#and these games are also mysterious to me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

systemic-dreams · 22 hours ago

Text

Dragon Age rant

I need to scream into the void about Veilguard. I hate what the narrative did to Thedas and I need to be very bitter and petty about it. So here's everything wrong with Veilguard's story and why I'm being a pendant.

Have some warnings:

[LONG ASS POST WITH ANIMATED GIFS AND IMAGES]

[VEILGUARD CRITICAL]

[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD BELOW]

For context, I am a Dragon Age Origins truther. I loved DA2 for completely different reasons and DA: Inquisition was still fun, even if the story/villain fell kinda flat. (Also Solas stole my Lavellan's eyebrows and I'm still mad about it).

The games were by no means perfect but even with all their flaws, they managed to capture the imagination and the essence of the interactive medium of videogames, giving you the freedom to role play but also replay and experience the world from a different perspective. And it would reward you for doing so. When you got to the end, you would already be thinking about your next playthrough and your next character and the decisions they would make, happy to sink another 100+ hours into the game.

Well, I finished Veilguard in around 80 hours, and by finished, I mean two complete playthroughs to make every possible decision in the game which amounted to playing the same game twice just to see if they were hiding another better game underneath the one I already played but no. I trotted up to Elger'nan and kicked his flying ass and was suddenly beset by the ‘good’ ending where Mythal absolves Solas of all his responsibilities and the Inquisitor showed up to hold hands with the Dread wolf so the pair of them could walk off into the sunset (hellish tear in the sky) together.

As a reward, I was shown a bunch of 2D title cards with one sentence summaries repeating my decisions (or lack thereof) back to me without epilogue, most of them regarding my companions. And then my Rook condescendingly told me "At their heart, stories are about change…"

But we literally didn't change anything. In fact, we fought tooth and nail to maintain the status quo (Veil). Hence, we were 'guard'ing the Veil, though we're never referred to as 'the Veilguard' ingame. If anyone was trying to change stuff it was the Evanuris or Solas or whoever. The Veilguard, specifically, were trying to stop change the whole time, from the very beginning with Varric. And we had very little choice in the matter.

AND THEN! To add insult to injury, the game shows you the briefest of cutscenes with every inciting incident from each of the previous games: Loghain retreating from Ostagar, Bertrand being driven mad by the red Lyrium idol, and the Breach that marked the Inquisitor. All of these things are surrounded by a shadowy group of people with gravelly voices who claim that they have been shaping all these events, and that they are responsible for all of it somehow. And now that the Elven gods are dead, you’ll be hearing from them. And you see the symbol for the Executors - a mysterious organisation of spies from ‘across the sea’ that don’t have much of a role in DA: Inquisition beyond some minor missions. You could easily miss them without trying.

So, great! Not only has the South of the continent been destroyed, none of what you did there mattered because the Illuminati were secretly behind everything the whole time. And you’ve left yet another game on a cliffhanger. This, being the culmination of at minimum twenty plus hours of game time and cutscenes during which you have to sit back and watch this trainwreck of a story unfold, unable to do anything about it because they took away player agency in a role playing game. The only decision you make is whether you participate, or not. And the game punishes you for not slogging through all of its content with character death and faction failure in the finale if you didnt get the right number of friendship points.

I think that in a kinder world where this game did not use the Dragon Age brand or setting, and simply did the whole ‘my first queer high fantasy rated T for Teen’ dance, I would probably forgive most of its trespasses and move on with my life, but that’s not what happened.

Veilguard took on the incredibly daunting task of living up to the Dragon Age name and the expectations that come with it, especially after the pitfalls of Inquisition. It wasn’t going to be easy - incorporating all the dense lore and beloved characters and hitting that grimdark yet hopeful tone of the setting while allowing for a breadth of decisions to have been made and to be made and to have a genuine impact on the story in a satisfying way.

It was unlikely they would hit the nail on the head but it wasn't impossible. And Dragon Age fans were rooting for it to come through, grasping at every whisper of Dread Wolf that never amounted to anything but title cards. And after Anthem bombed and Bioware scrapped Dragon Age: Dread Wolf, I kind of gave up hope. I think a lot of fans did. But then… a miracle! Trailers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard! And people accusing the game of ‘woke’.

For a moment, I actually believed. That our prayers to the Maker (Bioware) had been answered.

However, instead of fulfilling our wildest dreams, Veilguard dropped a cheap sanitized mockery of the franchise into our laps, sacrificing all the complexity, nuance and moral ambiguity of the Dragon Age we’ve come to know. All for an uninspired Marvel B-movie plot full of holes and inconsistencies, and worst of all, it took meaningful player choice out of the game in order to spoon-feed its watered down gruel to the masses, alienating a lot of loyal fans in order to pivot and appeal to an entirely different demographic while keeping the name Dragon Age for marketing purposes. In short - a study in enshittification.

So let’s go back to the beginning.

And the Maker said, “Let there be Character Creation.”

This is a fun opportunity to create a little person and inject them into the game as an avatar of your id - role play, as they say. Some of your choices are purely cosmetic since the Dragon Age setting doesn't really care about your gender or the colour of your skin (yay). This has been true since the first title released in 2009 - a time when the videogame scene was brewing gamergate and having more than one gender (voice actor) was a privilege not many developers could afford.

In contrast, Dragon Age: Origins had not only 2 genders, 3 classes and 6 playable origins, but same sex romance options and complex bi characters (of wildly varying quality). And the game was received quite well, with great reviews and much acclaim. It invited women and those in the queer community to peer into the cishet male-dominated world of AAA gaming and high fantasy with an opportunity to be represented. And no one vilified Bioware for ‘woke’. On the contrary, people flocked to see the dodgiest jankiest cringiest sex scene known to man starring their self insert.

So all the character customisation that the new game allows you to do, from top surgery scars, to bulge size and choice of pronouns, really shouldn’t matter to any of the old Dragon Age fans. This is just icing on a cake that lets you make your usual white human Gary Defaultman look however manly you wish, and all the companions will fall at his feet (which wasn't true in previous games).

But I digress.

While Dragon Age is unconcerned with gender and skin colour save what some writers might tell you on Twitter, DA is concerned about your Race and Class. To the point where non-human species such as elf, dwarf, and later - qunari, would have drastically different experiences based on the racial prejudices of the world. As they would in real life. For this reason, Backgrounds were locked to specific Races or Classes. And DA2 completely locked you into a Human hero due to time constraints in development. In Inquisition, we returned with the added opportunity to create Qunari (Kisoth) characters and the Inquisitor's race coloured the experience to some extent but not as much as Origins did:

You couldn’t be a Dwarf and a Mage for example because Dragon Age dwarves can't do magic. In fact, they are resistant to it. This is one facet of the lore that thankfully carries over to Veilguard, mostly to boost Harding’s ego and uniqueness but that little lock on the character creation screen seems foreboding for future titles.

However, the rest of the lore goes out the window as soon as you finish playing plastic surgeon.

You choose your Race, Class, and then your Background using the same time honoured formula, except in Veilguard, you can be pretty much any Race, Class and Background combo, which should be good, right? Inclusive and awesome?

Well, it would be if the associated Factions were the kind any person could join. Something like the Order of Grey Wardens who accept everyone regardless of race, class, etc. The Lords of Fortune Background also makes sense since they’re treasure hunting mercenary pirates, not super picky about their initiates. But the rest?

If you choose, for example, the Mourn Watch faction - an order of mages that fill a niche somewhere between Exorcist and Ghostbuster - but you don’t choose Mage as your Class, how did you join the Mourn Watch exactly? Buy a proton pack?

Nevermind the highly elite status of the Watchers in the Mortalitasi and their secret puppeteering of the Nevarran King. Did Vorgoth find you in a tomb and teach you how to juggle knives and play with swords for kicks? What do you do in the Grand Necropolis as a Warrior or a Rogue that's vulnerable to possession? Stand back and ‘watch’ while the real mages deal with the spirits of the dead? Or are you just sweeping the floors like one of the animated skeletons?

The Veilguard page on EA’s website describes the Mourn Watch as: ‘an elite necromantic order’, and they first appear in a short story called Down Among the Dead Men in an anthology called ‘Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights’.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Every mage in the kingdom of Nevarra was part of the Mortalitasi, a group that trained the gifted in the mysteries of magic. They served as Nevarra’s arcane protectors and priests. Within the Mortalitasi was a group of select mages invited into an old fraternity called the Mourn Watch. The Watchers served as elite guardians, keepers of the Grand Necropolis and its sacred repository of the dead.“

So, according to the story, the Mourn Watch are: a) only mages b) only Mortalitasi (death mage/necromancers from Nevarra)

So, Rook being a Warrior or a Rogue in the Mourn Watch doesn't really make sense. A Dwarf Rook wouldn’t even be able to perceive the Fade where spirits come from. It’s like a mage walking up to the Chantry and asking to join the Templars doing a mage hunt. It could be interesting, if the game did it on purpose to make a character unique, as Bioware has been known to do. Or it could be funny! A joke character which would also not be out of Bioware’s wheelhouse. (Never forget, Sandal)

But if you just blatantly ignore your own world building for no discernable reason right out of the gate, it’s clear you don’t take your own work seriously.

It’s so minor, but the game instantly breaks its own lore in character creation because the Mourn Watch are mages that deal with death magic, especially corpse possession. And here you are, running around trying to bonk spirits with a sword?

Why not use something else? Same anthology, different story. The Dread Wolf Take You by Patrick Weekes:

“There are others among the Mortalitasi who do other work—the Guides of the Path to shepherd the corpses, the Mourn Watch to deal with magic gone awry—”

I can’t get the image of a Mortalitasi Guide of the Path schlepping through the Necropolis with a bunch of corpses attached to their belt with magic leashes like a dog walker.

My point is, there are more groups of people moving through the Grand Necropolis than just Mourn Watchers, and since you’re, I don’t know, WRITING THE STORY, then create a Mourn Guard that’s all rogues/warriors with Templar/Seeker powers that can dispel magic and fight spirits and protect the Mourn Watch while they do rituals or something. Why not make Rook part of that? Why make this weird forced association with the Mourn Watch specifically when they’re so exclusive to mages?

And what about the Veil Jumpers? They were founded by a clan of Dalish elves trying to reclaim their lost heritage in Arlathan Forest where the capital of the elvenahn empire was obliterated by Tevinter mages and now they just admit anyone brave enough to jump into a death trap of malfunctioning magical artifacts?

Let's rewind back to Dragon Age Origins:

"You were born amidst the Dalish elves: noble wanderers who refused to join the society of humans that subjugated their homeland so long ago. The Dalish travel the lands in tightly-knit clans, struggling to maintain their half-forgotten lore in a human world that fears and despises them." - Duncan narrates the Dalish Elf Origin

Fast forward to "We've evacuated three Dalish settlements already."

Settlements??? The Dalish? Surely, I have misheard.

"Any Dalish settlements we can save, we should."

Hah? Nani?

And then Strife hits you with the greatest bit of dialogue ever written:

"If we could predict where they'd strike next, we might be able to get ahead of them. But so far, they've been unpredictable."

Genius. Chef's kiss. Where would we be without you Strife?

So, let me get this straight: The Dalish - the cagiest of elves, who distrust outsiders to a fault and barely tolerate traders, always moving about to avoid the wrath of human society - suddenly had a change of heart and thought it was okay to admit dwarves, qunari and humans into their clan? Humans - the people who destroyed the city of Arlathan which they are now picking apart?

From the Dalish perspective, why would anyone but elves care about ancient elven artifacts?

Reason a) to steal them and sell them off later

Reason b) to make use of their power for selfish purposes, likely the enslavement of elves (again)

The former leading to the latter in most cases, especially so close to Tevinter.

So why would they risk the security of their clan by admitting humans? And why would the Veil Jumpers have Morrigan on speed dial? To the point that we see her immediately as soon as Rook shows up at the Veil Jumper camp?

I get it, you wanted to bring back an old fan fave. But as far as we know, Strife only met Harding and Varric when they came to Arlathan forest in 'The Missing'. So, how does Strife know Morrigan? And the rest of Clan Morlyn are just chill with bringing in all these outsiders? It's super out of character and I think the developers know this because if you walk through the Veil Jumper camp, it’s all elves and aravel. This is a roving Dalish clan.

The environment tells the story and Arlathan Forest tells us this place belongs to the elves, both ancient and otherwise. Maybe half-elves at a stretch? But creating a Dwarf Veil Jumper Rook makes no sense because dwarves can't cross the Veil into the Fade and the game admits it! When you step outside the Lighthouse and talk to Harding you get this dialogue:

Harding: Rook. You're awake! And we're... Rook: In the Fade. Harding: This is where people come when they dream. But dwarves don't dream... And somehow we're here! Rook: Yeah, it's... unreal.

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER OF IT ALL

And then you have a 'meeting' and Harding hits you with a-

Harding: "Except that dwarves don't dream, remember? We can't. The Fade is the world of dreams, and we're not connected to it."

