#but now i know the LORE. and the dalish really interest me. and i want to make an inquisitor thats their own character

[ell-vellan]

A random collection of Veilguard Thoughts after completing the game, because I need to vent some feelings. spoilers below!

Firstly: I was going to love this game regardless. I came into it with the fewest amount of spoilers possible. I do love this game. I won't argue with anyone - if we have different opinions, that's fine! I won't tolerate hate, though.

This is my messy stream of consciousness, but let's start with the good stuff!

The Good:

-Gameplay was fun! Combat was fun and inventive, for someone who plays on Storyteller mode and tries to get through combat as fast as possible so I can get back to the story, it rarely aggravated me.

-The maps/puzzles are fun. They were usually easy enough to figure out on my own without looking it up, but just complex enough I felt smart when I got it. I like that the game almost always rewards you for looking around and exploring off the beaten path a bit.

-It felt like a spiritual successor to Mass Effect 2 in the way that you have to build your team up in order to save the world. I loved that.

-The griffons coming back is one of the best things in the Dragon Age universe ever, and I love that we could decide what to do with them. (But I'm kind of concerned that there's only 12, and they're...related? I feel like that's not enough individuals to grow the species back...)

-Letting us pet and hug Assan (with different animations!) over and over was one of the best things they ever did. Also, photo mode was a great idea.

-The little hints about Those Beyond The Sea we keep getting?! Dear God, I hope we get another game and get more lore. I'm dying to know. They've teased this for so long, I really, really wanna know what's up with this part of the world.

-i loved being able to choose our body proportions.

-I'm so thankful we got to make our Inquisitor and keep the same vallaslin and voice actor. I hate the outfit they gave them and how we had no choice in it, and I would have also preferred to have a choice in their prosthetic, but I'm grateful for what we did get. The missives from them were also a nice touch, and seeing the letter from the Inquisitor's love interest was SO HEALING. Tbh, in reality, I think the Inquisitor would have been involved WAY more, especially since the crossroads would have made travel basically instant across Thedas. But I get why Rook needed to stand on their own two feet.

-Morrigan/Mythal was a great touch. It made sense logically, there was character growth, and I'm glad Mythal wasn't gone entirely, but I wish we could know what's become of Kieran.

-All the VAs are so good. the world felt lush, magical, twisted, and fun, with just the right amount of tragedy and horror balanced with hope and love. Arlathan was gorgeous and tragic and horrific and I took SO MANY photos.

-we got more Dalish and more Qunlat words!!

-THE LORE. So many questions finally answered. I kind of thought we would learn that the Black City was actually the prison Solas made for the gods, but hey, maybe next time? I also still want to know if Andraste was real and more about the origins of elves as spirits, but alas...

-i loved the inventory system. I wish we could have sold equipment we didn't need instead of just the valuables, but it's a minor quibble. It was so much easier to manage, I didn't have to waste a bunch of time going through everything to find the best items for everyone

-ARCHON DORIAN PAVUS !! He was barely in the game which made me sad, but the fact that he was there at all and so glorious was wonderful. I wonder if people new to the game know or care about the significance of him being in charge of Tevinter, though, since we didn't even really get to have a conversation with him

About Solas:

I played thru DAI on release day. My first Inquisitor romanced him. When Everything Happened(tm) I was PISSED. I wanted revenge on Solas, I wanted to hunt him down. I've thought about him for 10 years, and now I am so wistful for more of him. I want to give him a hug. Moreover I want Lavellan to hug him.

Solas was INCREDIBLE in this. I loved, loved getting to see his memories firsthand - this was more than I'd hoped for - and the banter with Rook was one of the best parts of the game. Seeing him with hair - seeing him change into Fen'harel and fight a DRAGON? him helping us in the fade by baiting Elgar'nan and getting all bloody and beat up trying to help us, thinking he was going to trick us one final time? My wildest dreams came true. He was layered, he was complex, he was incredibly heroic and sympathetic and tortured and clever and absolutely ruthless. He was at turns heartbreakingly sincere and infuriatingly traitorous.

He showed a wide range of emotion; we got to see the real Solas, not the polite pretender of Inquisition. He was the shining star of the game for me. And he was sorely lacking.

We hardly got to speak to him!! It drove me nuts that we couldn't talk to him as much as our other companions. He literally knows the most about our enemies and how to defeat them. And we know he's probably planning some trickery in his lil mind prison. Why are we not checking on Solas at every chance we get?

Learning more about and speaking with Mythal? Chef's kiss. But I so, so wish that a romanced Inquisitor, along with Mythal's release of Solas, was what prompted Solas to realize there could be more to his life than rebellion and penance. He's betrayed everyone he's ever loved, and killed his closest friends, but he didn't kill her. Mythal represents his past, she's the origin of where it all went wrong - I wanted Solas to see a Lavellan that understands and forgives, even after everything, and that universal acceptance is the thing he needs to finally let go of trying to make up for what he's done. (It's fine, I'll just write a fanfic about it, whatever)

My Complaints:

-That we only can choose 3 possible variables for worldbuilding to keep from Inquisition. I think this the biggest, most egregious and disrespectful thing they did in the game, and I'm sure it's been talked about to death, but I'll just add that I hate it. I'll live with it - I'd rather they be vague than ret-con or kill off beloved characters off-screen - but still, what's the point of all of our previous choices if we don't get to see how they shape this world?

-The relationships felt SHALLOW. For a game that revolves around your companions, everything felt surface level. While I loved that almost every time you went to the Lighthouse, people were somewhere different and talking to each other, I HATED that Rook couldn't participate in their conversations. We only listened. I hate that we couldn't really ever initiate any long, deep conversations where we got to ask our companions strings of questions about themselves and their histories. I feel like I barely know Neve or Lucanis. I did like getting a bit more in depth with characters during their missions, but still...I feel like I barely know them, not the deep closeness I've felt with Dragon Age companions in the past. Nobody ever argues or disagrees with you, not really, just a couple times and it doesn't truly matter. I loved the companions. Their designs are so cool. I wanted to know everything about them and talk to them more. Why can't we ask Davrin about his vallaslin (it's obviously Ghilan'nain) and how he feels about it now that we are fighting her, especially if we're also an elf? And Bellara, why can't we ask about her tattoo and where her clan is and how she joined the Veil Jumpers? Why can't we ask Neve about her prosthetic? I loved the references to Inquisition in Harding's design, but since we couldn't import more than 3 things, she couldn't even talk about the Inquisition beyond the most vague things. Taash barely speaks at all. Emmrich has no life beyond the dead.

-The companions are so...one-note. Taash brings up being non-binary at every. single. quest, even though their adaari-ness and crossroads between being Qun and being Rivani was super interesting to me. (more on Taash in a minute.) Lucanis likes coffee. Davrin's personal quests mention "torlum" ad nauseum and the fact that Assan eats a lot. Bellara at least talks about other interests, but everyone else is so predictable. Even their banter doesn't seem to give them a lot of individual personality.

-the body models for female elves felt..a bit odd? My Rook always looked bow-legged. And do bras not exist in Thedas anymore? Lol

-The choice of who dies? HEART-WRENCHING. why was it between those two?! Why isn't the romance scene until AFTER this choice? Why doesn't the thing that happens with Harding and The Stone protect her (I thought it would!) and why don't we get any resolution to that if we lose her? I understand that Davrin was prepared to sacrifice himself as a Grey Warden, but making us lose Assan too...? Cruelty. That's what it is.

-I don't like that there are permanent deaths that happen regardless of our choices. That sucks. I know it's realistic, but this is a game, and I want my happily ever after for everyone, DAMN IT! The twist truly shook me, and I didn't see it coming. I didn't think I'd be caught by surprise and I was.

-The characterization of Rook is all over the place. I played an elven Rook with non-traditional vallaslin (figuring that the newer generation of Dalish Veil Jumpers might blend tradition with their new focus of exploring the Veil.) At various times, my Rook has said these things: "I didn't grow up with the Dalish." "I'm Dalish where it counts. "As a fellow Dalish--" WHICH IS IT? I'm in the most elfy faction, it's not even that I picked something unlikely for an elf with a face tattoo. I don't know what you have to do, what flags you have to trigger in the code, but the game still seems so confused about who our characters are. Pick a lane, Rook!

