honestly it's like 3 am again and i just plain don't have the time or the energy to unpack this, but now that I think about it, there is definitely something kind of funny in how i, a broadly agnostic atheist with no religious upbringing, no background in religion, and no belief in anything supernatural, find it much easier and far more appealing to engage with the concept of religion in fiction, than I do in real life.
like in DnD/Faerun, it's generally pretty easy for me, otherwise detached as I am from it, to conceptualize worship, devotion, blasphemy, gods, etc., knowing that the gods there are not mere ideas, but genuine, tangible beings in their universe, governed by actual rules and hierarchies, and possessing whatever the universe conceptualizes as "divinity".
but on the other hand, it's just really fun for me how in Dragon Age, despite being very much knowingly made up in the same way, the existence of Andraste and the Maker is still kept intentionally vague and ambiguous- and the "gods" or divine-adjacent beings that we've met so far have strangely kept turning out to be... well, pretty much no more than spirits, upstarts, or unfathomably powerful mages. The elven gods are either real or just mages and slavers, the Old Gods of Tevinter are either real or just ancient dragons(???), and Corypheus, despite posing himself on the precipice of divinity, is nevertheless very firmly established as being not a god. Even the nature of the vision of "Andraste" we see in the Fade is kept ambiguous- maybe it's Andraste, maybe it's Divine Justinia, maybe it's a helpful spirit that has latched itself onto some echo of Justinia's soul. If I recall correctly, there is not a definitive claim made by the game, only one of what you believe it to be, and maybe like, Leliana says it once?? I think???
I think the way divinity and godhood is conceptualized in Dragon Age is really fascinating, in that so far, it's been very much unlike the way most other fantasy series I've read/played have treated their gods, and now I'm actually really looking forward to seeing how it all gets upended in Veilguard.
Like I'm kinda feeling a bit giddy again, just thinking about again playing a character who is ambiguously and casually Andrastian in the general/average Thedosian way (maybe kind of like how Dorian is, in that she'll believe in the faith and not the Chantry), and trying to make sense of the presence of literal fucking elven gods in her city. Like, what a mindfuck, you know?
