#but we'll see what veilguard gives me

[kissingwookiees]

rava + solas / doomsday

finally finished this silly self indulgent project after wrestling with clipchamp trying to make it work in a way that was remotely comparable to a decent video editing software (it is not) but i had to get this out of my brain bc this song with them has been fucking HAUNTING ME.

[arts-butthound]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Official Reveal Trailer

It actually dropped. Huh, miracles do happen

[felassan]

August 30th 2024 Developer Q&A (from the official BioWare Discord) - Complete transcript

Under a cut due to length and spoilers.

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

[Link to video recording of Q&A] | [Link to equivalent post for first Q&A (June 14th)] | [Link to video recording for first Q&A]

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here. This blog post is linked in the description under the video. ( ˶´ ᵕ `˶ )

Please note before proceeding that the devs advised that this Q&A may contain minor spoilers!

Corinne Busche, John Epler and Community Manager Katey were the devs that were there.

KFM: Community Manager Katey JE: John Epler CB: Corinne Busche

---

KFM: We’re gonna be joined by John and Corinne here in a sec, just waiting for them to get on. Hey John, hey Corinne, thanks for joining - hey!

JE: Hello! Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure.

CB: Hey y’all. It's so good to see so many people, I see some familiar names here. Good to see you again.

KFM: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to, you know, bring us this second Q&A on the Discord server. Last time we were really, really happy, with the way it happened, y'know, it turned out and how everyone seemed to really enjoy it so we're back again. Thank you for submitting your questions on the ask-bioware channel. I am going to start and kick that off in just a second, but, for those of you who might be new here, I'm the Community Manager, and I'm going to let Corinne and John introduce themselves as well.

CB: Hey y'all, I'm Corinne Busche, Game Director on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I just generally help people on the team do cool things and create this world.

JE: And I'm John Epler, the Creative Director on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Corinne picked probably the best way to describe what I do, too, so I'm just gonna steal that. I'm there to make sure the team can, is enabled to do their best work and I'm super excited to share all this with you.

KFM: Awesome. Yeah before we start I also wanna give a quick heads-up, you might have seen in Announcements, but there are a couple of questions in here that we have answers to that we would consider minor spoilers. I'll give a heads-up before that minor spoiler answer is given, or even the question is read, so you can go, y'know, grab some water, or y'know, go outside for a second, or just do anything, to decide if you want to listen to the answer or not. But, I promise, these spoilers are, y'know, we'll call them out before we say anything.  

CB: That is kinda the coolest part of this session, we're getting closer to launch now, so I think we can do a little bit deeper on some of the questions this time.

KFM: Yes, no this is so exciting! Okay, are you guys ready?

JE: Yes! Yes I am.

CB: Let's do it.

KFM: Let's do it.

KFM: Let's start with a fun one. Do all Evanuris hate tea? Does Ghilly-Flower exclusively drink haunted bog water?

JE: Alright. That is a fun one. Y'know, it's funny because I think Solas is the only one of the elven gods that actually really has a tremendous aversion to tea. That said, we don't really get too into what they drink, I would say though, knowing what I know about Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, I think Elgar'nan probably drinks a combination of gas station coffee and the Thedas equivalent of an energy drink, at all times he's got a big Thermos with him. Whereas Ghilan'nain is all about the herbal concoctions that are supposed to be really good for like, your gut health, things like that - she really takes care of herself, so.

CB: John, I think you just described you, and then me. Interesting.

JE: Hurtful, Corinne, accurate but hurtful.

KFM: Okay, next one. So we know that we can hug Assan, but will we be able to hug any of our companions?

JE: So you can't hug your companions at all times. There's not an option to just walk up and give them a hug. They've got their boundaries, they've got their preferences. But there are opportunities in conversations, in dialogue, in scenes where you will, you know - a companion may ask you for a hug because they're having a rough time and you are able to give it to them.

KFM: And will there be a lot of politicking involved? And by politicking they mean quests like Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts.

JE: Yeah, so I mean, there's not gonna be a quest quite like the Halamshiral Ball, I mean that was very specific to the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor was trying to gain favor with a bunch of different factions, they were trying to form an army. Rook's struggle and Rook's, honestly,  challenge is much more immediate and visceral. That said, it's Dragon Age. It wouldn't be Dragon Age if there weren't politics. You'll have influence on the, y'know, things that are happening, and the fate of nations, that are happening around the world, and Rook, I mean, throughout the game, across this adventure, Rook does become a fairly important figure, so it's natural that you’ll have some influence and some involvement with the affairs of the different factions and nations.

KFM: Gotcha. So this question, this next question comes from Onomatopoeia. I know this has been asked before, but they didn't see an answer for it - is there a way to toggle off nudity and sex scenes?

CB: Yeah, let me take this one. It's so funny, John, you get the fun questions and I get the thirsty nudity questions - I'm here for it. So, let me, let me answer and maybe elaborate. So, there is a toggle for on and off nudity. That is one of the settings we have. And we'll be going deeper into settings and accessibility and things like that as we get a little bit closer to launch. But let me also expand on this. So when you're in character creator, you'll actually be able to select what underclothes your Rook wears, and whether that exposes your chest or your breasts. So, by default nudity is on, chest or breast, that is up to you by your underclothing that you select, particularly as you get into, say, romance scenes, but, at any point you can toggle the setting to be non-nudity and it will override your undergarments. 

KFM: Gotcha. This question comes from DarkGoddessEris. What are the companions’ ages? That was a question that actually came up a bunch, so I'm excited for somebody to be able to answer this one.

JE: Yeah,  I can take this one. So the companions in The Veilguard range anywhere from kind of early-mid twenties with Taash at the youngest, all the way up to Emmrich who is in his early fifties. The rest of the companions tend to be in their late twenties, early thirties, again though, they're all experts in their field, they're all people who have been through a lot, so even the ones that are at the younger end of the age spectrum, their experience, they've been through a tremendous amount by this point by the time you meet them, so, yeah. So I mean, I guess, Taash is the closest to Sera at early twenties, but they’re all in kinda that age range, so.

KFM: This next question I'll pitch to Corinne. How linear is the quest experience? Are there going to be side quests that you can stumble upon and resolve within areas or are you locked into a golden path?

CB: This is such a good one. Yeah, a lot of people have been asking about this so thank you to whoever submitted it. So the content in the game is a mix of directed, kinda like story quest missions, and then explorable content. Or you might say optional content. I don't even like calling it side content because it's a lot of fun, it's really good content. So to give you an idea, a lot of the main story quests are critical path missions if we want to call it that. They're very highly crafted. They're more linear than some of the other parts of the game, because we feel that’s how we can tell the best stories, give you a very intentionally-paced experience, y'know, with lulls and climaxes, so it really hits you. But that's only part of it. You're also gonna explore, fully explore a bunch of the locations in The Veilguard, so like, let me just lay a few on you: Arlathan Forest, Hossberg Wetlands, those are probably two of the biggest ones, the Crossroads - now we've seen Crossroads before in Trespasser, but this, isn't necessarily the Crossroads as you remember it. So you'll be able to explore this, this part of the Crossroads, and as you're there, you're absolutely gonna be discovering new areas, new quests, mysteries and new challenges. So exploration in the game is absolutely about player agency in these larger, less linear levels, and it's really an important part of the overall experience and core to our design. Now, as a player - and I'm just speaking for me personally - I'm the kind of player that wants to 100% every area. I want to go find all the optional quests, all the treasures, I wanna see that big 100% completed on my map. That's gonna take you quite a bit of time. So hopefully that answers the question. It is both.

KFM: I think that's a great answer, thanks, Corinne. This next one is from a user named Benedictus: Will we ever get the Venatori gear?

CB: Yeah, I can take that one as well. Venatori gear - so like, I'm assuming what we mean is for to like, wear on Rooks or on companions. Gosh, y'all, I'm gonna be honest - we really, really tried on that one. Hopefully you've seen in the videos our cloth sim, our hair sim, I think it's quite beautiful. The Venatori gear, generally we couldn't make that work to the quality we'd expect within combat. So, no you can't get most of the Venatori gear, but I will say there is a unique Venatori-themed helmet. I, I don't want to spoil what that is exactly, but, so, you can get a helmet, it is unique, it's pretty interesting and ties into some of the events that can happen in the game but I'm just gonna leave it there.

KFM: Gotcha. So, now we're getting into our first real minor spoiler question, so - consider yourself warned, do whatever you need to do, either listen or don't for the next, like, I don't know, minute. So this question is from Kala: Will there be any romanceable NPCs outside of the companions?

JE: I'll take this one. So, no - not this time. This time the romances for Rook are strictly within the companions. We wanted to really focus on those relationships and make sure that they were as developed and as deep as we could make them. And yet honestly and part of it - the other side of it is - Harding was a great example in DA:I, that was a character that as we were building the game, it really struck us, stuck out to us, this is a character that, actually, y'know, you see a lot, you build this very specific rapport with, and the writer, Sheryl, wanted to create that light romance with Harding. None of the characters in The Veilguard really jumped out to us in that same way as, this is a character we really want to build a relationship with, for Rook, but again, y'know, really focusing down on making sure the companion romances were as deep and meaningful as we could make them.

KFM: And this question is just for fun. So we're passed a spoiler, we'll get back into other spoilers in a bit, but this one's just for fun. We have so many cute, silly bird videos on the internet - Lucanis' Ninth Dagger, by the way, says that birds are their favorite animal - if you could just snap your fingers and a bird Easter Egg would be added for Assan, what would it be?

JE: Oh, that's a good question. So actually I'm gonna cheat, because I am trying to think of bird memes, or bird videos specifically, and I'm having a hard time, but, y'know, the thing about griffons is that they're half bird and also half lion, so I'm gonna go with a cat meme, say my favorite meme, and this is one that still brings me joy years after it came out, is the video of the cat grooving to the guy playing Finnish polka on the drum. Again, years old, I've loved - that's one of my favorite videos on the internet, so y'know, if we were gonna give Assan any kind of Easter Egg it would be that one.

KFM: I love that one - 

CB: You know, don't judge me on this, you're putting me on the spot here, but, the only thing I can picture in my head - y'all remember that video a few years back where the kid unleashes the rabbit into the field and then immediately that hawk comes down and snatches it up?

JE: Yes!

CB: Don't judge me, y'all! Don't judge me. But that's where my head goes.

JE: Oh, man.

CB: Assan just getting a little treat.

JE: I love that.

KFM: I love that.

JE: That's a great, that’s a great answer, Corinne. Fantastic.

KFM: So this next one is from a user named Ash. So Taash breathes fire, Lucanis has wings, Harding is a dwarf who has magic. A lot of our companions have some strange abilities - is this because the Veil is compromised?

JE: Oh, I'd say it's, I mean partially yeah. I mean, we've talked before about how over the course of the time since Dragon Age: Inquisition, I mean, it started at the end of Trespasser. The Veil's not in great shape. Corypheus already did a number on it, and Solas has very clearly, as you saw, in the [inaudible] preview, not been making things better in the intervening times. So, there is to some degree, y'know, I'll use Bellara as an example - Bellara's someone who's seeing these artifacts turn on, and being able to interface with them because there's all this magic that's coming back to the world through the torn Veil. Other characters though, I mean, you are recruiting people to stop the end of the world. You're recruiting extraordinary people, they're gonna have extraordinary abilities, and you know, someone like Davrin, a lot of his abilities are focused around Assan and the fact that he's got this partnership, this, almost, you know, familial bond with Assan, his griffon, so.

KFM: Can we get some Assans in the chat?

JE: I think I'm seeing a lot of Assans in the chat, so I think we're well covered there.

KFM: Me too.

KFM: Alright. This next one is for both of you, and I will say, another quick little spoiler, minor spoiler warning, depending on the way that either of you might want to answer this question. This is, of all the companions, who's the team's favorite and what companion was the most difficult to design?

JE: Ooh. I'm gonna cheat, I wrote Bellara so, I’m definitely not gonna say the companion I wrote because that would be weird, but I will say I loved the companion interactions so I'm gonna go with two of my favorite relationships that Bellara has within the team, friendships that she has within the team. So, Bellara and Lucanis start off as two characters who feel like they're from completely different worlds, their experience growing up was very different, where they lived, what they do, and over the course of the game, they kinda build this friendship over all these things that despite again - very different upbringings - they have a lot of things in common. They're both the, y'know, characters who just believe family is deeply important and that shows up in a lot of their interactions, a lot of, y’know, the way they talk to each other, they interact with each other, both within the Lighthouse but also out in the field. The other one - and this was one that came up organically as we were building the game - is Neve and Bellara and they, y'know, Bellara is a character who, y’know, despite being out in Arlathan is very big on stories, very big on - she finds - gets all the newspapers from Tevinter and she has kind’ve learnt who Neve is through that, and they build this very sisterly relationship that I love and that over the course of the game, I mean, we started out without this kind of as the intention, we started finding all these places that this can show up and it turned into, again, one of my favorite friendships that exists between the companions, so.

CB: Oh, that was such a good answer. Yeah, I think I might cheat as well, John, because, first of all, I don't want to speak on behalf of the entire team. So I'm gonna give you my two faves if that's alright. And I feel like y'all already know me on this. Every time we have a chance to talk about Taash and Emmrich I'm right there for it. I'd say they're probably my two favorites, but here's the thing y'all, here's why I love them so much. When you're out in the field like exploring, or on missions with them, their banter is so good, because they do not see eye-to-eye on necromancy, like, at all, and, it's really funny, it's really delightful, I love seeing how it evolves - so like, look - if you wanted a recommendation from me on like, banter in the field, you've got to hear Taash and Emmrich. Most difficult to design, let's touch on that really quickly. I, so, I'm gonna answer, but I don't want to say that like we put more effort into one versus another, but I would say the most challenging was probably Harding, just because you've probably seen if you saw some of the teaser footage, the pre-release trailer, we have teased some strange new powers for Harding, and when we do that we have to figure out how that layers into her combat kit, and when we onboard that, and, yeah it was an interesting challenge, it was a really fun one.

KFM: Awesome. Backing away from spoilers for a quick second, I'm going to ask this question to Corinne. With only two companions per party, as a Nightmare mode player, how can we balance not having a warrior in the team to tank? Will higher difficulty players be forced to bring Davrin or Taash for a melee instead of bringing the characters that we want?

CB: Oh super good - I was hoping this would come up, especially after we released the combat deep-dive for warrior trailer - hopefully y'all enjoyed that. So, let me start by telling you what's happening under the hood. Well, first of all, I'm not gonna bury the lede - you're not gonna have to bring a tank if you don't want to. But, let me first tell you what's happening under the hood, this is gonna be kind of high level, maybe we can go a little bit deeper when we have more time. Behind the scenes when you walk into an enemy encounter, we generally know how much pressure, or you could say intensity or aggression, we want to be putting on Rook to maintain that satisfying moment-to-moment experience. So to give you an idea of some of the levers we have for each encounter, that is the number of enemies that could be specifically focused on you versus your companions, how many enemies can be attacking at once, and even when you have multiple enemies coming at Rook, we have a ticketing system.

