#bioware what the fuck is this

[dragonagedastferaasdf]

[lizzybeeee]

Dragon Age 2, with it's production time of only 14-16 months, is infinitely superior to DATV which had a production time of 10 years.

[zombolouge]

Bioware just announced it's canning another 50 employees, including Mary Kirby, and I'm just miserable about what that means for the state of the games and the future of the studio.

[jazuthevulcanprincess]

so its like super sexy and cool for other people to have a spirit inside them but not anders

wynne is fine, lucanis is super cool with spite, but when it comes to anders and justice suddenly no hes a terrorist and a monster

bioware when i catch you its on sight

[vaguely-concerned]

obsessed with the fact that if you choose the last purple option in lucanis' romance chat before going off to tearstone island ("they MOVED the MOON!!!" still in the running for the best delivery in the whole game btw it's so ineffably hilarious to me), it's rook who flinches away just a little bit (if still warmly <3) and tries to change the topic and lucanis who's steady even though he's clearly still so afraid. 'don't tempt fate'/'*the softest fucking voice you've ever heard in your entire life* I don't intend to'. pain and suffering

lucanis looking at rook and helplessly, with a wonder that verges on despair, saying 'what would I do without you?' is soooo. especially at that point in the relationship and with what's about to happen. and for whatever reason rook can't quite stay with the fact that they do mean that much to someone, that they are so reverently and so groundingly 'I want to know what your favourite food is so I can make it for you any time you want it' everyday loved, it's too much and they have to deflect from it or the fear of losing it. can say some very interesting things about them, too.

(there is also a Pattern in that in my estimation lucanis frequently responds better to inviting humour than to earnest shows of concern -- it seems to help him be more engaged/online to be offered that more neutral space to meet you in and uh 'build' the conversation around something funny together than to be confronted with compassion head-on because that clearly mostly deer-in-the-headlights him, as we also see with some of the early flirt options haha. contrast this especially with bellara, who repeatedly gets genuinely upset if you try to make light of some pressing and painful situation she's dealing with (girl I'm so sorry I'm so jestercore and I canot change this but I'll try :'( for you). I think the times lucanis reacts negatively to the purple options are much more about you siding with other (frequently more charismatic lol) people against him or throwing him under the bus interpersonally -- like seeming to go along with illario's charm offensives, or telling teia lucanis didn't want to come help out with caterina's funeral and he'd just sit alone and brood about it if you didn't force him (???!!! hello??? unprovoked and deeply unkind out of left field???? this option is so fucking MEAN and for what fhdaskjfa you're telling me there's no way for rook to be a bit of a dick in this game?)

when it's one on one conversation he consistently seems to find it quite comforting, though... which makes a lot of sense because in many ways it's how he interacts with illario, just shorn of the resentments and hidden daggers and things they Do Not Talk About but really should beneath the levity that makes it sharp. it's gone ugly between them, but I think the affectionate instinct beneath is real and goes back a long way before all of that festered -- it's a form of play he does with people he loves. and uh. not really caterina huh. notably.)

[baejax-the-great]

If I were a writer at a big game company working on a sequel to a beloved series and the higher ups kept telling me to make the game shittier and kept sending my work back to me to be dumbed down even further somehow, and then once most of the writing was done they laid me and my coworkers off illegally without severance, I'd probably gleefully watch as people trashed the shitty game that shipped.

[deputyrook]

dragon age devs: solas would let people die but wouldn’t sacrifice someone directly, he might kill out of mercy but there are lines he would not cross

um-

[sundogsandrainbows]

"Whoever wrote this shit fucking hates Origins or has never played it and no fukkin clue what the hell the Grey Wardens even are. But it is really no coincidence, the Grey Wardens have been treated like shit in every single game (x)"

Couldn't have said it better.

But also wooah, I thought I have seen all of New Bioware's disdain for all that came before them™ by now, but this here, going complete scorched earth, is yet another level of spite for the old games and the people who worked on them (and left/were fired without severance pay since then) that even I would have not expected. Way to spit in the faces of longtime fans, "bioware" Good job!!! 🤢🤢🤢

Fuck this game, srlsy.

