#and because of who i am i'm like very defensive over lucanis and neve i guess. but like. oh my god

[kalkydra]

what the fuck are you talking about! mythal is solas' toxic ex and he and a romanced lavellan HAVE AN ENDING WHERE THEY END UP TOGETHER FOREVER. lucanis and neve only get together if you don't romance either of them!!! also like. that's one romanceable man out of three. i can understand them not being into emmrich if they're not an old man fucker or into goths, but like. davrin is literally right there and he doesn't end up with anyone if you don't romance him! and his romance is really good!!! or is there Some Reason you think he's less romanceable than lucanis 🤔

[amarmeme]

I finally finished the game last night and have a lot of thoughts/feelings left lingering about Lucanis/Rook. I know people have gone on and around on this already, but I am compelled by this fictional mess.

I don't even think we need more from Lucanis, but more from Rook, which is my takeaway from the game as a whole regardless of romance, but I would guess is most highlighted by his romance path in particular.

Spoilers below the cut.

Pretty much anything I have written or will write is going to include some degree of angst. It's my favorite brand of tension.

Case in point: my favorite Austen novel is Persuasion. If that shows anything, it's that I live for inner turmoil, quiet suffering, yearning, unspoken words, and two idiots in love.

I want to get my heart shredded until the love makes it whole. The Lucanis romance has the potential for this in spades, but the execution is just lacking and that's because we never go beyond surface with Rook's thoughts. It feels like this romance is supposed to carry on the backs of the players' imagination, which feels a bit cheap.

I've seen criticism of not enough from Lucanis and also defenses that he's been through A Lot so we shouldn't expect more. I'm actually past that. Yes, more scenes with Lucanis would have been great, but I actually want more scenes from Rook's perspective, even if alone, to fill in the strange gaps.

Before you lock in mechanically, imagine if you will, Rook having a reflective conversation with Varric, or in Varric's mirror. Rook asks if they are imagining a connection, or seeing into things.

What if Rook has a chance to speak with Neve, given she and Lucanis have a clear connection whether they get together or not? Or Harding, one of the other people who appear in Lucanis' mind prison?

I could see this continuing after the romance "locks in" -- companions comment on Lucanis looking happy, them being together, but what about Rook? If they're not ready to comment directly to Lucanis on what this really means to him (since they never kiss, touch, exchange soulful looks, etc.), Rook should be able to ask the companions what they have noticed/what they should do to advance things.

This comes down to my struggle with this game versus past Dragon Age games. It all boils down to the lack of interaction between Rook and others. If Rook could ask their colleagues questions rather than just listening to ambient conversations or helping further their personal quests, it would do so much to make this game as amazing as the past installments.

Rook is so lonely, surrounded by all these people. You have to choose to imagine they are connected and are having these interpersonal conversations about themselves, because they never happen on screen. At least I didn't get any of that in my Shadow Dragon Rook playthrough.

I am completely fine with what feels like one-sided pining, and even angst about what Lucanis actually wants out of Rook, but the game needs some mechanics to put into place to make it feel like Rook isn't just quietly okay with an empty relationship, or expect us to imagine things are happening when the game presents them as very much not.

So much of what is there is perfectly rife for fanfiction, but I expect the logical progression to be clear in the game where it really is just not. I have no idea how Lucanis/Rook get from point A to B to C. It feels like it is missing content, and it could even just be Rook-specific content to smooth it over. As it is now, it feels like an unconvincing story.

Maybe one day I'll play it again as a crow to see if that adds any crumbs, but for now I'm just feeling kinda conflicted for my poor Rook. I love the potential, but am not super pleased with the execution.

[butterflydm]

ever onward in our DAV adventure...

I'm on such a high with this game right now.

The romantic scenes I've gotten to do with Lucanis so far have made me very giggly and happy while I was playing through them. And Neve approves of our romance. <3

My next big main quest made me SO happy! Delightful, delightful! I really do love the quest & flow design of DAV and, even though I have to admit to some protectiveness/defensiveness over DAI (it was my first Dragon Age game), I think that DAV improved on it in several ways. I feel like the tension of the main storyline is a lot stronger here than it was in DAI post-Skyhold. The open world was just... too open in DAI, imo. Pulling back and making it more controlled in DAV (plus eliminating collection quests entirely except for the one) was a good game design decision.

When we got stuck in Elgar'nan's trap and then Rook heard SOLAS reaching out through the thinned Veil to help us through! I was just eating up the conversation between Elgar'nan and Solas as we fought our way through to save the Dalish. This game has been giving me so much great lore and I am loving it to pieces. Sneaking through the Venatori camp was... definitely illuminating on their mindset. They want old Tevinter back again, and the since the old Tevinter gods were actually the servants of the old elven gods...

Also... we're gonna have to kill that big-ass dragon that Elgar'nan just summoned (and then fed the Venatori to after we freed the elves) so... you know. That's coming.

