Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 04, 05)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

David Gaider, Designer

Spirituality in DA
You have some very good points, Amiety. Without commenting on the exact nature of DA's religions or whether it is polytheistic/monotheistic or whatever, I'll just comment on one point you made:

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4. Have a very, very good reason for limiting the player's spiritual options to exactly one. I'm not an atheist but I find the idea of the game dictating to me what spritual beliefs are kosher deeply unsettling, and for that reason I don't find a game in which your only options are the Official Religion or atheism very appealing. A really good story might redeem it -for example, one that explores the nature of conformity.

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I'm not sure why you would find the idea of DA dictating which spiritual beliefs are kosher unsettling. They are the beliefs held by those in the world, and whether they are one or a multitude that is what they are. That your character exists inside this setting is simply role-playing and not a statement by us on what fantasy in general should be. Our world is not a generic fantasy world, after all, but somewhere very specific. We do not adhere to any goal which says we must provide options simply as a matter of course... why would we?

Right now someone might be thinking "I want to be a paladin who worships a god of Justice, etc etc" and that's fine... but one must keep in mind that these are ideas bourne out of a lack of any knowledge about the game system or the background world. As knowledge of that system or of the world comes out, many of these ideas are going to be kiboshed and I'm sure there will be some folks who will cry out that their options are being eliminated and isn't that terrible, etc etc. Our goal is not to provide every option possible, however, nor to provide a background world where every possible character could exist or every possible story could be told.

While one could express a preference for pantheons, monotheism or whatever, and that's super, we're not in the business of providing "spiritual options" to anyone. There's no guarantee, after all, that you'll even have the option to play as a cleric or adherent of any religion to begin the game. We are here to provide one very good story and a fun game, period.