#bioware is deader than dead

[sundogsandrainbows]

I mean, that Bioware in a whole did not value good writing and engaging stories any longer was pretty obvious ever since ME: Andromeda, which was mid at best and already riddled with the marvel-eque "broad appeal" tone plaguing VG a hundredfold. ME:A pretty much foretold the steady decline of their games' quality in hindsight too and the less there is said about Anthem the better. But yeah, looking back on the past decade, Veilguard being written as ass as it is, kinda was to be expected as Bioware's priorities toward good, coherent storytelling got shortchanged for utter mediocrity and chasing after the coattail of the attention-span challenged mass-audience instead. Shallow, pretty appearance over substance and depth, that is the state of Bioware in 2025, and it will only get worse. Good on Gaider that he recognized it early enough to leave this sinking ship, tbh.

Now that Veilguard is out, this feels like he was trying to warn us.

[eff-plays]

That's what I found funny about those comments about Rook not being the 'super special protagonist'. Hawke started off as a nobody,and yet people on here generally seemed to like them,but the kicker was that Hawke was still extremely competent working as a mercenary and all that,despite the surrounding messiness of Kirkwall. With Rook its like the devs were more concerned with making them oh so quirky,funny and #relatable and I've never wanted to dropkick a protagonist in a Bioware game more than I did them which caught me off guard!😅

It's not even about competence, because Rook is perfectly competent. But that's about all they are. Competent. In fact, they're just as if not less competent than the companions. There's no real reason for why they're the leader, despite leadership supposedly being sooooo central to their story. A good game will give you a reason as to why you're the leader of your ragtag group, even if mechanically, it's a given.

Like. The Warden is recruited why? They did some insane shit and Duncan went "oh fuck I need someone like this ASAP" and/or "this compentent person's about to be murdered and I gotta grab them before that." There's myriad reasons, but you, as the player, are there to see it, and it makes sense to you. After Ostagar, why are you the leader? Because Alistair doesn't want to be. That's his big character trait, he doesn't want to lead, he's not comfortable making decisions. But somebody has to, or else Ferelden is fucked! This trait of his creates consequences for him and for the player, which builds both their characters. So the Warden is a leader out of necessity, and it adds to the desperation of the story but also the characterization of the Warden: no matter the reason why, this is a person who will step up when shit hits the fan, and get shit done.

Hawke. Why is Hawke the leader? Well, initially they lead the family because of family dynamics. They're the eldest sibling, and Malcom left them in charge, not Leandra. Again, this builds character for both Hawke and Leandra. They defer to her out of respect and because she's their mother, but it's made obvious in the prologue that she's not the one leading the party out of Lothering. Why won't Bethany lead? She's too timid, too used to hiding in the shadows. Why won't Carver lead? He's brash and has something to prove, his ego will get in the way of getting shit done. Also, both of them are like, 18. So yeah. Aveline? She's busy taking care of her husband, who is very much too dying to throw his dick around, as seen by Hawke standing up to him when he threatens Bethany. So? That leaves Hawke.

Why does Hawke keep leading the Kirkwall gang, then? Varric is comfortable close to the action but not the one leading it, he's a little freak who likes to watch and take notes. When he's made Kirkwall's Viscount, he fucking hates it. Anders? No. Fenris? He'd behead Anders the first chance he got, who's the only healer around, and Fenris needs to keep a low profile on account of being hunted. So he's deader than dead after a few months at best. Merrill? No. Aveline? She's in a position of authority, but as the game shows us, she's not very good at that, either. Isabella? She's probably the closest to a competent leader out of the guys left, and she's a former ship captain, so that makes sense, but without Hawke's influence, she's too selfish to stick around for long, so she'd just use the gang for her ends and then fuck off. She'd also have a hard time getting Aveline to behave.