Cool. I'm glad we all agree that this is fucking broken and doesn't make sense. Are you going to explain it? No?

Moving on then.

Half of Arlathan forest is weird portals through the Veil connected to the Fade. That's why they're called Veil Jumpers, they jump through the Veil, into the Fade, and back. This is something dwarves are cannonically unable to do. Even Harding in the beginning. So why is Dwarf Veil Jumper Rook even an option? Why would dwarves even need any of the magical elven artifacts?

Don't get me started on a Qunari walking through a Dalish camp full of mages and seeing someone like Bellara just accidentally exploding things. Those mages would be in chains with their lips sewn shut before you could say 'saarebas'. It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny and the game doesn't make any effort to explain it other than "We accept everybody!" (yay?)

Conversely, the Antivan Crows would not accept a mage into their ranks for the simple reason that they're super Andrastian (Catholic). The Crows were originally an arm of the Chantry/Church - a bunch of monks that were very good with herbs, read: poisons. They lived in the hills of Treviso and (woopsie!) poisoned the despotic duke nearby, starting a dynasty of infamous assassins, thieves and spies. The Antivan Crows are a criminal organisation with high-ranking members among the richest people in Antiva, even royals, with dubious morals akin to the Godfather version of the Italian mob. But the game white-washes the Crows into underground resistance heroes instead.

Let's do a small fantasy reality check here. The Crows base of operations - the Cantori Diamond - is a casino they own. The Crows have more in common with Trump than antifa but we're supposed to think they're Batmen? Sorry. "Shadowy protectors". Notice how the thieves and spies occupation has been removed from the job description. Evidently, someone's been playing too much Assassin's Creed (or saw the popularity of it and decided to cash in).

Similarly, the game glosses over how a lot of lower level Crows are elves because humans find them more attractive and therefore more easy to fall for and get assassinated by. Or that the Crows will buy children from whorehouses with too many unwanted pregnancies. These children are kept and raised in Amazon warehouses cramped quarters, subsist on 'Crow feed', are subjected to harsh training including torture and are killed if they make any mistake, mostly to keep the rest in line.

We know this through a former companion - Zevran Arainai - and his adventures in the Dragon Age universe. But Veilguard turns around and shows us some kid named Jacobus that mouths off to the Fifth and Seventh Talon and the Governor and is somehow elevated to the status of full Crow and given his own House??? All because his cousin died on a job (that Rook finished).

Ummm. Cool? Equality in the workplace, I guess? Ignore the child labour or the fact that you work for the mob. And let's not think too hard about how the rest of the Crows would react to this upstart child (by sending him flying from the casino and into the canal with a blade in his heart), prodigy or no.

Cool. Cool cool cool. Let's not think about what this actually means. Instead, show us the beautiful villa where Lucanis and Illario grew up. It has its own Opera House! Wow, you say, as Veilguard continuously shouts in your ear: "Assassins are cool! The Crows are a Family! It's the elected government officials and the occupying army of invaders that are bad."

Of course, older fans will be aware of the difference between a First Talon's grandson and a whoreson the Crows bought for cheap in the red light district on the Rialto Bay. But new players will be blissfully unaware of all the child trafficking our 'shadowy protectors' get up to. Since that would be very squicky to everyone who wants to romance Lucanis - Prince of the Assassins (and thieves, spies, poisoners and child soldier trainers).

However, this doesn't remove the Circle of Magi from Antiva. What is a Circle of Magi, you ask? It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the glossary or the codex? Interesting. Since a whole war got fought about it in Inquisition. You know, the Mages vs the Templars? That old chestnut. Well, The Circle of Magi is where mages typically go to train in magic when their powers manifest. This is for safety as well as prudence because you could accidentally turn into a little demon if you're not careful. So there are these big tough people called Templars that watch you all the time to make sure you're not doing anything bad with your magic. But if you do, they can do this neat thing called the Right of Annulment where they kill every mage in the Circle to minimise risk :)

And who's in charge of the Templars? Why the Chantry, of course. You know, the Dragon Age Church? Hm? That's not- Oh, there is an entry on the Chantry in the codex - The Imperial Chantry! Oh, it's just a note from Brother Gentivi griping about the schism between the Chantry in Tevinter and everywhere else. Interesting. Oh, there's an entry on the Maker and Andraste. Huh... These seem kind of irrelevant to the game. I wonder why-

*never interacts with the Chantry*

Ah. I see. I suppose that would require the game to tackle squicky topics such as religious institutions and the corruption within.

An important factor, if you choose the Mage class with the Crow Background. Not that the game would ever tell you this. Employing an apostate (mage outside the Church's oversight) would attract the attention of the Templars and the entire Orlesian Chantry. Regardless of their faith in the teachings of Andraste, if the Crows were harbouring apostate mages and training them to be assassins, the Divine would call an Exalted March (murder crusade) upon Treviso. They've already done this once to fight the Qunari and wouldn't you know it? The 'Butcher' is occupying Treviso right now. How convenient.

The fact that Lucanis gets possessed by a Demon despite not being a mage is an anomaly. And the fact that he maintains his human appearance instead of transforming into an Capital-A Abomination is incredible but not unheard of. We see Anders from DA2 retain his human form, albeit with some cracks, when possessed by a 'spirit' of Justice so... okay, sure. A Venatori blood mage slapped Spite onto Lucanis and he somehow maintains his own body, mind and has room for a very agreeable demon. Unlike this actual Abomination from DA:Origins.

But Veilguard acts like it’s all very cool and not a hindrance to Lucanis' daily life. He just walks around having coffee and whipping his wings out to tackle the first baddie you see. He’s broody and reclusive because that’s his personality (not because he would be pursued by Templars through the streets of Treviso just for existing). And the other Crow families (an already slapdash charicature of Italian mafiosos) just accept the Demon of Vyrantium as the First Talon? An abomination? All because he’s murder-grandma’s favourite?

Who are these people? Because they don’t sound like Antivan Crows to me.

And Illario casually mentions that they have a mage on staff? In the first Treviso mission where you go to the Ossuary in a little boat? There’s a mage in a cute little Crow outfit? You have an apostate on call? Out in the open???

This doesn't make sense in the context of the game either because then we hear an NPC give us this exposition in ambient dialogue:

Scholar: "The Butcher seems more reasonable than most Antaam, but he still doesn't want any mages in the city."

So either the Crows are harbouring displaced mages that are being persecuted by the Antaam, which would be a very cool and interesting development due to the occupation of Treviso, or, more likely, the Veilguard writers just don’t give a shit.

Similarly, a Crow Rook openly using magic in Treviso is totally handwaved by the game as something normal and okay when they should be getting dogpiled by Templars and Antaam. You’re an apostate! Saarebas! The Chantry is going to make you Tranquil if you don’t run, hide or repent! The Arvaraas is gonna put a magic shock collar on you and drag you around in chains if the Antaam don't kill you first.

As for the Shadow Dragons, I don’t see how a Qunari in Tevinter would not immediately stand out as a Ben-Hassrath agent saboteur and compromise the organisation. You hear as soon as you get to Treviso:

Teia: "The Antaam reached a stalemate in their war with Tevinter. Some have turned here instead. Antiva was rich, comfortable... and has no standing army to stop them."

Meanwhile, the Shadow Dragons are supposed to be a covert abolitionist group in the most racist country in Thedas - Tevinter - living on a knife’s edge between blood magic and slavery. There would be humans, sure. Maybe an elf can pretend to be a slave to get around? Maybe a dwarf could be Ambassadoria or something? But a Qunari? Even a Vashoth. In Minrathous??? The city the Qunari are still at war with?

"The outskirts of Minrathous are awash in a sea of refugees turned destitute by the never-ending war between the Imperium and the Qunari." —From In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar, by Brother Genitivi

Storytime!

Myrion of Ventus didn’t know much about Qunari. Until last week, they had been an annoyance, something young soldiers went off to fight while everyone else grumbled about the taxes they paid to defend the Imperium from the savage ox-men. That ignorance had ended in a blast of cannon fire, and in less than a day, Ventus, jewel of the Tevinter Imperium, had fallen. The Qunari had cut down anyone wearing armor. Those who were unarmed, they had herded into different groups. The women, children, and elderly had quickly returned to their homes. The mages had screamed horribly as alchemical concoctions killed their minds and left them as empty husks who stumbled along, sweeping dirt from the streets with awful vacant stares, their beautiful gold-trimmed robes dragging in the dirt behind them. The men, however, had been put into work camps. - "Three Trees to Midnight" by Patrick Weekes, from the anthology Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights

But yeah, sure. Qunari Shadow Dragon. Won't be murdered on sight upon approaching the gates to Minrathous. No, sir...

The game doesn’t react to these wild choices. You’re just Some Guy Rook, blissfully unaware of the lore you’re breaking because the game doesn’t care about it either. It doesn’t punish you or make you confront your decisions despite letting you take these big swings. It just makes you recite all the same lines as though it's all a-okay.

I would love to see a Qunari Shadow Dragon narrative or to find out how an apostate mage became a Crow. These sound like cool characters that have a lot of complexity and story to them but unfortunately, Veilguard does world building like a tradie filling a sandbox in the playground - by dumping an entire truck of sand on it.

They let it bury the existing lore so you don’t have to think about the sticky consequences of your decisions or the less than perfect world you live in by digging too deeply into the past or seeing the structure it's built on.

All of this could have been avoided with just a little care. Just impose limits on what Class/Race can join which faction. I know you can do it because the game won’t let you be a dwarven mage. And I know it’s racist. That’s the point. If you want to be inclusive of all races, you can’t just erase the discrimination a race experiences because it makes you feel uncomfortable. And if the lockout is too limiting, then maybe create some new factions that everyone can join instead of using the names of existing organisations within the Dragon Age universe for token fan service without enforcing any substance to the concept or history of them.

I know why they didn’t do any of this and just wrote a bunch of world-breaking hooey for the Backgrounds. It’s because it doesn’t actually matter! The little blurbs about your Faction and Backstory don’t impact any decision in the game at all. They don’t stop you or help you in any way past the starting equipment/abilities. You don't know the companion that comes from the same faction as yours, so you're basically strangers. The extra dialogue options don’t let you do anything unique or exclusive to the Background. So, of course, they’re a pile of nonsense. And players new to DA won’t know that anything is amiss at all, which makes it glaringly obvious who this game is actually intended for.

But hey, we gotta make all that dense lore accessible, right?

*eye twitch*

So, you pick a Backstory for your Main Character: "Rook". Even though both Solas and Iron Bull refer to it as 'the Tower' when they're playing chess in Inquisition. >_> (I'm not salty, you're salty.)

I chose Shadow Dragon Elf Rook for the ex-slave liberati spice (prepare for an extended rant upon elvenkind)

You would think that by choosing a backstory linked to a specific place, that you would know something about that place? Right?

Well yes, but actually no.

Cue the opening cutscene of Veilguard.

Seedy Bar with Varric -> Dumat Plaza.

Varric: “Can you get us there, Harding?” Harding: “Rook, you’re with the Shadow Dragons. I figured you’d know Minrathous better than I do.” 👆 Piddly Shadow Dragon Rook: “Sure, but Minrathous is huge, and this is nowhere near my neighborhood. I can try…” 🥺 👉👈

Really? That’s the best you could come up with?

Just for shits and giggles, I tried another Background and got this exchange instead:

Varric: “Can you get us there, Harding?” Harding: “Not a problem. I saw Dumat Plaza while I was scouting the area… It was crawling with Venatori. Follow me.”

So. This plaza that’s named after an Old God, that’s so obvious Harding spotted it on her first trip to Minrathous… Shadow Dragon Rook doesn’t know how to get there??? Even if they grew up in Minrathous working for a resistance group using miles of underground catacombs to smuggle people to safety? You even do missions in them later because Darkspawn start popping out.

Okay, sure. Other Rooks won’t know where to go. The writers thought up a throwaway line to acknowledge it and make Harding take point since the player won't know Dumat Plaza either. You don't want to make an exclusive mission and assets for 2 minutes of gameplay. I get it. I just kind of shrugged at this since it’s the opening scene. But it happened so immediately that it really felt like a slap to the face.

Like, why did I choose this Background if it can’t be useful in the moment? At least say 'the demons blocked all the paths I know' or 'there goes that bridge lol' as it blows up or something cool and substantial instead of this blatant cop out that backs away from your own identity.

"Whatever", I thought. This is just the beginning of the game.

Boy, was I right.

Since I chose the Shadow Dragon Background, I was sure that I would have a rich connection to this organisation that frees slaves and battles blood mages. But no. Apparently, I've been completely cut off since I left the city. And have to be led to the contact by… my new colleague, Neve Gallus. Who I've never heard of before?

This is the dialogue when you first meet:

Varric: "Rook this is Neve Gallus, our local expert."

And what am I, chopped liver?

Varric: "She's gonna help us find Solas. Neve, meet Rook. Both of you have done some work for the Shadow Dragons." Neve: "Isn't that a coincidence?"

I GUESS IT MUST BE, NEVE! For all the good that it does.

