#im bitching about veilguard yes im hopping the bandwagon

[dadmilkman]

there's already plenty that other people have said better than me about this game but one thing about veilguard that gets on my nerves the more I play is how Bioware clearly could not decide on whether they wanted this game to cater to new fans, or old ones. in their attempts to cater to new fans they've dumbed down or entirely erased a lot of the existing lore in order to make things more understandable out of the gate but also, they niceified a lot of bad things the universe used to have that new players would not have historical context for and thus maybe dislike (slavery, elven oppression, mages vs Templars, the brutality of the Warden order, not to mention the entire chantry as a concept). in theory you can know nothing about any of these subjects and supposedly walk into this game without having played the previous 3, and understand what this game is about (I'm not sure how true that is because I've played all the games multiple times). they even went so far as to entirely nullify 90% of every choice you've ever made in the last three games. only 3 choices matter in veilguard and they're from inquisition and they matter so little they might as well not exist.

but then at the same time there are SO many references and easter eggs to the other games and concepts thrown around with no context if you don't already know dragon age history i have to wonder if this game wasn't made solely for die hard fans because who the hell else would understand what anyone is talking about? but if this game was for die hard fans then why did they erase so much of their own lore????

anyway all of that aside my original point in making this post was to complain specifically about how varric is (later on anyway) made out to be some hugely influential figure for rook, and show that Rook holds a lot of regret for varrics injury (& death, once he finds out about that). which is all fine. but only someone who has already played da2 and dai would understand who varric is because he's got like 40 minutes of screen time in veilguard MAX and somehow you as the player are supposed to give a fuck about varric and rooks relationship. I personally as a player give a fuck about varric but that's because I know him, but again if you've never played the previous games his existence and his death are probably meaningless to you. and even if you HAVE played all 4 games, rook and varrics relationship is so non-existently developed that it's really hard for me to care about the entire scene in the fade prison where rook mourns varrics death.

so ANYWAY I said ALL in order to say this - if you romance davrin and you make him the second team leader and he gets killed fighting gilhan'nain, the impact of his death specifically considering his relationship to the PC is immediately and totally undercut by the fade prison scene ending up being about varric, a character who Rook was almost never shown interacting with.

I replayed the ending with a romanced davrin just to see the different outcomes and when rook watched him die I was expecting there to be a big difference in how the fade scene played out. boy was I disappointed. sure we got the davrin statues that rook sadly converses with as he explores the fade. but besides that it ultimately feels like there was not a lot of consideration given to rooks reaction towards their romance dying if that's who is killed in the fight.

cuz like, immediately after you get the dagger back - rook turns around suddenly afraid that Lucanis is dead. to me that felt like it came out of nowhere and seemed like a good opportunity to be one of those scenes that was dependant on who you were romancing (like the LI getting kidnapped in da2 or the nightmare demon in dai taunting hawke that his LI would die). I didn't romance lucanis and in my first playthrough davrin lived. so no offense but why would rook be worried about lucanis all the sudden? and then you flip over what you think is lucanis' body and you realize Solas is fucking with you because it turns into varric. someone who i.... also don't give as much of a fuck about? wouldn't it make more sense for the terrifying faux corpse to be your romantic interest?

anyway I'm digressing a bit. back to the fade prison. on my reply with davrin romanced and also dead, the one line conversations with the statues felt so... lack luster. and i understand that the only way rook made it out of the prison was to put aside his 'regret' (which Solas could not do), and on my first playthrough when harding died and rook was friends with her it made more sense that he'd be able to buck up and power through knowing they still had work ahead of them. but it felt really underhanded that when your romance dies, there are almost no extra or frivolous lines about it at all. Rook says a little bit more about davrin than harding (again, because i romanced davrin) but still ultimately winds up saying "Ah well, I'll miss him, but we gotta move on". which is.....not how my rook would have handled that. and if I'm supposed to have agency in this game then give it to me. it's like, why even give me the option to chose HOW rook says what he says when WHAT he says about it is basically unchanged. i WANT the option for rook to be distraught over davrins death because mine WAS. and what made it 10X WORSE was VARRIC immediately going "wow nice you got over davrins sacrifice! hey why don't you acknowledge mine?" HELLO? VARRIC IM MOURNING MY BOYFRIEND THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. it made me so mad that you had like three times as much shit to say about finding out varric was dead the entire time than you did about your potential romance dying in front of your fucking eyes. it felt so inconsiderate towards a this situation, whether it's harding or davrin either one. like they slapped the permadeath on as an after thought and had to work with what already existed. at this point in the game, I as the player was of course shocked to find out varric was already dead. but the game had given me NO reason for my rook to care as much as he was portrayed doing so. I never got to see rook and varrics relationship develop like we saw hawkes or the inquisitors. that moment was written entirely as fan service and not the good kind. that twist was written entirely for shock value for the player and did not feel like it was written in order to impact the narrative in anyway and it entirely undermines any weight that harding/davrins death would have had, ESPECIALLY if you had romanced them.

I will say, coming back to the lighthouse and everyone giving you well wishes...it hurt. when Lucanis said the line about "joy for a Warden is rare and I'm sure you gave him a lot" I actually cried. but at the same time it felt so hollow. it felt like a patch job for them to include one throwaway line of dialogue about the love interests death. the death of a character i just spent the better part of 80 hours with, gone like that, with hardly a second look back to be sad about it. it made me so mad and I'm really glad my first actual blind playthrough i kept davrin right next to me instead of sending him to lead the second team. And then for half of bellara's entire bit to be about assan too, like it's fine to mourn an animal but a person is dead. that felt so mean. not to mention it already didn't make sense that assan died at the same time. I guess just in an attempt to make it sadder or probably make it an easier mess to clean up if you don't have to worry about davrin being dead but not assan, s if rook wouldn't have taken care of him after davrin was gone.

there's a lot more I could say about lots of different things in the same vein of frustration on this topic (like why was lucanis given the final blow on ghilan'nain and not davrin, a Dalish elf sworn to kill blighted monsters? wouldn't it be more narratively fulfilling for him to kill his own blighted god? I digress). but davrins character really deserved a hundred times better than what he was given.