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111-439: The Darkspawn serve as the main antagonists of Origins , where they are initially presented as visually similar to orcs found in other fantasy fiction works such as the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien . They are redesigned from Dragon Age II onwards to match the developers' original vision of a race of diseased, twisted beings derived from the various sentient races of Thedas. The Darkspawn are generally considered to be

222-468: 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. Players also encounter various animals mutated by the Taint into monstrous versions of their original selves, such as blight wolves, bearskarns, corrupted spiders, and so on. Subsequent sequels in various media have further explored series lore about

333-625: A jidaigeki -themed martial arts action game where player samurai fight a number of swordspeople before confronting a more powerful boss samurai. SNK 's Sasuke vs. Commander , released in October 1980, is a ninja-themed shooting game where the player character fights enemy ninjas before confronting bosses with various ninjutsu attacks and enemy patterns. It was one of the earliest games with multiple boss encounters, and one of SNK's earliest games. Phoenix , released in December 1980,

444-556: A "boss song" that is more difficult, or a high-difficulty, computer-controlled opponent in sports games . In multiplayer online battle arena games, defeating a map boss usually requires teamwork of two or more players, but it brings various benefits to the team, such as buffs or lane push power. Some games, such as Cuphead , Furi and Warning Forever , are centered around continual boss fights. Bosses are usually harder to beat than regular enemies, have higher health points, hence can sustain more damage and are generally found at

555-747: A "strip of raw dried flesh ... the flesh of he dared not guess what creature". Half-orcs appear in The Lord of the Rings , created by interbreeding of orcs and Men; they were able to go in sunlight. The "sly Southerner" in The Fellowship of the Ring looks "more than half like a goblin"; similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed." In Peter Jackson 's Lord of

666-462: A Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves. In a 1954 letter, Tolkien wrote that orcs were "fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today." The scholar of English literature Robert Tally wrote in Mythlore that despite

777-536: A boss battle, but later appear as a regular enemy, after players have become stronger or had a chance to find more powerful weaponry. Many games structure boss battles as a progression of distinct phases in which the boss produces different or additional hazards for players. This is often reflected by a change in the appearance of the boss, or by a boss displaying increased frustration. The Legend of Zelda series and games inspired by it are recognized for having dungeons with bosses that are specifically vulnerable to

888-810: A boss. They come in many variations, such as the Chargin' Chuck Swarm encountered in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam , the Armos Knights from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or the Battle of 1000 Heartless from Kingdom Hearts II . A main requirement with most wolfpacks is that the whole group must be defeated in order to win; in order to prolong the fight, many wolfpacks, particularly in games with turn-based combat in lieu of real-time, will summon reinforcements to replenish their lost numbers. An example of this

999-554: A brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters , contrasting with the benevolent Elves . He described their origins inconsistently, including as a corrupted race of elves, or bred by the Dark Lord Morgoth , or turned to evil in the wild. Tolkien's orcs serve as a conveniently wholly evil enemy that could be slaughtered without mercy. The orc was a sort of "hell-devil" in Old English literature, and

1110-729: A class). They had similar names in other Middle-earth languages: uruk in Black Speech; in the language of the Drúedain gorgûn , "ork-folk"; in Khuzdul rukhs , plural rakhâs ; and in the language of Rohan and in the Common Speech , orka . Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald 's The Princess and the Goblin . He explained that his word "orc"

1221-503: A concept that Kung-Fu Master designer Takashi Nishiyama later expanded on when he created the fighting game Street Fighter (1987) at Capcom . The term "boss" was used in reference to the game's final boss by Mike Roberts in a review of the game published in the May 1985 issue of British magazine Computer Gamer , while he used the term "super baddies" for the end-of-level bosses. Sega's arcade game Fantasy Zone (1986) popularized

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1332-703: A connection with the Darkspawn and the Archdemon. The Taint within the blood will kill some recruits, while survivors will become Grey Wardens. The survivor of the ritual, the player character, later became one of the few surviving members of the Order after a disastrous battle against the Darkspawn at the fortress of Ostagar wiped out most of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden. The Blight would later spread throughout

1443-662: A crude accent, was used as a common language. When Sauron returned to power in Mordor in the Third Age , Black Speech was used by the captains of his armies and by his servants in his tower of Barad-dûr . A sample of debased Black Speech can be found in The Two Towers , where a "yellow-fanged" guard Orc of Mordor curses Uglúk of Isengard (an Uruk-hai chief) with the words "Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob búbhosh skai!" In The Peoples of Middle-earth , Tolkien gives