This is what you get when you talk to her in the Lighthouse as a Shadow Dragon:

Neve: Strange place we've fallen into. But I'll work with it. You know me. Rook: “Do I?” 👆 Neve: "We're both Shadow Dragons, and both from Minrathous. Maybe our paths haven't crossed, but I know our work has. It's a start."

Cool, I'm so glad I get a whole special line of dialogue to parrot our stupid motto. Seriously? Shadow Dragons? What happened to Lucerni? I know, I know, they were disbanded. But at least give me Umbra Dracones or something cool. -sigh-

So Neve takes me to Minrathous and this is the special exclusive dialogue you get for Shadow Dragon Rook:

Neve: "Minrathous. The Heart of Tevinter. Somehow the beat of it always pulls me back..." Rook: "It's just how I left it." Neve: "It always is." Rook: "Do the Shadow Dragons know we're here?" Tarquin: "Neve Gallus. You only turn up when you want news. Or you've got some." Neve: "Tarquin!" Tarquin: "And it's "Rook" now, I hear. Rook: "Tarquin." Tarquin: "I thought you'd be gone for good." Neve: "How are things?" Tarquin: "Same old Minrathous. Mages not letting us poor ungifted wretches forget where we stand."

And then the Viper appears and you get the same dialogue about the relic as everyone else except there's a shiny badge on the side of the screen reminding you that you clicked a button a few hours ago.

Then they hit you with the:

Tarquin: "And welcome home, Rook. Try not to get yourself run out of the city again."

Wow. Okay. Maybe this is just the beginning. I’m sure there are exclusive missions for Rook to do since they helped save all those slaves and pissed off all those nasty Venatori blood mages in their backstory! I’m a recognisable face that had to flee the city! I’m sure there are some NPCs or rivals in Minrathous specifically for Shadow Dragon Rook to talk to.

Maybe some templars will try to arrest me? Maybe there are whispers in the streets that I’ve returned? Maybe you have to wear a disguise to sneak into certain places? Perhaps one of the freed slaves recognises Rook and shows their gratitude, or sells you out to a magister?

Anything cool like that?

…

*crickets*

My background might as well be Some Guy.

Move aside Main Character, because every mission in Minrathous is about your cool new companion, Neve Gallus - an Icy Tevinter Mage solving crimes in Dock Town.

Sounds rad, right?

She’s a hardboiled magic detective, but also a stylish lady with a cool prosthetic leg that's shaped like a metal snake! And she has a fancy cigarette holder pipe (that we never see again)? And a cool ass magic rod? A geometric shape for a hat? With a veil? What a concept!

Imagine, taking a case that goes from the gritty streets of Dock Town, all the way up to the top. To the Archon's Palace floating above the city where the magisters concoct their evil schemes and shoot their magic laser beams at demons.

Surely, the finale of Neve’s arc with the Shadow Dragons will see us ascend to the glorious decadent capital of the Tevinter Imperium, to free indentured slaves who will rise up against their masters and help us slay some corrupt Venatori Magisters?! Maybe even the Archon himself!

…

No?

Really?

We get to choose the next Archon (magic emperor/king of Tevinter) in our seedy little hideout but not install them?

We don’t get to fight anybody or even go up there?

And why?

Because the Big Bad needs to take over the Archon’s palace in the final battle.

But- wouldn’t it- make sense for us to weaken the Archon and magisters so that Elger’nan can easily swoop in and take the palace like that?

Huh? That only happens if you let the Minrathous get destroyed and the Venatori take over the Archon's Palace.

But what if Treviso got destroyed and the Venatori never took over?

You still can't go up there?

Hmmmm. Feels like a super missed opportunity but guess what? It won’t be the last!

Turns out, with the exception of the opening sequence and the final battle which are heavily railroaded by cutscenes, you never leave Dock Town when you visit Minrathous. Instead of an imposing and extravagant Imperial city held together with magic, you get to run around a boring wet fleabottom of an area that’s not very big and reminds me of DA2's Kirkwall but wet. WHICH IS IRONIC because Kirkwall was the Imperium's slave capital in the south when it was a quarry. So the environment artists are on point. BUt the writers??

The game makes you return to Dock Town over and over, taking the same route through the same dank city streets, And every time, the bad guys are the Venatori, even if the Thread Crime Syndicate is involved, it's actually the Venatori behind everything!

You see, in Veilguard, Venatori is code for white 'mage supremacist cult'. They have a red/black colour scheme because of all the evil blood magic they do, not because they’re Republicans. And they all wear hoods to cover up their identities like the KKK so they’re literally faceless fascists when we mow them down. And we don’t interrogate any of that too much so we don’t feel bad about slaying them by the dozen. And I mean, 9 to 5 reaper duty on these people. I must have culled half the city and they still show up as a massive army at the end.

But we don't interact with any Venatori outside combat situations which means we don't get to talk to them or interrogate them. We only hear them scheming and quibbling and genuinely behaving like henchmen in an evil organisation. We don't see them as nuanced individuals or their day-to-day lives or why they might actually do blood magic and slavery in their hometown. Heck, we don’t even see the social stratification of Tevinter mages at all. Where’s the hierarchy within the hierarchy? Where is the Altus/Laetans/Praeteri divide? In a single codex entry from Brother Genitivi copypasted from Origins, I swear.

To the point that I still don’t know what Neve is supposed to be. I suspect she's Praeteri because according to her flavour text she was: “Born and raised in a working-class neighborhood of Minrathous.”

What does that mean in a city where there’s a servant class as well as a working class? Did Neve’s family have servants or even slaves? We don’t know and we don’t interrogate it. We just see her run around Dock Town in her fancy magic outfit (gorgeous btw) which makes her stand out of the crowd but she doesn’t connect with anyone except a guy named Halos who owns a food stall, and a Templar called Rana Savas - a cop whose dead husband is also a cop.

Way to be an ally, I guess. We ticked the activism box, gang! Chalk one up for ‘woke’ on the board. We can’t say 'fuck the police' or ACAB but at least our upper class private investigator is standing up for the little guy. Who, specifically? Halos the fish-fry who keeps trying to give Neve a grilled fish on stick (with all the scales and bones on it) on the house! But she always pays for it because she's so woke.

Sure, let's support small business owners, I guess. But how are you pandering to the ‘working class’ if Neve’s a mage?? That automatically puts her in the upper class of Tevinter, albeit the lowest rung if she comes from a non-magic family. Still! All vints secretly hope for a magical child in the family so they can magically pull themselves up by their bootstraps and into the upper crust. It’s a magocracy. There’s no other way up there.

A Praeteri magus is miles above any Soporati and lightyears above any slave in the Tevinter social strata. Neve’s family would have been thrilled! If the writers had bothered to give her a family, that is.

And wouldn’t Neve be sent to the Imperial Circle of Magi for training as soon as her magic was discovered? Like- If you know even a crumb of lore, the whole ‘raised in a working-class neighbourhood’ line comes off as bogus virtue signaling because Neve would have gone to a selective private school for the genetically gifted before even hitting puberty.

There’s like one NPC in Minrathous you hear talking about coming down to Dock Town because he doesn’t fit in at magic school with all the snooty upper class mages. I wanna hear more from him! I wanna interact with these Praeteri more! Ask them questions! Beat up their bullies at magic university! But it’s just some ambient dialogue as you get in an elevator.

Mage: "How has the Minrathous Circle been? Getting used to the schedule? The lectures?" Circle Scholar: "It... It's fine. There's just quite a few highbloods and... well. I guess it's why I come down here when I have the time. It feels like I actually belong here."

-LATER-

Circle Scholar: "So I'm supposed to accept that they're better because of an accident of birth?" Mage: "That's just how the world works."

-EVEN LATER- Mage: "My family isn't Altus either. You can find success in Minrathous, even if you're not from one of the old families. Sometimes all you need to do is just act like you're a highblood. People tend not to question it." Circle Scholar: "But I shouldn't have to act like something I'm not just to get ahead."

Why don't we get this opinion from Neve?

We know the reason, of course - that would be problematic for the audience and force people to confront their privilege. Even if they support the lower class, they’ll never be of the lower class, so instead they get to live vicariously through Neve who selflessly devotes her entire life to the less fortunate of Dock Town. The game never elaborates on why, or her inciting incident, or her raison d’etre other than ‘this is my town!’ like a true hard-boiled detective.

We see only two other Tevinter mages with 10+ lines of dialogue who are conveniently - the good ones. And that's ONLY if you choose to save Minrathous.

Dorian Pavus - former DA: Inquisition companion and necromancer who managed to travel through time in very sexy gay way. He returns to Minrathous to take his father’s place as Magister Pavus when the crotchety old homophobe dies. We don't get word on whether he frees his Altus family's slaves though.

Then there’s Maevaris Tilani, a trans woman written very carefully so that she doesn’t tip off the cishets about her transness. She tells Rook a story about how her father presented her to the Magisterium as his heir when she turned 15, but focuses on the ‘woman' part. The Magisters all disapproved! Which paints them with a believable sexist brush, instead of a transphobic one to the average gamerbro. I didn't realise this until I spoke to some friends that only played the videogames, and they completely missed it. And when I mentioned Tarquin was also trans? Blank stares and dialup noises in the brain.

But this is all the mages we see up close in Minrathous because why would you want to listen to nasty racist sexist transphobic fascist wizards explain why they are like that? That would require empathy. Ew.

So 99% of mages in Minrathous are enemy NPCs which means we hear the same sound bites from the same cardboard cutout evil wizards bent on 'reclaiming their legacy' and 'feeling empowered'. They're all mad and power-hungry and infiltrating the government all the time. We even catch one of the evil wizards’ kids buying illegal lyrium relics (read: drugs) and getting arrested. But then the cops/templars turn out to be dirty, so the kid's dad shows up and he gets released immediately. It reads like a hamfisted metaphor for US politicians/elites at best, and a pizzagate conspiracy at worst.

The culmination of Neve’s big storyline in Dock Town is a fight with a blood mage called Aelia but we don’t hear about her until halfway through the game. Apparently she’s someone Neve put away a long time ago for blood magic reasons. Turns out Aelia fell for the Big Bad’s promise of power and used the forbidden yucky blood magic again and isn’t sorry about it! >:(

I guess we have to - get her!

The fight concludes with a beaten Aelia getting manhandled. You don’t even get the option to kill her yourself for all the evil bloodletting that she does. Instead, Neve must choose, I’m sorry no, that’s incorrect. YOU must choose FOR Neve to become either the Protector of Dock Town or a Symbol of Hope. And since the game doesn't let you choose anything else, you just give custody of this evil bitch to someone outside the party.

Whatever you pick, the cutscene ends with Aelia getting dragged away by Evek the Thread or Rana the Templar. The mob or the cops.

PROTECTOR OF DOCK TOWN

Rook: "This ends here. Send a message." Neve: “Dock Town needs protection.” Aelia: "When this is over, I will bring it to them." Neve: "You won't! But I will."

- Aelia gets her ass handed to her -

Aelia: "I would raise us all. You-" Neve: “Enough. Dock Town’s under my protection. Elek.” - Aelia tries to stab Neve the good old fashioned way but gets intercepted by Elek the regular dude with no power -

Aelia: “Is this where you finish it?” Neve: “Rumour has it the Threads protect their streets.” - turns and walks away as a bunch of mobsters with lead pipes approach Aelia - -VS- SYMBOL OF HOPE

Rook: "Dock Town has you. And they see it." Neve: "They just want hope. A chance..." Aelia: "When this is over, I will bring it to them." Neve: "You won't! But I'll give it a shot." - Aelia gets her ass handed to her -

Aelia: "I would raise us all. You-" Neve: "I'll do what I can. Rana. Take Aelia. Make sure Dock Town sees it happen."

- Aelia tries to stab Neve the good old fashioned way but gets intercepted by Rana the Templar without magic -

Aelia: "You tried to stop me before!" Neve: "And if you escape, I'll find you again! And every time I do, Minrathous will see someone standing against people like you."

- Neve walks off and Rana arrests Aelia -

Because letting a crime boss drag someone into the shadows to be 'dealt' with, or handing them over to a corrupt police organisation, are clearly the only two options in this 'holy cow! it's the joker, batman' scenario. You can't kill Aelia yourself for all the murder and blood magic and kidnapping and colluding with the evil Gods that she does. You can't choose to rehabilitate her by sending her to a facility outside Tevinter such as a Circle of Magi (they'd probably turn her Tranquil but whatevs). You can't squeeze her to sell out the Elven Gods plans or anything.

It's a nothingburger decision that potentially puts a dangerous cultist back on the street in a few years ala the Joker and Bats. And if you chose Treviso over Minrathous, you don't even get the choice! You automatically side with Elek the Thread and Neve becomes Protector of Dock Town.

Player choice? In this role playing game? It's less likely than you think.