[text block character limit reached]

CB: And what that means is each enemy basically knows when it is allowed to attack or not. So, I tell you all that because basically when we're looking at the different types of classes and team compositions, those levers exist underneath the hood, so that we give you the most autonomy and flexibility, but also maintain that, that pressure, that engagement for you the player. So, a couple of other things on that. Now that you kinda get a sense of like what's happening under the hood, it is absolutely beneficial, but not required to have one of each class in your party. We did go into this with the goal of giving players more flexibility than perhaps we've seen in past entries. It's just a different approach. What we know is that players tend to get very attached to certain characters. If you've got your favorites, you oftentimes wanna bring them with you or if you're romancing a character, sometimes it's a feelbad to feel like you have to leave them behind because maybe they're the same class as you. So, the whole game is built and balanced around flexibility, and giving you the agency. So you can be successful, you can mix it up, but you gotta plan for it. So what, what do I mean by that? If you're not using teamwork, if you're not planning for your party composition for those synergies, it's definitely not gonna end super well. Right? Like, I've done no tank runs, but it takes some foresight in the strategy here. So I'll give you an example if you don't mind, I think I've been pretty out there that my favorite class and specialization right now - could change tomorrow - is the rogue Veil Ranger specialization. And this is very much a ranged archery-based specialization. So, I want to keep enemies at ranged, because I want to get those well-aimed critical hits, right, if those enemies are right up on top of me, I'm not gonna be able to do that. So if I don't have a tank in my party, a couple of the tools that I turn to - and I have done this, in fact, in my last playthrough I did this quite a bit - I might bring Bellara and use her Galvanic Tear, which pulls all the enemies towards like this really cool-looking gravity well and gets them off of me. I might instead use Neve's Time Slow. So the cool thing about this is it slows time for everything in the world except for you and your team, right? So I'm running away, I'm doing a Heavy Draw, getting those headshots, or making other tactical decisions. I could also turn to my rune loadout - hopefully y'all saw runes in the warrior combat deep-dive - that's an important part, especially if you're playing on Nightmare Mode, the strategic and tactical options that gives you, will allow you to overcome things like not having a tank. I think everyone may have saw the rune where you're doing a, basically an AoE freeze, and freezing everything in place. So it's kind of a long-winded answer, I'm sorry, it's complicated, but point is, is I think you're gonna have more flexibility in your build crafting and your synergies, but it's gonna depend on the strategy and composition that you feel works best for you and your own preferences. And then you did mention Nightmare, let me just finish with saying, and this is anecdotal, but in our own Nightmare playthroughs, we actually find that the most challenging aspect to plan around isn't necessarily aggro management, but making sure you have coverage on all the various elemental damage types. So, I just say this for anyone planning to go into Nightmare - plan well.

KFM: Staying on the topic of combat, it was noticed during the high-level combat videos that weapons and armor seem to be tied to different factions. Are there bonuses or something similar involved if Rook is a Grey Warden while using Grey Warden equipment? Are these removed if a Shadow Dragon Rook is using Grey Warden equipment? 

CB: Oh, interesting. You know, everyone went deep on that gameplay video, hey, I’m glad you noticed that. Yeah, so, to answer this, you're going to be working really closely with the factions in the game, right? Like the threat you’re up against is a world-ending threat so you’re going to interact with each of these factions. So that means that you’re gonna get a lot of the gear that that faction tends to use, and especially the stronger you help them become, the more gear you’ll have available from that faction. So when you see a piece of gear that has like the Veil Jumper icon on it, that signifies that it is aligned with that faction, but you can use it regardless of if that’s your faction background or not. All it means is that, you know, if I want to maybe improve it or get more gear in that vein, or that looks similar, I can see it’s from the Veil Jumpers, I’m going to go back to the Veil Jumper quartermaster, and that’s where I will find more items of that type or upgrade possibilities. But it also leans into the thematic identity. So, you know, I think in that video we were using the transmog system, but if I’m using a Veil Jumper gear like an armor, it’s gonna look like it was crafted by the Veil Jumpers, and it’s gonna lean into the mechanical themes of the Veil Jumpers as well, which, one of those themes tends to be lightning damage. Now, I will also say, and this is a little specific, but occasionally you will find gear, or even like skill nodes, that will occasionally be empowered, they’ll get stronger relative to your strength with that given faction. So like if you find a piece of gear that’s really core to your build, and it strengthens the stronger the Veil Jumpers are, like that gives you a pretty good signifier that maybe that’s a faction you wanna focus on.

CB: Katey, I don't know if you're still there.

JE: Yeah.

CB: Did we lose you?

[there is silence on KFM’s line]

JE: Ope.

CB: We may have lost Katey, y’all. 

JE: We can start, just, you know, let’s - 

CB: Yeah. Why don’t, why don’t, I do have the list of questions here so why don’t I ask the next one until Katey comes back. I hope everything’s okay on your side Katey. Alright. Next question I see, the Evoker description on the blog-post highlights ice-based magic. Does that mean we will not be able to have lightning- and fire-themed playstyles as the Evoker? No, no, absolutely not. The Evoker can lean into all of the elements, in fact, all mages can to a degree. You probably have seen the skill trees, you’re gonna pick up abilities, perks, traits, of all elemental types, and powering up those elements. So just because you’re an Evoker, doesn’t mean you’re like pigeon-holed into ice spells. What I will say is, if you’re heading towards that specialization, you’re gonna pass through the section of the skill tree where you’re more easily going to be able to naturally pick up those ice spells, right? So it might lean towards ice, but you can expand it. The name of the game is agency here.

JE: Corinne, why don’t I ask you the question so we can still kinda do a Q&A thing? CB: Yeah, that, that sounds good.

JE: Corinne, can I set the gear to look however I want without losing stats? And that is a question from YoCallMeRob.

CB: Alright, well, y’all know, fashion’s the true end game. So, we did confirm we have a full transmog system, so what I’m gonna do is spend some time going a little more in-depth for y’all, so that we’re getting new information. So yeah, if anyone’s not aware, transmog basically is, I have a piece of gear, but I apply an appearance to it that makes it look like something else that I like better so I can be fabulous. So, how this is gonna work is you’re of course gonna find gear as you adventure through the world, and you can equip that. But any piece of gear you find is also going to unlock the appearance for that gear. So you might find something that you really like, and you wanna look that way, and then you replace it, anything that you’ve already acquired, you can apply the appearance to whatever gear you want. Additionally, and this is one of my favorite parts, is, you’ll also find some appearance-only cosmetics that are specifically used just for transmog. So sometimes these are some of the fancier or more niche pieces of gear, maybe end up looking like a training dummy for instance. So you’ll get these appearance datas from opening treasure chests, exploring the world, and more frequently from vendors. So, look, if you’re in it for fashion, check out those vendor inventories because they got you. I would also say that you can transmog your casual wear, so field wear and casual wear, fully transmoggable. If you wanna be platemail while you’re hanging around the Lighthouse as a mage, more power to you. And then if I were just to give you a practical example of this, like on the Blood Dragon Armor, the pre-order bonus, those are cosmetics, those are just appearance datas, right, so they’re effectively evergreen, you can use them anytime you like without compromising your stats.

JE: I will say that I don’t think I’ve spent as much time in any other menu other than transmog, because as Corinne mentioned at the beginning of this, fashion is the true end-game, so. Katey, have we gotcha back yet?

JE: Katey, have we gotcha back yet?

KFM: Am I back? Can you hear me?

JE: Yay, you’re back. 

CB: Katey, we did our best Katey.

JE: Yeah.

CB: But I don’t think we were very impressive -

KFM: No, I think you both did a great job. It was one of those weird situations where Discord force-quit, but I could still hear everything everyone was saying. I don’t really know what that was about, but.

CB: I just assumed you didn’t like my answer.

KFM: Yeah, I rage-quit actually Corinne, it’s all your fault.

JE: Taken by the Fade.

KFM: No, thank you for taking over while I was figuring that out. There is a non-zero chance that that happens again, so just keep an eye out. 

JE: We’ll keep an eye out for it, we gotcha.

KFM: Thank you.

KFM: So I’ll just pick it up from the next question. The latest, latest - wow, I can’t even talk anymore - video series mentioned how each companion can set up or detonate specific combos. Are those always set in stone or would we get opportunities to change it up, through the skill-trees or otherwise? 

CB: Cool, cool, cool. I eat up these really specific combat questions. So first, let me give you an overview of how the primer-detonator relationship works between the classes. Like, this is very nitty-gritty y’all, if this is your jam, get your pencils out. So here’s the overview. Mages, and this whether, this is true of companions and Rook, mages apply weakened and overwhelmed debuffs, and those are two of the debuffs we call primers. Magers detonate the sundered debuff. Then if we go to rogues, rogues apply weakened and sundered debuffs, and rogues detonate overwhelmed. Warriors apply sundered and overwhelmed, and warriors detonate weakened. So you can see, kinda the interesting rock-paper-scissors relationship there. And when I talk about it as beneficial to bring one of each class? It’s just the inherent nature of that rock-paper-scissors relationship that I’m really thinking of. But, to answer your question, that is just the baseline, that is the default if you don’t modify it. Throughout the game, you will find opportunities, whether it’s from gear, skill-tree nodes, even runes, that allow you to break this paradigm. So when it comes to your companion builds, again it all comes down to the abilities you choose, what gear you’re equipping them with, how you allocate your skill points. Yeah, does that answer the question? There’s quite a bit of flexibility but there is a baseline paradigm as well.

KFM: Yeah, I think that answers the question.

KFM: Let’s see. The next one is, will we see a bit more the Lighthouse before release, as well as non-combat gameplay?

CB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We’ll keep it brief here because we are gonna be talking more about exploration and the Lighthouse next month, so forgive me, but I’ll say stay tuned on that one.

KFM: Alright. Then, this next one I believe is a little bit of a spoiler. I know that some people have, can’t hear me still for some reason, if you can’t, tell folks to quit Discord and rejoin it, but -

CB: Okay, minor spoiler y’all, if you can’t hear Katey, this one’s a minor spoiler.

KFM: Yes. Thanks Corinne. This one is, will we be able to give gifts to our companions, either generic or plot-specific?

CB: Yeah, you sure can! I actually wanna shout-out one of our lovely designers, Dusty. This was a passion project from him. He was advocating for this. So, the cool thing about this is, it’s not like a transactional thing, like where I’m gonna go farm a bunch of like nonsensical items and just like, mechanically turn them over. Out in the world, and there in various locations, so you kinda stumble upon them, you can buy a gift that is very personal to any one of the companions, and then you go, you turn that into them, you give it to them, they have a nice acknowledgement. And then, the thing that’s just like so sweet about it, we’ve talked about how the companion rooms evolve over time, but if you go and get them one of these, like, very personalized gifts, they’ll display it in their room. Like it doesn’t go into some stats void. It’s actually on display.

KFM: I love that.

KFM: This next question, I'll pitch it to John. Some of our companions like Neve, Emmrich and Lucanis have been in past short stories and comics and there's also a passing resemblance to some of the old concept art from years ago. What is the process like for making a character at some point and then planning to bring them back as a companion, or were they always written or designed and intended to be companions?

JE: Alright, that's a great question, and it's actually one I'm gonna go a little deep on. So, as we build the game, as we start writing companions we see how they fit in the story, see how they fit together. Some characters have been around, some character concepts have been around for quite some time, others come in a little bit later in development as we realise we have a gap, you know, something in the story that we need someone, who makes sense to fill that gap, to be that character. But part of it’s also just as the writers we want to make sure that the people who are writing these companions are passionate, and they're writing a character they want to write. We don't want to just say "we need X, Y and Z. Write a companion to fill these gaps", but it'll be "hey, in this story, it really doesn't make sense that we don't have somebody, ah, doing X, is there a character we can build for that?" And so, y'know, you'll see the old concept art and a lot of those concepts, y'know, a lot of those, kinda the core of those characters remains intact, we may have changed details of them, we may have decided "okay, they were going to be X but now Y makes a little bit more sense" - Or as a writer I'm a little bit more interested in why, y’know, what, this particular concept speaks to me more. In terms of comics, short stories and such, generally speaking - and this isn't universal - but generally speaking, writers are writing these short stories in particular, it’s a volunteer, we ask the team, like, "hey, does anyone - we've got this short story anthology, who wants to write something for it?”, so writers are going to pick characters that they're passionate about and in those cases they tend to be their companions, so for example. You know, Neve’s shown, is mentioned. Neve, Emmrich, Lucanis have all shown up. Those were written by people who are passionate about those characters and we had already intended for them to be companions. Other characters, though - I mean, and Harding is an excellent example - we create a character to fill a role. In the case of Harding, she was in Inquisition largely to be there to kind of connect those exploration spaces together and give you a sense of the Inquisition’s presence, and then we saw the fan reaction, but beyond that, Sheryl really wanted to explore Harding's arc more deeply, so she got promoted to be a companion as well, so, yeah, I mean, it's an organic process, and I mean again, it comes down to, we want to make sure the people who are building these characters, ah, not just the writers but also the artists, y'know, the cinematic designers, the editors, y'know, the gameplay people, are excited to build these characters. And you know, and actually, I'm gonna go a little bit side topic on that. Bellara's a great example where we knew what Bellara wanted to be, needed to be in the story, but gameplay-wise it took a bit to kinda land on how her gameplay and her character arc and who she was melded together. Y'know, Corinne’s talked earlier about the companions and how they show up in gameplay. A really big thing for us on this project is making sure that the gameplay reflects the characters, their arc and their personality as much as possible, so. Yeah, kind’ve a long answer to say, it depends, but yeah, generally if they show up, especially in something like a short story, we’ve already intended for them to be a companion because, those are the characters that people, the writers are most passionate about, so.

KFM: I love that.

KFM: Apart from wanting to try different classes, what are the main incentives for multiple playthroughs now that, now that stuff seems more overall universal, to be attempted all in a single playthrough. Are there choices presented freely - are there choices presented that are impactful, that wildly different outcomes will come from, while - wow, wow, wow, let me start that one again. I think it’s just, I’m reading it straight off the sheet. 

JE: No worries.

KFM: I'll start from the top. Apart from wanting to try different classes, what are the main incentives for multiple playthroughs now that stuff seems more universal, to be attempted all in a single playthrough? Are there choices that are impactful and wildly different, and different outcomes and decision paths?

JE: So, I mean, there's a few incentives, one of which, is, and I mean, the most basic is, the three classes from a gameplay perspective do play differently and, you know, I’ve, it’s funny, Corinne was talking about how her favorite is the Veil Ranger but that might change. Mine literally changes every time I play, I start a new playthrough, I develop a new favorite class, which is the class I'm currently playing. But more generally, yeah there are choices in the game, there are different outcomes, there’s content that does, that you will see or won't see based on choices you make both within the critical path of the game but also with the followers themselves so, y'know. You're not going to see everything in a single playthrough, you're not even going to see everything necessarily in a couple of playthroughs, but, y'know, you want to see how your choices have different outcomes, that's the best way to do it. 

KFM: This question is - I understand mages having very magical-looking moves, but why do rogues and warriors also have very magical-looking moves? Was making every class look like a mage a purposeful choice? 

CB: Cool, cool, cool. So it's a multi-part answer, but yes, everything we've done has been with intention towards supporting the overall player experience. So I guess the first place I'd go to answer this is from a game-tuning and balance perspective. We knew that supporting multiple damage types like physical, fire, electric etc, that was gonna be an important factor in the strategic depth of the combat system, particularly as it leans into builds and the strategies you'd use to take on various enemies. It’s not the extent of it, but it's an important part of it. So that meant that making sure the various classes in some capacity have access to some or all of these damage types. And that then means that we need to make them read visually as such on the battlefield. So the first part is about making sure you have those strategic options on the battlefield. But there is more to it than that I'd say, we also found - and I've heard this from a lot of you, that some of our magical hybrid classes have been amongst the favorites. My goodness the discourse around Knight Enchanter - 

JE: M-hm -

CB: - So this felt like a very thematic way for us to support that goal if that makes sense, the goal of game balance but also leaning into the things that seem to resonate the most. If I was to just focus on the Warriors out there for a minute though, because we just released the warrior deep dive, we've actually long had a goal within the team of making them more visually interesting and impactful. We know, and I’ve heard from a bunch of you that warrior, y'know, tends not to be peoples’ first choice, but hey, any of the warrior fans out there - big props to you, because I love them, too. So this was like our chance, really, to show what a warrior can do, to make them feel like they have a presence on the battlefield that could be as interesting as some of the other classes, but I will say, I absolutely recognize that there are those of you that like, if you're playing a melee class, you even want a pure, like, physical-based warrior aesthetic, maybe something that's a little more grounded, you can generally make a build that's more physical-focused if that’s more your taste.

KFM: In addition to playing the first three games, what comic books or novels do you recommend reading before playing The Veilguard?

