34 réponses à ce sujet

[berelinde]

I was about to protest that the Blight made a wasteland out of the Western Approach a thousand years ago... but in geographic terms, a thousand years *is* a recent event, isn't it?

[Das Tentakel]

I was about to protest that the Blight made a wasteland out of the Western Approach a thousand years ago... but in geographic terms, a thousand years *is* a recent event, isn't it?

 

Yup. Not that it matters that much, DA:I's desert zones are pretty traditional romantic desert landscapes dotted with ruins and the occasional oasis. All that's missing is some Bedouin Dalish.

 

Now, if there had been vast dead forests, ruined cities and long-abandoned villages, interspersed with some sandy areas where rains had been able to flush dead vegetation away (old river basins for instance), now that would have been pretty creepy and lonesome, but quite different from the traditional deserts we got.

 

 

 

 

 

But I don't want to complain too much; traditional romantic deserts or not, they looked very pretty in DA:I.

[berelinde]

Yeah, but now you've got me wanting to meet Bedouin Dalish! I wouldn't describe myself as a passionate fan of the Dalish, but I do find myself curious about the ways in which the various clans differ from each other. That would have been an interesting perspective.

 

But yeah, I definitely see what you mean. For a desert that recent, I would have expected it to look more like DA2's Blightlands near Lothering, not a classic romantic desert... but I do agree with you that a classic romantic desert might be more picturesque. But as long as they left the Hissing Wastes alone, I'd be happy either way. The Hissing Wastes are one of my 3 favorite maps, the other two being the Emerald Graves and the Emprise du Lion.

 

You know what might be well on its way to looking like the desert you describe? Ville Montevelan in the Exalted Plains. They aren't Blighted, but they've definitely seen better days.

[Caddius]

Yeah, but now you've got me wanting to meet Bedouin Dalish! I wouldn't describe myself as a passionate fan of the Dalish, but I do find myself curious about the ways in which the various clans differ from each other. That would have been an interesting perspective.

 

But yeah, I definitely see what you mean. For a desert that recent, I would have expected it to look more like DA2's Blightlands near Lothering, not a classic romantic desert... but I do agree with you that a classic romantic desert might be more picturesque. But as long as they left the Hissing Wastes alone, I'd be happy either way. The Hissing Wastes are one of my 3 favorite maps, the other two being the Emerald Graves and the Emprise du Lion.

 

You know what might be well on its way to looking like the desert you describe? Ville Montevelan in the Exalted Plains. They aren't Blighted, but they've definitely seen better days.

What confused me about the Western Approach is that, on the edge of the map and near the Abyss, you see the Blighted lands. Very cool looking, very disgusting looking. Apparently one effect of the Blight is to kill off everything living, even bacteria so that bodies don't decompose. So maybe the Blight is only around the Abyss itself?

I quite like the looks of the deserts you posted. I would have preferred that, but kept the design of the Western Approach for some other desert. Just too damn pretty to die...

But the rubble and houses and dead trees would be perfect for an Orlesian frontier province that was fairly settled and hit by a Blight.

[Forsythia77]

Latitude doesn't matter. Geography laughs at latitude. 

My own barbarian understanding of such matters is that ocean currents, the rain-shadow effect of mountains, that kind of thing, has a more potent effect on climate than latitude does.

In my state of Washington in the US, for example, which is on the same strip of coastline that the Alaskan rainforest is on, we're hemmed in by the Cascade Mountains, and the big rainforest by the Olympic Mountains. Combine this with the Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean, and you've got Seattle's legendary rain and looking like it's about to rain weather summers.

But the parts of the state over the mountains is very different. Heavy snow in winter, scorching heat in summer. No rainforest. Too hardcore for me.

 

Ocean currents/wind patterns explain a lot.  Which is why its much more mild in London than a city on the same comparable latitude over here in North America (which is somewhere up in Canada, BTW).

 

This is kind of a fascinating to look at where cities fall on their latitudes if you shift them from Europe to NA and visa versa. 

 

http://a.wholelottan...itude-maps.html

[Gervaise]

I suppose there is no reason why the climate, flora and fauna should operate in the same way in Thedas as they do on earth.   So if they want to put a lush sheltered valley populated by exotic looking birds that we think belong in a warm jungle, that is not to say it couldn't exist in their eco system.

 

However, I would point out that in Masked Empire they talk of birds flying south for the winter, which of course should be wrong since most birds would be flying in the direction of warmer, not cooler climes.   Still, may be they are heading for the Arbor Wilds and Frostback Basin.   I could never understand why the Winter Palace was so far south, unless the Orlesians indulge in skiing.   It would make more sense for it to be called the Summer Palace and the place where the Court retreats to when it gets too hot and smelly in Val Royeaux.   