Either way, Neve gets a little boost to her powers and becomes a Hero of the Veilguard (this means she probably won’t die in the endgame). And if you chose Minrathous over Treviso, you get to choose a new Archon of Tevinter - Dorian or Maevaris, even if you aren't a Shadow Dragon. Neve will tell you her opinion based on whether she became a Protector of Dock Town (Dorian proposes radical change) or a Symbol of Hope (Maevaris proposes changing the system from the inside). But if you picked one, chances are, you were already gonna pick the associated one anyway.

Neve doesn’t leave the party if you choose the opposite to her pick. And the Shadow Dragons make absolute sure to tell you that they'll be behind you either way so you don't lose their support. There are absolutely no stakes to this and all you get in the end is a one sentence title card in the credits about Minrathous and the leader you picked.

If you chose Treviso over Minrathous, then you automatically get Protector of Dock Town and Dorian. No epilogue or anything. You don't even know it's an option.

But you can only see the true result of your actions if you chose Minrathous over Treviso:

Protector of Dock Town - Elek the Thread gives Neve the title and control of the Thread Crime Syndicate in a cutscene. She becomes a mob boss and brings the organisation into the fold of the Shadow Dragons by introducing Elek to the Viper at the Cobbled Swan and tells Elek: "If I'm not here: he asks, you answer."

Symbol of Hope - Rana Savas quits being a templar (cop) and starts a detective agency with Neve. She is introduced to the Viper at the Cobbled Swan. Neve gets a couple of leads on Venatori plans but they're not missions for you to do, and they have nothing to do with the Elven Gods. (you find a letter from Aelia in the Gaspin Manor in the Hossberg wetlands) However, Neve is painted to be a Hero and this is considered the good ending. Again, we can't say ACAB because there's one good cop that quit :/

None of this affects the final battle or anything but party banter.

And what does Rook get for all this wanton murder?

You guessed it!

*tumbleweed*

Nothing :)

Fine. You didn't have time to write a bunch of bespoke shit for Rook. I get it. Gamedev crunch is bitch. But hey, uh... where are the slaves?

Hm?

You would think, since Shadow Dragon Rook helped rescue all those slaves in their backstory and keeps broken chains in their bedroom as a macabre reminder, we would see some slaves or ex-slaves in Minrathous, right? Liberati, maybe? I mean, this is such a big problem for the city that an organization like the Shadow Dragons has to exist in secret for fear of reprisals. You would think that you would interact with people that are currently enslaved, right?

Unfortunately, that would be problematic so what happens is... we don’t interact with any actual slaves in Tevinter.

At least I didn’t in my eighty something hours of gameplay.

The closest you get is a mission where some Dock Hands get captured and put in cages and then you find some pieces of paper that say the Venatori are going to sacrifice them for a big ritual. So, they're trafficking people to kill them. But they're not technically slaves.

The only actual Venatori Slave I found was in the Grand Necropolis in Nevarra! And we have to immediately backpedal to say there are no slaves in Nevarra so you're not technically a slave!

Venatori Slave: They said... they said I'd spilled the wine too many time. That I'd be a better sacrifice than a slave.

Emmirch: You are in Nevarra, sir. There are no slave on our soil.

Didn't realise you felt so strongly about slaves, Emmrich. Considering what you do to the dead :x

But Minrathous is supposedly the capital of the Tevinter Imperium, the slaver capital of the world of Thedas. The only country where this practice is not only legal but government approved. The government buys slaves for public infrastructure - Servus Publicus. In Dragon Age 2, your companion Fenris says that the Minrathous Slave Bazaar is a street ten miles long. So they should have slaves there, right? In the shops? On the streets? Waiting on nobles? Carrying stuff? They would supposedly come in via ships through the docks in DOCK Town? RIGHT?

So... where are they? Because I sure as Hell didn't see any on my fiftieth mandatory loop of Dock Town. Just a bunch of beggars and peasants and criminals ala every medieval fantasy RPG town. So either, the Shadow Dragons are doing their job a little too well or the gamedevs have decided to sanitize the whole thing so you don't have to deal with anything as problematic and upsetting as the visual representation of slavery.

*checks ESRB rating for Veilguard*

MATURE 17+ Blood, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

Okay, so… “What’s shapin'?” as Rook would say.

Slavery’s been one of the biggest socio-political issues in Thedas since the beginning. It's incredibly important to the plot of the game since the Big Bad - Solas - is an ‘elf’ that caused the downfall of his people, allowing them be enslaved by the Tevinter mages for over a millenia. I mean, your companion in DA2 was experimented on by a Tevinter mage and slaver and you met him in person! Danarius went to Kirkwall to collect his ‘property’ referring to a person! The Gallows in Kirkwall were built to intimidate slaves fresh off the boat. And you’re telling me, that in the capital of Tevinter, you can’t see any slaves? You can't interact with any of them? And the closest you get to slavers is Venatori brandishing glowing red hooks?

And WHERE is all the blood for these hooks coming from, pray tell?

The game constantly forces you to destroy these 5 foot floating red crystals that power magic walls and protect evil wizards but it doesn’t elaborate on how they’re made. We're told the Venatori do blood magic i.e. casting spells using blood instead of a Chantry approved rock called Lyrium. There's mention OF Red Lyrium - Lyrium's evil blighted cousin that makes you go crazy, paranoid and homicidal. However, the Venatori just look like regular clansmen. I mean, they’re homicidal, but only because I broke into their secret hideout during a clan meeting. We arrested that one guy trying to smuggle Lyrium relics into the city.

So, did the Venatori blood mages donate the blood for all the crystals in Minrathous themselves? Was it locally sourced? Organic? Free range blood? Fully consented to donating? Hmmm?

The closest we get to an explanation is one mission where a woman's husband, Atticus, goes missing. You follow the trail to a mage called Linus whose son is sick (boohoo), so he decides to do this:

WooooOOooo. Blood magic bad and scary. Everyone died. It was a Demon of Desperation's fault. Not the mage that did this, no. We have to be sympathetic to this piece of shit apparently. The game doesn't explain how this was supposed to help his son or what happened to Linus. And Atticus wasn't a slave, just some guy that walked into the wrong bar that may or may not be trafficking people.

I guess it’s technically not slavery if you kidnap a person and kill them afterwards. That’s just plain old murder. Much easier to think about killing people like Aelia in retaliation for murder instead of thinking about the hows and whys of blood magic for two seconds. Because blood magic problematic and nasty, YUCK!

Just to rub it in, Neve and Emmrich - two of the Veilguard party's mages, will talk to each other about Never Ever Never doing a blood magic because it's bad and evil. Even though one of these characters is a straight up Necromancer Death Mage and Fade Expert while the other comes from a city of blood mages.

Neve: "So. Necromancy's your calling." Emmrich: "Like most Nevarran mages. I hope it's not a concern." Neve: "We'll find out." Emmrich: "Your own practice - your work must find you in dangerous corners. Your experience with blood magic... Neve: "You want to know if I've tried it myself." Emmrich: "Well, in so many words..." Neve: "Never have. Never would."

Okay. Cool. Glad that no one in the party has blood magic cooties.

The game doesn't elaborate as to why blood magic bad. We're shown a bunch of dead bodies and left to make our own assumptions. But it doesn't tell you that can use blood magic to do a bunch of stuff, including regular magic, just using your own blood as a spell component.

So let's get into it since Veilguard flip flops around it like a fish.

Reasons why blood magic is bad:

a) you can use it to control blood, literally. mess with people’s thoughts and free will, walk their dreams and send them to the Fade. (you can do this with Lyrium too because it's also blood)

b) it attracts demons from the Fade. They hone in on mages, possess their bodies and transform them into abominations.

With Reason B, a mage is tempted by the demon to submit in exchange for power, sometimes verbally, sometimes they see tempting illusions over the warped world of the Fade which will keep you happy and dreaming forever if it can. The demons talk in your head and even take control of your body while this happens.

BUT mages don't even have to do blood magic for this to happen. A side effect of being a mage in this world is that you are a target for demons and spirits in the Fade whether you use blood magic or not. You could enter the Fade in a dream and encounter a demon and if you're not prepared/strong enough, it will trap you there and possess your body. That’s why mages get locked in towers and supervised by Templars for the rest of their days. Why the Qunari chain their mages and sew up their mouths and cut off their tongues! Because demons could invade your body at any time if you show even a slither of weakness (or so they say)

There’s also the Chantry - the Dragon Age Catholic Church with its own Vatican in Orlais (France). They think blood magic is heresy and sin and bad. They think if you leave a mage alone they will inevitably be tempted into blood magic, so all mages need to be locked up in towers and supervised by armed guards that take super Lyrium (cocaine) to disable your spells JUST IN CASE. This Circle of Magi is where you put all the mages. They also make a Phylactery with the mages' blood in case they run away so the Templars can track you. (Blood magic is okay if you’re with the Chantry ;)

As well, the Chantry/Circle controls the Lyrium that mages get, and consequently, they control all the big spells they can cast. But you can’t control mages if they’re just using their own blood for magic, can you? Then we wouldn’t need Circles of Magi! And what about the Lyrium trade with the dwarves? How would they live without all the gold they currently make? Won’t somebody please think of the economy?!

The topic of magic is a complex one in Thedas. But do your companions discuss it in Veilguard?

No.

Does Veilguard bring it up in even a vague way?

No.

Even though the whole Mage vs Templar war was a big part of Inquisition. In Veilguard, you don't hear about the Chantry. You don't hear about the Circle of Magi. You don't hear about the Templars (except the toothless Tevinter templars who allow ethically sourced blood magic as long as its from a donor).

So all the decisions you made in Inquisition? That's right. They mean nothing!

The only choice you make in Veilguard is whether the Inquisitor disbanded the Inquisition or gave full control of it to Divine Victoria. The game doesn't reference who became Divine Victoria so that decision doesn't matter either!

Instead of a multifaceted discussion on the ethics of magic, it's white washed into 'all magic is good, Actually. Except blood magic. Peeeyeeew.' We're told even Necromancy can be Good. Just look at Emmrich Volkarin! He's such a gentlman. He has a little skeleton butler. And the Rivaini Seers let themselves be possessed by spirits because they're sooo progressive.

Meanwhile, all blood magic is taboo. In the city of blood mages and slavers built on blood magic and slavery. All we see is aesthetically pleasing red crystals dotted about Dock Town. We hear people disappear sometimes and sacrifices happen. But what are the rituals for? What do they actually do? Because Aelia set up an evil IV drip with all those people she kidnapped for some reason and the closest we get to an explanation is when Neve looks up some magic CCTV footage.

Aelia: "The risen God will unlock my true power. He's given me Vena Vitalis. We start there." Rook: "What's Vena Vitalis?" Neve: "A rumour. An Old Tevinter ritual used to increase blood magic."

Cool. A blood magic ritual to increase blood magic. Nice!

Instead of differentiating and creating nuance, the game uses the term 'blood magic' to mean 'mind control' or 'bad magic' but it doesn't actually mean that or say that. If you look at the Veilguard glossary the definition for Blood Magic is:

The use of blood to fuel powerful spells. Most nations have banned blood magic because it can be used to cloud or even control people's minds.

Similarly, the Big Bad, Elgar'nan, we're told did blood magic to control elves and enslave them (boo!). We see him and Ghilan’nain manipulate the Blight with blood magic to mind control the people of D’Meta’s crossing. But then he goes to do a ritual in Arlathan and his Archdemon rises. He has a bunch of Dalish sacrifices (supposedly he needed the purest elven blood available). But we rescue them and... then he does a ritual where he sacrifices a whole bunch of Venatori? For what? That wasn't the ritual to make the Red Lyrium Dagger. So… what's it for?

It's not clear what his entire goal is because he appears unblighted at the beginning of the game. Completely uncorrupted, just tyrannical and shitty despite being trapped on the Blight side of the veil for xxxx amount of years. Ghilan'nain, we can see, is 100% munted. But she doesn't need rituals. She'll just see two dead bodies and not ask before slapping them together to make a cool new monster.

Even Solas, the Big Bad we’re supposed to be sympathetic to, will shout in your head at the beginning of the game “I ABHOR BLOOD MAGIC!” right after he did a blood magic to get in your head.

Meanwhile in Inquisition, when you ask about learning blood magic, Solas says,

“I would teach you, if I knew it. Unfortunately, using blood magic seems to make it more difficult to enter the Fade. You understand why I never bothered to learn it. A shame, as it is extremely powerful. Provided it remains a tool, not a crutch… nor a passion.”

He doesn’t use blood magic in Inquisition but has no problem doing it in Veilguard? When you catch up to him at the finale, he says,

“Yes. I was wrong to do so. I was desperate. Unless I escaped, the world would fall to tyranny and blight. The only tool I had was my tenuous connection to you.” “Blood magic.”

Okay. Cool. So you never learned how to do blood magic but you did a blood magic somehow and now you regret it. God of lies, indeed. And how did you bind the Evanuris to the Veil, Solas? If not with blood magic and a certain dagger, hmmm? Since we have to stab you to bind you to the Veil. Wouldn't that mean you had to get the blood of all the other Evanuris to do your big ritual to create the Veil begin with? Hmmmm?

It's just non-commital nonsense.

