So, something that I noticed with both DAI and DA2 is the disappearance of drakes. For some reason, these critters -- which were effective dragons without the high-level risk -- have not been featured in two games. Now, while their disappearance in DA2 could be explained by the appearance of the mature (female) dragon (which I thought was a good mid-tier option between the "regular" dragon to the high dragon), we don't even have that "stop-gap" in DAI. In DAI we go straight from dragonlings to high dragon with nothing in between.
For both DA2 and DAI, the absence of drakes makes little sense from a lore perspective since, according to codex entries, drakes guard females and the young, as well as compete with each other for the right to mate with a female. I suppose it's possible for the drakes to disappear when the females wake up and get ready to clutch (which really isn't lore-based from what I've seen), but in most cases, the high dragon we encounter in DA2 and the high dragons we encounter in DAI are either getting ready to clutch (like the dragon on the Stormcoast or the one in the Exalted Plains... both of whom breathe lightning, incidentally) or they have young who should have fathers around.
From a game design perspective, it makes sense that you'd want a diversity of critters. We don't get too much of that in DA2, but we get a lot of it in DAI. But, even in DAI you notice that, while the monsters have a level of variety, there are many other creatures that are serviceable "dragons." We have the varghests (which I love), garguts (meh), and wyverns (again, love), but we also have the phoenixes and lurkers who are, for all intents and purposes, "raptor" style dinosaurs with special powers. All of these creatures are dragons-lite, so why bother introduce them if substantial differences are offered in lieu of offering up the return of the drakes.
On a related note, did anyone notice how we had at least two occasions of being asked to track down "unique" monsters who did not have the right skins? Vivienne's snowy wyvern, for example, isn't a wyvern at all but a gargut! And, if you kill other garguts while on her quest and loot their hearts, the organs are referred to as "wyvern" hearts!
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