The world of Dragon Age is often rocked by monstrous invasions, magical and theistic conflicts, and other life-altering events. While the stakes seem high for it, it looks like the new animated series Absolution is going to take a leaf out of the pages of the excellent Dragon Age II, and do something a little smaller.
In a new trailer released today, Netflix gave us our first proper good look at Dragon Age: Absolution. Set during an unknown point in the saga’s timeline, Absolution takes views into the heart of the Tevinter Imperium, a powerful bastion of magic users otherwise shunned and persecuted for their dangerous abilities across the world of Thedas — a land where magic rules with a cruel iron fist. Following the story of a young Elven rogue named Miriam (Mass Effect’s Kimberly Brooks), Absolution explores a group of mercenaries tasked with staging a dangerous heist against one of the most powerful mages in Tevinter, secreting away a blood magic-infused ring.
Odds are, as is usually the case when it comes to blood magic in Dragon Age, things aren’t going to be easy for Miriam and her allies, as you can see by the amount of bloody action, spell-slinging, and general demonic havoc going on in the trailer above. It’s definitely got some of the Dragon Age vibe — beyond the fact we’ve got persecuted elves, dangerous mages, and races like Dwarves and Qunari. If anything, it feels closest to the oft-maligned Dragon Age II, a chapter of the game series that strove to try and tell a smaller-scale story confined to a single story, following the life of a young immigrant turned unlikely champion named Hawke. Yes, there’s lots of nasty demons and dire portents, but a heist isn’t exactly a world-ending quest, and the banter between the party seems like the idea here is to tell something small and interesting in the setting of Tevinter before we go visit it in depth in the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
Dragon Age: Absolution, which also stars Matthew Mercer (Fairbanks), Ashly Burch (Qwydion), Sumalee Montano (Hira), Phil LaMarr (Roland), Keston John (Lacklon), Josh Keaton (Rezaren), and Zehra Fazal (Tassia), hits Netflix on December 9.
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