#and the fact there is Actual romance in Veilguard while I just have to make up most of the love story between my arisen and main pawn

[birbycakes]

wait I should draw a "My Chad Arisen vs My Virgin Rook" meme. Emphasis on my Arisen's perfect round sweet face, soft round body and glorious F cups. The only thing my Rook has on her is the longer hair LOL

[dippedinmelancholy]

It might be because I'm relatively "new" to the Dragon Age fandom (the last few years) but it feels like people are actually losing their minds over the choices and world state revealed about Dragon Age Veilguard. Hear me out. Does it kind of suck? Sure. Carving out your own "canon" is cool. But if you craft a story around each choice someone could have made, you have to change your development and story planning for each of those possible choices. It's been 10 years since Tresspassor was released.

It's been 15 years since Origins was released. Real years, not in game years. Only Inquisition had the more "open world", widely stretching plot, and even that was barely held together by strings, hopes, and dreams. None of the games have thus far reached into Northern Thedas beyond having characters come from there. This could very well feel like a whole new world for Rook. Without the super nostalgic feeling, why would 99% of what happened in southern Thedas matter at all at this point, for this game? Who in northern Thedas would even know about it? These people? Sure, Morrigan can have a son (she did in my default world state for Inquisition anyways), but at this point he's fully grown? Why would she ever talk about him to Rook, to reveal that about herself? As far as I could tell, the Inquisitor only meets him because his mother is working at Skyhold and he's a child that needs to be cared for. The Well of Sorrows kind of blows, but again, 10 years later and they're finally able to give us a game. Not only are they giving us a game, they're clearly making some space for the unresolved issues between the Inquisitor and Solas (regardless of romance), all the while needing to get new people involved in the game for it to be truly successful. The choice with the Grey Wardens could have been cool, but again, it was in southern Thedas. I have a hard time believing every single Grey Warden was either doomed or saved by the Inquisitor.

I just think maybe people are taking it a bit too harshly, some of the comments make me think people really need a breath of fresh air and maybe to touch some grass. Do I want everyone to have fun in every single Dragon Age game? To feel all of the emotions and pride for what happens in those games? To love and cry for their OCs???? Of course I do. But based off of the fact that Leliana could have died????? But no matter what she's a face in Inquisition???? That tells me Dragon Age DOES have a default world setting with some things being set in stone regardless of what choices you make. But I also think it's a little unfair to call a game a failure, cruel, uncaring for their canons just because it doesn't have 10-15 in game and out of game years of choices perfectly represented. This is Rook's story, and honestly, nothing that happened in southern Thedas matters to their story. To any Rook, the Inquisitor is probably this legend like figure who may or may not have been touched by god(s). Or seduced a god. Who knows.

[riddleredcoats]

I just finished my first playthrough of Veilguard and boy oh boy, do i have thoughts.

but, TLDR:

Bros, this game is so fucking strange.

It literally giving me everything I wanted; every theory for the past 10 years I've had to speculate is bang on, they bring niche characters in a way that makes sense, they give us nice romances, they give us cool combat, EPIC set pieces and then [gestures].

Anyway, this is more for posterity than any real, coherent thoughts.

The Good:

I don't know what sort of wizardry the devs at Bioware made for this game, but this game runs smooth AF. Actually insane in the year of our lord 2024 that a AAA viddy game manages to do it. Kudos must be given.

The art-style grows on you really fast, actually. And considering what happens in the game, especially in the back half, I think making it more stylised was necessary to also compliment the aforementioned point of it running smoothly.

There is in fact, a lot of dark themes in this game. I don't know what game some reviewers played, but to say its basically a clean version of a DA game is... just wrong. I have a theory, in the Bad section, about why they believe that is the case, but Veilguard is filled with Dark Themes.

The set pieces of this game are fucking insane. Like, there is no comparison to any other Bioware game. Even ME3 with its bombastic set pieces isn't a match to Veilguard in the prologue. The Siege at Weisshaupt? Gagged the whole way through. That last 2-4hrs of game were amazing and while I have beef with it - further down - for what it is and what it is trying to be? They succeeded. Some of the best viddy game I have ever viddy gamed, frankly.

