646 réponses à ce sujet

[Rifneno]

Bioware retcon their lore all the damn time
I just don't ever care anymore
Consistency? Yeah? Who cares about consistency? Not bioware, apparently

There was a codex in DAO talking about certain things being simply impossible with magic. One of them was teleportation. When fans asked why enemy mages in DA2 could teleport around, Gaider responded saying they weren't teleporting, they were just going invisible, running to a new location at super speed, and then dropping invisibility. Seriously.

I'm not sure whether I like the hilariously bad attempts to explain retcons and inconsistencies or not. On one hand, I'd have a lot more respect for them if they were just honest and admitted what they were doing. But on the other hand, hilariously bad attempts are a lot of laughs.

[Steelcan]

So what happened to invisibility and running?  Now its "turns into a ton of books and pages and fly"

[Chari]

There was a codex in DAO talking about certain things being simply impossible with magic. One of them was teleportation. When fans asked why enemy mages in DA2 could teleport around, Gaider responded saying they weren't teleporting, they were just going invisible, running to a new location at super speed, and then dropping invisibility. Seriously.

I'm not sure whether I like the hilariously bad attempts to explain retcons and inconsistencies or not. On one hand, I'd have a lot more respect for them if they were just honest and admitted what they were doing. But on the other hand, hilariously bad attempts are a lot of laughs.

Oh yeah. That one. Made me laugh and cry and screech a lot

Well, mostly just giggle and facepalm

I wouldn't blame the writer team though. It seems that designer team and gameplay team and writer team sometimes do stuff without properly talking to each other.

It's just sad that technically retcons can be well done. bioware even did some pretty cool retcons (even about qunari, too) and gave more or less good explanations. But most of the time they're just headscratching

Weird, since ME has less of these

[DRTJR]

Actually IB's argument makes sense if you take his conversation with Solas into consideration. Cass would probably get her mind scrubbed clean and thrown into the Antaam. Because she is really good at hitting things.

[Nefla]

It does seem as though they changed the Qun a lot based on our past interactions with Qunari vs how it was portrayed in DA:I. The Qun was portrayed as this super rigid system where you don't have sex for pleasure, only for baby making and women don't fight, period and the idea is so shocking that Sten doesn't even believe the female warden is a woman. Now they are portrayed as very sexually open and can just have sex with priests whenever they get horny (sometimes orgies and sometimes with some kind of crazy device too) women fighting is totally cool, they're just re-branded men (this part is especially confusing for me based on Sten and the Arishok's reactions to female warden/Hawke) and we're not even talking just transgender here (which it seems the Qun would have a problem with) just any woman who fights is retitled a man? I understand the desire to make Iron Bull's personality what it is, and I think he's great but he's been living outside the Qun for a long time and could easily have adopted outside views on sex, gender, and sexuality while telling himself "it's part of the disguise." Maybe they wanted the Qun to seem less crappy but now it just seems random and contradictory rather than just horrible and rigid.

[DarkAmaranth1966]

You have to remeber, Bull says that the Qunari see Krem as a man. Aside from that like any people, what the religion says and what the heart wants are not always the same. Bull enjoys having the Inquisitor's love but, still sees parts of it as simply giving the Inquisitor what he/she needs - doing his duty. That's Qunari for you. He wants to love and does but, the sex part is still duty in his mind.

[LinksOcarina]

The Qun changed because Origins was the original. Like with Walking Dead they didn't know if they were going to do a sequel let alone 3 more games. Lore had to evolve.

 

 

Sten says you're female warden can't be female because she fights in a man's position according to the Qun. Meaning you're female warden acts like a female, and looks like a female, and thinks she is female. And this confuses Sten because the Qun says women are not warriors under the Qun.

 

Iron Bull says Krem looks like a man, acts like a man, thinks he is a man. Therefor under the Qun he is a man, which makes him capable of being a warrior.

 

Anyone out there trained Psychology, Sociology or Gender Theory? I know the sociological aspects of this fairly well but I think we need those perspectives to really take this discussion somewhere. 

[robertthebard]

No, he is not the entire leadership but the Arishok is the commander, highest ranking general and leader of the entire military branch of the Qunari. He is also part of their Triumverate, which is their entire governing body. He governs all of their military might including soldiers, so it seems like he would know who could and could not be a soldier. I am not interested in that line of thought, however.  
 
