How was Dragon Age a dark Fantasy?

[Vern5]

I was reading one of the seemingly endless threads of DA2 hate/support and I remembered something I had long asked myself some time ago: How was Dragon Age Origins a dark fantasy?

I guess there were hints of racism, deceit, sex and other mature overtones to the game but there was nothing about the game's fictitious nature that led me to believe it was "Dark" overall.

For example, The grey Wardens are supposedly tragic sacrifices to the greater of good of fighting the Darkspawn. What exactly did they sacrifice? My Grey Warden certainly seemed free to do whatever he wanted so long as he kept up his quota on Darkspawn slaying. There was no real tragedy to becoming a Grey Warden, just the Russian roullete of the joining, and even that was more of a risk than a tragedy.

Honestly, I expected the Grey Wardens to all be suffering some hideous, progressive deformities as the Taint slowly overtook them. Or perhaps the the voice of the Archdemon or other voices within the Darkspawn Horde would cause dementia over time but Duncan seemed sane enough.

Does anyone else think that Dragon Age was a Dark Fantasy? Or are we all just contented that it was just fantasy?

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

did you miss the fact that Grey Wardens never live more than 20 or 30 years after becoming a warden? or the fact that mages are highly susceptible to demon possession? or the exact nature of how Grey Wardens die when they get old enough? or the fact that almost everyone in the entire world is a total prick? it may not have been A Song of Ice and Fire dark, but it was still pretty dark.

 

[Blood Countess]

it's not really a dark fantasy since there isn't really a horror element at all and that is what Dark Fantasy is, Fantasy and Horror combined

Now maybe you have a different meaning to what Dark Fantasy is but that is what it is so no it's not.It's a Fantasy game plain and simple

 

[DEATHROAD]

I was reading one of the seemingly endless threads of DA2 hate/support and I remembered something I had long asked myself some time ago: How was Dragon Age Origins a dark fantasy?

I guess there were hints of racism, deceit, sex and other mature overtones to the game but there was nothing about the game's fictitious nature that led me to believe it was "Dark" overall.

For example, The grey Wardens are supposedly tragic sacrifices to the greater of good of fighting the Darkspawn. What exactly did they sacrifice? My Grey Warden certainly seemed free to do whatever he wanted so long as he kept up his quota on Darkspawn slaying. There was no real tragedy to becoming a Grey Warden, just the Russian roullete of the joining, and even that was more of a risk than a tragedy.

Honestly, I expected the Grey Wardens to all be suffering some hideous, progressive deformities as the Taint slowly overtook them. Or perhaps the the voice of the Archdemon or other voices within the Darkspawn Horde would cause dementia over time but Duncan seemed sane enough.

Does anyone else think that Dragon Age was a Dark Fantasy? Or are we all just contented that it was just fantasy?

The only tragedys im aware of in becoming a grey warden are A: They may be called upon to kill themselfs to slay a arch demon and B: Every time they go to sleep they have nightmares about the darkspawn and can hear the archdemon speak, alot of grey wardens ingame describe this in a very negative way.. I still dont think this makes dragon age 'Dark' but the grey warden thing does go alittle deeper than you said

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Because of the persistent gore. I mean, ketchup.

 

[Meggiepants]

Because of the persistent gore. I mean, ketchup.

Lol!

OT: I suppose they were trying to bill it as different than your standard JRPG? But really, I find the Shin Megami Tensei games to be far darker than these. DA:O has a little too much talk of sex and griffons to be all that dark imo.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Because of the persistent gore. I mean, ketchup.

Lol!

OT: I suppose they were trying to bill it as different than your standard JRPG? But really, I find the Shin Megami Tensei games to be far darker than these. DA:O has a little too much talk of sex and griffons to be all that dark imo.

I remember talking with Wynne near the end-game. I could act like a child and go "does this story have griffons in it?", and keeping asking about griffons over and over until her story was over...I was laughing uncontrollably at the thought of my Warden being so childish.

 

[Vern5]

did you miss the fact that Grey Wardens never live more than 20 or 30 years after becoming a warden? or the fact that mages are highly susceptible to demon possession? or the exact nature of how Grey Wardens die when they get old enough? or the fact that almost everyone in the entire world is a total prick? it may not have been A Song of Ice and Fire dark, but it was still pretty dark.

Maybe I'm just completely desensitized, but living a slightly shorter life (especially 20 to 30 years, that's a long time) is not Dark, just unfortunate. If it was really Dark, the Grey Wardens would have to live with the violent schizophrenia brought on by having the Archdemon's voice in their head. Or suffer horrific mutations. If it was really Dark, Magic-users would be REQUIRED to host a demon within their bodies and make deals with it in order to utilize its magical abilities.

And frankly, everyone in the world is a total prick. Some of us make up for it and some of us embrace our prickishness but it is always there.

Dragon Age is more Mature Fantasy but I doubt it will ever be dark until Blood Magic starts becoming the norm.

 

[Meggiepants]

Because of the persistent gore. I mean, ketchup.

Lol!

