The absolute side-eye from Josephine here. Sophia Loren would be proud.
Diving back into the lore-heavy opening of Dragon Age: Inquisition should be overwhelming. In the first few minutes, the game makes reference to mages, Templars, the Chantry, the Divine Justinia and more. It’s easy to share the bewildered confusion of your character. And perhaps, more than this, it makes me realise that I was always fuzzy on the specifics of BioWare’s grand, high fantasy world.
In this respect, the nine-year gap since release doesn’t really make much difference. I had, apparently, forgotten everything about Thedas anyway. This, in some ways, is a positive; there’s a sense that these byzantine, arcane institutions have existed for millennia, long before I ever started making informed beard selections in the Inquisition character creator. The fact that the specifics are lost on me is actually pretty realistic, in the same way I’d struggle to explain the difference between Christian denominations in a manner beyond ‘Catholics have fancier robes’. In Dragon Age, it’s enough just to know that certain factions are at war. And, unfortunately, that any hope for peace turns to explosive shit in the first minute of the game.