#I miss the dalish having Celtic accents 😭😭

[crancisfrozier]

Okay I just finished Dragon Age the Veilguard after about 100 hours and I have SO MANY thoughts I need to get out of my system.

First, the positives; 1) This game was FUCKING GORGEOUS. It is lightly stylized and I can see what people mean when they say it’s a little sims or Disney like, but overall I think they made a really bold choice to not look like every other game that’s coming out now and I think it paid off. I’ve never cared about photo mode in games before but I found myself stopping to take a screenshot every 5-10 minutes. Even in boss battles!!

2) The combat. This the first time ever in a DA game that combat is genuinely fun and not kind of a slog you have to get through to advance the story. Playing as a mage has never been more enjoyable.

3) The major story points. I won’t go into spoilers right now but Weisshaupt and the entire last act of the game were phenomenal. Peak Dragon Age. I was crying. I was shaking. I was scared for my companions and the state of the world. These battles were enormous and epic and world changing.

Okay putting the rest under a read more because this post is really getting away from me. There will be spoilers under the cut :)

4) The Solavellan content. I fully expected to have their story lowkey ignored because of how much time had passed and how much was going on in the world. At best I thought there might be one or two lines of dialogue about it. I was not expecting to get a conversation with my inquisitor solely about him that so beautifully sums up exactly why me and my inquisitor fell in love with Solas, or to be able to get the happy ending with them that I have yearned for this past decade.

Before I go into the negatives I want to state that I really enjoyed this game. It’s probably a 7 or 8/10 for me! But enjoying it does not make it immune from criticism. So, the negatives for me:

1) The writing/dialogue. I know this has been a massive point of hate for a lot of origins-only crybabies and I don’t want to necessarily validate them but I think we have to admit that the writing was…shall we say inconsistent perhaps? As I mentioned above, the pinnacles of act 2 and 3 are Dragon Age at its best imo, but in between that? There is a lot of tell not show going on and modernization of dialogue that can take me out of the immersion, which has never happened for me in a DA game before. My theory is that they overcorrected from inquisition, a game that is not very new player friendly (I say this as someone whose very first DA game was inquisition and I wouldn’t change that for the world) and ended up simplifying, excessively repeating, and underutilizing themes and parts of the story.

2) The companions. I enjoy them as characters don’t get me wrong (Emmerich Volkarin my beloved I will romance you every playthrough)! But they feel much flatter than in any other DA game. There is not a lot of tension or realistic personality dynamics between them. I’m not saying every game needs to have a Fenris/Anders level rivalry but when a group of people come together in a situation as stress-inducing as stopping the end of the world, they are not going to immediately be happy and love each other and give found family vibes off the bat. That has to be earned, they have to actually go through things together! They will have people they like and don’t like, people they get along with and don’t get along with! Consider the dynamic in inquisition: Sera and Solas do not get along. She hates his arrogance (and his “elfyness”) and he dislikes but mostly pities her. But Sera and Blackwall are best friends! Blackwall and Solas have a super interesting dynamic given their *ahem* personal identities. Solas and Bull have a mutual respect as strategists (I will always love their mental chess match in banter). Bull and Dorian have a whole enemies to lovers thing going on! Vivienne hates Cole because she sees him as a demon, But Cole is basically Varric and Solas’s adopted son who they have a minor custody battle over. I could go on and on! This drama, these personality clashes are what flesh the companions in previous games out so well. Everyone joining the team and then having next to no internal conflict (or if they do it is basically immediately resolved) makes it boring, I’m sorry! And on that topic, I have to mention their approvals and disapprovals. They mean nothing. There are not really any consequences for doing something a companion hates. They will typically immediately forgive you no matter what. Thinking back once again, what would the inquisition companions be without the approval/disapproval system? Without Vivienne changing around the furniture out of spite? Being able to punch Solas? Having companions leave because they disagree with you so much or straight up telling them to leave?? Not only does this give characters agency and flesh them out, but it provides the perfect role playing opportunities in what is supposed to be an action RPG!

3) The world state/choices from previous games. These were essentially non-existent and boiled down to “did you romance Solas in Inquisition or not”. It feels like they were trying to kind of soft reboot the universe which feels incredibly disappointing after a legacy of choices that can leave so many unique world states. A lot of them even conflict with some of the storylines in the game. For example, I always romance Alistair in Origins and keep him a Grey Warden. Where the hell was he in this game?? Multiple times they say every single Warden has gathered at Weisshaupt, you’d think you might want two veterans of the fifth blight (counting my HoF) to help fight an archdemon??? Are they dead then? Did you kill them bioware??? Also Morrigan, not only does it seem like Kieran doesn’t exist but it’s heavily implied that Morrigan drank from the well of sorrows, a choice that I have agonized over for these past 10 years because I am firmly in the “my inquisitor drinks from the well” camp. I also feel bad for anyone that romanced someone other than Solas in Inquisition because it seems like you get a little note from your beloved and that’s it.

4) The soundtrack. I don’t dislike all of it, there is some battle music I like and the dread wolf and end credits music were great! But a lot of this music felt disconnected from Dragon Age and almost like it was for Mass Effect. Like why are there weird futuristic synths in ancient Arlathan Forest? I was very worried about this the first time I heard Trevor Morris wasn’t coming back for the OST. And when I heard that he was being replaced by Hans Zimmer I couldn’t help worry that they were replacing high quality and understanding of the source material with a big name. The first time I heard the title music it sounded like Starfield. Or like generic epic action movie soundtrack. There has been nothing as truly memorable as the Inquisition theme. Nothing that I will cry in my car to like the lost elf theme.

5) The sanitization of some of Thedas’s darker parts in what feels like an attempt to not upset anyone. Tevinter is known through Thedas for its slavery, for its abhorrent treatment of elves. But we are in the capital of Tevinter and see none of that? The main story of the game unravels the central religion of the world and there is not a single religious person in your group or near it that can feel the full effects of this unraveling? If you play as a dalish elf, gods that you likely worshipped your entire life are proved to be real but not only are they callous and cruel they are trying to kill you personally? And all we get is a few lines of dialogue just saying “oh wow can you believe this”? Where is the mourning for your misplaced faith??? For people’s lives given to devotion for nothing???

6) The state of the world at the end of the game. There is a certain hollowness in preventing the end of the world but having possibly millions killed in the process. And about having places we have loved so dearly, and worked so hard to save in previous games, being completely destroyed offscreen. Then treating the protagonist like this is a great triumphant victory! There should have been a post battle scene at the end, like in origins and inquisition. A breather after all the hard work, but a more melancholy one this time. To register and convey how much of the world has been lost, what the price of this victory was, and the work it’s going to take to recover from.

I know I’ve listed more negatives here than positives but I want to again express that I did really enjoy this game! Not only did I put 100 hours into it, I’m literally already planning my second and third playthroughs. But it does have some major flaws that I think need to be pointed out. We can’t pretend this is a perfect game. For me, Inquisition is still the best DA game and that’s okay! I still have Inquisition, I can go back and play it whenever I want. And if anything, it’s a miracle that this game came out at all. We came very close to living in the Bad Place where it didn’t come out or where it came out as a live service game. I am truly so appreciative of all of the love and effort that went into DA4 and my hope above hopes would be that they do something like Larian where they identify and fix the major issues, but I know that likely won’t happen :(