JE: Oh, that's a great question. I mean, generally speaking, one of the things we wanted to make sure with The Veilguard was that players could get into the story, understand what was going on without needing to, y'know, get into the ancillary material. I love the comics, I love the novels, I love the short stories, but they are intended to be kinda side content. One of the things that we hear loud and clear is sometimes folks don't really want that to feel like I need to have read this, I need to have seen this comic, I need to have watched that show for it to make sense. That said, I’d say The Missing, the most recent comic series. is a very clear lead-up to the beginning of The Veilguard, it's setting up events, it’s kinda setting up, y'know, Varric and Harding's search for Solas, it sets up some of the characters that you'll see in the game. Tevinter Nights is another one, not - we mentioned earlier that some of the companions show up there. Beyond just the companions, there’s some thematic stuff that comes out of that as well, some things that we kinda wanted to set up when we wrote those short stories, like, giving you an idea of what the worldstate is, how things have changed over time, and then I’d say, you know, more very recently, we have the podcast, Vows & Vengeance, which is intended to give you a taste of the companions and also, again, talk about the worldstate of Thedas at this point, you know, giving you kind’ve the lead-up to weeks before the events of the Veilguard, so you do have that sense of what’s going on, who are these people, and how, you know, when I first meet them in The Veilguard, you kinda have an idea of who they are. Again, though, this is all stuff that I think enhances the experience, but it’s not required, there’s never going to be, we’re never gonna put you in a situation where a character shows up and, you know, everyone makes a big deal out of it, and you’re sitting there wondering like, who, who is this person? Because they were introduced in other media. We always wanna make sure that you understand, that the only thing that you need to have done to understand The Veilguard is play The Veilguard, so.

KFM: Awesome. Also, yes, Vows & Vengeance is so good, so definitely, you know, give it a chance. The first episode is out now. I think a lot of people in the Vows & Vengeance Discord server, Discord channel are, are really stoked about it.

KFM: This next question. Will we be able to adjust how much damage the companions do in the accessibility settings?

CB: Yeah, so our customized difficulty, and accessibility settings as well, they’re more focused on how you the player experience the game while in control of Rook. So, things like enemy health, timing, things of that nature. So not in the settings, no, but if you really wanna be that kind of player that wants to amp up your companions, like have them do a greater share of the overall damage, there’s a number of ways to accomplish this. You’ll get gear that just strictly says, your companions do more damage. And then there are some unique buffs we support like Rally Party, so you as Rook can trigger this surge in your companions’ ability. So, again, we know how diverse the motivations are within the player-base, so we wanted to make sure those tools were there for y’all.

KFM: So now we’re getting back into spoiler territory. There’s minor spoilers, but, you know, definitely, take heed, for the next couple of minutes if you don���t wanna hear them. Okay, we ready? Will we finally meet Maevaris Tevani in Tevinter?

CB: Oh my goodness, y’all. Alright, you got the spoiler warning, so when I talk about cameos and appearances, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Okay, this one’s very near and dear to my heart as a trans woman myself, I’m pretty open about that. Yeah, yeah, our dear Mae, she’s in the game, happy to confirm it, and I am, every time I see her I absolutely freak out. What I’m not gonna tell you though is what role or capacity she plays, so you’re just gonna have to wait and see. But Maevaris Tilani, she’s in.

KFM: I am living for chat right now. Like, I try not to look at it too much during these, because it’ll distract me, but I’m living for chat right now.

KFM: This next one is also a minor spoiler. Will we find out what happened to Lucanis' parents, for his grandmother to have had charge of him?

JE: Yeah, so I mean, Lucanis is an Antivan Crow. If you know anything about the Antivan Crows you know that they are, well, assassins, and assassins tend to have fairly deadly politics, and the daggers are a lot more literal than you would see somewhere like Orlais, so. That’s all I’m gonna say. You’ll find out, you’ll find out at some point for sure.

KFM: We’re doing a great job at not giving too much away.

KFM: Do we get any jealousy dialogues from any of the companions if you switch up your romance plans partway through? Are any of the romances hard-locked at any point?

JE: Yeah so, you can, I mean, once, there is an opportunity, or there is a place in a romance where you essentially commit to it being exclusive. And we really wanted to make sure that, A), we were very up front about the fact that you were committing to an exclusive romance at that point, and before that, it is portrayed as, you’re flirting, you’re kind’ve, you know, figuring out each other. So, not, there’s no jealousy dialogues, but there are - places where you commit, and we wanted to be very clear to fans. There’s also going to be a place, because I think I’m reading this right, where, there’s a point in the story where if you haven’t committed, if you haven’t said like, yeah, let’s, let’s, you know, I’m in for it, I’m up for this, let’s do this, where you no longer have that opportunity. We’re very clear about what that point is, because again, we don’t want people to be missing out on a romance, to think like, I’ve got some time, you know, I really wanna romance Neve, but, I’ve got a little, and then find out that no, in fact, you don’t have anymore time, so. 

KFM: Are class specializations locked to a particular faction, or can Rook only learn a specialization from a particular faction, like through a faction trainer?

JE: So, the specializations are a lot more thematically tied to the factions than they are a strict, you must be X faction, you must get it from this person. You know, for example, I’ll use the Veil Ranger is all themed, as Corinne said earlier, around electricity, around the use of the Veil, around the use of that kinda magic. So while they are thematically tied, there is no, you must be a Crow to be a Spellblade for example, and part of that is because, while we do like having that connection between gameplay and, you know, roleplay, we also don’t want you to feel like, well, I really wanted to be a Spellblade, but I also really want to be a Grey Warden. We don’t want those two things, sometimes we want gameplay to influence narrative, but we never want you to feel restricted by one against the other, if that makes sense.

KFM: Yeah, definitely

CB: Katey, can I go off-script really quickly?

KFM: Of course.

CB: Alright, so I saw someone post in chat, “okay, poly next time, though”. Let me just say, I cannot make promises, I cannot, but I’m with you. I’m with you. 

KFM: I love it. Anytime you wanna address anything that’s happening in chat, by all means.

JE: Oh, shit, copy that.

KFM: I mean, don’t go too crazy. Alright.

KFM: This next question is from Que Sera Sera. Will we be able to change the font size in the UI, subtitles etc?

CB: I can take that one. So, quick reminder, we are gonna do a deeper dive as we get closer to launch on accessibility settings, but let me just answer this one. Yeah, yeah you absolutely can. There are limits of course, but as a fellow person who often has to squint, I’m 42 y’all, my eyes are starting to go. I can play comfortably, I suspect most players will be able to play comfortably.

KFM: Will there be a way to save characters we make so we don't have to start from scratch each time?

CB: Heck yeah, you absolutely can. We, I mean, look, all of you playing Inquisition, you’re still sharing your OC and your characters ten years on. We know how much you love it, so yeah, yeah, absolutely. I do wanna have a, some caveats here though. So, it’s when you’re in the character creator, you can import the character appearance, it’s just gonna be the appearance data, from an existing save of yours. So when I say an existing save, just let me put a very fine point on it, that save has to be local to the machine. Remember, we’re an offline game, there’s no online character sharing built in. But for those of you that like, your OC, are very near and dear to your heart and every time you replay you like to have the same character, and you’ve spent hours and hours and hours working on it, yeah, you can import that.

JE: We saw how many of you were saving screenshots of sliders in DA:I, and that was not a great experience, as we’re well aware, so.

KFM: This next one is, are companion quests going to focus on internal factors or external personal events? Like will it be a growth in character and self-discovery, or are they firmly-rooted in their sense of self and will ask for/need help with their factions, interpersonal relationships, etc?

JE: So that’s a great, another great question. It’s a mix of both. I mean, each companion has their own personal arc over the course of the game. You know, you go on missions with them, you solve problems with them and the nature of those problems, you know, it’s, the problems are a lot, often-times very external in nature, you know, something’s happening that they need help with, but most of the time those problems are also tied to their own personal growth as a character. Again, you know, we really want to make sure that players feel invested in these characters, feel invested in their stories. And we also want to show that these characters do grow over the course of The Veilguard, this is, there aren’t characters that remain completely static from moment one to the end-game. These are characters who grow, and you help them grow. They’re still, their problems are still not going to like, they’re not sitting there saying, well, Rook, you need to do everything for me, but you are, you’re intended to be the leader of this group, but also, you can be their friend and help them with things that, their challenges, so. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a mix of both, we really just, it comes down to the individual character and there is a lot of nuance in that answer I think too.

KFM: This next question from XenoGabby is a minor spoiler, so you’ve been warned once again. The question is, is Lucanis possessed?

JE: So, again, spoilers, everyone has been warned, fairly warned. So Lucanis Dellamorte is also known as The Demon of Vyrantium. And, he has spent a lot of time killing Venatori, who are mages, and who do know a lot about demons, so. Yeah, somebody decided that it might be a good idea to make that nickname stick.

KFM: And this next one, from a user named Crom, is there reactivity towards the specialization that you chose? Like some people might trust more Champions, or maybe freak, others will freak out with Death Callers or Reapers? 

CB: Yeah, what a good question, so, in general the reactivity is reserved for things that aren’t necessarily likely to change, things that can create a throughline that we can keep building and building upon, so like your faction, your lineage, your class, your choices. So that keeps a consistent narrative thread with those elements, and then we can assume that thread continues from A to B. So the answer is no, they don’t react to your specialization, but in part that’s because you can full refund, you can respec at any time, you might a Death Caller one moment and another specialization on the next encounter.

KFM: And, this next question. You mentioned encountering companions on their own missions in the world. If I keep my party mostly the same, does that mean that I miss out on their side missions, or are they unavailable to be picked up during that time? 

CB: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re, you have all the tools that you’re not gonna miss out on quests based on who’s in your party. How would I answer this - so, there are certain plot elements that can change what quests are available to you, and in some cases, some quests that you might have in your journal can actually expire based on choices and how you advance the plot. So there are ways that quest content gets cut off, or alters. But in general you have the visibility and the tools so that you won’t miss out on it. I can give you a couple of examples, that might be helpful. So when you meet companions out in the world, there’s kinda like a couple of different ways that they can show up. In a recent playthrough, I was exploring Hossberg Wetlands. It was technically for a quest that should’ve been more oriented towards Davrin, but I didn’t have him in my party, and as I got close to the objective, he showed up with Assan and helped me clear the path forward. The other way this will happen, I was out in Arlathan, actually doing, on my way to do a main story mission, and I get to the far reaches of Arlathan Forest, and I already knew that Taash wanted to help me with some of the challenges of that arc. Well, Taash is right there waiting for me, so I actually chose to instead like, ah, Taash seems impatient, I’m gonna actually jump on that story arc right now instead of what I intended to do, so. Just some examples of the way that as you’re journeying through this world, opportunities are gonna show up, but they allow you just to express more agency, you’re generally not going to miss them.

KFM: Awesome. This next one is, minor spoiler, you’ve been warned. This next question is from Tazaba. What's the difference between the Veil Jumper faction and the Veil Ranger Specialization?

CB: Yeah, okay, so, yeah we just wanted to kinda flag this as a spoiler, just because there might be assumptions about how you take on specializations in this game. So John touched on this a little bit already, but specializations really represent the training and fighting styles used by a given faction. As John mentioned, you do not have to be a Veil Jumper to choose a specialization that’s associated with the Veil Jumpers. You’ve just been around them, you’re aware of their techniques, and you wanna take that on yourself. So, in this particular case, and I get the confusion because Veil Jumper and Veil Ranger sound very similar. If I’m playing as a rogue, using the Veil Ranger specialization, all that means is I’m fighting in the style of the Veil Jumpers, like they do, with bow and arrow, typically with electric damage, that sort’ve thing. So just, to be super clear, it’s not required that you have to play a Veil Jumper in order to be a Veil Ranger.

KFM: This next question is, where is the equator in Thedas, or the planet Thedas is on, relative to places we’ve explored?

JE: That is a great question. So, I will say that, you know, it’s funny until I saw this question, it’s not something I’d ever thought a lot about, but as I started thinking about it a little bit more deeply, based on how the climate changes across Thedas, you know, obviously, to the south are the Avvar and things get a little bit more wintry, and then up north is a lot more tropical, I’d say that Thedas is a southern continent on this world, so.

KFM: Are there any main story missions that require you to use a specific companion? Kinda similar to a previous question.

CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, there are a few, yes, again, in the warrior deep dive, I’m not gonna describe it, just in case anyone, you know, didn’t wanna have spoilers, you can see that a companion was required for that. However, that’s the exception rather than the rule. In general, we try to give players the agency to bring who they want for these moments. There are these times where a companion, either their faction or their story arc is so closely tied or intersects with the events of a main story mission that they do become required, but it’s not the standard. And then of course, in general, if you’re doing your companions’ arcs, those are the moments where they’re more than likely gonna be required.

KFM: Will we be - 

CB: It's pretty flexible, like if, if you’re worried about like, every mission I go through, like am I gonna have someone that is gonna be mandated? Generally not.

KFM: Sorry, I almost talked over you there Corinne, my bad.

KFM: This next question is, will we be able to pause cutscenes? Will there be any kind of dialogue history to look back on if we miss what was said? 

JE: So, you can pause every cutscene in the game. Obviously, life happens, you know, somebody, maybe you’re cat’s, you know, just to use an example that definitely doesn’t happen to me regularly, my cat might be throwing up in the next room and I need to find a way to get her off the carpet and on to, you know, not the carpet, so you can pause any cutscene, and conversation. There is no dialogue history at the moment unfortunately, and that’s not something, we did look into it but it’s just based on how the dialogue is structured and how it’s built in this game, that’s not something that we are going to have unfortunately. 

KFM: I saw somebody say “cat vomiting is so real”, and I agree, sometimes when I’m playing games, my dog decides to do something insane.

KFM: So, this next question is, since companions can get into relationships with each other, is there a mechanic behind which companions get together? Can a companion leave due to your world decisions, and if so, will their partners leave with them?

JE: I’m gonna answer half this question, the other half is a spoiler that we’re not gonna get into right now. Companions, there is not actually a mechanic behind the companions getting together. We never wanted it to feel like a mechanical thing, and obviously, different companions are gonna have different attractions. One of the fun things is, as you’re going through, especially if you’re not flirting with one of the companions, you can see these relationships starting to develop, and the thing that actually allows them to, you know, completely develop is, generally committing to another relationship, or, you know, not being engaging, not engaging in a romance with those companions at all. So, yeah, I mean, there’s not a mechanic, it’s just what we felt made the most sense and, I think that’s honestly one of my favorite things about the companions is, they’re all written to feel like real people with real preferences and real, you know, attractions. So beyond just romances, they also develop friendships and even rivalries with each other, because of these, them feeling like these characters that exist outside of just the game, so. 

KFM: Awesome.

KFM: This question is all about Davrin. Hildrana would love to know more about Davrin. What’s his personality like, what kind of hobbies or things does he like, and what his relationship with Assan is like?

JE: So Davrin is one of my favorite, I mean, I say one of my favorite characters, honestly I love all seven companions so it’s challenging for me to say which. But Davrin is stern, thoughtful and considerate though, he has a soft side for sure. You see that develop over time as he starts to warm up to the other companions. He has, you know, a kindness to him that is brought out in particular by certain companions, and also a strong sense of pride and when he develops a rivalry with some of the companions. So there’s that sense of, he knows who he wants to be, he knows who he is, and a lot of his arc is making that journey. In terms of how he relates to Assan, you know, his relationship over, evolves over time, I’m not gonna get too deep into spoilers because there are spoilers for that in his quest. The other interesting thing about, about Davrin, and this shows up, we’ve talked about this before. He’s a monster hunter. He’s not just a Warden who sees fighting monsters as, you know, just part of the job. He believes in turning this into a skill-set that he alone, you know like, he has more than anyone else. Learning how to defeat monsters, learning their weaknesses, and that does show up a lot in his character arc, so.

KFM: This next question came through our askbox on Tumblr, so shoutout the BioWare Tumblr. Rosered is asking why do elves seem to not like wearing shoes? Is there a lore reason behind it? Are they not afraid of getting frostbite or stepping in something gross?

