antivan-beau

[antivan-beau]

solas dragonage is like a type of colin robinson to me

[antivan-beau]

*by "vague" i mean in line with general, in-game personality, no backstory details not included in the canon, etc.

(basically what i'm trying to suss out is if people click on dragon age fic where they can't insert their own PC)

[antivan-beau]

we should not be paying that much attention to any of the datamined character descriptions looking for canon answers, because they were obviously written early in development and most of the information is wildly out of date, just like how the alistair character file for dao says that he’s like, in his thirties and stoic or something. however, i am deeply, madly in love with the sentence, “Teia believes she's a celebrity athlete who will die gloriously before she gets old and live forever in song.”

[antivan-beau]

okay I think my biggest critique of VG comes down to that this did not happen. every other da game for all its faults could inspire true discourse over the magical wizard rumpus club vs the warlock circlejerk. to me, “not feeling like a dragon age game” has nothing to do with combat or lore or whatever and everything to do with the lack of these organizations. the closest thing we even got to a slorpity porpity was a character from the last game

[antivan-beau]

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

my war orb

[antivan-beau]

running off to italy and letting minrathous get destroyed by a big dragon like this is for you Fenris 🫡🫡🫡

[antivan-beau]

listen i know they didn't get along but the idea of vivienne and sera teaming up post-dai/trespasser is so good to me. they team up to take down some bastard noble and they're both pissed that they have to rely on each other but also they fall back in line with each other so easily on the battlefield. thinking about them

[antivan-beau]

my #1 complaint with veilguard is probably the lack of moral complexity and maturity and how much of northern thedas is sanitized and almost all issues (outside of solas and mythal, which they knocked out of the park imo, but the moral complexity of them as characters and of their relationship makes the lack of nuance in every other faction and relationship stand out even worse) are presented as black and white, good vs. evil. i think the absence of the presence of slavery in northern thedas is the most egregious example of this. the crows are found-family heroes with absolutely no mention of the fact that they canonically populate their ranks with abused elven child slaves and kill them if they try to escape. we know minrathous to be the capital of a massive empire that was built and founded on slave labor and blood magic. the slave trade is baked into every single stone of that city, and it should be everywhere in a disenfranchised area like docktown. and yet.... its nowhere? its like they went, "okay well the factions all need to be GOOD and slavery is BAD so lets just pretend it doesnt exist so we dont have to talk about the way these factions have historically participated in it!" a few codex entries? a few mentions of freeing slaves by the shadow dragons and by solas but its never actually depicted? i think its something a lot of people have picked up on in accusations of the game feeling like something made by marvel or disney, and a lot of people are attributing that mostly to the art style and cheugy dialogue, but i honestly think it is the very simplistic and juvenile presentation of what should be complex issues diluted down to the sort of hero vs. villain, good vs. evil no-nuance conflicts that is creating that juvenile feeling, rather than the art style. past games have always had cheesy-ass dialogue and the graphics have never been the highlight of the game, but neither had the same feeling of playing something incredibly glossy but also incredibly shallow, especially in a franchise that is famed for its complex and nuanced (though, often poorly done and racist - looking at you qunari and dalish) depictions of sociopolitical issues through a fantasy lens.

but whats especially interesting is that the artbook (just the first 50 pages that are free) reveals that... this was present in the early stages of the game. the concept art of tevinter is full of disturbing depictions of slavery, as is the concept art of arlathan. now, to be clear, slavery is not a morally complex or ambiguous issue. slavery in fantasy is often depicted in ways that is damaging and problematic, especially when written by people who have no real understanding of it and its lasting effects on a group of people. bioware has been guilty of this in the past.