1554-488: A final boss in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link ). A superboss is a type of boss most commonly found in role-playing video games . They are considered optional enemies and do not have to be defeated to complete the game. However, not all optional bosses are superbosses. They are generally much more powerful than the bosses encountered as part of the main game's plot or quest , more difficult even than

1665-487: A fixture of fantasy fiction and role-playing games . In the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D ), orcs are creatures in the game, and somewhat based upon those described by Tolkien. These D&D orcs are implemented in the game rules as a multi- tribed race of hostile and bestial humanoids . The D&D orcs are endowed with muscular frames, large canine teeth like boar's tusks, and snouts rather than human-like noses. While

1776-414: A game. Boss battles are generally seen at climax points of particular sections of games, such as at the end of a level or stage or guarding a specific objective. A miniboss is a boss weaker or less significant than the main boss in the same area or level, though usually more powerful than the standard opponents and often fought alongside them. A superboss (sometimes 'secret', 'hidden' or 'raid' boss)

1887-592: A horror trope and how "fertility, particularly through rape, is used to strike fear into the heart of the player through the threat of the gruesome and grotesque treatment of the body" by using "a personal threat of the obscene against female bodies to both cower and fascinate the player". Hart said Hespith’s poem about the origins of the Broodmothers is one of the most disturbing moments in Dragon Age history. Conversely, Kirk McKeand from PCGamesN believe that

1998-526: A letter dated 21 October 1963 to a Mrs. Munsby that "there must have been orc-women". In The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth". Or, they were " beasts of humanized shape", possibly, Tolkien wrote, Elves mated with beasts, and later Men. Or again, Tolkien noted, they could have been fallen Maiar , perhaps a kind called Boldog , like lesser Balrogs ; or corrupted Men. Shippey writes that

2109-777: A more detailed version of the regular ending. Examples of a "true final boss" include the Radiance in Hollow Knight and the Moon Presence in Bloodborne . The term "Foozle" is used to describe a cliché final boss that exists only to act as the final problem before players can complete the game. Scorpia stated in 1994 that "about 98% of all role-playing video games can be summed up as follows: 'We go out and bash on critters until we're strong enough to go bash on Foozle. ' " A precursor to video game boss fights

2220-578: A need to do evil as to obtain fulfilment through the act of war. In the Warhammer 40,000 series of science-fiction games, they are a green-skinned alien species, called Orks . Orcs are an important race in Warcraft , a high fantasy franchise created by Blizzard Entertainment . Several orc characters from the Warcraft universe are playable heroes in their crossover multiplayer game Heroes of

2331-598: A new twist" in the Dragon Age series as reflected in the consistent victim-blaming narrative advocated by the Chantry, which blames mortal hubris for antagonizing the Maker and irresponsible use of magic for the creation of the Darkspawn. Moosa suggests that the Maker is a Victor Frankenstein figure who punishes all for the sins of the few, though he believes that the series lore secures apparent hope into mortal hands, as Chantry doctrine also encourages human action to win back

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2442-503: A number of titles in the Dance Dance Revolution rhythm game series contain "boss songs" that are called "bosses" because they are exceptionally difficult to perform on. In combat-focused games, a boss may summon additional enemies, reinforcements, or minions ("adds") to fight players alongside the boss, increasing the boss fight's difficulty. These additional enemies may distract from the boss battle or give time for

2553-497: A private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions,

2664-413: A product of ancient necromancy , or a zombie -like creature. The term "orc" is used only once in the first edition of Tolkien's 1937 The Hobbit , which preferred the term "goblins". "Orc" was later used ubiquitously in The Lord of the Rings . The "orc-" element occurs in the sword name Orcrist , which is given as its Elvish language name, and glossed as "Goblin-cleaver". Tolkien began

2775-466: A pug-nose ("flat-nosed" ) was attributable to Tolkien's written correspondence, the pig-headed (pig-faced ) look was imparted on the orc by the D&;D original edition (1974). It was later modified from bald-headed to hairy in subsequent editions. In the third version of the game the orc became gray-skinned, even though a complicated color-palleted description of a (non-gray) orc had been implemented in