-While I'm on this subject: it would have been so nice to be able to know from the character creator what every kind of tattoo, body paint, and scar pattern went with what faction. And for the Dalish, which god matched to which vallaslin. It would have blown my mind in a good way if our choice of vallaslin came up in any way shape or form

-I would have loved if our race and faction actually like..mattered more. Walking around the Veil Jumper camp at the beginning and nobody talking to me except Strife and Irelin, that was so boring! Nobody recognizes you or asks how you've been. Just silence. Like everyone around you is a cardboard cutout. I expected more from Bioware.

-We got so much amazing lore in this game, and I'm really happy about it! But why did Bioware have to take the most marginalized group of people in Thedas, who were barely clinging to their own language and culture and freedom to begin with, and make everything bad that ever happened THEIR FAULT? What was the thought process there? That they used to have power but their leaders were in fact so terrible that they tore themselves apart and now live on the fringes of society? It makes it feel like the elves deserved their present fate, which is...pretty sucky. I'm glad they did not massacre the elves in this game as they have in the past, and that the elves didn't become even MORE the enemy by joining with the gods, but it really feels like the humans are only going to kill more elves in retribution for their gods almost ending the whole world. Also, related: nobody ever gives us sass about being an elf, not even in Minrathous, where elves are almost entirely slaves?!

-i know everything's changing with the lore stuff we typically know, but why did it seem that existing physically in the Fade is just no big deal anymore?

-at no point does Harding mention Varric dying? They don't have a funeral, a memorial? The Inquisitor says nothing, Morrigan says nothing? I know Solas messed with rook's mind, but even after...?

-the fact that the romance scenes don't happen until after the deaths. So it's possible for your love interest to die before that? Cruelty. Also, weird places to hook up, right after I just found out someone I thought has been alive this whole time DIED AT THE BEGINNING, and another dear friend sacrificed themselves, and we aren't sad at all during this? I understand sex after loss is perfectly normal and I understand that. But at least for the scene I saw, there was no "celebration of being alive" feel, it felt...more lustful than loving? Just an abrupt tonal shift.

-it just...ends. there's the typical little wrap up slides, but they're, again, shallow. A few lines here and there. Apparently the whole of Thedas was nearly destroyed, and not a single country went unscathed, but it's all gonna be ok! The bit of hope was nice, but...I don't feel settled at all. And it seems like we won't get DLC? which...ugh. and they fired the writers, which, again, cruel. If they make another Dragon Age, I can't see it being truly Dragon Age without them.

-i decided to make Taash's whole deal and the Qun a separate post lol

All in all - so thankful we got this game, so thankful we got what we did, I'm still processing a lot of it, and the past 3 weeks of my life I have done little else but live inside this story, but I just really need to scream into the void now!!

[theygender]

I've got too many games I want to play and not enough free time 😭 I still need to finish my BG3 playthrough but since Endless Ocean: Luminous came out I've been playing a lot of that instead. Also just got back into Wizard101 last night. Started playing House Flipper again last weekend. Still need to finish BOTW so I can start a TOTK playthrough and finish Pokemon Shield so I can start on Pokemon Violet. I've been fighting off the urge to start up a new Skyrim playthrough for weeks. My brother just told me that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is getting ported to the Switch. And now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to replay DAI... And throughout all of this I'm also playing the hell out of DragonVale on my phone. Someone just pay me to play video games all day please

[eff-plays]

Hi! so I'm pink-ivy-vines but that's not my main so i'm sending this anonymously (i reblogged and commented on that lords of fortune post) and since you've also played a lord i was wondering if it felt as isolating to you as it did for me? because i'm trying a mourn watcher now and seeing just how much was either 1) never included with a lord of fortune rook (or maybe emmrich is just more involved than taash? i dunno) or 2) just flat out cut since it seems like there's so much missing when you play that faction. there are times when rook's dialogue hints at them trying to change from being a no-fuck's-given pirate who did steal stuff all the time but there's no follow up? no conversations about it? not to mention the weirdness of taash talking to me like i'm a child when they've only been in the lords for six months at the MOST.

Hiii @pink-ivy-vines!! 😊😊😊

I gotta be honest, the reason I picked the Lords is mainly because I noticed from the start that they were 1) the only vaguely morally questionable background, because even the Crows are just cool guy assassins now 2) the newest/least integrated faction in terms of lore 3) the least popular pick among players, and I'm nothing if not a contrarian. The Veil Jumpers, Shadow Dragons, and Mourn Watch are also "new" afaik, but lbr the Veil Jumpers are just Dalish who accept diversity hires, while the Shadow Dragons have some justification for existing because there have been people fighting slavery in Tevinter since, idk DA2? And the Mourn Watch are just an extension of the Mortalitasi. So I figured they'd all be way more relevant to the world, and wanted to know what they'd cook up for the Lords, who are essentially unique to the game. How would they integrate a bunch of treasure-hungry pirates into this story?

Well. They wouldn't. I picked the least popular faction hoping for some new crunchy lore, or at least some fun interactions, maybe some interesting characterization options for Rook? But look what it got me. Nothing. Serves me right, I suppose? I can't say I didn't expect it, so I didn't feel as, uh, robbed? I'm sorta used to making up my own little dude either way, but it is a bummer in a Dragon Age game, where even Inquisition gave you something to chew on.

There are some scant Lords-specific dialogue options where you basically go "damn I sure did stealing once", and I liked Elgar'nan tempting you with gold and glory when he tickles your pickle in the Dalish rescue mission, but nobody really comments on your background, aside from Taash, who seems to have an entirely different understanding of the Lords. And you can't even correct them? Instead of "hey I've been around for longer and had a higher position than you", it's "umm things changed since you left, like a lot, so stfu" and you feel like a stranger in a faction that already has fuck-all to do with the plot. It's so baffling.

My impression was honestly less that there's content missing and more that they just didn't bother making any more of it? But then you get shit like "Oh yeah I used to be a slave before the Lords took me in" and Taash is just like "huh" and that's it. Like a Lord Rook potentially has the most hardcore/traumatic backstory but it's like whatever, I guess. Didn't even bother mentioning that in the faction slides.

Also what was the point of the arena. Why was it so easy. Didn't even have good loot at the end. What the fuck. I guess it's a leftover from the live service days but like. What.

[winterfromtevinter]

I want to start this out by saying that I love this game a lot. Veilguard has brought me back to Dragon Age, invested in its lore and characters again, in a way I haven't been in years. I think there is plenty that can be critiqued, but that a lot of hate the game is getting is disheartening and I just...don't want to see it. I enjoyed the game! I had fun! Sue me. And yes, I am an OG Origins player and love this universe's lore, but I'll admit to being a Veilguard enjoyer and defender too. So I've been hesitant to voice my own criticisms and have it appear as if I'm inviting all the really negative, unhelpful bashing too. I'm not.

All this being said, I had a lot of thoughts particularly with how the elves are handled here.

Game spoilers under the cut. VERY long and rambly, elf centric talk mostly.

Absolutely bonkers batshit wild to me that when we tell the Veil Jumpers their gods have come back and are very evil about it that their immediate reaction is fear and they just accept that. Now, and I don't know if I missed this being mentioned maybe, but did the Veil Jumpers uncover the truth or were somehow made aware before all of this? Did they discover things this close to Arlathan that contradicted the beliefs they were raised with?

But even so; the reality of the 'gods' and their treatment of the ancient elves is not widespread knowledge. It was this big "oh fuck" twist in DA:I that the gods were actually tyrants, their markings to denote their slaves. It was a slap in the face to any Dalish who had proudly reclaimed that, worse it as a symbol of heritage and pride after coming of age. The elvehn pantheon is still venerated by most Dalish clans to this day. How interesting would it have been to see a divide in the Dalish? I think it was sooooo silly to just have a single line about how the modern day elves wouldn't willingly follow the Evanarius. How would the vast majority of modern elves even know they're evil? And many elves are heavily discriminated against, living on the fringes of society or in alienages, or outright enslaved. They are not a monolith, and they are heavily oppressed in most of Thedas. Nuance and factions here, please!

