#Draon Age Inquisition

[psalacanthea]

Are we going to talk about how scary being the Inquisitor is for a Lavellan or…?

I mean, the more and more I have played this game, the more the Chantry shit is terrifying. Over and over again, you see painful and irrefutable evidence about the shit humans did to elves in the name of the Maker. The Exalted Plains is an obvious example.  (I consistently call it Dirthavaren you don’t like it fight me bitch) 

Like I think the entire fandom can agree on fuck that bitch sister Amity. The Chantry crusades destroyed what was left of the elves, destroyed them. Culture, body and spirit. Like be honest, there aren’t many Dalish clans left and each time a new game/book comes around, another one bites the dust. It’s so easy to lose your clan in Inquisiton and even easier to accidentally kill off Marethari’s. Hell, you can choose to kill Zathrian’s. 

The Dalish are dying out, any way you slice it.

Then suddenly a hole rips open in the sky and everybody thinks Lavellan did it. It destroys the Conclave…don’t tell me for one second that the humans didn’t immediately start developing an ‘elves and vengeance and antiMaker’ conspiracy theory. The ‘remain silent’ dialogue option in that first interaction isn’t a stoic ‘I don’t give a fuck’ to me, it’s more of a ‘whatever I say doesn’t matter I’m already dead’ for a Dalish Inquisitor. 

The true horror is knowing that they wont just kill you, they’ll call for a bloodbath on elves across Thedas.

“For the elves were guilty of the greatest sin, of turning from the Maker.”

You’ve damned them all and you can’t even remember how or why. For a First, it must be terrifying to realize even if you try to diplomatically talk your way out of it, they’ll never believe you. As a hunter or warrior, you know it’s hopeless. All you can do is throw yourself forward as the villain, claim that whatever happens you acted alone and take as many of these shems out with you as you can.  As a mage you know if they take pity on you, you’re condemned to their mage-slavery prisons.

“Whatever you think I did, I’m innocent!”

But then they believe you (barely, like thank the Creators the Lavellan clan taught you how to talk to humans civilly and not panic) but it’s basically a hostage situation. There’s one other elf with you and even if he’s not Dalish thank Mythal because shit you were scared and you’re still scared but at least it’s something. His name is ‘Pride’. You take it as a sign from the Creators that it’s not time to give up yet. Suledin, you think.

There is an orb, a weapon that caused this. Solas tells you it’s elven and your heart sinks.

“Eventually, the humans will find a way to blame elves…”

You become Inquisitor and things are a little better but the humans call you Herald of Andraste. You don’t believe in their Maker but none of them care. You know your clan would feel betrayed, think you’ve given up your gods. You haven’t of course but the terror is there…what if the gods think you’ve given up them? You talk to Cassandra and Leliana, trying to understand the human chantry and maybe figure out a way for your two beliefs to coexist. 

 But no.

You realize it wont help. Cassandra talks about spreading the Maker’s word to all corners of Thedas…you remember the lonely howls of the wolves across Dirthavaren. You know what ‘spreading the Makers word’ means. Leliana at least acknowledges what the Chantry did, but she dismisses it with words. All those lives and hopes and dreams dismissed with the words ‘that hate won’t just go away if you dissolve the Chantry’. You understand what she really means, though. 

She’s saying that the hate will never go away, not until the elves are just like humans. The Chantry will never stop.  She says she wants elves to be part of the chantry so they survive and you try not to taste bile in the back of your throat when you think of what that means.

“My father says humans are like weeds that choke out the grass…”’

Slowly, slowly, slowly...they consume you.

[dragonagebrainrotblog]

i just think she’s pretty

[kirkwalldrama]

let's speak the truth - anders would be the best drag queen out of all dragon age characters.

except for solas. maybe. i call it sasha velour effect.

[hattedhedgehog]

"The Inquisition is my chance to atone. I will not see it fail."

Finally getting around to posting these Cullen photos from my shoot with @mephistoplz on IG. We had a really good time with this lot.

[knuttydraws]

Art Summary 2022 My first full year of arting!

Thanks to everyone who left nice comments and tags (im seeing you and i adore you all!), who were brave enough to commission me or take part in an art trade, everyone who encouraged me publicly or in private - this really would not happen without you. I can't wait to see what next year brings ❤

[herald-divine-hell]

Amayian and Leliana

[jrastegar]

Taking One’s Measure Update

Chapter 2 posted.

