This post has been made in Apr. 01 2013.
First off, I just want to take the time to thank you for responding to this. I know you’re real busy and that we haven’t exactly seen eye to eye in the past, and I really do appreciate you reaching out like this when you didn’t necessarily have to do so.
I’m on sabbatical leave at the moment, so there are far worse things I could be spending my time doing— which I will be, shortly, when I head off to New Orleans. At that point, nobody will get anything coherent out of me, I’m quite certain. :)
I’m going to snip some of your post and just respond directly to certain points (in the interest of not getting too quote-happy), but I did read the entire thing.
To see Dragon Age fall back on that trope of “Humans Are White, Fantastic Races are POC” was really disheartening and just plain tiresome, to be honest. This has been a thing for as long as I can remember in fantasy, especially sword and sorcery fantasy in fantasy counterpart versions of medieval Europe like Thedas. People of color, if they exist at all in these settings, are typically either Orientalist Yellow Peril monsters from the ~Forbidden East~, or dark barbarian hordes from the wastelands outside the pristine lily white lands of the heroes, always threatening the white status quo somehow. At best, we’re noble savages who can teach the white heroes ancient wisdom and life lessons about how to be better people. This, despite so much history available about the diversity of medieval Europe, how it was much less white than people generally believe it to be. I know that Thedas really relies on the fantasy counterpart culture idea, but in a land of blood magic and dwarves and darkspawn, the idea that societies are racially and ethnically homogeneous is…weird? Squicky? Fucked up?
That’s an excellent point. I don’t think we started from the idea of “this is medieval Europe”, but rather “this is a traditional fantasy setting à la D&D\Tolkien”. The notion was to add a layer of reality on top of that, without saying that this was necessarily “our world”, so I wouldn’t want to go too far down the line of making comparisons to medieval Europe. While some analogues certainly exist, it’s not meant to be representative.
Could we have done differently? Probably, yeah. You’d have to remember that the people initially involved in DAO (of which I was not one— I didn’t come onto the project until a bit later) had just finished Jade Empire, which is as non-standard a fantasy setting as you can probably get, and really wanted to get back to the traditional stuff we did in Baldur’s Gate and NWN. I don’t really think we unpacked that “traditional setting” very much, however, to examine a bit closer why things were set up the way they were. Perhaps we should have, but that was the baseline from which we were initially working.
I suppose you’re correct that, on some level, there seemed to be less thematic need to address issues of racism within human societies with there being such a visible “other” for them to deal with. Perhaps one could say that skin color isn’t such a big issue in Thedas when there are elves and dwarves and qunari who are so much more different among them… or perhaps that’s a cheap way to look at it? Something to think about.
That said, I don’t think the societies in Thedas are as racially homogenous as you believe— or, at least, they’re not intended to be. How well have we shown that in-game? Probably not very well. That’s due in part to the areas we’ve visited so far, in part to the Eclipse engine and its frustrating handling of darker skin tones (now thankfully a thing of the past) and in part… I don’t know? That’s really a question for the art team, as they’re responsible for character appearance, and I wouldn’t want to put words into their mouths.
I won’t lie and say I’ve been constantly bringing it up— it’s not something I think a lot about (my privilege showing, I’m sure), and I have a lot of other things on my plate to deal with. Mostly, when I’m dealing with the art team, it’s about how major characters look and the representation of things like architecture or the building of specific levels for the plots rather than the look/composition of background characters. The issue has come up, however, and I think I can safely say it’s something the team is aware of and something the art team specifically has expressed an interest in working on.
Part of that involves where we’re going. One could rightly expect Orlais, particularly in its bigger and more cosmopolitan cities, to have more visible diversity. One could also expect that, if we go to the Tevinter Imperium or Antiva or see any characters from those places, there should be some difference. I think it’s well-known that the Rivani are dark-skinned, but if you go into Antiva or the eastern Imperium the “average” skin tone will also be darker (if not as dark as in Rivain). And none of those people are locked up behind walls, so one should expect to see at least the odd character here and there even in relatively homogenous places like Ferelden.
How well that will translate into the final game? That remains to be seen. From conversations with the art team, my impression is that they find the idea of variety in skin colors more visually interesting at the very least, so chances are pretty good— but, again, I don’t want to put words into their mouths… and I honestly have no idea if there are technical hurdles remaining.
Biggest point of WTF: in the character creator, I can make a dark-skinned Warden, or a dark-skinned Hawke (rather poorly due to the engine, but I can try is the point). Where would such a character come from, given this idea I’ve seen floated around that Rivaini folks stay in Rivain for the most part? What about their lineage and family history, particularly for a POC Cousland?
Yeah, that was why the argument existed for having your family members in DA2 change based on your skin tone choice, and why that feature ended up going in (even though it was a bit clunky and suffered from the engine limitations that existed everywhere else— I think the feeling was that clunky was better than nothing). Having it pointed out to us that, while it was nice to have the option available in DAO, it kind of made it obvious in origins where family members were present that it was an afterthought (and it was— that option in the CC didn’t even appear until after the writing was nearly complete), and thus we wanted to address it.
insofar as explaining how that character came to be— well, like I said earlier, the Rivaini aren’t holed up in Rivain or anything. Individuals do find their way even into places like Ferelden… or how would Duncan have come to be? I suppose we could have that explained in the player’s in-game background more, but I think the intention was to leave that to the player’s imagination.