[0alix0]

you hate solas x mythal because you think solas shouldn't have had any previous relationships in thousands of years of his life

i hate solas x mythal because it's yet another exhausting love triangle where the slaver and abuser gets a funky reincarnation and the victim gets blamed for absolutely everything and put into magical prison forever..........

we are not the same

[vangbelsing]

Can I be so transparent and say idc about the Neve and Lucanis ship. I'm not a big fan of it but also it's whatever so when it happens I just kinda stand there like🧍‍♀️okay??? BUT I am about to kill myself at the idea of Emmrich being with Strife and not me

[v-arbellanaris]

i go out of my way to tag my critical posts because i dont want to interrupt people's enjoyment of the game, but ive gotta say im getting really fucking annoyed at fan attitudes about anyone who has criticisms of the game at all

white people in the da fandom will hear "hey, why isnt the fact that racism/classism exists (which THE GAME has made clear for like 15 years now), and is systemic, ever mentioned or acknowledged in any real way in this game" and immediately have the worst bad faith take on the statement ever to immediately scream about how evil it is that People (because ofc they never imagine that any person of colour might be upset at the blatant erasure) Want Depictions of Bad Things like racism in their media

as an example, there is no consideration of slavery as a systemic practice in dock town - even as 'the poorest of the poor' social level, soporati are not slaves. i dont know if youve ever interacted with members of your society, but we do not fucking exist in a vacuum. dock town is not magically Not part of tevinter or tevinter politics - the fucking black divine literally has a whole fucking home base there. it literally wouldn't have taken that many changes either. we could have heard ambient banter about how the pay's shit, etc, but We All Know It Could Be So Much Worse (you could be enslaved). an ambient dialogue/banter about maybe someone working themselves desperately to the bone to try and buy their sibling back from servitude from a magister. like those are ugly situations, yeah, but do you see how that 1) lends some fucking depth to the population that is both consistent with the lore of previous games and 2) emphasising that people in dock town are not magisters, and are as subject to the whims of the ruling class as slaves are (can't believe i want class consciousness in my media, i know) and c) creating social and power distance between the magisters of tevinter and everyone else. but i dont recall getting anything like that in the game, but i do recall the two dockhands trying to awkwardly go on a date together. this is because veilguard is not interested in delving into these topics, which is a decision that was made, that i - a person who paid money for this game - get to criticise. on my own damn blog. under a read more on a correctly tagged post that you can choose not to engage with so as to not spoil your own hype.

YOU can't deal with your guilt so it makes YOU uncomfortable to see depictions of racism, but i dont have that problem. i don't get to opt out of racism in real life, i don't get to opt out of classism and casteism in real life, and so it's important to me to represent these experiences authentically and respectfully. if that kind of storytelling is not your cup of tea, that's fine, you can literally just say that - we all have different things we want out of our media. i might privately judge you but that's a valid take to have. but im getting really fucking annoyed by people acting Holier Than Thou and like Superior Understanders, and constantly undermining valid criticisms of how flat the sociopolitical contexts are in veilguard are either just Coming From The Racists, bad faith interpretations and/or illiterate idiots in the most fucking condescending way possible

[lizzybeeee]

Calling it now:

If there's ever any future installments of Dragon Age there will be no mention of the differentiation between the Dalish or City Elves.

Like in DATV they will simply all be 'elves' and the vallaslin will be reduced to 'cool looking tattoo's that some veil jumpers have' - no mention of the elven pantheon either, because why bother! They're all dead now!

They're all dead and responsible for every lore plot point in Thedas, and there's nothing of mystery or substance left in the world now.

No mention of the culture in the alienage, of the vhenadahl tree, of the horrific racism and systematic abuse the elves have been through...now its just elves. With the way the Veil Jumpers have been set up, and the fact that the elven gods were the enemy in DATV, I find it extremely unlikely that the Dalish will even exist as a group either. Why would they? Their Gods returned and blighted the world - not that the fact is even truly discussed in the game. Elves are just elves, and the notable elves are Veil Jumpers.

Maybe you'll walk in a city, pick up a codex, and get a copy and pasted explanation of history from a DAO codex - a reminder of what we used to have and what BioWare absolutely demolished in their attempt to build a new IP on the bones of Dragon Age. The absolute whiplash in writing, story, and character between DAI and DATV is staggering. How on earth could the studio that made such a gorgeous, rich world of lore surrounding the elves in one game end up utterly bastardizing and reducing it to nothing?