I made a few corrections to chapter 1 thanks to some great feedback and those are posted as well. Already a bit into chapter 3, but I waited to review chapter 2 this morning and ensure it still read well after my eyes started crossing last night. Thanks for reading!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32729818/chapters/81244684

[dyalavellan]

Nahiri Lavellan & Cullen Tarot Card

I instantly fell in love with @graywitchrequiem's Nahiri. I wish to her and Cullen a beautiful life together ^^

[jackdawyt]

Most of you will have heard about this recent article by Jason Schreier as he comments on the current state of BioWare, Anthemand the next Dragon Age game's development. I'm glossing over the whole 'Anthem is a mess' narrative, and jumping straight to the important juicy Dragon Age news.

So, without further ado, it's imperative that we just jump straight into this story from the very start! So let's crack on with it!

The production on Dragon Age 4 {title still not announced} reportedly started in 2017, under the leadership of Mark Darrah and veteran Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw.

With the departure of studio general manager Aaron Flynn and Anthem in a desperate state, Darrah was parachuted into theAnthem team as executive producer.

This iteration of Dragon Age 4 was code-named Joplin, and those who were working on it have stated that they were excited by creative director Mike Laidlaw’s vision for the project.

The project was named after Janis Joplin as the game aims to be revolutionary for the Role-Playing Game genre, proving to be a landmark on the franchise.

The next Dragon Age will also be the fourth installment in the series following in the same vein as Janis Joplin and her massive success with her fourth album launch, BioWare felt inspired to name the project after Janis' achievements.

However, Anthem received flack, by October, it was on fire. BioWare had decided to make some massive changes.

That summer, studio general manager Aaryn Flynn departed, to be replaced by a returning Casey Hudson.

As part of this process, the studio canceled Joplin. Laidlaw quit shortly afterward, and BioWare restarted Dragon Age 4 with a tiny team under the code name 'Morrison'.

The code name Morrison is a call back to Jim Morrison, a legendary American songwriter renowned for being an influential front-man in rock history. He went on to create the rock band - The Doors.

This is what was meant when we heard the news that the next Dragon Age project had been 'rebooted', the fact that Laidlaw left, with his creative vision.

Morrison is seemingly what remains of the skeleton team working on Dragon Age 4, the likes of Patrick Weekes, John Epler, Mark Darrah, Nick Thornborrow, etc. Each of these developers are Dragon Age franchise veterans.

Meanwhile, the studio moved the bulk of Dragon Age 4’s developers to Anthem, which needed all of the company’s resources if it was going to hit the ship date that EA was demanding.

One big change that’s already been enacted at BioWare is a new technology strategy.

Developers still at the studio say that under Casey Hudson, rather than start from scratch yet again, the next Dragon Age will be built on Anthem’s codebase.

BioWare have stated that they will share more on what this means for the game in the near future.

Parts of 'sharing Anthem's codebase' mean that BioWare will avoid throwing out huge amounts of work developers put into adapting Frostbite.

Jason Schereir has confirmed on Reddit that we'll be getting an updated news story hopefully this week regarding Dragon Age 4 in the near future.

Of course, you're already in the right place when the second that information drops, which should be this week!

Okay so opinion time!

The fact that Dragon Age was pushed aside for the likes of Anthem is upsetting to all BioWare fans, however, I feel this isn't the most pressing news to be alarmed about.

Regarding the whole, Dragon Age 4 will share the same codebase as Anthem, all this means is that the next Dragon Age will build on the existing tech used for Anthem. This is exactly what I mentioned in my previous video, the idea that sharing resources on the Frostbite Engine would be handy for BioWare given the trouble with the Frostbite engine.

Sharing the same codebase is in no way, shape or form declaring that the next Dragon Age game will be multiplayer, we already know that their working on a separate multiplayer feature for the game, as they've hired a new, side team to embark on that task alongside the development of the main game.

How I envision Dragon Age 4 basing it's codebase on Anthem's is simply by using it's most upgraded presets within the Frostbite engine as BioWare have constantly innovated it with three previous games, each systematically adding and changing mechanics within the software.

Dragon Age: Inquisition layered the foundations for their first role-playing game in the Frostbite engine, Mass Effect Andromedastretched out the engine with larger maps and fast vehicle usage, and Anthem innovated with it's flying mechanics with a streamed-in world.

I've seen a lot of people worried about using Anthem's codebase and what could this mean, and by a lot of people I mean Reddit. One particular comment I noted said, why don't BioWare just use the same codebase as Dragon Age: Inquisition since that was the previous RPG title that the team is most comfortable with.

