I've recently replayed DA:O and I've noticed a few things
It is a good game despite clunky combat with a lot of lore and love put in to it but:
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All companion dialogue is you pleasing them. You can't change their mind. This is also a problem with quests like Orzzamar. You can't for instance ask Harrowmont to keep the traditions but increase trade despite not being any issue with tradition. It's either progressive or isolationist to extreme.
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there is already signs of millennial writing with Alistair.
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Some lesbian crap that seemed rushed with Oghren's wife. It almost looked like someone tried to add a lesbian in a story that was already done. First it was implied that Oghren started drinking because his wife went to the deep roads without him and he was holding on to hope even after 2 years but apparently he feels nothing for her and she was a lesbian that took her lesbian lover with her. Made 0 sense.
In the DLC Awakening a lot of fighters you talk to are women despite having like 1 female fighter in the original. In the main game you see no female templar but now you have a woman "Ser" templar. It also tries to hammer home how the mages are just oppressed rather than walking timebombs.
It definitely looks like there was a woke escalation between DA:O and the DLC.
Mostly agree. I haven't played it in years, but what I noticed at the time was that there was this enormous emphasis on slavery being bad. Yeah, of course, but it went a bit overboard in an American kind of way. Same thing with Game of Thrones, where you just know that the author is an American for making a girl hate slavery for absolutely no reason. Historically, this sort of thing did not exist - even people who were freed slaves did not become abolitionists, but instead wanted to become slaveholders themselves.
That said... I do disagree with a few points here.
Realistic if nothing else. Opinions have people, not people opinions.
Three things. You could argue that trade and non-isolation inherently undermines tradition. That's why the Tokugawa Shogunate closed off Japan. Not saying anything about the trade-off, just that it's a thing.
Secondly, I kind of like that the 'progressive' is an out-and-out villain. And I sided with Harrowmont even on the second playthrough because I'm not a consequentialist.
Thirdly, and perhaps somewhat contradicting the second point, I like it when games have real consequences. Arguably, the woke believe the the 'morally right' (in their skewed morality) is also the optimal solution consequentially, and this is not always the case. It should be a difficult choice and not an easy one.
Not only that he becomes a tyrant at the end but is blamed on the nobles not backing him up.
Disagree on changing minds. I did change my mind drastically and I think a lot of people here have.
So did I. But no one argued it out of me. That must be very rare. Trump's own words were far more persuasive in me souring on him than 1000 leftists screeching about Tangerine Voldemort.