The Reason Dragon Age is Obsessed with Cheese
The Dragon Age series has been around for more than a decade’s time. As a result, it makes sense that it has managed to pick up some oddities over time. To name an example, the Dragon Age series has something of a cheese obsession, which has become clearer and clearer over time.
Why Does Dragon Age Have a Cheese Obsession Anyways?
Initially, the signs were subtle to those who played Dragon Age: Origins. If not, said character was one of the party members, a Grey Warden who happened to be the illegitimate son of the previous King of Ferelden. One of Alistair’s character quirks was that he was very fond of cheese. Besides that, Dragon Age: Origins also had a cheese knife show up as one of the weapons that interested individuals could come upon in the Shale DLC. As for Dragon Age II, its mentions of cheese were on the subtle side of things as well. For example, there was the cheese wheel in Gamlen Amell’s house, which was very strange considering said individual’s circumstances. Similarly, other signs ranged from a picture of cheese to someone who had apparently been crushed to death by a wheel of cheese.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was the title that was most blatant when it came to the Dragon Age series’s cheese obsession. In part, this came in the form of numbers. Simply put, there were a lot of cheeses in the title. Some of these cheeses showed up in relatively reasonable places such as plates. Others, well, suffice to say that there were cheeses found in the hands of statues as well as cheeses found in the center of summoning circles. On top of that, Dragon Age: Inquisition also featured a cheese shield, which is very amusing even if it isn’t very practical even by the lowered standards of fantasy media. As for why the Dragon Age series has a cheese obsession, well, no one knows. Certainly, no one has revealed anything about what exactly prompted the whole thing, which is assuming that anyone even remembers exactly what happened in the first place. After all, it isn’t exactly unknown for trends to start up without anyone intending for them to do so before proceeding to pick up a certain momentum of their own, meaning that it could be that Bioware staff decided to just roll with it. Until someone speaks out on the matter, this is the best that we have at the moment. In any case, it will be interesting to see how else the cheese obsession will show up in the Dragon Age series, seeing as how Dragon Age 4 is still in the works.
It Has Been in Development for a Long Time
For context, it is known that people started working on the next title in the Dragon Age series in 2015, meaning that the project that has been around in one form or another for the better part of a decade. Generally speaking, that is cause for concern. Certainly, there are games that get support for years and years. However, those tend to be games that get released before proceeding to see regular updates so long as there is enough of a player base to sustain them. When a game remains in creative limbo for this long, it tends to be a sign that something has gone seriously wrong.
Something Went Seriously Wrong
Having said that, we don’t need to make guesses about whether Dragon Age 4 has gone wrong or not because we have had plenty of indications that it already has. To name an example, the project was outright canceled at one point in time. As the story goes, it suffered multiple interruptions because its staff was borrowed for other Bioware projects. Eventually, the project was just straight-up canceled, apparently because its lack of potential to be a live-service title meant a lack of support from senior decision-makers. Later, Dragon Age 4 was revived as a new project, which would have a live-service component. Something that horrified a lot of fans at the time because of the perception that senior decision-makers wanted to use the title as a cynical way to extract as much money from the fan base as possible with reduced regard for the play experience. Later still, that plan was canceled. This time around, senior decision-makers apparently felt that Dragon Age 4 would be better as a single-player game, meaning that the multiplayer components had been dropped. Supposedly, this change of direction was caused by two factors. One was the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which gave them confidence that a single-player game could still be very beneficial for them in these times. The other was the failure of Anthem, which was a massive blow to people’s confidence in Bioware. Something that would have presumably encouraged a retreat to a more conservative model for the studio’s upcoming projects. Of course, there were personnel losses happening throughout these steps. Generally speaking, a company is more than just its employees. Essentially, companies develop their own cultures as well as their own practices over time, which cause them to work a certain way. Thanks to this, they can be very different from one another even when they are working in the exact same industry competing for the exact same customers. Something that has complicated more than one merger over the years. Having said that, those cultures are still made up of people, meaning that there are serious limits to how well they can hold up when they lose important members within a relatively short period of people. As such, those personnel losses have caused a lot of people to fear the modern Bioware just isn’t the same as the Bioware that made their favorites from bygone days. For that matter, it is hard to blame them considering the general course of events for Dragon Age 4. To name another blow, Matthew Goldman has been creative director of the project since 2017, which is why a lot of people started eyeing the whole thing suspiciously when it came out that he had left Bioware by November of 2021. After all, the departure of key figures before the completion of a project tends to be regarded as a bad sign for such initiatives.