2886-556: A reduction of the victim's intelligence and sophistication. Rhodes acknowledged the divisive reception towards the redesign of the Darkspawn as a learning experience for the design team. 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 . The Darkspawn's overall visual design

2997-608: A similarity with the Latin word orcus , noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya] urko , S[indarin] orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc , 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connection between them". Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size. They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight. By

3108-455: A sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil." He notes Tolkien's own description of them, saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the " Other ", and states "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite " and mentions Tolkien's letters to this effect. The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in

3219-616: A special item that is located within that dungeon. Player(s) typically acquire this item while exploring the dungeon and is given opportunity to learn to use it to solve puzzles or defeat weaker enemies before facing the boss character. Boss battles are typically seen as dramatic events. As such, they are usually characterized by sometimes quite theatrical cutscenes before and after the boss battle and unique music. Recurring bosses and final bosses may have their own specific theme music to distinguish them from other boss battles. This concept extends beyond combat-oriented video games. For example,

3330-525: A special ritual by copulating with a male Warden, the life of the Warden who slays the Archdemon will be preserved. The essence of the dying Archdemon will be transferred to Morrigan's unborn child who will, according to her, be reborn as an entity untouched by the corruption of the Darkspawn Taint. The Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening expansion pack reveal that following the demise of the Archdemon,

3441-499: A temple) and fighting a boss character at the end of each level; in turn, this end-of-level boss battle structure was adapted from the Bruce Lee film Game of Death , where Lee's character fights a different boss character on each floor as he ascends a pagoda. The game was distinctive for giving both players and each boss a health meter , which leads to the game temporarily becoming a one-on-one fighting game during boss battles,

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3552-429: A time limit by having a large number of players or parties working together to defeat the boss. Examples of such superbosses can be found in games like Pokémon Go and World of Warcraft , and are generally referred to as a raid . Toby Fox 's games Undertale and Deltarune both feature superbosses in the form of Sans , Jevil, and Spamton NEO. Some major video game series have recurring superbosses such as

3663-494: A typical dungeon campaign there would be one powerful enemy acting as the boss of the weaker minions that players would face beforehand, in the same sense as a crime boss, which later inspired the boss battles of role-playing video games . The first interactive video game to feature a boss was dnd , which was released in 1975 for the PLATO system . dnd was one of the earliest dungeon crawl video games and implemented many of

3774-463: Is Astaroth in Diablo IV . Many other wolfpack bosses empower themselves when one of the other enemies in the battle is killed to keep the threat level from falling over time. The final boss, last boss or end boss, is typically present at or near the end of a game, with completion of the game's storyline usually following victory in the battle. The final boss is usually the main antagonist of

3885-456: Is Bruce Lee 's Hong Kong martial arts films , including The Big Boss (1971), in which Lee fights a criminal gang before battling the eponymous "big boss", and Game of Death (1972), where Lee fights a different boss on each level of a pagoda , which later inspired the boss battles of martial arts action games such as beat 'em ups. Another precursor is tabletop role-playing games starting with Dungeons & Dragons (1974), in which in

3996-547: Is a fixed shooter where players's ship must fight a giant mothership in the fifth and final level. At several points in Namco's vertically scrolling shooter Xevious (1982), players must defeat an Andor Genesis mothership to advance. In side-scrolling character action games such as beat 'em ups, Irem 's 1984 arcade game Kung-Fu Master established the end-of-level boss battle structure used in these games, with players progressing through levels (represented by floors of

4107-557: Is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman 's orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of orcs and Men ? That would be a black evil! The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world

4218-479: Is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it

4329-508: Is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that. The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent". The journalist David Ibata writes that

4440-422: Is found the Darkspawn extend their Taint, which transforms the dragon into an Archdemon . When the Archdemon rises to the surface, the Darkspawn follow it as a "Blight", corrupting the surface as they go and spread across the land like swarms of locust . People who were wounded by a Darkspawn in battle or became infected by Darkspawn blood eventually succumb to the Taint and become Darkspawn themselves. In response,

4551-449: Is generally much more powerful than the bosses encountered as part of the main game's plot and is often an optional encounter. A final boss is often the main antagonist of a game's story and the defeat of that character usually provides a conclusion to the game. A boss rush is a stage where players face multiple previous bosses again in succession. For example, in a run 'n' gun video game, all regular enemies might use pistols while

