Dragon Age 4 Teaser Breakdown @ EA Play 2020
Transcript
Hey! This video is presented by EA Gamechangers All that means is EA please don't take down this vid cause I allegedly ripped footage from the livestream... yay.
Before we start, a quick disclaimer: I will be referencing several spoilers from the entire Dragon Age series. This includes Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Descent DLC, and Tevinter Nights. If you haven’t gone through any of these, I highly suggest playing the games and reading the latest book Tevinter Nights. Again, READ Tevinter Nights, as I have been told will feature, and I quote, “brand new areas and characters [...] before they appear in the next BioWare game.”
Links to everything is in the description. If you’re cool with all that, let’s continue!
INTRO
To the dismay of many, including myself, EA Play only featured three scenes from the next Dragon Age for next gen platforms. Three. A spooky tree, a creepy courtyard, and a whole lotta red. I’ll reiterate that these three scenes are still classified as “Works in Progress” so it’s completely possible that we won’t see these specific scenes in Dragon Age.
AT A GLANCE
Instead, consider these scenes as part of a mood board. BioWare and EA releasing these three teases is more of setting the expectation of the world that we will be playing in the next game. On a high level, this is an example of the capabilities of their game in the latest version of Frostbite. Fantastical graphics, raytracing, glowy HD visuals (though to be frank, we won’t see this in action well enough until we see a reveal that’s legitimately in 1080p 60 frames not already reprocessed by Youtube or Twitch.)
Running back to the idea of the “mood board”. Because these images are the first we’ve seen in game, I think it’s fair to say that the aesthetic is going to be uneasy, unsettling. Bloody, dark, creepy. (Your typical Tevinter affair.) The snowy environment helps contrast the red scattered throughout all three scenes, calling back to the same vibes we saw from the old Awakening expansion and the Broodmother plot. Branka and the Anvil of the Void. Warden-Recruit Friedl and the horrors of Thaig Hormak. It’s a resurgence of the Darkspawn Blight — without the Archdemon. It’s a resurgence of certain magics we haven’t seen in some time. It’s something... we’ll get to later :)
The dark... deathiness of it all is unnerving, to say the least, but also matches well to what we are expecting from the more northern Thedosian nations. Tevinter with its dark magical bougie lifestyle, Nevarra with their obsession with death and the afterlife. Antiva with its shadowy, stabby politics. The Inquisitor did stab a knife through Tevinter already - it all makes sense.
Before we continue dissecting these three scenes, I wanted to take the time to at least set a baseline to frame everything we’re going to continue talking about. I’m sure for most Dragon Age fans this will be very basic. But to make sure we’re on the same page, based on the previous games, here are some things we know to be allegedly true.
Blue lyrium is blood from a Titan. (Source: Valta, the Descent DLC)
The Darkspawn Blight only affects living things. (Source: Bianca, DA:I)
Red lyrium is lyrium tainted with the Blight. (Source: Bianca, DA:I)
And lastly...
The Blight is filled with anger, singing a different song than normal lyrium. (Source: Cole, DA:I)
THE TREE
The most prominent thing here is the barren tree towering over the area, with glowing red lines pulsating on top of the trunk and roots. Let's get one thing out of the way: the tree is not romanceable.
It's PROBABLY not romanceable. In its current state. /sigh
Okay, if you notice the trunk, you'll see the pulsating red lines sprawled out. Historically, most spirits and demons possess bodies of people — humans, elves, dwarves, qunari, etc. But not always! On occasion, spirits aren't interested in the difficulties of inhabiting a social being, and will inhabit other organisms like animals or plants.
In particular, spirits that inhabit trees are called Sylvans.
