#is corypheus genuinely so devastated by the revelation that there is no god that he seeks to make himself one to fill the emptiness? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vaguely-concerned · 3 years ago

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I love both games but it genuinely wounds me that dragon age inquisition is considered a better written game than dragon age 2 in wider gaming circles.

da2 does SO many interesting things, from its very deliberately paced and solid three act structure, its arc as a tragedy, its use of the frame narrative and the metatextual implications of a stated unreliable narrator -- all the questions surrounding how much of what we’re playing is the actual truth or where the narrative is distorted by the storyteller: varric extrapolating from what he does know in situations where he wasn’t present, like the romances, or even him openly admitting that he’s taking liberties because it makes for a better story, you can sometimes deduce he’s protecting someone b/c he’s basically talking to a templar cop lol, every so often he doesn’t actually know what happened but doesn’t believe cassandra will buy that -- or simply out of love, like giving hawke that talk with leandra at the end of the dlc even if she’s dead, because hawke deserves the closure and this is the only way varric knows how to give it to them. it’s a story about stories, and you’re playing as hawke but really you’re playing from varric’s perspective; his stories for making sense of the world. the city and people he loves and, as becomes increasingly clear as you play, his grief at what’s happened to them. it’s a character study of a guy you get to know through his stories in ways he probably wouldn’t let you in person. gameplay wise we have no choice but to engage in what he presents to us as if it’s truth, even when it’s obviously not. and on top of all that it takes the themes of unreliable narrators and how history gets written from all the dragon age games and fucking RUNS with it and it’s just so gooooooooood and interesting I want to cry.

and like... don’t get me wrong, I have played a truly unconscionable number of hours of da:i, and it has great individual character moments and a lot of wonderful stuff. but overall, structurally, it’s just a fucking mess lol

#RIP corypheus who could have been genuinely really interesting and yet he is. that #dragon age #dragon age 2 #on second thought let's not go to kirkwall it is a silly place #the archon and corypheus have very similar flaws tbh -- they're meant to have these really alien perspectives #but the writers go with standard bad guy stuff anyway because... reasons? IS ascension genuinely considered an honor among the kett?#then why is the archon using it as a threat?#is corypheus genuinely so devastated by the revelation that there is no god that he seeks to make himself one to fill the emptiness?#then why are his concerns so petty and pedestrian? (could be a good theme b/c he's still just a really old magister under it all #but I didn't buy it)#there's a lot of cosmic horror 'god is evil and indifferent to human life' influence in bw villains right back to the reapers #but they don't always manage to marry that thematic unknowable indifference with their actual role and dialogue in the games #I would have loved for cory to be even MORE human and fallible than he is actually #like have the last fight be him completely unraveled by despair because faith has failed him #instead of him taunting you he's just having a breakdown that threatens to destroy everything #and you need to beat him before he gets to it #I like the confusion and... vulnerability? sort of? of him in da2 a lot more than the straightforward blargh I am evil stuff in da:i #found this in my drafts and you know what? I am still right and I should say it #dragon age 2 daring to expose the player to the reality of powerlessness in a genre that reveres power fantasies? immaculate #sometimes you can do everything right and still fail. you gotta swallow that philosophical pill to understand this arc gamerz

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