Dear Darkspawn, You just don't do 'it' for me anymore.

[Zechnophobe]

I just want you to know that I tried. WE tried. I'm not normally into generic incarnations of evil with no drive, but everyone else at the DA:O party was so cool, I figured you must be too! But... it is hard to ignore the fact that you are about as generic as a spikey haired anime Hero. I just thought, when we're in the bedroom, and I'm at my computer, maybe you could... put some more feeling into it? Maybe have a bigger role to play than just 'generic evil omg it killz me Nao'? What's your DRIVE? What's your MOTIVATION? Do you care about something? Do you care about... me?

See, I know that you want to tear off my shirt and have your way with my body... probably turning me into an unspeakable terror in my own right. But what else? If we go to a party, what will you tell my friends that you 'do'? I feel like your only purpose in life is to give me experience and occasionally random items. I just want, y'know, something more from this relationship.

(Darkspawn are a surprisingly boring bad guy from an otherwise interesting world. Does it seem that Bioware sorta dropped the Narrative 'buck' on these guys?)

 

[WrongSprite]

Otherwise interesting world? Man, it's the same old Dwarves, Elves, "Orcs" shit all over again, it's hardly original.
Game still rocks though, but you're not really highlighting the strong point, which is the gameplay, through conversations and combat.

 

[Radeonx]

The whole point of the game was to create a throwback to other western RPG's from the years back.
Taking out orc like creatures would be stupid.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Trollocs and Myrddraal are better.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

Neat format by the way, but I think RadeonX said it best. It's like back in the old days when no one understood orcs and they just pillaged... Now Orcs have whole stories and such. Might come one day, probably won't

 

[mexicola]

Yeah, like it has been said the whole DA setting is very bland so Darkspawn don't strike me as a gaping whole in an otherwise flawless narrative.

 

[Normandyfoxtrot]

Trollocs and Myrddraal are better.

Not really their still the same kind of general evil for existing evil thing it's a common problem in escapist media, black and white is easy and not challenging slaughtering things is fun, unless you find out that they might only be raiding monsters because everyone else shuned them and cast them out into a unsurvivable waste which seems where ultimately most orc type creatures seem to head the moment their acknowledged as actually being sentient.

 

[moretimethansense]

You didn't read the codex or play awakenings did you?
There is more to them than you seem to think, plus define "generic".
Darkspawn are a race of monsters that desended from Tevionter mages that tried to literely encroach on gods domaim, they tunnel underground looking for buried old gods which they then corrupt so it'll lead them, and they reproduce by taking women corupting their bodies and turning them in to broodmothers which produce a different kind of darkspawn depending on the species used top create it.

I don't know every piece of fantasy out there but that hardly sounds generic.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well, that's the thing though. DA has a pretty generic setting at a glance. But they go deeper into each thing. The Elves have a history involving their exile, the dales, and some religious icons. The Dwarves with the lyrium trade, and the underground areas they keep, as well as their politics. The humans are fairly classic, but still have little, interesting, nuances.

But... the Darkspawn are really just the random mindless threat. Compare them to the Demons of Sin that come from the fade. One is really interesting, has backstory, some cohesion of narrative. The other is just the evil thing that comes and kills people.

 

[Radeonx]

Well, that's the thing though. DA has a pretty generic setting at a glance. But they go deeper into each thing. The Elves have a history involving their exile, the dales, and some religious icons. The Dwarves with the lyrium trade, and the underground areas they keep, as well as their politics. The humans are fairly classic, but still have little, interesting, nuances.

But... the Darkspawn are really just the random mindless threat. Compare them to the Demons of Sin that come from the fade. One is really interesting, has backstory, some cohesion of narrative. The other is just the evil thing that comes and kills people.

Except for the fact, that you know, there is an entire backstory to the darkspawn and how they were created.
Not only that, but Awakening also gives some insight into the darkspawn.

 

[Kilo24]

I consider them the single worst part of the first Dragon Age. They were painfully un-fleshed out before the expansion, which added a very little bit by including ones that could talk. They're just a generic evil horde that doesn't have anything better to do give your character a way to save the world. With some vague zombie-plague-spreading stylings that really aren't explored in the game.

It's an insult to DA's claim of being a deep dark fantasy setting to have so one-dimensional an enemy. Elsewhere, it at least does a mediocre job of maintaining a narrative more sophisticated than "you kill orc there", but the chief overarching conflict in the game is the same crap that's been rehashed in almost every game in the world time and time again.

You didn't read the codex or play awakenings did you?
There is more to them than you seem to think, plus define "generic".
Darkspawn are a race of monsters that desended from Tevionter mages that tried to literely encroach on gods domaim, they tunnel underground looking for buried old gods which they then corrupt so it'll lead them, and they reproduce by taking women corupting their bodies and turning them in to broodmothers which produce a different kind of darkspawn depending on the species used top create it.

I don't know every piece of fantasy out there but that hardly sounds generic.

That backstory's not carried over in gameplay or in the story itself beyond just a side mention. It's pretty much just an abstract infodump that doesn't synergize with the significant amount of attention paid to the characters and conversations everywhere else in the game.

Yes, I've played through Awakening and that fleshing out does help - a little bit. But a long lecture at the end of the game that contradicts everything you've done for the past 80 hours is hardly good storytelling, unless hints as to what was really happening were seeded throughout it. There wasn't anything like that.

 

[Zechnophobe]

You didn't read the codex or play awakenings did you?
There is more to them than you seem to think, plus define "generic".
Darkspawn are a race of monsters that desended from Tevionter mages that tried to literely encroach on gods domaim, they tunnel underground looking for buried old gods which they then corrupt so it'll lead them,

All of that was explained in the first few minutes of the game, via the opening cinematic. It's like the fancy schmancy explanation of zombies you'll get in every zombie game you play. Yeah some stuff happened ... zombies. If a two sentence synopsis covers the entirety of it.. it isn't really deep.

and they reproduce by taking women corupting their bodies and turning them in to broodmothers which produce a different kind of darkspawn depending on the species used top create it.