 

So it is probably best just to accept whatever we are given and not try and equate it too closely to what we have on earth.

[Statare]

No offence, but those aren't exactly tropical / subtropical parrots - although their distant Gondwanan ancestors were - and they look fairly dull. Besides, if Thedas had a population of climate-adapted parrots, one would expect them also in more northerly - presumably warmer - areas of the same landmass.

 

That the different zones and their plant- and wildlife are designed around a specific 'landscape theme' (desert, jungle, forest, swamp etc.) absolutely.

The desert zones, for instance, are supposed to be relatively young, cold deserts of supernatural origin (the Blight). However, they do not look like an extrapolation based on the lore (one would expect lots of dead trees, ruined settlements etc.) but they rather resemble stereotypical warm deserts with deeply eroded landscapes, big reptiles etc. The ruins (not the Tevinter ones) reinforce this impression, even including black sarcophagi that look vaguely Egyptian in inspiration.

 

The Blight is really only responsible for at most the WA, as with the addition of the Forbidden Oasis and the Hissing Wastes it seems the desert the WA is part of existed pre-Blight.

 

I'd say the WA in particular has elements of the Great Basin of America in it (the Grand Canyon, Arizona and Arches, Utah) which is a colder desert, and Dorian does say "aren't deserts supposed to be warm?" randomly while in the WA, but it definitely has an African/Middle Eastern vibe that makes me wonder if it is still supposed to be the cold desert as it was described in Asunder or if it has a-geographic elements a la the Arbor Wilds.

 

The theme does seem to be that places with Elven significance warp the environment. Even back with the Brecilian Forest that was the case, though the rainy coniferous forest made perfect sense for where it was geographically, but it was hinted that the Forest was abnormal. I wonder if we went back there in DA:I what it would look like.

[Sifr]

As a completely unrelated aside, does anybody else remember reading that Thedas has two moons? I wonder what that does to the tides. Clearly, I spend far more time than I should thinking about the climate and ecology of a fictional universe.

 

Poor Satina, when's the second moon ever going to get shown? It's lack of appearance has been bugging me for a couple games now?

 

[Gwydden]

I suppose there is no reason why the climate, flora and fauna should operate in the same way in Thedas as they do on earth.

Random inconsistencies like this won't stop gnawing me. Not until I can tell whether this was a case of careless worldbuilding or there is a method to their madness.

[Das Tentakel]

The Blight is really only responsible for at most the WA, as with the addition of the Forbidden Oasis and the Hissing Wastes it seems the desert the WA is part of existed pre-Blight.
 
I'd say the WA in particular has elements of the Great Basin of America in it (the Grand Canyon, Arizona and Arches, Utah) which is a colder desert, and Dorian does say "aren't deserts supposed to be warm?" randomly while in the WA, but it definitely has an African/Middle Eastern vibe that makes me wonder if it is still supposed to be the cold desert as it was described in Asunder or if it has a-geographic elements a la the Arbor Wilds.
 
The theme does seem to be that places with Elven significance warp the environment. Even back with the Brecilian Forest that was the case, though the rainy coniferous forest made perfect sense for where it was geographically, but it was hinted that the Forest was abnormal. I wonder if we went back there in DA:I what it would look like.

Good point about the Hissing Wastes et al, in the sense that the area has its own name, separate from the Western Approach.
However, when you look at the map of Thedas itself 'The Western Approach' (in lore definitely the result of the Blight) is a broader region that, when compared to the game map, seems to encompass the two other desert areas as well.

Given that there's a whopping huge forest and a large marshy area north of the Western Approach, where heat and evaporation should be higher, this makes the existence of a 'primordial' sandy desert hemmed in between a devastated Western Approach and vast forests and swamps a bit, well, implausible...
There's also the fact that the Hissing Wastes were once capable of supporting a civilization, though one could easily cook up a convenient ecological catastrophe to explain the area's desertification. Postfacto explanations are cheap .

I would also like the point out that the presence of the fennec fox is one of those out-of-context artifacts that clearly point to the 'romantic traditional warm desert' inspiration, as the fennec is native to the Sahara and the Arab peninsula. In fact, fennec comes from 'fanak', the Arab word for fox. I suspect the animal got into the game specifically for the desert areas (maybe somebody influential thought them cute?), but was then reused in the other zones.

 

Personally, created by the Blight or not, I would loooooooove  a proper cold desert (ruins included). It must however, have Bactrian camels ...