Dragon Age fans are left wondering if Greg Ellis, the voice actor of series character Cullen Rutherford, will be able to reprise his role in future titles after lashing out against ex-executive producer Mark Darrah on Twitter.
On Thursday, December 3, BioWare announced that Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah would be leaving the company along with General Manager Casey Hudson.
“Dragon Age will be in good hands,” wrote Darrah in his own blog post regarding the news. “Christian Dailey will be moving into the Executive Producer role. Christian Dailey is a strong leader and will provide great insight into the rest of the Dragon Age leadership who remain. This is a team that includes people with decades of experience at BioWare. I am confident that, together, this is the team that can make this Dragon Age the best one yet.”
In response to Darrah sharing the blog on Twitter, Ellis responded with a tweet saying:
And a relief for many others.
I’ve worked with you for over 10 years as the voice of Cullen (and Anders) @dragonage & have never worked w a more DISLOYAL, duplicitous corporate fake
Your enforced *resignation* is a victory for @bioware,its employees & particularly the fans.
Darrah responded with a quote-retweet and subsequent thread replies, saying:
Hey there Greg…I’ve been letting you slide for a while but I think Dragon Age Day is maybe the day when that ends.
Is there some world where you imagine that your behavior with regards to me and the community in general would actual cause you to EVER be hired on a Dragon Age game?
I’m not sure if this is performative in some way in order to get the attention of a different group, but it CERTAINLY isn’t going to endear you to a company that cares about its public appearance.
As Ash Parrish at Kotaku informs, Ellis has drawn the public and private ire of many for his conservative ideals and support of U.S. President Donald Trump over the last few years. He was embroiled in controversy when he lashed out against Darrah back in September. At the time, Darrah responded to a Dragon Age fan’s concerns about Ellis’ politics and social media usage, saying, “Like you, it’s important to us that the people we work with are aligned with our BioWare values. This will be apparent when we’re ready to announce which actors will be lending their voices to the game.”
After his exchange with Darrah this week, Ellis uploaded a now-privatized YouTube video on December 4. In the video, Ellis roleplays as Cullen to address the Cullenites — fans of the fictional character Cullen, and not his voice actor. He (Cullen) informs his fans that “a small vocal mob of social justice warriors attempted to have me and my voice actor, Greg Ellis, tossed into the cancel culture wastelands … This is my response to the mob’s inquisition of me and my voice actor, Greg Ellis, and how we attempted to understand the resultant blight it spread across the fandom.”
He calls the fandom to action. “Join us on this most magnificent morality quest as we venture forth to a new land of possibilities – a brave new era of enlightenment,” he states as Dragon Age: Inquisition’s iconic theme plays in the background, reaching its climax.
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Other noteworthy lines from the almost 37-minute-long video consist of, but are not limited to:
“#MeToo and the intellectual glitterati demand that men discard their past treatment of women and forge a new code defining 21st-century masculinity — a fair, necessary demand. But what is that new code? Do we simply surrender ourselves to the caricature of the feminist left, binding ourselves to a permanent state of moral reparations where our engagement is merely one of acknowledged expressed shame for the inequities of centuries of patriarchy? If so, count me among the unconverted.”
“The manifest is filling up. The womanifest is filling up, too. Join me for this new adventure. Like. Follow. Subscribe. Plant your flag against cancel culture.”
“I have worked on Dragon Age for over a decade. Mark Darrah is the worst kind of corporate coward. He has no code of honor. Instead, he hides behind the corporate veil, espousing about BioWare’s values without actually stating any of them. Specifically, virtue signaling on behalf of his company, knowing all too well that BioWare’s internal human resources has a well-documented history of having to deal with actual homophobes and racists from inside the company. The hypocrisy of this man is staggering. Yes, Mark. Go woke or go broke.”
“Greg and Cullen were summarily lumped together and generalized about due impart to the coincidence of skin pigmentation.”
“Black lives matter. And they don’t matter more than anyone else’s. I love…I love everyone. I support everyone’s life choice and decision to love whoever they please, and who identify with whatever gender they prefer. So, yes, all lives do indeed matter to me. I think it sorry and very sad that this sort of statement has become negative in our society.”
“In this moment, I am choosing love … for everyone who has chosen to eviscerate me and Greg Ellis for not living up to their expectations.”
“Mobbing is social murder, and by definition, people cannot survive their own murder.”
It remains to be seen if, after all this controversy, Ellis will be reprising his role as Cullen in the next Dragon Age game. In the video, he implies he has been recording for it under a non-disclosure agreement. The last we heard of it was in August at Gamescom. We will be seeing more of the next Dragon Age game at The 2020 Game Awards.