Just some ideas but: A) these beings are not really their gods, their gods could not be these monsters. So having to prove to Dalish allies that these are the gods in the first place. B) the gods have come to liberate them and will free them from obscurity and this slow death of their way of life and history. Why wouldn't they side with them?

I also think there are quite a few characters who should have come back instead of some of the ones we were given...

You're telling me we have the whole eluvian network thing and no mention or sight of Merrill? Okay. Like Merrill and Bellara tinkering on the eluvians together and interacting wouldn't have been the most interesting thing in the world. I'm tired of Morrigan being treated like the ancient elven expert I'm sorrrryyyy.

Really, really wish we had gotten Fenris involvement with the Shadow Dragons. Speaking of elves, how interesting would it have been had the gods turned to all the elven slaves in Tevinter and used them as part of their army? City elves who know nothing about these beings who claim to be their ancestral gods except maybe very convoluted stories. Elgar'nan whispering in their ear of freedom, of broken bonds, of power and lives reclaimed? You're telling me some of them wouldn't find that appealing?

Fenris and Shadow Dragons racing to free city elves from Elgar'nan's influence, those who want to can then join the Shadow Dragon's ranks...

There's so much more too. But I've said enough I fear LOL.

[himluv]

DA Review Series: Vows & Vengeance

<<< Previous Review: The Missing

Here we are. The final review. The last little crumb of DA content I had to consume in my year-long journey to read, watch, play, and listen to all things Dragon Age before Veilguard's release.

For awhile there I didn't think I'd be able to to get it all done, but here we are with two weeks to spare. I don't know how I'm going to survive these next two weeks with no Dragon Age media, but I'm thinking of it as a sort of cleanse. A break to prepare mind, body, and spirit for what comes next...

Veilguard.

Title: Vows & Vengeance Writer(s): Will Melton and Jeremy Novik Publication Year: 2024 In-World Year: 9:45+ Dragon Verdict: I had a lot of fun with this series, despite its at times cringe-worthy writing and the occasional lore discrepancy. Is it a wellspring of lore and info? Not so much. But as an introduction to Veilguard's companions and key characters I think it's quite successful. But, successful doesn't equal necessary so you do you, boo.

Vows & Vengeance follows thief Nadia Carcosa as she tries to save her lover Elio from the Fade. He's stuck there thanks to a certain Dread Wolf and the artifact he surreptitiously hired her to steal ��� the Eye of Kethisca.

After Solas's ritual goes wrong (this dude is a broken record!) Nadia meets Drayden Kiel, a scholar and historian with a particular interest in the Fade. Their hunt for the Dread Wolf and Elio takes them through much of Northern Thedas, and each episode introduces one of the seven companions in Veilguard.

I found all of the companions incredibly endearing and wonderful. Harding is so sweet and kind, but also a bamf. Davrin is strong and noble, but also extremely charming. Taash is an absolute badass and I can't wait to see more of her dynamic in the group. And of course, Neve is a stunner and not just for her fashion sense.

Bellara's episode was an absolute delight — as a longtime fan of the Dalish, hearing one of the People stand up and speak out against their colonizers was very powerful.

Obviously I LOVED the Lucanis episode, even if Antivan nobility having British accents was buckwild. What we heard from Lucanis told us so much about his character and I can't WAIT to get to know him better, if you know what I mean ;) .

Emmrich and Manfred were such a joy to meet. Their dynamic is so sweet and the kindness just radiates from Emmrich. I can't wait to play rock paper scissors with my little bone buddy.

It was almost unfair, honestly, because the companions were so loveable and Nadia... Wasn't. I really struggled with her, for a lot of the same reasons I struggled with Katara in ATLA. But Nadia doesn't have the excuse of being a child.

Nadia came across as very impatient, oftentimes mean, and incredibly short-sighted. She oscillates between being a know-it-all and being utterly uninterested in understanding what's happening around her. I wasn't really rooting for her, sadly. She was just the vehicle this podcast used to introduce us to these other characters.

I must add here that I absolutely loved Drayden and would be more than happy to meet them in Veilguard or other Dragon Age media in the future. But I am glad Nadia's "retired".

I also feel really bad for Elio. I don't feel like Nadia really processed the fact that he died and that it was her fault (and also Solas's). Or at least, we didn't get to hear her process that. And so her eulogy/vow at the end rang a bit hollow for me. Her emotion and her grasp at closure didn't feel earned.

But! I do want to say that shoving all these characters into eight 45-minute episodes had to have been an INCREDIBLE challenge. And, when compared to other Dragon Age tie-in media, this one is definitely not bad. I know I'm glad I listened, and that my Thursday morning drive has been the highlight of my week for the last eight weeks.

But now it's over. Just like this review series is over. The only thing left to do is sit back and countdown the days until we finally return to Thedas!

TWO WEEKS LEFT, Y'ALL!!!!!!!

[andrewknightley]

ok so here they go my dragon age 4 opinions but i havent even recruited davrin yet, so spoilers of that

for now the bad are worse than i thought (the lore) but also the good is better than i expected (scout lace harding my beloved)

so the good:

-scout harding my beloved is the cutest thing ever i die. also she is giving me dwarf lore blessed

-i really like walking around in the cities thats so nice, and i like that you can give money to street performers and people asking for money. one shopkeeper told me his grandpa was a dwarf it was so cute

-i love decoratiiiiing and i wanna get all the decortations and clothes. i also like the scene with your chara talking about their opinions on things while decorating

-the fights are fun to play!!! this is a first for me in dragon age lmao

-for now i do like the companions i love harding and i like neve bellara and lucanis and i do wanna get the rest

-maevaris was the one cameo that i was like !!!o mg !!!!!!!!!!!

-im a weak girl i get missions just to hang out walking with the companions and im like HELL YEAAAAH

the bad:

-da grey morality wasnt perfect but in here is like all the allies are mega GoodyGood and all the enemies whole personality is Being Evil. cmon. i hope im wrong later tho

-these people get along too well (person whose teams were always alistair/morrigan anders/fenris sera/vivienne). i need more blood pls. a lil bit. like it could be refreshing and i love friendship but its just feel a bit forced idk

-i love the qunaris and i always been very interested in the qun and stuff, and i guess cause these are the antaam only but like?? they made them so boring they are just brute force conquerors. give me the cool lore of this pls i miss the arishok T-T but i fear they are just not gonna give a fuck about them

-i miss having casual convers with people asking about their culture and shit... now every conver is a cutscene so i cant ask stupid shit about their opinions...

-im waiting still for them to explain how the fuck the veil jumpers formed and how all this is affecting the dalish, but its like you tell them "hey your gods are back and are evil" and everyone is like "ah ok" and believe you instant?? TOT (except the grey warden boss the only normal reaction in the whole game) but like i wanted to see how this impacted the dalish people??? pls show me?? pls bellara tell me how you became a veil jumper why do you know so much????

-sometimes when i load the game my dwarf looks like the default one instead of mine T_T its annoying

[aricr0cs]

So I'm getting ready to go rescue Anora and something occurred to me.....

Here me out ghgbg

HEAR ME OUT GBGBGBGG

I've always wondered this entire time.... I watched my gf play dao (see pinned post). And I've always wondered....

Morrigan is antisocial. She sleeps away from everyone else in camp.

Shale too. She's off a bit. Near Bodahn and Sandal.

Zevran Oghren leliana Wynne and Alistair are far more social and are all grouped near the fire. It just makes sense.

So why? Tell me why Sten is so close?? It would make sense for him to be distant too. Even if for no other reason than not wanting to talk and a barasaad compulsion to check camp fortification.

I've ALWAYS wondered why he chose to stand so close to that little social circle.

But seeing him here in the warden's room in Denerim......

Yall I'm swooning so hard. I'm grasping at straws with unmitigated joy.

"It is not every warden that can say she has her own Barasaad."

"What is your wish, kadan?"

Yall I find this big grumpy man choosing.... of his own volition, to lump grump in the warden's room in Denerim (side note but Morrigan is there too and don't think for a second that another distant person in camp choosing to lounge so near to the warden isn't every bit just as meaningful to me.....)