The lore drops are also insane. I basically watched all of Solas regrets back to back to back and basically it was confirmation upon confirmation upon confirmation. I'm still in the high of the Solas/Mythal confirmation and that happened like 3 days ago, lmao. And if you know me, you know why - it goes wayyy beyond Solas and Mythal for me, personally.

Morrigan's place in the narrative. Keeping it vague, but just [gestures to all of it].

Issenya... Just... Issenya, man.

The companions. Yeah, they're all great, I don't think there's really a dud one. Sure, I connected more with some than others, but man- these companion quests are involved and meaningful and progress the story. You do get to know them very well. Harding, Neve, Davrin and Emmerich will always have a place in my heart for their questlines, even though I love all the other companions too - but those really resonated with me.

Combat. Holy shit, a DA game with a fun combat system. That's all really.

The Middling

The music. I don't love it but I don't hate it. I can count on one hand the amount of times the music made me feel something - basically the last scene of the Harding questline and when The Main Theme came in during the final quests. Trevor Morris reigns supreme; I teared up more for The Lost Elf theme return than any other musical moment in the game.

The pacing of this game is... baffling. I'm not sure if its my own fault for basically trying to do everything in the first act, but Act 1 took me like 40 hours, while the remaining two acts took me 20. Weird. Will need to experiment because it might absolutely be on me, but yeah.

The Bad

It's basically one thing but honestly, every time it was brough up it was like a dagger piercing my heart while my stomach was stepped on by a bronto.

The lack of geopolitical talk both past and present.

Much as been said from the infamous 3 choices that Veilguard imports - and I will say, that even those 3 are laughably implemented imo - but never is it more felt than in this aspect. The past straight up does not matter. Worse; they actively disregard it imo. There is no difference between world states, no world leader talk, no nothing. It is just... nothing. And listen, the specifics deserve their own post eventually, but im just processing shit still.

The game is really fun, and the themes and characters that are there and the lore is fantastic and when im locked in, I'm REALLY locked in, but then when I try to put it in the context of the past games, what I loved about it - the politics, the disagreements, the sheer brutal way that history and prejudice can just fuck up a country, Veilguard just... it feels hollow, without any bite or flavour.

And this is the crux of all the problems, really, in the present in Veilguard.

The way people talked about the dark tone being gone? Yeah, I can see it here considering that there is no distinction between Dalish and City Elves anymore basically. The discrimination against elves is just... gone, apparently? Which is insane - because we are in Tevinter and it's just... abandoned? The way Rivain is all cool and shit about Magic and Spirits with like zero nuance or, more imporantly, any real consequences when [gestures to the past games] - it just makes the South Really Dumb because of course they are now ig. The Crows - these assassins that bought children to train, in what amounted to a sponsored slavery ring - are now freedom fighters and all the nuance of the assassinations is gone? The Wardens are fine mostly, really, but they are suddenly very above board all of the sudden.

And that's the whole thing here.

They have tried to make everyone stay so above board, to make everyone The Perfect Ally That No One In The Real World Can Criticise, that it retroactively sucked all the nuance and Flavour For Thedas At Large out of the story. It made the story worse because everyone is just so gosh dang nice and A Super Ally when in past games the conflict, the flavour of the Whatever Big Struggle was that everyone hated each other and was constantly in-fighting. Which made it fun and interesting to play.

Okay, sorry i forgot I had another one:

the fuck is that ending credit scene? with the executors implying they have been behind everything since DAO? Oh man, Bioware you can't do those types of stories - you tried in ME3 and [gestures]. Why can't Loghain just be a dude traumatized by Orlais which led to All The Things in DAO? Why can't Bartrand just be a greedy bastard whose actions bring about DA2 and DAI and basically informs Varric's character from then on?

What the hell.

Anyway.

Yeah, initial Veilguard thoughts.

