37 réponses à ce sujet

[Jonata]

So, after struggling to make a qunari Inquisitor that I truly was willing to play through the whole game, I found myself asking why I found them a bit unappealing despite the qunari being my favorite race ever since I thought they were stoic hornless giants in DA:O.

And the answer is, quite obviously, that you're not actually playing a "real" qunari in Inquisition. The uniqueness (and beauty, in my humble opinion) of the qunari race resides in their culture, and the huge willpower with which they follow their uncompromising set of moral values.

Being a Vashoth who has never seen Par Vollen in his/ her entire life, nor was ever able to actually understand the Qun or chose to follow it is akin to just playing a huge horned human mercenary. It could still have potential in playing a qunari who wants to understand/ rediscover his/ her roots, but the game itself does not offer enough unique dialogue choices or plot events to effectively play out this angle, as focused on the elven lore as it is, even during Trespasser or through befriending/ romancing the Bull.

 

Now, what I want to say is that I absolutely get why this kind of choice was made. We know so little of the qunari and their culture that open them up as a couple of codex entries made available after you make an Adaar would be extremely disappointing, and the kind of storytelling behind explaining why a true follower of the Qun would want to even become the Inquisitor may be a bit too much for a game that still has to follow a pre-determined path for each race. Being a Vashoth who becomes the Inquisitor, as it is, is already quite a weird twist of fate.

That's why the true point of my reasoning is asking this question: do you believe that with DA4 taking place in Tevinter, with a possibly less "politically relevant" PC, the option for a "true" Qunari could open up? Maybe a Ben-Hassrath who finds himself involved in all sorts of weirdness, with all the intriguing unique race-specific dialogue choices that could come up from such a background? Or do you believe that the "mysterious" nature of qunari culture still rule this possibility out until more is revealed?

I would really like to hear your thoughts about it, and your speculations on how this could be made, if it could at all. Thanks in advance!

[LightningPoodle]

I had the same raccoon as an avatar before.

[LightningPoodle]

To answer your question, unlikely. Qunari society is very much "This is your role. You must fulfill your role. You must not deter from your role." Et cetera et cetera. Because of this, BioWare would not be able to provide much choice for the player, whilst still keeping it as to the lore as possible. The two would conflict. As much as I would love to play as an actual Qunari, I don't see it happening, unless the choices you make, come the end og the game, determine whether you stay as a Qunari or become a Tal-Vashoth. That's the only way I can see it working.

[Ieldra]

There are not a lot of roleplaying options for someone whose life is completely circumscribed by their role in qunari society. I don't see it happening. Also, I don't see the appeal.

[Beren Von Ostwick]

Being a Vashoth who has never seen Par Vollen in his/ her entire life, nor was ever able to actually understand the Qun or chose to follow it is akin to just playing a huge horned human mercenary.

 

You don't think they have had difficulties living among humans?  And as regards the bolded part... that's racist.

[Big I]

If Bioware can make a Dalish protagonist work twice, they could make a qunari one work. There would be a lot of challenges though.

 

The first challenge would be class restrictions, because "real" qunari think mages need to be leashed, making it difficult to play a qunari mage. Not to mention their gender roles and Sten's "women can't be soldiers" thing. I think David Gaider once posted that the Ben Hasserath has on occasion recruited mages, so maybe it would work best if a qunari player was always Ben Hasserath. That would certainly work with the gender thing.

 

The second and much bigger problem would be just how different qunari society is to everyone else. Elves and dwarves are easy by comparison. Qunari have no families; their names are a string of letters and numbers for official identification. Their society does not seem to allow romantic love between people; sex is either for their eugenics breeding program or with an anonymous tamassran. They're an isolated society to such an extent that even someone like Sten knew little about life outside Par Vollen. It would be hard to encompass all that strangeness in a player character, alongside other racial options. That's why I doubt they'll ever do it; it's just too hard for too little pay off.

[In Exile]

The Dalish, though, apart from at most some super racist beliefs, are pretty much indistinguishable on an interpersonal level from humans and dwarves. The qunari - proper qunari - are different. The issue isn't Bioware making a qunari work. It's making one work together with an elf, dwarf and human. 

