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tiredassmage · 3 months ago

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veilguard thoughts!

rook + solas parallels edition

spoilery ofc because my head's not full of cotton balls today and i haven't stopped chewing on it all since i finished the game! so! this is a little endgame heavy; you've been warned for what's below the cut <3

the final first playthrough counter has come in just over 67 hours and i am all but physically holding myself back from launching right into another one with another rook because i had a blast. i'll concede it was a bit heavy on the exposition in the first several hours, but what followed has certainly won my heart, and i think the game is visually beautiful.

but i'm not even looking to do a full review here, but i think one of the most fascinating things this game did was set up rook and solas. so, two parts of preface then: one, i was a little determined to love this game and hoped it would at least perform decent. that's my spite about it, lol, but that's not the point, so we're not here about that. two, one of my admitted concerns when they had first announced this game having its own protagonist was... that i wasn't sure there was another person to finish solas's story other than the inquisitor, and this isn't a solavellan thing for me, though my beloved canon inquisitor is a lavellan. solas's friendship wasn't the biggest hitch in inquisition for me, but it was important to my inquisitor. he wanted to prove his friend wrong.

i don't believe hallaren had a plan at the time for how to achieve that. he wasn't sure it was actually possible to convince solas the dalish were not as lost a cause as he seemed to believe, but he had to try.

and when i started veilguard, i wouldn't say i'd have anticipated the parallels of solas and rook, nor how well they ended up working for me. i admit: they got me. i didn't see that twist coming. and the hindsight of losing varric from the beginning makes a lot hurt (i say that as a compliment). i think it's easy enough to explain why i didn't see it, why (my, at least) rook didn't puzzle it out, but i also readily admit i'm historically bad at seeing these kinds of things, so you're free to be amused on your own time, lol.

anyway. regret. not becoming what you hate, what you claim to fight against. not being beholden to what you were or what you've lost. the game hits these beats several times, and i think its a real beautiful repeating thing they've done if you hammer all the companion's stories with the main deal, and i did the memories of the dread wolf as well. rook and the inquisitor have a conversation about it that about touches on all of it way more eloquently than i could summarize.

and, of course, part of the reveal is solas did dabble with blood magic on the matter of varric's death, did set rook up for the level of regret and grief they must settle with to trap them in the fade - a prison fit for gods, a prison fit for a god's regrets.

and this is where i transition into blorbo-specific thoughts. because i think part of what fascinates and delights me so much about the rook and solas, potentially two sides of the same coin deal is how tyr's relationship with solas starts and then develops.

tyr does not trust solas from the outset. which i think is where a very interesting presentation of similar (at their roots) choices begins, as varric says: in a bar, as all good stories. one of the first story notifications we get is how rook chooses to handle the bar owner: charm your way out, or a more direct approach, and we're told varric takes note of this.

varric's own plan is an appeal to solas's nature. to talk his way out. as is varric's way.

normally, i'd call tyr the kind of character (having played with him as an oc in various medias for oh... going on 2 years, is it? maybe 3? time's fake, different post) to also prefer talking his way out. but he doesn't believe solas will listen. so he rebukes varric's plan of just waltzing up and charming him with his babygirl eyes.

then at d'meta's crossing, he spares the mayor. not because he doesn't hear the concern that the greedy bastard will fall to said greed again, and not out of an entirely conscious mandate for live with the consequences of your actions, but... in hindsight with other choices, i'd argue it's... from at least a little of that kind of place.

he tries and fails to reason with the first warden. several times. in the heat of weisshaupt, and with the recent conversation with solas about whatever it takes on his mind, he ends up decking the man. the stakes are too high for risking the first warden staying on his high horse again if another attempt at reason fails, is the driver of the decision.

i'd chewed for a while on how that would seem to make tyr's commitment to "talking things through" indicated by that first choice in the bar inconsistent. it all seems justifiable at the time, and he didn't get to the place with the first warden he was out of intentional malice, but he still wound up there.

much of that is natural by the circumstances he was presented. by making calls with the information and under the conditions that were present at the time, as anyone, not just rook, would have to do under such circumstances, if they traded places. sure, some of it is also by solas's engineering of his conversations with rook. by setting them up to be a leader asked to make those hard calls. maybe even for arguably goading them a bit into a situation where whatever it takes was their only feasible option. which neve has a great comment on:

this is, i think, most directly about varric's death, but also, personally, i have to say is applicable for solas's intervention during blood of arlathan.

so, back to blorbo for a moment. tyr begins from a place that mistrusts solas's motives. the I'm quoting you here, "lies, treachery, and rebellion" kind of mistrust. and then, as things progress, as the team unveils more about solas's past in the crossroads and through the murals, it circles back to what I think motivated much of his comment to varric that talking with solas wouldn't work: that even if solas has any regret for what's happened, he's too stubborn to concede, too trapped by the mistakes of that past to ever admit fault, to hear himself sound like the 'gods' he claims to despise. tyr continues to take solas's advice into consideration the whole time, true, because it's... hard to discount the only potentially close to the problem kind of advice and knowledge they don't... exactly otherwise have themselves. he's not sure what the other shoe dropping in that equation is going to look like, but he's more convinced it'll happen than he is entirely happy with the situation.