Oh yeah, and Neve is hot and I love her.

[anneapocalypse]

Well, I think I've officially decided I'm changing my world state for my first playthrough of Veilguard!

I decided against using Rogues Gallery, for two reasons:

I still haven't finished Calla Cadash's playthrough. I know, I'm terrible to this girl. I swear I will eventually but I don't want to have to rush through it.

Solas... hates Calla. lmao. I'll be shocked if she even gets the redeem option in Trespasser, with how low his approval is. And I think that's interesting and I'll really enjoy playing with it for a future playthrough... but for my first, I really do want to play with an Inquisitor who wants to save him. Doesn't need to be romanced; I just want to play a worldstate where the Inquisitor thinks there's hope for him, an option I love with Solas friendship (I actually prefer the friendship redemption dialogue in Trespasser to the romance dialogue).

That makes Eleanor Trevelyan the perfect Inquisitor. She was also the first Inquisitor I actually finished! And honestly I love her world state, and I think I'll really enjoy building on it. She romanced Sera, disbanded the Inquisition and all other things being equal would really rather settle down with her wife--except that she swore to show her friend Solas that this world is worth saving, and she hasn't forgotten that promise. I think that however big or small the Inquisitor's presence in the actual game, I can make it work for her.

I will probably have to play a little loose with the theme of that world state to make it work, because previously it was romancing city elves (Zevran, Fenris, and Sera) and aside from the fact I don't want to pick a romance ahead of time, I don't think we even have a city elf romance option (Davrin and Bellara both seem to be of Dalish origin). The option I see is to simply play a city elf Rook. With Rook's origins focusing on factions, and not culture of origins, that should work. So it's looking like my first Rook will be an elf!

In that world state, Ilana Tabris is a rogue, while Alessandra Hawke and Eleanor Trevelyan are both mages. I think their Rook will probably also be a rogue. As for origin, I've been leaning toward Lord of Fortune as they just sound fun. But we'll see if anything else catches my eye. Still not making any major decisions about personality or backstory until I have the character creator in hand! I haven't even picked a gender; I do usually play a female character first, but I might not this time; we'll see.

[kaija-rayne-author]

Review 3.5 in series for Dragon Age Veilguard

Spoilers for Veilguard

18 hours in, 16 playtime

Same disclaimer as the others, if you've already read it you can skip to the cut.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm on media blackout while I play this, so I'm only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Y'know? Every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you Bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

Review 3 is here.

Okay. Got several more hours into the game last night. I'm finally getting story bits!

It really shouldn't take 16 hours to get that far.

I utterly love Treviso. And to my surprise, most of the NPCs are brown. So they didn't fuck that up.

I've so far met Lace (hate her), Neve (withholding judgment), Bellara (withholding judgment) and Lucanis (hilarious that I actually like him in game). Though what's with the count Dracula look? Dude looks like he needs to find his coffin. That's an... interesting design choice. Gotta admit I loved the coffee meeting. I may end up eating crow. (I said in a group that if I ended up romancing Lucanis in game, I'd happily eat crow, because I utterly loathed his intro story, The Wigmaker, in Tevinter Nights.) I still have to meet the rest of the companions. And yes, it's a double entendre.

Again, the sets, backgrounds, and environments are fantastic and the best part of the game so far. It's an interesting twist to me that they chose a negative coded demon for Lucanis. I was thinking it'd be Valor.

And I feel seen in a caring manner on the trans options. I do wish the CC would've given me the same freedom of design on that front as BG3 did. It doesn't. Larian was far, far more brave and accommodating on that front. But I could make a representative character for me, so that's important and good enough.

Larian also had the courage to allow polyamory too. Sooooo. My opinion of not being able to be polyam like me in DAV is pretty damned low. Only 30% of the dating population is monogamous. Get with the times, Bioware.

Arlathan turned out to be more beautiful than I originally expected. Not a city person so Minrathous doesn't do much for me.

I had some pretty negative feelings about the game reveals, but that post is here if you want. Fair warning, I didn't censor myself much and it's both acidic and negative.

