Friends and Rivals

Abstract

This chapter explores how through both narrative and gameplay mechanics, BioWare’s 2011 digital role-playing game Dragon Age II seeks to help players redefine their understanding of ethics in terms of human emotion and interaction. These interaction-based ethics are the product of our desire to situate ourselves within a social community rather than on an abstract continuum of universal “right” and “wrong.” The ambiguity contained within the friendship-rivalry system factionalizes Hawke and his/her companions, forcing the player, as the group’s leader, to ally with one of the two sides in the game’s overarching conflict. This coercive mechanic produces awareness in the player of the way in which interpersonal relationships form our responses in ethical situations, and causes the player to question whether their decisions are the product of “pure” ethics, or the consequence of deliberate or unconscious submission to the ethical mores of others.