Ever since the title of the latest Dragon Age game was announced I wondered why the creative team choose the name "Inquisition" for it. To me, and I think the public at large, it's a term that only has negative connotations (even if all that people remember is a vague notion of witch-hunting).
Or possibly just this:
So why choose it? It's a fun question to pursue in the long months before release, even if the answer is a very minor facet of the game itself.
What was the Inquisition, historically? Since we don't know what the creative team knows, I'll stick with the broadest implications as being relevant (being obscure results in no payoff for using it). The Inquisition was:
a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim [was] to combat heresy. It started in 12th-century France to combat the spread of religious sectarianism.
Just to be clear, sectarianism is when people from one religious group develop different beliefs within the same paradigm. At any rate, it's clear our Inquisitor isn't interested in heresy or imposing a particular version of the Andrastian faith on others, so that context can be tossed aside. The Seekers are a branch of the Chantry (the church, as it were), so perhaps the Inquisition has the blessing of the Divine (despite the Inquisition being completely independent). What's of interest is that the historical Inquisition was a judicial, investigative branch with a mandate for change, which matches what Dragon Age: Inquisition is intending:
As the Inquisitor you have rights and powers that other citizens don't have, and you can use those to great effect. At the same time you also have to make decisions, moral decisions, about what's going to happen. Do you want to save a village from burning, or do you want that village to burn down?
Beyond the Inquisition having cache, I think the broader intention is to indicate that the player can choose to be ruthless--that's what's implied by Morrigan's speech in the E3 trailer:
Darkness closes in. Will you stand against it? Or lead this world to its bitter end?
The key phrase here is "lead", so the Inquisitor can choose the latter scenario. I think the storyline shown in the demo from the fall illustrates how easily a player can make morally questionable decisions.
In game terms, I was uncertain if the Inquisition itself pre-dates the Inquisitor until I found this article by AusGamers, asking much the same question. Cameron Lee says a lot (including confirming that Leliana is in charge of spies and assassins), but I'll focus on the element most relevant to what I'm exploring here:
the formation of the inquisition is kind of always like a plan B that the head of the Chantry was considering, and then Cassandra starts to bring this all up after the events at the temple [the breach of the Fade and deaths of the heads of the factions]. And she's doing that because she knows that the Chantry was considering it and that the Chantry is just going to run off and talk about stuff rather than taking any action. So she sets things in motion via this loophole, picking up the Inquisition, but then as a player you need to go through a process of "well do people believe me? Do they know I didn't cause the explosion? Do they trust me enough? How do I start leading? How do I build it up slowly to the point where it's the Inquisition I want it to be as a player?"
Lee also talked about the question briefly back in September where he emphasized "inquisition" representing a search for truth. In the history of the Dragon Age universe, the first Inquisition was formed with:
[the] goal of protecting the people from the tyranny of magic in whatever form it might take; blood mages, abominations, cultists or heretics. A loose association of Andrastian hard-liners, the group combed the land in search of these threats and some say theirs was a reign of terror. Others say they were cast in a negative light by history because their investigations and even application of justice, protecting both mages and common people impartially, crossed too many powerful groups. In these accounts it is suggested that the group was already known as the Seekers of Truth and that the "Inquisition" moniker was perhaps pejorative
The developers have intentionally created an ambiguity about what the Inquisition was that echoes actual history (although revisionists in the real world have a harder time spinning it in a positive light, given that the "crimes" investigated weren't blood magic, but people simply having different beliefs). It's a brilliant creative choice and I can't wait to dive in and experience my own Inquisition.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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