So. It has to be Hawke. They're the only one who can utilize the companions in a productive way while keeping their most destructive tendencies in check, consciously or not. Mind you, being a GOOD leader isn't a priority in a game. You can be a huge asshole, but still there needs to be an in-universe reason for why it's the player character and nobody else. More on this later.

Inquisitor? They're the easiest to explain, because they have the Anchor, but even with that narrative gimme, the writers show them becoming The Inquisitor after a while. After they work for the Inquisition as an agent first, proving themselves very capable out of necessity or a genuine desire, after Haven, where we see they have what it takes to lead a large amount of people while also putting those people above themselves (potentially out of optics/necessity). Even there, the narrative goes out of its way to show how and why the player character is in charge, the progression of events that leads there. Notably also, the Inquisitor isn't shown to be good at everything nor handle everything personally, they have advisors and agents, so even there it's not "everything is your job personally and only you can fix it" but "you're the main guy, both figurehead and the only one with the literal means to fix this, but you're just one person so you need help". It makes sense from a narrative standpoint.

Rook? Oh boy. First of all let's see why they're in the story in the first place. Varric recruited them. Off-screen. Where they did a thing that saved people instead of a powerful person's investment. Cool. We don't see this happening, or how Rook went about doing this. We're meant to be swayed by just the concept of somebody not being down to sacrifice people for the profit of some guy, we're meant to think this is what makes Rook a good leader. But it doesn't? It just makes them a vaguely good person, yet we're meant to think Varric, who's seen so much shit, thought this quaint little action was enough to mark Rook as special. Need I remind you that he recruited Hawke because they were a very competent mercenary. And yeah, the man has done a lot of growth in the years since, but you get what I'm saying, right? If anything, he'd think this was a naive little rookie (ha) who hadn't yet been hardened by the world.

But sure, okay. Varric recruited this do-gooder go-getter, and then he croaks, leaving them in charge. Why? No really, why are they in charge? Why do Harding and Neve defer to them? Harding was an Inquisition scout and worked to stop Solas before Rook was even recruited, so she'd have seniority over them in this regard. Neve is a hardened seasoned Batman detective or what the fuck ever. She's not even getting paid at this point, so she sticks around out of morality than anything else. Why doesn't she take charge to lead the investigation? Esp since Rook and Harding are more used to following orders than she is. As the later companions join, it gets even more ridonk that Rook is in charge. Davrin is explicitly a superior to a Warden Rook, and he does give them the order that he'll be the one to kill the Archdemon instead of them. Emmrich is explicitly always senior to a Mourn Watch Rook, and he's a professor, and older than everyone else. This guy knows how to lead. Rook is always outclassed by whoever shares their faction. And yet, they're in charge.

"Well they have Solas in their head" sure. But Rook could just as easily have been an advisor type who relayed the information to whoever else led the Veilguard. Solas' manipulation is a Doylist justification for their leadership, but provides no real reason for why everyone else is down to listen to the guy who has the enemy whispering secrets in their brain. Solas needs a foil, yeah, so he creates his own foil. But "Solas needs a foil" can't be the justification you give the rest of the characters in-fiction. If Davrin asked "hey why am I listening to the orders of a junior member" Rook shouldn't answer "well it's because one of the guys we're fighting who caused all this tells me what to do :)" Good thing everyone's so nice and never asks questions, I guess.

The one thing Rook has going for them is that they're so nice and can talk people through their problems. But that's a therapist, not a leader. And we don't really get the sense that being nice and a good listener is unique to them in any way. Because everyone is always nice to each other, we don't get the sense that any of them have a connection to Rook they don't have to anyone else. In fact, we can't talk to anyone outside of when they want to talk to us, with our only option being that we have to eavesdrop on them talking in private, and they stop as soon as they notice us. That makes Rook feel uniquely isolated from the others, not like they have a special connection to each of them. It's more like we truly are the therapist, somebody who has to be nice and understanding out of obligation rather than any genuine connection.

