#da4 spoilers //

[st4rch1ld404]

heres my rook with spite because.. i need him lol

[vigilskept]

“zevran fixed the crows” -> so we’re admitting veilguard has a canon worldstate then right?

[azdesertwillow]

Yes yes yes yes yes this!

I legit do not think that Caterina would hate Rook, especially not Rook de Riva.

Rook got her grandson back.

Rook saved Caterina's own life.

Rook saved the world.

And Rook is also Caterina's best hope for carrying on the Dellamorte's name (because adoption is at least on the table which is a better shot then when Lucanis was single). I think she knows that if she wants great-grandkids, she's gotta do everything she can to make sure that Lucanis doesn't mess this up for her.

Great potential narrative tension in Catarina not appreciating Crow Rook (in a Rookanis romance), BUT I raise you...

Teia, Illario and Lucanis huddling by the fire and whispering as Catarina pats Rook on the cheek on the other side of the room:

"Wait, is ROOK the favourite now??"

Illario: [Loki "Yes! Now you know how it feels!" gif]

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

it's insane actually that Neve tells you about the Demon of Vyrantium and how she's heard rumors of him but never been able to uncover his name, but has been tracking the information on him for years now. and then you walk into the Diamond ten minutes later and go "I need a magekiller" and Caterina just goes "Lucanis. My grandson"

[dragonagecinema]

Dragon's Gate /

Baldur's Age

If there's one video game I would recommend to Dragon Age fans, it would definitely be Baldur's Gate 3 ❤️ Not only it is the sequel to Origins we never got from Bioware, it has an incredible storyline and characters, and the most complex decision-making process I've ever seen 🤯 There are so many choices to make, both good and bad, as well as endings.

When I first played Baldur's Gate 3, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the party camps ⛺

Another aspect I found familiar was Gortash's coronation, similar to the famous Landsmeet 🏰

After playing Dragon Age The Veilguard only one year later, the similarities of the final battle were astounding to me 👀

The final battle ground in the sky (Palace/Brain)

Climbing up the tendril

Blighted Bellara / Tadpoled Dark Urge sitting on the throne

The throne

Blighted Elgar'nan / Tadpoled Dark Urge siting on the throne

[beaulesbian]

that escalated quickly

[galedekarios]

what it feels like to take emmrich and davrin with you as your team

it's basically just emmrich 'gentle parenting' volkarin vs davrin 'tough love' the warden

[gwinaesfer]

"The Veil Guard didn't actually care about Rook" the Veil Guard was so desperate to get Rook back from the prison they tried to make a ritual dagger of their own to rip the Veil apart and look for them

Rook wasn't their boss, Rook was their home

[sky--phantom]

Rook and Lucanis' banter during the Siege was a highlight

[warden-commander-of-ferelden]

I love him your honor

[thismission]

two of the sexiest lines in this game fr

[pancakesprince]

arvel mahariel - he/they

hes 50 years old now.. never experienced twink death

edit: part 2

[corseque]

The final song in the Solavellan ending, when Lost Elf reappears, that is not on the soundtrack

[edwardbonnets]

rook: *obvious flirting* emmrich: 😲😲😲🤯🤯🤯😳😳😳??????????

bonus:

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Veilguard Ecology Part 1

I have decided to channel the ways I am insane by cataloguing the plants, animals, rocks, geography, and what have you we see in Dragon Age, starting with Veilguard. I am starting this with the acknowledgement that all of these things largely exist just as "assets" and "textures" placed around the landscape to the devs rather than thought out inclusions (unlike some of the specific diversity of ecoregions & their contents we see in DAI), so I'm making it my problem instead.

who is this for? me. it is not going to be interesting to most other people beyond a vague "i didn't know that was something you could look at" or a "i like to read about other peoples weird hobbies" thing for everyone else probably. anyway

PROLOGUE PART 1: Minrathous

jumping into the game and what do we have here. two beloved companions we've known for years? no. ignore them. time for grass.

I'm going to use the fieldwork unknown ID naming conventions for plants that aren't referred to by species/common name in these games, though I will speculate as to what they're based on via imported textures. So this will be Grass1. You can see both yellow and green tissue, implying it's either a perennial or an annual that grows multiple rounds in a single season. My bet is perennial. The stems and leaves are both upright and rigid, the leaves angling sharply upward from the stems. This game is nowhere near detailed enough to see ligules, auricles, or trichomes (AND SHOULDNT. to be clear. i can't even imagine how hot my computer would be running) which are like my #1 way to ID grass family in absense of seed head (which these also don't appear to have) so not gonna bother guessing taxonomy. Although visually the shape reminds me of a Muhlenbergia perhaps. note if you google any of the plants i mention you'll only see highly watered versions which are Not how most grasses look in their native wild habitat, where they are much more resource limited, so keep that in mind.