OT: I suppose they were trying to bill it as different than your standard JRPG? But really, I find the Shin Megami Tensei games to be far darker than these. DA:O has a little too much talk of sex and griffons to be all that dark imo.

I remember talking with Wynne near the end-game. I could act like a child and go "does this story have griffons in it?", and keeping asking about griffons over and over until her story was over...I was laughing uncontrollably at the thought of my Warden being so childish.

I know. If there was an answer that had griffons in it, I picked that one.

Griffons make everything more interesting.

 

[KeyMaster45]

Because of the persistent gore. I mean, ketchup.

It's raspberry sauce man, get it right nub.

OT: I can't really say I felt DA:O was very dark; maybe a bit more in line with what a medieval fantasy world would actually be like. (rampant poverty, religious zealotry run amok, every town having a fine coating of shit on everything) Grittiness I think is the term I'm looking for.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Dragon Age is more Mature Fantasy but I doubt it will ever be dark until Blood Magic starts becoming the norm.

Did you even play Dragon Age 2? xD Every single mage was secretly a blood mage.

Anyway, I think Dragon Age calls itself that because I guess it is dark. But it's still not much different from other high fantasy fare.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I think Dragon Age desperately wants to be a dark fantasy. I think there are elements in the lore that are certainly darker than the average high fantasy epic, especially when it comes to gaming, where everything is usually as vanilla as possible. I do think it fell short of its aspirations though. It was originally billed as a dark, adult, "low" fantasy epic in a similar vein to ASoIaF. What we got instead was a gory Lord of the Rings. So, a step in the right direction, maybe, for lovers of dark fantasy, but an itsy bitsy step.

 

[SnakeCL]

Well, there is the creation of darkspawn, namely, tainted females of various species are brutally raped and force-fed meat to turn into brood mothers and birth the various forms of darkspawn.

That's not exactly super-nifty peachy-keen.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

They called it dark fantasy because it wasn't knight in shining armor and wizard with a pointy hat cliche fantasy. If anything it was gray fantasy, 95% of the moral choices are so gray it's not even worth discussing. "Gray" wardens, I c wut u did thar Bioware

 

[Emurlahn]

DA is not Dark Fantasy, it sometimes looks like it WANTS to be Dark Fantasy, but it isn't.
It's got some darker themes, but hey, ever read the Silmarilion? That is NOT Dark Fantasy, as any other Tolkien it is the definition of High Fantasy (And for those who still don't know what the Silmarilion is; get your ass off your chair and down to the local library and start reading!!!!).
And for those saying that Silmarilion is Dark, no. H.P. Lovecraft is Dark, Tad Williams is Dark (sometimes), Steven Erikson is Dark, Glen Cook is (mostly) Dark, Tolkine is definitely NOT Dark, and even though Silmarilion is somewhat tragic and serious, it's just not Dark Fantasy.
And yes, Silmarilion was a bad example to use, because it's on the absolute borders, and the main thing that makes it not Dark is the fact that Tolkien wrote it, which is not the best reason, so I'm not going to splash more around in that, cause I'll end up drowning my own argument like that.

IF DA should be Dark it should not be about saving the world, but about saving your own ass, which it's not. It should not have x happy endings, y "sad-but-still-good" endings, where z of them ends up with the hero dead, but x tragic endings, y where the main character ends up dead, and z "relatively-good" endings (implied that x is always the largest number, and z is always the smallest).
And you should not en up being the Hero of Ferelden.
The entire game is way to much "lets-go-save-the-world" to be Dark.

 

[SnakeCL]

I don't think "Dark Fantasy" has really been defined scholarly.

That being said, Dragon Age feels a lot closer to Diablo than say, Lord of the Rings.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Berserk is dark fantasy. Dragon Age could be, but it isn't really trying to be dark.

 

[JediMB]

it's not really a dark fantasy since there isn't really a horror element at all and that is what Dark Fantasy is, Fantasy and Horror combined

Well... Broodmothers...

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Honestly, I expected the Grey Wardens to all be suffering some hideous, progressive deformities as the Taint slowly overtook them. Or perhaps the the voice of the Archdemon or other voices within the Darkspawn Horde would cause dementia over time but Duncan seemed sane enough.

Read The Calling. You pretty much just summed up the plot. Seriously, word for word.

Also, I find it mildly darker than the usual fantasy-based games I come across. For example:

Spoiler

No, seriously. Spoilers. For Dragon Age 2.

Spoiler

For a third of the game, you're trying to catch a serial killer who takes women, and all that is usually found is a severed piece of them. Eventually, he takes your mom (who's been with you since the beginning), and when you finally find them, he's stitched together a mangled corpse from the different body parts of each woman, and he stitched your mother's ripped-off face onto the Frankensteinesqe monster. The killer did all this for the sake of recreating his wife that died, and when he would see a woman with his wife's eyes or hands, he would take them and cut off the appropriate body part.

It's not like something I wouldn't see in any DnD game I would play on a Friday night, but it is something I don't see from the standard RPG fair.