#But Veilguard Harding is truly hit and miss

[porgthespacepenguin]

Am I the only one who got *really* irritated by some of Harding's banters with Emmrich? I know she probably means well, but my goodness.

This line in particular grinds my gears. She's basically insulting Emmrich's home, his job and his life in one fell swoop.

"Un-life"? 😭 The man is a world-renowned professor! He has a skeleton son and seems to be well-liked around the Necropolis. There's no indication that Emmrich was unhappy with his life before meeting Rook; on the contrary.

And don't get me started on the sheer hypocrisy of her harping on and on about Emmrook's age difference, when she ends up dating Taash who is AT LEAST ten years younger (probably closer to 15 if Harding was in her mid twenties in DAI).

Not that I care about age gaps, to be clear, but the hypocrisy is astounding.

[utilitycaster]

The thing that I think gets me about Neve the most, and this is past the point where I personally am in the game, is that you can still romance her after you've chosen to prioritize Treviso (which you can't do for Lucanis if you do the reverse). The thing is, it makes sense. Neve judges you negatively for trusting her. There's a dialogue in the Shadow Dragons hideout where Tarquin (Shadow Dragons faction agent) gripes about The Viper (Shadow Dragons faction agent and leader) running background checks on him, before admitting he'd probably do the same. And the thing is, if you tell Tarquin that this seems reasonable he accepts it, but he seems irritated. Neve doesn't.

You meet Neve striking a pose, having frozen her assailants, needing none of your help. Neve does not, on the whole, ever seem to want your help until she begs you to save Minrathous. She approves of you taking her to interrupt the ritual, and seems to be entirely unbothered by the fact that it leaves her badly bruised - indeed, you have to actively choose to leave her behind later when you go looking for Bellara.

Neve loves Minrathous and Dock Town, which means she also hates them. She takes you there, if you do the companion quest, which you should. She invites you after Bellara fangirls out over some news pieces about her (Neve drily remarks they were hit pieces), to go pick up some leads and some serials Bellara wants. For all she's sarcastic, gruff, and even a little snide with Bellara (and with my playing of Rook, who is fairly direct and positive with the Veilguard companions) and doesn't believe a Tevinter serial would ever truly end happily if it were remotely realistic, she still wants to get those serials for her teammates. She's not here to make friends, though she's slowly doing so, but she also believes in working with your allies even when they're sunny and scatterbrained or bracingly positive and you're an exhausted, cynical detective.

Exhausted is I think the most salient point. Neve is fucking tired. She tells you she's lived in Dock Town her whole life, and she became a detective, taking on cases for people who weren't helped by the Templars (who, you learn in one of the core missions prior to your choice to save only one of Minrathous and Treviso, are corrupt all the way up to the top). After solving a missing person case successfully, with an implication that she freed a slave in the process, the Shadow Dragons recruited her, but she's been doing the same work she always done. And the Shadow Dragons, meanwhile, in addition to attempting, with limited success, to infiltrate the Magistrate and fight for abolitionism, also do a lot of work like Neve's: helping people on the street. Their basement is full of unhoused and hungry people with nowhere else to go.

Neve is tired because, I think, she doesn't really believe Minrathous will get much better in her lifetime. She tells you in her companion quest, as you eat street food on the docks, looking out into the ocean, that she treasures the small wins because that's what she gets. Whereas the Crows remember a free Treviso and fight for that, Neve, in particular, feels like she's just trying to keep things from getting worse, and maybe help a few people. She's cynical because dreaming big probably won't pan out and she knows it so she's not going to waste her time.

Her work is her life. Her gift is literally just more evidence. Harding, Lucanis, and Bellara all reminisce about friends and family, but Neve still hasn't yet. You get the sense that Rana, one of the few clean Templars with whom she works, is probably the person she'd put down as an emergency contact. She doesn't even really get along with Tarquin, though, to be fair, doesn't seem like anyone does. Her world is a network of people who are useful.

I'm going somewhere with this, and that's, unsurprisingly, to Critical Role Campaign 3, because after all that here's my thesis: Neve is what people want some of Bells Hells, but especially Ashton, to be.

I've seen defense of Ashton's abrasiveness because many leftists are abrasive people, and the thing is, that's not untrue, but they're abrasive because they're like Neve: they're doing endless difficult work with very little reward or thanks, and at most they get small wins.

What has Ashton done for their communities? The Nobodies and Krook House aren't feeding the hungry or fighting corruption; the former is a group of thieves with no particular cause and the latter a punk co-op house. What was Ashton doing for the people of Jrusar or Bassuras? I struggle to find anything tangible. There's a lot of talk and no action - punk aesthetics and a lot of talk about standing for the weak, but when do they actually do that? It's all very surface level, and so the defenses of Ashton must focus entirely on what and who they are (nb, disabled, punk, had a terrible childhood) and what they say but never, ever, what they do. It's posturing.