So if we say that their greatest military leader is not the authority, then there is no reason to consider Bull the authority either. Basically if we question either, we question both. That is where I am coming at this from. So basically, if it's not a retconning then the Qun is a much softer and less rigid philosophy than was originally stated. If there are certain rules in one body and not the other then that means there is dissension and separate disciplines or types of Qun. If that is true then who makes the new rules and why? Different Tamasran maybe?

Here's a dangerous thought, but how about instead of thinking that one source of information is absolute, we look at the big picture instead? If we asked, for example, what's life like in the United States? Would we want only answers from one subset of the population, or would we want to get as many different samples as possible, to try and paint the broadest picture possible. If we only ask people that live, for example, in New York City, we're going to get an entirely different picture than if we asked people that live in Lindsborg, Kansas. Even with NYC as an example, do we only ask people that live in Harlem, Queens, or any of the other boroughs? In Origins, we had one source of information. That expanded to 3 in DA 2, and to 5 in Inquisition, if we count Bull's contact, even though our opportunity to discuss is limited with Gatt.

If, instead of taking one source as 100% canon, we look at all our sources, we come up with a broader picture. Will some of it have to be filtered out? Surely, but we really don't have enough information to decide what is and isn't a retcon, because we really don't have enough information.

[littlebrightpanda]

Anyone out there trained Psychology, Sociology or Gender Theory? I know the sociological aspects of this fairly well but I think we need those perspectives to really take this discussion somewhere. 

 

Neuropsychological view of transgender people:

If I remember correctly from my neurology class, the brains of transgender people are closer to other men than to other females. Their wiring is what makes them feel uncomfortable in a body that is opposed to that wiring and living after their wiring lifts heavy psychological burdens, as they otherwise have to surpress their true self and that causes all types of problems such as depression and suicidal thoughts. 

 

There was a case of twin boys who got circumsized right after birth and something went wrong for one of them. The doctors and parents decided, after the then common believe that your gender is based on how you are raised, that the little boy should now be a little girl. He never felt right and commited suicide when he found out he was actually a boy. And the thing is, despite his mom and dad treating him like a girl, he still behaved like a boy. 

 

So Krem is by all accounts male, he just happens to have to bind breats and put a sock between his legs, as this is the closets he can get to his "actual" body. It probably helps him that he has found a group that accepts him for who he is and doesn't care that he does not represent his biological sex. 

 

The qun accepting transgender would certaintly not be against their rules, as reeducation doesn't sound like they change the actual wiring of the brain, but experiences that then inform your personality. As they have no means to make Krem feel like his biological sex, they have no choice but to accept him the way he is and accept him as a warrior. Same to other transgender people. 

 

Sten as part of the military part of the Qunari does not accept women in a warrior position, but Krem is fine cause he is male. Ben-Hasserath however, appear to be generally more open towards women being "fighters" as they have to able to defend themselves as spies. But they are not "true" warriors, as those are under the Antaam and as they therefore would not live under the blade. It is a different military codex and a different group.

 

Therefore, both Sten and the Iron Bull can be correct. We do not know however, how much Bull is lying or misremembering, as he has been outside the qun for some time and it is difficult to uphold one's culture in the face of another if there is no support structure.  

[K3m0sabe]

It's Bioware, they arent exactly known for consistency within their own lore, as much as Gaider and co. which us to believe, if a designers says "it looks cool to have a mage teleport while having books pages fly around", they will put it into the game and say "we know better than the community". 

 

Same with the Qun, they wanted a transgender in the game, and the easiest way to explain it in a medieval setting like Thedas is to atribute this "deviancy from the norm" to how progressive Qun is. Lore? An afterthought. 

[Geth Supremacy]

It's Bioware, they arent exactly known for consistency within their own lore, as much as Gaider and co. which us to believe, if a designers says "it looks cool to have a mage teleport while having books pages fly around", they will put it into the game and say "we know better than the community". 

 

Same with the Qun, they wanted a transgender in the game, and the easiest way to explain it in a medieval setting like Thedas is to atribute this "deviancy from the norm" to how progressive Qun is. Lore? An afterthought. 

 

button.  awesome.