One thing that stuck with me is that Iron Bull line from Inquisition, where he says that being a leader isn't about being the best or strongest or most powerful, but being willing to make tough decisions when nobody else is. And this, this could have worked wonders in Veilguard. If everybody else remained as nice as they were, but Rook was pragmatic and ruthless and didn't shy away from hard choices? That would have made sense, especially with the angle the game tries to go for of "uwu the burdens of leadership uwu." Rook never has to consciously make hard decisions, they never have to weigh the pros and cons and consider the consequences, because they can never know those before they make a choice. The main ones being Treviso vs Minrathous and Harding vs Davrin.

In Treviso vs Minrathous it's pretty ridiculous how the companion from the city you don't save gets mad at Rook. The same amount of people went to each city, and people didn't know they needed the dagger to kill the dragon. As far as Rook knew, both cities had the same chances of survival, and it was unfortunate luck that this wasn't the case. And while it makes some sense for the companion to have this irrational blame for Rook for a bit, the game can't really frame this as "Rook's choice", because it wasn't. It's not their failure. The consequences of that choice are not fully theirs to claim, and thus that burden of leadership doesn't apply to them quite as much as the game pretends to.

The Harding vs Davrin choice is even dumber in that regard. Rook sends one of them to hold off a second hostile force. Which they successfully do, regardless of who you pick. Davrin/Harding then chooses to launch themselves at Gil. That is 100% out of Rook's control. Rook didn't send either of them to their deaths, and it's only a consequence of the player's actions in a gameplay sense, NOT Rook's. Which is why the whole Regret prison sequence feels so weird. The game conflates the player as an actor with Rook as a character.

Actually, let's talk about the Regret prison. The game's whole "oh woe the burdens of leadership, Rook vs. Solas as leaders, oh these parallels!!" Except when it comes to actually hold Rook accountable for anything they do, it chickens out. The game bombards you with The Walking Dead style popups like you have the object permanence of a toddler, "THIS ACTION WILL HAVE CONSEQUENCES", but then when it's time to face those consequences in the Regret prison, Rook gets outta there lickety-split because, well, they have no regrets! And the ones they do have aren't theirs to claim! Davrin/Harding chose to launch themselves at Gil! Bellara/Neve volunteered to deal with the barriers! All of Rook's allies are grown adults who know what they're doing!! Rook has to rely on their friends who are also fighting to save the world!! :))))

So the game spends its entire self trying to convince you that your choices matter and that they will have consequences, but in the end it goes "um actually. any leader must rely on their pals :) and their pals will willingly die for the cause (: so it's not your fault!!"

Honestly, it would've been brilliant commentary on agency in narratives like this if it was only a little bit more intentional. And the one thing that could've saved this would've been Rook going "actually, I have no regrets. Yeah it sucks my companions died but like. I succeeded in what I set out to do. Yeah Treviso burned but that's because Minrathous didn't. Yeah Harding died but that's because somebody had to keep the darkspawn away. Yeah Bellara got taken but that's because the barriers had to come down." If Rook's lack of regret wasn't because their companions are soooo competent and sooo responsible for their own fates, but because Rook WAS responsible, and they knew it, and they OWNED it, that would have been baller. But Rook's regrets aren't theirs to claim. And they're not allowed to have those they try to claim, in the end.

Instead, Rook is sad because of things that are blamed on them despite not being their fault but the game presents them as their fault, but then they're absolved not because it wasn't their fault from the start, but because the companions apparently had all the agency to begin with and simply take Rook's regrets away. So Rook feels bad about being a bad leader after experiencing the consequences they could never have predicted or owned, but are then absolved of having to feel bad because those actions were never theirs, and they actually did super great!! So, in the end, did Rook actually do ... anything? Anything at all? Can they claim to have done a single thing, if they're not even allowed to take the blame for their own choices? Can they take ownership of consequences they could never predict? Are they even a leader, or simply the most replacable therapist in all of Thedas whose only job was to tie up someone else's loose ends and enable them to save the world? And if that was the point, why yap about leadership and Solas parallells and the inane popups?