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4662-429: Is generally thought to be derived from the Latin word/name Orcus , though Tolkien himself expressed doubt about this. The term orcus is glossed as " orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol " ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossaries , about which Thomas Wright wrote, " Orcus was the name for Pluto , the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand

4773-589: Is said to have trapped the Old Gods deep beneath the earth where they remain dormant. The rulers of a powerful nation called the Tevinter Imperium eventually decide to open a gateway into a heavenly realm out of hubris, and usurp the rule of the gods. The mages would then step out into the "Golden City", analogous to the real-world concept of Heaven , where it becomes tainted due to their imperfect nature as mortal humans and transforms into "The Black City";

4884-479: 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. Upon the mages' return to the world, they became the first Darkspawn, the source of evil that hangs over much of the series. The ending moments of

4995-523: Is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth ]. Scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics . In The Two Towers , the Ent Treebeard says: It

5106-559: The orc-né (pl. orc-néas , "demon-corpses") was a race of corrupted beings and descendants of Cain , alongside the elf, according to the poem Beowulf . Tolkien adopted the term orc from these old attestations, which he professed was a choice made purely for "phonetic suitability" reasons. Tolkien's concept of orcs has been adapted into the fantasy fiction of other authors, and into games of many different genres such as Dungeons & Dragons , Magic: The Gathering , and Warcraft . The Anglo-Saxon word orc, which Tolkien used,

5217-594: The Kirby games. Others may be a recurring version of a previous boss, who is either weaker than previously encountered or is less of a challenge later in the game due to character or equipment progression. An example is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ' s Gaibon and Slogra. Other video game characters who usually take the role of a miniboss are Vile ( Mega Man X series), Allen O'Neil ( Metal Slug ) and Dark Link ( The Legend of Zelda series, though he appears as

5328-471: The London Review of Books , endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about". Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy , despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars. In a letter to his son, Christopher , who was serving in

5439-675: The Monster Manual for the first edition (1977). Newer versions seem to have dropped references to skin-color. Early versions of the game introduced the "half-orc" as race. The orc was described in the first edition of Monster Manual ( op. cit. ), as a fiercely competitive bully, a tribal creature often dwelling and building underground; in newer editions, orcs (though still described as sometimes inhabiting cavern complexes) had been shifted to become more prone to non-subterranean habitation as well, adapting captured villages into communities, for instance. The mythology and attitudes of

5550-477: The Darkspawn Chronicles as a powerful visceral experience. He described the lives of the Darkspawn as "brutish, cruel, and short, but that's part of what makes them compelling. "You only ever know how to design your game when it’s done. That’s just the reality. We’re fortunate on Dragon Age to have the freedom to correct or finesse designs according to what we’ve learned in the past. At the end of

5661-446: 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

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5772-466: The Dragon Age universe was described in the Art of Dragon Age: Inquisition book as an "abominable" mash-up of twisted metal, chains and organic mass, literally signifying their corruption. According to Matt Goldman, who served as the art director for Dragon Age II , the adoption of a generic art style for Origins was an actual design principle for the art team that worked on the game. Goldman decided that

5883-518: The RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict: Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on

5994-568: The Third Age , a new breed of orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight. Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men , and may indulge in cannibalism : in The Two Towers , Grishnákh, an orc from Mordor , claims that the Isengard orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an orc flings Peregrin Took stale bread and

6105-404: The "evil horde" is more of a reoccurring "living plague " which threaten the world on an irregular basis. Gaider conceived of a backstory where in ancient times, mages used to rule the world of Thedas, and humanity used to worship a pantheon of draconic beings known as the Old Gods. The Maker, the deity worshipped by the Chantry which is positioned as the dominant human religion in modern times,

6216-534: The Darkpawn do to the victims they choose to take captive. Prior to the final battle against the Darkspawn in Ferelden's capital city of Denerim, Morrigan , the daughter of Flemeth and ally to Ferelden's last remaining Grey Wardens, reveals her true motivations for her companionship. Morrigan confirms that the Grey Warden who strikes the fatal blow against the Archdemon will die, but claims that if she undertakes

6327-535: The Darkspawn and the Taint, including their connection to the Grey Wardens, the nature of the phenomenon known as "the Calling" which drives the Darkspawn to seek the Old Gods and the Wardens to end their lives in battle before their time, and so on. Darkspawn characters are playable in the Darkspawn Chronicles , a downloadable content pack (DLC) for Origins which is presented as an alternate history retelling of

