What is your favorite bit of lore/worldbuilding/characterization in Dragon Age? Is there anything you saw, thought was NEAT and then brought it into your characters or focused on it in your writing?
Oh this is so hard. There's so much I like. I adore the lore of religion, the Maker and Andraste as being something that like, now in retrospect we know is false, but was/is very much believed by the people in Thedas. And the complete 180% of the Evanuris. I know a lot of people DON'T like that but... I'm probably going to get hate for this but as someone who grew up non-religious, religion always had the tone of mythology to me and I had this fascination about it. Most fantasy worlds I see have only one True Religion and it's 100 clear and we know exactly how it goes. Any elements of mystery are just "you are too dumb/mortal to understand it."
Like, Skyrim, we have those gods and we know they are real and there's proof everywhere and there's no true competing religion (as far as I know). Same with most fantasy books I've read. Lord of the Rings, there is one True Religion with the wizards though I am not versed enough in LOTR to explain it. But there's no doubt that Gandalf knows What is Up and it's 100% true, whatever he believes. Every fantasy setting I've encountered seems to go by this rule. One religion, and it's 100% true, you never learn anything that is wrong. You always just learn the correct and true thing about the religion from the start. Maybe I just had exposure to shitty world building in this regard, but it annoys me.
But Dragon Age is the opposite. Right of the bat, you hear about the Maker, but you so quickly learn how the Chantry is contradicted at every turn. There's no actual proof of any kind of the Maker's existence, and any and every bit that people point to being proof of the Maker can easily be explained by other means -- either a different religion or science (aka magic in this case lol). Sacred ashes? Could be Andraste was actually an elven goddess (hello Mythal) and that is why her ashes do that. Or maybe they're just imbued with amazing healing magic because a spirit of healing or compassion or whatever has touched it (and those spirits are a "scientific" fact that is not tied to any specific religion).
And you right off the bat, regardless of your origin, learn about the Dalish and their religion, from the statues outside Ostagar, to the Dalish clan you encounter. You learn about the dwarves and their religion. About Sten and the Qun. And you meet Flemeth who seems to just be an anomoly.
And then, when we talk to Solas, we find out even the Dalish religion was all wrong! But not 100% wrong, just in such a twisted way as to make the religion the opposite of what it was supposed to be (coughcoughmodernamericanchristians). But you can see what it grew out of, why it was believed the way it was. You can see the threads. And even now, we don't know everything. We don't have confirmation of what the fuck happens when people die in Thedas. We don't know why the Kossinth exist. We don't know shit about humans. We don't know where the spirits that became the elves came from. We don't know what the Maker is if he ever existed, if he wasn't just fully made up or if there was SOME truth to his existence. We don't have a confirmation about Andraste, and though we as a fandom often point to Morrigan/Flemeth/Mythal... We legitimately talk to her and not once does she flat out say "yeah so I was Andraste." She alludes to it possibly, but she never explains the whole story. And the most important point is, the common people don't know it, either. There's mystery. There's contradictions. There's mistakes. The Dalish mistakenly worshipped the wrong people. The Chantry mistakenly probably worshipped a spirit/elven goddess. Tevinter worshipped fucking dragon monsters that only existed to serve the Evanuris as gods. It's all wrong, twisted, but also has flakes of truth in it that allows you to understand why and how it all began.
From the start, the religions and cultures feel real and organic and not made up in a way that I can't fully explain.
The same with politics. I feel so many fantasy worlds just have very like, forced political relations? I don't know, I can't put my finger on it. Often those worlds don't feel fully organic. I can't quite tell you how or why they work the way they do. Thedas feels more realistic in a lot of ways. The only way I'd say Thedas breaks this immersion for me is that as far as I know, there's never been any map changes. Going back to the Last Flight, hundreds of years ago, the same countries and city-states existed then as they do in modern Thedas. Other than the fall of Elvhenan and the Tevinter Imperium, we don't really see any changes, as far as I know. But, honestly, we don't spend much time in the past, anyway. So modern Thedas? The politics kinda just feel real in a way I can't say I feel other politics do.
Like, okay, why did Gondor never like, absorb Rohan? They just peacefully co-exist? Do they never fight? Do they marry off their nobles to each other? I don't know. I don't know enough about LOTR and obviously it's not a perfect comparison, but it's hard for me to feel anything but that LOTR is just fantasy.
Meanwhile, I ADORE that Fereldans have stereotypes about them regarding the dogs, and cheese, and it being cold and dreary and all that shit. I love that Orlesians are stereotyped as the French. I love that these stereotypes exist. Not because they're true, that would just make everyone 2d. But it's still culture, and it's still fun to be able to give both negative and positive stereotypes about each of those nations, see how they overlap, see what others remember about those cultures, and how often those stereotypes are so wrong, but you can see why they exist, and sometimes, they're even correct. We meet plenty of Orlesians who are not posh, who are not frivolous, who are badass and competent and terrifying. Yet purple Hawke hating Orlesians and making fun of them is SO fucking funny to me. And it's so real. We do also meet some posh Orlesians, of course. And even Leliana in DAI still loves shoes. It's just part of her culture in a way she can't shake no matter how edgy she gets.
The historical conflict between Orlais and Ferelden because of invasions, it's just a chef's kiss! No weird magic or curses or shit. It's just regular politics.
It's honestly probably one (of the many) reasons I love DA2 the most. It felt more political. It was a story about people struggling with a very real issue. How would fascism and discrimination look like in a fantasy world? Forget Big Bad Wizard Overlord, give me a story about a traumatized woman taking over a city and growing mad with power. Give me a trade war between Nevarra and the Free Marches. Give me a story of Fereldan nobles accidentally starting a war with Antivan nobles because they wore the wrong color to a wedding. I eat that shit up!
(This is tied to why Veilguard is one of my least favorite games. It was kind of devoid of politics. Groups banded together, sort of, to destroy a big bad. DAI had some of that, too, but... Eh. DAO's main darkspawn problem was ONLY a big problem cause of Loghain and his fucking hatred of the fake French lol. But I'm not going to talk badly about Veilguard, only that I'll say it didn't hit the mark with me in many ways).
For me, writing is always very character driven. The characters of Dragon Age grip me, and their stories, and politics and religion are such a huge part of who people are and how they interact with the world.
So yeah, that's my two cents :> Thank you so much for sending in the ask!