I don't know every piece of fantasy out there but that hardly sounds generic.

I did not play all the way through awakenings, but did encounter this Broodmother. They tried to make the darkspawn more interesting in Awakening, and succeeded to some extent. I mean,you know how they reproduce now.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

I think the exact same thing applies to the Darkspawn, that applies to every part of DA.
On first glance: the most generic thing ever.
On second glance: a quite interesting variation or subversion of a well known theme.

The problem is that the interesting aspects of the Darkspawn are just not well communicated via the main narrative. So the dominating impression is that of overwhelming genericness, i.e. they appear to be boring as shit.

 

[Zaik]

I always wondered how the darkspawn propagate themselves. I mean, all these blights, and an entire caste of dwarves who do absolutely nothing but kill darkspawn all day every day, and despite the fact you could clear out the entire deep roads that was available in DA:O yourself, everyone talks about them like their numbers continue to increase.

I mean, they're quite literally, soulless, genderless husks. Do they have some sort of "soul well" type deal that just re-creates their bodies as soon as they die like how the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers in Oblivion were re-created? Do they grow like plants? Are they like ants? Really, where do they even come from?

 

[GothmogII]

Yeah...we need a game segment from the Darkspawn's point of view! Don't they have feelings? Ambitions? Dreams?

Don't they love their mothers too?

Spoiler

*wipes the vomit from his shirt*.

Annnyway. I agree. Lamest mooks ever, and you know what? The Archdemon was also lame. Both it and the Darkspawn themselves -literally- have no character. This is acceptable of course in the individual Darkspawn, they are mooks after all, like many other videogame enemies, designed purely to be killed by the player. But, what bothered me, is that further into the game, in the later sections of the lower Dwarven areas the game does try to get across the kind of horror the Darkspawn are supposed to induce, going quite a bit into how they're made and one of the creepiest segments upon your party come across a person who:

Spoiler

Has gone quite mad just being around them and recounting the horrors they've witnessed.

I would have liked to be shown the Darkspawn retaining at least some of their humanity, and not even perhaps like in say System Shock 2 with the Many infected crewmembers, who will cry out for you to kill them. How about, instead of just having the Darkspawn look like brown tumourous orcs, why not have the taint leave the face mostly untainted? Have each most of the Darkspawn have a randomly generated face, one that even if they are going to still be mindless drones, still has the eyes completely focused, aware and with a look of utter horror stamped across it. Obviously, the older Darkspawn would have such things rotted off, but it would add a sense that these were indeed Men, Dwarves and Elves at some point.

Apparently things were rectified in the DLC content adding some Darkspawn related villains that were not merely mindless. But having not played those I can only really comment on the impression I got while playing vanilla DA:O. And of the Darkspawn it was not a good one. Overall, forgettable sword fodder.

 

[GaijinAndrew]

You didn't read the codex or play awakenings did you?
There is more to them than you seem to think, plus define "generic".
Darkspawn are a race of monsters that desended from Tevionter mages that tried to literely encroach on gods domaim, they tunnel underground looking for buried old gods which they then corrupt so it'll lead them,

All of that was explained in the first few minutes of the game, via the opening cinematic. It's like the fancy schmancy explanation of zombies you'll get in every zombie game you play. Yeah some stuff happened ... zombies. If a two sentence synopsis covers the entirety of it.. it isn't really deep.

and they reproduce by taking women corupting their bodies and turning them in to broodmothers which produce a different kind of darkspawn depending on the species used top create it.

I don't know every piece of fantasy out there but that hardly sounds generic.

I did not play all the way through awakenings, but did encounter this Broodmother. They tried to make the darkspawn more interesting in Awakening, and succeeded to some extent. I mean,you know how they reproduce now.

Didn't they explain already how they reproduce in DA:O I mean that dwarf lady made it pretty clear...(eeew). But the darkspawn aren't that dull: They are the corrupted counterparts of the 4 major races, and their motivation is to kill opposition and convert more into darkspawn in preparation for the next Blight. If they were orcs or undead that would have really been generic.

 

[moretimethansense]

You didn't read the codex or play awakenings did you?
There is more to them than you seem to think, plus define "generic".
Darkspawn are a race of monsters that desended from Tevionter mages that tried to literely encroach on gods domaim, they tunnel underground looking for buried old gods which they then corrupt so it'll lead them,

All of that was explained in the first few minutes of the game, via the opening cinematic. It's like the fancy schmancy explanation of zombies you'll get in every zombie game you play. Yeah some stuff happened ... zombies. If a two sentence synopsis covers the entirety of it.. it isn't really deep.

and they reproduce by taking women corupting their bodies and turning them in to broodmothers which produce a different kind of darkspawn depending on the species used top create it.

I don't know every piece of fantasy out there but that hardly sounds generic.

I did not play all the way through awakenings, but did encounter this Broodmother. They tried to make the darkspawn more interesting in Awakening, and succeeded to some extent. I mean,you know how they reproduce now.

Didn't they explain already how they reproduce in DA:O I mean that dwarf lady made it pretty clear...(eeew). But the darkspawn aren't that dull: They are the corrupted counterparts of the 4 major races, and their motivation is to kill opposition and convert more into darkspawn in preparation for the next Blight. If they were orcs or undead that would have really been generic.

I was about to post something to this effect but you beat me to it.
Though I'd argue that orcs and undead aren't automaticly generic either, they can be give an expansive backstory, engaging motivations or even just good charecterization.

I subscribe to the belief "It's not what you use buthow you use it.