6438-401: 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 stock respectively. Then-Creative Director of the series Mike Laidlaw described the Darkspawn as sadistic, marauding beings with no redeeming qualities. At a predetermined point in the narrative of Origins , the player encounters

6549-473: The Darkspawn nor the Grey Wardens existed in his first draft of the world setting. Gaider elaborated in a 2017 post uploaded on Medium that James Ohlen , who led the design for Dragon Age: Origins , wanted Gaider to come up with an “evil horde” of sentient monsters, a ubiquitous enemy like orcs which does not confront the player with a moral dilemma about killing. Gaider initially disliked Ohlen's request, but eventually came up with an iteration he liked, where

6660-642: The Darkspawn unfavorably to villains like Loghain due to their "comparative lack of personality". "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. This virtual symbolic violence therefore reinforces misogynistic hegemonic ideologies." —Sarah Stang, The Broodmother as Monstrous-Feminine The Broodmother has received particular attention due to her reproductive role within Darkspawn society. Sarah Stang explored

6771-482: The Maker's favor. In her analysis of the cinematic intro for Origins , Cecilia Trenter formed the view that it is "designed to motivate the player" by creating a "dystopian historical consciousness" which combines and blurs the lines between a "dark past, a threatened present and an uncertain future" which is variously depicted throughout the intro; the historical consciousness works on different levels in order to create an identity. The virtual identity in this instance,

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6882-422: The Rings films , the actors playing orcs are made up with masks designed to make them look evil. After a disagreement with the film producer Harvey Weinstein , Jackson had one of the masks made to resemble Weinstein, as an insult to him. The Orcs had no language of their own, merely a pidgin of many various languages. However, individual tribes developed dialects that differed so widely that Westron , often with

6993-600: The Ruby and Emerald Weapons. Some superbosses will take the place of the final boss if certain requirements are met. Some superbosses can yield special items or skills that cannot be found any other way that can give players a significant advantage during playthrough of the rest of the game, such as added experience or an extremely powerful weapon. For example, the "raid bosses" from Borderlands 2 give rare loot unavailable anywhere else. Some superbosses in online games have an immense amount of health and must be defeated within

7104-503: The Storm . The orc features in numerous Magic: The Gathering collectible cards, in the 1993 game series published by Wizards of the Coast . In The Elder Scrolls series, many orcs or Orsimer are skilled blacksmiths. In Hasbro 's Heroscape products, orcs come from the pre-historic planet Grut. They are blue-skinned, with prominent tusks or horns. The Skylander Voodood from

7215-785: The Ultima Weapon and Omega Weapon in Final Fantasy and the Amon clan in Yakuza . The Warden from Minecraft could be considered a superboss, as it is vastly more difficult to fight than the final boss, the Ender Dragon. However, Mojang, the developer of Minecraft, has explicitly stated that the Warden was not intended to be fought by players. A wolfpack boss is a group of enemies who may be considered weak on their own, but in large groups can be considered strong enough to be

7326-852: 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. The Darkspawn appear as enemies in the DLC Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Descent , which takes place in the Deep Roads. Tauriq Moosa from Polygon suggested that the idea of an all-consuming uncaring god stretches across BioWare's most popular franchises, including Dragon Age . Moosa said BioWare's "love of cosmic animosity toward creation found

7437-498: The art style for the Dragon Age series had to change as other fantasy works like The Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian have more or less defined the "generic" style in the fantasy genre. 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. Matt Rhodes, who worked on concept art for

7548-692: The beginning of Hawke’s story in Dragon Age II , the Darkspawn are not the main focus of the game. The Darkspawn appear as enemies during the expedition to the Deep Roads in Act I, and in the DLC Dragon Age II: Legacy . Corypheus, another intelligent Darkspawn who is purportedly one of the original Magisters who entered the Maker's realm, is introduced in Legacy as its main antagonist. Unbeknownst to Hawke, Corypheus escaped his prison in

7659-400: The boss in question becomes progressively stronger and/or less vulnerable as their health decreases, requiring players to use different strategies to win. Some bosses may contain or be composed of smaller parts that can be destroyed by players in battle, which may or may not grant an advantage. In games such as Doom and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night , an enemy may be introduced via