How can you look at a place like the Temple of Mythal and go from those gorgeous golden murals and emerald tiled roofs that reached to the heavens to a place like the Lighthouse? From the Emerald Graves to the ruins of Arlathan - devoid of halls that reach to the heavens and golden murals replaced with stained glass? The entirety of the Trespasser DLC had more character and reverence for what the elven empire once was, and DATV feels as though it's approaching it with the perspective of 'generic elven bullshit with triangles everywhere'. All that unique architecture has been obliterated by adding in World of Warcraft focus crystals and automatons.

How can you go from the atmospheric/environmental storytelling of the Lost Temple of Dirthamen to Solas just blurting everything out? No weight, no double truths or hidden meanings - just blurting it out, getting it said and done with no gravitas? That was Solas' entire thing! People have made threads literally dissecting what Solas says and does not say - now he spits lore out as though it were common, everyday knowledge.

How can anyone justify the sudden emergence of magical automatons everywhere in old elven ruins? As if Dragon Age didn't have a host of enemies/creatures available to use in their stead - or the ability to create something unique to the forest of Arlathan. What happened to the spirit guardians? What happened to the lingering echoes of the elves slaughtered by humans in wars ages past like in DAO? Magic was their very existence - spells taking years or centuries to cast, weaving in and about each other - and you're telling me the ancient elves spent their time creating magical transformers?! It feels/looks so utterly seperate from everything we know of the elves from Dragon Age.

Or look at the Crossroads - listen to how Morrigan speaks of it - the reverence for the past, the misty atmosphere, and the heaviness of this pocket of the world that carries the fading memories of a world and people that no longer exists...now it's reduced to a hub world! People are just popping in and out of it at will!

In Trespasser, the few eluvians that we were available to travel to led to the most lonely, desolate spots of Thedas, which ensured their survival over the past millennia. The mirror in the Deep Roads, the mirror in the ancient stronghold in Ferelden...now they're everywhere!The 'few surviving' eluvians are in every major settlement of Thedas and all are in operating order! More than that, everyone who sees an eluvian knows what it is - this ancient marvel of a world long gone has lost all worth and is reduced to a 'world building' justification for fast travel.

Poor Merrill, slaving for a near decade to try and restore a small sliver of her history, only to have all gravitas and wonder of her discovery utterly made void. All that accomplishment wasted, especially when Bellara can wave her magic omni-tool and fix an eluvian in a matter of hours.

If you took every specific Dragon Age terminology out of the Veilguard and replaced it with generic fantasy bullshit you would never be able to tell the difference. The world of DATV is so divorced from its predecessors its astounding.

[fxnharellll]

LEAVE LOGHAIN OUT OF UR BULLSHIT

[vigilskept]

genuinely in disbelief that this is what the devs were talking about when saying they “gave the dalish a win.” it’s so absurd i don’t even know how to go about trying to make sense of it.

how is it a win, exactly, to put an entire culture in a position where they have to abandon their religious beliefs so that they can align with you?

“well now you don’t have to kill them :)”

you didn’t have to kill them before, either. but they had their own motivations and belief systems which could clash with your character. they could be openly hostile to your character from the first meeting. but you had the choice to try to understand them better, and find a way forward that wouldn’t end in bloodshed.

elgar’nan speaks to an elven rook calling them my child. he tells them he empathizes with their pain, the wrongful oppression they’ve suffered in this world. he offers them a place at his side.

to have him extend the same offer to other elves (not ALL of whom are powerless! there are keepers! there are first enchanters! if leliana is the divine? there are CHANTRY MOTHERS) would not have been crueler, it would’ve been the perfect outlet for elven characters to express their pain, their frustration with the state of things as they are/have always been.

and you could (as you’ve ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO) offer these characters understanding. you could reach out, and find a way to work with them too.

it’s not a “win” to have no conflict with dalish or elven characters. it’s not a “win” to have what little inner conflict these characters are allowed to have reduced to a codex entry where an npc struggles with the legacy of arlathan.

the position of the veil jumpers is already so sidelined within the narrative compared to the crows and shadow dragons, there was absolutely room to expand on it.

instead, we had the agents of fen’harel scrubbed from then game, and elves who can’t express any conflicted feelings about the situation outside a codex entry. and somehow this is a win?

[wetsocksinbed]

while I’ll never personally pick anything but the “redeem” route, I do find it incredibly funny that Fen’Harel will fight literal gods, and a giant dragon, and fully rip said dragon’s throat out with his own teeth, only to be defeated by a rather scruffy nobody, who was named after a chess piece by a man who writes canonically bad smut for a living

[baejax-the-great]

Playing Veilguard like: