Too Much/Not Enough
Jan. 23rd, 2019 14:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aubergionI've been spamming some friends with messages recently, trying to get my head around some of my ongoing problems with Inquisition. Why the game can feel tedious to play. Why I don't like most of the companions, they're just kind of... there. Why I always feel unsettled and alone even in the big fancy castle I'm supposed to be in charge of. And then I hit on it (more than a week ago, but I needed some time to organize my thoughts and write this post).
My two inquisitors, thus far, have been a qunari (vashoth) warrior and an elven mage. And the game does not hesitate to tell you that whatever you are, you're doing it wrong. Iron Bull, the other qunari (a capital-Q qunari, a follower of the Qun), denies outright that he has anything in common with an Adaar inquisitor. As though culturally, you take nothing from the place you came from just because you decided to leave it behind. Does he still think that way when he himself leaves the Qun? I don't know. There's no chance to follow up.
Elven protagonists have it worse. Minaeve denies her heritage as a Dalish elf and scorns your attempts to reach out. Solas and Sera deny being elves and decry your elven nature - the same thing from two different directions. Varric Tethras is the least dwarfy dwarf in existence, and Harding isn't much better. I haven't played a dwarf Inquisitor yet, but if I close my eyes, I can hear Valta telling me I'm a surfacer, I don't have stone sense, and I don't count. Because that's how this game and the characters in it work. It's practically a motif. No matter where you go, you're too alien for the humans (too tall, too short, too elfy) and too human for the rest (vashoth, surfacer, flat-ear).
And it's not handled with the least bit of nuance. There's no chance for change, no opportunity for reconnection and rediscovery. It's always either unwanted or impossible. I'm a monolingual Taiwanese-American from white suburbia. I've been the token non-white kid in my class, the other, the model minority. I've been the big-nose banana, just another American, unable to communicate fluently with my own grandparents or read anything more complicated than a board book. And I still take pieces of my culture with me, and I still care about learning more, and this is a very very personal struggle for me. It's not some fluff in the background chatter of a game. It's my life. I can - and do - add all the counterpoints I can in my protagonists. But I'm still fighting against the rest of the world, and that's a lot.
The funny thing, except it's not that funny really - I know they're trying. I know that the devs wanted to be inclusive and expansive. They tried to include more chances to look different, to acknowledge difference and diversity and give more people the opportunity to see themselves in the mirror. But what I saw was a slit-eyed caricature in the character creator, with sickly yellow skin like the jaundice the nurse thought I had at birth because she'd never seen an Asian baby in her life. And unexpectedly, it hurt worse than any number of failures to make my own self-insert in another game. It is one thing to be overlooked. It is another to look at the token options they give and the perspectives they tried to write and ask - "is this how you see me?"
So thanks, I guess, Inquisition, for reminding me there's worse feelings than being merely invisible.
My two inquisitors, thus far, have been a qunari (vashoth) warrior and an elven mage. And the game does not hesitate to tell you that whatever you are, you're doing it wrong. Iron Bull, the other qunari (a capital-Q qunari, a follower of the Qun), denies outright that he has anything in common with an Adaar inquisitor. As though culturally, you take nothing from the place you came from just because you decided to leave it behind. Does he still think that way when he himself leaves the Qun? I don't know. There's no chance to follow up.
Elven protagonists have it worse. Minaeve denies her heritage as a Dalish elf and scorns your attempts to reach out. Solas and Sera deny being elves and decry your elven nature - the same thing from two different directions. Varric Tethras is the least dwarfy dwarf in existence, and Harding isn't much better. I haven't played a dwarf Inquisitor yet, but if I close my eyes, I can hear Valta telling me I'm a surfacer, I don't have stone sense, and I don't count. Because that's how this game and the characters in it work. It's practically a motif. No matter where you go, you're too alien for the humans (too tall, too short, too elfy) and too human for the rest (vashoth, surfacer, flat-ear).
And it's not handled with the least bit of nuance. There's no chance for change, no opportunity for reconnection and rediscovery. It's always either unwanted or impossible. I'm a monolingual Taiwanese-American from white suburbia. I've been the token non-white kid in my class, the other, the model minority. I've been the big-nose banana, just another American, unable to communicate fluently with my own grandparents or read anything more complicated than a board book. And I still take pieces of my culture with me, and I still care about learning more, and this is a very very personal struggle for me. It's not some fluff in the background chatter of a game. It's my life. I can - and do - add all the counterpoints I can in my protagonists. But I'm still fighting against the rest of the world, and that's a lot.