however, i think it is the best example of the shallowness of veilguard when compared to both the past games and the concept art. other examples, however, include literally the Qun as a whole suddenly being UNAMBIGUOUSLY EVIL combined with, imo, a super racist depiction of the antaam as mindless and animalistic, absolutely no exploration of racism against elves other than like, one mention from davrin in a game that is basically all about elves, blood magic being unambiguously evil rather than exploring how it is being used and for what purposes, the complete absence of the mage-templar mass incarceration and mass-lobotimization conflict, isseya being afforded none of the empathy that solas is given and instead presented as unambiguously evil and deserves to die, the grey wardens being heroes who definitely do not manipulate disenfranchised people into escaping their lives to join an order that will steal their bodies and eventually their minds and futures from them, and much more. going from a world that was so willing to at least ATTEMPT to depict the horrors of empires that utilized slave labor to build, the way dehumanization facilitates and interacts with these issues, violent class disparities and how poverty forces people into crime, the effects of institutionalized racism even after slavery has been legally abolished, with stories like that of varania and fenris, of zevran and taliesin, to.... finally going to the site of the horrors they faced and to find it to be completely sanitized? and yes, they did not always land, and i have a lot of issues with their execution of some of these representations (the option to give fenris back to danarius and having anders approve??????? HELLO?), but at least they TRIED to tell a story about a man recovering from the trauma of something so horrible and learning to trust again. so what happened in the middle? were they afraid of their own ability to handle the topic due to past criticism instead of attempting to learn from it? instead we are just going to pretend like it doesnt exist? we're not going to talk about it? its literally the most insane elephant in the room. of course fenris and zevran couldn't make cameos in this game, because then they'd have to make a statement on a painful, real, and difficult to discuss topic that actually means something, instead of using a warehouse full of elves being guarded by armed police at the docks as a hollywood-style backlot and depict an empire built on the blood sacrifices of the poor and enslaved as just another fun little area to explore. how does neve fight for the people of docktown but slavery literally never comes up in her story????? we know that blood magic exists but we never see who is being disproportionately used for those blood sacrifices?

i think its especially interesting considering how explicitly supportive of trans people this game is, which is fantastic and i admire bioware deeply for making such a strong and unapologetic statement of their values of acceptance. but that strong statement makes the lack of any other strong statements or exploration of issues even mildly contentious (again, slavery is not even a contentious issue, and i think that's why their fear to depict it at all, much less as unambiguously horrifying, is so insane) leaves the world of northern thedas feeling so shallow and sterile. it is as if bioware doesnt trust me to engage with topics like an adult capable of using critical thinking skills, and did not trust themselves to depict these issues like adults capable of critical thinking skills either. maybe, considering the presence of these things in the artbook, this was on EA for pushing for more mass-market appeal, or maybe it was really the bioware devs backing away from difficult topics due to a lack of confidence to do them justice. idk. but its really disappointing to me

[antivan-beau]

This post is soooo real and the decent dlc was a mistake on biowares part because what do you MEAN the dwarves use the fossilized blood of their creator-gods to write their histories with and. What do you MEAN there's a lost culture/religious sect of dwarves in the deep roads so old and isolated that they don't even speak the same language, and have dedicated their lives to the protection of said creator-gods.

And they just never bring this shit up again.

[antivan-beau]

3 dwarves and a mage walk into a hole full of darkspawn

[antivan-beau]

what if i simply pass away right now

[antivan-beau]

generally i make fun of the orlesian version of an organisation more than any other but i’ve got to admit there’s no bitch as useless as a kinloch hold templar

[antivan-beau]

I got a party banter between Bellara and Taash about how the Lords of Fortune steal elven artifacts. And then Taash clarifies later that they have a Dalish expert on the team so they can check to make sure the Lords don't sell something culturally important and instead return it to the elves.

Like. I get it. You want the Lords to be fun swashbuckler Disney pirates and Robin Hoods instead of actual pirates who steal and plunder. Because we're only now in Western society realizing that stealing from indigenous groups is, uh, bad. But like. Writing really uninteresting factions for your "dark" fantasy (tho lbr Dragon Age hasn't been dark fantasy since DA2) isn't gonna solve real-world neo-colonialism, ya know? The Lords not stealing priceless elven artifacts and returning them to the elves doesn't signal to me that the Lords are total rascally good guys, it signals to me that BioWare itself is trying really hard to seem morally conscious. "See? We know stealing from other cultures is bad!!!"

