„What Pride Had Wrought“: On the Ethics of Knowledge and Belief in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Zusammenfassung

This paper takes a closer look at the ethics of knowledge and belief in BioWare’s Dragon Age series (2009-present), as well as how they apply to social and political processes. The focus will be on Dragon Age: Inquisition (DA:I, 2014), its Inquisition as an institution, and its relation to knowledge. Based on a theoretical framework in applied ethics adapted to the requirements of Game Studies, first the ethical models of DA:I are analysed using Marshall Brown’s concept of transcendental, horizontal, and vertical ethics (cf. Brown 2008, p. 58–59). In a second step, the nature of knowledge and belief in the choice-based medium ‘game’ is explored. Knowledge in DA:I is based on epistemological naturalism. It is about agency and the risk of freedom. Belief is based on religious Foundationalism. It is about immersion and the safety of dependency. DA:I shows that both may be required for survival, determined by the situation. Both immersion and the safety of dependency taken to their extremes are potentially destructive forces. Ethics, the game suggests, must be driven by a refusal of metaphysical justification and grounded exclusively in critical humanistic rationalism and social (inter-)action. Thus, the ethics of knowledge and belief in DA:I exemplify an extraordinary contribution that the franchise makes on a cultural and artistic level to the current debate about ethics in Western societies.