The funny thing, except it's not that funny really - I know they're trying. I know that the devs wanted to be inclusive and expansive. They tried to include more chances to look different, to acknowledge difference and diversity and give more people the opportunity to see themselves in the mirror. But what I saw was a slit-eyed caricature in the character creator, with sickly yellow skin like the jaundice the nurse thought I had at birth because she'd never seen an Asian baby in her life. And unexpectedly, it hurt worse than any number of failures to make my own self-insert in another game. It is one thing to be overlooked. It is another to look at the token options they give and the perspectives they tried to write and ask - "is this how you see me?"
So thanks, I guess, Inquisition, for reminding me there's worse feelings than being merely invisible.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-23 22:47 (UTC)I played an elven inquisitor (archer), and the only time that I felt my Quiz shared some kinship with Solas was during the bizarre singing scene in the snow, when she and Solas shared a 'wtf' moment separate to the humans. I've never played a qunari Inquisitor, but my elven inquisitor felt she had a lot more in common with Bull than anyone else as they were both cultural outsiders.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 15:01 (UTC)My elven inquisitor (mage) can at least connect to Solas on the magic thing. If not for that then... yeah, I'd agree, Sid's got more in common with Varric and Bull than Solas or Sera.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 07:34 (UTC)In fact, I've noticed over time that since we only saw dwarven nobility in Origins, Harding's viewpoint is more of the accepted one. The Orzammar dwarves come across as pretty ridiculous from an outside perspective. Surface dwarves have their own problems; they often don't concern themselves with what's going on back in Orzammar. The ones who never lived there or don't remember living there don't care. The ones it impacts are the ones who lost something by leaving. The casteless would all probably be better off on the surface at this point.
It's a different experience with the elves or qunari. And humans don't even seem to get much of a choice. Probably why I've always liked the dwarves best. Even when playing a noble, you would have died if you hadn't gotten to the surface. So it's a new beginning.
None of this fixes what you're talking about, unfortunately. But maybe it's a slightly better fit in the meantime. Fingers crossed that the DA4 CC addresses this. Considering how the Andromeda CC looked (and especially your reaction to it), I'm hopeful.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 15:08 (UTC)Still. Orzammar high-caste dwarves might be resource-poor and nuttier than a squirrel's stash, but it'd be nice for someone to acknowledge you can leave that place behind and still take a little bit with you - a little bit of faith in the Stone, perhaps, or even just grandmama's boiled nug recipe. Oghren's a hard character to like, but the part where he cares about the caste and house and city he left behind feels real. It'd be nice if the game let someone besides the first generation care, but I feel like that's too optimistic.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 18:13 (UTC)I'd like to see a surface-born dwarf who wants to live in Orzammar. How would that work? (Poorly.) Or give us an equivalent to Dagna, a non-dwarf who wants to stay there.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 18:19 (UTC)If there had been any recourse - any way to meaningfully protest, correct, or even tell these guys off - that would have been something. But no. The character pretty much just has to take it.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-25 03:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 18:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-24 19:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-25 03:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-25 12:12 (UTC)Maybe they'll have gotten it out of their system for DA4, idk
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-25 00:49 (UTC)I remember seeing something long ago about DAI's development. Initially, the story (and game) was designed around the human inquisitor and that was all they were going to have. When their development budget was extended for an extra year (or extra 16-18 months?), they added the other three races as inquisitors, added the Cullen and Solas romance, and a few other minor things. The "incompleteness" of all of this content that, dev-wise, was essentially added at last minute, could be part of the problem...
...except Bioware has a habit of writing content that fails hard dealing with matters that intersect race, ethnicity, nationality, and culture.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-25 03:45 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-26 01:34 (UTC)Honestly I haven't even played DAI yet because I got all the spoilers and it made me very very sad for many of the reasons you've spelled out here. I loved Origins and replayed it a whole lot because I was able to play an outsider and save the world. And as a rom I related to the elves really, really hard. And then they did what they did. And I feel a lot of ways about the whole thing.
I feel like they wanted to show the other side in DAI, but the first two games did not make me WANT to play the establishment. I got to play myself for once, and then in 2 I at least get someone who wouldn't mind knowing me. And in DAI I feel like we went from that to now you're a cop. It's bait-and-switch and there are clearly not enough marginal people in the room to write the story they're trying to tell with any nuance, anymore. Bless fandom for fixing THAT problem, anyway.