Be warned: this piece contains spoilers for Dragon Age 2.
As someone with South Asian heritage, I’m typical in that family is an essential part of my life story. I grew up amidst cousins and aunts, weddings and birthdays, weekly visits to my uncle and great uncles after school, and weekend drives with my grandmother as I sat in the back of my father’s car, clinging to a book.
It’s made me think. So many role-playing games I have encountered focus on gathering friends and romantic interests around the protagonist, but how much focus do they give to your character’s family members? There are lots of games about found families, but could I think of one that was about siblings and parents and grandparents?
Then I hit on it. BioWare’s Dragon Age 2 actually ponders the family one is born into, and the complex dynamics within that family. It’s a huge part of the game. And it does this in ways that I haven’t seen before when playing games. As a result, Dragon Age 2 has a more intimate and even novelistic quality than both of the other, more celebrated, Dragon Age games. On that note, the story itself is actually narrated by a novelist who is one of your party members; they’re named Varric and they’re also a rogue.
Varric’s story begins as your character, Hawke, along with your mother Leandra and your two siblings, Carver and Bethany, flee your home during a battle with monsters named Darkspawn. In the fight, one of your siblings is killed. If you play as a mage, your sister Bethany dies, and if you play as the other classes, your younger brother Carver is apparently the one to die instead. (As someone who usually plays as a mage, the sibling that survived in my playthrough was Carver, but I’m intrigued to do another playthrough with Bethany.) You manage to get the rest of your family to relative safety, a city named Kirkwall. It’s a city where your mother has an inheritance and a respected family name. Now refugees, you reach the gates and manage to meet your uncle Gamlen, hoping for a warm welcome.