And how about the elves, huh?

You would think that Elf Rook would encounter some hostility while existing as an elf in Minrathous, aka Racism City. Perhaps they might even get mistaken for a slave by a templar and asked who they belong to? What would be Rook’s reaction to that?

Tell the truth?

Lie and play along?

Fight and get arrested? (followed by a hilarious prison break)

A classic Dragon Age scenario. Maybe you have to skip town for a while if it goes poorly? We’ll never know because Veilguard never lets you be discriminated against. Even though the subjugation of the elves has been a polarizing topic throughout the series. It's mentioned in Veilguard but never demonstrated in practice so it sounds more like a myth than a reality.

From the get-go of Dragon Age, from even character creation in Origins, you are told that elves are second class citizens that live in walled off Alienages (ghettos) on the edge of cities. The discrimination is constant. Even the ‘free’ Dalish Elves are racist to City Elves for cowing to humans.

But did anyone call me a 'knife-ear' (a slur) in Veilguard?

No. Of course, not. And I hate to say 'because of woke' like a right-wing incel edgelord but damn, y'all aren't making it easy.

Veilguard completely side-lines slavery and elves as second class citizens despite the whole story revolving around Solas vs the Evanuris - Elven Gods who enslaved elves. And even though I picked the elf race for my story, I encountered zero discrimination whatsoever. It was a perfect liberal idealist utopia that has never existed in the real world, let alone Thedas.

I know I'm complaining that no one was racist to me or shouted slurs at me in a video game but if a drag queen walked into a Trump rally, I don’t think she would have a very good time. So when Rook walks around Minrathous with their helmet off and everyone’s just cool with it, some alarm bells start ringing. Like, is the game glitching? Am I accidentally registering as human or something? Did I load the wrong character?

No?

Hm :(

Just another bullet point in a long list of things Veilguard gives lip service to but in practice, ignores or makes fun of.

You can’t just say slavery is a big deal through every character’s mouth and then not show it happening in the place where it happens frequently and so much they did wars about it. You can't just say elves face discrimination and then evenly distribute them throughout every NPC and map while removing the Elven Alienage that ought to be in every city. You can't just say 'blood magic bad because bad guy did it' and then turn around and say 'actually all magic is blood magic because lyium is Titan blood but it's okay for you because you're a hero'.

It's juvenile and condescending. Instead of being thought provoking and asking questions about fantasy ethics, Veilguard presents you with a simplified trolley problem with one track and a timetabled departure. You don't get to think about anything yourself because the lore is completely overshadowed by the irreverent narrative of Veilguard. It just bulldozes the world building and doesn't stop to answer questions.

The Tevinter mages buried the elven city of Arlathan and enslaved the whole race for a thousand years. The entire Andrastian faith is based on a woman inspiring elven slaves to rise up and join her armies as she marched on Tevinter and specifically Minrathous. The allegory for Jesus/Joan of Arc in this world was killed by a Tevinter mage for daring to empower slaves. Yet, this is only explained in some optional codex entries in game.

And when characterising Solas, the game keeps yapping on about how he freed slaves or fought against slavers and tyranny, and we see… what? Some broken chains on the ground in the opening sequence with no sign of a living being having existed there at any time. We get one weird flashback where we have to save the slaves! Then we open a gate and there’s three elves in there happy to escape Elger’nan and the game suddenly code switches to call them 'captives'. Which is it?

Were they slaves or were they captives?

It's the same story in Minrathous. You see a couple of NPCs that were kidnapped and were going to be sold to Venatori for ????? evil reasons. But they're not slaves. They're 'captives' or 'prisoners'.

The only time you really see the concept of slavery in play is in a mission to rescue some Dalish elves from being sacrificed in Elger'nan's big scary ritual. We see slaves being used for laughs to make the bad guys seem comically bad, heads bowed and being forced onto all fours to act like living chairs for the Venatori. You can't talk to these people. You can only listen to what their evil masters are saying so you hate them more.

Haha. So funny. I'm glad we can make light of this instead of treating it like a serious issue.

What's worse, your companion, Neve, pretends to be a Venatori cultist during this mission, while you and some other companion, in my case Bellara, are her entourage. There’s a brief exchange where Neve pretends to be a snobby caricature of a Tevinter mage and the guard is so stupid he lets you through without any cross examination despite also being Venatori? Again, they didn’t explain the social order of mages in Tevinter so I’m assuming Neve pretended to be an Altus mage and this guy is Laetans at best. But you get to pat Neve on the back for the horrible weight she had to endure - pretending to be a bad person (yuck!)

And then you rescue the Dalish and everyone is like, yaaay Solas.

Seriously?

We did all that work for 10 NPCs without names thanking Rook for being their saviour?

There was an Archdemon to fight right there! *points across the bay*

There was an Elven God right there!

By the way, did you know that the Old Gods of Tevinter were actually just dragons enslaved by the Elven gods? Yeah, those cool evil Archdemons that started this whole Blight business in Thedas were somehow bound by the Evanuris with (blood) magic. We see some graffiti about it in the opening scene while chasing after Solas in as they say - foreshadowing~~

So each Elven God/Evanuris had a dragon/archdemon who was bound to them apparently. And the God was immortal until you slew their dragon which I would argue makes you iMortal+ *

*T&Cs apply.

But how convenient, right? The elven gods are bad. They’re also controlling Tevinter’s Old Gods that are also bad. They also started a war with the Titans and killed them and made their dreams so angry they turned into an evil plague. And once the Titans were destroyed, they split into thousands of… *checks notes*... dwarves. The Titans were thousands of dwarves in a trenchcoat, and their blood is… Lyrium.

Wait a second… We’ve been doing blood magic this whole flippin’ time?! Just mining the corpses of Titans for calcified magic blood?

Cool.

Cool, cool, cool.

I’m glad everyone has been twisting my arm about this since Dragon Age Origins. Merill was fucking right. Justice for Merill from DA2! Where is she btw? You know, the Dalish elf that figured out that blood magic was just magic? That spirits and demons were all just spirits and equally dangerous? That Eluvians were incredibly rare magical artifacts that let you basically teleport everywhere? Shame the one she found was blighted but she cured it somehow! Merill the real MVP of this franchise. And do we see this amazing companion return and give us a humble ‘I told you so’?

Absolutely not.

Solas just tells you the bad guys are the bad guys and they did all this bad stuff and they don’t regret it and he imprisoned them because they suck. In fact, it’s Solas’s fault none of us have magic anymore and you have to ‘live through’ a bunch of flashbacks of Solas leading a rebellion against the Evanuris. Which would have been cool if more than five character models could be on the screen at any one time. The rallying cries to the armies of spirits and elves felt so awkward. It was just me and Jerith from Accounting exchanging side-eye.

The awful thing is that there’s brilliance in the way the first three games set up the world to work on biased information that wasn’t really correct yet everyone believed it thanks to the prevalence of the Chantry/Church. And if the writers on Veilguard had done a better job, all of these revelations would be devastating. I’m talking KOTOR reveal level of mind blowing. Maybe they got close on Dread Wolf before they pulled the plug? We’ll never know.

Because all we got was - the bad Elves are actually bad for everyone (except the Qunari). They did everyone dirty (except the Qunari) so you can all come together to defeat them and feel good about it and there’s no reason to feel conflicted or look into it any deeper. And all the elves are totally on board with killing their Gods for some reason. This isn’t a divisive issue for anyone. No one joins Solas even though he’s also an elven God. And the only people who join the Evanuris are tyrants and bullies as Solas tells Rook. What a coincidence - that’s all of our enemies! Thank goodness no people we actually like end up siding with the Bad Guys. Phew.

Because the pantheon of Elven Gods aka the Evanuris aka the Illuminati, not the Illuminati from the beginning of this rant mind you, but the sub-Illuminati controlled by the Executors, so I guess the Evanuris are like the Anti-Vaxxers of this world. Anyway, the Evanuris are apparently responsible for the Blight, the Old Gods, the Titans dying and subsequently the dwarves’ existence AND… Andraste! The Jesus/Joan of Arc allegory was apparently possessed by an elven god - Mythal - and secretly led the elven people to rebel against their masters.

Couldn't have been the brutal conditions of slavery in Thedas. Nope. Gotta be the Evanuris.

And there’s only two of them in the game - Ghilan’nain and Elger’nan. And Mythal who they murdurlated and is kinda dead now but still possessing Morrigan (don’t worry! It’s good possession because there was consent!)

Plus, Solas who isn’t really Evanuris but is implied to have been ‘close’ with Mythal and the game crassly tells you they were ‘doing it’ through Taash’s mouth. Anyway, Solas woke up from Uthenera and chose violence which is why we’re now in hot water. But that still only amounts to 3.5 Evanuris? I guess the devs ran out of time because there’s all these statues of Elven gods around. Should be 9 in total. 7 according to the statues.

Hm.

It seems Bioware tried to do Endgame but only 3.5 Avengers showed up and not even the good ones.

Wait, I’m forgetting the Forgotten Ones!

Ironic. Yeah, the Evanuris did a war on these other elves that are even more evil than them and they all got banished to the Abyss? We only see one of the Forgotten ones - Anaris - and kill him immediately because he’s trying to make elves into Demons for 'reasons'. And we tell Mythal we killed him and she says, ‘oh shit. I hate that dude. Respect. Here, have a piece of my soul, homie.’

A measured response.

Also, Ghilly and Elger’bum love the Blight. You know, the nasty magic zombie virus that makes you puke black blood and your eyes turn red and weird necrotic flesh grows out of your body. They think it’s beautiful! Can’t get enough. And like all toxic white people with too much power and plastic surgery, the Evanuris decided to share this gift with everyone, whether they like it or not.

I’m not gonna lie, I think Ghilan’nain has one of the coolest character designs I’ve ever seen. I love how she moves like a squid and slaps dragons together to create better monsters. Conceptually? 10/10. Artists, you did so so good on this. I love you long time, mwah. But the writing? Hnnnnnn….

If you were going to do this whole ‘Elven Gods = Evil’ thing, you really needed to make it feel epic and grandiose. It’s a big reveal to DA fans who’ve been sucking on the teet of ‘Elven Gods = Good’ lore of the previous games. We already got a bit of a slap in the face (literally) when Solas removed the Vallaslin because it was a ‘slave brand’ so it’s not a stretch to go: Elven Gods? Were a bit fucked up actually. That’s believable. But Evanuris did 9/11 is so… I can’t even with this.

Since DA1, we've heard stories of Ghilan’nain - Andruil’s chosen - the woman who was so devoted to animals she stood up to a hunter and was mutilated for her troubles. She was turned into a white Halla by Andruil and elevated to the status of goddess for her devotion. The Dalish pray to Ghilan’nain when they travel to find their way faster. In Veilguard, we see only the ugly squid abomination she’s become when corrupted by the Blight. It makes it easy to hate her. To accept a black and white narrative of 'Bad Guy bad' when they’re right in front of you. Especially if this is your first Dragon Age game.

The only companion that comments on the cognitive dissonance is Bellara and she becomes an allegory for white guilt. 'Oh no, our gods were evil and now they're doing all this evil stuff! However can I - a manic pixie dream girl - ever come to grips with this concept? Good thing the Elven Gods are carrying the plague so I don't have to think about joining them!' And this attitude ultimately culminates in her decision to erase the Archive that records her people's entire history??? Tell me you're a neocon without telling me you're a neocon. Yikes.

There are ways to give these narrative decisions meaning without immediately dumping the weight of the world on one companion's shoulders! And it's not having the Veil Jumpers say 'Oh shit!' every time you say Elger'nan. Davrin doesn't even seen to care since it's the Blight and he's a Grey Warden before he's a Dalish elf apparently.

Like, we hear Davrin tell the tale of Andruil the Huntress and by the end of the conversation with the team, he just calmly accepts the fact that she may have discovered and spread the Blight to Thedas. Stone-faced. As he carves an action figure out of wood. Where is the emotion, Dav? Where is the devastation? Or denial? Disbelief? Betrayal? Why are we all like, 'yeah, Solas is Fen'Harel, what about it?'

I want you to be as devastated about this as I am. And I’m Some Asshole from the real world. If you have a tattoo on your face because you thought Joan of Arc was cool, and it turns out Joan enslaved her own people and created a super plague she used to make monsters out of your friends’ meat, you would feel a way about it!!!

The dialogue and emotions of the characters feel so wooden and unbelievable. Like they're not inhabiting Thedas but your own little world in the middle of nowhere where none of this is real.

And they feel so out of time. Mostly because Veilguard is almost exclusively written in modern Simple English but sometimes the characters will say something that sounds like it belongs in an after school special. Like something a government employee responsible for writing mental health mandates imagines a person that’s been to therapy might sound like. Like if you googled how to talk to someone having trouble with their mental health and went to wikihow, especially in companion interactions, you would get Veilguard dialogue. This makes most of the conversations feel jarring and inauthentic and combined with a thick US accent that feels straight out of Hollywood, you get cutscenes that feel like you’re watching the CW.