7770-444: The boss to regain or regenerate health, but may also give players opportunity to regain health from health boosters and ammo dropped by the boss's defeated minions. A miniboss, also known as a "middle boss", "mid-boss", "half-boss", "sub-boss" "semi-boss", or occasionally "tank", is a boss-like enemy weaker or less significant than the main boss in the same area or level. Some minibosses are stronger versions of regular enemies, as in

7881-517: The boss uses a tank. A boss enemy is quite often larger in size than other enemies and the player character . At times, bosses are very hard to defeat without being adequately prepared and/or knowing the correct fighting approach. Bosses usually take strategy and special knowledge to defeat, such as how to attack weak points or avoid specific attacks. Bosses are common in many genres of video games, but they are especially common in story-driven titles, and are commonly previously established antagonists in

7992-653: The completion of specific additional levels, choosing specific dialogue options or after obtaining a particular item or set of items, such as the Chaos Emeralds in the Sonic the Hedgehog series or performing a series of tasks in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker . These bosses are generally more difficult to defeat. In games with a "true" final boss, victory leads to either a better ending or

8103-467: The concept of "monstrous-feminine" video game characters in a paper published by York University , where she discussed the Broodmothers in detail as "problematic examples of the abject monstrous-feminine" that follow "a long tradition in horror media of framing the female body and the birthing process as something horrific and repulsive". Aimee Hart from Bloody Disgusting agreed that Broodmothers are an example of female bodies being frequently intruded on as

8214-434: The concept of a boss rush, a stage where players face multiple previous bosses again in succession. Michael Fahey of Kotaku noted in a podcast that usage of the term "boss" by Nintendo Power grew sharply around 1988, and that there was no clear single etymology of the term. In the same podcast, former Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo speculated that bosses became known as such because they were "in charge of all

8325-521: The conflicts between orcs and humans from the orcs' point of view. In Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, orcs are close to extinction; in his Unseen Academicals , it is said that "When the Evil Emperor wanted fighters he got some of the Igors to turn goblins into orcs" to be used as weapons in a Great War, "encouraged" by whips and beatings. Orcs based on The Lord of the Rings have become

8436-564: The core concepts of Dungeons & Dragons . The objective of the game is to retrieve an "Orb" from the bottommost dungeon. The orb is kept in a treasure room guarded by a high-level enemy named the Gold Dragon. Only by defeating the Dragon can players claim the orb, complete the game and be eligible to appear on the high score list. In 1980, boss battles appeared in several arcade action games. In March 1980, Sega released Samurai ,

8547-594: 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 Grey Warden Duncan sets out to seek new recruits, where he will initiate them into the Order via a ritual called the Joining. The recruits would imbibe from a chalice a special preparation containing Darkspawn blood, which puts each initiate into

8658-403: The day, Concept Art is about telling the story of the game and we felt that the original design of the Darkspawn wasn’t doing the story justice." —Matt Rhodes, Associate Art Director at BioWare The art style for the Darkspawn were among the major aspects of the series' setting which was overhauled during the transition between Origins and Dragon Age II . Early design work for Darkspawn in

8769-476: The end of a level or area. While most games include a mixture of boss opponents and regular opponents, some games have only regular opponents and some games have only bosses (e.g. Shadow of the Colossus ). Some bosses are encountered several times through a single game, typically with alternate attacks and a different strategy required to defeat it each time. A boss battle can also be made more challenging if

8880-635: The environment with little difficulty. The Darkspawn are first mentioned in the 2009 novel Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne , where the Witch of the Wilds, Flemeth prophesied to King Maric Theirin of Ferelden that a Blight will come to Ferelden. An apparently sapient Darkspawn emissary, the Architect, makes his first appearance in Dragon Age: The Calling , where his plans to spread the Taint

8991-613: The explanation of hel - deofol . Orc , in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs , means a spectre, or goblin." In the sense of a monstrous being, the term is used just once in Beowulf , as the plural compound orcneas , one of the tribes belonging to the descendants of Cain , alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God: The meaning of Orcneas is uncertain. Frederick Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", to which

9102-482: The final boss and often players are required to meet certain conditions in the game or complete a sidequest or the entire game to fight the superboss. The first such superboss (or secret boss) was Akuma in Super Street Fighter II Turbo , that required players meet certain conditions before he would appear as the final boss. In Final Fantasy VII , players may choose to seek out and fight