JE: So the shoeless elves thing is in part a, it’s a, Dalish are very close to nature, they walk, go around shoeless, in large part, to become closer to nature. It’s part of their culture, it’s part of who they are. But, you know, especially, and it’s not true of every Dalish clan, the Dalish are a tremendously widely-spread and widely-varied people, so. For example, Bellara does not go around shoeless. She wears boots. She’s climbing around on ancient ruins, walking through maybe a shattered eluvian, or a place where eluvian’s shattered, it’s a great way to get your feet sliced up on the hard rocks and on the hard glass. And in general Veil Jumpers are a little bit more, where they go and what they do really requires a lot more care and a lot more protection, so. I mean you’ll notice in Bellara’s visual design but also in the visual design of the other Veil Jumpers, they’re very practically minded, they know that what they’re doing is dangerous, and, you know, and, again, not every Dalish clan goes round shoeless, so.

KFM: ZJ wants to know, do all companions have aesthetic changes when in the Lighthouse and outside of the Lighthouse?

CB: Amazing. Yeah, yeah, they absolutely do. So, just like Rook, each of the companions has what we refer to as their casual wear. This is how they look in their downtime, their more relaxed moments. It’s definitely different from how they look headed into battle. And I’ll tell you this. If Emmrich’s casual wear doesn’t send you, I just don’t know what to tell you.

KFM: I’ve got a fun one coming up. Do they companions have favorite foods, and if so, what are they?

JE: Oh I love this one, so they do. Each of them does have favorite foods. It’s funny, I’d say that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is probably the most we’ve talked about food in a context of Dragon Age, ever. But yeah, I mean, you know, some of them are a little bit more, you know, they have simpler tastes, and in large part that’s because that’s what they’re used to or what they can cook. We talked, I’m gonna actually give a little bit of a, I don’t know if I consider this a spoiler, but maybe if you’re really sensitive to spoilers you don’t wanna listen to this last part. We’ve talked about how there’s people on the team who are better cooks and people on the team who maybe don’t have necessarily the skill-set, who could burn water. So one of the things I really love is, you know, Bellara and Lucanis actually end up being, essentially, the team cooks. Bellara, you know, spending a lot of time out in nature, learning a lot about, you know, different types of cooking, is really big on experimentation, she likes to, you know, try different things. Lucanis comes from the Crows, Lucanis is very big on the finer things, so between the two of them, there’s a point in the story where they basically decide, if we don’t do this, the entire team is going to starve, so let’s just call ourselves the cook, cooks, and make sure that nobody dies of food poisoning, so.

KFM: This next one, I believe we actually might’ve even touched on this in the first Q&A, but, Trev has noticed a lack of dwarves in our promotional material concerning Rook. Inquisition had them sharing facial hair options with humans. So their question is, will dwarves return to more braided, grander beards, or will the facial hair options be shared like previously?

CB: Yeah, we did touch on this briefly, so let me go a little bit deeper. Yeah, there are some grander dwarven beards, like braids, beads woven in, it’s really lovely and really thematic. And y’all have seen our Strand hair, how great that looks, I think it looks just as great for the beards. And I do know, we’re gonna, at some point leading up to launch, we are gonna be showing some dwarf Rooks. So, let’s see if we can’t get some beard options on display there. It actually really was quite the challenge to get the physics to work with all the armor variance we have on those beards. So I’ll tell you what y’all. The team loves hearing from you. Would it be okay if I just asked in chat, could we get some love for our character art and tech anim teams because they put their heart and soul into make sure this would work for y’all. 

JE: It is, it is incredible how good the beards look, like, it just, they did, the work that they’ve done is just spectacular.

CB: Aw y'all are too kind. And then I guess just to finish up this question, we try and let you use as many options as the character creator has for any character you wanna create. So we definitely created bears in mind that are more dwarven in nature. You can use that on a qunari if you want, or you can use a more traditional human beard on a dwarf if you want, but your options are there. Aw, y’all are lovely, thank you so much.

KFM: So we didn't tag this next one as a minor spoiler. I don’t think that it is. But, definitely want to flag it anyway. Will the Solavellans have a chance at a happy ending?

JE: Corinne, I’m gonna let you do this one. 

CB: Oh my goodness, this is the question. Look! I mean, I thought y’all wanted the pain? Didn’t you tell me you wanted the pain, that tortured romance that rips your heart out? Honestly though, I just wouldn’t feel right about spoiling anything there. I’ll just say this, I’ll just say this. Trick has done a fantastic job with Solas, they always do, this is some of ther best work I think. And then I’ll also say, as, for myself as the resident shipper on the leadership team, I’m repping y’all, but that’s all I’m gonna say.

KFM: That’s definitely what I meant by, not really a spoiler, but some people might’ve thought that in the beginning.  

KFM: Okay, next question is, since you can choose to be part of the same faction for most of the companions, will that give you an advantage when trying to befriend them?

JE: So you will get some unique dialogue with the companions that are part of your own faction. The first time you meet them, they may not all know you by face, but they’ve at least heard of you, I’ve heard of who you are, maybe even heard of you leaving the faction to go help Varric to track down Solas. But that said, you know the faction, you don’t necessarily as people. So they will know you but you still have to work to earn their trust and learn, you know, get them, help them with their problems.

KFM: Next question is, will there be more connections between the Veilguard? Like will we see them hanging out together without out us?

JE: Oh, I love this one. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think I’ve said this twice already, but my favorite thing is how much the companions feel like a, end up feeling like a found family. They’re invested in each others problems, you know they’re, invested in each others’ success and failures, and this manifests through a bunch of different ways. Scenes, banter, even interactions in the Lighthouse itself. Because one of the things that I think is important, I know Corinne also thinks is super important, these worlds, these games feel the best when they don’t feel like they’re there as a theme-park just for you, just to exist for Rook as a protagonist. These are characters that have relationships, have, you know, things going on that don’t necessarily directly involve Rook all the time. They have their own relationships, their own feelings, and we really want them to feel like their own people, and feel like they do exist outside of just the sphere of Rook. So, you know, they’ll follow, you’re the one leading this fight, but the companions don’t just exist for you.

KFM: So this next one is a real minor spoiler warning. Will the companions have interactions with Solas? I imagine the companions will comment on Rook’s decisions regarding Solas, but was wondering if the potential relationship between Solas and the companions will play any part?

JE: Oh, this is a good question. So a lot of Solas’ relationship is with Rook. Rook and Solas have a connection, they have a bond, and part of that is, and I’ve said this before, but Solas sees a lot of himself in Rook. He sees, you know, the person, you know the person he was before, the person he thinks he is, in Rook, and becomes, you know, again, we, they develop a connection. You get to flavor how it is, you can make it more antagonistic, make it friendlier, but ultimately it is a connection between the two of you. Now, that said, the companions are much a part of Rook’s story as Solas is, and sometimes those relationships can cross over, as well as, there are followers who, you know, are going to have a more complicated connection and complicated relationship with just, Solas as an entity, you know, Bellara, for example, is an elf, she’s Dalish, and this a person from her pantheon, so. There’s going to be a lot more of a, I guess, like I said, complex relationship between the two of them. Davrin is another example, someone else who is Dalish, so, you know, their views on the gods in general are going to be a little bit different. And then on the other side,you have someone like Emmrich who is very big on magic and the Fade, so they’ll have their own [inaudible] and their own thoughts. 

KFM: Before I get to this next question I do wanna say we’ve got about a fifteen minute warning, we’ve got about fifteen minutes left, so we’ll get through as many questions as we can in that time. And with that said, our next one is, and, I feel like we might have actually touched on this one earlier, but, keep me honest. Would it be possible to hide some of the combat UI, such as companion trackers and enemy HP bars, for even more immersion? 

CB: Yeah, good question. It’s actually, it’s reasonably robust what you can do with your UI. So let me give you some examples. If, normally when you hit an enemy you’ll see damage floaties come off of it. If you wanna turn those off, you can. If you want to play without, say, the minimap or the wayfinding markers, have a more organic experience, you can. I challenged myself to do a, it was really difficult to do a really difficult run where I turned off my own health bar, you can do that too. And then, I know one of them that a lot of people have been asking about is, we do have the incoming attack indicators, that just help you react. But, if you’re the kind’ve player that wants to turn those off, cut down on the noise, yeah, you can do that too, so. You know, I can’t say that we support every single option that you might have in mind, but it’s reasonably robust. 

KFM: And then, another, just small, minor spoiler, you’ve been warned yet again, is there lock-picking in the game?

CB: Oh gosh lock-picking, notorious lock-picking. Well let me answer it this way. I think the approach we took in The Veilguard is that each companion has a unique, what we’re calling, exploration ability, or abilities, that you can use to solve puzzle, access new areas and find treasure. So, like in that regard it’s not actually dissimilar to lockpicking, it’s just that it is more thematic to the companions and their unique skill-sets within The Veilguard. It’s very specialized, I guess you could say. And, look, I’ve been there when you’re playing and you feel like you have to take a rogue, otherwise you’re not gonna be open the lockpick chests. Some players like that, some players dislike it, but the option that we wanted to give to y’all is that, you know, we did say this is a spoiler right? We did, yeah. So Rook does find a certain dagger and through it a method to channel these exploration abilities of their companions, even when the companion is not in your party. So like, look, if I’m exploring Hossberg, and there’s a puzzle and I know how to solve it, like I’m not running all the way back to like a party swap-point, you can just use the dagger.

KFM: This is not a spoiler, and it is actually something we confirmed a little bit earlier in the Q&A, but it doesn’t hurt to be clear. Can we freely reallocate or refund skillpoints?

CB: Yeah, so we’ve confirmed this, I’m just gonna keep it brief, yes, absolutely. Refund all, refund last, no cost. It’s an entirely friendly refund system. Go experiment, and then let me know what you do.

KFM: Will the acts be broken down into acts or stages at all? Mainly wondering for like spoiler discussion purposes, while they’re all playing and wanting to talk to one another about it?

JE: So while we don’t officially within the game say this is this act, this is the next act, there are some pretty obvious narrative breakpoints where the context changes, or there is, you know, events that make it clear that things are now advancing into a different stage. That’s now, to be clear, that’s largely around the critical path. Other content can largely be done at any time, but even there we do unlock certain things over the course of time, because, again, it makes, it maybe doesn’t make narrative sense in the context of, say, an earlier act, but now, you know, you’re into act two, it feels a lot more meaningful and makes a lot more sense in the world. You can do a lot of content in any order, but the critical path is largely broken into acts.

KFM: Now, I think this next question might be the most important question we can answer. A user by the name of doggiesnores says, would you please tell me happy birthday? 

JE: Happy birthday doggiesnores.

CB: Aww, happy birthday doggie - I feel weird saying doggiesnores. I mean, listen -

JE: You gotta roll with it Corinne.

CB: John, Katey, do we wanna sing? Do we wanna sing?

JE: No!

KFM: Oh we can - oh, okay.

JE: You can sing.

CB: Alright. [sings] Happy birthday to you -

KFM: - [sings] to you - [stops singing] are we gonna stop now? Okay.

CB: We’ll stop, we’ll stop. 

JE: Yeah, I think, yeah. 

CB: We gotta get back to the questions.

KFM: Yeah, we do have a time limit now.

KFM: Alright, next question, alright. This is from Guapa. Okay. I wanna know the helmet situation. Back in Inquisition, there were helmets exclusive to races, and to be honest, most helmets were exclusive to humans. Will elves and humans share helmets since their head shape seems to be more similar now, and will there be qunari helmets rather than just facepaints?

CB: Love this described as “the helmet situation”. I love it. Yeah, so let me describe this to you. All the helmets can be worn by all the lineages with one big exception. The qunari still use the vitaar face paint. So each helmet has a unique look, and if you’re using the vitaar variant of that instead, that too has a unique look, so you’ll wear that facepaint instead of the helmet. And we, we felt that this was just generally a good precedent following Inquisition and, really what led us to this decision is that, when you see horn customization, and hair customization with the horns in character creator, we didn’t want to sacrifice that aspect of it in character creator. It’s just effing cool, that’s all I can say about it. So, yeah, the qunari will use vitaar. All the other helmets can be worn by all lineages. We’ve talked a lot about transmog, so of course you can transmog them, you can hide your helmet, you can hide your helmet in certain situations. So I’d say, as a “situation”, we’re pretty happy with it.

KFM: This next question is, will we be able to tint and change the color of our armours, or have they, or do they have their default colors only?

CB: Oh cool, yeah, that kinda gets to transmog in a way. Gosh, what’s the, the best way to answer this I think is that each armor piece, like gear piece you have, will have bespoke colors, but for almost every single armor piece, while you can’t dye them, we have created color-variant cosmetics and they’re very often aligned with the various factions in the world, right? So like, there’s one, for instance, that has this like, incredible, like flowing cape, I use it all the time. There’s a variant of it for each faction with different faction, with different colors and logos and things of that nature. So you can’t dye, but it really is flexible and very thematic. And then I guess, going back to the Venatori armor question we had way at the beginning, while I wouldn’t say they’re explicitly Venatori, there are some very Venatori-like color schemes in some of the armors you’ll find.

KFM: I think this might be our last minor spoiler question, so once again, you’ve been warned. AelaFireheart asks, will we be seeing other griffons from The Last Flight? 

JE: So, again, just to be clear, spoilers, but yeah, Assan has brothers and sisters, so Assan is not the only griffon that shows up in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 

CB: Hey, I just gotta respond to something in comment, that somebody says, wait, does that mean I can’t be pink? And I’m assuming we’re talking about armors. There are some pink armors. Don’t worry -

KFM: Confirmed.

CB: - there’s some pink.

KFM: As some of the companions come from media outside of the games, were they already chosen as companions for the game and then integrated into the additional media, or were they characters outside of the game, and the team wanted to bring them in?

JE: I think this is pretty similar to a question we answered earlier, so I mean, again, it depends, but if they showed up, especially in Tevinter Nights, they were already intended to be companions at that point, so.

KFM: Are there any lineage-based surnames or is it just based on the background?

JE: So surnames in this game are entirely based on your background choice. The reason for this is we do reference your surname in dialogue, a not inconsiderable amount, and we didn’t, at a certain point it becomes unsustainable in terms of how many different variations, so. We reference it based on your surnames, sorry, your background.

KFM: Is there any chance that we will be getting any audio snippets of some of the companions and Rook’s voicelines before release?

JE: Well that’s the great news about the, Vows & Vengeance, is that, each companion will show up in one of the episodes, and you’ll be able to hear their voice in there, so. First episode yesterday, and there’s more to come.  

KFM: Remember when I said that was the last, or we had already read the last minor spoiler, I was wrong, there is one more. So, once again, you’ve been warned, minor spoiler upcoming. This question is from SammyCherryLee. Considering Varric’s timeskip, looks are a direct, Varric’s timeskip looks are a direct translation of how he looked in the comics. What thought process went into Morrigan’s new design, and what do you usually consider when bringing in old beloved characters back, but also make sure to adapt them to the years that have passed within the game?

JE: So, in every case, any time we’re bringing back a character, we want to think about, what would, what’s changed for that character in the time since you’ve last saw them, so, Varric, Morrigan, any other characters we bring back, there is this thought of, okay, it’s been, in this case, you know, almost ten years, what’s changed for these characters in that intervening time? In the case of Morrigan, she’s coming to terms with a lot of truths about both herself but also her mother, you know, you see her with Flemeth’s crown, or a variation of it, and that’s speaking to her personal journey of, what I would call, kind’ve acceptance of who she is and how she connects to Flemeth, because ultimately we want this to feel like a real world. It’s, they’re not the same person they are ten years ago, none of us are, and we don’t want characters to feel like, either ten years have passed, and hey, I’m exactly the same, because that’s stagnation for the character, and it’s just not believable or, honestly, fun, for you. And it doesn’t do justice to those characters.

KFM: Can we clarify - ooh, fuck, I think my Discord just went down again.

JE: Yep, I can still hear you.

CB: We can, we can hear you Katey, so.

KFM: Oh, good!

CB: Yeah.

KFM: I’ll just keep talking!

CB: Great, let’s do it!

KFM: I’m so sorry for the f-bomb, I didn’t know you could still hear me. 

CB: Hey, we’ve all been there.