I know that you can’t get into spoiling things about DA3 and whatnot, but if I had my way?:
More brown folks of all races, but especially humans. PLEASE. Major and minor NPCs. Ideally I’d like to see another companion of color, another LI would be fantastic.
Fair request. I have to ask, though— how do we avoid an impression of tokenism? My gut says that, if there are at least a few major and minor characters who are visibly different that should be fine… but how few are too few? When you say “more”, how many do you mean? I’m not asking because I want to discern what the minimum is, but just to get an idea of what you believe might potentially be viewed as insufficient.
I know that there might be a fear of looking like you’re somehow “capitulating” to ~the politically correct~ , or that it might look strange to suddenly have all these brown folks walking around a setting that up to that point was very white, but to that I say—screw ‘em.
Well, you’ve no need to say that to me. I’m speaking only for myself, of course, but when I once said “those who say the only way to please them is to restrict options for others are the ones who deserve it the least”, I meant it. That applies to more than just romance options. If someone were to honestly claim that, in a setting which is still predominantly white and straight, being “confronted” with a few characters that are black or gay or what-have-you is unacceptable in a mature game… well, I think those are customers we can do without. Thankfully, for them, they have the privilege of having lots of other game choices which won’t challenge their delicate sensibilities.
If you do include more brown folks, please make them as richly developed as the equivalent white characters. No more Duncans dying an hour or two into the game, to provide angst for the white heroes.
Hey! Lots of different people died to provide Alistair angst!
I kid— point taken. I think this is probably by virtue of the fact we haven’t many examples of black characters in the game, and thus whatever capacity in which they were used sort of makes it appear that’s the only way they could be used. I don’t think my writing team sets out to make characters less developed as a rule, and I suspect that— with more examples— that’s the sort of concern which would essentially solve itself. I can’t speak to specifics regarding DA3, but I definitely hear what you’re saying.
Give the elves some spotlight. I’ve been saying for years that the elf situation is something that desperately needs more attention because it is really compelling stuff, and something I found far more interesting than the mage vs. templar conflict.
Fair enough. The mage-templar conflict is a ball we have currently in the air, and one we can’t simply set down, but I’d like to eventually do more with the elves. It’s a compelling story— and, not to make a subtle plug or anything, but Patrick Weekes’ upcoming DA novel would likely be a good place to look for more on that front (at least insofar as the near future goes).
And on that topic, there needs to be some further differentiation between elf mages and human mages. I thought DA2’s mages-as-oppressed folks narrative was kind of lacking because there were only a few times where it felt like the elven mage plight specifically was discussed (a couple of banters between Anders and Merrill, IIRC). My friends and I have been talking about this recently on tumblr, about how elf mages might not be served terribly well by mage libertarianism, considering how awful the Alienages are the Circles might not be that bad of an alternative, and how they might suffer further in the war. This is something that deserves further exploration if it’s a planned plot point.
An interesting point. I will say that, for the most part, an elven mage is treated (at least within the Circles) as being a mage first and an elf second… meaning the fact they’re a mage far eclipses their race. This isn’t universally true, of course, as individual attitudes will vary… but on the average it will be true, and thus you’re unlikely to see an “elven mage faction” specifically. There will be mages who feel they’re better served by the Circles (represented by the Loyalist fraternity), and while they’re not specifically elven one could likely expect to see elves being more prominent there.
I felt like Orsino’s position as not only the youngest First Enchanter, but as an elven one, should have been a lot more important than it was.
I would have liked to do more with Orsino— sadly the plots where he was supposed to be more prominent got cut, and thus he ended up not being developed as I would have liked. So while I don’t disagree that what you mention about him could have been an interesting route to take, that would have required him receiving development at all.
And lastly, I know that being a writer you don’t really have a say in this, but if you could pass this along to the folks who do? Please give us some kinky/curly hair options in the CC. Please. Even if it’s just a braided hairstyle. And some better sliders in terms of facial structure. That alone would go a long way toward being inclusive. It was beyond frustrating having to “settle” for a white PC when I still played on PS3 because the vanilla options made trying to create a plausible dark-skinned woman with non-European features impossible. I shouldn’t have to resort to fan-created mods for that.
I can pass that along, yes, though— like I said earlier— it’s something about which the art team is already aware. Having the new engine really does change a lot. I guess the important thing would be not to forget some things just because they’re not the most pressing issues on our plate… but that’s exactly what I was talking about in my GDC presentation. Yes, our #1 priority is to ship a game— and, with a new engine, that’s a task in and of itself— but this kind of consideration shouldn’t drop off our plate completely. While I don’t think it has (yet) that doesn’t mean anyone should stop asking about it.
Again, thanks for listening. I really do appreciate it.
(And okay I’d be remiss if I didn’t include my complete ultimate pipe dream, which is to make Empress Celene look as much as Beyonce as you can without being sued over it. A lot of tumblr dreams would come true. ;)
Ha! I think you can already see how Celene looks from the new novel cover— but how sweet would Empress Beyonce in a freakum ballgown be? They’d have to physically restrain me to avoid slipping a “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly” line in there somewhere. :)
And thank you for the pleasant discussion. I can’t help but feel you’ve gone a bit easy on me… perhaps that will change once you’ve read my responses, and I’ll be happy to clarify if needed, but I really appreciate your forebearance. Again, while I can’t speak for the rest of the team, I think there is more awareness and eagerness to address these issues than it might seem from your end… and I hope you’ll be pleased with what we’re doing in DA3.
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