Just as an exercise, count how many times this dialogue shows up:

“Are you alright?” / “Are you okay?” / “Everything okay?”

**Character turns away dramatically**

“I’m fine.” / “It's fine.” / “I'll be alright.”

Funnily enough, this is not how people are supposed to sound in the high fantasy world of Dragon Age. At least not according to three AAA titles, not to mention all the books, TTRPGs, anime and even comics in the Dragon Age universe, since the different regions of Thedas are roughly based on real life places. Like Orlais is DA France/the Vatican, Ferelden is Anglo-Saxon England, the Tevinter Imperium - Roman Empire, Antiva - Italy/Spain, the Anderfels - Germany/Eastern Europe, Par Vollen - Ottoman Empire, Rivain - Moorish Spain, Nevarra - Prussia/Hungary/the spooky part of Romania.

Not to be the person that says you need fake accents and racism in your RPG game but you're telling me you got MATTHEW MERCER - the king of role playing games - Dungeon Master extraordinaire - and you couldn't get half a Europe's worth of accents out of him? You paid him to hiss into a microphone and make monosyllabic skeleton sounds for Manfred? ( I love him btw) Way to make use of those seasoned VA chops! I'm glad the Viper had such riveting dialogue as “Did we win?“ that I didn't even recognise him as Mercer until the final battle.

Like... the whole appeal of Dragon Age was exploring a world like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings but different and new. Part of that was the buy in - the immersion - role playing. Much like in Dungeons and Dragons which can take place exclusively in the mind’s eye through oral storytelling, sometimes a voice or an archaic choice of words, a turn of phrase, or an accent, can bring a character to life and give them the complexity of time and place and personal beliefs, fleshing them out in three dimensions and adding some texture to the world.

Veilguard is capable of this!

Think of Antoine and Evka from the Grey Wardens. You can tell Antoine is from Orlais and Evka is from Orzammar just by their voices, speech patterns and accents. You know Evka is casteless by the brand on her face which means she had it rough in the dwarven city. She had very few options and becoming a Grey Warden, though difficult, may have been an improvement on her life quality.

Same with Antoine. An elf in Orlais is a second class citizen, a servant or a slave. No Vallaslin means he’s not Dalish. The Grey Wardens were probably a better path for him. This is good character design and execution. We only need to hear a few sentences from Antoine and Evka to buy in. They belong in Thedas. But why are they the exception?

Why are most of the characters in Veilguard two dimensional at best? If you look at the VAs on the cast, it's absolutely not a question of talent. It's the writing and direction that makes Veilguard's dialogue such a let down. Not only is it oversimplified and modern, it sounds like they used the first take on most of these lines! And the first draft on all of these stories.

I mean, this is Dragon Age! Think Lords of the Rings! Think of a world with different languages for elves and dwarves and even words for things in English. In previous games, you learned them organically as they came up in conversation or codex entries. You learned who came from where based on how people spoke. No one was breaking character and saying things like 'what's up?' or 'okay' or 'wow' or 'I would kill for coffee' or 'non-binary'.

These are incredibly modern terms and phrases, and you are supposedly living in the Middle Ages inside an ancient bastion of magic. It’s not Hi, it’s Greetings. It’s not God, it’s the Maker. It’s not sir, it’s ser (gender neutral). We completely lose Ser in Veilguard because they bring in Ma'am halfway through!

To be clear, there are in-world examples of non-binary characters and identities and Veilguard even uses 'aqun-athlok' - the Qunari term for someone that doesn't identify with the gender assigned at their birth. But they do this in the most condescending USAmerican way of like, 'oh, the Native Americans call it ‘two-spirit’ - 'The Qunari call these people aqun-athlok'.

It feels disingenuous, inauthentic and just plain uncomfortable to be there. Again, we are being told instead of shown, which is Veilguard's cardinal sin. What would have been cool is if Taash went on a journey to discover other aqun-athlok or the Rivaini equivalent, and Rook could accompany them to learn more about it.

Instead, Neve suggests that Taash go to Minrathous??? The city Dorian Pavus famously fled because his homophobic father tried to use blood magic to make him straight? Really, Neve? That's the bastion of queer acceptance you want to recommend to someone as raw and inexperienced as Taash? An underground organisation based in a racist city of people still at war with the Qunari Antaam???

And we don't even get to go with them!

It all happens off screen, even if you’re a Shadow Dragon. I would kill to do something in Minrathous other than chasing Venatori around stinky old Dock Town. Why do I have to go to the same bloody tavern with Neve three times but there's no non-binary NPC I could talk to in there?!

You get the nasty Governor Ivenci in Treviso that negs you every time you pass them in the Grande Market. The only decent NB NPC I found outside of Taash is a healer named Flynn in the village of Lavendel in the Anderfels. Evka sends you on a quest to find their mentor in the alps and later, you find out that Flynn was sick with Blight and got healed by secretly becoming a Grey Warden. This was done by Evka who allowed Flynn to return to their work - healing the villagers - instead of immediately getting conscripted to fight Darkspawn as a Grey Warden normally would.

What a cool idea! Using the Grey Warden ritual (blood magic) to save someone from the Blight, albeit for a short time, but doing it in secret because you know the Grey Wardens have strict rules about this. What an act of compassion on Evka's part that speaks to her personality. And what a reflection on Flynn that they stayed in Lavendel instead of running away once they were cured.

But you never find out what the Ander term for 'non-binary' is. We don't find out what the reaction to this kind of person is in that society is, positive or negative. Instead, Flynn hand-waves it all with a throwaway line - 'my mentor helped me with my non-binary stuff'.

STUFF?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Your entire gender identity and the consequences of it is just... STUFF??

The amount of times this game uses the word 'stuff', particularly in the second half, absolutely kills immersion dead.

Which brings us to the next cardinal sin of Veilguard - it doesn't take itself seriously.

Everything is just 'stuff'. The main quest? To kill the Elven Gods you unleashed? The super Blight that's ravaging the South? That's all funny and we can make jokes about it like we’re sarcastic purple Hawke. Haha. And you know what, let's just put it all on hold and go take care of our own personal business first. I'm sure coffee is more important than Treviso being overrun by Antaam and darkspawn and plague.

At one point, the main story quest is to 'check in' with the broody assassin and the grumpy grey warden because they had a disagreement during a meeting. Not for any Elven God apocalypse business, but simply to see how they're doing and talk about their personal problems like you’re the HR rep at Godkillers Incorporated. You’re not here to help raise an army using the connections of their respective factions, but to further their personal vendettas and chase after targets that won't matter if the whole world is Blighted.

At one point, you get back from Weisshaupt, having defeated two dragons and a cool darkspawn hydra monster. You kill an archdemon and make an Elven God bleed, for Maker’s sake! And Neve has the fucking nuts to say 'There's trouble in Dock Town.'

BINCH!

There's not gonna be a Dock Town if we don't take care of this APOCALYPSE!

This rubbed me so bad I had to stop playing and begin this rant.

I thought it couldn't get any worse but then I went on Harding's quest to find Valta, and wouldn't you know it…

You enter Kal-Sharok, fabled dwarven city beneath the ground that was sealed centuries ago to protect against the Blight, the people inside entombed alive. Or so we thought. A recent expedition into the Deep Roads led to a shocking discovery - some of them survived!

And we meet at the tall imposing gates of the city carved into a mountain. As you follow a dwarf called Stalgard through the vast chambers inside, he tells you that the inhabitants took in some of the Blight to survive the Darkspawn incursion, becoming like the Grey Wardens.

(Let’s just ignore that the ritual kills most people and makes 99.99% of the rest sterile and gives you 20-30 years until you turn into a darkspawn yourself, so it's impossible for any of them to have survived since dwarves already have a very low fertility rate. AHEM.)

You enter the deepest chamber of Kal-Sharok. A sacred place in the stone. Lyrium - the font of magic - grows from the walls and wraps around them like veins.

(Even though physical contact with raw lyrium ore will cause serious injury and psychological damage for humans, elves, and Qunari, and any contact with the unrefined substance will kill a mage outright. But we just walk on in.)

You approach the statue of a great dwarven warrior and miracle of miracles, it glows and speaks to you in the voice of the Oracle. She tells your companion, Harding, of the Titans and their song and warns of danger - something awakening. And what does Harding do upon receiving these words of wisdom?

She throws a tantrum like a five year old. And the stoic dwarf named Stalgard actually breaks character and says, “She does that. Riddles, riddles, riddles. Oh, I'm a rock.”

It was so cringe I had to walk away from my PC and go for a run.

I know the writers were trying to be funny. But there's a way to be funny in character and in-universe. Remember Shale? Remember the unbreakable pigeon? If you can't do that, then maybe don't do Stalgard? Because it stinks of Marvel Cinematic Universe screenwriting where they stop to point out how lame superheroes are despite being a franchise that revolves entirely around superheroes.

If you don't like Dragon Age and high fantasy, then don't write Dragon Age and high fantasy. Don't take jobs where you're expected to write Tolkien when the best you can do is Madame Web. Or, if the lead writer/director is the one spearheading this change, then I think we have bigger problems.

It's clear that the demographic the writers are appealing to is vastly different to the original and even Dragon Age: Inquisition. Veilguard is trying to tell this highly sanitized PC story that’s inclusive of newer younger players who don't know the lore, and probably don't care. They're here to play dress up, get their pronouns sorted and make their Rook kiss an NPC. All fine goals! The problem is - the world doesn’t react to your being there. You get a surface level aesthetic facade of choice and the exact same playthrough as everyone else. Because you can't write a perfect 'uwu all my friends live in a lighthouse' AU in the nuanced morally grey world of Thedas without drawing a curtain over the established setting, lore and characters.

It's incredibly obvious to a long-time fan that you’re covering up the controversial and problematic parts of Thedas to make sure no one gets offended while playing. Veilguard appeals to the delicate sensibilities of a purity police poisoned populace and needs deliver a highly polished centrist narrative with no bite and nothing to say other than SLAVERY BAD. It won’t even give you the choice to disagree! None of the dialogue options let you flat out object to what's being said, disrupt the conversation, or start a fight.

It’s incredibly jarring when compared with past games which offered a broad range of moral choices, regardless of the player’s personal ethics, sometimes with disastrous consequences but the freedom to role play as you saw fit. And it challenged you to think about your decisions whether they were good or bad, whether the ends justified the means.

Dragon Age has always been about grey morality. It’s not even subtle about it. They’re called the Grey Wardens for a reason. It’s about making the hard choices where there are no easy answers. It's about making sure the Blight and every other disaster is stopped. It's about making sacrifices for the greater good. About being the only person there at the time. It’s about the love that was there but it didn’t magically save everyone. It’s about hindsight and finding out information after you've made a difficult decision, then going back and replaying the game because of regret or because you want to see what would happen if you’d known. It’s about having the option to do something terrible and clicking it just to see what happens. It’s about the game getting harder or easier based on how much of a jerk/edgelord you are and whether you can live with your sins despite this being a videogame. Because that’s what this is - a safe space to explore morality without real world consequence.

We see brief attempts to replicate that in Veilguard. Like with Minrathous vs Treviso. It's a big decision the game forces you to make waaay too early in the story to make it meaningful. You choose which city gets your direct intervention against a blighted dragon attack.

Your choices are: the racist mage city or, the city home to a bunch of assassins with no standing army that’s already under occupation and is heavily implied to be in far more dire straits.

Unless you’re from Minrathous, you’re highly incentivised to help Treviso. And the game almost assumes you will. Because if you pick Treviso, the Shadow Dragon hideout in Minrathous is completely destroyed, the environment changed and individual members are publicly killed and hung on the streets. The Viper is infected with the blight and the Venatori storm the Archon's Palace and take over the city.

Meanwhile, if you pick Minrathous, the Cantori Diamond in Treviso remains standing. You lose a few people in it to the blight but this is so early in the game that you may not even know these people yet. Some turn into darkspawn and the game expects you to care about them but if you were assuming that the urgent story quest was urgent, you were mistaken. The game waggles its finger and points at all the side quests you didnt do by making you make this decision and locking off anything you were planning to do. This big big choice happens at the end of a recruitment mission for Davrin so you either have to lose all your progress and go back or live with the game's stupid pacing decisions.

Meanwhile, you don’t control ANYTHING that’s happening in the South.

Morrigan invites you to meet the Inquisitor at a tavern in Minrathous and tells you that most of the South is under siege by Darkspawn.

ARE YOU SHITTING ME?

Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain have restricted their activities to the North but deployed their forces to the South????? And the Inquisitor wearing my Shadow Dragon pyjamas is the only thing holding back the Blight???

What the actual fuck? or as Rook says more politely, “If the South is in such turmoil then why did you come up here just to talk?”

Darkspawn have cut through the center of Orlais???? Val Royeaux and Halamshiral are barely holding out??? Denerim is lost????? They’re holding the line at Redcliffe with help from Orzammar???

I am losing my mind.

The Free Marches have the worst of it??? Acting Viscount Aveline Vallen??? has led an evacuation of Kirkwall???? She’s taking her people and what’s left of her army to help Prince Vael keep Starkhaven???

Why would she ever help Sebastian keep Starkhaven??

Doesn’t matter. Because according to the Inquisitor, The South is the Inquisitor’s problem! Rook has to stop the Gods and the Inquisitor deals with the Blight. Oh, and here's a cool statuette that reminds me of Solas :)

Okay, putting aside the way they rattled off a bunch of names for the fans and immediately said all your faves are screwed. Why is the Blight down in the South if the Elven Gods awakened in the North? They make the Red Lyrium dagger in the North. Elgar’nan’s Archdemon and Ghilan'nain's rises in the North. Elgar'nan takes Minrathous - in the North.

Maybe if the other seven Evanuris were awakened simultaneously and attacked the South, I would believe it. Is that what the Dread Wolf was gonna be about? Did they scrap the game where the Evanuris were all attacking Thedas at once?

Or is this an intentional move by the writers to wipe the slate clean for future games? Can’t have any problematic old lore and beloved characters getting in the way of our nothingburger of a story, now can we? Let’s just destroy it all so we don’t have to think about it… and neither do our players.

>:(

I’m so mad.

And while the South burns, Rook gets to make inconsequential decisions until the end of time.

Such as:

Fight the Venatori vs Smooth-talk the Barkeep

Both end with a cutscene that you don’t control and you get the information you need.

Your methods are never addressed again.

Disagree with Varric vs Support Varric talking down Solas

Varric goes to talk down Solas anyway.

This is ‘remembered’ by the illusion of Varric in your head in one line of dialogue several minutes later.

It is never addressed again.

Neve vs Harding follow you into greater danger

One of them gets hurt during the debacle with Solas. They have a cosmetic scar for the rest of the game and never talk about it again.

Save vs Kill the Mayor of D’Meta’s Crossing

This has no bearing on the story whatsoever. A one time approval bump and then never again do we see or hear from the piece of shit that sold out his whole village which are now Blighted puppets of the Evanuris. No one explains how he 'sold out' either, probably blood magic. That's always the excuse.

Punch the First Warden vs Reason with him at Weisshaupt

This is such a deus ex machina. Because if you choose to reason with him, you conveniently notice the blood dribbling out of his ear and make a Sherlock Holmes level assumption about the Calling. This is something Grey Wardens experience once enough time has passed since their Joining. It's basically the end of your life as you know it as you slowly transform into a Darkspawn. Grey Wardens walk into the Deep Roads when they hear the Calling but the First Warden has held on for longer than he should have and gotten a bit mixed up in the brain. You should not have knowledge of this unless you are a Grey Warden yourself so fuck whatever Background you pick, it doesn't matter. You say some rousing words about becoming the leader who defied a God and suddenly, the First Warden admits you were right and he wasn’t. Just a complete 180 and he's on your side.

THE RESULT IS THE SAME. He sends you to the dragon trap.

If you punch the First Warden and knock him out, Evka stands up for you as next in command and sends you to… you guessed it - the dragon trap. No matter what, the First Warden goes to stab the Archdemon and gets pwned.

You see him later during Davrin’s personal quest, fully Blighted. He’s either sane and suffering or insane and profane. Either way, you can’t save him. All you can do is end his misery. And it’s so frustrating because he has dialogue! He tells you to look for a feather that belonged to Isseya's griffon, it's the only thing she stops to look at with emotion. But the game completely ignores this and doesn't give you an optional marker for it. It just says 'Confront Isseya'. And that's it!

Like… the illusion of choice is infuriating!

None of your decisions have any meaning. There's no lasting consequences. You never lose a companion due to your pre-finale choices. You never lose a faction. Even if you pick the worst nastiest dialogue option on the wheel the whole way through, it doesn't matter. Rook will still says something affirmative and the game continues on its merry way, railroading you into the predetermined story.

There's no way you're not reaching the end. And that’s the only place where you’ll be penalized for not taking Daisy for a walk. I mean, going to dinner with Taash’s mother. Did I mention that?

The game forces you to be there when Taash comes out to their mother as non-binary in your own kitchen and I cannot express how much I did not want to be present for that conversation. In my wildest nightmares, I would not dream of inviting my boss to a coming out dinner with my conservative mother in the office kitchen.

Why in the Fade would I want to experience this awkwardness in game when I just met Taash and I'm not romancing them. And I’m technically their boss? This feels like the most basic and degrading representation of the queer experience. I’d expect something like this from Glee. And I’m forced to sit there and watch this trainwreck of a dialogue. The game will not give me the option to say NO, not as a friend and not as an employer. Forget evil playthrough, this is just plain setting boundaries. Why can’t Rook say NO?

When I picked up the cool fire breathing dragon-hunting non-binary qunari companion, I thought we would be getting someone along the lines of Krem and Iron Bull from Dragon Age Inquisition. I thought we would be hunting dragons or participating in fighting tournaments, and the non-binary stuff would maybe come up over drinks and maybe there'd be one non-combat mission where you go meet their crew and see how telling them goes.

Instead, it's a 30/70 split between the cool stuff and the whiny cutscenes about not liking dresses and wrapping yourself up in weird bondage rope. Like, yeah, Taash. It is weird. Maybe don’t do it if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Especially when you’re in the Lighthouse and not living with your mom.

I get it, it's a ham-handed metaphor for being of both worlds but neither. Qunari and Rivaini, man and woman, yet neither, or both. But instead of starting at a place of questioning, we're introduced to Taash as a badass dragon hunter, who then very suddenly loses all sense of self and identity.

Rook: "So you've got no problem fighting other Qunari?" Taash: "I'm from Rivain. Not like I follow the Qun." Rook: "You've got the arm ropes." Taash: "Sure. I wear a lot of stuff. You don't get to tell me who I am."

Cool, right? And then again, immediately, Taash stands up to the Antaam poachers.

Taash: "Hey! I brought her down! She's mine by right!" Poacher, in Qunlat: "You are no warrior." Taash, in rough Qunlat: "You don't get to tell me who I am." - breathes fire and roasts him alive -

Badass. Again, asserting themself as whatever they wanna be. But then they turn around and ask you, a stranger, whether they should be more Qunari or Rivaini. You don't get a choice about the non-binary stuff. But the cultural stuff seems to be something you get to choose? Why? And why can't they be both? Tell me you've never met a multicultural person in your life. Newsflash: People have multiple parents. They can be raised in polar opposite ways simultaneously. Yet it's been distilled into a binary choice - Qunari or Rivaini. Which just smacks of hypocrisy after making the character non-binary.

And the whole coming out scene with the mother. I did it twice just to see what happens if you make Taash be more Qunari and Shathann accuses you of meddling so the Qunari can soften up Taash to the Qun and take her away. This woman is insufferable. Because if you romance Taash, she'll say you're a bad influence too. But hey, she comes around RIGHT BEFORE SHE DIES. That's all that's important, right?

The fact that none of this is optional once you talk to a companion really grinds my gears. I didn't know what they were gonna say when I walked up to them the first time. I saw a big exclamation mark over their icon and I thought it was important. Even when it's a little grey clock icon, they'll end up giving you a mission. I didn't know I was automatically going to get a quest whether I wanted to do it or not.

And you can't leave or untrack a quest, so you just walk into the kitchen and boom! Now you’re having awkward dinner with Taash and her conservative mother. And after she gets up and leaves the table you have to reassure Taash about the whole situation? Like, why is that my job?

It feels like Rook is everyone's lap dop, mother and personal therapist. Not only do the companions dump their emotional baggage and problems on you but Rook just readily accepts it like you're not literally fighting God at the same time there's an evil magic plague with dragons and shit devouring the world.

The only person who cares about Rook’s health is Emmrich, and Varric, but he’s dead. (Emmrich can also be undead)

Honestly, Varric’s death didn't bother me as much as everyone else. I never particularly liked him and getting stabbed in the heart with a Lyrium dagger seems pretty fatal to me. I was actually mad when he showed up alive in the infirmary minutes later. Like, way to cheapen the moment he got stabbed with an immediate cop out. And then at the end of the game you find out he actually DID die and Solas is just being a prick. And the game still asked you to sympathize with him despite all the shit he did.

I feel like multiple people wrote Solas and he comes off majorly polarized as a result. He flip flops between right and wrong, regret and conviction, all the way to the very end. And it’s clear they tried to make him the morally grey sigma male but he just ends up feeling stupid.

I never empathized with Solas. I tried romancing him in Inquisition to get more lore but it just doesn’t matter. He keeps doing more bad things to justify the bad things he’s already done, and Veilguard tries to make him sympathetic in the worst way. Your whole team gathers around the table to explain his Memories to you like you didn't just watch them. It feels so condescending, voyeuristic and unnecessary. Like a fanfic that couldn’t figure out how to make the big bad sympathetic so it threw in some flashbacks. And why? For the secret third ending, SssHhhh.

Mythal’s alive! Kinda. Her spirit was broken into lots of pieces and one of them can be yours for a limited time. But only if you watch all of Solas’s Funniest Home Videos. Morrigan shows up to explain that she also has a piece of Mythal and most of her memories but doesn’t help you do the thing. Thanks, babe. Glad you and your mom figured things out- wait. Didn’t we kill Flemeth before she could transfer- hold on, what’s the timeline for these memories? You talked to Flemeth-Mythal? 👉And agreed to accept the memories before you ran away and met the HoF? I thought- 👆you left- 👉and then we killed- 👈But she was back in DA2- 👉Solas took her powers in Inquisition???🤷‍♀️

What are you saying Morrigan? Are we retconning Dragon Age Origins? Also, where is your son?

I’m so confused. Glad this doesn’t matter. Like all of your decisions.

Morrigan comes and unlocks the third ending for you. It was hidden behind these brambles in the Crossroads you find at the start of the game. Imagine if Rook had a weedwacker and some Round Up. The game would be a fraction of its length. The Blight could be readily cured with pesticides. But as it is, you go through the secret hole and find a spot where a bit of Mythal’s spirit hangs out. She says she still helps by possessing humans like Andraste to guide her people.

Why humans though?

Not important. Nothing is important in this game. And none of your decisions matter. Don't look too closely. Don't analyse anythng or you'll miserable like me.

If you get the little Mythal statuette (because that’s how I would give you a piece of my soul) then Morrigan shows up at the end of the game, right before the final battle.

I almost had a heart attack.

Because I remember the end of Dragon Age Origins.

Morrigan comes to the Hero of Ferelden on the eve of battle and explains that she knows a ritual that can transfer the soul of an Archdemon to the foetus in her womb if she has sex with the Grey Warden that slays it. And you have to choose between:

slay the Archdemon and let its essence kill you

make someone else slay the Archdemon and get killed

have sex with Morrigan before you kill the Archdemon to make an eldritch dragon God baby with her

force Alistair or another Grey Warden to have sex with Morrigan and then kill the Archdemon to have the eldritch dragon God baby

Additionally, if Alistair is the future king of Ferelden, this baby may be the only way he gets an heir because fertility is so low among Grey Wardens. So you have to consider the power vacuum Alistair will leave behind when he dies childless, destabilizing Ferelden and leaving it weak and open to attacks from Orlais like his half-brother Cailin Theirin did. Discounting whether or not you romanced Alistair.

You could also just get Anora to be Queen.

You see what I mean about complexity and nuance?

The fact that you could lose Alistair or Morrigan as a companion so close to the end of DA1 and your arch enemy could join the party instead?? Insane, both narratively and mechanically. And in DA2, you could just straight up sell your companion, Fenris, back into slavery if you wanted. It was genuinely fucked up. Your team lost its tank and you got a bunch of gold. But that freedom was incredible. We lost it a bit in Inquisition. Mages vs Templars was a no brainer. Who gets the throne of Orlais? I was rooting for toxic lesbians but I guess we got to pick the new pope? It all amounted to nothing, of course, because Veilguard chose to ignore everything you ever did.

The only comparable decision it allows you to make is the choice of the new Archon: Dorian Pavus or Maevaris Tilani.

Does it make a difference?

Only to the single title card they play for you at the end of the game. And you don't get any epilogue. Did they succeed in changing Racism City? We'll never know.

I would argue the most morally grey decision you can make in Veilguard is whether your companion Emmrich becomes a Lich.

Now, if you've played any amount of Dungeons and Dragons, you'll know that a Lich is an evil wizard that killed someone, did a ritual and now they're an immortal skeleton person with glowy green/red light for eyes and cool powers. But don't worry! Veilguard has made becoming a Lich morally fine and good, actually 👍

See, you don't have to kill anyone. You just get your coworker to stab you dead and your boss does a quick ritual which strips your flesh, makes a phylactery and you're sorted. Immortal wizard skeleton lich powers are yours to command. It's more of a promotion, really. You just have to pass this arbitrary morality test that we administer. (Don't worry about it.) But you can't raise your already dead skeleton son back from the extra dead, even though you’re a necromancer. Otherwise, where will it end? *clutches my Lich Lord pearls*

Anyway, Professor Emmrich Volkarin, Necromancer, Death Mage and noted Fade expert, 55 years old, turns to you and says, 'Rook, you should decide whether I resurrect my beautiful skeleton son that's just begun to talk and is voiced by Matt Mercer, OR, if I should go through with my entire life's work, get that uber promotion at the funeral director's home and become a Lich Lord that potentially puppets the King of Nevarra. I will have no say in this and you can't let me make my own decision. I simply won't give you a dialogue option for it.'

