Welcome, welcome patrons! I know I said next time you see me things
look different, but I’m squeezing in one last video to talk about the small teaser
that dropped on D4 Day, titled ‘Thedas Calls’. It’s not as juicy as previous ones, in my
opinion, but let’s dig into what we can figure out from the newest tease! * The Visuals
* So the whole teaser this time features a wonderfully animated map of northern Thedas
showcasing off three major locations, and then zooming out to look at them all. * The first location is the nation of Antiva,
with the capital city of Treviso highlighted on the map. It then cuts to a cityscape, which I think
we can safely assume is Treviso. * On the BW blog, they also released a high
res image of the city scene describing it as “twisting canals and gleaming towers
of Antiva, where Crows may lurk in any shadow”. Also in the BW blog, it has this little quote
about Antiva matching a drawing from a fan artist they hired for DA Day: “Ever the
pinnacle of mystery and intrigue, the Crows watch from the deep shadows of beautiful Antiva. Something, however, is amiss, and they are
set on uncovering the source.” * If you look very closely at the image, you
can just make out Qunari banners hanging from the central building. If you haven’t been keeping up with the
DA Day short stories, then It’s going to come as a surprise that the Antaam of the
Qunari have split off from the Qun and are now rolling down on much of northern Thedas. At the moment, they have control of Treviso. * I guess my one question with the quote however,
is what do you mean they have to uncover the source of what is amiss? Isn’t it obvious what is amiss? Is there something more to the qunari occupation
that we don’t know about? * Part of me wonders if this quote is just
about the drawing, but later down the line, it mentions something in the Anderfels that
isn’t obvious from the drawing itself. So while it could go either way at this point,
I’m going to treat it like it’s all related, but keep in mind, it could also not be related
at all. * Next we see the nation of Rivain, which
doesn’t have any cities listed, but is depicted as a giant squid? From there, we see ruins of some sort of coast
line. * The ruins are interesting, in that it feels
very skyhold-esque to me. It’s really mostly this stone texture, but
the fortress like-windows aren’t helping. Out in the distance is a sunken ship, and
this statue, which I’m surprised they included because we see this all over the place in
DAI, although not really at this angle. You cullen-mancers should probably recognise
this the most, as this same statue is actually seen in the skyhold chapel. It’s used in other places around Fereldan
as well, so it’s not like it’s skyhold specific, but overall I’m thinking this
building is very much southern in it’s design, and as it’s also connected with Andraste,
which is unusual for Riviain given it’s the least Andrastian nation. Note, not impossible however, as given it’s
state, maybe this was once an outpost for the chantry, or at least an Andraste aligned
faction, that was abandoned once they sort of gave up on Rivain. The giant blue dome also sticks out, but I
cannot tell you anything interesting about that honestly. * The BW blog has this to say on Rivain “The
turquoise seas of Rivain with its rushes of greenery and hardy sea-faring people” and
later “Upon eastern shores and sunkissed sands, the Lords of Fortune no longer hold
dominion over the coasts of Rivain—not when dragons are growing bolder and laying waste
to their ships.” We do see some sort of large bones and a sunken
ship, so I wonder if the lords of fortune have managed to take one down. That being said, having googled what whale
bones look like, I wonder if this is actually a dead whale, as there only really seems to
be a spine, with no bones for wings or back legs. * Our final major location is the nation of
the Anderfels, with the Grey Warden’s headquarters of Weisshaupt highlighted. Then we see a stormy look at… something. I’m assuming a Grey Warden base given the
context, but I have no idea what these circular pillars are. * Really there is a lot of stuff going on
here that I can’t make out. You can sort of see a makeshift zipline, golden
statues that almost seem elven to me, and like this glowing red biomass that reminds
me of previous trailers. You can also make out griffon statues, or
really like… griffon gargoyles. This really does seem like a very old building
that became just unable to be maintained, and then built on top of with shittier and
cheaper materials. As the grey warden have had less funding in
the last few hundred years, I wonder if this is just the state of Weisshaupt at the moment. * The BW blog has this to say on the Anderfels
“The desolate, beautiful badlands of the Anderfels with curtains of distant mountainous
spires.” and “To the far west, three Grey Wardens patrol the Anderfels. Tremors have been creating disturbances of