9213-402: The first game in the series, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure , is an orc. Boss (video game) In video games , a boss is a significantly powerful non-player character created as an opponent to players. A fight with a boss character is referred to as a boss battle or boss fight . Bosses are generally far stronger than other opponents the players have faced up to that point in

9324-462: The forms of the Children of Ilúvatar. Alternatively, they may have been East Elves (Avari) enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth (as Melkor became known), or, "perhaps ... Avari [(a race of elves)] ... [turned] evil and savage in the wild", both according to The Silmarillion . The orcs "multiplied" like Elves and Men, meaning that they reproduced sexually . Tolkien stated in

9435-514: The game's events and is non-canon. Rob Bartel, lead designer of the DLC, believed that putting the player into the role of a Darkspawn unit, and showing the capture of the human nation of Ferelden's capital city and fall from the Darkspawn's perspective is "an interesting thread that players would want to experience". Bartel said the Dragon Age franchise is "complex and multifaceted" with many different stories out there that could be told, and he positioned

9546-479: The game; however, there are exceptions, such as in Conker's Bad Fur Day , in which the final boss is the antagonist's alien pet. Final bosses are generally larger, more detailed or better animated than lesser enemies, often in order to inspire a feeling of grandeur and special significance from the encounter. In some games, a hidden boss, referred to as the "true" final boss, is present. These bosses only appear after

9657-508: 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”. 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". Conor Rennick from Headstuff compared

9768-521: The implied concept of evil as Boethian – that evil is the absence of good. He notes, however, that Tolkien did not agree with that concept of evil; Tolkien believed that evil had to be actively fought, with war if necessary. That is something that Shippey describes as representing the Manichean position– that evil coexists with good, and is at least equally as powerful. The possibility of racism in Tolkien's descriptions of orcs has been debated. In

9879-690: The interpretations of orcs in Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings films look much like "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II ". As a response to the type-casting of orcs as generic evil characters or antagonists, some novels portray events from the point of view of the orcs, or make them more sympathetic characters. Mary Gentle 's 1992 novel Grunts! presents orcs as generic infantry, used as metaphorical cannon-fodder. A series of books by Stan Nicholls , Orcs: First Blood , focuses on

9990-459: 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. An incursion into the Deep Roads in search of the dwarven artifact the Anvil of The Void led the Grey Wardens into an encounter with a survivor of an ill-fated dwarven expedition named Hespith, who explains how the Darkspawn procreate and what

10101-419: The mages themselves are tainted in the process and turn into the first Darkspawn. Cast out by the Maker back into the mortal realm, the Darkspawn cannot stand the light of the day and burrow deep beneath the earth to get away from it. Gaider would then frame it as a story akin to the real world Christian original sin , told from the point of view of the priests of the Chantry instead of being an objective truth of

10212-628: The more modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of evil humanoid beings. His earliest Elvish dictionaries include the entry Ork (orq-) "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with orqindi and "ogresse". He sometimes used the plural form orqui in his early texts. He stated that the Elvish words for orc were derived from a root ruku , "fear, horror"; in Quenya , orco , plural orkor ; in Sindarin orch , plurals yrch and Orchoth (as

10323-443: The most notable monsters of the Dragon Age series, though some critics find them to be lacking in depth and nuance as antagonists. The Broodmother in particular, a type of Darkspawn unit that gives birth to other Darkspawn creatures, have been subject to critical commentary as a horror and gender trope . The Darkspawn are created by David Gaider , the lead writer of the Dragon Age franchise from its inception until 2015. Neither

10434-563: The most notable monsters of the series. PC Gamer described the Darkspawn as "the kind of world-consuming threat that demands attention, even if most of them are faceless hunks of evil" for players to kill. 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. Carolyn Jong noted that other characters in

10545-512: The orcs are described in detail in Dragon #62 (June 1982), in Roger E. Moore 's article, "The Half-Orc Point of View". The orc for the D&D offshoot Pathfinder RPG are detailed in the 2008 book Classic Monsters Revisited issued by the game's publisher Paizo . Games Workshop 's Warhammer universe features cunning and brutal orcs in a fantasy setting, who are driven not so much by

10656-588: The orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with a continual supply of enemies who one could kill without compunction, or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered. Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality , though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. Shippey opined that Tolkien, as