You go to speak to him and the first thing he does is complain about Denerim's fortification.

"But they will do." Said by this giant grump that's choosing to spend his time essentially watching over where the warden sleeps as he has since he became a companion.

After my gfs Dalish warden's first dream of the archdemon she woke up near the campfire. That was my first taste of camp. And there he was. Not off being distant as I'd expect him to be. And not right next to her like Alistair. But still only a short distance away.....

And you know he heard her tossing and crying out every night with those dreams.

As pissy as he is..... the warden took him out of his prison in Lothering. She found his Asala. He called himself "her own Barasaad." He called her kadan. In my playthru he did not fight her in Haven. Merely said his piece and moved on. He's the most vulnerable in fights and still my warden drags him everywhere and painstakingly shoves the majority of healing potions down his reluctant gullet (he really does sometimes curse when you select a poultice for him ynhnhh).

And now he's here. In my warden's room. Worried about fortifications and choosing to spend his time watching over the warden's dreams as he has since the beginning. As steadfast and routine as any good soldier in the Barasaad.

My dwarf warden is in a romance with Alistair. And he's over with the Arl. Nothing wrong with that. The fate of the world and his own obligations to the throne and to Ferelden make this an understandable necessity.

Simping aside I find it so so meaningful that the two most socially distant companions have chosen to spend their Denerim time near the warden. Literally more close to her than any other companion.

I've seen people saying that Sten is a wooden character. Or put in to ignite interest in the qun and begin that part of game lore. And this he certainly does do at least for me.

But this man isn't wooden at all imo. Just because he doesn't talk much doesn't mean he doesn't have thoughts and opinions and reasons for the choices he makes.

And I friggin love him to pieces gnybgbg

BIOWARE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID

[thedragonagebigbang]

Bang Creator Interview: AO3: ParallelanPrincess  |  Bluesky: ParallelanPrincess

The Collaboration period has begun! In these quiet months before works are due, we want to foster a sense of excitement, camaraderie, and celebration among our participants. To that end, all participants were given the option of a formal interview by our mod, Dema, or an informal “ask-game” survey. We hope you enjoy getting to know our phenomenal creators as much as we have!

Local Elf Extremely Unqualified For New Job

Para and Dema talk Hinterland Elves, Nickelback, and tug-of-war with wayward OCs

Dema: We're about two months into the writing period(!!!! halfway!!). Have you found your process has changed during this time?

Para: Oh definitely. In the beginning I was writing daily and being upset when I missed a day. Now, I'll do roughly 7-10 days of writing straight and then take a break.  I work a fulltime job so I'm always writing either in the evenings or on the weekends. I've found that the best way to get work done is by sprinting with others. Prior to that, I was just sitting down to write for an indeterminate amount of time and making little progress. Sprinting is definitely more effective in getting words on the page in a reasonable amount of time. I also use an excel sheet to track my writing in regards to time spent, word count, what day, etc so I've been trying to use that to maximize my productivity.

Dema: Sprinting is such a powerful tool. One of the things that I find so interesting about it is that it appeals to people in different ways – some just like the time + short break, some like the community or body doubling, as some are competitive and looking to get the highest word count. What about it is helpful for you, do you think?

Para: It’s the community that helps. Even if the other person isn't writing, or is using the timer for something else. So since I'm extra, I use gifs to announce that I'm in the server and want to sprint, and usually people respond very enthusiastically to that since it kind of opens the floor to join. But for this bang, sprinting has been all about the word count since this will be my longest COMPLETED fic.

Dema: Oh wow, that's exciting! Is this your first big bang, then?

Para: This is my…I want to say third bang? The first one was the Not Victuuri bang and the second was a Tadaai Bang. This is my first non-anime bang! So for tackling it, I had to redo my approach. I couldn't just rewatch a show. I had to replay the game and make notes as I went!

Dema: I love a note-taking replay. Did anything stand out to you this play through? Any little tidbits of dialogue or lore that you were excited to be reminded of?

Para: I noticed that there's a lot of opportunity to help elves in the Hinterlands. And if you do there are a few dialogue options that correspond if you're Dalish. So I wanted my Lavellan to react to these elves who weren't in a clan or alienage and how that sort of fit into his world view.

I also noticed that if you dillydally too much, Solas will start to insist you go to Val Royeaux, which is really interesting to me. Very early on in my writing, I noticed I was retelling the main game beat for beat, so I had to do a VERY hard pivot and start getting extra creative. But also just the whole thing of being an "outsider" and suddenly having to deal with politics and religion that are utterly alien to you was an intriguing concept. 

Dema: I'm so curious if there was a particular elf in the Hinterlands that influenced or challenged your Lavellan's worldview. For me it was Hyndel. 

Para: Oh it was definitely Hyndel. I can't go into detail because I worry it will enter spoiler territory. But Hyndel and the cult were very intriguing concepts to explore. Also, I think her name is Maura, the elf whose husband is killed by the templars. She was also a good concept.

Dema: Is Inquisition your favorite game in the franchise?

Para: Oh definitely. I played Origins first and loved it. My first Origins playthrough was Surana and I went in deciding that would be the default world state. I've never, ever seen a copy of DA2 in the wild, so I never played that. Good thing we have the Keep. But yes, Inquisition holds a special place in my heart. The game that showed me that I could handle open world rpgs. I'm typically a Simmer and a farm rpg girl, so Inquisition was the first time I went "Okay, maybe AAA games aren't overhyped." I've done about 4 playthroughs, but I crafted a new one just for the bang. Also, the mage combat was far, far easier in DAI. 

Dema: I LOVE being a mage in DA:I! All the classes are fun but Mage is always my first playthrough 😂 As a fellow simmer: have you made your DA OC's in the Sims

Para: I really, really should. My laptop would explode if I tried to add the necessary CC. Also, my fave game in that series is Sims 3. Those third installments hit different.

Dema: They really do. That game was a masterpiece. Besides your new play through and the DA universe in general, is anything in particular inspiring you for your bang fic?

Para: I really draw a lot of inspiration from music. I'm the type of person who always uses song lyrics for their titles. If it works it works. Feel free to redact if this is goes to spoiler territory, but the guiding song behind this fic was Nickelback's Rockstar. For the guiding song, my brain has a full on animatic in mid. Shame I can't draw. But yes, I was debating what kind of Lavellan I wanted to make. Heard the song randomly and went Oh.....OH! I can use this!

Dema: Did you already have a general idea or direction and then created your Lavellan, or was it a back-and-forth? Or something else?

Para: Once I had the guiding song, it came down to crafting my Lavellan from that. And he then proceeded to fight me. The end result is only a hint of the character I set out to write. But hey, that's part of the process! So I had a concept and a direction that immediately went left. Decided to roll with it because it was putting words on the page and making sense. So it was a tug of war in many ways and my Lavellan won out in the end. (He is a lil shit)

Dema: Well he's a Big Rockstar. What did you expect. (mine always give me a hard time too lmao)

Para: I expected him to go with the plan!!

Dema: Besides wrangling your OC, what is the greatest challenge writing a fic like this?

Para: Sticking to the outline. Dear lord, the outline. I do not do well with outlines and I foolishly thought this would be different. My original outline was both vague and overly ambitious. For this reason, my fic was dragging a bit at the beginning. I had to revise my outline three times and then finally tossed it once I got about 14k in because I finally knew how to scale it down for the time I had left. Another thing was deviating enough from canon to make my fic unique without making the characters and setting unrecognizable. Looking at my first outline, I had pretty much retold the game so it's good I ditched it.

Dema: Sounds like you've been very flexible in this process and it's serving you well!

Para: I have to be. This is a big word count to hit and sometimes staying on target means doing whatever keeps the plot progressing, even if you have to go in totally blind.

Dema: In the last few minutes, and only if it sounds fun, can you give your fic a misleading click-bait title? (Without major spoilers of course)

Para: Local Elf Extremely Unqualified For New Job

Dema: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Para: He did not sign up for this!!

Dema: Actually cackling right now. This could be a spider-man meme with so many Lavellans.