Am I making sense? If not, it's because I'm trying to untangle some bullshit that never made sense in the first place. I'm a lot like Rook in this scenario. No agency in sight.

But yeah um. I'm totally pissed because I'm not the main character. Totally just malding that I don't get to self-insert as the Mary Sue protagonist. Sure. Whatever dude.

EDIT: I just realized that a game I finished recently, Wandersong, does the whole "infinitely good therapist type fixes the world through being nice and they're NOT the main character" shtick so much better lmao.

[sugarbubbleslove]

Bioware didn't think it through.

I swear to god, this game kills me

This game really doesn't like it if you don't like Liara, it's so pathetic.

You can't call out Liara on handing your body over to Cerberus (because, you know, she can't let you go which is so beyond creepy if you weren't friends with her in ME1 - since I left her until after Virmire so no friendship and my Shepard was cordial but nothing else with Liara).

And dear god, the DLC really wanted you to hit that paragon button. I just ignored it and it came up about three, THREE!! times - like, fuck off Bioware, Shepard not comforting the person who handed her body over to Cerberus, has a part of her Armor locked up in a glass cage for display (Like why?!) and didn't even care about the fact that Shepard took a fucking tumble out of the window to stop Liara's hit-man.

Not to mention, if you invited Liara over to the ship and you talk about how you're upset that Kaidan/Ashley doesn't trust you (Which you know, is valid), she says they are short-sighted.

I honestly wanted an option to turn it around on her and remind her that SHE is the one who didn't tell ANYONE about handing Shepard's body to Cerberus.

She didn't tell Tali - considering Tali was shocked that Shepard was still alive and later says that she thought Shepard was undercover the whole time (I'm assuming Shepard gave her the bare bones later and made it clear, nope, she was deader than a doornail. 'Meat and tubes' as Jacob, so wonderfully, put it.)

Even Shepard's MOTHER believed Shepard was undercover and got called out for letting her think Shepard was Dead.

Wrex was just Wrex. He thought Shepard was that much of a badass that she basically had systems that allowed her to be spaced until she pointed out that humans don't exactly have the same system as Wrex therefore, you know, she died.

I'm sorry Liara - but you don't get to call Kaidan shortsighted when YOU were the one who left him out of the loop. YOU don't get to bad mouth Kaidan because YOU didn't tell him anything.

And the funny thing is - I'm pretty sure Liara STILL didn't tell Kaidan during the whatever time (Depending on when you did the DLC - I did it just before I hit Omega 4 Relay then did Arrival after Omega 4 so I'm gonna go with roughly 7 months) between you telling Shepard you handed her body over to Cerberus and her being on house arrest. YOU had plenty of fucking time to open your stupid mouth and TELL Kaidan the truth.

The whole thing reeks, to be honest. I actually felt like Liara and TIM were working together to keep Shepard away from Kaidan.

TIM admits that he lured the Collectors to Horizon, while informing the Alliance that Shepard was going to be on Horizon, knowing Kaidan was on it, spreading rumours that Shepard was working with Cerberus (in order to keep them from getting the Alliance) then proceeds to ask Shepard if she has put her personal business behind her.

Fuck off TIM, Shepard's business is no one but her own.

Then you find out that Liara never bothered to inform Kaidan regarding Shepard and still to this day (As far as I can tell) never told Kaidan the truth about Shepard.

Goddamnit - I seriously want the option to tell Liara to get the fuck off Shepard's ship and get her ass on the Crucible where she won't take up space and she can actually do something useful instead of sitting around in the room.

Miranda's room - BTW, which was actually Shepard's captain quarters on the Normandy SR1. She really wants to destroy all the good memories about that room, doesn't she?

Fuck.

This is the only reason why I keep Garrus alive for ME3, so I can boot Liara out of the party when we hit Palavan moon.

Bioware - you really did not think this series through, that's for sure.