And now on the other side of this little platform we have Grass2. Taller than Grass1, appears to be entirely senesced (gone dormant / all brown above ground / roots probably still alive--if aboveground tissue is yellow rather than grey you generally assume the plant isn't dead just not photosynthetically active). we have what MIGHT be now bare seedheads but no seeds left on them. the dry leaves tend to be more curly than rigid although the overall habit is still fairly upright and tall. This is too tall to be a Boutaloua or Hilaria jamseii but not spiky enough to be Hilaria rigida (although that one might be another contender for Grass1 now that i think about it), and the leaves are flat rather than rolled like an Achnatherum. probably its based on something outside my wheelhouse of dryland or great basin grasses so if i narrow it down better I'll come back to it later.

In this section we also see a pile of dead weeds all grouped together, in a few spots. however the lighting here is shit and i remember seeing these somewhere brighter later so I'm skipping them for now.

Here we have Shrub1. Look at that! finally something green in Minrathous (YES i know there is 1 single green herbacious something or other in the grass/weeds pile in the last spot but again it's in a group asset so we're saving it for somewhere with better lighting. also it just looked so sad there on its own). anyway this is an upright shrub with redish stems and some sort of dark berry in clusters. I'm guessing this is based on some ornamental which aren't my wheelhouse, but the leaves are opposite branching, leaf margins smooth and entire (though some are browning at the tips which is a nice visual detail), and the fruits form in small groups but not large enough cluters that would indicate an umbel type flower. I have NO proof to back this up but when i look at it i feel like it's vibe is evergreen rather than deciduous. maybe because the light on the leaves makes them seem waxy... however this is not a plant you are meant to look at up close as it's entirely flat textures layered together so i'm concluding analysis there until i pull up an ornamental shrubs list and figure out which one it's been scanned off.

ENOUGH WITH THE PLANTS, LETS TALK ROCKS: Solas' Hideout Cave

Ok there are some more senesced and dead grass/weed textures here too that aren't exact copies of above. but the lighting is even more abysmal so i'll skip for now and come back if i don't run into them elsewhere in the game i guess. also i'll be honest i can see an aspen leaf in the pile and there's NOT aspen trees here so it will just annoy me to put them in this section rather than Arlathan which is up next. let's look at the cliff instead.

Here we have some sort of chunky weathered yet clearly very stratified rock. you can see all those narrow horizontal lines that indicate this is a sedimentary rock, so at one time Minrathous was a depositional environment, which i'm not getting into right now but am making a note for my now 10-year-old tectonic plates map of Thedas. We're right on the sea without much beach and the rocks look more chunky than crumbly, as well as this darker grey color, so i'm leaning sandstone/siltstone rather than something softer like limestone. maybe some shale but Minrathous has been built so large I can't imagine the region is predominately shale or it'd be way more structurally unsound after all these centuries.

Now when I first played Veilguard this was one of the first places i stopped and went "ohhh, nice" while looking around because I do think they did a fantastic job with the ground surface textures. we have a sort of sandy patch on top of a rock base which makes sense for an area people are walking in/out from but the edges are clearer, which if they're being slapped by waves now and then would indeed drive the sediment either in or out. We have different grain sizes for the sand and gravel as well as different colors. The ground-rock is kind of way lighter in color than the walls-rocks but i am attributing this to the needs of seeing your character when running around vs stratigraphy change. anyway this is just chatter the funny part is actually when you go inside the cave

aaaand now we're leaving realistic critique behind and are entirely within the realm of game design. But i do want to point it out because i think this is one of those things that, unless you spend a lot of time thinking about geology/geography, you wouldn't ever consider. I've even bothered to adjust the lighting in these screenshots (why are games all so DARK) so you can see what I'm talking about.

Here in the hideout we first see on the floor some cobblestone/brick on the floor, partly obscured by sediment, and leading right up to and implied underneath the rest of the stone wall. In the second screenshot you can see the remains of elven brickwork in the wall and archways leading further in, both in various stages of crumbling. whats wrong with this? Well, the rock is growing on top of them. Which is not how rock works--rock can distort, warp, crush, etc buildings housed inside it but it does not grow over things the way plants do. Yes, even if ancient Elvhen empire was 10,000 years old, sedimentary rock cliffs need millions of years to form, not thousands, and if they WERE forming new rock it would happen in even layers from the bottom up, not growing over the wall like a parasite (I would allow for stalactite growth too but that's not what we are seeing in this cave).

What has happened here is: environment designer made an uneven wall, then took a brick wall asset, and sank it halfway into that wall so the rock shows through. This is WAY faster than designing a brick wall that is falling apart and showing rock from behind the places it's crumbled away. I don't blame them for doing this, it would be very silly to put that much extra work in for something only me and probably 4 other people will ever notice. but! perhaps now you will notice it too the next time you play a cave or underground section of a game and go "heehoo the fantasy Rock That Can Grow Over Things" the way I do.

That's all for this section--up next will be the Arlathan Forest part of the prologue, eventually.