Para: It really could.

Dema: Thank you so much for your time today, Para! It's been fun chatting and I can't wait to read your fic!

Para: Thank you for taking the time out to speak with me!

[rindemption]

I finished Veilguard....

(Vague mentions of major spoilers, read at your own risk)

Not gonna lie I'm kinda pissed. Really? Really? The guy you met for 10 minutes at the end of an optional DLC two games ago?? That's your big reveal? That's the lead in to the next game? I thought this was supposed to be our closure, I thought this was supposed to be the last chapter of the story. You can't keep bringing this guy up at the end of credits and expect me to give a shit, I have no stakes, no skin in the game.

Also I'm still convinced Varric was just a shoe-in to pull old fans, so that "twist" was just to hand wave him out of any plot importance or an active roll in the game. He could have been replaced by any kind of mentor/faction-tie-in and it would have hit the same for Rook. It was shock value for old players and that was it.

This whole game feels like a first draft that never got revised, characters that never got fleshed out beyond "three interests, one goal, one flaw".

I did enjoy parts of it, sure. I'm disappointed in bioware (or really EA, I think they're the big culprits in this), but I didn't hate it. I just think this was not 10 years worth of work. It feels more like some fan's attempt at their own ending to the story, rather than the original game company and writers and directors wrapping up the story they wanted to tell. That's the only way I can really enjoy it, separating it from the other games in the franchise.

Like, it didn't even feel like there was much chance to really connect with the companions. Companion quests were two dimensional when it came to things like personality and goals and motivations. You never even get to talk to them outside of predetermined moments. There isn't even any kind of real relationship established until the end of the game. I remember when bioware used to have the balls to have you in a full on romance (bedroom scene included) in the middle of the game.

The characters are barely more than building blocks, and if you want to know anything about them you have to either hope there's some tie in media, or dig through tweets. Mostly you just have to make it up yourself.

The politics, and flaws of the country and the people, and the issues going on the world feel defanged, like they suddenly got scared to get too dark and too gritty. Where's the blatant classism between Teventer mages and non-mages and and elves outside of ambiant dialog? Where's the slavery outside of the Venatori? Where's the mistreatment of the dalish and qunari outside of... codex? Where's the daily struggle of the elves trying to hold on to the scraps of their past in a world that wants to treat them like shit, outside of Bellara vaguely mentioning it? So much of this game and the world's lore was fumbled so badly. Corruption among Templars is barely even touched on and that's been a huge point in all the other games.

Supposedly doing things to make those issues better, to put someone in power to end slavery, to help raise the dalish up, to help people be less racist, to remove corruption among the powerful, to help, it doesn't have the same punch to it when those things don't even seem to be happening. In any noticeable capacity. At all. Not even in conversation with your own companions outside of possibly one or two lines.

Also anyone calling the game "woke" is just a shut-in whose too online, honestly their one commentary on anything "woke" related was done so horribly it was kind of embarrassing. Like they were trying too hard to show off how good of allies they were, they made it that character's only personality trait or point of conversation (and anything not directly related was in some capacity a metaphor).

I have so many more thoughts but it's all jumbled up right now. I do still plan on doing a second canon playthrough knowing how things work now but I need to go sit and stew for a bit

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Deeply funny concept to me is the idea of an elf from Wycome joining up with Solas' rebellion after Trespasser. Because Wycome is, by the end of the Clan Lavellan missions, ruled by a council that includes some human merchants, city elves, and the Keeper. So like, the situation there is probably pretty good! Not a bad place for an elf to live! Then, of course, the clan and the alienage get a post-Trespasser warning and deeply confusing explanation from Ena about the Dread Wolf, who's a better person than the Dalish lore makes him out to be, but also is currently up to Some Fuckshit Stuff and please do not join his movement, he's a dumbass and he did some good things in the past but currently he is Making Bad Choices.

Clan Lavellan has a lot of trouble figuring out what to make of that, but like, the city elves don't have the personal connection to Ena, and the Inquisition did save all of their lives and their city, so they're willing to take a warning from the Inquisitor at its face.

But there's definitely some like, naive and optimistic city elf who's craving adventure and joins up as an agent of Fen'Harel and. okay. Solas is a paranoid bastard who can't bring himself to trust anyone and that keeps fucking up his life and his plans. We know that. There's no way he does any delegating with his agents. He's directing all this shit personally, I know he is. He's not letting anyone else in on any of this. Everyone gets their orders from him personally. I can feel this in my heart.

So. there's an elf from Wycome here. He knows the situation in Wycome and how personally tied it is to Clan Lavellan. He knows how much Ena cares about her clan. He cannot tell if this young elf from Wycome is Ena's attempt at a spy, or someone who is earnest in their desire that, because things are so much better now in Wycome, they want to help Fen'Harel make things better everywhere. He does not think Ena would be the type to try and spy like this. He cannot be certain.

He also cannot stop himself from fishing for information from this elf from Wycome. Oh, yes, I have heard that a Dalish clan lives with and works with the city now, how are they faring? They are the Inquisitor's clan, yes? Did the Inquisitor come back after the Inquisition disbanded? ...What did she say of me?

And the new recruit is just like "I know I heard that Fen'Harel speaks personally with everyone, but wow, he really is interested in Wycome and my boring life..." while Solas is like, mentally lying facedown on the floor being sad about being divorced.

[vigilskeep]

so a bunch of your posts made it onto my dash and i got really curious and ended up playing dragon age for the first time ever, and i wanted to say thank you cuz i love this game and now that i (mostly) know what you're talking about, i love seeing your posts! i played as mahariel, romanced alistair, spared loghain, didn't do the ritual, and left alistair to marry anora while my warden made the ultimate sacrifice and now everything hurts real bad :c

i'm going to play again and shoot for a happier outcome, but now that i've finished my first run i wanted to ask, if you could add any different origins to da:o what would you pick? i don't know a whole lot about the lore but reading the codex entries it seems like there's a lot of interesting groups! and i didn't think there were mages in the dalish at first because it wouldn't let me play as one, but i think i would have liked that a lot.

omg!!! excited that u ended up playing dragon age and apologies for the way i may have influenced it towards turning out JGSHSJSJK but the drama is so good

hmm any different origins... any kind of apostate mage origin would be really good but that’s more towards taking the existing origins and spicing them up e.g. apostate human noble, apostate dalish elf, apostate city elf. the most important thing abt the origins to me is the insight they give you into different parts of the world and the unique perspective you can have on events, and i’m trying to think of a group—within ferelden—where i feel like there’s missed potential. some kind of human commoner would be good just bc humans always have to be nobles which is lame. maybe like a bandit origin or idk redcliffe castle servant origin so people can have a connection to that quest or ummm oh a soldier origin maybe where you’re one of loghain’s or howe’s? an orlesian origin would be incredibly spicy. every persuasion check with a fereldan should get doubled in difficulty for that. i know they scrapped plans for an avvar origin and people have come up with the idea of having a chasind origin before... oooooo for a connection to haven there could be some kind of. i don't know. secluded andrastian sect origin. you could also have like a templar origin that would be crazy. tevinter origin is a push but it could happen...? idk

i’m just throwing ideas onto the drawing board here and i don’t think any of them are super compelling, i haven’t thought a lot abt it. the origins really are very good as introductions to ferelden and orzammar and i don’t feel like there’s really majorly significant groups they missed

[criffyzou]

My dragon age next gen kids moodboard were only humans and dwarves, so I started a new elfy one, and decided to document my process.

Here is the resulting rambling.

First thing I usually do is find stand-ins for the parents, to have *something* to start from. They usually don't appear on the moodboard itself, but I love to do that step.

I'm pinning these two deviantartists as Cammen & Gheyna, teens from the DAO dalish camp that the warden help get together (them but older & as parents). This is to keep to my theme of "kids that exist or survive thanks to the heroes of Thedas".

It's then time to pick a name. It can be a lore thing, i.e. Ailis Theirin is named after a chantry sister from Maric and Loghain's fereldan rebellion days, who raised Cailan and, I choose to believe, Anora too, once Loghain started bringing her to work. It can also be completely unrelated: I wanted an old french name for Pernille de Chalons, but as a french person myself, all of it sounded cringey; in the end her name is from the karpe song Au Pair. It sounds orlesian enough but is not actually french.