[MaxQuartiroli]

You'd need too many specific dialogue/game options in order to be able to play such a character. There are always budget constraints especially when it comes to extra content. Unless they'll go back to non voiced character (which is impossible for BW games) we'll never be able to play again very different characters with unique traits and specific game contents.

[In Exile]

You'd need too many specific dialogue/game options in order to be able to play such a character. There are always budget constraints especially when it comes to extra content. Unless they'll go back to non voiced character (which is impossible for BW games) we'll never be able to play again very different characters with unique traits and specific game contents.

 

It's not even a voice thing. A Qunari acts in a totally different way. You'd still have to expend resources on the other side of the voice - unique NPC reactions to your totally non-standard non-voiced dialogue. You might say, without PC VO this gets you more Qunari-like reactions, but seeing how little race-specific interaction we had in DA:O notwithstanding the voice I'm not persuaded by this position. 

[berelinde]

You mean, "Can DA4 be an entirely different game if you're playing as a qunari?" And the answer to that is "Only if qunari is the only race offered." They aren't going to make two games for the price of one. So if race is going to have any impact at all, it needs to be pretty similar to a default race (human), or the game has to be generic enough where race makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in the roleplaying choices offered. The only way playing as a cultural qunari would make sense would be if other races were viddathari.

[MaxQuartiroli]

It's not even a voice thing. A Qunari acts in a totally different way. You'd still have to expend resources on the other side of the voice - unique NPC reactions to your totally non-standard non-voiced dialogue. You might say, without PC VO this gets you more Qunari-like reactions, but seeing how little race-specific interaction we had in DA:O notwithstanding the voice I'm not persuaded by this position. 

 

Correct. They should remove VA at all at this point, maybe also cinematics.

Just look at BG2 and the huge amount of class/race/alignment exclusive content that was available for each character.

But like I said such a thing it's impossibile at present... different era, different games, different targets.

[Ghost Gal]

I think it could be possible, if challenging.

I don't understand all this talk of "The Qunari culture is too strict/alien" though. DAI showed us Iron Bull, a Ben Hassrath who was sent to spy on non-Qunari and was instructed to act like a Tal-Vashoth to do it. At first he was just pretending, over time he started to embrace non-Qunari ideals for real. The same could hold true for a Qunari PC. You have been sent to do whatever it is all PCs must do, then every once in a while you get the opportunity to say whether you're doing this because just following the Qun, are starting to question the Qun, don't want to follow the Qun anymore, or you don't know. Much like characters asking the Herald in DAI how they feel about the role thrust on them and you can respond a number of ways ("I believe" "I don't believe" "I don't know" "This is stupid" etc), this game can focus on what you need to do and how you feel about it.

Personally, I think it is far more likely that we will play a Tal-Vashoth than a Qunari PC, and I am okay with that. Someone who has seen and rejected the Qunari culture is just as interesting as one still in it, if a little more relatable and flexible.

Plus, I REALLY want to play an ex-Saarebas.

[Andraste_Reborn]

Just look at BG2 and the huge amount of class/race/alignment exclusive content that was available for each character.

 

... what class/race/alignment exclusive content? The only class-exclusive content in BG2 is the stronghold quests. Now, the strongholds are great (at least most of them are) but that's the only thing I can think of - and monks, barbarians and sorcerers miss out on that and get lumped in with fighters and mages because they were added late. The game pays almost no attention to your race except insofar as it can prevent you romancing some characters, or anyone at all if you play a dwarf. You can roleplay a variety of alignments, but other than determining which of the cleric strongholds you get, it has no effect on what content you have access to. (And it's surprisingly difficult to play any alignment with complete consistency, except maybe Neutral Good. There are plenty of conversations where a Lawful Good character has no alignment-appropriate options, just for example. Especially since you have to side with either vampires or thieves for the plot to advance.)

[Ashagar]

You do get called the sum of all evil for being a elf by a bigot whom you can fruitlessly talk with in the promenade and that your a elf does come up in when you meet up with with the wood elves. You also if your a Paladin get to use the most powerful weapon in the game which you can make even more powerful in the throne of bhaal, the holy avenger.