Neve? It's entirely what she does. She is, for what it's worth, disabled and queer (and played by a woman of color, though whether she's coded as such in-game probably requires an academic background in both the history of Thedas and the history of the real-world Black Sea region) but we don't know a damn thing about her childhood yet. We don't know if she's been hurt or heartbroken or abandoned until we, as Rook, have to decide whether to do that to her. And when we do? She takes her time (she's not back yet in my game) but in the end, she blames the actual root causes of the elven gods sending the dragon and blight, and the Venatori working with them and, as far as I know, gets back to work. As she always has.

[suohenki]

on my second playthrough of veilguard (for some reason). this is the insane person's ramblings about lore/writing unlike my last post

this is the first time i've been so utterly bored of a second playthrough. never has an rpg given me this feeling.

like there are no quests i look forward to tbh, every main quest is a long combat sequence. even inquisition had the orlesian ball that you had to resolve with some actual noncombat solutions. (get behind me inquisition i will defend you from the fandom)

made a qunari this time to see if it affects anything, no, really doesn't. there's barely any qunari dialogue options.

picked the crows origin, it is truly astonishing the way they treat them in this game. they seem completely shy about the crows being contract killers? it's not even that they don't talk about the things Zevran talks about, but they fully try to ignore the murder part. Mfrs are freedom fighters now apparently.

and the "twist" villains in the crows storyline are so comically obvious i hoped they were both red herrings. the butcher is so underdeveloped too. the way the illario/blood magic twist is written is confusing, rook sees it all with his damn eyes and then never says a word about it. Yes i think illario is the bad guy here, Rook, i know you heard the "amatus". What. (swear to god the dark brotherhood is more deep than this. i never thought i'd say TES has better writing than DA.)

By the end they never address the fucked up things the crows do, outside of Rook's one throwaway line of "yeah my training was hell lmao." Is it just Aranai that's fucked or what kind of hellish training are we talking about? Rook also mentions having been an orphan... so the crows are as usual but we just won't talk about it. The lore and characters have never been this confusing and woobified. The positivity of Rook rly feels off when they are a trained assassin... no one reacts negatively to it, everyone even goes "Omg lucanis is a killer. Oh, not you Rook, you're better :)" no i don't think he is? Both killers.

Similarly they are so scared of the (elven) slavery in Tevinter. If you hadn't played the previous games you'd be forgiven for thinking Tevinter had no slavery because you missed the 3 sentences that mention it. We are in the slavery capital of Thedas and we are being shy about it. I guess Dorian's and Fenris's stories are too "problematic"... It's frankly gross how they brush it off after how serious it was in previous games. Also crazy how religion never comes up. In the country of the "black divine", you'd think Harding would have something to say at least. It really only now hit me how hard they avoided bringing up non-elven religion when it's been such a big part of the lore...

Neve's storyline just begs to be about the actual known issues of Tevinter instead of whatever it was about, all of it went from one ear, out the other. To me, her and Lucanis are the weakest companions on replay. Neve's voice acting is so strange and flat it's really difficult for me to be endeared by her. (this is coming from a cassandra pentaghast enjoyer)

Even if I think Harding's scenes could be better at least i get what she is about. Tho all the titan stuff feels like it's not treated with the gravity it should be. I do like Taash and Bellara, i just wish Taash wasn't written so immaturely. i never found Sera immature in this way, she's abrasive and yes, "immature" with the pranks etc., but Taash is written like a stereotypical teen, Sera just felt like a weirdo adult. And you can tell Alistair to suck it up lmao, it's really not even comparable. And the Isabela scene with the push-ups.... talk about making it all about yourself. Taash should have just been nonbinary from the start if they were going to make the representation this awkward.

I wish Bellara's quest had more drama. You don't get to save her brother but you also have no scene where, for example, Bellara endangers Rook or lets Anaris escape because she is actually conflicted about her brother... Rook and her just kinda let them go. Bellara is okay with killing her brother with barely any convincing lol.

Emmrich and Davrin are still my favorites, I think Davrin just works, and i like that we get to see more of his background. He's not terribly ~deep~ but he doesn't have to be, saving the griffons is an understandable goal, one that would be devastating to fail. Just a charismatic man that has things he cares about with conviction.

Emmrich is an interesting portrayal of necromancy which is something i'm always receptive to, i'd play a DA game set entirely in Nevarra. His quest has wild tonal shifts but at least the set dressing kept me interested. I do wish we didn't decide for him if he became a lich tho.