I'm not good at elven names in Dragon Age, my Lavellan inquisitor is named Sheana because I was being a Dune nerd when I learned there was a Siona among the emerald knights (iykyk). The reward for the quest Cammen's Lament is The Tale of Iloren and its corresponding codex, a book cherished by Cammen's family for generations. I like Iloren; it's technically a male keeper in the tale, but the name feels gender neutral, and I want that kid to be a girl.

Cammen & Gheyna get married in 9:30, but they're so young their first child doesn't have to be born for a number of years. By my referent point 9:52, I want her to still be a teen, around the same age as her parents when we meet them in Origins ? I don't actually know how old Cammen and Gheyna are. I also want Lena (born in 9:37) to still be the baby of the band; let's go with 9:35.

Now, class ! I really want a dalish warrior, but there aren't many interesting warrior specializations. Champion hasn't been used yet, but feels too similar to Ariane from Witch Hunt. Reaver is probably my best option.

Identity down, now to the moodboard specifics !

I like to follow the old lavellanpls template because it forces me to think about the character in details I would not have thought of.

Complexion is a square I use for faceclaims. Both Iloren's parents are white, like a lot of Dragon Age NPCs; I've not had a lot of wriggle room for non-white next gen kids outside of Zerlinda's son, whose dad is not shown, and Kieran, both Morrigan and Alistair being biracial even if Bioware doesn't show it. I don't really brainstorm for that one, I simply look at a lot of pictures until something clicks.

Wardrobe has a few armor options from my initial generic dalish pin rampage, that I may choose from when I have a better idea of the dominant color. My main issue is the lack of consistency in dalish heavy armor, and how hard it is to find a real life equivalent.

Hair can be Gheyna's red, Cammen's ash blond, or a mix of the two, but I have too many redheads already.

Now is the time I start to lie invent rather than extrapolate. I want this elven kid to be strongly attached to her dalish way of life, à la Velana, because we have enough self-loathing elves in canon. That could Home accounted for then, something representing the dalish camp, or the nearby Brecilian ruins.

Obviously I cannot resist the Animal square for a dalish from that clan, born after the werewolf conflict, to be a wolf despite how on the nose it is. I like when things are predictable.

Iloren has to be an extravert, if not because she was raised in a commune, then because we have more introverts in the current next gen lineup and I like balance. E, S and J feel right, let's try ESTJ. Yes this is relevant, as I use either the Season or Element squares as clues for the character's personality. Season I will probably put Brecilian forest in its winter dreariness, so let's focus on element: First one I can think of is ironbark, "surprisingly strong and very light". It is also somewhat blue in color; that is our first official color of the moodboard ! It doesn't feel very Reaver-y though, but we have other squares to express that.

Accessory square I often put down as a weapon, as that seems the most logical option for a prized possession. It could also be something sentimental from games lore, like Tini Kondrat's toy horse, like the one the warden gave Oghren as a joke, that he may have repurposed as an actual toy for his child. I've only played Reaver with two handed weapons, let's continue this trend. Ideally something resembling the Sulevin Blade from Inquisition, because it is the perfect weapon for Iloren, but not one she would have access to.

Last square unaccounted for is Texture, which is usually my "make the moodboard actually cohesive" free card, while keeping it relevant to the character, adding personality or background hints I could not fit into the rest. Reavers get off on pain, and bruises would fit into the blue-ish color scheme, while adding the reaver touch that was missing.

Aaaand we're done ! A brand new complete character, spun whole cloth from a vague desire to have an elf in the lineup.

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player. 

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded. 

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[johaerys-writes]

Fic Writer’s Round Up: 2020

I was tagged by wonderful friendos @in-arlathan, @noire-pandora, @faerieavalon, @pinkfadespirit, @tevivinter, and @serial-chillr! Thank you so much, it was so interesting to see what you've been up to this year <3 

2020 was a ride from start to finish and I considered not doing this at first because frankly, I wasn't particularly happy with my output this year, but I decided to give it a go and I was pleasantly surprised! This year has had a lot of ups and downs for me and there were plenty of times when I had a hard time putting words on the page, while others I couldn't stop. I've written primarily for Dragon Age and The Song of Achilles, and a little bit of Castlevania. In the below breakdown I've included all the fics I’ve written solo, both my published stuff as well as those that I plan on publishing in the near future  (for my lengthier works, I’ve only included the chapters written in 2020):

Aran belongs to @oftachancer!

I don't know if you noticed the ~50k words of deleted stuff, but that was an entire arc that I wrote for A World With You, but decided it wasn't good enough so I scrapped and rewrote it. Those long gaps between updates this year? Yeah. That was it. I normally don't include deleted scenes in my overall wordcount but I decided to add this out of spite because it was a lot of hard work and it may or may not have had me sobbing into my coffee once or twice. Anyway. MOVING ON.

I also co-wrote A LOT with my friendo @oftachancer this year! It all started with a Modern AU one-shot of Aran and Tristan as college roommates, which then derailed into an epic adventure of about 250,000 words (placeholder title: Never Let Me Go) as well as a prequel of about 180,000 words of the boys before they went to college, which is currently being published on AO3 (Playground Love). We also published a smutty one-shot for Kinktober (Tea and Corsets). I love those boys so much, and I’m excited to write more of them. I have also co-written a few scenes for the Band!AU @oftachancer and @midnightprelude have been working on, which has been so much fun and I look forward to writing more! So, total wordcount for co-written stuff is approximately 445,000 words,  not including a couple one-shots that we’ve written and posted on Tumblr and I’m too lazy to track down now, or others that haven’t been published yet but will soon!

New Things I Tried This Year: 

Co-writing two massive, novel length fics was definitely a first, I had a lot of fun world-building with @oftachancer​, and it gave me the opportunity to develop some of my OCs that had been lurking in my mind for a really long time. I also started writing for a new fandom, TSOA, and that has definitely been a highlight in my year. I grew up reading the Iliad and ancient greek myths, and to see them brought to life was very rewarding. It has also been a lot of fun finding ways to integrate ancient greek lore in my works, I really love it!

Fic I spent the most time on: A World With You, although Playground Love and Never Let Me Go are close seconds!   

Fic I spent the least time on: To Build A Home. I wrote it in only a couple sittings after finishing Season 3 of Castlevania because I had so many feels! Chapters 1 and 2 of High-Flying Birds were also written on my phone in less than an hour, because again I was overwhelmed with feels after finishing The Song of Achilles.  

Favourite things I wrote: I am really proud of everything I’ve written this year, especially since it was such a stressful year and writing gave me a much needed escape! But I'm going to choose a few highlights, purely based on the satisfaction they gave me while writing, and how often I've gone back to reread them (does anyone else do that?? Lol): Viper in Tall Grass, because I enjoyed the heck out of writing in the Witcher Universe. Chapter 2: Thorn, from High Flying Birds, which was one of those scenes that practically wrote themselves and I still like the way it turned out. Lastly, Chapter 28: The Prodigal Son and Chapter 29: In Water Waist Deep from AWWY. They were both really challenging to write but in the end they were worth it and I personally feel it’s some of my best writing yet. I always get emotional when I go back to reread them.  

Favourite Things I Read: I’ve read a lot of published fiction this year, but not near as much fanfiction as I would have liked! I mentioned some of the fics I’m currently reading and loving in this post, but I’m going to make a more detailed fic rec post soon, so keep an eye out for that! 

Writing Goals for next year: My primary goals for 2021 are to finish AWWY and High-Flying Birds so I can start working on some projects I’ve been wanting to post forever, but apart from that, I have no goals other than to have fun writing, and perhaps participate in more fic exchanges and challenges! 

This post is terribly long (I’m usually rather quiet unless someone asks me to talk about my fics, and then I can’t shut up lol), but I want to thank every single person that has liked, reblogged and commented on my work, you guys are the best and there’s nothing like a comment or a thoughtful tag to make me want to create more! 

