#do i understand why they weren't in veilguard yes do i want them back so bad also yes

[dirthamen-enjoyer]

please remember that this is all my personal thoughts and i might be wrong about some of the things. it is critical. this started off as one specific topic about solas and then ended up turning into more of a ramble. i guess? anyways spoilers for veilguard under the keep reading line.

i wish my brain worked properly sometimes because i really want to know why i feel like they didn't write solas cohesively enough. to me, he is the best part of datv. and no, it's not because i romanced him in inquisition. actually, i could never finish his romance because he was such a know-it-all and it would annoy me lol. (it's because i'm a know-it-all and know-it-alls tend to clash. i plan on forcing myself through it one day though.) despite him annoying me, i liked him as a character. i liked his reveal, the moral greyness of him.

i think mainly my problem is how they presented his morals and why he wants to tear down the veil. it feels like they couldn't decide how to focus him. so originally he's tearing down the veil because it was a mistake and wants the world to go back to the way it was so the days of the ancient elves - specifically after the evanuris are gone - could return, at least that's what i got from it.

then at the beginning of veilguard, it suddenly it feels like tearing the veil down is just a byproduct of him needing to move the last of the evanuris to a better prison. huh? in my head i always thought that solas was ready to fight the evanuris when the veil is brought down because he's willing to take the risk of dealing with them just to bring the old world back. maybe that's too headcanon-y? also i never got around to reading the books or comics fully so i might have missed some details.

then at the end it's "i must do this for mythal or her sacrifice would be for nothing" or whatever he said. huh? i don't get why it's suddenly about mythal, even with the regret murals showing how close they were. it should be about him and all he sacrificed, only for it to not go the way he wanted. without even talking about what was revealed in the regrets murals, he sacrificed the world he knew to lock the evanuris (and forgotten ones) away to try and make life better for the common elves, the slaves.

i don't know how well that last paragraph comes off. i'm just saying that it felt like it didn't belong. his whole story is about regrets, yes. makes sense. he regrets the events that happened because of the veil mistakenly happening. he regrets what's in the murals (which i might talk about in another post because :/) but the game acts like him tearing down the veil is just selfish. there's no other nuance there, it's just selfish. huh? there is so much nuance to this position, in my opinion, that i can't even figure out how to write it.

okay so i've officially lost my train of thought about this original topic, which means i don't know what else to put. i'll just say that i feel dumb that i don't understand it while it feels like everyone else does. also i don't understand why i dislike how everything ended for him. it was like someone punched me when lost elf started playing because this ending didn't feel right. and i don't know why. (that one ending... "i am a god!" bffr he would NAWT FUCKING say that.)

also let me just quickly state that i do not think they should have made the evanuris, and elves, originally spirits. it takes away the fantasy in a the fantasy story, is the best way to say it. i know it sounds weird, but... mysteries are good. not everything needs an explanation. we could have had the mystery of "what were the evanuris?" if they kept them as just gods instead of explaining them. just have the reveal be that the gods weren't good to their subjects and are all-powerful. no need to explain all the time.

this has nothing to do with how much i wanted to fight actual gods (i did. i wanted to go up against actual gods other than the archdemons. and we know that reveal :/ ) or even how much more impactful it would have made solas's history.

[simpforsolas]

some more ramblings

Topics: Soft reboot vs sequel discussion, and why Veilguard companions fall flat

One of the biggest issues that I think Veilguard suffered from was that it felt like BioWare couldn't decide if they wanted to make a sequel or soft reboot. The story was a direct sequel to Inquisition, but everything else felt like a reboot. The cameos were so shallow and dissatisfying, and the fact that we couldn't carry over basically any choices made it so it didn't even feel like our own world. It also felt like the parts that were integral to Dragon Age's world in previous games weren't even present. Religion, race relations, issues regarding magic, none of these issues were there. It was like they didn't want to bog the game and story down with lore for new players which I can understand, but then we were left with something that barely felt like Dragon Age at all. What do you mean there was barely any distinction between city elves and Dalish elves? What do you mean a new player could play as mage Rook and not realize that in the majority of the continent they would be hated and feared? But then, the main story directly continues Solas's story in DAI, and they brought the inquisitor back. But at the same time, they didn't want the inquisitor to have too big of a role because new players wouldn't care about them and it might be confusing. But then that left returning players like me honestly, very dissatisfied, because I wanted more solavellan, and I wanted Lavellan to have a bigger role in Solas's final outcome.

With regards to companions, none of them had interesting character arcs or opinions relating to this broken world they lived in. I mean, they couldn't, because BioWare simplified the world so much that these complex issues can't shape anyone. What made Vivienne so interesting was the way the world shaped her as a character. Same with Solas, Fenris, Anders, Alistair, Cassandra, Wynne: all of these are characters whose personality, flaws, and beliefs are shaped by their background, which meant that if you threw them in a room together, you inevitably got fascinating banter because the characters had such strong identities and beliefs that you could tell who would clash and who wouldn't. To me... the new companions in Veilguard didn't really feel like their personality and stories were inexorably tied to the world. You could pluck Taash's story from Veilguard and set it in a completely different world, swap out a few things, and it would be the same. But for Anders' story to work, it requires meticulous worldbuilding and understanding of Thedas. It is, to its core, tied to the world of Thedas. Yes, you can of course find parallels to the real world with Anders' story, but it still requires to be told in the world of Thedas for it to truly make sense. That's not to say the Veilguard companions are necessarily bad, but it was disappointing to me that none of them had the same spice as the previous games' companions, and I really think it comes down to the fact that their arcs focused more on broad human experience and didn't tie into the world that created those stories.