And man. Not to be a "political correctness has poisoned media" grifter on main (tbh it's less political correctness itself and more the commodification of real-world activism) but I couldn't help but imagine how this convo would've played out in earlier games, potentially even Inquisition.

You could've so EASILY made this interesting while giving the Lords and Taash and Bellara a lot more depth, while also making it clear that stealing from indigenous groups is wrong.

Just have the Lords, yeah, actually sell those artifacts. But also establish that the Lords take in and help elves from all walks of life. That they free slaves, or collaborate with alienages. Then you could have Taash defend the practice by saying to Bellara that little orphaned elf kids being sold as slaves probably don't give a flying fuck about some artifacts they're never gonna see, but the money from selling those artifacts goes to buying them food. And have Bellara fire back that preserving elven culture is also part of its survival, and that there are Dalish clans that would be willing to pay for them or offer something in return. Or have her say that the Lords are doing charity for the sake of recruitment rather than actual altruism. And then Taash responds that those high and mighty Dalish elves don't do shit to help abandoned city elves, just because those aren't part of their correct elven subculture, and they care more about reclaiming old glory than helping the people that exist here and now.

Then you could have side missions or at least codex entries that describe maybe some Lord recruit being conflicted about what they're doing. Maybe a few of them are collaborating to hijack a deal or steal back an artifact. Have implications that some high-ranking Lords are, in fact, using those artifacts for their own gain, despite claiming otherwise. Have some Lords genuinely trying to help, and believing that gold and trinkets don't matter as much as people's lives, so they sell them in exchange for safety for refugees or slaves or some other helpless group.

But no. Instead it's "hey do you steal from my people?" "nah lmao we have a cultural advisor don't even worry about it" "oh wow so cool and woke of you!" And then that's it. No need for any further discussion. No conflict and no complexity. No bad actors and moral quandaries.

Weh.

[antivan-beau]

Neve in her office.

[antivan-beau]

for the elf specific dialogue there to be to apologise to harding on behalf of their people is just. un believable

[antivan-beau]

solas in DAI part 1 (the backstory)

the thing about datv is that the most glaring problems with the plot in terms of just sheer racism are actually problems inherited from dai. so without further ado. the vision for dai, wrt plot and lore that carries over into datv, part one: 

the most important thing is that the elven gods aren’t evil; they didn’t enslave the elves, or do the titan stuff (dwarves & the titans will get their own story later, one which doesn’t solely serve a different racist narrative and actually centres dwarven culture and history), or create archdemons or any of it. instead, taking inspiration from ambient dialogue about the lighthouse having a spirit of its own formed by the many people who once lived there & their hopes, dreams and fears, the evanuris are spirits formed and fed by the dalish as a vast and interconnected community, and the shared values and faiths which connect the clans. that is, the elves themselves predate their gods and in a sense created them, elevating them through faith to power unlike that of other spirits, and as they were formed on the basis of that faith, the evanuris became the protectors and stewards of their people, much in the same way that spirits of curiosity are created by curiosity, and spirits of rage are stirred by powerful anger. however, because of this very power, they could never intervene directly on behalf of their people — they lack the precision to do so without harming the people they seek to protect, and so they could act only as guides and advisors from a distance. fen’harel and mythal were always sister spirits, indelibly connected; as she became a leader, he developed cunning and wile, and became her general. of all the evanuris, fen’harel’s ability to influence others through talk, trickery and other nonmagical means enabled him to exert the most direct influence over their people, and so he was often tasked with carrying out mythal’s will, and became the god most often seen by the elves to interfere with mortal affairs.

with the expansion of human nations, elven society is threatened: as the tevinter imperium expands into elven land, the evanuris seek the means by which to help their people withstand the incursion; the conflict escalates, and in his search (spurred by mythal) for a weapon the elves can wield against the encroaching human nation, fen’harel discovers the blight dormant underground — and accidentally unleashes it, not just on the humans and the elves, but on the evanuris themselves. in an attempt to save them, and delay the spread of the blight, he locks the evanuris away in stasis in the fade, and spends the next centuries searching for a cure.