I also want to give a special shoutout to @solas-disapproves, @in-arlathan, @midnightprelude, @tessa1972 and @oftachancer​ for being the lovely, inspiring people that they are, and for gifting me with wonderful fanart or fanfic this year that made me want to melt in a puddle, as well as to @tenmeooo-thefangirltrash​ for translating High Flying Birds to Vietnamese! (Check it out here) Thank you all so much, your friendship and support has meant the world to me ;w;

I’m sure that everyone has done this already, but I’m still going to tag @pikapeppa, @schoute​, @schattengerissen, @zuendwinkel​, @elveny​, @fandomn00blr​, @dafan7711​, @dalish-rogue​, @jeannedarcprice​, @nug-juggler​, @kittimau​ and @lavellanvibes​ for art or writing, because I always love seeing what you’ve been up to! If you’ve made it to the end of this humongous post, please consider yourself tagged, and tag me back so I can see your work too!

CHEERS, AND ON TO 2021!! <3

[thedinanshiral]

My personal DA4 wishlist + thoughts

I’ve been teasing this post for a couple of weeks over at Twitter, i’m the worst! But anyway, since game journalism has decided to confirm, once again, that the next Dragon Age game will be set in Tevinter like that’s breaking news, now’s as good a time as ever to write all this down.

Locations: Tevinter, clearly. It’s been pretty much a given since the end of Trespasser in 2015, with that scene where the Inquisitor stabs a map on a table directly on Tevinter as they promise to go after Solas to stop him. But also concept art and several stories from Tevinter Nights heavily imply Antiva, Nevarra, the Anderfells, and maybe Rivain. For those of you who don’t know your Thedosian Geography 101, that’s basically Northern Thedas. And it makes sense, since so far for three games straight we’ve been first stuck in Ferelden, then the coast of the Free Marches, and later the rest of Southern Thedas. We’ve never been North, only heard of it. So in DA4 i’m sure we will finally be able to visit.

Characters: If we’re going to Tevinter, we must meet Dorian again, maybe meet Maevaris Tilani as well (previously only seen in comics), judging from the latest comics series, i’m hoping for Fenris too. And going by the latest teaser trailer, we might see Varric again. As for characters that so far we have no news of, i’d like to see Cole, the Iron Bull, and if by any chance BioWare feels like blessing us with a Hawke/Fenris reunion i might just die happy.  I’d also very much like to see the Inquisitor, but more on that later.

Companions: considering concept art and the latest teaser trailer, plus Tevinter Nights stories and new characters, we have an interesting repertoire of new potential companions. A Tevinter mage, an ancient elf (like a temple guardian) or a dalish elf (like Strife), a Nevarran mortalitasi or spirit, Antivan Crows, Lords of Fortune (new faction, kind of like treasure hunters), Qunari lady, maybe an alchemist or shapeshifter, Grey Wardens (possibly a dwarf), a liberated or escaped slave, a Siccari (Tevinter spies/assassins)..even past agents of the Inquisition could return. 

Plot: We know Solas wants to take down the Veil. We know there’s two archdemons left, and Grey Wardens are regaining some spotlight in concept art lately. We might have to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously and be strategic about it. Solas might even unleash a double Blight just to keep us distracted while he focus on his own goal, who knows. But many other things are happenig in the margins and all over the place. The Qunari Antaam is having a crisis with some of its members supposedly going rogue, the order they’re so proud of is breaking up, and the whole of Northern Thedas is facing an imminent threat of invasion. Tevinter is still dealing with remnants of the Venatori and might soon be dealing with a slaves rebellion and/or a political and social reform (Magisters Dorian and Maeveris have been working wirh the Lucerni, a group aiming to restore and redeem Tevinter). The Antivan Crows -the de facto rulers of Antiva - may be dealing with a succession crisis, as their First Talon, a powerful feared and respected but old lady, might not be around for much longer and seems her chosen heir has died before his time. Meanwhile in the Anderfells nobody’s heard anything from the Grey Wardens’ HQ at Weisshaupt since the end of Inquisition, and as told in the novel Last Flight, the sudden reappearance of griffons may have had something to do with that radio silence. So you see, get ready for another +100 hours long game because BW has plenty of stuff to keep us busy with. But in short, DA4 seems will be about primarily searching, finding, and dealing with Solas. Regardless of what you decided at the Exalted Council in Trespasser, the Inquisition or what’s left of it is most likely the group orchestrating that mission. As it was so clearly stated then, they need new people Solas doesn’t know so he can’t foresee their actions, so it’s possible the DA4 protagonist is a new agent or a third party hired to do what the Inner circle can’t due to their familiarity with Solas in the past. But at the same time -and this is assuming we get to find Solas in this game - i definitely think the Inquisitor could easily show up again. No, losing an arm doens’t mean they’ve retired forever, prosthetics do exist in Thedas, a world where you can combine dwarven craftmanship with enchantments, seriously, i don’t ever want to hear “but they lost an arm” ever again as an excuse to write them out. And no, marrying Cullen or joining the Red Jennys is no impediment to join the “Stop Solas” Squad; the end of Trespasser means something, mainly that this is personal. Be it they loved them as lovers, as friends or ended up hating his guts for using and betraying them, the Inquisitor’s relationship with Solas makes this very personal, and so having any other character do that face off would cheapen all of it, all that bittersweet angsty development and expectations of either revenge or closure. That moment should happen between those two. It adds a ton of motivation due to their past historyas well, something a new protagonist would lack entirely.  My personal best hope is for a sort of dual protagonist thing, say we play new protagonist for most of the game but a selected missions or scenes where we play as the Inquisitor once again and take over for key and heart-wrenching dialogue options. My second best hope is for the Inquisitor to show up as playable for the moment we catch up with Solas. My third and final best hope is for the inquisitor to be a sort of advisor but more like new protagonist’s boss/employer to whom they report back to and get new missions from. The Inquisitor can be stuck in meetings for the most part of it, i just want to know they’re there, behind a door, super busy but there. A cameo like Hawke’s in Inquisition is the bare miminum i can take, anyhting less than that like a mention in a sidequest description or a footnote in a codex entry would be a total  injustice. 

Romances: I’m open for pretty much anything, as any good BW fan would be. But i’d like romances to feel more alive in the sense that they don’t abruptly get stuck once you exhaust all related quests and dialogue options. As much as my Adaar liked that spank from the Iron Bull, that it was the only thing they could share after their romance was locked was a bit..meh. I liked Dorian’s tho, because his gave one the option to talk a bit, go for a walk, gossip, and sure, it all happened off-screen, and there were limited possibilities, but it was nice and made their relationship feel a bit more real, like they had more to it than kissing and stuff. It happens in most games, once you secure a romanceable companion suddenly you run out of things to do and share with them, and you get stuck with the same 3 lines of dialogue over and over again. There should be a way of solving that.

Side quests: i’m ok with fetch quests initially as it is a good way of forcing the player to go out and explore huge maps, but i’d also like the fetching to have some meaning other than checking things off a list. I want to explore many ruins, and -can’t believe i’m actually saying this- i want a Fade quest. Wait! I know what you’re thinking but don’t kill me just yet, here’s my idea: what if we could visit the Fade at certain locations to witness memories or meet with spirits and recollect information on Solas, his past, his present? Both to understand him better (keep in mind we’ll most likely get a new protagonist who isn’t familiar with him like we are as players) and try to locate him or predict his next move. It would be i think i great way of having visions of Arlathan in its golden age, maybe seeing some of the other Evanuris, how they interacted with each other and with the elves in their service, what really happened ...i just want that sweet, sweet lore, i need it.

Technical stuff: ok, graphics will be amazing for sure, but i also would really really like: better, more varied and longer hairstyles, PLEASE. Body sliders, it’s damn time we get them. Mounts that actually make a difference! Let staves blades make damage in combat, I’M BEGGING HERE. Combined classes, MAGICAL ROGUES! A homebase we can fix up/build on/redecorate as fully as possible (Skyhold was great and i love it to pieces but why were those walls NEVER repaired????) . More casual outfit options, idk i love to dress up my characters, maybe some transmog? A day/night cycle and please i would love to see Thedas’ second moon, also weather variations depending on the region. Yes, i’m ambitious.

