#bros come on whos gonna do it with me

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[myreputatioooon]

okay but can we see Wuthering Height's side on the fallout of Heathcliff being Doomed by the Narrative in World of U Corp?

manor reconstruction is in order, golden boughs are secured, some more years and Heathcliff will be invited back home

some years too early an uninvited guest requests an audience with somebody he only knows by the name of Cathy to give news regarding Heathcliff

Catherine, deprived of her love for so long demands the same, demands he tells everything he knows about Heathcliff, to know the name of whom Heathcliff has spent the last of his years with

"I've beaten around the bush for too long, I came here because Heathcliff loved you dearly, so much so he had a coffin made for the moment of his inevitable demise.

"I'm inviting you, and anybody you wish to take with you, to my love's funeral. Please forgive me for not having the funds to host it in a Nest," is spoken from Yi Sang.

whom Heathcliff has spent the last of his years with

it can't be him

[wisegirl-seaweedbrain]

and the crowd… exchanges confused glances?

[bayetea]

just all of this from moa regarding frank/hazel/leo. the most uncomfortable romantic tension ever because nobody understands it and nobody involved wants it to be there

especially "Hazel's eyes glittered like gold. 'Gold is easy,' she said. It didn't seem that way to Leo--not when he looked at her." like we can interpret this in a few ways. what an interesting thing to think about a girl you just met

and the whole "if this is a private special thing that she's only done with her boyfriend then I either really don't want to try it or I really really do want to try it" like STOP cut the cameras

[kuroshipped]

11

bro the black is so hideous oh my god But whatever im still figuring out the optimal way to draw him.. maybe ill shade thid more tomorrow im extreme Eveeryday im artblocking so it looks ass I REALLY LIKE THE CHEREN THOUGH not his hands.

anyone remember this Little scuffle before they went yaoi mode

[borgialucrezia]

"He's spent the entire time being picked upon and bullied by the family. I think personally from where Juan stands he sees the hypocrisy in the family, how they can do one thing and say another. As far as Juan is concerned he's always had the best interests of the family at heart, however misguided that might be and doesn't quite comprehend why nobody understands that. Nobody seems to understand that what he does, he does for the betterment of the Borgia clan and never waivers from that. He does that in ways that perhaps aren't sanctioned by the church or sanctioned by family law."

[tojiscrack]

MALAKAI WILL PERISHHHHH AND CRUMBLE AT MY FEET AT THE HANDS OF MEGUMI DONT EVEN PLAY. worldstarrrrrrrrrrrr Twitter fight video

(Hi boobooo ilysmmm i hope ur having a good day 🫀🫀😛)

erm-

if malakai was ever a love interest (will he? will he not? 👀) i’m pretty sure megumi would feel REALLY secure in his relationship with y/n 😭 like, he wouldn’t even feel threatened by THAT, iygwim?? 💀 like malakai as his competition guarantees him a win, i think. unless kai pulls out some of that poetic english he speaks in (he’s really good at analysing dark poetry, old poems like my last dutchess or stories with dark themes).

(hello ml, this made me die laughing you have no idea 😭 had the worst day today but made instantly better when i saw this weirdly-detailed message sent by you 😧)

[atopvisenyashill]

podcast makes a point that the iron throne is completely at odds with the concept of the valyrian freehold, and kinda dooms the targs from the start because the freehold being a large group of families reminds them that their power is completely tied to the living and very killable dragons whereas the throne demands only one person on top, so you HAVE to reconcile the branches on your family tree or they WILL start getting massacre happy about being The One On Top.

it’s a really great point. anyways i think this could be fixed by aegon giving every single lord paramount a dragon. there’s no way this goes wrong it’s full proof i’m a genius.

[spearxwind]

i think also a huge part of why artists majorly refuse machine-learning (bc that’s what it is, i refuse to call it ai bc it’s inaccurate and gives tech bros too much credit) is that the people currently championing and developing those tools actively want it to replace artists. They loudly and proudly hate the arts and want every creative professional put out of work. They want every creative HOBBYIST to give up. I have seen machine-learning art generators call us artoids (like ‘femoids’ incels or unhealthily online misogynists use to refer to women. To give you the idea of the kind of hate-fueled superiority we’re dealing with) and circle-jerk to the idea of art no longer being a career and no one being able to ask for commissions anymore.

Machine-learning tools are currently a symbol of people who see creativity and art as an enemy, a boogeyman to be slain. They are designed accordingly - stealing human work to create the data, designing it so that people can generate ‘sketches’ or ‘doodles’ to deceive the layman that it was hand-drawn, using real-world likenesses without consent, etc. When tech bros get tired of weaponizing machine-learning because they think we need to get ‘real jobs’ or that furry porn artists charge too much for comms and need to be stopped, it will probably be a lot easier for artists to embrace it as it’ll be a lot easier to develop ethical tools. On top of making development easier, it could become a great tool to make the visual arts accessible for people that have disabilities affecting drawing ability. It could be a wonderful technology.

But as it stands we’re not there yet.

WHATTTT.... ARTOIDS 💀.............................. that is THE most cringe fucking word ever im gonna start calling them fucking inceloids or something

Arent these the people who also have hentai addictions and collect all sorts of images of anime women breasting boobily? Do they think before AI that those images just popped up from the aether? They should also get real jobs that arent living in their moms basements and being a hateful little bitch

It's kind of hilarious that they think machine learning models will be the the end of art though. As if art hasnt been a core human function from prehistoric age and as if it hasnt survived hundreds of purges, demonizations, and attempts to erase certain styles and movements and people. We're going to prevail no matter what and they can die mad about it

[jrueships]

im going into my new work tomorrow, first time ever😐

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Was soooooo happy with this phase 1 which is what made it so much funnier that I was immediately clapped by his phase 2 😂

[grinchwrapsupreme]

being super normal about White calling Billy "a dreamer"after the events of Maybe No Go

[pastelpousay]

hades is a vile and disgusting in character (disney & mythology) and you’re no better than a proshipper for selfshipping with him </3 sorry not sorry but dont try to lump urself with us normal people when you ship yourself with a problematic character!

Nigga ur literally using anon you have no right to have an opinion 💗

“Don’t try and lump yourself in with us normal people” WHO TF DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!? 💀 IF HOU HAVE TO CLAIM YOU’RE NORMAL YOU ARE NOT NORMAL 💀 PLEASE GET OF TUMBLR GET OFF THE INTERNET AND GO GET A LIFE. ALSO HES LITERALLY A DISNEY CHARACTER GROW TF UP BITCH 😽💗

[shiny-miltank]

man what a weekend. I went into lunch with my pizza launchable and came out twenty minutes later with things once again on fire political wise lmao.

and my lads, if you go into a cat rescue listing off extreme specifics, practically shopping for a kitten with certain color aesthetics, and not even taking the time being borderline hostile for me to politely explain the odds and ends of what a shelter is trying to do while showing you very friendly and cute other cats, and maybe a kitten isnt a good fit for your older, modest cat --

then please step on a sharp corner lego piece on the way out.

[tittysuckersworld]

lettin here know first but uh. im a resident usamerican and because of. well. my family is already planning on moving out of the place! so! uh yeah!!! were plannin on headin somewhere where we can take time learning new languages and can hopefully make ourselves a good life. i dont know when this will happen. i know im at least going to be finnishing this school year as long as stuff dosent get too bad. my older bro is going to be leaving somewhere else first early so he can be safe while me and lil bro plus dad are gonna be staying here to finnish the year. sorry all this is really surreal and i dont know what to say. ya

[floralovebot]

i got the full fairy outfit UEUEUEUEUEUUEUE