 

[AEve1]

Same with the Qun, they wanted a transgender in the game, and the easiest way to explain it in a medieval setting like Thedas is to atribute this "deviancy from the norm" to how progressive Qun is. Lore? An afterthought. 

People, no. The Qun is not progressive for having a term for transgender people. That's the whole problem with this thread - everyone seems to assume this is automatically "progressive" and "liberal" and "modern." It's not.

 

There is nothing inherently progressive about not determining someone's societal gender based on physical primary and secondary sex characteristics. The Qun evidently views gender identity as something that is formed in the mind: yes, this matches our own modern scientific viewpoint*, no that is not incompatible with a rigid and regressive societal structure with clearly defined gender roles.

 

As countless people have already pointed out, Sten's confusion regarding a female Warden fighting has to do with the fact that she considers herself a woman. The Iron Bull tells us that there is a term for people who consider themselves men and fill that societal role. Bioware hasn't retconned anything - the writers filled a gap in the lore, because before, we didn't know if there was a term for what Sten thought the Warden was. What's more, even if this were a retcon, it would be one that makes anthropological sense, because real-world societies with rigidly defined gender roles often have rigidly defined exceptions as well.

 

The Qun still doesn't allow self-identified women to fill the societal roles of men, or self-identified men to fill the societal roles of women. Maybe Aqun-Athloks are treated as their self-identified gender 100% of the time (outside of reproduction I guess) or maybe they're treated more like a third gender (which often exist in societies with very strict gender roles!), but the point is they are not treated as the gender that shares their external physical sex characteristics.  It still sucks to be a woman under the Qun who wants to fight, or a man under the Qun who wants to trade.

 

I'm getting really freaked out by people who say that the Qun is being too "nice" about this, and that's why they think it's an undesirable retcon. 1) It's not automatically "nice" to have a different view on what determines gender, 2) even if it was, why are you so invested in the Qun being horrible to the same people the real world is horrible to.

 

 

*eg There's a part of the brain, called the BST, that has been linked to androgen and estrogen production, as well as sexual behavior in lab rats. There's evidence that MtF transgender women have a BST sized comparably to cisgender women, while cisgender men's BST is twice as large. This is a statistically significant difference. It couldn't be explained either by sexuality, since both straight and gay men were studied, or by adult hormones, since both trans women who'd undergone surgery and cis men who'd undergone surgery to remove the penis were studied. Ergo, evidence that early brain development of trans women is closer to early brain development of cis women. The study can be found here.

[Bladenite1481]

Here's a dangerous thought, but how about instead of thinking that one source of information is absolute, we look at the big picture instead? If we asked, for example, what's life like in the United States? Would we want only answers from one subset of the population, or would we want to get as many different samples as possible, to try and paint the broadest picture possible. If we only ask people that live, for example, in New York City, we're going to get an entirely different picture than if we asked people that live in Lindsborg, Kansas. Even with NYC as an example, do we only ask people that live in Harlem, Queens, or any of the other boroughs? In Origins, we had one source of information. That expanded to 3 in DA 2, and to 5 in Inquisition, if we count Bull's contact, even though our opportunity to discuss is limited with Gatt.

If, instead of taking one source as 100% canon, we look at all our sources, we come up with a broader picture. Will some of it have to be filtered out? Surely, but we really don't have enough information to decide what is and isn't a retcon, because we really don't have enough information.

This is a horrible analogy. You are describing America, which is a melting pot where new ideas and choice was supposed to coalesce into one homogeneous recipe for innovation and comparing it to a hive minded society where everything is handed down in a logical and proficient manner. Change and dissension is not proficient. The whole idea from the beginning to me was that the Qun society was almost like a living computer, they don't make mistakes and if things don't fit then they are dealt with. That is why Sten seemed so alien and different to the rest of everyone. 

 

If you want to use real science and aggregate theory to calculate what a video game Lore and or behaviors transpire to then you would be looking at sampling sizes in the thousands at the very least. That isn't really a feasible possibility. So all that we can do since every video game known to creation mostly has a very limited supply of its NPC's and lore available to us is make conjecture, opinion and hypothesis. Which is what everyone is doing from what information we have at our disposal. No matter how much you want your answer to be right, or how smug and contemptuously you propose an egregiously arrogant rebuttal to pose as fact, your opinion weighs no more or no less than anyone else on the thread. 