Gameplay: i’d like more AI options for companions, but not quite like in DAO, that was too much and i rarely used it. I’m curious how they’ll do combat this time but i know for sure i don’t want the kind of combat that has me going almost frame by frame pausing at every second, it’s annoying for me. I want large areas like in DAI but with a bit more stuff to see and do although one of my favourite maps is the Hissing Wastes so i won’t complain if we get a literal desert but i’d also like it to have secrets hidden around, make me work to find and solve them, i love exploring, i jump and click on EVERYTHING like i’m still a kid playing Monkey Island. A companion in concept art seems to be holding what looks like some form of rifle, so i’m curious how they’d incorporate that in the game. I know Tevinter has the magics and dwarves have the skill, a firearm is totally within the possibilities in-game without breaking any lore; also super curious what sort of skill trees Crows or Lords of Fortune could have, are they rogues, or warriors, or both??

So far, that’s what i got in my head.Well, most of it anyways, i may have missed something but this post has to end somewhere lol

What’s in your head? Feel free to share! Have you been thinking on how you’ll create your next protagonist? All i can think of is magical rogues and that  glowing bow was all the hype i needed.

[viviae]

can you like. tell me a little about dragon age. seeing your posts about it has got me interested in playing but i have little to no clue what it actually is

Boy can I explain nonny <3 This is a bit long so strap in and im sorry

Dragon Age is (currently) a three game series composed of Dragon Age: Origins (PS3, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PC), Dragon Age: II (PS3, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PC), and Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) and its really unique because of its selling point that your actions impact the games as you progress. Like if you kill one character in one game they’ll stay dead through the rest of the series which makes you feel lived in the story and that your actions matter. Dragon Age is also an RPG so a roleplaying game kind of along the same lines of DnD where you get to make and play your own character. And yes there are romances and you can be gay.

The First Game of the series is Dragon Age: Origins where you choose from a selection of six unique (technically seven) origins or backgrounds for your character. You can be anywhere from a human noble or a Dalish elf, the unique elven culture in Dragon Age of nomadic clans dedicating to reclaiming their past. But eventually, from the events in your origin, you wind up a member of a secretive and elite order known as the Grey Wardens whose duty is to protect the world from the Blight.

The Blight is this spread of a horrible disease known as the Taint but is characterized by the presence of Darkspawn, a kind of zombie like creature who exists only to destroy the world. Grey Wardens take the heavy duty of protecting the world from the Blight, which have nearly wiped all of humanity multiple times, at all costs. And currently the country of Ferelden is under going a blight and due to events you wind up the only Grey Warden with your companion Alistair to save the world and reunite Ferelden which had fallen under a civil war.

Along Origins you meet many interesting characters. Alistair is your friendly co-warden who has a mysterious parentage that he hides under his happy go lucky attitude. In contrast to Alistair is the witch Morrigan who is your favorite goth swamp queen who would insult you and you thank her. In addition you meet your chaotic bi rogues Zevran and Leliana. Leliana is a nun who is on the run and hiding from a dark past and she is suspiciously good at murder. And Zevran is not at all hiding his aptitude for murder as an Assassin for hire who tried and failed to kill you but who can ignore that charming bastard?

Dragon Age II follows a much smaller story of a Ferelden refuge who had escaped from the Blight to the city of Kirkwall named Hawke. Unlike in origins where you get to pick your background 2 limits you to Hawke but fear not, Hawke is a loveable bastard and you can still customize them. Throughout DA2 you get to experience all the delights Kirkwall has to offer: Demons, crime, corrupt cops, and fighting your way to survive in this city and make a name for yourself.

Where Origins sets the stage for the world DA2 you are the actor in that play - literally the game is divided into 3 acts that take place over a span of 7 years. DA2′s main conflict is the argument of Mages vs Templars, as in DA’s lore while there are those who are born with magic they are forced to live in prisons policed by the Templar order and the church. You explore the more political arguments of; are the Templars right in their fears of magic as Kirkwall is filled to the brim with corrupt mages or do Mages deserve the chance to live and prove themselves freely from their prisons.

Your romancable companions in DA2 are all bisexuals as the true theme of DA2 is: be gay do crime. You have the foils of Anders: the runaway mage who fled from the prisons the mages are housed in and is determined to bring mages to freedom, and Fenris: the runaway escaped slave who curses magic for only inflicting pain and suffering in his life and wants his warnings to be heard about the dangers magic bring. In addition you also have Merrill, your cute but terrifying Dalish mage who would probably murder you with a cute smile and then go oops. And of course, my pirate wife Isabela, who lives a life free from commitment and is dedicated to the idea everyone should have a good time no matter the cost. Also while not romancable Hawke’s bff Varric deserves every ounce of praise he gets as never before has the energy of “two idiots sharing a braincell” ever been so well adapted.

Then finally we reach Inquisition. After the events of DA2 it triggers a full on war between the Mages and Templars that is destroying the land and causing severe damage that neither side can handle anymore. Desperate for an end to the conflict the Divine (err... fantasy pope) calls for a meeting on both sides... only for the entire thing to literally explode. Killing everyone present and causing a hole in the sky which now means demons are raining like cats and dogs you are the only one to survive. In Inquisition you can once again return to pick between unique backgrounds like in Origins but you don’t get to play through those backgrounds sadly.

You now possess something on your left hand which gives you the ability to patch up the hole in the sky that is pissing demons and due to being the only survivor everyone is incredibly confused about you. Eventually the Inquisition is formed around you, the character they are calling the Herald of Andraste (Andraste is fantasy Jesus) due to your ability to seal the holes. The mystery unfolds as over the course of the game you learn what caused the explosion, how you are connected, and what exactly the mark on your hand is.

DAI has the largest numbers of romance options so I’m gonna give a quick bullet point list for them all

Iron Bull (Pansexual, All Races): A Qunari (think Tiefling but big and beefy) mercenary who is far more clever than he lets on, as well as being the rope top dom of your dreams. Literally! Bull’s romance is a really healthy bdsm relationship if you are interested its very well done

Josephine (Bisexual, All Races): Your loveable ambassador and advisor for the inquisition. She is a workaholic noble who is a tried and true classic romance. Sweep her off her feet and duel for her hand all while navigating the nobility

Dorian (Gay, All Races): The flamboyant pariah rock star mage, he demands attention whenever he walks into the room. Although he wants to be all talk and no emotions make no mistake he is making puppy eyes at you the entire time and gets deeply offended if you say he is. Also not going to lie Dorian is the best piece of gay male rep in gaming history.

Cassandra (Male-only, all Races): Your stern warrior wife who is all serious no funny business... expect she is a bleeding heart romantic who reads horrible smut for fun. You wish to COURT HER?? I mean... if you want 👉👈 she won’t say no...

Blackwall (Female-only, All Races): Your weird dilf who wants desperately to prove himself every step of the way and help people. He is a constable for the Grey Wardens, but all the details on him seem murky... Ah well I’m sure its nothing, the Grey Wardens are a secretive order after all.

Sera (Lesbian, All Races): My wild child, monster chugging, beer guzzling, arrow shooting lesbian. Sera is here for a fun time and not a serious one, she’ll always make sure to keep you humble and ensure you aren’t getting to big for your breeches. 

Cullen (Female-Only, Human and Elf only): Cullen’s the Inquisition’s commander who oohh boy is steeped in a lot of trauma. Cullen’s actually a character you get to know through out the series and see just all the horrible nonsense he’s been through. But he is your tragic self loathing... he isn’t princely but he is your adorkable charming

Solas (Female-Only, Elf Only): The humble apostate who joins the Inquisition out of curiosity of the breech, he is an expert on what the hell is going on with that hole in the sky. However, he holds a wisdom that goes far deeper than your typical apostate. Smooth talking and refined he carries a heavy cloud over him.

I left out a lot and all the nonsense with books and what have you but this is the easiest overview of the series I can offer. It’s main selling points is the deep story and characters throughout the games. And of course who doesn’t love the ability to make and roleplay your own character as a bonus? The games are bit of a flawed gem and Origins in my ugly child but they are truly a delight if you are interested