#I'm so torn as far as romances for dav

[catebees]

It's a monthly tradition now! Drop your favorite DA character in my askbox and I'll draw them!!

This time it's my pick, Here's a quick Davrin <3

You can check the #da requests tag to see which characters have already been requested

[ohlawsons]

slow day at work so i might as well put together some veilguard Thoughts now that i'm hurtling towards end game on my second playthrough. anything spoilery will go under the cut

tl;dr it got me invested in dragon age again, which i wasn't sure would happen.

first off, i have largely really enjoyed playing. it's incredibly refreshing to play a game that feels complete (bear with me) -- yes, it's sparse in some places, but nothing so far has felt outright unfinished to me. the closest would be the lords of fortune (which. btw. what a fucking background to start with. the mourn watch has been 1000% better) but that feels more... tacked on later?

i personally have run into zero bugs. i know there have been a few, but none that i've heard of that are game or even quest breaking, which is a novel thing these days.

(i'm gonna preface this next bit by saying i think it's incredibly unhelpful to use bg3 as the Gold Standard to hold all rpgs up to for a variety of reasons, but i have 2 small comparisons to make)

this comes on the heels of playing through bg3 an embarrassing amount of times since launch, and not once have i been able to complete jaheira's entire questline in act 3, due to bugs. twice it's been bugged to the point that i'm unable to recruit either her or minsc. so to have an entire dav playthrough where the game runs entirely As Intended? amazing.

also, as much as i miss the depth of companion convos we expect in a dragon age game, one thing i really really missed while playing bg3 was the feeling of companions interacting. there's a bit of party banter, sure, but i've really missed having companions hang out at camp and little cutscenes where they interact and mini-plot lines between companions.

combat: it's fun, it's different, i'm kinda *wiggly non-committal hand gesture* about it so far. the changes to mage combat is amazing, but i'm playing a warrior this time around and not big on the changes. as much as i really miss having a party of four, i will begrudgingly admit it works better this way with the new combat

exploration: i think they really hit the nail on the head with this. it really feels like a fantastic middle ground between da2 and dai in terms of maps -- the more "enclosed" and less overwhelming da2 maps but without being. tiny.

plot: yeah, the pacing is a bit wonky, especially at the start. i really feel like i get what they were going for, but i don't know that they managed it all the time.

also, this is not the popular opinion and i'm aware, but i really don't hate the lack of imported choices. i think there's a couple that would've made a lot of sense (well of sorrows, inquisitor's class, if romanced!cass is divine, etc) but it's clearly set up as a soft reboot which just feels inevitable, tbh. there's so many choices and it's been 20+ years since the blight so some (not all) will lose importance.

i also don't hate the art style, tbh. i think it'll age better than an ultra-realistic style. also the hair? amazing. perfect. 10/10. so much of the character creation (and gameplay options in general tbh) feels like bioware actually listened to feedback over the last few bw games

on to the spoilers!

so let's talk about varric.

i'm. uh. torn. because when he was stabbed in the prologue, i said out loud to myself "i hate it but also, narratively, it just feels like the right time" and then he showed up at the lighthouse, and the twist at the end caught me completely off guard and i'd already built him up in my head as the only father figure nasrin has ever known. so. :(

playing back through knowing that he's dead has actually been really interesting. i still don't know how i feel about it or how i'll decide to write (around) it in fic, but it definitely comes across as a deliberate plot choice that they planned/wrote around and not something tacked on later. rook is the only one to look at him in cutscenes, his lines get cut off/talked over by companions, any reference to him is very carefully worded, everyone (rook included) only refers to him in past tense.

that said. the reveal that solas completely fucked with rook's mind/memories is not given enough weight narratively imo. i do really enjoy the juicy implications of varric being the one to help rook through their mind-regret-prison, but we're really just gonna skim over that thing about solas, huh bioware?

tbh i really enjoyed like. 99% of the end game sequence. it really feels like the tension gets ramped up on the island, then a nice bit of reprieve back at the lighthouse, only to be thrown right back into things. it's probably the closest a game has come to feeling like the denerim sequence in origins for me. my only minor gripes are 1) i wish it was a little less hand hold-y about who to choose for what in minrathous, let me accidentally get my friends killed bc i chose bad!! and 2) it's a bit odd that you choose who goes where, then a big cutscene plays and shows the outcome of everything. i really thought it would be more like me2, where the cutscenes are broken up by combat to sort of draw it out.

i like the companions. i like the factions. the lords of fortune was lacking for sure, but i LOVE playing as a mourn watcher and being weird coworkers with emmrich!! i actually love that his quests are like... comically spooky? i'm def looking forward to playing through as a warden next (grey wardens my beloved)

i do agree with the popular opinion that the game lacks bite. i love the fact that the companions actually feel like friends which we get bits of in the other games but in hindsight, inquisition companions feel more like work-friends than friend-friends for the most part. any disagreements between them (like taash and emmrich or lucanis and davrin) do feel sort of glossed over, but i don't think i hate it?

i can headcanon around the factions. doesn't mean i should have to. it's easy to say we don't see slavery/excessive classism in minrathous bc we're in the poor part of town. it's easy to say it's been two decades since zev started cleaning house so the crows are less shitty now. it's easy to say the lords are culturally-conscious bc look how things went the last time isabela stole an important cultural artifact. but it really does just feel like the game trying to toe the line and be full of Good, Non-Offensive Content.

the "choices" are odd to me. mostly bc there aren't many outside of the companions. and maybe that's intentional? but if that's the focus, why isn't there more of a reaction to which path you choose for the companions, instead of just "are they loyal y/n" during the end game

i want to also add that wrt taash, i do like their plot line. parts feel a bit Too Real (the codex entry about "mae says she's here to support me on my journey but i never asked for a journey"?????? just fuck me UP bioware) and yes, the Very Modern Language feels extremely out of place, but overall i did like it. maybe it's shitty writing to have everyone throwing around terms like nonbinary and agender, but i'm going to pretend it's an extremely deliberate choice to be crystal clear about what's going on. maybe it's a (political/social) statement. idk if that's the case but it makes it easier to get through.

last thing (bc this got incredibly long lmao) -- bioware what's going on with the romances? why the step back? why the awkward forced sex after one of the most traumatizing and emotional scenes in the entire game? why does it literally not feel like you're romancing lucanis until that moment? bellara's is really sweet, just... lacking in content, and i've watched emmrich's and neve's and they're better, and i've heard harding's is really good. i don't think we need straight up pixelated porn a la bg3 to have well written romances, but i literally walked away from my first playthrough with no idea why in the world lucanis is interested in nasrin. their chemistry is about 95% in my head or stolen from lucanis/neve banter (sidenote: why do they work SO well together and why is that the best written romance in the game and how long until there's a poly mod so i can romance them both with an equally Sexy And (professionally) Competent rook??) like. dai had blackwall dramatically profess his love while handcuffed and completely at the inquisitor's mercy and had the inquisitor heroically literally duel for josie's hand complete with a pick-up-and-spin-her-around kiss after!! veilguard barely let nasrin get any confirmation that lucanis actually liked them until they were forced into a sex scene.

anyway. i've had fun playing. i'll probably be writing fic eventually.