JE: Cursing, in our Discord, my goodness!

CB: How very human of you.

KFM: Ban me, ban me. This next question is, can you clarify if Spellblade will be forced to use a dagger, or can we still use staff as a melee combat weapon?

CB: Oh, heck yeah, let’s go. You know, I was wondering if this was gonna be clear in the combat video we put out, so I’ll speak about mage, but this is generally true of all the classes. So they each have two weapon sets, if you’ve seen the character sheet. So for mage, you’re gonna have your staff slot and then you’re gonna have the orb-and-dagger slot. So, at any point, like even between weapon swings, you can swap to your class alternate weapon set by hitting down on the D-pad. So you’re not locked down into one weapon set or the other, even if you’re in a given class or specialization. Now, like what I would say is that the Spellblade specialization has a lot of extra functionality and depth that like is augmented when using the orb-and-dagger, but, like if I give you an anecdote of how I play, the staff heavy-attack armor, I take this, or, the staff heavy attack charge, I take a trait where when I’m doing damage and playing, it’s building up that heavy attack charge on my staff. Even when I’m playing as my Spellblade. So I’ll be, just going to down with orb and dagger, I’ll notice that my staff is fully-charged, I’ll swap at a convenient moment, use my heavy staff attack, blast the enemies down, I was telling y’all, like, these Nightmare players, like planning around your elemental damage types, it’s really great to have weapons of multiple elemental types, right? So I go up against something that’s resistant to fire, I’m gonna hit down and maybe swap to my necrotic weapon.

KFM: I'm back, in record time. 

JE: Welcome back! 

KFM: Okay, did we get to the next one, or was that just the Spellblade question?

CB: Oh that was, sorry I was geeking out too much Katey.

KFM: Oh that’s okay, no, it’s great!

CB: We hit upon a favorite topic of mine.

KFM: That’s okay. Do we think we have time for one more, or do we think it’s time to wrap up?

JE: I can go a little late, we’ve got, I think we can do a couple more, for sure.

KFM: Okay, we do only have three left, so.

JE: Let’s finish the list!

KFM: Let’s do it.

KFM: Alright, next question. Since it was mentioned that playing as an elf in the Veil Jumpers will see you more of a, see you as more of a Dalish elf, and a City elf if you play as a Shadow Dragon, what kind of elf would you be in the other factions?

JE: So this is actually a really interesting question for me because I think one of the things I’d say is, while City Elf versus Dalish Elf is a lot more of a useful distinction in, you know, Ferelden, Orlais, we’re in northern Thedas, things are different up here. And a great example is Rivain. Dalish settlements, you know, they have Dalish settlements within cities, integrated into the cities, because, again, they don’t have that same bias, that same distinction. So it’s not really a City Elf versus Dalish Elf thing in a lot of those cases. It’s a lot more about, how you play into the faction, you know, and, in some cases it matters more that you’re an elf, in other cases it doesn’t actually matter to the people of that faction, they’re just looking for someone who could do the work. A great example, and I’ll just, very, very light spoilers, Mourn Watch is a great example where, they just care that you are capable of, you know, executing the duties that you’re given, so.

KFM: This next question, we’ve definitely confirmed a few times today already, but I’m sure there’s been a couple of people who cycled in and out. Will, when will we be releasing detailed information on the full list of accessibility features in the game?

JE: So yeah, so I mean, we mentioned, we’re not quite ready to talk about them, but we will be diving into them before launch. We wanna make sure as many people as possible can enjoy and play the game, so.

CB: Yeah, I think we’re doing a feature, some kind of blogpost on that, but, that’ll be a good format where we can be a little bit more in-depth.

JE: Yeah.

KFM: Alright, and the final question that I have on my list. It’s about localization. WoodenSmith says, I’d like to hear more about how localization works. What sorts of things have to be changed or adjusted so they make sense in different regions? Do localization teams have to be super careful when they translate to make sure they’re not accidentally revealing more than was intended in other versions? I’ve also always been very curious about accents in other versions. For example, do the, I’m gonna butcher this, do the Orl - Orlesian -

JE: Orlesian.

KFM: Orlesian, thank you, John. Character voice -

CB: That was really good, Katey!

KFM: I tried!

JE: Yeah, you tried, you got most of the way there, yeah!

KFM: For example, do the Orlesian character voice actors speak in a French accent in the Japanese version, or dwarf characters speak with an American accent in the French version?

JE: So I’m going to talk broadly about localization, and I’ll get a little bit into the accent question. So, localization is a thing that we’re doing constantly. We’re almost working with the teams, we have regular syncs with them, and a lot of that is because localization is not just, a lot of people think of it like, yeah, you’re just translating. Well, you’re not, you’re, you know, you’re, again, there’s different things to understand about different languages, they have different rules around grammar and, I will say, I think every writer has at least one story where they wrote, kind’ve, a fun double-entendre into a conversation, and then they got a ping from some of the localization teams saying, hey, can you very thoroughly explain what you meant there? And that’s what I like to describe as being hoist on your own petard because, sometimes, you’re like, oh I said this, it was really ribald, and now I don’t want to talk to this person who is very seriously and very concernedly, looking, it’s just like, ‘can you please tell us what that means?’ But yeah, I mean, in general, it’s an art-form of its own. You know, different sayings translate differently into different languages, different metaphors translate differently to different languages, and we always wanna make sure that other people, you know, people are playing this game in every language have an experience that feels authentic and meaningful, and doesn’t feel like it’s just kind’ve, you know, phoned in, we just, we just ran it through Google Translate or something, so. Again, localization is a huge part of what we do, the localization team we have is amazing, they do fantastic work, I love working with them. As far as accents, yeah, we do try to keep some consistency, it’s not always going to be a one to one, but we do try to say like, okay, so, this character, this group of characters needs to sound similar, and they’ll find an accent that works with the language that they’re trying, because, again, different accents work differently with different languages, and we wanna make sure that there’s that consistency, so, yeah.

KFM: We did it!

JE: Yeah!

KFM: That’s all of our questions that we’re able to get to you today. Wanna just say a quick thanks again to the community for submitting all of these really questions, it was a lot of fun going through them and, you know, making sure that we were able to give you some new stuff this time around. Yeah, anything you guys wanna say before we hop off?

CB: Yeah, can I just say, look, we love here, being here answering questions for you but the support, the interest you all show, it really fuels us in the team.

JE: Mhm.

CB: You all are a big part of us being able to make this game what it is, and I really hope we do you proud, so just, sincere thank you to everyone. 

JE: Yeah, just, I just wanna echo that. I’ve been on this project for a while, and it’s been a lot of, not getting to talk about it, and quietly saying I don’t know, are we making more new Dragon Age? So being able to actually have these conversations and give you the details that you want without spoiling the game, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. This is genuinely the funnest part of my week, so thank you everyone.

KFM: Awesome, well thank you both so much for your time, Corinne and John. And, yeah, we have recorded the audio for this, so we’re going to turn that into a transcription, and put that in the Q&A archive channel, which lives underneath ask-bioware. That will be coming, you know, in the next couple of days to a week or so, you know, we’ll, we’ll be working away at it as soon as possible, so just let, let me know if you have any questions.

JE: Awesome. Thank you so much everyone, have a good Friday, good weekend, and I’m gonna go eat a sandwich, so.

CB: Happy Friday!

KFM: Happy Friday, and happy sandwich day!

CB: Bye bye.

JE: Thank you.

KFM: Bye.

JE: Bye.

[source: the official BioWare Discord server, August 30th dev Q&A]

Update: If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here.

[eruscreaminginthedistance]

The tweets are giving pandering to a very specific subset of the fandom that are still complaining that their HoFs aren't still the main character ngl. Saying "you don't want characters to return cos we'll do something mean to them" is bizarrely juvenile. Like yes, unironically I think anyone who engages with your stories in an intelligent way sees the value in killing off or ruining the happy endings of beloved characters in service of a compelling narrative and showcasing the impacts of our choices.

The choice to sacrifice Hawke or the Warden - potentially Alistair - in The Nightmare was one of the best moments in Inquisition, one that was diluted in playthroughs where one was stuck with, say, Stroud. Mass Effect 3 is full of amazing moments like these - are Kirby and Weekes saying that we wouldn't want another Mordin? Another Legion? All the incredibly impactful moments of that third installment where our decisions played out to either the benefit or detriment of beloved characters? Are Kirby and Weekes really putting all of the fandom under the umbrella of a minority of entitled fans who would rather their faves be the specialist most happiest characters in existence in favour of the dark and high stakes narrative the first two games set the series up to be? What a bizarre response this has been.

All this to say, I wish these devs would just be honest and admit carrying over all those decisions is just too much work. Turning the finger to the fandom and claiming the fans just don't know any better isn't doing anyone any favours. As if returning creator-favourite Morrigan is in any danger or will have anything go wrong for her in any way. Just stick to your guns, guys; overwhelmed at the work is way more understandable than this made-up position that this is secretely what the fans want. Yes, I expect that when you keep bringing back significant characters in Veilguard that you do put in all that effort and do something more interesting with them than just fanservice, hence why I've been asking for months why Varric isn't dead yet.

But for the most part, nobody is expecting fully voiced and mocapped cameos or questlines from every single fan favourite or potentially relevant character. It's really just the throwaway lines and codex entries that people like me would want; just getting a sense that the world is a living thing that is breathing and acting even while we're away, and that even if our impacts did not influence the game itself, they still had an effect on the world.

[wardencallings]

Since it seems generally agreed upon that romantic banter is lacking in Veilguard, I came up with some Rook x Harding (+ other companions) banter. It's tailored to my Rook's personality, but I think a lot of it is general enough!

After "date" with Harding to test out her powers/initial visit to Kal-Sharok + unhardened Neve:

Neve: So, Harding, you and Rook have been traveling together for some time now, right?

Harding: Yep! Varric picked Rook up about a year ago and asked him to help us find Solas.

Neve: Were you two as friendly as you are now?

Harding: *giggles* Um. No.

Neve: Nothing like the end of the world to bring two people closer. I guess that's one thing to thank Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain for.

Rook (sarcastically): I'll be sure to thank them after I thank Solas.

--

Lucanis: Harding, I went to your room last night to bring you that slice of cake you asked for, but you weren't there.

Harding: Oh, I wasn't?

Lucanis: No.

Harding: Did you knock?

Lucanis: Yes.

*pause*

Lucanis: You were with Rook, weren't you?

Harding: Can you bring the cake tonight instead?

Lucanis: Of course.

Rook: A slice for me too, please.

After first kiss/lyrium poisoning:

Harding: Rook! I've been thinking about our...problem.

Rook: Come up with any solutions?

Harding: I think I have an idea! It'll require some flexibility but if we --

Davrin: Not in front of Assan!

Harding (sheepishly): Sorry, Davrin. We'll talk later, Rook.

After making relationship official:

Taash: So, Rook, Solas lives in your head.

Rook: I'm not really sure the specifics, but yeah, I guess.

Taash: So he can see what you see.

Rook: Uh, I'm not sure. Maybe some of it?

Taash: Do you think he watches when you and Harding --

Harding: Taash!

Taash: What? That really hasn't crossed your minds?

Harding & Rook: No!

Taash: Whoops.

Rook: Maybe we stick to just gardening tonight?

Harding: Agreed.

--

Bellara: So I think I'm close to finishing my novel!

Harding: That's exciting! Will you let me read it?

Bellara: Of course! You helped me flesh out the romance a lot when we talked about you and Rook.

Rook: Is that right?

Bellara: Yeah! I could feel the romance behind Harding's every word about you. I actually lifted some phrases directly from her. I'll give credit to Harding in the acknowledgments, of course!

Rook: What sort of phrases?

Harding: No spoilers, Rook!

Rook: Aw, I can't get a sneak peek?

Bellara: When this is all over, I'll send you an advanced copy. Oh! And maybe you can blurb it for me?

Rook: Of course, Bel.

[nadas-dirthalen]

I Saw Solas's Origin in an Achievement Icon and It Opened My Eyes on 15 Years of Lore

— PART EIGHT: if you haven't read previous parts, do it now! —

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ]

Welcome, friends and travellers! I wanted to get some thoughts recorded before Veilguard's release so I could see if I am right about an absolute BOATLOAD of theories I have.

In short: I saw the achievement list when it was released. I have seen the backstory hints for Solas included in said list. AND MY MIND WAS BLOWN.

You have been warned: THIS COLLECTION OF THEORIES INCLUDES SPOILERS FOR EVERY DRAGON AGE GAME AND ALL PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL UP TO AND INCLUDING OCTOBER 18, 2024.

Come sit down with me. Make a nice cup of tea (and hide it from Solas). We've got a lot of unpacking to do.

(no, this photo isn't the spoiler, I just like it.)

The Story of Solas: Him Solas Evanuris, Da'durgen'lin (1/3)

— The Ballad That Played Right Before Our Eyes —

I meant to write this as soon as I got my day started today (perks of being on the border of a sinus infection right before Veilguard). But I thought of something last night, and I had to do some of the Temple of Solasan and Trespasser all over again to confirm it.

I'm glad I did. I'm horrified at what I found.

Let's begin.

Seriously, as ever, go read the other parts before this one. If you need to only read a few, then read 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 (linked above). All of those matter for context here, you've been forewarned!

This post will exist in three parts. First up, we've got:

The World at the Time of Solas's Manifestation

Da'durgen'lin: Not the First, but Perhaps Mythal's Last

Solasan: The Icy Terror the World Forgot

The Dread Wolf: Inspiring Hope in Friends, and Fear in Enemies

The World at the Time of Solas's Manifestation

I will be as brief as possible here. Remember when I said the other parts were important for context? It's because we're largely skipping the context we've already covered today.

In the briefest of terms:

Titans, unsundered.

Maker's second children, made. Evanuris, jealous. Evanuris, slaying Titans.

Evanuris, already doing all of their lyrium/Titan-atrocities. We'll get to how I know that.

Conditions are perfect for the blight to begin. All Titans, thus far (that we know of), have been wounded consistently. All are ramping up to "fight back." (We'll get to that.)

But the Evanuris are continuing, heedless of what their arrogance will bring.

Enter: Solas Evanuris.

Da'durgen'lin: Not the First, but Perhaps Mythal's Last

More brevity here, but now with added screencaps from when I just played Trespasser this morning (in fact, I just finished the Shattered Library, and am going to go back to Trespasser after this).

We already knew Mythal was mining Titans for people. What I've refreshed my memory on are three things:

We don't know where in the Deep Roads this is (that I know of)

This is not the only place we see lyrium coffins

This is where we see the codex about needing to forget this place: the one I mentioned began the blight yesterday.

Before I go on, I wish to revisit one more codex from this portion of the Deep Roads: Mythal's Lullaby.

Ir sa tel'nal Mythal las ma theneras Ir san'a emma Him solas evanuris Da'durgen'lin Banal malas elgara Bellanaris, bellanaris.

Isatunoll Mythal gives you dreams Lyrium within Becomes Solas evanuris Blight you give to the Titan Forever, forever.

I've discovered new significance in it that I have not been able to fit into these posts as yet: this lullaby is almost perfectly in the Hallelujah cadence. It follows Hallelujah's meter, but the lines are split up as a distraction.

It can be arranged as:

Ir sa tel'nal, Mythal las ma (8) Theneras ir san'a emma (8) Him Solas Evanuris, da'durgen'lin (11) Banal malas elgara (hallelujah, hallelujah) Bellanaris, bellanaris. (hallelujah, hallelujah)

With the use of "you" in the song and the fact that it is called Mythal's lullaby, I am going to posit that she is singing this to Solas. Why?

Cole tells us in Trespasser. "He did not want a body. But she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face."

I believe that this is Mythal asking Solas to take physical shape. But... why? Why coax a spirit if he did not want to come into the physical world, outside of his Titan? If she coerced him into a body, only for the horrors of the Blight to follow, why would he look up to her as the lone voice of reason among the Evanuris?

I'm choosing to read Mythal in a good light here. Know that, as I continue to theorize, the worst case scenario is also possible.

