{"id":277,"date":"2011-03-24T15:07:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=277"},"modified":"2011-07-12T15:07:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-12T19:07:27","slug":"bodice-ripper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=277","title":{"rendered":"Bodice Ripper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dragon Age II<\/em> uses retrospective as a narrative frame: your story is told by Varric: dwarf, bard, spymaster, adventuring companion, and accomplished bullshitter.  He tells the story of Kirkwall&#8217;s implosion\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmagophobic templar against wizard, Qunari against Kirkwall, noble against perpetual elvish underclass against refugee human newcomers, slaver against rebel\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom a distance of several years, and paints your character in the middle of it: your in-game decisions are the flashbacks in his version of your story.<\/p>\n<p>Just how accurately he tells your story is an open question.  I heard a wonderful report of how deftly the designers employ the device of an unreliable narrator, which, if true, rocks my world.<\/p>\n<p>Your first appearance features you and a sibling escaping your destroyed home town, darkspawn nipping at your heels.  If you play a mage, as I did, you&#8217;re stuck with your pissant wannabe brother, a warrior; if you play a rogue or warrior, you&#8217;re paired with your little sister, a mage.  The scene is something of a tutorial, teaching you to mash the attack button and move around a battlefield, and maybe hint at the various class roles.  You dispatch a bunch of darkspawn, but they just keep coming, and things begin to look bleak, until a dragon shows up and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bullshit!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d interjects the templar interrogating Varric.  She demands the Real Story, so Varric shrugs and returns to his tale.  At this point, I&#8217;m told, if you&#8217;ve been paired with your little sister, her breasts are animated much smaller than they were just a minute ago, a subtle and brilliant dig at the video game industry&#8217;s fascination with boobs as well as a subtle and brilliant demonstration of Varric&#8217;s personality.  I haven&#8217;t had the chance to verify the rumor myself, but you can bet I&#8217;ll be watching for it when I explore the powers of a different class on a second playthrough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dragon Age II uses retrospective as a narrative frame: your story is told by Varric: dwarf, bard, spymaster, adventuring companion, and accomplished bullshitter. He tells the story of Kirkwall&#8217;s implosion\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmagophobic templar against wizard, Qunari against Kirkwall, noble against perpetual elvish underclass against refugee human newcomers, slaver against rebel\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom a distance of several years, and paints [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}