Dragon Age & Religion

I saw Superman and had a great time! Krispy Kremey also has DC superhero-themed donuts, if you’re interested. I just finished re-reading Tyrant’s Throne by Sebastien de Castell, and after that is… The Truth? Or maybe The Mesopotamian Riddle? Could be Delilah Dirk? 

I am out of town this weekend, so I’m trying to get a headstart on writing this Saturday Note. The idea has been in my notes for at least half a year now; since pretty early in my start of playing Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Dragon Age & Religion

I had been meaning to try a Dragon Age for, uh, ages, and last year found the third game on sale in the Playstation Store. I had heard really good things about the writing, and I wanted to see for myself. I found myself deeply impressed, if also a bit intimidated by exactly how deep different aspects of the game were.

Let’s talk about how it handles religion!

The main religious institution in the game is Andrastrian Chantry, an obvious stand-in for the medieval Catholic Church. In-universe, there’s a lot wrong with the Chantry, and they tend to get a lot of details about the world’s history. The story is far from a wholesale condemnation of organized religion, though, and I think fans who try to paint its depiction as such are missing quite a lot of the story.

[Really, fans who treat everything in the world of Dragon Age as a one-to-one analogy for real world issues tend to get disappointed, and the developers get somewhat surprised. Apparently the writers were a little offset by how many in  the fanbase overwhelmingly sided with mages in the the mages versus Templar conflict, acting as if the only thing to read here was that mages were an often-oppressed minority. Which is true, but there’s also a tendency for mages to get possessed by demons, which is, uh not great. It’s like the problem with the argument of X-Men as an oppressed minority. In real-life, oppressed minorities aren’t actually a threat to society.]

I mean, the main theme from Inquisition incorporates the melody of a Chantry hymn. And when the titular Inquisition faces its lowest point, when the villain wrecks the base and leaves them stranded in the mountains, it’s singing that Chantry hymn that rallies the characters into gaining hope again. The story isn’t saying that organized religion is bad, or even that this one is, because it provides hope for so many. 

And I like that when you’re presented with evidence that the Chantry’s official line about something in the far past is put into question, you can talk to one of the clergywomen (Mother Giselle) about it, and instead of flat-out denying it or calling you a heretic for questioning things–which is what a lot of lesser, badly-written religious characters tend to do in fiction–she has a more subtle approach. Giselle points out that the character you heard this from is hardly an unbiased source, being a villain, and even if he isn’t lying to you to avoid blaming himself, he could easily just be wrong–it did happen a long time ago, and he’s not exactly a stable mind. She also admits the possibility that their scriptures left something out, or were mistranslated somewhere along the line, causing the discrepancy. 

There’s also the whole deal with the god of the Chantry religion, the Maker. Even when the series undermines the Chantry’s theology, there’s no word one way or another on whether there is a Maker. This is intentional–the developers made a rule that the whole point of the Maker was faith, and so won’t reveal if he’s supposed to be there, really guiding events. One of the few characters who might know, Solas, doesn’t seem to know if he’s real, but does admit that he approves of the idea of him–a deity that isn’t declaring himself as such, just simply is.

[Then again, Solas has issues with gods and morality in general, so maybe his views on theology aren’t necessarily the best thing to work off of.]

And when it comes to alternate theologies, the games take a similar approach. The old elven gods come to the fore in the story here, and it’s unclear at first what you’re meant to think of them (at least, until the epilogue DLC). The story indicates that while maybe ‘gods’ is the wrong term for them, they are something ancient and powerful. The epilogue confirms this, by revealing that they were incredibly powerful mage kings, though they weren’t the benevolent rulers that their modern followers paint them as.

The stance here is not ‘Religion is all bad’, which they easily could have gone into. They went with ‘Religion is complicated’, and I think that fits a whole lot better with a lot of people’s experiences. The point the games present is not to make too strict of a judgment on an issue, it’s to raise complex ideas and let the players decide what they want to think about it. There are definitive statements on some things, sure, but topics like this, Dragon Age wants you, the player, to take in multiple points of view. I wish more media did that kind of thing with topics, especially religion–though I admit that it’s difficult, I think it’s worth more writers trying.

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