Solasan: the Icy Terror the Elvhen Tried to Forget

Last night, after writing part 7, I could not get this codex out of my mind. The moment of the blight's beginning. I am astonished that I have not seen it theorized before (not to say it does not exist, just that it has not been flung far and wide across the fandom—at least not where I can find it).

Let's go back to it.

In the light of the veilfire, the runes seem to shift, coiling and uncoiling like snakes. A thunderous voice shatters the stillness, shouting: "Hail Mythal, adjudicator and savior! She has struck down the pillars of the earth and rendered their demesne unto the People! Praise her name forever!" For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire. The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy. A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic. Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast. A voice whispers: "What the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would end us all. Let this place be forgotten. Let no one wake its anger. The People must rise before their false gods destroy them all."

I could not help but think again on how Mythal's lullaby directly says, "Blight you give to the Titan." I asked myself, late at night, in despair: could Solas's manifestation TRULY have been the beginning of the blight on Thedas?

Well, we know where to find out, don't we? The Temple of Solasan. I'm not the kind of person to grab 114 shards in a video game (sorry, Bioware), but I did find a mod that let me in over the summer, and I pulled up an old save.

Jogging my memory made me cry.

The top chamber in the temple is where one finds the inscription on Solas. We'll get there, and we'll also get to the outside of the temple, don't worry. For now, I want to focus on the lower level. (Pardon my Inquisition screenshots and their messiness; I told y'all I wasn't going online in any real capacity today, and I meant it. You're getting all homemade footage here.)

There are three rooms down here. One for plants (left), one for fire (right), and one for ice (center).

Huh. Doesn't that sound like...

For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire. The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy. A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic. Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast.

My heart sank. My stomach twisted into knots. I explored the fire and plant wings again, and found little that I hadn't already explored or looted—only corpses possessed by demons.

But the ice room...

Something flashed within. Something that made my blood run cold (fittingly, I think).

I ventured in. And then I began to cry, for I knew.

Without enemies, not in combat, the floor periodically flashes when you run over certain spots in the room. The whole floor, just for a second, is covered in these.

I'm not one of the fancy fly-cam people, so I spent a lot of time running around until I could hit the Tactical Mode button at the exact right second.

I don't know what this exact sigil means. But I swear that it has blight or bad-bad-not-good-magic implications, and... well, it's red. Red, in a blue room full of ice.

Even with no corpses around this time, no enemies left to fight: I knew, deep in my bones, that this place is what that codex was referring to. Let this place be forgotten.

Let the Titans be forgotten, because of what horrors we have seen.

It makes me read the codices of this temple in a new and horrifying light.

Faintly carved into the stone is a figurebound in chains. Two other figures haveturned their gaze from the central image.The script below the image is ancient,though Solas is able to provide a partialtranslation: Pride in our accomplishments and in our hearts. That same pride became (a word meaning corrupted or altered) within him, he sought to claim (indecipherable), cast from favor and so was bound. Hidden from mortal eyes, death lies within.

"That same pride became (a word meaning corrupted or altered) within him." Now, we have new context on what corrupted or altered might imply.

The same with, "cast from favor and so was bound." The Titan—the Stone—rejected Solas. But why? Was it because of what he was seeking, or because of what Mythal was coercing/asking him to seek? And when he was "bound" — it was by her, right?

But we know what came next. We know that Terror—a Forgotten One, a Titan—fought back, just like Cole says.

"They made bodies from the earth. And the earth was afraid. It fought back. But they made it forget."

The Earth—the Titan—was afraid. It was Terror. It fought back, lighting a room entirely in horrific red circles that gave me a jump-scare (and no doubt doing other terrible blight things). It chased the elves from the Deep Roads, even as they sealed them.

They begged the other elvhen to forget this place. "Hidden from mortal eyes, death lies within."

The blight.

This was terrifying (pun almost intended) for the fleeing elvhen. So much so that they left a parting message by the door to the temple.

An inscription taken at the temple doors in the Forbidden Oasis, followed by a translation. The writing is shaky and uneven, as though the writer labored to complete the task: Emma solas him var din'an. Tel garas solasan. Melana en athim las enaste. Arrogance became our end. Come not to a prideful place. Now let humility grant favor.

Let's re-examine that elven language.

Emma solas him var din'an. Within [Solas or arrogance] becomes our end.

Remember "that same pride became (corrupted or altered) within him?" Does him mean Solas, or does him mean the Forgotten One from whence Solas came?

Regardless, I am beginning to understand the legend, the horror: one last person from one of Mythal's lyrium coffins, and Terror begins to consume Solasan. Elves, fleeing desperately, hands shaking as they carve warnings into the doorway.

The markings are crude and simplistic, but their meaning can be understood: "They did not ask questions and so I was away. I keep my head low and work like the rest. The circle will not hunt this far. At first I regretted the choice, but they all feel the dread at the door. I do not stand out. Only a brother or sister would know these words. If you found your way here as I have, then you are not alone. If you would have allies when this contract ends, then find me." For a moment, the pounding of footsteps can be heard, as if someone is running. Then it fades.

I saw this on my way back to Solasan—I had not seen it before, clearly. I looked, and I wept. I'll admit that.

Because I saw, "the dread at the door," and I knew. The dread locked inside Solasan. The Terror, barred within and forgotten.

And from that Dread? Only one pulled from a lyrium coffin. Mythal's last da'durgen'lin, rushed out of Solasan. I hope that she asked him to take a body to help him escape Terror. I hope that she asked him to take a body to somehow calm Terror, if the Stone truly rejected Solas.

I hope she did not mean for Solas's creation to cause Terror.

Regardless of the motive behind Solas's true and horrific origin, the effect is the same: a parallel to the Inquisitor, Solas's rise to fame and power began when he survived something he should not have.

Dread.

The Dread Wolf: Inspiring Hope in Friends, and Fear in Enemies

If you're like me, you've wondered why these seem to be everywhere. Outside of Dalish camps, sure (even though Fen'Harel is their villain, they still entrust that he'll protect them, uh huh)... but also in the temples and holy places of other Evanuris, not just Mythal. Also out in the middle of the wild.

Now we know. We know because we know the meaning of the Dread Wolf. Wolves, in ancient elvhenan, were warriors, generals, second-in-commands. We can intuit this based on their continued use in Dalish culture with its Arcane Warriors/Knight Enchanters. Solas was one such "wolf" — but he had a quality that no other did.

He had been marked, somehow, by his survival of Dread. I don't know enough today to confirm whether that means Solas is blighted, immune to the blight, or something else entirely, and I only have 1.5 more days until Veilguard launches (and maybe proves all of this wrong). I can only guess at this connection.

Whatever it was, that became his resonance in the culture of Arlathan.

"I was Solas first. Fen'Harel came later... an insult I took as a badge of pride. The Dread Wolf inspired hope in my friends and fear in my enemies... Not unlike "Inquisitor," I suppose."

The insult, presumably, was that he was the one "wolf" for whom it had all gone wrong. Rejected by the Stone; product of a turned Titan fighting back with new blight. But to inspire hope in his friends, and fear in his enemies? We must consider what those friends and enemies would want, and what they would consider hopeful/fear-inducing.

Solas's friends, we know from the agents we see in his rebellion, also want an end to the Blight. His enemies, the other Evanuris, want the blight to cover Thedas.

Therefore: to inspire hope in his friends and fear in his enemies, the Dread Wolf would have to possess some innate anti-blight quality. Therefore, I posit that Solas's title, the Dread Wolf, is meant to refer to how the blight did not kill him when it was unleashed by Terror.

This quality—and the threat that the blight would soon pose to all of Ancient Elvhenan and the entire ancient world—would give way to... well, we all know.

Rebellion.

Stay tuned.

----

Also: I am essentially FULLY OFFLINE to try and avoid game spoilers! As these reviews have just gone live yesterday (10/28), I am not reading my notifications/replies, and am appearing here only to continue posting my theories. I have heard that the embargo has been broken at least once already and I refuse to risk it, so I will respond to messages and notifications once I have played Veilguard for a bit.

(Mutuals, if you need me, you may DM me, as long as you do not mention the reviews in any capacity.)

[translucio]

more veilguard thoughts! minor spoilers below cut

stuff im liking:

still having fun with combat

level design has been good, tons to explore, solid puzzles. beautiful environments. im liking how distinct and lived in the big cities are feeling.

i am liking lucanis more than i expected.....i know Everyone is simping over him but.. i might have to as well and romance him instead of bellara 🙈

im liking how bite sized the codex entries are. makes it easy to read them all on pickup whereas in inquisition sometimes it was like godddd i want the lore but i dont wanna read five pages right now

petting cats and dogs! i love the haptic purring, that's a really good way to do it (i would honestly love to see that polished even further with variations + meowing/whining/sniffing/licking sounds thru the controller but hey, it's a tiny part of the game and what they have is fine)

the resource economy is feeling pretty decent to me, im motivated to seek out collectables, i buy stuff from vendors often, i understand the upgrade system enough to inform my decisions. it feels very god of war or ghost of tsushima. so my only worry is that i might just get bored of it after many hours as i did in those games (which, i think the solution to that is for the level design to keep things interesting and satisfying enough that theyre rewarding even without the collectibles. so we'll see)

stuff im not really liking

overall plot so far feels Just Okay. but i felt that way about 2 and inquisition too lol

it is actually starting to really bum me out that you can't talk to people at will. like, the lack of dialogue choices in it, for a bioware game, is troubling to me. these settings and characters are interesting and filling me with many questions! i want to be able to dive deeper into them, but i just cant. you just get barks for all the world npcs. and the lack of choices really makes rook feel more like a prewritten/predestined character rather than one that's really yours to characterize. i realize it's a lot of writing and voice acting $$ to have that many dialogues, but that's one of the main selling points for bioware games for me... and it feels weird that other games are now doing it better than dragon age.

similarly the lack of continuity of choices from previous games makes me sad.

i still haven't gotten all that far, but i am several hours in at this point, and i gotta say i am kinda missing side quests a bit... related to the point about lacking world dialogue, but the world is feeling a little bit underwhelming in terms of the character and lore context/depth that i find myself wanting. which was a big problem for me in inquisition as well. like sure, there are collectables and hidden paths and puzzles to navigate through, and those are absolutely a huge improvement over inquisition's. but those don't give life and flavor and narrative depth to the environment the way that having meaningful interactions with npcs does. the barks are nice, but they leave me wanting significantly more in terms of interaction and depth.

im gonna keep comparing it to god of war (2018 - haven't played ragnarok yet) since that's really the closest thing its reminding me of. and while i loved god of war, i did feel like its world was very lonely. it made up for it with its extremely honed in narrative focus on the journey of the two established characters, and the quality of its writing and voice acting both for their dialogues and the few quests with other characters. it's not a game about the setting or how it shapes the characters that live there, it's about a grieving father and son who happen to be gods.

whereas dragon age IS about its world almost as much as it is about its characters. and with such a rich setting with three prior entries to build on, it seems kind of a shame to let players explore all these places we've heard about but not meaningfully interact with the characters there outside of Big Epic Story Moments or companion-focused quests, especially when you could in the previous games.

anyway.... much to think about... still enjoying it, still have more thoughts as i keep playing

[shift-shaping]

I think this is a really important part of the article from yesterday that people are overlooking. I absolutely understand the frustration people feel about the lack of choices brought over from Inquisition, I'm also frustrated. However, they have said not just here but I believe during the dev Q and A a while back that some choices are consciously being saved for future games.

Rambling thoughts below cut, feel free to ignore

I get the sense that Veilguard is going to be a very focused game, and the focus is on Solas and the Veil.

Here is my suspicion.

I think that this game is going to set up Mythal to be a major force in the next game by decisively finishing the roles of Solas and the Inquisitor, and by tearing down or at least significantly altering the Veil. That game is when we'll see the Well of Sorrows and Kieran and the payoff for whoever we left in the Fade during Here Lies the Abyss.

Veilguard doesn't necessarily need to address any of those things if the writing is careful enough. Maybe we don't actually see Morrigan for very long, maybe the Well hasn't actually done anything yet, maybe we just don't get a chance to talk about who was left in the Fade.

This is not without precedent. DA2 carried very little over from DAO, and easily could have given us a much more stripped down list of choices than what we had. Did it matter if we sided with or against Zathrian in DA2? No. I don't think that one even got a one-liner. They easily could have asked us 3-5 questions about our choices in Origins and the game would have been functionally the same.

That all being said: what frustrates me personally is that while you can strip out many of these choices and have what is functionally the same game, the subtle continuity of your decisions from one game to the next has always been a big part of the appeal of the series for many fans.

For example, there's a minor quest early in DA2 that involves Renvil Harrowmont, the last member of House Harrowmont still alive if you chose Bhelen to lead Orzammar. This is a very small quest that, like most quests in DA2, kind of just results in you fighting more random bad boys in the streets.

But that's not the point, is it? The point of tiny cameos like this isn't the overall impact they have on the plot of any specific game, it's about the continuity they create for your world state. The little one-liners and brief cameos and bullshit quests actually do matter to fans because they reinforce that this is the same timeline they've been playing in, and give the impression that your choices are affecting people. Knowing that even these little things won't be present in Veilguard is frustrating and a bit sad.

[luckyjak]

The Decisions I Would Have Included in Veilguard

(Not that anyone asked me)

(Sorry, yes, I am still a little salty about this, apparently.)

Kieran: Does he exist? Who is his dad? If he DOES exist, there should be a small cutscene when Morrigan goes to leave where we see a grown-ass Kieran wave as he picks his mom up before she leaves. If the HoF was sacrificed, there should be a HUGE memorial for them in Weisshaupt...that we see get promptly destroyed by the elven gods when Weisshaupt is attacked. Really hit us where it hurts, you know?

Zevran's fate Of all the original DAO love interests, Zevran has gotten the least amount of attention. We are going to be working for the *Crows* man. Give us a side-quest where we have to hunt Zevran down, and decide to either let him go or murder him.

Sten's fate I care about this one way less than any of the others, and I have no idea how into the story the Qun are in this game, but it would have been a nice little acknowledgement had Sten been the Arishok.

Are Fenris, Isabela, and Merrill alive, and what was their relationship with Hawke? Given the factions, let's be real: Fenris should be a Shadow Dragon, Isabela a Lord of Fortune, and Merrill a Veil Jumper. Especially if they are all alive/unromanced by Hawke. Hell, they could be voiceless merchants and the fandom would be tickled pink, I think.

What is the fate of Dorian, Iron Bull, and Josephine? What is the Inquisitor's relationship to them? Again, idk how much the Qun are involved in the story, but of all the companions in Inquisition, these are the ones who stand the best chance of being seen in Northern Thedas again. Dorian especially since we'll be in Minrathous!

Is Cole a human or a spirit? This one is mostly for giggles, but I would love it if Solas and Varric continued their custody battle arguments ten years later, especially since both of them seem trapped in the Fade (?).

Well of Sorrow Absolutely should have an impact, somehow. I'm interested in seeing how they wrote themselves out of this one. + the questions that are already in Veilguard I agree with them that I don't think who the Divine is or who is ruling various kingdoms in the south will make much of an impact on the game, but yeah. These are the changes I would have made.

[wizardsix]

I can't remember who said this but there was this one dev who said that when making romanceable characters they have to be attractive in some way (personality, looks, not too morally fucked up etc). and since I read that, the statement hasn't left my mind and I'm very aware now of whenever outside influence and modern discourse get to me or other writers. like just yesterday I found myself rewriting a scene to be more "comfortable" to witness, even though the point was to be emotionally charged and face a difficult topic the character had been actively lying about. but some things can't be glossed over. sometimes it's good when media grabs you by the shoulders and makes you face horrible shit. it's good when media makes you uncomfortable even if it's coming from a ~romanceable companion~. that means it's working. if you remain comfortable forever you learn nothing.