(previous — the necropolis)

(next — solas in DAI, part two)

[antivan-beau]

the vision for rivain: instead of an organised faction of good-guy treasure hunters, the lords of fortune are a much looser organisation; not so much a tight-knit group of friends as a network of fences, buyers and suppliers, informally referred to as the “lords of fortune” for their reputation as led by the principles of profit above anything. the lines each “lord” is willing to cross varies as they don’t have a unifying ethos, but it’s a market with a reputation for graverobbing, theft of valuable artefacts and other ethically dubious procurement of goods, and its atmosphere and structure are heavily influenced by the blending of cultures — rivain is a coastal country with a history of occupation iirc, and they have better relations with the qun than other countries in thedas; things are more fluid, cultures are less defined and tend to bleed together. they’re also a country with a long history of mage tolerance and reverence for magic, so less chantry presence, more free trade and more open trading in goods that are frowned upon elsewhere, such as spell reagents and body parts for use in necromancy and blood magic. taash's mother fled to rivain and is a contact for the lords but taash herself isn't one; notably, the lords are neither the only trading network in rivain nor the largest, and more reputable traders abound along the coastal towns available to explore. 

rivain itself is not represented solely by an uninhabited beach and a gladiatorial arena. instead, while you find taash on a dragon hunt along the coast, rivain is first represented as a thriving coastal city with a significant population of free mages, seers, qunari and tal-vashoth, with whom dialogue can be initiated about their varied opinions on the state of the city and surrounding area. the dragon hunt with taash is characterised by discussion of dragon hunting as a sacred practice to qunari (more on this later!), with taash emphasising the spiritual and cultural importance of dragons to qunari; they are insulted by the implications of killing a dragon for profit, and take a defensive stance about it, but will later admit they were planning to profit off killing it: having grown up isolated from qunari culture, while they are aware of dragon hunting as a sacred practice, they’re unfamiliar with the practical rituals surrounding use of the downed dragon’s body.

after successfully baiting the dragon, you fight it for a while, before it overwhelms the party and you’re forced to retreat; taash is frustrated, but admits she’s never actually successfully killed a high dragon. you head back to the city, where the lords of fortune contact is unimpressed by the failure to bring back loot, and taash takes offense: before things can get violent, isabela steps in, introduces herself, and offers more useful contacts in exchange for rook and taash’s help dealing with a group of slavers moving qunari slaves to tevinter off the rivain coast. as a known pirate, she can’t get legitimate crew and since she won’t participate in slavery, the lords of fortune won’t help her without a solid promise of reward. lord of fortune rooks here get some unique dialogue regarding frustration about certain practices within the lords. you and taash help her free the slaves, and open up a new faction merchant and base area.

rivaini culture is depicted here as a blend of mercenary and spiritual, with a lot of npcs expressing a range of religious beliefs, including unconventional approaches to andrastianism, followers of the qun, rivaini seers, and dalish elves. the city carries a very different atmosphere to both treviso and minrathous, with a more mixed class and caste system, fewer templars and guards, and a strong sense of movement, as merchants and traders move in and out of the city. quests can be given by a range of npcs, including tal-vashoth, qunari, dalish elves, seers, and human citizens.

the primary quest, given by bela, is to retrieve a cursed artifact stolen by another subfaction of the lords of fortune: when you bring it back and have it appraised by taash’s mother, you find it’s an elven artifact that’s been damaged. isabela recommends taking it back to merrill at the veil jumpers, and gives you a note to pass on on her behalf too. taash will volunteer to come with you of her own free will, having heard about the blighted dragons at minrathous and treviso: taash’s mother tries to discourage this, but they insist.

also, bela gets clothes.

(previous - arlathan and the veil jumpers)

(next - the wetlands & the wardens)