I wish with all the companions the way it worked was they decide based on previous dialogues. If you keep encouraging emmrich to pursue lichdom and face his fear then he does, if not, the opposite happens. i'm just not a fan of the "here's the moment where rook decides another person's fate!!!" like why am i deciding. it's their life.

i romanced Lucanis this time to try to see why people like him so much but man, i just think his whole story is a mess. they love to imply all the trauma Lucanis has but don't truly convey any of it. you don't even talk about being a crow with Lucanis like you talk about being a watcher with Emmrich. I guess it's my bad for expecting an assassin that has been tortured and forced into an abomination to be more of an interesting character.

i'm gonna need to know more about a companion than he has trauma, he likes coffee and he cooks, to be invested. The coffee thing feels like flanderization before i even know the man, put the damn cup down. First time i felt this disconnected with a romance.

i felt like they really squandered Spite too. You'd think a demon possessing a companion would cause more trouble than 1 escape attempt. Lucanis missing the first stab attempt barely registers as Spite's fault. Spite doesn't get any sort of pay off or drama.

I could forgive a lot more if the writing was better but the bad writing stands out so much more on a second playthrough. The basic dialogue, the spoon-feeding of info, the marvel-quips, the uninteresting side quests. Can't believe that i had to find out from fucking tumblr that the time Rook spent in the fade was WEEKS, you'd think that would be an impactful detail. Legit thought they got him out in a day lmao. Explains the dagger coming out of nowhere.

They try so hard to make the team cute and wholesome, it cemented my dislike of the found family trope. It comes across as so unearned. The game is like half competent writing, half DA fanfiction. Everything to do with Solas is okay. But everything else is so off. At least they managed to make Solas a love-to-hate type character for those like me who did not care about him in DA:I. The reason i'm not talking too much about the overall plot is it was okay, i just don't care that much about the evanuris. weird choice to try to blame it all on the elves tho. Like i love you but stfu Bellara, you do not have to take on the sins of the father. Have the elves not been through enough?

[ammy246]

The Rook x Solas ship dynamic is already really good and full of missed potential, but shipping Solas with my Antivan Crow Rook makes the dynamic even more intriguing.

Rook: I am supposed to kill him, but I love him. My goal was to gain approval from the Crows which I had accomplished. Can I truly throw it all away for love?

Solas: Rook is here to kill me, yet I cannot fight the growing attachment to them. They are similar to me, but different. They are my other half I know what I must to do accomplish my goal, but am I strong enough to do it?

Just the thought of Rook voiding a contract for love and betraying the Antivan Crows after their origin goal being to gain approval is such an interesting concept. Imagine the shock of the Crows after discovering Rook fell for the enemy, and chose to abandon them and their cause after fighting so hard for them. The Veilguard would be in just as much shock, but in the case where Rook manages to save Thedas with the power of love and they all survive, they would learn to accept it, because they want their leader to be happy. Though, they would definitely have feelings about it. If Varric survived, he would definitely have written a romance novel about them that would've become a hit worldwide.

Varric's Story Prologue 1st Paragraph: I once thought Solas was beyond saving. Never in my wildest dreams would I have seen love changing fate. Here is a true story of love, betrayal, and sacrifice. Get a box of tissues ready, because you are going to need them.

[godsgamefreak]

After 1354 saves and just over 60 hours, I finally finished my Dragon Age II re-play, the first of its kind since the game came out 13 years ago. I toyed with it for a bit longer, I know I bought the Mark of the Assassin DLC and I think I even finished it, but I barely remembered it. But not a single proper playthrough in 13 years.

In that time DA2 of course got ripped apart by the media for the glaring issues of developing a massive RPG in 16-18 months, like the re-used assets (particularly in dungeons) but I had remembered enjoying it well enough as I played. Though, I also had issues with a lot of the Companions at the time too.

After being quite soured in my playthrough of Inquisition a few years later, I had fully dropped the series, with little to no interest in anything it was doing (granted it wasn't a lot, with Veilguard only just recently being properly announced) outside of the animated series on Netflix which was neat. But with Veilguard around the corner, and over 10 years of life under my belt, I thought... why not give it another try, see what's different?

Turns out both not much and also a fair bit. The not much was how much I enjoyed it - while certain mechanics don't work the way I'd like or aren't communicated as well (I'm very sad I couldn't truly be a proper tank, since enemy threat was constantly all over the place) I still had FUN with it. Since I remembered being meh on a lot of the Companions, I made sure to keep a particular eye on them this time around and I came to realize I understood them all a lot more this time around.

