Darkspawn
The Darkspawn are a fictional collective of humanoid monsters who serve as recurring antagonists of the Dragon Age video game media franchise, developed by BioWare and owned by Electronic Arts.
[3] The Maker, the deity worshipped by the Chantry which is positioned as the dominant human religion in modern times, is said to have trapped the Old Gods deep beneath the earth where they remain dormant.
[7] BioWare staff said in promotional material and interviews that the Darkspawn are essentially corrupted equivalents of the sentient races of Thedas; hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks and ogres are converted from human, dwarf, elf and Qunari[note 1] stock respectively.
[7] At a predetermined point in the narrative of Origins, the player encounters a boss fight with a Broodmother, a large, grotesque creature mutated from a female victim, who now function as part of the reproductive caste of Darkspawn society.
[13] Goldman noted that he was not in a decision making role for the previous game's art department, and believed that being generic is not "the most inspirational direction" for a team to follow.
[13] Matt Rhodes, who worked on concept art for the Dragon Age series, explained in a blog post that the decision to redesign the Darkspawn was necessary for a number of reasons; besides their unsatisfactory art style in Origins, he cited the storytelling need to emphasize that the Taint is a severe sickness affecting people, and as a necessary retcon of the complex and intricate design of Darkspawn armor in Origins since the Taint is supposed to lead to brain decay, which results in a reduction of the victim's intelligence and sophistication.
[10] Lead Character Artist for Dragon Age II Shane Hawco explained in an interview with Pixologic that a decision was made to portray the Darkspawn "like a complete and cohesive group" with the new art direction, as opposed to their more "hodgepodge appearance" in Origins.
As the Darkspawn are capable of appearing in almost any environment, the designers chose a high contrast color scheme to make sure individual units were readable; the skin is pale as an indicator of the Taint disease, and the armor is darkened.
An apparently sapient Darkspawn emissary, the Architect, makes his first appearance in Dragon Age: The Calling, where his plans to spread the Taint is thwarted by the Grey Wardens shortly after their return to Ferelden.
Origins opens with a cutscene reciting a parable about a group of powerful Tevinter magisters who attempted to invade the Golden City, only to be damned and cast down back into the mortal realm.
The ending moments of the cutscene reveal that Origins is set on the eve of the fifth occurrence of the Blight, where a Darkspawn invasion led by an Archdemon on the Kingdom of Ferelden is imminent.
The Blight would later spread throughout the land as civil war erupts between noble factions, while the surviving Grey Wardens work to gather allies to stand against the Darkspawn hordes and their leader.
Unbeknownst to Hawke, Corypheus escaped his prison in the Vimmark Mountains by possessing one of his Grey Warden jailors, and later appears in Dragon Age: Inquisition as its central antagonist, though the Darkspawn hordes are never seen or counted among his forces.
[18] PC Gamer staff member Tom Senior acknowledged that the Darkspawn are good fantasy villains, but expressed a preference for "grey-area antagonists" who work against player characters for their own relatable reasons, such as Loghain Mac Tir and Flemeth.
[19] Carolyn Jong noted that other characters in the games frequently referred to the Darkspawn as "evil, soulless creatures", which in her view renders them as "voiceless objects", and are therefore subject to “finalizing secondhand definitions”.
[20] Jong noted that in Origins, there are no opportunities for non-violent interactions with Darkspawn, except as "finalized, externalized objects that exist only to be killed", which in her view forces players to "operate within an overly simplistic, binary opposition".
[21] "The argument underpinning this article is that the act of playing as a hero who slays pregnant and birthing monsters—referred to here as ‘Broodmothers’— functions as a re-enactment of the violence directed at women’s bodies within our heteropatriarchal societies.
[23] Conversely, Kirk McKeand from PCGamesN believe that the upcoming fourth title of the series needs to re-embrace the dark storytelling of Origins and look to its extensive collection of "sickening, self-contained stories" such as the Broodmother encounter for inspiration.
[19] Heather Alexandra said while it is "thematically cogent in many ways" and "helps illustrate the size of the darkspawn horde", they considered the Deep Roads a long "slog" which is overly annoying and a feature they are more than happy to skip.
