#i don't wanna come for anyone bc the fault is CLEARLY ON THE CORPORATE LEVEL

[nirikeehan]

Seeing simultaneous takes on this site like “I'm angry BioWare ripped out all mention of institutions and their dysfunction from Veilguard” and oldies but baddies like “Leliana, the Inquisition's spymaster, must have known about Blackwall being a fake, she just didn’t say anything to anyone to not hurt his feewings” makes me wonder sometimes if maybe you got the game you advocated for tumblr

I am not saying it's tumblr's fault the game is like this. I just mistakenly assumed professional writers had more sway on the game than they did, and would be able to work right past takes like this. But I misunderstood the power of corporate capture of IP and how skittish BioWare/EA must be about their brand. And I would not fault a marketing person at BioWare for getting on this site, seeing some of these posts, and thinking, "Okay, our audience is a bunch of children incapable of holding any complex thought inside their heads, we better dumb this shit way, way, waaaaay down."

So, for the record, no, I don't think Leliana, a commensurate professional and ruthless spymaster with decades of experience, hid the truth from everyone about Blackwall. That could have been CATASTROPHIC and she probably would have lost her job. I think, as the textual evidence suggests, she was simply putting out too many fires at the organizational level, and Blackwall slipped through the cracks because he checked out just enough and he was helpful to the cause and kept his head down. These oversights happen in bureaucracies ALL THE TIME, and I found that to be extremely realistic to my experience with them. It's writing like this that makes Inquisition one of the best games of all time – and certainly the best written one I've ever seen.