late. Their cause is unknown. Upon the distant horizon, a storm of ominous
intent brews and darkens the skies.” I’m not sure if any of these three wardens
are supposed to be recognizable, but the tremors do give me pause. I also assume that the ominous storm is the
one seen in the trailer. * Finally, we cut to the larger map of Northern
Thedas with a bunch of different illustrated details that are pretty interesting, although
some of the juicer parts are covered by clouds. Now, honestly my friend Andarateia over on
twitter just did an insane amount of work and put together an amazing infographic on
her findings on the larger map, and frankly she did a much better job than I ever could. I’ve linked her post down below so you can
see all that she found, but I do want to highlight a few things. Hidden within the mist, Andy found that there
are more locations than are highlighted in the trailer. The BW blog does hint at other locations,
so I would be willing to bet that Andy found what they are referencing, which includes
floating ruins in the Arlathan Forest, Minrathous, possibly the Grand Necropolis, and if we are
getting a little crazy, maybe even Kal-Sharok! * The Audio
* I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve been locked onto the audio portion
of this trailer for once- possibly because a lot of the locations that the visual tease
have been on our radar for quite some time now. * However, I think some part of me focusing
so heavy on this has to do with what I’ve been up to these past few months. See, while I’ve been taking a break from
Ghil work to recover, I’ve been playing FFXIV. This is my first MMO, so it’s been an experience,
but while I’ve been loving the story so far, one of my favorite parts is hearing how
many times I can clock a dragon age voice actor doing a role in this game. I’ll just be minding my own business, and
then BAM, a voice reaches into my heart and I just get this obsessive need to find out
where I know them from, and from this experience, I’ve found I have a pretty decent ear for
voice actors. More on this in a bit. * In total, there are four voices that are
featured in the trailer. * The first voice says “We fight for everyone,
and we always will. The crows rule Antiva.” * A friend who plays overwatch immediately
caught that the voice is Carolina Ravassa, known for her role as Sombra. She hasn’t actually been in anything I’ve
come across, but looking her up on youtube, I agree that it sounds a lot like her. * Now, who is saying this? I think any woman of the Crows is a good guess,
Andarateia and Caterina Dellamorte are at the top of my list, but it could also be a
new crow we haven't met yet. From the way she talks, I’m assuming its
someone in the upper ranks, but honestly its very open ended. * The second voice says “Glory to the risen
gods! They come to deliver this world!” * Unfortunately, this is the only voice I
can’t track. If you have suggestions, please leave them
down below! * This is also the most opened ended of the
lines- given recent events, risen gods could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It could be an elf talking about the evanuris,
a tevinter talking about the old gods, a rivaini talking about their original animist gods
that we know something about. At this rate, this is honestly the most mysterious
line of the whole trailer. * The third voice says “Grey Warden’s
don’t hide in our castle. I won’t ask good soldiers to turn tail and
run!” * As for who the voice is, it’s Nicholas
Boulton, or better known to us as the male Hawke voice. I’m not going to argue with anyone here,
it is. Having played other games with him in it,
he’s so easy to spot now. However, that being said, I don’t think
he’s playing Hawke here as having played DA2 too many times, the performance isn’t
the same as his various Hawke voices. * As for who it’s supposed to be, I think
an obvious answer is some leader in the Wardens. As this is literally in Weisshaupt, the most
obvious answer is the First Warden, who is the head of the entire Grey Wardens. Which, fun fact, we actually don’t have
a name for the current First Warden. * And finally, the fourth voice says “All
the world will soon share the peace and comfort of my reign.” * There are a couple things about the last
line, but lets start with the voice actor and also jump back into my headspace for the
last few months. When I heard this voice, I KNEW I heard it
before. There was just something about it that just
sounded so familiar and I had the hardest time placing it. I spend hours pouring over IMDBs, asking people,
and finally- finally think I found who it is. * I will say that, minus one other person
on twitter, not a lot of people agree with me here. And I could be wrong, but I believe this is
a guy named Joseph Capp. While he is actually in FFXIV, I haven’t
actually gotten to the part of the game he is in. What I recognize his voice from was from ANOTHER
