1) BioWare does a good job with their worldbuilding in drawing just enough from real history that players can bring some baseline knowledge to the table to fill in gaps, while making the specific sources obscure enough, and kinking the end result enough, to leave space for novelty. Like how the setting is not just Fake Middle Ages but specifically Fake *French* Middle Ages, or how Andraste, \u201cBride of the Maker\u201d is a conflation of Jesus and Muhammad, with Judas\u2019 betrayal setting the stage for the Fitnas and the Sunni/Shiite split.
\n\n2) I like the handling of healing, all on to the limited but freely refillable single type of healing potions, upgradeable in number and power. It means that the felt experience of gating map areas by enemy difficulty went from being wiped out by a single enemy and sent to last save point to having a series of victories \u201ccost\u201d too much resulting in the \u201cdecision\u201d to fast-travel back. Same ultimate effect but much less tedious and unpleasant. (plus evading all the inventory management shit, I don\u2019t know how long I\u2019ve spent in Spiderweb games consolidating and redistributing potions) It\u2019s like the RPG equivalent of the FPS innovation of regenerating health.
\n\n3) More sympathy than I expected for the people giving them shit for their yay diversity treatment of gender/sexuality. \u201cShoving it down our throats\u201d isn\u2019t right, but they do noticeably drop their standards for the sake of putting it in there. No comment on the charge that straight romances available to men suck - I\u2019m playing as a bi woman, as one does. But the two times they put gender/sexuality stuff front and center - Dorian and his dad, drinking with Bull and Krem\u2019s gender identity - feel like those G.I. Joe PSAs, bracketed off from the rest of the story, with an earnestness that\u2019s at odds with the tone and characterization elsewhere.
\n\nAnd I mean BioWare\u2019s still competent, so it\u2019s not terrible, just substandard. That Bull would accept Krem as a man is believable - as he says, his band\u2019s a bunch of misfits and there\u2019s a lot weirder shit taken for granted in this world. That he would so earnestly and firmly deliver The Message instead of smilingly busting balls over it like he does everything else\u2026 nah. And that your conversation options range from enthusiastic agreement to friendly curiosity, in a game that usually offers cynicism and hostility (at the expense of good relations) and otherwise presents sympathetic presentations of multiple views on genocide, slavery, totalitarian collectivism, and the prophylactic killing of innocents\u2026 it stands out.
\n\nDorian\u2019s more believable - that there might be some emotion and trauma under that insouciance, I buy it. But his situation just shows how the devs are trying to have their cake and eat it too - crafting a fantasy of a world where sexuality doesn\u2019t matter (as infodumped in the Sexuality in Thedas codex) and then stretching to rig up scenarios for you to triumph over retrograde opinions anyway. Just like they make a world where no one comments how Fake France is populated with a random assortment of Irish- to Ethiopian-looking folks, and then bring in the Dalish to Explore the Issue of Racism.
\n\nI\u2019ll live. But like I\u2019ve said before, however well-intentioned this shit really comes off like \u201c\u201890s attitude\u201d Poochieism sometimes.
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