Dragon Age 4 is set to pick up the story of Solas the Dread Wolf as he plans to bring down the Veil between the Fade, the realm of magic, and Thedas, the main setting of the Dragon Age games. Despite this focus on the elves, however, the game will likely take players to the Tevinter Imperium as its main setting, the oldest human kingdom in Thedas.
The humans of Thedas have a long and fascinating history that’s primed to come to a head in Dragon Age 4. While they can easily be thought of as the default option in fantasy games with multiple playable races, there are some great new reasons for players to consider roleplaying as a human in the upcoming Dragon Age game.
Humans are the most populous race in Thedas, but they didn’t used to be. Before the humans arrived and established tribes in the north, most of Thedas was run by the elves. They lived in a magical elven empire named Elvhenan, and there was no boundary between the Fade and the material realm before the Dread Wolf created it during his rebellion against the old elven gods. This, however, was long before the humans arrived.
When the human tribes arrived and established the Tevinter Imperium, there were quick to notice their new neighbors. The humans of Tevinter made a swift but long-lasting alliance with the dwarves, while the elven empire was destroyed by their war machine and its people were taken as slaves. The elven capital was sunk into the ground by Tevinter blood magic.
The same empire would be responsible for the origins of the darkspawn. Tevinter worshipped the old gods, ancient dragons which whispered in the ears of their high priests and convinced the elite Magisters Sidereal to make a big enough blood sacrifice to pierce the Veil and enter the Fade itself on their behalf. According to the Chantry’s account, by entering the Maker’s Golden City these Magisters were transformed into the first darkspawn, the city turned black, and the First Blight began.
Since then, the Tevinter Imperium has been at the center of some other major events in Thedas’ history. Andraste marched north during the First Exalted March and began freeing the elven slaves on her way until her capture and execution. Ten years later, the Archon of the Tevinter Imperium would himself convert to Andraste’s teachings, though not without their own Tevinter flare which heavily reinterpreted her teachings on mages in positions of power.
Dragon Age 4 is very likely to be set in Tevinter, which means some big changes coming to characters who play as humans in the next game. In all of the main Dragon Age games released so far, the human Dragon Age player characters have canonically been from Ferelden.
In Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition the human character was a noble, unless the player chose to play as a mage in Dragon Age: Origins. However, the player character in Dragon Age 4, according to the studio’s Gamescom video, is supposed to explore “what happens when you don’t have power.” This could mean the character is a Tevinter commoner – a powerless person at the heart of an empire run by magic.
This could create some fantastic roleplaying opportunities in Dragon Age 4. A lower class human from Tevinter might find themself susceptible to the qun, for example, which has a history of success among the lower and slave classes ever since the qunari briefly conquered Tevinter from Par Vollen, before their reach receded. They might also have very different views on the elven liberation Solas is attempting than some of their higher class counterparts. If nothing else, playing as a human from Tevinter would likely allow human characters who roll as a mage the freedom to roleplay as a mage who is able to move beyond the conflict of the Templars and the Circles.
With Tevinter as its setting, a human mage character could, despite starting off without power, become more powerful than most other mage characters in Dragon Age have been able to become so far. A human mage Warden in Origins, for example, could not become Queen or King of Ferelden, while a human rogue or warrior could. While it has been fun for many players to play as a mage within the restrictive society of the Dragon Age games so far, flipping the formula on its head could be a great move in Dragon Age 4.
There is no guarantee that the human character in Dragon Age 4 will be from Tevinter, but there are a few reasons its likely. Most nations in Thedas are shown to have distinct accents like Cassandra’s German accent, Zevran’s Spanish, or Leliana’s French. However, if Dorian in Inquisition is anything to go by, the humans of Tevinter have the same British accents as those in Ferelden. This could avoid the problem of having to have the player character speak with a heavily accented voice in the game, especially since Dragon Age’s non-British accents tend to be a bit over-the-top.
Tevinter is at the heart of many of Thedas’ major problems. It spawned the darkspawn, it enslaved the elves, it is on the front line of the qunari expansion, and it’s an empire run by mages in a world where magic is considered a conduit for demons. By playing as a human in Tevinter the player character could be at the center of all of these issues without having any particular alignment. They could turn against Solas in a way that might feel wrong for many players rolling an elf, or they could join the qunari in a way that might seem odd for the other races of Thedas. The human race has always been the flexible option in fantasy, but Dragon Age 4 may be the first game in the series to give human characters the opportunity to truly put that roleplaying flexibility to the test.
Dragon Age 4 is in development now.
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