And I don't like the non-open world thing. In fact, I hate it. I much preferred DAI on that aspect. I feel like the Devs are herding my rather contrary ass through the game and I just really don't like it. You often can't go back (say for potions you didn't need before but could use?) It’s really just unpleasant. I don't like being led around by the nose for the story the devs want to tell. I want to be able to explore. When I want to.

And I want both my third companion and my ability to play the other companions back, damnit. I really hate that too.

I've got a busy day, so I'm not sure if my weak ass will be able to play tonight. Though after 18 hours I'm feeling a very, very slight desire to play? Again, it shouldn't take an 18 hour commitment to want to log in to a game.

Oh, and I'm playing a rogue. 16 hours in and I've yet had the opportunity to pick a damned lock or defuse a trap or any of the fun rogue bits I play rogues for. Did they really decide to get rid of an entire section of the stuff that makes rogues fun to play? That basically turns my rogue into a weak ass elf good with a bow and dual weild. They could be any Joe Blow with that. They removed everything that made rogues special? Really? Really really? Fucking hell, man.

I'm recovering from a Pulmonary Embolism (really do not recommend) so my energy levels have very finite limits.

If you have the wherewithal, money is tight, and if you're enjoying these reviews, I could really use any financial aid people are willing to offer. My work of words is my only income, and I'm the only income in the house.

Fourth instalment is here.

[dracoangel]

So since rayne and cullen are no longer your headcanon does that mean that it never happened at all? does she still join the Inquisition? what does that mean for her and alistair? their relation was pretty rocky in the lion and the wolf

If you mean do they still have a secret relationship while they were both at Kinloch Hold, yes they still have that. Because Rayne needs that extra trauma 🤣 But any kind of romantic relationship afterwards, never happened. They might have a friendship in Inquisition, but that's about it. So yes, Rayne still joins the Inquisition as an advisor (though I've contemplated making her a full companion, she's a woman of action).

As for her and Alistair. Im not sure what direction I want to go with them. I think I've moved passed him pining over her for 10 years, so that will take that component out of their rocky relationship. I've fiddled with the idea that they actually get back together after DA2 (because she is keeping her DA2 story). I've also fiddled with them just being friends and Rayne solo-ing it. Or maybe she gets together with someone else, like maybe she and Fenris actually make it work. I kinda want her to be with someone so I can bring Davia back (Davia being Rayne and Cullen's first child) because I loved her relationship with her brother Aiden (half-elf Davia? 😏).

Unfortunately my Dragon Age well is kinda dry after 10 years of stagnancy and the trailer for The Veilguard didn't rekindle those juices (in fact, it did the opposite. I wasn't impressed). So trying to re-write/re-do Rayne's Inquistion and Romance story is kind of a struggle.

[vassothmercar]

Can you tell me what makes you think the veilguard promotions are geared towards romance? We got a trailer with no romance, a 20-minute gameplay preview with no romance, a q&a which only had around 2 questions about romance, the game informer spread that had one throwaway line about flirting with neve, and then one article about relationships (platonic and romance), since that is a feature and the writer has been releasing articles about features within the game. What the developers say on their social media isn't really promo, but even the questions they answer typically have little to do with romance.

Thank you for asking! I will be ignoring the pointed and accusative tone of this ask and telling you what I feel because this is my blog where I put my opinions even if sometimes they are not too grounded on data.

(Although the post has been liked and reblogged more than my usual posts since I posted it so I am definitely not the only one feeling this way)

To answer your question! It’s not anything too big which is way I said I was a tad worried only not a lot. My concern mostly stems from a throwaway line from the most recent article that goes like “this is a r19 game” by one of the people on the Veilguard team, and like, it isn’t MUCH which is why not overtly concerned but it reminded me so much to BG3 advertising that I had to stop and go “huh”. That paired on the fact that while we haven’t had that many articles or information about the romances, we do tend to get at least one little “hint” about them on the promotional materials just made me a tad wary because I saw Larian discard marketing strategies based on BG3’s plot and focus more in the “yeah in this game you can kiss this person and have sex with THIS person isn’t it neat? You should buy it!” Strategy which then meant that a lot of the patches we got were to add romance to characters (except, notably, Wyll which is not as fan popular) and less into fixing the glitches in the actual game.

