I would like to start this post with two notes. This will likely be my last Dragon Age: Origins post here, though the fact that it has wrung so many out of me here and in other places speaks to how I feel about it. I thank you for your indulging my obsession. Also, this post will contain spoilers for both the game and the DLC pack The Stone Prisoner, so if that concerns you, I ask you to avert your eyes, bookmark it until you have played it, and then join back in the discussion.

Shale_faceShale is a companion that was slated to be in the original game, but due to the fact that the character model was originally much larger, this inclusion posed many problems, such as fitting through doors and blocking camera angles–hence why Shale can only be found in The Stone Prisoner DLC (the team was allowed extra time through delays to change the character model to better fit the game). Which is a shame, because Shale, like many of the other companions, is really rather compelling, though one could easily write this character off as another of BioWare’s non-human ‘thinks humans are squishy slabs of meat’ companions. Most the companions in this game can belie their initial impressions though (dunno about that Oghren–but I didn’t have him in my party much).

For instance, this golem starts off by referring to the Warden as it, rather than by ‘he’ or ‘she,’ which starts the examination of how gender is handled for this character. As you will note, I have avoided gendered pronouns and the impersonal it when referring to Shale, and here is where I will provide a cut to fly away from spoiler-avoiding eyes.

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