I'll be honest having had a perusal of the dude's twitter he hardly strikes me as crazy SJW maniac. versus someone who is addicted to tweeting (44 in a day...get a grip dude) and an unhealthy habit of virtue signalling typical NPC talking points.
Personally, I'd prefer to see them reboot Dragon Age from the off because to my mind it's one of those series that hasn't aged all that well and I think in large part that's a resultant of a certain naivety to the world building and writing, that is a little too broad brush. Dragon Age never felt like a lived-in world, versus one simply pulled together from the inspiration of various fantasy writers, without much regard when it came to generating a comprehensive history or and more importantly grounding the characters fully within it, both in terms of their mindset, attitudes, beliefs and knowledge.
That might seem kind of harsh, but I'll try and illustrate what I mean with an example of the how easy it is to undermine a setting with poor writing. I'm going to use a clip from GOT to illustrate my point. Skip to around the 2-minute mark and listen to the dialogue: -
When you live in a world without clocks and watches the concept of people talking about minutes as a measure of time is jarringly discordant. '5 minutes' is a concept that we as modern 21st century humans surrounded by endless time pieces get because we're used to trading in that lexicon, but in a series set within a medieval fantasy world it sits less easily.
Unfortunately, Dragon Age as a series falls into this habit a lot. The whole Varric as a romance writer storyline in DA: was a particularly groanworthy example, not from the perspective that Varric couldn't be a writer (he's the unreliable narrator to DA2 for example), but more the notion of mass distribution within the whole seemed to sit poorly within the world scape. To be fair with the Witcher series, there have been times where the dialogue seems to sit ill at odds with the setting in terms of the modernity of the language, although that may well be reflective of the novels.
The concern with what Epler says seems to me that he considers Dragon Age as a platform to celebrate modern values, and I question whether that's either necessary or serves a positive purpose from a storytelling perspective without risk of undermining the whole intent of a fantasy setting. If at the end of the day the end result is merely modern mores in fantasy dress up, why bother? Versus instead make an RPG set in modern times.
Perhaps take a leaf from the commode scene in Reservoir Dogs and realise that in order to really sell a story, you need to truly put yourself into it wholesale: -
Alternatively, I kind of feel like Epler is likely big on reading fantasy, but not necessarily big on reading the thing that inspires a lot of fantasy, namely history. For all the shit I give him for being a procrastinator extraordinaire at least GRRM knows his European history and the shitty nature of life back in earlier times.
If anyone has a new title, feel free to post and I'll edit it. For note, mod team stance (particularly in gaming) is any titles that are obviously trying to be sensationalist or introduce a stance from the off will be replaced with an anti- sensationalist/reductive title. Titles of youtube videos are not good thread titles unless sourced in the title as well.