Merrill held a conviction, though a dangerous one, and while commendable to hold to it despite understanding the dangers... was completely blind to so much more. A great comparison to Anders, who was so much WORSE than I remembered, finally coming to a head if you question him during his Act 3 companion quest. I literally had to get up out of my chair in anger when he tries to threaten your friendship over his cause ("trust me even though I lied to you" like fuck off man).

Fenris was still overly grumpy about so much, but the reasoning is still solid, and it was nice to see him loosen up a little here and there. Agreeing to drop the mage freedom topic with Isabela and deflecting with a game of "guess my undergarments colour" was wonderful. Speaking of Isabela, I'm definitely older and care less about her darker side than I did as a "young and pure paladin" of 20 years old. I even romanced her, due in part to a similarity to one of my wife's OC's. Her romance story ends so sweet too, and her story is quite interesting. I wish the game had more time to expand on both Fenris and Isabela's stories and personal growth.

Varric and Aveline are still great, I love how they individually check in on Hawke through the game. They feel like the closest friends you have, in that they check on you just as much as you check on them, with no other major goals taking up their time and attention. Though the Aveline vs Isabela lines feel like they get a little too catty, there was one scene of them laughing over a drink once that made me happy to see they could get along.

My biggest regret is that Bethany is so absent from Act 2 and most of Act 3, not even making an on-screen appearance over your mother's death - the quest of which still hits pretty hard, though I didn't fully realize it until afterwards.

All in all, it was wonderful to re-play it, re-experience it, and play it in its complete form start-to-finish, and did exactly what I hoped: re-ignited my desire to care about this dark fantasy world, and make me excited to play Inquisition again. This time with less faffing about, more paying attention, and spending more time with Companions (and other major characters). I barely remember what happened in the game, so it's almost like finishing a re-play of DA2 before the big new game comes out. I hope I really find something I missed in my first DAI playthrough that makes me love it after hating it for 10 years.

[hallahart]

veilguard thoughts part the last one, ending spoilers, stream of consciousness

i truly can't believe we got a solavellan happy ending. and solas LIVES no matter what. i will still not be watching the non-soalvellan endings. they do not exist. to me. i do not see it.

And I returned to my beautiful city, black skies change into blue

i'm unwell

literally tearing up even thinking about the last solavellan scene. I can't.

Overall I absolutely loved the finale. it was everything I wanted. Dread wolf form!! Sad puppy sounds! Morrigan! redemption without death! there's so much. when this game hit, it really hit.

What fell flat for me if I can get critical for a sec, is the theme of regret as applied to Rook. I didn't feel like they actually... regretted much? 'Overcoming' their regret was a line or two about how it wasn't really their fault, which... idk man. It didn't hit for me.

I missed the idea from Solas' line, "what will they call you when this is over?" Everyone just loved and respected Rook and frankly I don't think they earned it. At least not that early in the game

(I did hope that Rook would take on the Dread Wolf mantle in Solas' stead-- stay at the Crossroads, fight tyranny, Solas can retire to the fade with his heart. I did get the last part which like, yes, thank you for the magnificent feast holy shit)

What it felt like to me was that there was a version of this story where Rook truly did do terrible things with good intentions and regretted them and was maligned for it. A story that really put Rook in Solas' shoes as someone trying to make the world better and failing. But it was decided that this version of the story was not 'heroic' enough and we get a lot of shoehorned talk about how great Rook is and how much better they are than Solas because... found family...? It's a shame. Because if they leaned into that fully, it would have been fantastic.

I continue to be bothered by the shitty and stupid comments your companions about Solas' memories. One reason I liked Davrin was he saw things from Solas' perspective. One that sticks out to me is in the memory with Ghilan'nain, he (iirc) mercy kills one of his agents who she blighted. And everyone's like 'he doesn't hesitate to DISCARD PEOPLE' and it's like, you guys remember these are his regrets, right?? he did not enjoy doing that?? what did you want him to do, magically have a cure for the blight??

harding, though, she can hate solas as a treat lol. the rest of you, get a grip!!

THAT BEING SAID. Overall I loved and am grateful for this game. I know what an immense labor it was to make it. I just like picking at things that bother me to figure out why certain beats aren’t working for me.

so compelled by the mythal and lavellan paralells. lavellan is mythal's foil as much as rook is solas'. mythal took him from the fade and broke him and lavellan brought him back home and healed him. LOVE.

i love that they let the mythal relationship remain somewhat mysterious and nuanced. deep devotion to someone who hurt him so badly. not wanting to hurt Lavellan the way she hurt him. pain

BRIDE OF THE MAKER, BABY.

so so so much to chew on. so much

is this solavellan heaven