#“if you aren't comfortable with dark implications in your stories then don't write dark stories”

[diskusaurus]

My biggest issue in Epic the Musical is Odysseus, actually. In this essay, I will....

[widowling]

You know what? There are things about all the games that I like and dislike.

I love the scope of Dragon Age: Origins. It truly introduces you to the variety in this world and has an epic feel to the dangers you face. The writing is amazing. I still get chills at Ostagar. I love the companions. I have never loved a character so instantly than I have Alistair. I love that you can become a warrior queen. I love the infinite choice in the game. You can play it differently every time if you wanted. Its probably the only game in the series that allows you to truly customize your protagonist.

But, I can not stand the combat. It has aged terribly and it was never very good. How am I somehow micromanaging what everyone is doing and doing nothing at the same time? The game kind of feels like a complete slog to get through. If I could just play this game as a series of cutscenes, i would. The entirety of the game is amazing, but the individual parts? Redcliffe? The Circle of Magi? The Deep Roads? THE FADE??? I hate doing all those parts. You can tell its a post-9/11 game at times in how they characterize the Qunari. It has one of my least favorite tropes in fantasy: A dark, inexplicably evil race that invades and corrupts fantasy Europe.

I love the characters in Dragon Age 2. I love the change in the combat here too. I love Hawke as a main character. I love that it takes place over approximately ten years, allowing you to spend so much time with your companions and growing attached to the city. Varric is truly one of the best characters in the series. I love the narrative structure. Varric telling the story to Cassandra as an unreliable narrator? Absolute peak video game writing!

But, i don't think i could say anything new about the very obvious flaws in this game that haven't already been acknowledged a thousand times. It was rushed. It looks terrible. The game feels like one long prologue. I keep waiting for the 'real' game to begin, for the world to open up. It never does.

I love the lore of Inquisition. I love that it plays with myth and legend in a way that the other games don't. Personally, I really liked the open world although i understand criticism against it. The game looks beautiful. I love its epic scope, its world-shattering implications. Solas is truly one of my most favorite characters of all time. It has some of my favourite missions in the entire series. Going back in time to save the mages at Redcliffe? Love it. Playing the Great Game at the Winter Palace? Top Tier. Adamant Fortress? Amazing! Honestly, Inquisition remains my comfort game. I have sprinted towards it in some of the darkest times of my life.

But, I'll never forgive them for putting the real ending of the game in a DLC. Without Trespasser, the ending of the game with just defeating Corypheus in what, at that point, is a fairly easy boss battle is a complete anticlimax. The companions in the game really do just feel like co-workers, not friends. There is a coldness in Inquisition, a loneliness, that does not exist in the other games. Maybe that's just what its like to be the Herald of Andraste, but the companions should have been different. I'm also still salty that they never really fixed the banter bug. I am running around for hours, and never hearing the friends speak to one another.

I love Veilgaurd too, although I certainly haven't played it as much as the other games. My computer can barely run it, to be honest. That's my fault. I love that the companion quests run throughout the game and aren't just a short little one-off quest. There are mechanics in this game that I hope are implemented in other RPGs, like the banter continuing if its interrupted or that you can choose the appearance of an armour without sacrificing its stats. I really liked the antagonists. I loved the ending, honestly placing it at the level of Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission with its drama and sacrifice. Rook, I think, is my favourite protagonist so far. I love my Inquisitor, but I did all the work there. Rook is capable, integrated in the narrative, and has amazing dialogue and personality options. I love that you can choose your factions and origins with out the strict rules placed on former protagonists. Hawke could only ever be human, with their class determining more. The Inquisitor could only ever be a dalish elf, or a quanri mercenary, or a carta dwarf, or a human noble / circle mage. But Rook can be a Quanri veil jumper or a dwarf in the mourn watch. Rook is a great protagonist. Also, all I wanted was a reference to Solavellan and I got so much more than I could ever have hoped for. That story in particular had such depth and meaning. It impacted me profoundly.

But, I found the pacing a little strange. It lacked the urgency of Inquisition. The narrative relies on telling, not showing. It should have had a moment like Ostagar. The fall of Weisshaupt came close, as did the choice between Treviso and Minrathous, but Origins did more with much less by showing the cutscene of King Cailan being crushed by the ogre. We should have had a completely brutal image like that to showcase the threat. We're told about these things, but we don't get to see them. I disliked reading about the chaos in the South and never getting to see it, being told not to worry about it, when I have such a strong connection to Fereldan and Kirkwall and Orlais from the previous games.

But, honestly, at the end of the day, I like Dragon Age. I have many flaws, but I am not a hater. I don't like things I dislike. I do think some people might be a fan of a particular game in the series, and not the whole series and that's okay because there is no single 'right' way for a dragon age game to be. The games are radically different from one another, in a way that, for instance, Mass Effect is not. Because of the inherent differences between the games, I like and dislike various things from game to game. But, at the end of the day, i just like Dragon Age. I like the games, I like the books, I like the comics. I'm honestly not sure what drove me to write this, other than procrastinating from writing my thesis, but here it is. I do wish Veilgaurd was a more obvious smash success, just to keep Bioware releasing games in the future and protecting it from whatever fuckery EA is up to. I do have a sinking feeling that this might be it. We might never get another game or a remaster. Bioware was always the weird outcasts of EA and Dragon Age was also less popular than Mass Effect. I'm not sold on Mass Effect 5 yet, but I remain forever hopeful because I love to love things. And I love these games.