 

I am not even sure why you picked my post, or what you think I am saying from it. It seems like you are attacking something that is not there because my idea was that neither of them are right and neither are wrong, that there is a less rigid philosophy at hand and it may even be up to the individual do decide on their own basis, but could be handed down by certain teachers. So your basic analogy of demographically related answers not being an absolute answer and that change or deviation is present within the system,  is the same basic idea. The only difference being I think the deviation could be something that is being handed down or taught through Tamasran and you believe the deviation is more closely related to us just flat out not knowing everything we need to. 

[BloodyTalon]

Even with the lore from game to game about the Qun being a little off, you also have to keep in mind the people of the Qun are a society just like anyone else and even taking into account that some may study has groups or use the same metholds of study and teachings. The Qun in the end is about the perfect society and culture, where everything is in perfect order, now that could mean some progressive views on transgenders very easily, its not so much about the Qun bending to accept one, but about not wasting resouces in the end its not progressive at all when you take that into account. During studies a woman could act like a man and be transfered to a male role and expected to act like one and so on

And remember what bull said about the mind scrubing at one point, it could leave you mindless and have the need for someone  assigned to you to help you poop.  So doubt that is always used.  So the Qun needs other ways not to waste resouces and so on to get people to fit into society roles. 

I also took the Qun changing slightly  from game to game being the fact that we haven't really talked to someone fully educated in it yet. the only way to get the full  info about the Qun and say the lore is fully solid is to talk with a priest of Qun.  And that would be more of how it should work,. 

Hopefully  next game we meet a few of those priests so we can get a full proper view, cause without hearing from a couple of the priests who would have slightly different views of the qun we won't understand it fully.  Can never just take one person's view of something on such topics.

Just my two bits and sorry for typos and errors.

Modifié par BloodyTalon, 07 décembre 2014 - 05:41 .

[Bladenite1481]

Even with the lore from game to game about the Qun being a little off, you also have to keep in mind the people of the Qun are a society just like anyone else and even taking into account that some may study has groups or use the same metholds of study and teachings. The Qun in the end is about the perfect society and culture, where everything is in perfect order, now that could mean some progressive views on transgenders very easily, its not so much about the Qun bending to accept one, but about not wasting resouces in the end its not progressive at all when you take that into account. During studies a woman could act like a man and be transfered to a male role and expected to act like one and so on

And remember what bull said about the mind scrubing at one point, it could leave you mindless and have the need for someone  assigned to you to help you poop.  So doubt that is always used.  So the Qun needs other ways not to waste resouces and so on to get people to fit into society roles. 

I also took the Qun changing slightly  from game to game being the fact that we haven't really talked to someone fully educated in it yet. the only way to get the full  info about the Qun and say the lore is fully solid is to talk with a priest of Qun.  And that would be more of how it should work,. 

Hopefully  next game we meet a few of those priests so we can get a full proper view, cause without hearing from a couple of the priests who would have slightly different views of the qun we won't understand it fully.  Can never just take one person's view of something on such topics.

Just my two bits and sorry for typos and errors.

I think that would be better, but it still doesn't prove anything. The issue is that two separate Qunari have said something, that may be interpreted as being contradictory to the other. Talking to a priest or Tamasran won't give you an answer any more than talking to either of the ones before, especially if we keep the notion that it is a society just like any other that can change at any time. The only way we get an answer to what people are asking is if more than one body is present at the same time and we begin to get similar results with both so that we can connect the dots ie Sten and Bull talk to one another or to a priest etc. Come on..that would be pretty awesome, though Sten might kill IB if you saw him as a Talva. 

 

Until then, it is all conjecture and estimated guessing. Which is fun while we wait for some way to factually prove the answer. 

[robertthebard]

This is a horrible analogy. You are describing America, which is a melting pot where new ideas and choice was supposed to coalesce into one homogeneous recipe for innovation and comparing it to a hive minded society where everything is handed down in a logical and proficient manner. Change and dissension is not proficient. The whole idea from the beginning to me was that the Qun society was almost like a living computer, they don't make mistakes and if things don't fit then they are dealt with. That is why Sten seemed so alien and different to the rest of everyone. 
 