Well, if you think about it, the codebase for Inquisition is at least 5 years old now, and not to mention a large part of that games was brought down due to previous game-generation limitations, as Inquisition released on both PS3 and Xbox 360. It's probably a super outdated preset on the Frostbite engine, whereas Anthem's codebase is higher tech, more developed and not to mention super recent.

It makes sense for Dragon Age 4 to share the same codebase and resources as Anthem, this is in no way saying that the next Dragon Age is going to be stickily multiplayer, it's just an improvement regarding the tech of the Frostbite engine.

I feel a lot of these confessed mistakes for Anthem's developments show an optimistic light for the next Dragon Age game, BioWare are embracing their mistakes once more, this time with Anthem and BioWare's A team.

They've learned throughout the course of creating three games on the Frostbite engine, each from scratch is a very hard thing to do. So instead, they've decided only now for the next Dragon Age, they're going to share the presets from their most recent, previous title.

This is exactly the same situation as how Fallout 4 is built upon Skyrim's engine, they ported the presets of their tech for Skyrim into a next generation level of the Creation Engine and then began creating Fallout 4. If anything, I see this as a positive, it shows that BioWare have learned how chaotic the Frostbite engine is, and now they've decided to make their lives easier, they can actually speed up development on new projects because they'll have a template and needn't start from scratch.

And judging my Anthem's latest tech within the engine, the gameplay is super fun, the world is streamed in and allows for tight flight controls whilst looking beautiful all at the same time. I've made a video literally explaining the Frostbite engine's developments with Anthem, and how they pave the way for Dragon Age 4.

Using previous games as build templates just sounds like a typical games design motto, I feel perhaps this gets bad press because Anthem wasn't a BioWare epic and it's an always online multiplayer experience, however, the motivation is still the same.

Moving on, It's disheartening to see that BioWare have responded with an underwhelming, lacking reply which attempts to throw shade at the likes of Jason Schreier who're just showcasing the mistakes of Anthem, so BioWare can learn.

It's almost hypercritical, it's like we, as a studio can call our games a mistake, but how dare you point out the flaws and call it journalism.

To nip this in the bud, I feel like there are two teams within BioWare, the sympathetic developers who deeply love their games, and will actually come out and say when something went wrong, as noted by Jason's sources.

And then there's the EA side in BioWare, who're conflicted against them, controlling every word from the studio and not accepting room for growth or improvement.

We can see from Jason's article that plenty of the BioWare developers have spoke out, regarding the studio and Anthem's developments, there not all EA puppets. So, there's seemingly a few decent bunch in the studio who care for sharing the studio's current state to the public.

Trying to end this positively, the fact that the next Dragon Age has been 'rebooted' shows that the studio hasn't given up on this franchise, that there trying to work it out in the best way possible, that they will give the game it's due time and care. And lets not forget the masterminds working on the project as mentioned before!

If the title had merely been a failure without Mike Laidlaw's vision, they'd have given up on the game, but no, there's still hope for the future of this franchise. They've found a way to reboot the project, following a different vision and seemingly unique enough to be given a new project title.

It doesn't seem like it'll be that long before we hear what this could potential mean, and how the next Dragon Age as been rebooted, examining what the differences are between project Joplin and Morrison.

Sheer speculation on my part, but other than Jason delving into when we'll hear from Dragon Age next, I feel he could have a bigger story on the horizon.

[scarecrow-forest]

i’m enjoying this lovely height difference too much

[purplemeow12345]

Happy Valentine’s Day  for Dragon Age ^^

Zevran/Fenris/Solas 

[totprww]

Cremisius Aclassi

[trashychann]

"𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖑𝖆𝖉𝖞 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗. 𝖘𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖓𝖔 𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖉"

[the-cheshire-cat-grin]

Spirit Boy

He, with eyes of lightest blue

The tattered veil he traveled through

When cries of pain tore through the night,

He found the source as fast as light.

The spirit’s eyes filled fast with sorrow

As starvation left the mortal hollow.

There was nothing left that could be done,

For the evil of the world had won.

But yet, the spirit had a thought

As he looked on at what greed had wrought.

This need not be the end of life,

Despite the horror and the strife.

The spirit held the mortal close,

Becoming what he’d longed for most.

In the span of a single breath, he rose

A not-quite mortal in tattered clothes.

Off he went throughout the land,

And with a dagger clutched in each hand,

He searched for those in need of help,

And with each blade, his justice dealt.

[hattedhedgehog]

Close-ups of my hand-embroidered Cassandra character card from Dragon Age: Inquisition. 89 hours work.

[l-space]

Hopping on to stream some more of the dragon age re-gothening.  https://www.twitch.tv/spectrealafete