[scripttorture]

I want to write characters suffering, and being hurt in ways that aren't just accidents, but I don't want to write torture apologia. If a character gets stuck in an automated alien "hospital" or "spa", where everything was designed to be beneficial and/or pleasant (but to non-human physicality), would that avoid those unfortunate implications? I love doing fantasy/sci-fi worldbuilding, so that bit would be an added benefit for me.

Idon’t see a problem with that concept.

Aquick look at the biodiversity on earth shows just how much thecomfortable norm varies between species. I mean we have humboldtsquid and naked mole rats and bearded vultures. The temperature,humidity and pressure differences in their preferred environments arepretty extreme and we’re not even getting into the reallyweird life like those snails living in high salinity conditions orthe invertebrates that can survive being frozen solid.

It’sperfectly possible for an environment built and designed for one formof life to be extremely uncomfortable for another. And this wouldresult in injuries and discomfort that isn’t necessarilyintentionally inflicted.

Evenenvironments where we cancomfortably survive can be extremely painful or distressing if theindividual involved isn’t used to them.

Sofor instance- the city I grew up in had temperatures that were around30-45C (86-113F) most of the year, with humidity ranging from 30-75%.We’d also periodically get really strong winds and a lot of dust. Ispent quite a bit of time outside every day and was perfectlycomfortable.

Nowthe first time I had to play sports outside in an English winter is….Not something I’ve ever forgiven that teacher for.

Butmy class mates were perfectly comfortable that day and probably wouldhave been in a lot of pain in the conditions I considered ‘normal’.

Gettingback to the main question- I think this avoids the stereotype of hightech torture because it’s not intended as torture. Or at least thedevices and environment weren’t made to torture.

Inmuch the same way if you wanted to set an abusive scene in anaquarium and a character was thrown into a low temperature tank Iwouldn’t interpret it as a fictional use of high tech torture.Because while the tank is high tech the torturers had nothing to dowith the design, building or installation of this thing. They’recoming along later and misusing it with minimal effort.

Ithink that’s the main thing to consider when you’re trying towork out whether a scenario crosses that line: how much effort is it?Remembering that if something was made specifically to torture thenthe effort involved in the device’s creation is part of thatoverall effort.

Tortureis fundamentally lazy.

Ifyour sci fi scenario already has a way to dial up the gravity onevery space ship then it may not be much effort on the torturer’spart to fiddle with a dial and subject a victim to higher G forces.It’s building such a device specifically for torture that’s aproblematic trope.

There’snothing wrong with world building or making your setting unique anddistinct. I certainly don’t want to discourage fantasy and sci fiworld building.

ButI do want people to think about what they’re implying when theybuild their world.

We’vebecome more accustomed to doing this around issues of race, genderand sexuality. I think we should do it around violence and abuse aswell.

Becausewhat we write is rarely neutral.

Evenif we’re writing something that’s nominally set in this world assoon as we pick up the proverbial pen we start defining things. Wedefine good and bad, beautiful and ugly. We define what a supportivefamily looks like and what a healthy romantic relationship is.

Andin the case of torture what we often get is…. people who have noclear idea what torture is or what it does attempting to define it.

Iknow that most of the time this isn’t maliciously intended. It’shard to find accurate information on this subject and we’re notused to talking honestly about violence.

Partof what I’m trying to say here is that just because your story issci fi (or fantasy) you don’t have to avoidusing torture. If you’re building a world that’s completelydifferent from ours then using more unusual tortures or even tryingto make up some unique ones makes sense. Things that might not bephysically possible here might be possible in your world. I don’tsee anything wrong with exploring that.

Thetrick is to try and go into this particular bit of world buildingwith a basic understanding of what torture is like. In much the sameway that you might look up a little bit about how geography effectsclimate before you draw or fantasy map. Or how space travel works nowbefore designing your own space craft.

Offthe top of my head the main things that crop up for sci fi are thatin reality:

Torture for information does not work

Even if complex wounds can be healed the damage torture causes is long lasting

Victims are not made placid or obedient when tortured

Torture is neither complicated nor scientific.

The vast majority of the time it isn’t high tech

Torture actually takes quite a bit of time

Non-scarring tortures still cause long term damage to victims and are still torture

Torturers are lazy, the more complicated a form of abuse is the less likely it is to happen

There’salso a whole host of tropes relating to unethical experimentation orsome sort of pseudo-scientific torture. Which often seem tomisunderstand how medical testing works as well as misunderstandingtorture.

Reallythe key thing here is to get into the habit of thinking through theimplications of what you write.

Ifyou make a sci fi world with a high tech device that ‘forces’people to tell the truth by inflicting pain- then yesthat’s torture apologia because it’s suggesting that pain can‘make’ people tell the truth. Which is a real world justificationfor torture.

Ifyour fantasy world has an obedience spell that inflicts pain and alsomagically forces someone to change sides and work for the casterwillingly- that’s probably alsotorture apologia because again, it’s suggesting pain ‘makes’victims change their minds. Which is another real world justificationfor torture.

Ittakes time to get into the habit of thinking these things through andspotting the stereotypes.

It’snormal to make mistakes along the way. And it’s OK. (Believe me youdo notwant to see some of my early attempts at tackling dark themes.)

Thinkabout your story. Read about the real world issues. Practice. Ipromise you you will get better and you’ll feel more confidentabout handling these issues as you go forward.

Ihope that helps. :)

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