A Whole Lot of Silence and Trousers - The Batmanification of Sooney Cousland

DRAGON AGE ORIGINS (DAO) STORY – HUMAN NOBLE INTRO

Content Labels - Bat-Pain, child murder. I'm going to try to be a lot less sweary than I usually am, but... yeah. Keeping it clean is fucking hard.

Our families keep us from being adventurers.

That's a lie, but it seems super popular as lies go. Popular and kind of unspoken. Every once in a while, when I get fed up with the evil men in the world, I get the notion that I should try to annoy them full time. I suspect everyone does. It's exciting. Then I remember I've got Darkpaisley and animals and nieces and nephews and, well, something to lose.

But if I didn't, boy, I'd throw my body in the gears and get my blood all over the nice shoes of those evil, evil men. This is a selfish, horrible, puerile line of thought, but it pops up however often I chase it out. I'm pretty sure anyone who believes in a cause, or who saw The Crow (1994) as often as I have gets those thoughts. Fact of the matter is that I know, in my case, it's a lie. I've gone through the last couple of months barely functional at the possibility of losing one or both of my cats in the near future.

But I see it all the time, this notion, Bruce Wayne, Eric Draven, Dean Winchester (ok, Dean has Sam, Eric has a bird, and Bruce has a parade of different minors named after the same bird. And Alfred. And Catwoman. Sometimes. And the second-best rogues gallery in comics*). Hell, it's as old as Simon Peter telling his family they're going to have to haul the nets in without him so he can follow a guy around and hang out with prostitutes, tax collectors and Samaritans. Tyler Durden told us in order to be able do anything, you have to lose everything.

So let's meet Sooney Cousland. Second child, only daughter of Teyrn** Bryce and Teyrna Elenor of Highever. Brother, Fergus, the heir; his wife is Orina, son Oren. Don't get comfortable with these people, they are not surviving the intro sequence.

Sooney has Jeanne D'Arc bobbed black hair, dark eyes and faint facial tattoos that I imagine she got from a kidnapping to the Korcari wilds or got done a couple years ago when she was really into whatever the Ferelden equivalent to The Cure is. She has the standard issue lady-body for Dragon Age, which involves gorilla arms, stubby legs, a slightly slouching posture, and proof that Ferelden has the most supportive brassieres in all fantasy kingdoms everywhere.

Seriously, they’re the Toph Beifong of undergarments***.

Dad Cousland is going to war with his bestie Evil McJerk and sending Big Brother ahead while Evil McJerk's forces take their sweet time to show up (spoiler alert, they will be showing up to torch the place and murder all within, because that's how the McJerks do).

Sooney wants to go with them. She's got a talent for making herself invisible, which she's pretty sure will come in handy in the war, but Mom Cousland isn't having it. Dad Cousland calls her "Pup" because this is Ferelden, and Fereldens are all about their doggies (in Dragon Age 2, the Free Marchers use the slur "Dog Lord" on the Ferelden refugees that show up, but that was back before Dragon Age decided to let fly the F-Bombs, so we all know what "Lord" stands for here). Mom Cousland is motherly. Big Brother Cousland has armor with double-popped collars. Sister in Law Cousland is a proper lady and slightly foreign. Nephew Cousland mugs for the camera so hard his pixels look about set to burst into pure adorable, but then the whole effect just falls flat.

Sooney's nanny ("Nan") is irascible, her dog is to a boxer what a hummer is to a car sane people drive, and Ser Ginger McHunksalot is unaware that Sooney has a poster of him on the back of her door, with hearts drawn on.

Well, the dog lives. He or she becomes a regular party member and gives you the weird experience of having to level up a dog.

At least it's easy. Strength and Constitution all the way.

And then we get the Grey Warden, Duncan, come to recruit Ser McHunksalot. Evil McJerk is a little put out by his presence and Mom and Dad Cousland are put out by his appraisal that their daughter who can turn invisible might be just the thing he needs to kill the orc-expies his job is all about. We'll probably talk more about the Grey Wardens and what they do, but for now, let's just say they haven't had to do it in 400 years, and they're about to have to do it a lot, with only two of their number remaining. Grey Wardens have the right to tell someone that they are taking them in, and no one can do jack about it. Dad Cousland is a bit nervous.

Anyway, all the pieces are in place for the sudden yet inevitable betrayal, when Evil McJerk's men show up, try to gank Sooney in her underwear, and learn that, in addition to turning invisible, she can get her armor on in picoseconds. She got this ability from her mother, I suspect, who shows up fully armored and sporting a bow. We learn that Fereldens age extremely well below the neck, too, because the armor is... well, there's no boob windows, but that's all I am giving it. D minus.

