At the same time, does anyone find it odd that ambassadors in fiction are so often portrayed as huge knobs or extremely abrasive individuals without a hint of tact?
I think the most modern keystone of this trope was 80s-90s action movies like Lethal Weapon 2, with the trope of the foreign diplomat in league with the bad guys who the heroes can't touch because of diplomatic immunity.
Maybe this makes more sense in the modern day where diplomats have more leeway to be a douche because there's no way they can start a war by insulting someone and the job has become more technocratic. But in ye olde times I'd think that you'd want your ambassador to very specifically
not be an unlikeable asshole.
Now, ever since Dragon Age: Origins, I've always felt that the Dalish were, if not an allegory for indigenous people, at least some degree of indigenous-coded. And lead writer David Gaider concurs:
I mean, I think Gaider can kind of bugger off repping that comparison considering how little they give a shit about the alienage elves in the actual franchise. The City Elf intro is the first game is probably the most unique and fresh elf depiction in the entire series. Then they just drop them.
If you really, really want to preach the virtues of assimilation in your game maybe that's a socially acceptable place to go with it because the alienage elves are already kind of assimilated. Like, look Bioware! They're doing the thing! They're very gradually folding into majority human culture, syncretizing their beliefs with the Chantry to make something new. Oh wait, now that they've aligned themselves acceptably to the Anglo hivemind you don't give a shit?
It's like they don't even want any nuance in their deconstructive depiction of elves. Alienage elves would get in a way of a 100% elves suck policy.
The third factor is the contrived moral greyness and "BOTH SIDES!" politics BioWare is so fond of. Their thinking is that "Black and white conflicts are stupid, childish, unrealistic, and boring! Morally-grey conflicts are where it's at, and the morally-greyer they are the better they are!"
The big problem for Bioware is that their idea of grey morality contains within it a lot of black vs white morality assumptions. A lot of it is the legacy of the Light side/dark side days of KOTOR and sorta Mass Effect. But just as much of it is just the writers having a lot of moralizing wrapped up in what they consider grey or not.
One of the big examples of this is the mage-templar plot in Dragon Age 2. Anders starts out as more idealized rebel fighting a well justified battle against the system, but then he starts going questionable things and going to far until he reaches a tipping point. It's a sympathetic character who does bad things but his actions are still portrayed from a more moralistic standpoint.
You could just as easily take the grey a notch further by giving Anders an actual reason to do a really drastic terrorist action aside from just lashing out to make a point under demon influence. A ruthless but calculated action that can actually be defended would definitely be grey, but Dragon Age is not willing to cross that line and ultimately retreats into standard fantasy moralism.
I actually like the comparison between Dragon Age and the Witcher because for all the faults of the franchise and handling of social issues the Scoi'tel in the Witcher atleast have bite as real guerillas struggling against clear oppression. Their actions make them less sympathetic, but that also makes it clear how serious the oppression of elves is with how hard they're willing to be in fighting against it.
In comparison the elven plight in Dragon Age feels like it's treated as a non-issue? There aren't a lot of Dalish guerillas fucking up human travellers, you don't see any alienage programs and the elves getting violent in response. It's like oppression of elves is an abstract issue nobody really gives a shit about.
And when the mages start getting really violent about their oppression it's more very clearly treated as going completely cray-cray and taking things too far, where Witcher portrays it as not morally right but understandable.
There's also a weird little bit where you can come across paintings that aren't quite level, and when you straighten them up your character gets a Strength bonus (for indulging their OCD, I guess?)
Okay that's lame. You'd
think with Bioware's love of wacky hijinks it would be the exact opposite.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcMVpEz3JN8
