Damn you, Arl Foreshadow. He basically hinted to the entire premise of DA:I using a neatly organized side quest and a hard-to-get codex entry in DA:O.
Does anyone remember the “Summoning Sciences” quest in Dragon Age: Origins? You encounter it while playing through the Circle of Magi plot quest. It’s an entirely optional side quest and it’s hard to activate the quest in the first place. You have to stand next to a stack of books that aren’t highlighted by the game’s glittery particle system and spot the fact that you’re able to select the book on the floor. Upon clicking on the book, the quest activates, and you have to perform a series of three exercises according to a codex you receive.
The
quest takes a bit of time since none of the items that you’re supposed to
interact with are highlighted by the game’s particle system, either. You have to find them inside of a giant room filled with books and other items and hope that your character or mouse cursor (if you play on PC) happens to find which exact item or book the quest is talking about. I remember being tempted to give up
when I first did this quest years ago, because finding everything can take a lot of time.
Well, I’m replaying the game right now, and now that I’ve played through Inquisition and Trespasser I’ve noticed a few things about this quest that I hadn’t before. For one thing, every time you finish performing an exercise
and a creature appears, the codex updates with information about that creature. Do you notice anything familiar about these three creatures?
Maybe I’m looking too much into this first part of the quest. But seeing as how this quest eventually leads you to a man who’s name is literally Arl Foreshadow, I don’t feel like I’m that far off when I think that these three creatures remind me of Fen’Harel in some way. More specifically, the Fen’Harel that we get to know inside of Dragon Age: Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC. Through this quest in DA:O, we find a hog who instantly dies because it cannot survive without the fade, a trickster, and a beast from across the veil who you have to fight who is “very real” and possesses a “fearsome will to be free”.
After you perform all three exercises and find these three creatures and the codex updates, the quest is considered over inside of the game. However, like the Dragon Age Wiki states, there is a secret fourth experiment that players can perform. In this fourth experiment, players have to redo every single experiment that they had done through Exercise 1-3 in order, without any mistakes. If a player does that, and proceeds into the next room inside of the Circle tower, they are able to find the man known as Arl Foreshadow.
(I’d also like to add that Arl Foreshadow is a reference to a character called “Lord Foreshadow” in Baulder’s Gate, who gave the player hints about what was going to happen in BioWare’s next game, Neverwinter Nights.)
After you speak with him, he disappears after a few seconds saying what he says in the image above. But if you have a rogue in your party who is able to successfully pickpocket, stealing from him will give the player a ton of gold as well as a new codex entry called “The Notes of Arl Foreshadow.” The codex I presented in the first picture.
Making deals between Ferelden and Orlais? Interacting with the Fade and the spirits inside? Elves who have managed to survive since Arlathan’s fall?Doesn’t that all sound familiar?
Seeing as how Inquisition is already out and we know all of this stuff now, nothing about this side quest is really news. I just thought it would be fun to point out that the Dragon Age devs have seriously planned out how the series is going to go. It’s always fun to replay an old game and see these sort of quests again with context.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Especially when these foreshadows are given to us as plainly as having “foreshadow” in a character’s name.