10767-558: The other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , states that Middle-earth has a "fully expressed moral geography ". Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly denied by Tolkien in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967: Auden has asserted that for me 'the North

10878-445: The perceived threat level for lower-ranked units like hurlocks, who are originally derived from humans; to balance this, the brutish ogre and the spellcasting emissary are depicted as large and intimidating, who tower over the player's party and are supported by a large army of hurlocks swarming in from all directions, the intention being to present them as a significant threat and a challenge for players. The Darkspawn's role in combat

10989-402: The player character as the Grey Warden, is "dealing with a biographical forthcoming catastrophe" that forces them to join the Order to fight the Darkspawn. The Darkspawn are considered to be an important element of the Dragon Age series, though some sources feel they lack depth and nuance. Kirk Hamilton from Kotaku mocked the Darkspawn as "goofily-named", but acknowledged their importance as

11100-459: The plot of the video game. Action-adventure games , beat 'em ups , fighting games , platform games , role-playing video games (RPGs), and shooter games are particularly associated with boss battles. They may be less common in puzzle games , card video games , racing games , and simulation games . The first video game with a boss fight was the 1975 RPG dnd . The concept has expanded to other genres, like rhythm games , where there may be

11211-461: The remaining Darkspawn hordes on the surface are depicted as devolving into opposing factions rallying around The Architect or a sapient Broodmother of human origin known simply as The Mother . Fully sentient and self aware versions of Darkspawn known as "Disciples", as well as the Mother's grub-like Children, are first introduced in Origins – Awakening . Although the Blight plays a pivotal role in

11322-404: 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. Orc An orc (sometimes spelt ork ; / ɔːr k / ), in J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth fantasy fiction , is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls " goblin ". In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , orcs appear as

11433-409: The translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice. It is generally supposed to contain an element -né , cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár , both meaning 'corpse'. If *orcné is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', then the compound word can be construed as "demon-corpses", or "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)". Hence orc-neas may have been some sort of walking dead monster,

11544-619: The translation: "Uglúk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!" However, in a note published in Vinyar Tengwar he gives an alternative translation: "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!" Alexander Nemirovsky  [ ru ] speculated that Tolkien might have drawn upon the language of the ancient Hittites and Hurrians for Black Speech. The origin(s) of orcs were explained in multiple inconsistent ways by Tolkien. Early works depict them as creations of Morgoth, mimicking

11655-473: The uniform presentation of orcs as "loathsome, ugly, cruel, feared, and especially terminable", "Tolkien could not resist the urge to flesh out and 'humanize' these inhuman creatures from time to time", in the process giving them their own morality. Shippey notes that in The Two Towers , the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick" (an immoral act) of abandoning a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam Gamgee has done to Frodo Baggins . Shippey describes

11766-517: 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. The Deep Roads setting, which is featured in all main series games and are mostly populated with Darkspawn enemies, has also been criticized. Heather Alexandra said while it is "thematically cogent in many ways" and "helps illustrate

11877-472: The various civilizations of the world realize they need to defend themselves against the Darkspawn. The Grey Warden Order arose as part of a trial and error response to permanently slay an Archdemon in order to stop a Blight and disperse the Darkspawn. Besides the origin story presented by Gaider, little was revealed about the Darkspawn, their biology or their society prior to the release of Origins . BioWare staff said in promotional material and interviews that

11988-438: The world's history. Codex entries and lore additions later in the series suggest multiple divergent in-universe perspectives of the Darkspawn's true origins. Gaider decided that the Darkspawn would incessantly search for the Old Gods who are slumbering deep underground. The Darkspawn would invade the subterranean network of dwarven kingdoms known as the Deep Roads, and displace the dwarves from most of their cities. When an Old God

12099-401: Was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability", and I originally took the word from Old English orc ( Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc : þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')). This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc , ork , a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order". Tolkien also observed

12210-452: Was also considered, with the original design too easily blending into the background. 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. This assisted animators with telegraphing the attacks and movements of Darkspawn units, and players could spot them from

12321-411: Was simplified with a focus on angular elements, and their color palettes de-saturated "almost to the point of being black and white". Darkspawn armor is kept very primitive in aesthetic, almost to the point of not being well protected, since the Darkspawn's main concerns revolve around the Blight and the infection of the Taint as opposed to self-preservation. Hawco noted that this has the effect of reducing

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