I bring this up bc the veilguard companions are the perfect example and victims of the "romanceable characters need to be attractive" mindset. they don't have ugly sides, they don't fight with each other--and I mean really fight--they don't have controversial opinions or do problematic things. they don't ever question your authority over their lives and why you're the guy in charge. they are nice and perfect and their problems aren't really that serious and can be fixed by simply having a therapy session w rook (bc being possessed or gaining new magic isn't a big deal in a world where previously such events are Very distressing and hard to control). they are further proof that trying too hard to make something attractive has the complete opposite effect if your brain isn't the size of a pebble.

it's overall very frustrating that big game developers continue to be so spineless and I'm not giving anyone a pass for shallow writing, especially from a franchise that is known to have complex characters. none of this is impressive after the first three dragon age games, which were well loved and dissected and debated for years after their release. that isn't to say these games don't have kind characters, having that balance is why I personally like dark fantasy and liked what the dragon age games offered (whenever the writing was good..). it's not dark for the sake of being dark (see grimdark), there's a reason why these things are happening, and in this world no one is completely innocent even if they have good intentions. most people like when their characters aren't always kind or agreeable, bc it's extremely rewarding to finally find that middle ground (of course I have to bring up larian, who made bg3 and proved just how much people appreciate flawed characters, see astarion). conflict is the driving force of a story, no matter what it is. even the most sickeningly sweet cozy slice of life story will have some kind of conflict. it's unavoidable. that's life. taking that away is setting yourself up for failure and all that remains is a boring story full of boring people. no one cares about characters who have their lives together.

(the post is technically over but I wanted to put some final thoughts under the cut bc this got longer than I meant)

I want to go back to the statement real quick... like i do agree, it's true as writers we'll subconsciously (or consciously if you're insecure) try to make our characters appealing, but this is the common trap writers fall into by giving a shit about what others think and want from Their work (which btw I fully believe in writing what you want even if it's "bad" because something with genuine soul will never be as bad as soulless cashgrabs). romanceable characters can and should be as flawed as you'd make any other character, bc trust me there's an audience for everything. even a random npc with two lines will be attractive to someone.

the pressure of an imaginary audience is what pushes writers into a corner and prevents writers from writing and exploring what They want. it's the writer's story first, not the audience's. I think the romanceable companion trap can be easily avoided if writers just 1) grow a bit of a backbone and 2) ask themselves if this is even a necessary or insightful mechanic that will help develop a character further. ask themselves if this character even has the capacity to handle a romantic relationship bc everything else is subjective and it's impossible to appeal to everyone (which apparently this is a controversial take). I won't sit here and pretend that I don't appreciate a good romance, but sometimes all someone really needs is a friend.

obsidian is a good example of self aware devs. they tried to do romance for pillars of eternity 2 bc of fan demand, and it didn't work very well. now for avowed, they didn't explore romance bc they know it's not their strong suit and don't feel it's necessary for this story, instead that time and effort went to developing the characters in other meaningful ways. I have nothing but respect for such a decision bc they know what they want from their story instead of lying and trying to be everything at once. less is more as they say.

[butterflydm]

ever onward in our DAV adventure...

I'm on such a high with this game right now.

The romantic scenes I've gotten to do with Lucanis so far have made me very giggly and happy while I was playing through them. And Neve approves of our romance. <3

My next big main quest made me SO happy! Delightful, delightful! I really do love the quest & flow design of DAV and, even though I have to admit to some protectiveness/defensiveness over DAI (it was my first Dragon Age game), I think that DAV improved on it in several ways. I feel like the tension of the main storyline is a lot stronger here than it was in DAI post-Skyhold. The open world was just... too open in DAI, imo. Pulling back and making it more controlled in DAV (plus eliminating collection quests entirely except for the one) was a good game design decision.

When we got stuck in Elgar'nan's trap and then Rook heard SOLAS reaching out through the thinned Veil to help us through! I was just eating up the conversation between Elgar'nan and Solas as we fought our way through to save the Dalish. This game has been giving me so much great lore and I am loving it to pieces. Sneaking through the Venatori camp was... definitely illuminating on their mindset. They want old Tevinter back again, and the since the old Tevinter gods were actually the servants of the old elven gods...

Also... we're gonna have to kill that big-ass dragon that Elgar'nan just summoned (and then fed the Venatori to after we freed the elves) so... you know. That's coming.

Had a great conversation with Solas afterwards (Rook has officially earned his respect) and we got a bit of him talking with some regretful longing about the Inquisitor after we got a bit of her doing the same in our earlier meeting, so that was sweet (I set them up as having romanced in DAI so I could get any potential extra dialogue). Rook called Solas out on his pride, and we really did get to see a big difference between Solas and Elgar'nan -- Solas knows how to apologize and realizes it when he screws up. Which was true in DAI as well -- if you took the high approval route with him, he's way more conflicted about his ending choices, because he realizes that his initial assumptions about people post-Veil were incorrect. If you prove him wrong, he admits to being wrong.

Solas also gave a pretty clear 'endgame approaching' warning in the game, in the sense of saying that our next encounter with the gods is likely to be our last chance, so my next priority is to finish up any character or region quests, to get everyone as prepped as possible for the next big fight. Companions were my first priority, to try to get them all up to Hero of the Veilguard status alongside Harding.

So, companion updates:

Harding - already a Hero of the Veilguard, but I had a really good conversation with her after the Solas convo, where she expressed how glad she was that she had friends to help her past feeling the weight of the Titans' pain on her shoulders and how she believes that Solas can be saved too. Okay, I definitely need to go with an Inky who doesn't believe that Solas can be saved in my next run, because I'm very curious how her opinion might change if Inky thinks Solas needs to be stopped as opposed to saved! (I'm wondering if it's like how Varric's approval during Mages/Templars choice in DAI depends on what Hawke chose in DA2). Harding firmly believes that Lavellen could save Solas from trapping himself in his regrets and bad choices if given the chance. So it's possible we might have a Solas/Inky happy ending waiting at the end of the game if we play our cards right. Maybe. We'll see! Depends on Solas and his stubbornness, really.

Taash - I wanted to finish up them next, to see if that moved the Taash/Harding romance forward. We've gotten some hints and flirting here and there and it's been very cute. During the quest to take care of the Stormrider dragon, Taash asked Harding about her mom, and they had some good mom-related conversations.

Taash's personal quest really tugged at the heartstrings (I shed a few tears, for sure). I had Taash leaning towards being more Rivani and their mom wasn't a big fan of that. And was confused about Taash being non-binary. And now Taash has to struggle with the pain of never getting to have that big conversation where the two of them work it out. And that's hard but also... really true to life at times. It felt very honest.

Taash's personal quest also crystallized something I was trying to say before about the themes of the game -- for some of the characters, it's not sins of the past so much as the struggle with the weight of your culture and the baggage that it brings. That's become more clear as we've gone through each quest. Because that was definitely Taash, who is torn between two cultures, Rivani or Qunari -- one culture that stresses personal freedoms and is chill about magic and spirits, and the other one which stresses authoritarianism and control and is definitely not chill about magic or spirits. And you can certainly take from both in some ways but there are other ways that the two cultures contrast so strongly that you have to pick one.

But we've had other characters struggling with issues brought about because of their cultural background -- like Bellara, who is dealing with ancient elven history in the form of her brother accepting an offer to serve one of the Forgotten Ones of elven lore; or Harding dealing with the cultural weight of all of the grief and anger of the murdered Titans, and Davrin needing to deal with the 'whatever it takes to win' cultural background of the Wardens coming back around again in the form of the Gloom Howler. The regrets of the past. So... similar to what I was saying before, but slightly modified.

In lighter news: matchmaking successful!

Emmrich - We killed Johanna and destroyed the lantern, but this was a really tough quest on an emotional level. We just lost Taash's mom in the previous quest and then I had to make the call to save Manfred or encourage Emmrich to let him go and move forward into lichdom. And it was a really difficult choice! For this specific Rook, I encouraged him to become a lich but, wow, I was torn. But it is Emmrich's dream, and when we spoke about it... it's clear that it's what he wants. And Manfred isn't any more dead than he was before, since he was always a wisp inhabiting a body. He just won't be... inhabiting anymore. But, yeah. A tough one. Taash got Hero of the Veilguard status at the end of their quest, but Emmrich didn't get it here. Either he'll get it when he becomes a lich, or picking lichdom means that he doesn't get it. I guess I'll find out.

All throughout this, I would go back to the Lighthouse between each mission and run into delightful conversations between my companions. I really love how lively and dynamic it feels like the Lighthouse is. People are always moving around and talking to each other. <3

I moved some other companion missions forward but haven't completed them yet -- I need to do the next story mission in Treviso to complete Lucanis's personal mission, and Neve's mission next goes to the Cobbled Swan, where the Inquisitor awaits for a second check-in (excited to see her again! She's not ~exactly~ my Inky, of course, but you can't distill dozens of hours of characterization into a dozen lines, so I wasn't expecting that). I have some final tie-ups for Taash and Harding, plus the Lichdom ceremony for Emmrich, and I've moved forward to the next steps on Davrin and Bellara's quests.

Speaking of Bellara's questline, this hit me HARD after my recent decision to go no-contact with my brother:

Yeah, that's gonna be a rough one, especially if we have to kill her brother.

My next quest is going to be helping put to rest the souls of the Rivani mages murdered by Templars during DAI (we found a heartbreaking codex entry about this at the time).

[thedragonagebigbang]

Bang Creator Interview: Tumblr: @crabs-with-sticks  |  AO3: CrabsWithSticks

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!

Found Family in Crisis!!!!!! How This Local Woman's Life Just Keeps Getting Worse!!!  

Jacs and Dema talk music, tragedy, DMing tabletop games, and OCs who won't follow the damn rules

Dema: Good morning! Happy Saturday. Are you writing today? 

Jacs: I'm hoping to! Though I might be taking a break from my actual project to do some fun oneshots. Give myself a bit of time away from the tragedy of my bang fic and write something happy haha

Dema: That is very fair! Especially with heavier fics. How do you get in the zone to write, regardless of the project? Or does it vary depending on the vibes of your fic?

Jacs: Normally it involves getting nice and cozy under a blanket on the couch with a good cup of tea. I'll sometimes put a playlist on to get into a particular vibe, I've got a bunch of character playlists which can help get into the perspective of whatever oc I'm writing that day.

Dema: I won't get too specific with this question but, if there is one song on your playlist that especially fits your bang fic, what would it be?

Jacs: Hmm, I'd say probably 'Sampson' by Regina Spektor. The song is based on a tragic biblical story and is all about what could have happened if things had worked out differently. If the love had been enough to save them, then they wouldn't have been remembered by history but they would have been happy.

Dema: Oh okay, arrow straight to the heart. I see, I see.

Jacs: Yeah, I'm a known tragedy enjoyer, just rolling around in the sadness like a dog in a puddle. In order to get optimal levels of tragedy you gotta have some happiness first just so that readers can really see that it didn't have to be this way (but they never could have changed it).

Dema: I can't wait to read it! I also love tragedy, and especially in that ratio. Is there a particular one-shot idea you have kicking around, to cleanse the palate?

Jacs: Not sure! Though probably something with my oc Luca Trevelyan with Dorian, though I haven't actually managed to get very far through that particular playthrough yet....I'm a bit of a serial oc creator who then never gets around to actually playing them in the game.

Dema: Do you always make your OCs in game? Even if you don't get around to the playthrough? 

Jacs: Yep! It’s probably my favourite part of Dragon Age, or any CRPG. I really like thinking up characters, with their conflicts and histories. I'm a forever DM in real life, so I'm fairly used to making up characters and then never playing them, although at least with Dragon Age I already know the events of the game they'll be going through, so I have a better idea of their development arcs. I am trying to do a re-playthrough of the whole series before Veilguard comes out, but we'll see how successful that is haha.

Dema: Do you find that DMing has informed the way you structure your stories?

Jacs: I'd say that it probably has. When I DM I'm always keeping a hand on the pulse of all the characters, their emotions and where they're at in their arcs, because my aim is really to tell a good story. So I think it can help me to see things from the big picture as well as a more mechanical perspective. Though sometimes I do need to tell myself to stop looking at the big picture and just focus on what is at hand.

Dema: I'm a bit in awe of DMs. To me it seems like being the conductor of an orchestra, except all your musicians are improvising. Do your characters sometimes feel like players? Or do they tend to stay within the lines?

Jacs: They do end up getting away from me sometimes, or they'll do something that leaves me going 'huh, why did you just make that decision', because I know it's accurate but I'm not entirely sure why. Though sadly there's no actual player to ask...just my brain. I was intending to make quite a whimsical and happy Brosca, but she just keeps doing morally grey things!

Dema: HAHA ah yes, relatable. I find it's such an interesting balance, for me, between wanting everything in the story to feel a bit inevitable (especially in a tragedy!) and embracing the realism of some things just not having a clear explanation, especially character decisions.

Jacs: Yeah for sure! It's great when characters are messy and contradictory, I just wish it wasn't so hard...I had a character at one point who was making a whole bunch of decisions I wasn't expecting or had planned for, and I'd try to think 'ok why is this character doing this?' and all she supplied in return was 'I'm lactose intolerant'...which honestly was a very in character response; just straight up ignoring the question. 

Dema: A character in writing, or a character in a campaign you were DMing?

Jacs: A character I was writing.

Dema: Hahaha, incredible.

Jacs: I sometimes have, I guess little 'conversations' with my characters in my head where I tap into the section of my brain that they live in.

Dema: That's a great strategy! Is that how your characters first come to be?

Jacs: Hmm, I think the conversation part comes a bit later when I have some context for them, either in their history or in the game itself. It starts off as a lot of collaging together different ideas until it makes a full character. Often I start off from a particular theme or emotional angle I'm interested in exploring. So one started off as 'religious trauma', and another from 'idealism in a cruel society' and so on.

Dema: Has that first theme or idea ever come from a really unexpected source? And related to this, do you tend to be primarily inspired by the source material itself? I know that's a big reason so many of us love DA in particular.

Jacs: I think the themes are usually all ideas that I'm already interested in, but it's super fun seeing the way it can connect to the worldbuilding and lore. I think it's really important for characters to have specifics which tie them into the world around them, so thinking about how their family might have lived in the particular part of the world they're from, how they and the people around them either adhere to or go against it, and what impact that would have on their story. It's really fun looking at how a theme can change based on where the character comes from, like a character with conflict based around religious trauma is going to be different if they're human, Dalish or a city elf, and the world will react to them differently because of that.

Dema: Now I simply must ask you if you ever write AU fics.

Jacs: I haven't written many to be honest, though I do have some ideas for some. It can be hard translating a story that is really rooted in the specifics of one particular world and translating that to another. So I'm always really impressed to see when other people do it so well! I often find you can find a good parallel for one aspect of a character, but then you have to try to fit a second aspect or character conflict in and it doesn't fit the new world at all!

Dema: I feel the same!

Jacs: Writing; it's hard man.

Dema: It is! So why do you do it!? And a follow-up question: writing is hard, and you're signed up for a Big Bang! What made you interested? Is it your first one or have you done this before?

Jacs: It's like a wonderful little puzzle; except it can be all wibbly wobbly and just like real life it doesn't always need to make sense- it's lovely just to embrace the humanness of character writing!

So a bit of context, I recently finished postgraduate studies, and realised I didn't have any hobbies! I used to love creative writing of any sort when I was but a young whippersnapper (they say, in their mid 20s), so I decided to embrace the cringe and get back at it. I've never participated in any fandom events, or even written something this long that wasn't academic! But I'm really loving the community around this event and getting to chat to other writers as we all write (and suffer) together!

Dema: In the last minutes, and just for fun: can you come up with a click-bait title for your fic? Without giving anything major away, of course.

Jacs: Maybe something like 'Found Family in Crisis!!!!!! How This Local Woman's Life Just Keeps Getting Worse!!!’  (To quote the venerable Sir Terry Prattchet: And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.)

Dema: Ten out of Ten, would click again. Thank you so much for setting aside this time to chat with me!

Jacs: No worries! I had a great time!

[someshakespearequote]

Random speculation about Taash and Qunari in general: (no real spoilers, but I talk about Tevinter Nights and some of what we've seen in general previews)

In DAO, Sten was our first look at the Qunari, a simple but deep believer. This was like if you dropped a blue-collar soldier into another country. They'd be giving you the basics of their country's belief system.