Had a great conversation with Solas afterwards (Rook has officially earned his respect) and we got a bit of him talking with some regretful longing about the Inquisitor after we got a bit of her doing the same in our earlier meeting, so that was sweet (I set them up as having romanced in DAI so I could get any potential extra dialogue). Rook called Solas out on his pride, and we really did get to see a big difference between Solas and Elgar'nan -- Solas knows how to apologize and realizes it when he screws up. Which was true in DAI as well -- if you took the high approval route with him, he's way more conflicted about his ending choices, because he realizes that his initial assumptions about people post-Veil were incorrect. If you prove him wrong, he admits to being wrong.

Solas also gave a pretty clear 'endgame approaching' warning in the game, in the sense of saying that our next encounter with the gods is likely to be our last chance, so my next priority is to finish up any character or region quests, to get everyone as prepped as possible for the next big fight. Companions were my first priority, to try to get them all up to Hero of the Veilguard status alongside Harding.

So, companion updates:

Harding - already a Hero of the Veilguard, but I had a really good conversation with her after the Solas convo, where she expressed how glad she was that she had friends to help her past feeling the weight of the Titans' pain on her shoulders and how she believes that Solas can be saved too. Okay, I definitely need to go with an Inky who doesn't believe that Solas can be saved in my next run, because I'm very curious how her opinion might change if Inky thinks Solas needs to be stopped as opposed to saved! (I'm wondering if it's like how Varric's approval during Mages/Templars choice in DAI depends on what Hawke chose in DA2). Harding firmly believes that Lavellen could save Solas from trapping himself in his regrets and bad choices if given the chance. So it's possible we might have a Solas/Inky happy ending waiting at the end of the game if we play our cards right. Maybe. We'll see! Depends on Solas and his stubbornness, really.

Taash - I wanted to finish up them next, to see if that moved the Taash/Harding romance forward. We've gotten some hints and flirting here and there and it's been very cute. During the quest to take care of the Stormrider dragon, Taash asked Harding about her mom, and they had some good mom-related conversations.

Taash's personal quest really tugged at the heartstrings (I shed a few tears, for sure). I had Taash leaning towards being more Rivani and their mom wasn't a big fan of that. And was confused about Taash being non-binary. And now Taash has to struggle with the pain of never getting to have that big conversation where the two of them work it out. And that's hard but also... really true to life at times. It felt very honest.

Taash's personal quest also crystallized something I was trying to say before about the themes of the game -- for some of the characters, it's not sins of the past so much as the struggle with the weight of your culture and the baggage that it brings. That's become more clear as we've gone through each quest. Because that was definitely Taash, who is torn between two cultures, Rivani or Qunari -- one culture that stresses personal freedoms and is chill about magic and spirits, and the other one which stresses authoritarianism and control and is definitely not chill about magic or spirits. And you can certainly take from both in some ways but there are other ways that the two cultures contrast so strongly that you have to pick one.

But we've had other characters struggling with issues brought about because of their cultural background -- like Bellara, who is dealing with ancient elven history in the form of her brother accepting an offer to serve one of the Forgotten Ones of elven lore; or Harding dealing with the cultural weight of all of the grief and anger of the murdered Titans, and Davrin needing to deal with the 'whatever it takes to win' cultural background of the Wardens coming back around again in the form of the Gloom Howler. The regrets of the past. So... similar to what I was saying before, but slightly modified.

In lighter news: matchmaking successful!

Emmrich - We killed Johanna and destroyed the lantern, but this was a really tough quest on an emotional level. We just lost Taash's mom in the previous quest and then I had to make the call to save Manfred or encourage Emmrich to let him go and move forward into lichdom. And it was a really difficult choice! For this specific Rook, I encouraged him to become a lich but, wow, I was torn. But it is Emmrich's dream, and when we spoke about it... it's clear that it's what he wants. And Manfred isn't any more dead than he was before, since he was always a wisp inhabiting a body. He just won't be... inhabiting anymore. But, yeah. A tough one. Taash got Hero of the Veilguard status at the end of their quest, but Emmrich didn't get it here. Either he'll get it when he becomes a lich, or picking lichdom means that he doesn't get it. I guess I'll find out.

All throughout this, I would go back to the Lighthouse between each mission and run into delightful conversations between my companions. I really love how lively and dynamic it feels like the Lighthouse is. People are always moving around and talking to each other. <3

I moved some other companion missions forward but haven't completed them yet -- I need to do the next story mission in Treviso to complete Lucanis's personal mission, and Neve's mission next goes to the Cobbled Swan, where the Inquisitor awaits for a second check-in (excited to see her again! She's not ~exactly~ my Inky, of course, but you can't distill dozens of hours of characterization into a dozen lines, so I wasn't expecting that). I have some final tie-ups for Taash and Harding, plus the Lichdom ceremony for Emmrich, and I've moved forward to the next steps on Davrin and Bellara's quests.

Speaking of Bellara's questline, this hit me HARD after my recent decision to go no-contact with my brother:

Yeah, that's gonna be a rough one, especially if we have to kill her brother.

My next quest is going to be helping put to rest the souls of the Rivani mages murdered by Templars during DAI (we found a heartbreaking codex entry about this at the time).