Now, the strategy works which is why I understand why they used it, and why I would understand why the Veilguard team is using it, because at the end of the day the game is meant to sell. But I can still point out the trend because frankly, why do we need to be explicitly told that the game is R19 in relation to sex scenes? It’s a Dragon Age game! We were expecting those scenes! That there is a pointed comment about it just struck me as weird!

[kaija-rayne-author]

I'm doing a series of reviews as I play Dragon Age Veilguard. One or two posts a day, whenever I can play.

This is installment one.

Can't remember if I mentioned that a lovely person gave me a copy of DAV. And I'm so very grateful I can play close to release. So I can do an unbiased review series.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm on media blackout while I play this, so I'm only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

I'm seven hours in. (2 in CC so 5 playtime.)

Spoilers for DAV. Dragon Age Veilguard

Five hours in... I can confidently say welp, it's a game. It is indeed a video game.

I don't hate it? Most of it? Can't say I love it, either.

Background and environment folks did a fantastic job. And I was pretty sure they would. That part feels like Dragon Age. Except for the floaty spaceship thing in Minrathous. Intentionally not saying what it's supposed to be, because they do tell you.

Baddy design is as bad as I feared. If not actually worse.

I totally called it on several points, which gods escaped, for one. The fact that those 'demons' were gonna give me a headache, too. And the whole Solas Varric sitch.

CC is pretty good. Nothing ground breaking, but people should be able to make a character they like? You can make a good redhead.

I like the new codex design. I still preferred DAO for that one. Aaaannnnd I've already caught a couple editing errors in the text.

Extremely thrilled that my non-binary ass can be non-binary.

Yes, you can actually make a (slightly) pudgy character.

That is still not Solas. And you can't try to tell me I'll probably like him once I see him in game, anymore. I don't. He does still move the same, so they got that right. Still has the subtle humour, too, which, since Weekes wrote him, makes sense.

They were right, the characters do look better in game.

AND THAT IS STILL NOT A FUCKING DARKSPAWN.

My youngest kid just glanced at my screen and did a double take with a 'Ma? Why are you playing Fortnite?'

From the mouths of babes. He's right in that Fortnite player age bracket, FWIW. And no, he has no interest in playing Dragon Age. No matter how much they made some of it look like Fortnite.

Not feeling any of the romanceables, yet. But I've only met Neve, Lace, and Bellara. Alas my poor bisexual heart. None of the women do it for me. That may change, it's still very early as per in-game events.

I'm going to stick with it to see if it'll actually catch me up. Because it sadly has not, yet. By an hour in on my first playthrough of DAO, I was head over heels for Alistair. By 1 hour into Awakening, Anders had me. By hour 3 in DA2? Anders and Isabela both had me. By seven hours into DAI? I was very much in love with Solas, though I was playing a guy because I wanted to Romance Dorian first. (Still really loved Dorian.) But yeah, that bloody elf had me first, and I think it was at the first damned scene with him in it. Which is roughly an hour or so in?

I'm intensely curious about the story, and it's why I was so desperate to play it. So unless it somehow utterly offends me, (worse than those not-fucking-darkspawn and what-the-actual-fuck-are-those-demons already have) I'll finish it. Unless I lose interest. It's at least worth playing so far. I don't feel like I wasted the seven hours.

Fighting is reasonably easy to adjust to. And it'll be more fun when I get the hang of it. (For me, I usually don't have a lot of trouble picking up new fighting systems in games.)

Oh, and it took Astarion BG3 half an hour. 🤣

Please no spoilers if anyone responds. As I said, only seven hours in.

In case you're interested, here's my predictions piece.

And here's the second part in my ongoing review as I play series.