Retórica procedural moral em Dragon Age Inquisition

Abstract

The present work intends to analyze what it calls Moral Procedural Rhetoric present in Dragon Age Inquisition. To this end, the first moment of the work addresses the theme of games, digital games and expose the theory of procedural rhetoric. The reasoning about Procedural Rhetoric is based on Huizinga (1950), who approaches games from a sociological perspective. Also Salen and Zimmerman (2003) are used to make an overview of various approaches and theories of games and summarize them in their work. Rouse III (2005) is consulted for focusing specifically on the development of digital games. Having based the sociological and digital part on games, Ian Bogost's (2007) theory of Procedural Rhetoric is addressed. This work is based on Huizinga's (1950) conception that the game, the playful, is essentially composed of a player's attitude that, in the words of Salen and Zimmerman (2003), challenges a system whose characteristics are Rouse III (2005) helps to elucidate. From this experience of a game comes a speech from the developers to the player. To constitute what is called Moral Procedural Rhetoric, the present work is based on the assumptions of Natural Law, as approached by Rhonheimer (2006). Other authors are used to complement the discussion, such as Peterson (2018), Finnis (2006) and Brooks (2014). The authors are presented with a critical approach, contextualizing their writings with the other elements that surround their works. It is considered that there is a resemblance to the deistic perspective of the worked authors and the fact that games are developed to express something. That is, the game universe and the real universe are physically and morally constituted, so that moral experience cannot be totally dissociated from world experience as such. The following describes the digital game Dragon Age Inquisition (2014) and then it is constituted as an object of study highlighting the specific and narrative aspects of the choices it presents, as well as the relationships between the choices and the rewards. From this construction, the analysis of Moral Procedural Rhetoric is made based on the assumption that the experience of the world is always a moral experience and that, therefore, the best rewards the title gives players are for their actions indicate the best actions, according to the developers' conception. This is because the rewards work, in the words of Rouse III (2005) as a feedback of what the player is doing. Given that the best rewards lie behind decisions that often require the player to use the game's most complex mechanics, they also require him to be aware of the logic the title presents, meaning, the logic of the universe it is being experiencied in the game. It’s noted that Dragon Age Inquisition presents a Prudence Rhetoric, manifested by the title's effort to express to the player what he is doing, how he will do it, and what the consequences of his actions will be before he makes the final decision. In this way, he will be able to be aware of the results of his choices before making them.