game I was obsessed over many many years ago that also heavily shared a voice cast with
Dragon Age games, Divinity Original Sin 2. His character comes up in the last bit of
the game, so what Im about to show you is technically spoilers for that game, but I
wouldn’t consider it heavy story spoilers- more that this character exists. He plays a character called the Shadow Prince,
and in my opinion, he has the exact same cadence as the last voice in the new trailer. A few people I have showed this to weren't
as convinced as I am, so I should at least say that this particular part of the game
came out in 2017, so the performance is almost 6 years old at this point. I’ve listened to a few other performances
by this VO, and honestly none of them come as close to what we hear as his role in DOS2,
but yeah. That’s my guess for who the last voice is. * So, all that being said, who is saying this? I mean, frankly, I’m of two minds. One is that I just want this to be beetle
from the murals- so then this is possibly the voice of Elgar’nan. It could also be the voice of the leader of
the Antaam- HOWEVER- with that, this is not even close to the voice of the man we once
knew as Sten. If Sten is indeed the current Arishok that
has broken apart the Qun, then no was is this him. But, if someone else has taken over the Antaam,
then its possible. I will also say that it could be someone from
Tevinter, but after a whole game of ‘Guy from Tevinter wants to be a god’, I just
don’t think they will go that route. Also, yall, please, this is not Dorian’s
VO. This is not Dorian. Please, I beg you. Stop. * The Blog Posts
* So like every year, there is a bioware blog post along with all the other goodies involved
with D4 Day. I’ve already been using bits and pieces
of it earlier in the video, but there are a few bits and bobs I wanted to highlight. * First, is this phrase “The fate of this
world teeters on the edge of a knife”- while on it’s own it’s just a saying, this same
thing is said twice on the newly opened steam page for DAD- which yes that hasn’t come
up yet, but you can wishlist on steam now. I’m not a copywriter, but when I’m writing
scripts for these videos, I try to have the last line before the outro have a little punch
to it. To mean something, as that's sort of a common
thing to do in a ton of media really. And I think this means something here- even
more so when you combine this with the image of Solas and the mysterious blue knife (that
I think general fan consensus is that this is somehow the healed red lyrium switch blade
idol.) Does this mean that this knife is going to
be the magical mcguffin for the game, similar to the orb and… perhaps ironically the idol
if it does end up being the same thing. * And because I’ve been working on this
video long enough, weeks after D4 Day, peachypowder on the da subreddit discord found DAD listed
on a page that scrapes steam data, and within a bunch of images on the listing, is this
icon. With a knife. Hmm. The icon itself I’m going to assume is what
could be the app icon, but so far there isn’t anything solid, and it might also change over
time. * At the very end of the blog, it also helps
answer the question raised in the video- what does full reveal mean? Per the blog: “With that will come our full
reveal including new trailers, gameplay, and—of course—the long-awaited release date.” * They obviously haven’t announced where
they will release this info- trailer releases have been weird lately- with the pushback
against the most recent game awards, EA might honestly revive their own live streams to
talk about DAD, or BW might just post media to socials themselves without any 3rd party. Or maybe Geoff makes amends and we do actually
see things during next year’s summer games fest. * Either way, and it feels weird to say this
and actually have something solid to base this prediction on, but there is a chance
you could be getting DAD for the holidays next year. * In recent BW game releases, there has been
about a 5-6 months window of heavy marketing before the release. For MEA, Their reveal trailer came out on
Nov 7, 2016, with the game releasing March 21, 2017. Anthem is a little odd, because marketing
for new IP’s is different from established ones as you want to build up hype for longer,
but looking at their youtube channel, after their E3 reveal in June 2018, a bulk of the
marketing content came out after Sept 2018, with release hitting in Feb 2019. * If the full reveal of DAD is summer 2024,
then it’s actually super reasonable to say we could be getting the game before the end
of that year. So prepare your timers kids. Dust off your DA world states, break out the
last gen consoles and fix those mods that the new EA launcher broke. Gather start those novels, buy the comics,
break the spine on the lore books, and prepare your shrines to summon your favorite character… I think it’s time.
