How was Dragon Age a dark Fantasy?

[Timmibal]

You do realize that if Dragon Age: Origins had focused on those 'details' within the game, made them the forefront of the story rather than a side-dish, people like me wouldn't be able to deny its Darkness. If Dragon Age really had been Dark, then nobody would have been able to ignore the obvious amounts of dark content because it would have been the first thing anyone saw once they started the game.

This seems to be your primary issue against accepting the world of DA as 'dark' fantasy. I don't have the links to hand, but I remember a number of discussions with the BW devs where they bemoaned the limitations of the engine in portraying a lot of the nastier aspects of the world (Lyrium addiction was the primary example, but I think others were mentioned.)

I don't think anyone's disputing that the game did not explore the darker aspects of the world in depth, but I believe that was a limitation of gameplay rather than deliberate omission on the part of the writers.

 

[Saelune]

I read the skill books in Morrowind. THATS dark fantasy. DA is not dark. Its "realistic" as far as the fantasy setting goes. It seems like a more plausible one comparible to our world, than say, Final Fantasy.

 

[Emurlahn]

Snip

To both of you: What you're thinking of is low fantasy or Sword and Sorcery, not dark fantasy. Dark fantasy is something that mixes elements of horror and fantasy, like Stephen King's Dark Tower series, or most of HP Lovecraft's better works. Low fantasy/Sword and Sorcery is stuff like Conan the Barbarian, Sword of the Berserk, and the average D&D campaign as run by roll-players, who are not to be confused with role-players.

That is mostly right, but Dark Fantasy is split up in two parts, where Dark Tower and Lovecraft represents one part of it, the horror/fantasy cross, the other part is a collection of parts of the genres Sword and Sorcery, Urban and Heroic. While not all in those genres is Dark Fantasy some of it is.
And I would say that Berserk is definitely Dark Fantasy, while Conan is Heroic/Sword and Sorcery.

 

[Loonerinoes]

People think of so many damn things when they use the term 'dark fantasy'. A lot of people think it should mean 'The world is shit, no hope exists' and in that respect - no, DA:O definately was *not* dark fantasy. Others think dark fantasy should automatically mean something ala cthulu and that god forbid you should use Tolkien-esque tropes, in which case again - no, DA:O was not in a dark fantasy setting.

But if by that one means it's a fantasy setting, that does not merely rely on constantly conjuring its causes from the ether and usually has the causes with a negative theme (for example, I loved that you got to find out how Darkspawn come to this world in a perfectly concrete, yet utterly horrifying, fashion) then yes - in that sense DA:O is a 'dark fantasy' setting.

Frankly, to quote Flemeth: "Names are pretty...but useless." For me DA:O uses high fantasy elements, but puts them in a setting that is not quite as whimsical as most other high fantasy settings and instead uses a darker spin. And that's fine by me I think. Heck, if I remember during an interview Bioware even kind of backtracked from the 'dark fantasy' title and said they felt it's more like 'somehwere between dark and high fantasy' for them.

 

[Zom-B]

Definitions were never really required since DA:O does not feel like a Dark Fantasy while one is playing it.

How does it not? Reading through this thread, posters have given numerous examples of where the story has darker themes - be it rape/sexual assault, horrific mutation, possessions ,moral ambiguity and scenes of bleakness.

I think you, like all the other posters who desperately want to defend Dragon Age as Dark Fantasy, are having a difference of opinion and definition with the rest of us.

While all the things you mention are "dark", they are not dark in the classic sense of Gothic or horror writing. I won't dispute that much of DA has a darker tone, but it's really only a veneer over a fairly standard High Fantasy tale, and your and others excessive cribbing from Wikipedia doesn't change that fact.

If I may, I'll go through the things you list point by point:

1. Rape/sexual assault- while horrible crimes, not the right kind of darkness we are looking for. This are simply terrible acts committed by terrible people.

2. Horrific mutation- I'll show my ignorance on this one and admit I'm not familiar with the instances in the DA games that concern this. If we're talking about the darkspawn and their various means of reproduction, it's a pretty standard corruption style genesis of life.

3. Posessions- This I would totally agree with, but it's not enough to bring the whole canon into the gothic realms for me.

4. Moral Ambiguity- Political intrigue and spotty moral choices do not make for Dark Fantasy on their own. I never felt in my playthrough of Origins that any of my choices were truly ambiguous. It was more like Good, Bad, A little less Good.

5. Bleakness, scenes of- Sure, there was bleakness. Unfortunately, in most High Fantasy stories, where I would put DA, the whole setting is usually undermined by the fact that before we ever read one word or hear one line of dialogue, we know that there will be a happy ending. So while things my seem bleak, in the end, we know that Good will triumph over Evil and all will be well. As it was in DA:O. One of the reasons I gave up on the fantasy genre was because of this exact problem. The only books of recent memory that have strayed from that tired old formula have been George RR Martin's books, and we all know he's doing his best Robert Jordan impression at the moment, so I never expect to see a concluding novel written by GRRM. Regardless, I never found Origins to be bleak at all. Sure, there was tragedy and some scenes of desolation, but overall, I knew, that the outcome of the storyline would be rainbows and puppies for everyone after the big, bad blight was driven back. And it was.

However you slice it, it's up to you. You and others see it as Dark Fantasy. I don't. We'll have to agree to disagree, as the criteria for the "Dark Fantasy" genre is so unrefined that we can make just about any fantasy story fit it, if we really want to.

 

[Slycne]

as the criteria for the "Dark Fantasy" genre is so unrefined that we can make just about any fantasy story fit it, if we really want to.

I think that the term Dark Fantasy is credited as being coined by both Charles L. Grant, who wrote predominately horror, and Karl Edward Wagner, who wrote predominately Sword & Sorcery, is extremely telling of the situation, and why there is such a disconnect between viewpoints.