If you want to use real science and aggregate theory to calculate what a video game Lore and or behaviors transpire to then you would be looking at sampling sizes in the thousands at the very least. That isn't really a feasible possibility. So all that we can do since every video game known to creation mostly has a very limited supply of its NPC's and lore available to us is make conjecture, opinion and hypothesis. Which is what everyone is doing from what information we have at our disposal. No matter how much you want your answer to be right, or how smug and contemptuously you propose an egregiously arrogant rebuttal to pose as fact, your opinion weighs no more or no less than anyone else on the thread. 
 
I am not even sure why you picked my post, or what you think I am saying from it. It seems like you are attacking something that is not there because my idea was that neither of them are right and neither are wrong, that there is a less rigid philosophy at hand and it may even be up to the individual do decide on their own basis, but could be handed down by certain teachers. So your basic analogy of demographically related answers not being an absolute answer and that change or deviation is present within the system,  is the same basic idea. The only difference being I think the deviation could be something that is being handed down or taught through Tamasran and you believe the deviation is more closely related to us just flat out not knowing everything we need to.

I replied to your post because you wanted to dismiss all the sources as "not experts". The fact of the matter is, your feeling of being attacked aside, that we don't have enough information to know, for a fact, that both of them aren't blowing smoke up our asses, let alone to know if BioWare is retconning anything. The reality is, we haven't had the need for more information that what we've gotten, because we're not being asked to convert to the Qun, or to play in a setting where we're living under it. It's been my stance since I first read here, we don't know enough to say, one way or the other. There's nothing to attack, because there's really not enough evidence to say.

[BloodyTalon]

I think that would be better, but it still doesn't prove anything. The issue is that two separate Qunari have said something, that may be interpreted as being contradictory to the other. Talking to a priest or Tamasran won't give you an answer any more than talking to either of the ones before, especially if we keep the notion that it is a society just like any other that can change at any time. The only way we get an answer to what people are asking is if more than one body is present at the same time and we begin to get similar results with both so that we can connect the dots ie Sten and Bull talk to one another or to a priest etc. Come on..that would be pretty awesome, though Sten might kill IB if you saw him as a Talva. 

 

Until then, it is all conjecture and estimated guessing. Which is fun while we wait for some way to factually prove the answer. 

Yup why I said a few of those priests. Without talking with more then one its pointless, and even its more of how it should work.

But yup it is a society more then a faith in the end, so it does change has society needs change, its the wonderful thing about basing anything off something written anyone reading the text can see it differently from another depending on hoow its written. Thats probbly the biggest source of in-fighting in the Qun cause  Bull said the in-fighting isn't like what other cultures do, though if that is the ascept of the in-fighting it most likely is close.

Modifié par BloodyTalon, 07 décembre 2014 - 06:06 .

[Applepie_Svk]

 

 

Until then, it is all conjecture and estimated guessing. Which is fun while we wait for some way to factually prove the answer. 

 

And you can guess of what we will get from BioWare, I can see it right now... Some Quanari colony filled with trans-gender holding their hands singing about how Qun peaceful, tolerant  and good is.

[NotBeouwulf]

Iran is accepting of Transgender individuals, doesn't make them progressive. Rather there acceptance of transgenderism is related to their hatred of homosexuality. They believe all homosexuals are all really transgender.

The Qun may be the same way, their acceptance of Transgenderism may be related to their strict gender roles. Thus according to the Qun, any female who is best suited to be a warrior must be a man, even if she identifies as female.

[Kenshen]

I have wondered just how much Bull tells us is really true and how much of it he is making up thinking that is what we want to hear.  So far Bull is far different than Sten and Arishok were.  Even the elf we meet during Bull's quest is more like the other 2 than Bull.  However is Bull really much different than Tallas was?  I mean she kind of bent the rules to fit her need much like Bull does.

[JoltDealer]

The Qun, from what I understand, is all about telling people where they fit in within society.  If you're a baker, you're a baker, regardless of what others say or what you look like.  Someone may be built like a warrior, but his mindset and actions are those that the Qun associates with a baker.  Therefore, he is a baker.  Gender may be something similar.  Krem may be of the female sex, but his gender is male.  Aside from lacking the body of a man, he is, for all intents and purposes, a man.  With that logic, it would make sense that the Qun would recognize that.  After all, Krem is a warrior and women can't be warriors according to the Qun, which would mean that he is a man.

