher if you want to have a large proportion outside of a limited geographical area, though.
Guest_Caladin_*
how did the British distinguish from the Irish?
We normally know where someone is from from dialogue, this day n age no matter how someone looks you cant really say where they are from, you can guess but thats about it, until they actually open there mouth just going by visuals alone only tells a moderate story.
... Not sure if serious. 'most of the nobility' attending the DLC party that you can interact with and who are actually Orlesian (other than Leliana whom I'd mentioned already) is De Lancet family who get explicitly made fun of by another guest and "hear my accent my accent is so Orlesian" son of the Duke that gets like three lines before you dispose of him (but not before questioning either his tastes or sexual orientation) Your other examples aren't from the DA games, but either from Japanese-made animated movie or tie-in book. One of them is speculated on the Wiki as possibly not an Orlesian at all.The Divine Justinian, Empress Celene, Regalyan, most of the nobility attending Duke Prosper's party aside from the Duke himself, Liselle the shop keeper, Ser Michel, Briala, Gaspard... should I go on?
I thought DA:O's depiction of Orlesians was fine, with Leliana, Riordan and even Isolde being proper dramatic characters, but DA2's were rather stuck in the funny foreigner role.
I thought DA:O's depiction of Orlesians was fine, with Leliana, Riordan and even Isolde being proper dramatic characters, but DA2's were rather stuck in the funny foreigner role.
I didn't care for DA2's depiction of the Orlesians either. I thought it leaned a bit too close to francophobia. Most of the Orlesian characters in that game were a collection of (bad) French stereotypes.
I thought DA:O's depiction of Orlesians was fine, with Leliana, Riordan and even Isolde being proper dramatic characters, but DA2's were rather stuck in the funny foreigner role.
That's hard to avoid with any strong accent.
Riordan is a Fereldan nativeI thought DA:O's depiction of Orlesians was fine, with Leliana, Riordan and even Isolde being proper dramatic characters, but DA2's were rather stuck in the funny foreigner role.
But yeah, if he was an Orlesian that'd be a nice example of a more nuanced character.
Riordan is a Fereldan native
Riordan was born in Highever but he is culturally Orlesian.
I was born in Ireland but thanks to formative years in an English public school I talk like Hugh Grant.
Riordan is a Fereldan native
Well, based on the games themselves Orlesians are semi-evil and have outrageous accents, or they are 'goodish' but actually Ferelden-born and / or bred (Leliana, Riordan, Avelline). It may not have been intended that way, but that is how it came out.
Orlais (in the games, and to some extent it seems also in the novels) is probably a good example of the potential dangers of very vaguely basing a fantasy country off a real one, but without being able (or willing) to give it even a bit of the complexity and nuance it deserves. Instead, Orlais effectively serves merely as a vaguely 'exotic' container for a small number of clichés and stereotypes about France and/or the wider fantasy genre.
There've been moments during Sarkozy's tenure I was worried he'd play the English version of DA:O and DA2 and instantly order the force de frappe to nuke Edmonton 
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Mask of the Empire is a pretty good portrayal of Orlais and shows the distinct differences between Orlais, Ferelden, and historical France. It's a story about the strong division between the commoners and the nobility--something Ferelden doesn't have quite as strongly, because of their warrior-king culture (which Orlais lacks).
Mask of the Empire is a pretty good portrayal of Orlais and shows the distinct differences between Orlais, Ferelden, and historical France. It's a story about the strong division between the commoners and the nobility--something Ferelden doesn't have quite as strongly, because of their warrior-king culture (which Orlais lacks).
I'd think it'd be surprising if there were not huge differences between orleasian and fereldan nobility, considering that orlesian nobility seems to be based on the french nobility of a very different historical period. Personally, I disliked TME precisely for its focus on orlesian nobility, because it kept reminding me of novels and films along the lines of Les Liaison Dangereuses...
If there's one thing I could complain about for not being medieval enough , it's definitely Orlais 
(...) Orlais (in the games, and to some extent it seems also in the novels) is probably a good example of the potential dangers of very vaguely basing a fantasy country off a real one, but without being able (or willing) to give it even a bit of the complexity and nuance it deserves. (...)
I absolutely agree. I understand searching for inspiration in history, but in cases like this, I think it's better to keep as hidden as possible real world references
I'd think it'd be surprising if there were not huge differences between orleasian and fereldan nobility, considering that orlesian nobility seems to be based on the french nobility of a very different historical period. Personally, I disliked MotE precisely for its focus on orlesian nobility, because it kept reminding me of novels and films along the lines of Les Liaison Dangereuses...
If there's one thing I could complain about for not being medieval enough , it's definitely Orlais
I think the 'problem' here is, to a large degree, structural. In general elite and urban middle class culture, as well as political structures, tends to be very similar over broad cultural zones, like medieval Catholic Europe or the respective culturally Arab- or Persian-dominated parts of medieval Islam. The countries in Thedas seem waaaaaaay too different, but at the same time the people often look and sound the same (cha, lack of budget for different clothing styles, armour, voice actors with different but 'culturally' consistent accents etc.).
A lot of D&D descended settings do this; mechanically, it allows for adventures and locations with a broad range of distinctive backgrounds, so you can have 1600s swashbuckling adventures here, Egyptian tomb exploration there, and Versailles court intrigue over there plus all the pseudo-medieval dungeon crawling and dragonslaying you want, while still remaining within a single 'world'.
The problem is that this kind of approach tends to undermine the cohesion and believability of a setting, while you could get similar but more 'consistent' results with a bit more research or effort.
As for referencing real world history or nations, I think it is best to keep it unrecognizable, OR going for it no-holds barred, meaning something that is clearly, unequivocally a fantasy version of that country or empire but fully embraces it and turns it to 11 (in a fantasy sense). Examples would be Tigana or Arbonne from Guy Gavriel Kay's novels, or the Empire from Warhammer Fantasy.
how did the British distinguish from the Irish?
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