Stated in volume one of The World of Thedas, "...only rage demons become sylvans. The demon will spend considerable time and effort twisting and molding the host to make it mobile." Now I'm not saying that our next protagonist will go out of their way to bang some wood, but I find it important to reflect on something I mentioned before: the Darkspawn Blight affects living things. And the Blight itself is angry. If red lyrium were to spread unchecked throughout Thedas, which it already has because of Inquisition, and should spirits decide to, en masse, inhabit the landscape as they did when the Veil was initially torn, it would be catastrophic to all the people of Thedas. Where half of them are in recovery, and the other half are prepping for war. And judging by the three pictures, something's been festering beneath the surface for a long time. During Inquisition, we spent all of our time fixing the sky and handling our sexy bald Elven god problems, but the Blight has been and will always be a threat.
Beyond the spooky tree and flying crows, several urns are spread out and around. The urns are so numerous that they continue to fade far into the looming background. Some of these urns are recognizable in Fereldan culture, while others have been found in the Fade, in Elven ruins, and Nevarran context. I find the urns' placement around the corrupted tree to be more foreshadowing. For along the well-trodden path, you'll find many urns of the dead, locked still by time and snow. Along our journeys as the Hero of Ferelden, the Champion of Kirkwall, and the Inquisitor, we’ve seen so much death. And much more will come as we journey into the unknown ahead.
THE COURTYARD
Broken buildings. Red lyrium. Foggy marsh. Fleshy sacs.
Thanks to the moon, we know this is within the physical world. You can also see the tinge of yellow and green in the sky — a permanent scar from the events in DA:I. To the right, you can also see a pervasive red glow coming from the fortress in the back and the tendrils glowing on the center archway. The fog makes this courtyard look like a marsh, but during the zoom you can tell the soil is wet yet there's no water. Historically, BioWare has deliberately used fog in trailer reveals to blur details in a location. As far as architecture is concerned, it's not Tevinter. Not Orlesian. Not Elven. Well, it somewhat looks like the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It also looks like the Temple of Mythal. My thoughts? It's all inconsequential. It’s more of a cinematic placeholder. What really matters — what's more alarming — is the spread of red lyrium and corruption spreading unchecked... and who's behind it.
If you look to the sides, there are fleshy, translucent tumors that are being spread through vines or veins of organic matter. It's too similar to the same meat bags we saw at the top of the Fereldan circle in Dragon Age: Origins. The nature of this corruption is unnatural, spreading across trees and walls and buildings.
The red tendrils are closest to Deep Mushroom, a group of fungi that are often found in dark caves or in the Deep Roads. According to volume one of "The World of Thedas", the most common varieties of normal Deep Mushroom carry the Blight, but cannot transmit it. Additionally, they often sprout near lyrium veins. Clearly, red ones, too. It's unnatural that the fungi is able to grow in this environment above ground, and seems to only thrive and perhaps benefit from accelerated growth and spread due to the blighted lyrium that has tainted it.
The normal version of Deep Mushroom cannot transmit the Blight... but this form might. It seems exposure of the Blight will be significantly easier in the next game, if this were to grow closer to civilization. And since red lyrium isn’t easily destroyed, once must question what caused this area to be so damp and dark to permit the growth of this flora.
Thanks to Vhenanshiral and Murnauk on Twitter, they helped me rethink how damaging this red lyrium-afflicted flora is in Thedas. More specifically, what if we did not have a reliable lyrium source in the next Dragon Age games? If more lyrium sources were tainted, or the supply was choked by demand, how would the world fare?
The last three games have illustrated this supply and demand very well. On one side you have Mages and apostates running from Chantry control, trying to gain enough power to defend themselves. On the other you have templars addicted to lyrium, and struggling to find a way out of servitude to the Chantry... or the Carta. The Tevinter-Qunari war is already escalating, with both Tevinter cities Ventus and Carastes falling to the Qunari. If supplies were to run low, and source of blood runs too thin, why not use the easily accessible red lyrium growing on your doorstep?
Red lyrium is still very powerful. And it's also just as caustic. But that doesn't stop the evil... nor the desperate.
