T w e n t y S i d e d

This was supposed to go up last night but I ran into a delay, sorry about that.

I write about Bioware a lot, but there are several Biowares. In fact, according to LinkedIn,You need an account to view the page unfortunately. there are eight studios. Recent development on the Mass Effect franchise has centered around two: the “main” studio in Edmonton, and the newer studio in Montreal that was assigned Mass Effect: Andromeda. (This was covered in some detail by Jason Schrier’s article about the game.)

And then there’s the Dragon Age team. Its latest entry, Dragon Age: Inquisition, was a mild-to-moderate critical disappointment. It was not, however, a notorious flop, nor did it spawn the memes of Andromeda. Furthermore, its primary weaknesses were (in my opinion) gameplay that leaned too much into MMO habits and a rushed final act, not its writing. Not that its writing was perfect, but I think it mostly lived up to the Bioware standard. There’s one specific area I want to talk about: the Dragon Age writers have been particularly adept at designing and depicting fictional religions.

The primary religion players encounter is that of the “Chantry.” It’s very obviously aesthetically inspired by the Catholic Church, but it isn’t a carbon copy. Their religion is based partly on an origin story: there was a God, called “The Maker” who built a glorious golden city, something like a shiny version of the Garden of Eden. Then, a bunch of Tevinter Mages (boooo!) tried to enter this golden city, corrupting it and causing The Maker to abandon his creation in disgust. But then, a human woman named Andraste became something like an advocate for humanity, winning the The Maker’s sympathy when he heard her song. Eventually Andraste was burned at the stake by the Tevinters (boooo!), and is promised to return again, with her new husband, The Maker. When they finally return, presumably they’ll fix everything.

If you grew up in a western, Christian country, it’s likely that the above story will sound familiar to you. The Maker is something like the Old Testament God, while Andraste the Messiah figure is something like Jesus. The Tevinters are the Romans (and, just like Jesus had Judas, Andraste had a Fereldan warlord named Maferath who betrayed her to them). The promise of the Maker’s return is something like Christrian eschatology. And that’s not the only church in Thedas (the world of Dragon Age). There’s also a Tevinter Chantry, which is a bit like the Orthodox church (while the “main” Chantry, based in Orlais, are more like Catholics), and there’s also the “Qun,” a religion followed by the hulking Qunari, described by one writer (I couldn’t find this quote, but I’m pretty sure it’s right) as the “militant Buddhist Borg.”

I consider all of these to be cleverly designed religions. They’re just familiar enough not to knock us out of our sense of place, while unique enough to draw the player’s attention. They also retain some level of doubt. Doubt isn’t always a feature in fictional religions. Take, for example, Dungeons and Dragons and similar roleplaying games. In them, Clerics can use their faith and their prayers to do miraculous things, all the way up to raising the dead (provided you have enough diamonds). In a world where Clerics can do that, there isn’t a whole lot of room for athiests – it’s pretty much accepted by all that the God or Gods do, in fact, exist.

In Thedas, by contrast, The Maker and his bride Andraste are both *absent*. They left, a long time ago, to parts unknown, and while it’s promised they’ll eventually return, it’s only a promise. This means that believing in them requires a certain level of faith, and faith by nature is generally at least a little bit blind. The absence of proof of life for this “Maker” fellow would seem like a weakness in a religion, but Dragon Age‘s writers recognize that it’s also a strength. When you ask faith of your followers, you’re asking for a commitment to believing something that is, on some level, irrational. If the history of real world religions is any indication, there’s a certain power in that.

That’s not to say that the religions of Thedas are objects of contempt. In Dragon Age: Origins, players learn about the Chantry faith partly through a deeply religious Orlesian party member named Leliana. While she’s not presented as perfect, she is a sympathetic character, and her sincere beliefs are occasionally challenged but not mocked. The same is usually true of the Qunari you encounter, and even members of the Tevinter Chantry. It’s clear to me that Dragon Age‘s writers see fictional religions as something that can enrich and deepen a game world, and not just a target for enlightened disapproval.

Mass Effect, by contrast, is relatively secular. This isn’t too surprising as it’s a sci-fi setting, as opposed to fantasy, and has a different focus. But there is one religion that’s worth mentioning: the worship of the Asari “Goddess,” Athame.

The Asari have worshipped Athame for much of their history, but she’s a “fake” (for lack of a better term) goddess. The real Athame was a Prothean – a member of an ancient, advanced, and now extinct species, who sought to recruit the then-primitive Asari to one day oppose their enemies the Reapers. And so her worship – which is a real and important part of Asari culture – is also colored with dishonesty and manipulation on the part of the Protheans. This is in-line with the habits of sci-fi as a genre, which, when compared with fantasy, is more likely to be suspicious of religion rather than sympathetic to it.

The reason for that entire lenghty preamble is to introduce the idea of religion playing a role in the world of a hypothetical Mass Effect 4. Specifically, I can anticipate two particular setting elements becoming objects of religious devotion: Shepard and the Reapers.

One of my personal favorite elements of the Mass Effect setting is Reaper indoctrination. It’s the process – described in semi-scientific terms – by which the Reapers psychologically influence and eventually dominate anyone in the vicinity. It’s creepy, insidious, and extremely effective – indoctrinated “slaves” are amongst the Reapers’ most useful tools. The codex entry says that victims eventually come to view the Reapers with “superstitious awe.”

Of course, one thing that’s not clear (from the Codex at least) is what happens to indoctrinated people once they Reapers are gone. That ambiguity leaves us free do almost whatever we want. But it seems to me that the Reapers were so powerful, so terrifying, had such a huge effect on the world, and left so many indoctrinated people behind, that it would be almost impossible for them not to spawn some kind of weird-ass religion. The natural counterpart to it would be veneration of Shepard, who’s said to have defeated them. Bioware has always played with the idea of Shepard being some kind of messiah figure – I could see that idea becoming explicit in a post-Crucible world.

I don’t mean to suggest that the game’s campaign would be dominated by religious conflict, or even centered around it. But it would be a setting element, and one that adds to the unique character of Mass Effect. Religious disputes in Dragon Age might take the form of people arguing over what happened a thousand years ago. Here, the events under dispute would be in living memory, though obscured by the fog of history and recent, devastating war.

This wouldn’t be an easy thing to write. I imagine there would a dozen ways of getting it wrong – making it too pat, too obviously good or evil, or have it be somehow implausible or over-the-top. However, Bioware’s semi-recent depictions of fictional religions in Dragon Age leads me to think this may be an arrow that still remains in their quiver. Faith is something people sometimes turn to in desperate situations, and the situation on post-Crucible Earth would certainly be at least occasionally desperate.

Of course religions, even fictional ones, don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re informed and affected by their environment, and inform and affect it in turn. This includes getting mixed up in politics, which will be covered in the next entry.

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.