#but thanks Veilguard nice of you to confirm that Loghain was right about Denerim

[zenatness]

I got to Weisshaupt.

I've decided to ignore the whole 'we're killing off all grey warden characters' bit, because I've decided that Loghain is elsewhere and, as previously established, he's the only grey warden that matters to me. This game never asked if I recruited him, nevermind if he's alive, so what is it going to do? I shall assume he's in Ferelden regardless of what the First Warden has to say, feeling regrettably justified in his previous atrocious choices now that Denerim has proven to be as indefensible as he said it was.

Anyway, I punched the First Warden and was informed via pop-up that I'd made a serious enemy. Hooray! He then went and died maybe fifteen minutes later. Not by my hand either. Just... splat. Ok then. Why even bother with the pop-up?

This was followed by ten seconds of conflict in the group. I was delighted. Finally! Davrin implying that Lucanis can't be trusted because of the demon! Lucanis firing back that they can't trust Davrin because of the blight! Whoo!

And then...

Oh, we're just... dropping it? Kissing and making up at once?

Fine.

Why is this game so scared of conflict between allies?

Scratch that - why is this game so scared?

It won't portray racism, slavery, etc despite us venturing into Tevinter at long last. This was supposed to be slavery central. I've seen a slum and executions but that's all. It won't give our companions actual flaws. It won't let them be angry at each other for more than a couple of minutes. The Dalish can't flock to the gods because then we need to actually examine the fact that we made a people's gods into the villains and what that says about our attitude towards the Dalish (and how they constantly get screwed over every game). We want qunari enemies but we don't want to make all qunari into villains so it's just the antaam. You can play a qunari but not a qunari. Dwarven casts? Don't know what you're talking about. Everything Zevran told us about the crows is gone because we want them to be plucky heroes. It won't even give us villains with reasonable motives because heaven forbid that we feel sympathy for them.

And holy fuck the therapy talk. It's killing me. But we wouldn't want to say something offensive or be unsupportive. It's a fantasy world, but don't you worry, we're all very progressive and knowledgeable here.

This game has no teeth and it's terrified that you'd think it does even for a second.