[Applepie_Svk]

Iran is accepting of Transgender individuals, doesn't make them progressive. Rather there acceptance of transgenderism is related to their hatred of homosexuality. They believe all homosexuals are all really transgender.

The Qun may be the same way, their acceptance of Transgenderism may be related to their strict gender roles. Thus according to the Qun, any female who is best suited to be a warrior must be a man, even if she identifies as female.

 

That´s the problem if we take in credit of all what Sten said and not just that You - as a warden are either woman or man. If the BioWare end up with this idea here, than there would be no doubt of what IB is saying may be right, but Sten has continued in Qun´s look on sex role within their society. Qun means a logical order in certain aspects, there are men and women, two different sex with different roles, it´s estabilished by Sten´s disaproval and questioning about that why would you try to do man´s work when you are a woman, which implies that Sten looks on warden as a woman as a sex and not the gender and that´s why he is confused, at that time it looks like Qun does not acknowlendge gender but only sex.

[K3m0sabe]

People, no. The Qun is not progressive for having a term for transgender people. That's the whole problem with this thread - everyone seems to assume this is automatically "progressive" and "liberal" and "modern." It's not.

 

There is nothing inherently progressive about not determining someone's societal gender based on physical primary and secondary sex characteristics. The Qun evidently views gender identity as something that is formed in the mind: yes, this matches our own modern scientific viewpoint*, no that is not incompatible with a rigid and regressive societal structure with clearly defined gender roles.

 

As countless people have already pointed out, Sten's confusion regarding a female Warden fighting has to do with the fact that she considers herself a woman. The Iron Bull tells us that there is a term for people who consider themselves men and fill that societal role. Bioware hasn't retconned anything - the writers filled a gap in the lore, because before, we didn't know if there was a term for what Sten thought the Warden was. What's more, even if this were a retcon, it would be one that makes anthropological sense, because real-world societies with rigidly defined gender roles often have rigidly defined exceptions as well.

 

The Qun still doesn't allow self-identified women to fill the societal roles of men, or self-identified men to fill the societal roles of women. Maybe Aqun-Athloks are treated as their self-identified gender 100% of the time (outside of reproduction I guess) or maybe they're treated more like a third gender (which often exist in societies with very strict gender roles!), but the point is they are not treated as the gender that shares their external physical sex characteristics.  It still sucks to be a woman under the Qun who wants to fight, or a man under the Qun who wants to trade.

 

I'm getting really freaked out by people who say that the Qun is being too "nice" about this, and that's why they think it's an undesirable retcon. 1) It's not automatically "nice" to have a different view on what determines gender, 2) even if it was, why are you so invested in the Qun being horrible to the same people the real world is horrible to.

 

 

*eg There's a part of the brain, called the BST, that has been linked to androgen and estrogen production, as well as sexual behavior in lab rats. There's evidence that MtF transgender women have a BST sized comparably to cisgender women, while cisgender men's BST is twice as large. This is a statistically significant difference. It couldn't be explained either by sexuality, since both straight and gay men were studied, or by adult hormones, since both trans women who'd undergone surgery and cis men who'd undergone surgery to remove the penis were studied. Ergo, evidence that early brain development of trans women is closer to early brain development of cis women. The study can be found here.

 

Your identifying thedas and its cultures with your own biases. I remarked it was progressive, even going as far as adding """, within the games lore and cultures.

 

The fact is, Bioware based Thedas on a loose translation of medieval cultures and societies, none of which have demonstrated in the previous games the level of open mindedness that Iron Bull has shown in DA:I, that what i remarked on, how the Qun was an easy enough lore bit to use as an "alien culture" to thedas so as to introduce trangenders in the game.

 

Are the Qunari in DA:I anything alike to the ones found in both DA:O and DA2? I personally dont think so. 

[Chari]

Honestly, looking at IB and his viewes and the way he actually speaks about things... I can't say I actually believe him. He is a hissrad, a liar, a keeper of illusions

The way he carefully chooses his words makes me think he simpy doesn't want to hurt Krem's feelings. After all, he doesn't says the the Qun would accept Krem. Rather that he accepts Krem

That or Bioware made another silly retcon. Blah, not the first time and not the last one for sure I'm looking at you the most technically progressive culture in Thedas which goes half-naked into battles like a bunch of savages despite what Sten and the Codex had previously said