#DON'T GET ME WRONG. i am so excited for taash too

[vulpixelates]

god i haven't seen the new dav video yet but the gifs of bellara's little face... she is so cute it hurts???? i love her little apple cheeks oeifjaoiwef i feel like she's probably going to be my favorite companion and i honestly had an inkling of that the instant i saw her jump out of the rift in the trailer

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[andersons-bayonettes]

Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance... The podcast that you are...

It's mediocre.

Now, let me explain. Vows & Vengeance was never meant to be an absolute amazing podcast, it's as supposed to make you hyped for Veilguard/show you the companions. A little teaser to bridge the waiting time until release, that it did pretty well.

However. I loved the story of the podcast up until Episode 7-ish. I still liked episode 7, but I could tell it was going somewhere I probably didn't want it to go. Episode 8 was... Episode 8 exists.

But let me actually get to critique it, before bashing it.

I listen to Podcasts a lot. Some of them Lore Podcasts, other Story Podcasts, with or without narration, talk podcasts, amateur and professional. This one felt like it wanted to be professional - while not quite being there - but still felt amateur enough to be a little off-putting. I don't mind most voices (including Nadia's, I think she's fine.) yet tge acting/writing was sometimes whacky at best. I felt like most voices were just way too similar. I often, especially at the start, got confused who is speaking. It got better, of course, but you don't want your listeners questioning who of your main characters is speaking.

Additionally, the podcast was meant to bring some characters closer to you, it was supposed to be a "hey, look at this, this is what they will be like, are you excited yet?" Kinda thing which worked for some. Mainly, the episodes featuring Lucanis, Emmerich and Taash did a really excellent job characterising them. I am ABSOLUTELY down to see more of them. Bellaras was fine, could be better, could be worse. The episodes with Davrin and Neve were... Not well for characterisation. And don't understand me wrong, you get to meet them, yes, but while most characters showed multiple layers, Neve and Davrin both just seemed like you just met them. I forgive them for the Lace Harding episode because we already know her from Inquisition.

Now, I don't mind Solas not showing up often. I think it's fitting. At the end of Inquisition, they out a heavy emphasis on the fact that if Silas doesn't want to be found, you can not find him. He was supposed to be that sliver of danger lurking all around, but where exactly, you'd never know. Thus, Nadia chasing Solas for weeks was absolutely fitting. Even if I think it's funny how Silas's plans have been ruined twice now by people he used as a pawn, doing something he didn't anticipate.

The ending was very, very, very lackluster. The funeral was nice, the demon battle was okay. I don't understand why they had to squeeze in this "I've been haunting you since you were little" crap, it was absolutely and entirely unnecessary. It's sad we spend so much time wanting Nadia & Elio to be back together, rooting for them to finally get a happy ending and all we get is "I killed him, anyways, lemme kille you now". One last talk maybe would have been nice, or let the demon, in one last attempt to stop Nadia, transform back into him. I know it's cliche, but it's cliche because it works.

Or, have the demon kill Elio in front of her. Let's say teh demon used Elios connection to Nadia to cross over, let him kill Elio and the ending would have been a lot cleaner in my opinion. Semantics and personal preferences aside, if they ever make another Podcast, I do hope they find someone who has experience in how to do them. The actors were good. They absolutely were, I assume it's a directing issue.

All in all it was a decent podcast. It has a lot of issues, but it also has a lot of good aspects, makingbit overall, well, like i said, mediocre.

[bhaalble]

Ok so past. The most non-spoiler way to say it is The Big Grey Warden Fight. Here are thoughts so far (spoilers ahead)

-First two hours had me NERVOUS they apparently saved all their cringest lines for those two hours ("People are always dying. It what they do" they could never make me not burst out laughing at you). After that though I genuinely think they found their footing. Still the occasional cringe or eyeroll moment but now at extremely manageable Bioware levels. I can feel the Gen Xer/Millenial in the room with me but they are no longer beating me over the head with Joss Whedon

-God this game is fucking gorgeous to look at every environment I could be in for hours. They keep bringing us to these highly anticipated locations and it keeps being better than I imagined.

-Roleplaying definitely feels more limited. In the spirit of Dragon Age 2 Two I've elected to play as the wisecracking scoundrel hero I feel the game is angling for after my attempt to oc kept crashing and burning. This isnt inherently a bad thing but time will tell if this will be like Hawke (where I am pretty locked into playing specific archetypes but there's enough wiggle room in there to play different kinds for freak) or Inquisition (where there's really only One kind of guy the game will let me realize via dialogue and if I want to do anything different I'll need to hc the shit out of them)

-Companions have proven vastly charming ajd are finally starting to develop the kinds of conflict I associate with Bioware companions. I very much get people who say they feel a little too nicesies for the series, I've felt that in different bursts on my own. That said they are all individually compelling enough for me to still be engaged. Possible my time with FFXIV has also just increased my appetite for groups of people who are Friendships. Neve Lucanis and Davrin have so far all been massive hits with me

-Was a little worried the choices were gonna feel too edgeless but I actually think the linear storytelling lends itself well here. My Shadow Dragon Rook chose to help Treviso believing their organization could handle the other archdemon without them and oh boy were they wrong!!! And the consequences of that have felt deeply palpable on an interpersonal level and a worldstate level

-Glamour system a lot of fun. Wish they let you try things on in the shop before purchasing

-Trans stuff has been both a lot of fun to play with and shockingly well-executed with some genuine variance in play. As a personal preference I tend to kind of repel when fantasy worlds have identical concepts of transition/identical terminology but its been really good to have as a dialogue option. Taash being possibly nonbinary/transmasculine has also been a kind of delightful surprise and I'm really excited to see where they go with it. never in a million years did I really expect them to do this with an R.O.

-BLIGHT IS SO FUCKING BACK DRAGON AGE HORROR IS SO FUCKING BACK ORIGINS/AWAKENING IVE MISSED YOU SO BAD

-DWARF LORE DWARF LORE DWARF LORE

- Weishaupt genuinely inspired a level of hype in me I haven't had for dragon age since my first time playing the battle of denerim. Extremely cinematic in a genuinely compelling way and the use of all the companions (not just whatever two I clocked on here) made it feel so much BIGGER and more engaging.

-In general I think its finally perfected making my inner circle feel like an inner circle rather than just a collection of guys i found in the woods. Its not just banter big team meetings, finding them talking to each other around the Lighthouse, cutscene interactions all make them feel like a proper growing unit. Almost like thats the theme or something-

-I don't mind the simple puzzles (because I am stupid) the environments are fun enough to navigate that it stays fun to complete them for me but I do wish maybe the companions would wait a little longer before prompting you. Hearing "we just need to destroy two more crystals", destroying one, then hearing "ok, one more, just up ahead!" in the span of ten seconds is. Something.

-While I do think that HR writing people are moaning about is a bit exaggerated (likely due to both the anti-woke weirdos and also the lack of companions just going for the throat on each other's lived experiences right away) I do think occasionally its a little too precious about anticipating the discourse. The poor Lords of Fortune get hit by this pretty hard the amount of emphasis drawn on btw we dont steal any cultural artifacts and we employ sensitivity Tomb Raiders is a little clumsily executed in a way that pulls you out of genuinely a cool idea (pirates turned guardians of a way of life that imperialism is trying to snuff out)