{"id":634,"date":"2015-01-14T14:58:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/?p=634"},"modified":"2015-01-14T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:58:08","slug":"shes-not-that-into-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/shes-not-that-into-you\/","title":{"rendered":"She’s Not That Into You"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to talk about the part of\u00a0Dragon Age: Inquisition<\/em> that made me cry, or at the very least to tear up and force myself to not cry.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of narrative beats, a lot of moments, in\u00a0DA:I<\/em>. I am sure you might expect that this emotionally-impacting scene is one of many in the rather large, global scope of the game’s story. Right?<\/p>\n

Nope. It’s about a woman. Specifically this woman:<\/p>\n

\"Cassandra
Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Probably my biggest, tear-jerking-est emotional moment in\u00a0Dragon Age: Inquisition<\/em> came when Cassandra Pentaghast had finally had enough of my flirting and had to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn’t meant to be.<\/p>\n

While this post is mostly spoiler-free, I’m still going to put everything behind the cut just in case.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, some context. The “romance option” is by now a cornerstone of the Bioware storytelling style.\u00a0DA:I<\/em> took a step back from\u00a0DA2<\/em>‘s approach (which I’ve written about previously<\/a>) and went back to romance-able NPCs with specific, defined sexualities. Cassandra is an option for male Inquisitors, but not for women. She IDs as a heterosexual woman.<\/p>\n

Something new in\u00a0DA:I<\/em>, however, is that your Inquisitor can flirt with characters that you can’t romance. I actually like this a lot, even though it is also the source of two of my greatest heartbreaks: the subject of this post, and that you can flirt with but not romance Scout Lace Harding. But it’s also a source of interesting moments, and a nice beginning to a trajectory away from previous models of Bioware romance<\/a>\u00a0where the world revolves around your character. You can flirt with the indomitable Madame de Fer, Vivienne, for example, but her response will always be an amused “Of course not!”<\/p>\n

A natural consequence, however, is that there is a possibility of heartbreak. That’s the situation I found myself in: my lady Inquisitor flirted with Cassandra relentlessly, partly because I as a player unexpectedly found her an incredibly compelling character. Cassandra is a devout knight, a Seeker of Truth: a member of an ancient order that are the “watchers of the watchmen.” But as of the events of\u00a0DA:I<\/em>, her world is crumbling. The church is floundering, the world is in peril, and if you do her character-specific quest you also discover that the Seekers have a dark past they’ve been keeping from the world.<\/p>\n

Cassandra is trying her best to keep up, however. She comes to trust the Inquisitor in ways she didn’t expect. She comes to challenge the tenets of a church she’s served all her life because she believes it can and should do better. Cassandra doesn’t reject any part of her past; she synthesizes them with her current situation into being a genuinely good person. So why wouldn’t my Inquisitor flirt with her? She’s amazing, a pillar of strength, a worthy partner.<\/p>\n

And if Cassandra likes you — and you flirt with her enough as a lady Inquisitor — the following scene will eventually happen:<\/p>\n