And the game is like, what should he dooOOooo??? As though everyone in the new demographic isn't gonna pick 'stay human and resurrect Manfred'. I mean, he’s a heroic little skeleton boy and I love him dearly but this is clearly not up to me or you. Emmrich should be mature enough to make a decision on his own.

There’s a lot more nuance to this whole thing that I wish was discussed but if you choose to save Manfred, that’s all Rook talks about - the value of Manfred’s undead life - his potential. Not the imminent death of Emmrich even though he believes he will become immortal as a lich. Not the loss of his senses or his humanity which he seems convinced will remain. And especially not the fact that once he’s a lich, he will have his phylactery stored in the Grand Necropolis. Myrna carries it out after the ceremony. Sure, this might be preferable to giving your phylactery to some templars or the chantry. But if Emmrich disagrees with the Lich Lords, he can be suppressed or even lose his free will and die anyway.

We don’t discuss the specifics of Emmrich’s condition past a few brief comments on how he has extra senses for spirits and the Fade. But he says it will be much harder to get killed as a Lich before the final battle so it means it’s still possible. He could become a Lich and still die. And for a guy terrified of death, it feels like a great moment of conflict. If you romance Emmrich, he tells you to stay behind so you won’t die and he won’t have to mourn you forever. There’s no way to reassure him because the dialogue wheel is an illusion of choice. You’re going to have a disagreement and spit back something insensitive like ‘I’m not going to be afraid of dying just because you are.’ Them’s just the breaks in Veilguard. All options lead to railroad.

Anyway, I think Emmrich's decision has the most nuance you get in Veilguard. Mostly by accident. There should have been a tonne more, of course, but at this point, beggars can't be choosers. If you pick Lich promotion, Emmrich turns into a skeleton man in a cool robe and a crown and then you have to have an awkward scene where he has to ‘come out’ to the party as a Lich. And Taash has to ruin it with their blunt insensitive dialogue. We can’t take anything seriously in this game. -sigh-

But Manfred is gone. Forever. It's not like he did anything in combat so I don't lose any firepower but I do miss him. Manfred isn't important to the story after his heroic final act so there's no political fallout but it does feel like you lost a member of the team.

The other companion decisions don’t hold as much weight because they lead to similar if not identical outcomes to their counterparts

Bellara keeps the archive spirit VS frees it (loses the knowledge)

This seems to me like a no-brainer. Freeing the archive spirit and losing all that knowledge to enforce blissful ignorance is a terrible choice. I guess it’s nice to have the option after going through so much of the game with barely any. But it seems out of character for Bellara to discard the thing she and Cyrian were searching for their entire lives, especially when he makes the ultimate sacrifice. You do a funeral walk and light the same braziers either way. The words Bellara says are different. She butchers the old elven stuff so it just makes you feel awkward. Again, I don't know why they're trying to make learning about your sketchy past the bad option but we know USAmericans are bit weird about the slavery.

Harding uses rage VS compassion to control the Titan’s Shade

This one has a secret third option. A romanced Rook that tries to kiss Harding gets yucky lyrium veins on their face and Harding harnesses the Titan power to remove them and save the horny Rook.

Otherwise, the three party members get together for a huddle and Harding gets control of the Titan’s Shade with rage or compassion. Either way, she keeps her earth bending powers. If it's compassion, you meet some dwarves in her next personal mission and she can share the Song of the Stone with them. If you choose rage, there's no one there. You just look out at the bones of a Titan from a snowcapped mountain.

The Griffons become Mounts for the Grey Wardens VS Guardians of Arlathan Forest

The game acts like you can restore the griffon population from a single clutch of eggs. This feels a bit weird since they’re all related but I guess beggars can’t be choosers. It’s six griffons. And I feel like you just saved them from the Blight, so sending them back to the Grey Wardens seems like a cruel and ironic fate. Couldn't you split them up, so that half go to the Wardens? In any case, they’re gonna get bred together. Assan will stay with Davrin either way, even if he sacrifices himself, Assan perishes with him.

Taash embraces her Qunari heritage or her Rivaini upbringing

This feels like a personal decision you shouldn’t be making for Taash. Sure, it’s an important step in them discovering who they are but like? I dunno what’s right for you, bud. And I feel like you can be multicultural? You can be both? Or neither? Or just take what feels good. Like, you had the right idea at the beginning when you and Rook went bird feeding.

I feel like Taash had their mom telling them what to do before, and after her death they expect Rook to tell them what to do. Either way, Taash will read the old tablet about (Adaari) firebreathers - they’re a rare genetic variant of Qunari that comes from having dragon’s blood. The tablet says they’ll be needed to fight the Devouring Storm (whatever that is).

Taash decides to help the Adaari and the Antaam because they don’t know how to live outside the Qun. They’ll seek to unify them for whatever comes next, either under the Qun and Qunari or with the Lords of Fortune. Same goal, different people. Again, why are you the one to choose?

Lucanis forgives VS condemns Illario’s betrayal

Illario doesn’t die or get killed either way. He just gets locked up if you condemn him. Lucanis is moody for a bit and becomes the First Talon anyway. If you forgive Illario, he just gets dragged away by Viago with a promise to ‘keep him out of trouble’. This mirrors Neve’s mission where Aelia just gets ‘taken away’. However, you still get the option, even if Treviso fell and Lucanis is hardened, and it’s weird that you make it for him. He talks about getting rid of Spite but we never see it happen in game. You only get the Fade/fake Ossuary run if you chose Treviso over Minrathous.

So, after 20+ hours at the minimum, we arrive at the finale. And if you did all the stupid side quests, from ‘have tea with a griffon’ to ‘murder a blood mage’, you should be ready to face the Big Bad. Again, you are railroaded into a suicide mission reminiscent of Mass Effect 2. I’m not saying it’s a rip off but it does feel oddly similar. Even the Darkspawn look like Husks from Mass Effect. However, doing your companion’s side mission would ensure they survived the finale in ME2. In Veilguard, no matter how many nug truffles you find, you will always lose at least one companion.

After an entire game of meaningless choices, this seems kind of arbitrary and unwarranted but okay, sure.

Harding or Davrin will die no matter what.

Harding will naturally be romanced by Taash if Rook doesn’t get in there, so Taash will be devastated if Harding dies. Harding is also the only dwarf that can do magic? And hears the song of the Stone? And is connected to the Titans? Plus she is a rogue so I don’t see how she’s supposed to hold off a bunch of Antaam by herself.

Davrin is a Grey Warden and built like a brick shithouse. He has a pet griffin but there is a ticking clock looming over his life that ends with him leaving for the Deep Roads to die fighting Darkspawn or becoming one himself. A family and children is biologically unlikely to happen for him for Grey Warden reasons. If Rook doesn’t romance him, he remains a good boy griffin dad, alone.

It feels cheap and nasty but Grey Wardens are about sacrifice and Davrin keeps talking about how he should have died at Weisshaupt so it kind of makes sense for Davrin to give his life to slay Ghilan’nain but it feels bad after all he’s been through. And after all the bad guys you’ve spared in Veilguard, it sucks that you have to lose someone at this stage no matter what.

The next decision is

Neve or Bellara unlock the magic wards and open the door for the party to move forward

The consequence of this is that one of them is kidnapped by Elger’nan and used to pilot the Blight in Minrathous like an organic computer. This means whoever you choose will be infected and get nasty black veins and eyes with red irises. However, if you finish the game and seal the Blight in the Fade again, then whoever you pick gets a title card and is cured? As long as they have the Hero of the Veilguard badge like a pokemon, they will survive.

The final FINAL final battle(1).psd has some more choices that are so simple it's kind of insulting.

Three guesses who should go with the assassins to assassinate the enemy of the assassins? If you guessed Lucanis, you were right! Get a mage to help the Veil Jumpers do the magic things. And a warrior to fight the big evil statue/construct.

It’s like a shape puzzle for toddlers that rewards you with a cutscene. And if each of the assigned companions have a Hero of the Veilguard badge, they are guaranteed to succeed and live. Which just makes me feel bad for Dav/Harding.

The final decision you get to make in the game is what to do about Solas.

He’s tricked you into killing Elger’nan whose soul was the only thing left binding the Veil in place so in a roundabout way, Solas succeeds in tearing down the Veil like he planned from the beginning.

You have 3 (maybe 4) choices.

Fight Solas, stab him with his dagger and bind his soul to the Veil to keep it in place. If you suck and all your friends died, then you get sucked into the Fade with him.

Trick Solas with a fake dagger Emmrich made (super unclear how/when/why you have this). Solas tries to use the fake and it backfires. You then stab him and bind his soul to the Veil, he gets yanked in like a yoyo.

IF you watched all of Solas' Funniest Home Videos and got the shard of Mythal, you can appeal to Solas’s better nature. Morrigan appears and channels Mythal who’s like- ‘Solas, you did everything I ever told you to do and it fucked you up. I’m sorry. You’re fired.’ And the Inquisitor appears to plead with him. If it’s a romanced Lavellan, they kiss and walk into the Fade.

Secret Ending. If you did the Mysterious Circle puzzles and got the Mythal Ending you too can experience blinding rage by getting the forbidden Executors cutscene

Whatever you choose, the sky closes up. The Blight is magically cured. In the end, what’s left of your party climbs down the beanstalk and gets a cheer and applause from about five NPCs and now we’re back to where this rant began.

The Illuminati.

I’m so glad we waited 15 years to be told it was all part of the Executors’ plan. And the REAL bad guys were across the sea and manipulating us all along.

What a satisfying ending /s

I hate it.

I hate this game so fucking much because it could have been so good. And instead, it was bad and rushed.

Even the romances that were soooo hyped up by the writers turned out to be less than twenty minutes long and folded into regular dialogue. You have to have most of these conversations anyway, even if you’re not romancing the character. Go on. Look up how long each romance is on Youtube.

Lucanis - 18 minutes of flat, bored, uninterested broody angsty responses and coffee talk while he makes googoo eyes at Neve

Emmrich - 18 minutes of true romance but hounded by ambient dialogue of cradle snatching from the party and an argument right before the final battle. It’s clear this romance got a lot more thought and care written in than the others. There's definitely more going on that just a confession of feelings, commitment to an exclusive relationship, and fade to black. Coffin sex? A pleasant surprise.

Davrin - 17 minutes of hunky grey warden booty with a heart of gold and a baby bird lion child. Perfect LI <3

Bellara - 18 minutes of shy awkward girl fumbling with words and eventually getting them out. Feels like Merill from DA2 but less complicated and deep. She’s definitely cute and someone’s type but very Disney princess romance

Taash - 18 minutes of wooing a moody teenager with anger issues that realises they’re non-binary, loses their mom and finds out they have some crazy destiny but handles everything like a child. Everything has to be a dragon hunting metaphor. yikes

Neve - 16 minutes of Neve who’s great but you get most of the same scenes without the romance. You trade quips and banter like in a hard boiled detective novel and then it’s over. The fact that she can get hurt and kidnapped and her city can get destroyed adds a lot to this but it’s so little.

Harding - 14 MINUTES!!! Most of it is stuff that you have to talk about as part of her quest. You could have done so much more with the lyrium sting it gave Rook but they didn’t.

To compare, Solas’s romance in Inquisition was around 17 minutes long if you don’t count all the dialogue you can have by just talking to him. You can’t do that in Veilguard because you can’t just walk up to a companion and talk to them. It has to be a cutscene with extremely limited lines, or it’s ambient dialogue that's dripfed to you every time you return to the lighthouse. If you count every single conversation you can have with your companions in Inquisition, then each romance is at least an hour long!

In Veilguard, you can’t even walk up to your LI and ask for a kiss! >:(

I am so angry. I'm only going to play it five more times.

I need to know more about Elger'nan and Ghilan'nain. Why didn't we learn more about their origin story? About their plans? Why did they need the Blight when Elger'nan just showed up in Arlathan and all the Venatori were ready to bend the knee? They could have just walked up to Minrathous with Lusacan and Razikale and been met with uproarious cheers. And how did he move the moon? How did he just do an eclipse? How did that not drown the entire fucking world? Is Thedas flat earth?

Why the Titans? What happened? Why did they have magic? Was it different? Why did the spirits/elves want it? If the Evanuris were the first elves then are modern elves technically related? Can they all trace their lineage back to them? Where are the other Elven Gods? Are they sealed away forever now? We killed their archedemons so they must be mortal. And what is the Devouring Storm?

AAAAAAAA

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome.

#veilguard critical #datv spoilers #veilguard spoilers #dragon age spoilers #rant #long post #dont click this unless you wanna scroll for days

31 notes · View notes