Why we're addicted in the first place

Dragon Age Origins Blog Reese vs. squirrel1 Opinion: Grey Wardens Rule

A simple forest path.  An eerie quiet.  Then, from among the red and orange autumn trees, a dozen darkspawn materialize. In the distance an emissary chuckles vilely and conjures a spell I am sure to regret. Hunched over my desk, one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard, surrounded by unpaid bills, file folders, bits of computer gear, and other office detrius, my inner barbarian revels at the prospect of massive bloodshed.  Bring it on.

Not long ago, driving in our suburban neighborhood, with the autumn trees gently raining leaves of gold down upon us, my husband let out a low whistle.

“I don’t know how you missed that little fella.”

“What, a squirrel?  Did I almost hit it??”

He looks at me thoughtfully.  “Yeah, but I guess I’m glad you didn’t see it.  You probably would have driven us into a tree trying to avoid it.”

He’s right.  I don’t like to see living creatures die.  I’ve walked out on movies because I couldn’t stomach the gore. Yet I get a thrill every time Alistair yells “It’s a gusha!” and blood spurts all over the party. It’s a bigger thrill when my favorite PC pulls a critical hit, slicing a darkspawn head clean off so that the steaming corpse kneels, penitent, in front of me. And oh, the ecstasy I experience when Anders hits a roomful of stunned mercenaries with Chain Lightning and they explode in technicolor body parts like fireworks proclaiming my victory.

I know I’m not alone in this. I would wager that most of the Gen-X gamers I know share a similar aversion to violence, personal or state-sanctioned.  Why then do we revel in this indiscriminate variety? I’m not referring to the story-telling, the voice-acting, or all the other elements of the games that we are free to enjoy without shame or suspicion of moral duplicity.  I’m strictly speaking about violence and bloodshed.

Steve’s admonition to rehabilitate ourselves and give up our Grey Warden addiction led me to revisit my own obsession with the order, and it occurred to me that violence and blood fueled that obsession. So here’s an unapologetic rationalization of said addiction: Of all the aggressors we could play in Thedas, Grey Wardens are uniquely satisfying for civilized humans.

Modern life can leave us feeling powerless in the face of endless rules, unreasonable expectations both internal and external, and injustices seemingly too pervasive to mitigate. Daily, we navigate interpersonal conflicts with complicated feats of critical thinking and emotional empathy. It’s exhausting. But it is to our credit that we soldier on anyway, and the world’s a better place because of our persistence.

It’s all very civilized.

But that sustained civility has a dark side, a primal gebbeth, a doppelganger we keep locked safely away in our mental cellar when company comes to call. It’s dangerous. And it gets hungry.

In Thedas, as in reality, violence is an equal opportunity employer. So why am I suggesting that the Grey Warden variety is so much more satisfying than any other in the Dragon Age universe? Because Grey Wardens are everything we aren’t allowed to be.

Grey Wardens are a society of superheroes that fight evil together, like the Justice League or Robin Hood’s band of merry men. There’s power in numbers, but there’s a sense of family, too, and when Alistair reminisces about what it was like before Ostagar, it feels genuine. Like Hood and his gang, the people they protect respect the Wardens even when they act outside the law. They have influence and power – thanks to the taint, they have superpowers – and a mandate to defeat evil using whatever means necessary. Deceit, lies, trickery? Fine. Colluding with shady characters? We’ll look the other way. Blood magic? Even the Chantry’s hands are tied.

But what they have in spades is mystique. Aloofness, an exclusive and secret joining ritual, the shared suffering of the taint and its consequences, legendary heroes, gryphons. Children want to be them when they grow up. Grown ups still want to be them. I love my job, but I doubt any of my students gazes at me awestruck and thinks, “I want to be a math tutor someday.” Within our everyday lives, we are offered few opportunities to be heroic or to wield power without restriction, as the Wardens do, and how can we help but covet that.

Mercenaries, Carta thugs, apostate mages, Templars…Everyone in Thedas is a potential killer. The preview images and trailers for both games and their DLC feature an appalling amount of blood, and everyone we see is seriously enjoying it, granting us communal absolution for our own thirst. (Look at the Mark of the Assassin trailer.) So that in itself is not unique to the Wardens.

Dragon Age Origins Blog Cubicle land with darkspawn 373x280 Opinion: Grey Wardens Rule

Delivery for Steve?

However, Wardens are the only killers whose victims are so unhuman and inhuman as to be instantly beyond redemption and sympathy. Guilt free slaughter. In Dragon Age 2, our enemies are primarily other humans or elves or dwarves. That’s less satisfying. It’s easier to empathize with them, and you can’t tell just by looking at them whether to kill them. You have to think about it, and the decision isn’t an easy one. Some mages are bad, some Templars are good, Merrill is flaky, but she’s right about the mirror, Anders is right about mages, but blew up the Chantry. Hawke is heroic, respected and in the end, powerful. But it’s not the same. I feel bad killing mages. I feel bad killing Templars. Mages, Templars, Dalish, Dwarves…they look like us and their daily lives are not so different from our own. I love this game, but I cannot deny feeling nostalgic for something simpler.

That’s probably why I liked the Deep Roads quest in Act I of Dragon Age 2. It was a relief to finally just know that I was going to kill whatever came around the corner next. When you see a darkspawn, you kill it. That’s pretty simple. Ironically, it’s an attitude that I would find appalling in real life, but which is extremely cathartic in this fantasy one.

Maybe I’m way off base, and most of you have no particular interest in the violence. Maybe you’re reading this thinking that my dark side and I sound a bit too cozy and someone should call the cops before I let it out one time too many. But I’m guessing you’re too busy trying to cram yours back in the cellar and lock the door behind it to worry about mine. Better let it out.

Author’s Note: I’m ignoring Awakening, because it messes with the lovely little Grey Warden fantasy I’m building here. And truthfully, I felt that way when I played it as well. Oghren single-handedly destroyed the whole mystique of the Joining Ritual for me. So we’re not going to go there right now.

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