We’ll leave this thought for another day. Looking at the big picture, it's clear that these ruins were destroyed and abandoned for some time. How long will it take to get to civilization? How early or late are we into the world's next large-scale spread of the Blight?
The third and last scene featured during EA Play. Although a more boring but logical explanation, I find this is likely a closer peek of the fortress in the back of the second scene. I thought at first it was the Fade, until I realized the windows aren't similar to the same keyhole ones of the raw Fade.
Now, normally, I don't like to talk to folks while I'm doing analysis videos. I like going in fresh, with no biases, describing what I see and what I know. That said, I did stream my original reaction...
... and a lot of friendly folks came by the stream and Twitter asking almost the same question:
IS THAT A TITAN HEART?
And to that I say... no. I don't think so. A few reasons why. One is because of its smaller size, compared to the heart we saw in the Descent DLC. There’s no banana, but to estimate the scale of that mass, you can use the staircase on the bottom of the screen. Two, there are no lyrium arteries present in this shot. Yes, the object is pulsating, but the object lacks lyrium arteries and is likely outside in the physical world. It's too exposed and Titans don’t sleep above ground. Finally, though it might be a bit silly, I don't think this is a Titan heart because there's fungi growing at the bottom of the mass.
(Hi, it's Ashe from the editing process! I can't talk too loud because it's 4:36am right now, but toward the end of editing this video, I realized there's some correlations between the imagery of the original reveal trailer and the new teases. My stretch prediction is that the red lyrium idol is ACTUALLY the beating flesh in the third scene of this reveal. Okay, back to the video.
Because of the corruption tumors from the second scene, I'm more inclined to believe that this is also a corruption tumor of a larger scale, infected with red lyrium. When I look into this pulsating, lava-looking sack, what I see is something silently growing. Something waiting to be released into the world. And what comes out isn't anything that Thedas is prepared for... not by a long shot.
THE TAKEAWAY
It stayed on the sidelines throughout events of Inquisition, but I believe that the Blight disease is back in a new form, thanks to the spread of red lyrium. All thanks to the event of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The Blight only affects living things, but it's as if physical Corruption is acting as a vehicle for red lyrium to accelerate its spread on the surface. The source of this Corruption is the real question. Is it purely because of the spread of red lyrium through Corypheus's efforts? Or is someone taking matters into their own hands?
My thoughts lie in the charred, root-like Corruption itself. It's spreading its roots throughout the physical world, in a remote location that looks as if it can bloom undisturbed. The roots themselves can also be a product created by a third party, as we know plant magic is possible thanks to two mages in previous Dragon Age titles. Velanna in Awakening and Francesca Invidus from Blue Wraith. Though the knowledge of it is rare, the magic does exist, if we are to believe that these roots are from unnatural causes.
Now why is this all that bad? Sure, the Darkspawn Blight makes you mad. But even worse? It makes you controllable. We saw Corypheus easily take control of the Grey Wardens through harnessing the Blight. We also saw the Architect remove the indoctrinating song from Darkspawn. Those who hold the keys to the Darkspawn taint, such as the magisters like Corypheus and the Architect, can gather and control countless armies. And as seen in Horrors of Hormak, and the Well of Sorrows, the Blight isn’t the only method of control yet to threaten Thedas.
All in all, the next Dragon Age looks already to be a darker, more fearsome game—perhaps closer to the same fun dread we all enjoyed in Dragon Age: Origins. Then again, this is an extremely early look at the game, showing off Dragon Age made for next-gen platforms. All of this could mean very little in the grand scheme of things—in Solas's grand scheme. But for now, we got ourselves a tree.
Thank you for watching! I'm happy to be back with Dragon Age, even if it's only a little while. From this point forward, I'll be dropping in here and there to bother you with more games. More crackpot theories. Whatever I feel like. You can also join the Discord as I'll be updating there when I have new videos and streams coming.
Take care and Fen'harel enansal :)