In DA2, the Qunari were more alien and antagonistic, and we got to dive into the mind of the Arishok in some places, really seeing how his thought process worked. A commander who has had more time to philosophize but is still a soldier, a different view.

In DAI, we get Bull, who gives us our most sympathetic look at someone grappling with whether to leave the Qun. He's a former soldier broken by his experiences (Trick Weekes compared Seheron to Afghanistan and said that while they didn't give Bull full PTSD (to avoid stepping on the toes of Cullen's arc, I think), Bull does talk in some places about hyperawareness and always knowing where the exits of a building are.) He's cynical and seems to feel that people are just people, and the Qunari philosophy is just rules to make people not kill each other, like the Chantry is supposed to do for humans.

Some people have complained about that, and I'm honestly on the fence. Do I want the Qunari to be more alien and unique, with a really different philosophy, or do I want them to be "just people"? I can see both sides. It reminds me of the arguments that have been circulating about the revised edition of D&D 5e. In the original 5e, you had ability score bonuses locked to certain races, and you had strongly worded suggestions about how to play those races. Yuan-Ti should always be evil. Half-Orcs should probably be evil but at least be chaotic and hot-tempered. In the expansion books to 5e, the devs seemed to listen to feedback and untethered ability scores from race, and in the revised edition, race (now "species") doesn't affect ability scores at all (it's tied to backgrounds, which are like jobs), and the rules make it clear that there's room for a genius scholar half-orc or a softhearted Yuan-Ti. You might have a nation of evil Yuan-Ti, but that stuff wasn't genetic. D&D heard what its players wanted, which was less "Your personality is innately tied to your species," and modified the rules accordingly.

And this feels like Dragon Age doing the same thing. Bull is humanizing the Qunari. Do they still have all the fancy Qunari stuff? Yes, in the same way that humanity in Dragon Age has the Chantry and elves have the elven gods and their stories. But the Qunari who act like Sten or the Arishok did are now over on one side as true believers/hard-liners.

So what are we getting in Veilguard from Taash?

Given that the events of the Tevinter Nights novels set up the Qunari Antaam as breaking away from the Qun and invading the south, it seems likely we'll be fighting them in some places. So these are our hard-liners, although they've broken away from the Qun, so if anything, they're the equivalent of evangelical "Christians" who talk about God's Army destroying the heretics and really just mean "fellow white people" when they say "Christian" -- the Antaam aren't following the Qun anymore. They're just using it as a handy guide to identify members of the in-group. They're Sten or the Arishok with all the tribalism and none of the philosophy (or at least, they are in Tevinter Nights, to the point where one of them gets killed by a Ben-Hassrath for giving Qunari a bad name).

My initial theory was that Taash was going to be the flip side of the Antaam -- the philosophy without the tribalism. It doesn't look like Taash is a formal follower of the Qun, though, which made this initially tough to believe.

She (they? we'll know in a week and a bit!) does have a Qunari name, though, likely something related to "dragon" or "glory", since it looks likely that the name Taash relates to Ataash (glory) or Ataashi (dragon). Taash also wears the arm-ropes, so either those ropes are just terribly comfortable, or Taash still keeps some elements of Qunari tradition. It feels like we can assume this isn't a complete "human with horns", culturally (a vashoth, to use the formal term), like Inquisitor Adaar if you made a Qunari Inquisitor in DAI.

My best guess at trying to figure out the little contradictions from what we've seen so far is that Taash is a first- or second-generation immigrant -- someone who left the Qun young or was raised by someone who left the Qun before Taash was born. (That also fits with Rivain, which had a peaceful, even friendly, relationship with the Qunari, at least before the Antaam broke off and attacked.) If Taash's story is an immigrant story, then that lets us look at the Qun in a new way -- someone who left (or was born having already left) the Qun formally, but who (unlike Bull) still keeps many of the cultural traditions while living in a new country.

Maybe Taash begrudgingly keeps a few of the Qunari traditions taught by family, but doesn't don't think much of them?

Maybe Taash was raised with no Qunari traditions but has grown more interested in exploring Qunari heritage as an adult (while not being willing to actually join the Qun)?

Whatever it is, and I'm confident that it's going to be something in that neighborhood, I hope it gives us a new way to look at the Qun and make Thedas a little more complex. (And also that however it does that works with a fun cool character exploration of Taash!)

Or possibly I have just smashed my keyboard a whole bunch while making no sense whatsoever, which wouldn't be the first time I had thoughts that made sense in my head but not here.

[esta-elavaris]

Hiii! I hope you’re doing well. Just wanted to pop in here real quick because I just finished Veilguard and I am of course obsessed with Lucanis, and since we do seem to have similar taste in fictional men I wanted to get your take on your whole experience so far. Also would definitely not be opposed to you writing fic about him to help me fill the void 😂

If you’re thinking of writing something, I’d be super interested in what your take on MGiT as Rook or as another companion would be, but honestly I’d read anything you write.

In the meantime, here’s a nice little Lucanis gif. I mean just look at that little smirk!

Ayyyy a fellow connoisseur!!

I'm not long having finished the Weisshaupt mission, so I'm not too far along in the game - but I have mixed feelings on the Lucanis romance so far. I don't mind a slow burn, but god I feel like 9 times out of 10 when I choose the romantic dialogue option he just doesn't react at all. Like I actually started googling to see if I was somehow failing the romance because lad was just giving me nothing. It's enough to make a lady sensitive to rejection. Doesn't help that he's the companion that seems to want to talk to me least around the Lighthouse, too.

I do love him as a character and I'm still holding out hope, though, so we'll see -- and the upside is that this fact alone has already majorly inspired the little one shot I'm gonna write of him, so it's free material, at least! And it does make sense for his character, I'm just used to being a Cullen gal where the pining vibes were there early on.

I would also loooove to write a MGiT fic, Lucanis might end up being a good outlet for that because before that I thought it would be Cullen, but I never end up happy with anything I write for him. I just need to get a wiggle on and actually finish some of my 43589345 currently ongoing ones before I even consider writing anything new, because the fic roster is getting ridiculous and it's not fair to folk already invested in the stuff that's already been started. But as soon as I finish some stuff, Lucanis and Gale from BG3 are my priorities for thinking about new fics! TIl then I'll indulge in one shots here and there!

[fancytrinkets]

i finished veilguard

My thoughts are still a bit scattered and I think I'll be spending time carefully reading all the codices and letters over the next week or so.

The fight through Minrathous was fun. I bumped the difficulty back up to Adventurer in order to enjoy the battles more thoroughly. And for the first time in a Dragon Age game I found the darkspawn emissaries to be fucking TERRIFYING. Their flesh-tether Blight attacks are excellent and horrible. 10/10 for that

I liked assigning teammates to different roles. Taash to fight the giant construct at the gates, Neve to disable the wards, Lucanis to slay the Venatori mages. Davrin to split off and join the front lines before the climb to the archon's palace. And Bellara, returning from what seemed like certain death to take control of the Blight herself. It felt really moving in a way I liked.

Dorian and the romanced Inquisitor standing side by side and having a caretaking conversation with each other before the final fight was really gratifying for me also.

Seeing Solas turn into a giant wolf was both required by this point and very satisfying. The Solas redemption ending was satisfying for me also. Seeing my Inquisitor kneel at his feet, having Morrigan show up, while Rook produced the statue from Mythal... just from a cinematic perspective—and with the Inquisition's music from Trespasser coming forward in the score and then taking over—I found it really moving, a fitting end to the Inquisitor's story with Solas....

That said, I do have critiques about how disconnected the characters and events and environments often felt from the lore of previous games. I think other people will delve into that better than I can right now

For now I'll just say I have questions. If Andraste really was a previous incarnation of Mythal, before Flemeth, then what was the Maker? Another of the elven gods? Another powerful old spirit? Or a story Andraste told to help her people make sense of their brutal march to war?

What does it mean that the Veil is restored? Has Solas come to trust other people—these new and "lesser" people—enough to believe that they will caretake for spirits (who presumably still can slip through the Veil in some ways) rather than continuing to fear them and drive them off? Or is he just ready to admit that it ought to be out of his hands? He couldn't fix it or undo his errors and atrocities, so he needs to try something new...

What happens to the South? Are Southern institutions so broken by the Blight that they need to accept help from this new Northern alliance that seems to be coming together? Will this alliance fracture and lead to wars again? What are the politics at play? (Lol, I guess the game didn't give us as much bureacracy as I might have liked.)

I am most happy to have given Bellara the Archive and happy that she survived to keep studying it. I still find the Veil Jumpers to be a strange and disconnected-from-the-world sort of faction. But I like Bellara's story within it. As a character, she grew on me.

The Davrin romance was sweet and right for my elven Shadow Dragon Rook. I liked the Grey Warden's story arc, probably moreso for having read The Last Flight. And I'm happy that he survived and Harding didn't. Not because of the romance, really, just because it felt more significant to kill off another returning character, and another of Trevelyan's friends....

I'm happy with Mae as archon. Trevelyan and Dorian deserve a break from the spotlight for a while... (I'm going to have to rewrite their retirement story however, now that Varric is dead. I'm also imagining Trevelyan, Hawke, and the Hero of Ferelden teaming up to fight together in the South during the events of Veilguard, so that's been giving me some writing interest already... we'll see where my writer's brain goes with it)

I have other thoughts, but that's where it's at right now.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Choices

One of the things I've noticed in the last little while, playing Veilguard and not being worried about spoilers, is that there are a fair few entitled players out there, at least when it comes to Bioware games. (You guys are fine; it's mostly what I'm seeing on Reddit.) Now, I'm not enamoured with all of Bioware's decisions when making this game, and things could have used some work, but I am happy to change my mind from my original assessment of "not worth it", and most of all, I'm not going to say that the game is objectively bad just because it isn't the game I made up in my head. Even if I had played it despite all the pain to end up hating it, I would have said "It's just not for me" and chalked it up as an expensive life lesson. But these people seem to think that "bad" translates to "not what I personally want".

There are going to be a lot of posts like this, I feel, so I'll handle one complaint from the Reddit brigade at a time - namely, what they did with the build-up to and results of at least one difficult choice. And here's a read-more just in case; there are spoilers but it's for Act 1 so you might find it worthwhile reading.

Specifically, Minrathous vs Treviso. The results because ... well. The build-up to? According to the Reddit crowd, that's down to the Antivan Crows and Tevinter's attitudes towards slavery.

We'll start with the Crows. When these people said they wanted "dark", they apparently meant, "We want to know all about everything Zevran told us about how the Crows behave - how they buy children and torture them and kill them, or let their peers kill them, in order to become Crows! This is hero-washing the Crows into freedom fighters!" And in the next breath they'll complain about an absence of Zevran. Two things, though. The first? It's been decades. My assumption at the point where the Crows behave more like a mob family than anything Zevran described is that ... look, after Zevran left the Hero of Ferelden, he basically became a vengeful ghost dealing with the worst elements of the Crows. It got so bad the Crows sent Nucio after him in DA2, and we know what happened to Nuncio in DA2. I personally figured that the less brutal Talons took things in hand to keep the Crows as a going concern. But of course, the Reddit folks complain about "Why don't we ever see or hear about Zevran?!?" and I'm like, "Guys, seriously - would you, as the head of a guild of assassins who more or less run a country at this point, go around telling some total stranger (or, if you picked the Crows as your background, some fledgeling) that you were ever brutal trainers at all? And if you did, would you then tell them that one man disrupted that guild so badly that you had to change your policies?" Lucanis suggests that there's still some nasty shit going on in the interests of training an assassin, but ... again, we are playing Some Guy. I doubt they're going to even so much as leave bits of paper with, "The last Some Guy we had who went on a world-saving mission at the end of a contract basically tore us full of so many holes that we had to go away and think about our choices". And that's not even counting having to change at least some policies when the Antaam blew into town because they were having enough problems as it was.

And then Tevinter. That one's shorter. They wanted to hear about the blood magic and the slavery. They wanted to see the slavery. Which ... like, okay, much like the thing with tortured young people in the name of making a better assassin, this gives me a bit of the ick, but they want their dark and gritty (and there might be some prurient interest there but I don't kinkshame) so whatever. Point is, not only have they had the Lyrium Ghost on their asses for like a decade, but they've had Dorian fucking Pavus working on them via the Shadow Dragons from within. I figure at the very least the jackasses who are into the slavery have had to be less conspicuous unless they wanted an elf who can phase through people and/or a Magister who faced down the end of the world and won on their asses.

Anyway, what you see of Minrathous is enough. Shadow Dragons notwithstanding (sorry, Matt Mercer as the Viper, and trusting Dorian to get the hell out of there), my personal view on Tevinter is, "Let it burn". Aaaaaaaaaand because I picked the place with the group that actually seems to have taken steps to rehabilitate itself, not to mention the one with no standing army ... Minrathous did.

And that's the other bit of bitching we get from the Reddit group. Like, "We sent the other three to Minrathous! Couldn't they do anything?!?" Since the dragon was only actually sent down to ground level where they could be attacked to fetch that fucking lyrium dagger, no, the technically unnamed Veilguard couldn't do shit all. Minrathous' own defenses had a better chance, but if they decided not to clean house of the Venatori in their ranks until it was too late, that's on them. And when and if the day comes that I choose Minrathous (and I might; I have a few pragmatic Rooks who really don't want to give the Venatori a better foothold and see the Antaam as a lesser threat), I know damn well the other three couldn't do anything for Treviso for the same reason.

Also the bitching about, "Why does the faction that got its city destroyed blame us?!?" A few reasons, honestly. First, it's generally not the entire faction - it's the one whiner that most of these factions seem to have (and who I'm fairly sure are some kind of traitor in at least one case but never mind). Hell, the Viper gets Blighted and all he says is, "I can buy myself some time, and it's not Rook's fault; it is what it is". (I do <3 Matt Mercer and he's probably about the only reason I regret letting Minrathous burn. That and the dog the Viper has nearby. I hope pupper got out.) Second, people say things when they're grieving and upset. People blame themselves for everything bad that happens around them, and they know that's not healthy and certainly not comfortable, so they sling that blame on the nearest available target. And third of all ... every. Single. Faction blames you for knocking a statue into a giant ritual with no idea what the fuck was going to happen when you did. Would they have made a different or better choice? Probably not. Harding's arrow would have done nothing at that point, not with Solas that strong, so just assassinating him before he could complete it was not an option. Varric was never going to talk him around, so strangers were hardly likely to do the same. It was disrupt the ritual or let it happen. But the faction leaders weren't there to see any of it; they just know that something different would have happened if Rook hadn't done what Rook did. In their hearts, they have to believe it was better, because they can't even contemplate "worse" than this.

(Would it have actually been better? Solas seems to think so, and talks about his "army of spirits to minimise the damage" he was about to do, but Solas is Solas - not even just "he's Fen'harel"; he's fucking Solas and wasn't up-front with us at any point in Inquisition, even the last. I can trust Solas about as far as I can throw the entirety of blighted Minrathous.)

Anyway, point is, I am still reading the Reddit posts and the various complaints, just because I want other opinions, but that's to build a framework by which I can judge what actually happens in the game. Like I said, the problem is that people had ten years to make up the game they wanted inside their heads, no matter how difficult or outright impossible that game would be to create. The imagination can do things that modern technology cannot. These people are unwilling not only to accept the game we were given because it's not the game they personally want, but also to use the spaces this game gives you to make that game in your own imagination. I can headcanon for days. We all can. We've all had to. Romance lacking? We had Sebastian and we sure as hell made that work. Bits of plot make no sense? We fanfic about it. None of the people complaining seem to want to do that ... if they're able to. I recognise that we are imaginative people and really awesome at what we do and not everyone can do what we do. But I honestly think it's mostly that they don't want to. They want the game they want, done to their exact specifications, and they want it handed to them on a plate with no room for wiggle room or nuance or speculation. And then they accuse the plot of having no nuance because we're not being forced to consort with child-abusing murderers.

I'm still enjoying it, anyway. You can pet the adorable young griffon. That alone sells me.