What follows is the "How to Fight" tutorial, where you, Mom, Dog, and some random Johnny (if you have the right stats to convince him), search the castle for Dad. At this point, Big Brother has left, Sister-in-law and Nephew are murdered on the floor (and Nephew's name becomes Mom's battle cry, which might have been more convincing if the script or voice acting had been there, but actually making us care about Mugs-for-Camera Cousland and his mom would have taken time we don't have in the intro), as are Nan and most of the servants. Dad and Duncan are missing, and Ser Ginger McHunksalot is making his final stand in the great hall. Sooney doesn't get a dialog option to declare her love for him, which I think is a real missed opportunity.

Eventually, you find Dad Cousland dying in a cupboard. Duncan comes along and agrees to take you with him, but only if you join the Wardens, and of course you do. Mom and Dad Cousland die off-screen and we cut to Ostagar, where further heroic motivation is in the offing.

If you're getting the impression that I am not invested in these early proceedings, move to the head of the class. The problem here is threefold.

First, you don't get a lot of time to identify with the Couslands. In the game’s defense, you really can’t get a lot of time to be with them. You’ve got to get your Blight on, and story in the intro is all just an excuse to justify the tutorial. So trying to make you care about a bunch of pixels and recorded lines in such a small amount of time takes real brilliance, and in a game, that kind of brilliance would be badly misplaced in an intro that potentially 1/6 of the players see.**** What happens is that every attempt to make you like this family comes off as ham handed or just hammy. Mom Cousland does the best in the bunch because she’s got to shoot arrows into the soldiers that were trying to stab her daughter. Ginger McHunksalot gets second billing because he’s very pretty.

The second problem is that you see Batmanification coming the moment you meet your little scamp nephew. And that’s only if you’ve got your brain switched off. Otherwise it kicks in about midway through the conversation with Dad and Evil McJerk. Sooney Cousland is about to grind through a dead horse trope, something that has been used so often and for so long that there really is no story value left to it. It is possible to go from this trope and make a story (and I would argue the The Crow manages it best), but the trope itself – family killed, sole survivor, R3VEnG3! – does nothing for nobody anymore. Even Dean Winchester’s moved on to lying to and getting lied to by his only remaining relative as the well from which he gets his Bat-Pain.

I could talk all day about Bat-Pain and how much I hate it, but we’re creeping up on 1500 words, so I ought to get a move on.

The last problem is particular to this sequence and, to an extent, to this game. In dialogue options, you have the opportunity to protest your mom making a heroic sacrifice to buy you and Duncan time to escape. But Mom is going to sacrifice herself to buy you and Duncan time to escape. At different points, you get options to say you want to go find your brother and tell him what happened, but you and your brother are going to see each other around the same time that Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal get back together, and that’s not a spoiler alert. You know this. You can tell Duncan to shove this Grey Warden thing, the Darkspawn and his Joining up his Taint, but the game is about you being a Grey Warden. It’s not about you finding your brother and getting revenge on Evil McJerk (but what are the odds he’s never showing up again, highly placed among your enemies regardless of whether your intro sequence provided you with a personal beef against him?), it’s about saving Ferelden from the Blight.

Sooney should insist on saving her mom. She should insist on finding her brother. She should tell Duncan she’s happy to join the Wardens, but she’s got to at least tell her brother his wife and son are dead before she gets around to mastering her Taint,***** but the game is in the other direction, so I know that choosing those options just puts another line of Duncan telling me no between where Sooney is and what she’s going to actually be doing. It makes me not want to choose those options. It makes me act like Sooney doesn’t care that her family is dead.

And if Sooney doesn’t care, why the hell should I?

* Flash rogues = best rogues. I am a late convert.
** Ferelden’s noble titles are Ban, Arl and Teyrn, in, I think, ascending order of rank, though I think the Arls have more influence overall. I’ll check that in the codex, sometime.
*** I really think the old girl missed a big marketing opportunity in not going into designing underwear – UNDERWIRES, OVERWIRES, METAL BENDER APPROVED.
**** There are six possible intro sequences (two of them with personal beef against Arl “Evil McJerk” Howe), but the player base is by no means divided evenly between the six. I am guessing that most of the players get the Human Noble intro – default for human warrior – which was why I picked it.
***** The phrase “Master our Taint” is spoken without irony in regards to what Grey Wardens do. The schoolboy in me cannot let that phrase just pass without comment.