 

As for a Qunari, I can see no way that it could be done in DA4 without making it the only thing you can play and indeed I don't think I could bring my self to play a Qunari given my view on them being the greater of the two evils between them and Tevinter.

[thats1evildude]

Qunari PC: Oh look, I have been imbued by an ancient forbidden magic and am being regarded as the Herald of Andraste.

 

 

*Cue sad trombone*

[Tidus]

As long as there are other race options ,if there isn't no sale.. I never cared for the Qunari and I'm not alone in that thought.

 

Ashagar,You do know there are many Elvan heroes in the books and not one Qunari?

[Medhia_Nox]

Just like we will never explore dwarven politics... we're never going to explore the Qun. 

[In Exile]

Correct. They should remove VA at all at this point, maybe also cinematics.

Just look at BG2 and the huge amount of class/race/alignment exclusive content that was available for each character.

But like I said such a thing it's impossibile at present... different era, different games, different targets.

 

I did look at BG2, which didn't have all that much specific content. Certainly it had a fair amount relative to other games, but a lot of that wasn't tied to the voice at all - it was pure quest content, and that's just about resource allocation (e.g. Bioware could just cut a companion - which today has way, way more content than before - and get you the same extensive variety). Let's put it this way: if we cut, say, Varric, we could get a lot of race specific content.

[Anvos]

There is no such thing as a Qunari race as the Qun is a philosophy that replaces relgion and not a defined race.  It just so happens that the Qun came with a bunch of refugees fleeing their own land (or possibly another land where their grand movement failed and got kicked out) and the people of that land were Vashoth.

 

Asking to play as qunari is much like asking why the pc couldn't be a Tevintar mage instead of circle or apostate in these 3 previous games.  Unlike Tevintar however the Qunari chose to be at odds with every other people since their empire can't suffer independent thought and thus would be at odds of all other PCs.

 

Personally as well I find the Free Vashoth far more appealing than Qunari to play as their literally a people still struggling to define what being Vashoth means since the Qun had stolen personality/racial identity from them.

[ShadowLordXII]

I'd welcome the option of being a qun follower or a tal-vashoth who rebelled against the qun in addition to being a vashoth who was never part of the qun.

 

The thing that I'm disappointed about is that the qunari pc in general seems like an afterthought and the lack of detail about the vashoth is part of that problem.

[ComedicSociopathy]

There's a reason why in the Dragon Age series you either get to play a free agent or a leader. Both can get away with making any decision they want without a superior telling them it broke some demand of the Qun and therefore have been condemned as Tal-Vasoth awaiting assassination. Regardless, of whether your playing a Qunari spy or a sten your going to be given specific orders of conduct when it comes your decision making and choosing an option that doesn't align with the Qun will get you kicked out real quick. Why bother?

[ComedicSociopathy]

I'd welcome the option of being a qun follower or a tal-vashoth who rebelled against the qun in addition to being a vashoth who was never part of the qun.

 

The thing that I'm disappointed about is that the qunari pc in general seems like an afterthought and the lack of detail about the vashoth is part of that problem.

 

It pretty much was with playable dwarves, elves and qunari being added after Inquisition got an extra year of development. 

[thats1evildude]

Just like we will never explore dwarven politics... we're never going to explore the Qun.

Aside from that whole 'king of Orzammar' thing, of course.

But what's to explore about dwarven politics? Here, let me sum it up:

1) Surface bad.
2) The Assembly fights constantly.
3) The murder of lesser nobles is A-OK.

[Absafraginlootly]

It seems like the best way to do a protagonist who follows the qun without losing race selection would be to make the dwarf/human/elf protagonists viddathari. That would require far less differences in content/dialogue between the races as they would all get qun related content with small differences to account for whether they were born into or converted to the qun.

 

Probably would also have to be Ben-Hassrath to allow for a wider variety in classes and gender.

[Beomer]

Maybe if they ever made a linear Dragon Age adventure game. No choices, just a story and maybe a dozen or so linear levels. You could play as a Qunari warrior/ rogue/ mage. Kinda like that Ultramarine shooter we had a few years back.