The act of impersonation: empathically engaging with the player character in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Abstract

This thesis focusses on how impersonation, with which I mean taking on the assumption of a character, can function as form of empathic engagement in CRPGs, with as focus the relation between the player character and the player. I hereby use the specific case of Dragon Age: Inquisition. A roleplaying game in which the player has the ability to shape both the outside as the personality of their player character. I will argue how impersonation is afforded within the game design of Dragon Age: Inquisition and how playing a game by impersonating the player character influences the empathic engagement a player experiences with their character. To be able to show this I will make use of a couple of theories and concepts, which will be: impersonation, character engagement, the operator and machine, the player character as actor, diegetic elements, nondiegetic elements. Character engagement will function as an overarching concept that offers a certain way of looking at the relation between the player and their character. This concept, used by Petri Lankoski, contains two categories of character engagement, of which empathic engagement will be linked to impersonation in order to be able to look at and compare the emotional connection a player experiences when playing a character. In this regard it is important to realize that there is something between the player and their character that separates them, which will be described in the terms of operator and machine and diegetic and nondiegetic interaction. The analysis will show that impersonation creates a distance between player and character, which limits the empathic engagement a player experiences.