Being Made By a Struggling Studio
Once upon a time, Bioware was famous for making single-player RPGs. Indeed, the Dragon Age series started up because the studio wanted a setting of its own, having already built-up considerable experience making titles for other people’s settings. Nowadays, Bioware is in a much poorer position because it has botched consecutive releases. After all, Mass Effect: Anthem was a flop, so much so that it derailed the studio’s original plans for continuing the Mass Effect series by making stories set in said galaxy. Somehow, Anthem managed to be even worse. Originally, a lot of people wanted to blame EA, which was both fair and unfair. On the one hand, EA has a reputation for killing once-beloved studios because of their unprofitability, so it seemed as though Bioware would be the latest in a succession of them. On the other hand, well, EA gets a disproportionate amount of hate from consumers. Unfortunately, it turned out that while EA did contribute to the failure of Anthem, Bioware made plenty of stumbles of its own such as internal conflicts, the lack of a coherent vision, and a work culture that was brutal even by the standards of the video game industry. Under those circumstances, it is hard to have confidence that Dragon Age 4 will turn out well.
Seems Like It Will Be Focused on the Tevinter Imperium
In any case, it seems reasonable to speculate that Dragon Age 4 will be focused on the Tevinter Imperium. At one point in time, this was outright confirmed to be the case. Said statement has become less reliable because of the sheer number of changes that have happened in the time since. Even so, the Tevinter Imperium remains a logical choice for the Dragon Age series to explore next. Essentially, the Tevinter Imperium has always been around in the various titles in one way or another. Generally speaking, this meant being enemies from a foreign, often-hostile culture. However, there was a notable exception to that trend in the form of Dorian, who was a party member in Dragon Age: Inquisition. By this point, the Tevinter Imperium is one of the most notable regions that haven’t been explored much by the series. Moreover, it is well-suited for said role, being both familiar and unfamiliar thanks to its previous appearances. Indeed, the Tevinter Imperium is bound to be involved in storylines that were introduced but left unfinished in Dragon Age: Inquisition, which is another factor that makes it a logical choice for inclusion in its follow-up.
Seems Like It Will Be Featuring a Lot of Returning Characters
A trailer has been released for Dragon Age 4. Based on it, it seems likely that the title will be leaning hard on already introduced characters, which is both understandable and not so understandable. For starters, the return of Solas was no surprise. After all, he plays a major role in the aforementioned storylines that remain unfinished, meaning that it would be rather strange for him to be absent in the follow-up. Meanwhile, the inclusion of Varric is more cause for eyebrow-raising. Said character was a party member in both Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition, so the potential for him to have a major role in another title seems excessive, particularly since he is the only character to receive such treatment. To an extent, this is understandable. Varric is very popular, so it makes sense for Bioware to lean on him at a time when it needs as much player goodwill as possible. Still, it seems remarkably risk-averse for it to do so. Something that has been known to ruin projects as readily as being too eager to take on more risk. Having said that, we know very little about Dragon Age 4 in truth, so a single trailer doesn’t actually tell us much about what we should and shouldn’t expect.
What Is So Interesting about Cheese in Fictional Settings?
Besides this, it is fun to think about the role of cheese in fictional settings. A lot of people have put a lot of effort into thinking about fictional settings. However, it is extremely common for them to stumble when it comes to the question of how everyone is being fed, which is often overlooked but nonetheless fundamental because it has shaped so much about the real world. Cheese is actually relatively interesting in that context because what is says about a fictional culture. Essentially, meat was extremely expensive in pre-modern societies, so butchering livestock for meat would have been relatively rare. Having said that, livestock could still produce other useful goods. Cheese was one of them. Milk was a very convenient way for people to transform plants that humans can’t eat into something that humans can eat. Cheese turned that milk into something that could be stored for a long time, which was critical in a time when food preservation techniques and technologies were so much more primitive. Besides that, it is interesting to think about what kinds of cheeses could be made in fantasy settings. In the real world, people tend to think of cow’s milk cheese when they think of cheese. However, the fact of the matter is that cheeses have been made using the milk of a much wider range of animals, which can sometimes seem very strange to say the least. Never mind the stranger cheese-making methods that have been used out there.