the murals create... a hunch. or develop it. that rather than just being too prideful about the harm he'll cause by tearing down the veil, that solas is trapped in this plan by his regrets and guilt for actions of the past. at that point, tyr... has a better understanding about how they got to this point, but it kind of only solidifies his reservations that solas might actually be reasoned with.

the one moment this is changed, then, is during blood of arlathan. because frankly i think that was one of the worst experiences tyr has in the entire game. elgar'nan's influence in their minds, and an incident where they're trapped with no conceivable way out and potentially facing down an archdemon again, not so long after weisshaupt that the losses have stopped aching.

whatever his reasons or motivations and whatever else happens, solas saves their lives. tyr can't find a way around that one, and he's not even certain he wants to. because it's one of the definitive moments where he didn't have a plan, and he was terrified the tables had finally turned against them, and they'd fail.

it's not... trust. but tyr's also spent all this time working with his team on this concept that change shouldn't exactly be beyond anyone if there's a little effort put in. and whatever his own feelings are, varric wanted to believe in his old friend, and so does the inquisitor - both people he respects greatly, and he's constantly calculating their desire for a better outcome into the rubix cube that is trying to figure out how to stop the gods.

the problem then, is that solas all but instantly takes advantage of this... lapse. this faint relaxation of tyr's guard against his manipulations. that whole little incident with the fade after ghilan'nain's fall is all but immediately after, and its a betrayal nearly thrice or so over in rapid succession: that varric's been dead this whole time, that solas has manipulated him and how he feels responsibility for the team and the regrets that arise out of having to make hard choices, especially in times like these, and then on the other side of the fade, that solas has gone to minrathous, solas is playing "hero" about it all in tyr's and the shadow dragons' backyard. and to add salt to the wound, in minrathous, it's been blood magic all along.

and, y'know. solas says sorry, says he won't tear down the veil by his own hand, but hands rook the weapon to do it for him. sets them up again. so maybe that's more like... four or five times, depending on your count and categorization of it all.

and rook has a choice about all of this to make, a certain level of peace they have to make with it all to even get out of the fade. and how much to follow varric's advice about don't become what you hate - what you were fighting all along, or trapped by what you lost.

here's tyr's opinion that solas has more than likely been beyond reason because he's too far gone on his own path to even see that he's done exactly that: that he talks like elgar'nan's control, he's just dressing it up in a different way. that he's trapped by what he's lost and sacrificed and admitting that will be too much.

and here's tyr's inescapable bitterness of having been betrayed, of having spent so long trying to be careful with the god of trickery only to have danced right to his tune the whole time. a fiery emotional response for a threat to his home, to minrathous that he's tried very hard to protect and leave a smidgen better than he found it in this whole fight.

by circumstance... and by a little of solas's own design then, rook and solas confront the same trouble of what sacrifice being a leader demands. what cost is too high? how much is too much?

i had the pieces at that point for the ending with mythal, but now i had tyr bitter and a bit more resentful about solas - in a kind of pain about betrayal that was still asking why? about it rather than worried about if regret was present or meaningful. which is where this came from in my head akdfnas;dfnsadf

you're both thinking it. and the endings directly focus on whether or not solas succeeds in tearing down the veil, but the thematic part of it, to me, was... do rook and solas recognize where they might be held back? does tyr act on the pain and resentment of betrayal and swing blindly at solas as repayment? or is it bigger than both of them? is it about posing the question to solas about regret? how much is it like what drove solas to this point to act on that resentment? is it just retaliation? or did either of them learn anything from that prison in the fade?

and that's what makes the parallel, and it's what sets them apart.

and that's how, still, in the end, i have tyr who is willing to choose trying to reason one last time. for the sake of the advice of an old friend. for the people that brought them this far, the ones who chose to believe against the odds. and maybe, even, a little bit for himself. a choice against letting regret and resentment rule.

for the sake of it and because i couldn't get this game out of my head, i checked out the other endings, just to see, and i... think i like sticking with convincing him the best for both of them.

the trick with the dagger swap i think is the only other fitting course of action tyr might've taken from that point, and i think some of its elements reflect similar beats here about... learning from the past, if you will.

the accusation of likeness to the gods is still there. the banter about wits. i am a fool who finally met his match. one might argue that's for underestimating rook, which... fair enough, but i think... it also falls in line with solas's regrets, the appeal to be made to his nature, the... want, in the end, to be proven wrong. to find a 'better' way, as once he suggested to the inquisitor, and as mythal's release from debt and rook and the inquisitor's forgiveness, if you will, finally allows.

and that is... very satisfying to have said between them, when it's been on tyr's mind the whole time. and... they can both be proven wrong this way: for tyr, that solas wasn't beyond listening, and for solas, that there was another way.

for both of them that they could move on from what these trials have made of them, what they have done, and what they endured.

and man... man that was good. and so, so satisfying. it worked, veilguard. you sold me on these two as parallels to each other.

and that's just... one of many things in this game that gave me a lot of emotions, but this has already been. a helluva ramble, so if you've made it this far, congratulations and i salute you, lol.

i'm sure i'll do it all over again and have even more thoughts about even more rooks to throw around and chew on with this and what it'll reflect about each of them and that's. MMM. that's delicious. i loved this game. if my brain and time cooperates, i'm sure i'll have more thoughts and maybe even some writings for it in the future, we'll see where the blorbos take me. xD

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