#im thinking about dragon age and i love my characters so so very much

[thelaughingmerman]

The second one is still a year old by comparison but I found very old warden from maybe 2018 so there was still significant improvement

[depresseddepot]

SO THERE'S THIS TEMPLAR NAMED CULLEN........

[cacturne]

fun stats for me:

PLAYTIME

for both dao and da2 i used a program called borderless gaming to put it in my preferred resolution which, for dao, did not count any of the playtime on steam. i will be calculating it off the playtime of the application instead

DAO: 108 hours (unexpected)

DA2: 46 hours (yeah that feels right)

DAI: 133 hours (very expected)

FAVORITE GAME: 2

LEAST FAVORITE GAME: inquisition

FAVORITE CHARACTER: my ocs varric (surprisingly) but if you forced me to pick between varric and (female companion i like a normal amount) i think he would understand.

FAVORITE GIRLFRIEND: all applicable 🫶

im DONE!!!!!!!!!

[felassan]

I received a few asks around a similar topic, so I'm popping them together here. ( ´ ▽ ` ) DA:TV spoilers under cut.

[the Felassan Files]

hello! ◕‿◕ thank you for the lovely and fun ask messages!!

lavendervoids asked: "i’ve been dying to know what ur reaction was to seeing felassan in the game was???? the moment i saw him i was yelling and hollering and my first thought was “omg what does tumblr user felassan think of this” LMAO and thank you for all the documenting you’ve been doing up until and past the release of the game, i ended up blocking every dragon age tag a couple months back to avoid any sort of spoilers but i still came to your blog everyday cause i knew you wouldn’t spoil me haha"

hhhh ( ´ ▽ ` ) tysm for thinking of me at that time!! and for the nice comment about this blog and visiting it. I'm really glad to know that my approach to spoiler tagging etc has been okay for you.

littlerune asked: "i don't even know you but you and dragon age felassan are so intrinsically linked in my brain that when he appeared in veilguard all i thought was "ohhhh i wonder how tumblr user felassan feels about this"

hhhh :D 🥺 thankyou so much for thinking of me!! ♡ some say that his ghost operates this tumblr blog, or that he lives still

songofamazon asked: "I'm still on my first play of the game, but whenever I got to the memories in the Crossroads, I thought to myself, "I hope Tumblr Felassan is having a great time. Did you?"

I had a great time playing the game and when playing the Crossroads memories sections, I loved them a lot, they were very cool and a highlight of the game. thankyou sm and for thinking of me, and I hope that you did too!!

phantabula-interactive asked: "im so glad you're enjoying the game!! I had to ask; how did you feel about seeing Felassan in game?? I was so excited to see the notes from him, I wasn't expecting a boss fight MUCH LESS. FULL CAMEO!!! They made him a lot prettier than I was expecting too (/pos)"

thankyou!! I hope that you've been enjoying it too!

so: I was sooo excited and shook to see Felassan in the game!!! I was like

(I yelped/hooted out loud like a clown) and then

and then it was suddenly like too much (pos) and my soul left my body and i astral projected into space/paradise/the Astral Plane/the Void or something etc

and then it took me some time to process or gather my thoughts about it.

obviously I was super hoping that we would see him in the game. I was sure that there would at least be some references to him in codexes/notes etc or allusions made in passing dialogue like Cole and Solas' lines about him in Trespasser. then when the marketing mentioned that we would see flashbacks from Solas' past in the Crossroads, I was like aaa omg, wouldn't that be the perfect time to actually show Felassan??, as a Fade memory or flashback or spirit echo or something. so then I was hoping like 🕯️🕯️🕯️ and yea. but even so, still when I saw him in game for the first time it was still a huge shocked Pikachu moment for me.

I was already feeling psyched from the first Felassan codex/note that I found, then I couldn't believe (pos) just how many codexes/notes scattered around written by him that there was?? I was already feeling spoiled (not spoiled by spoilers but like spoiled from eating good) from that (a bunch of codexes/notes might not seem like a lot but when your fav is a side character that has only appeared in one [1] tie-in novel..) and then he goes and actually APPEARS, AAAA. I feel like I ate so good. with the Betrayal fight and the rune at the end as well, it felt like he was threaded throughout the game and was really haunting the narrative. some assorted thoughts:

first of all everything about his DA:TV appearances/DA:TV references continues to underscore that he is the greatest of all time

it also continues to underscore the pain of his death/story and of his friendship with Solas

may I please go and start a new life living in Solas' memories of Felassan on repeat. i simply do not care that my body would waste away in the waking world from lack of sustenance

in the endgame I was trying to concentrate and punch Elgar'nan in the face and save the world but I like couldn't see straight through the tears after having been given Felassan's Magical Boyfriend Super Rune (morrigan pls.. what a way to twist the KNIFE at an extremely critical moment for thedas hhhh..)

expansion pack where we relive Solas' memories of him and Felassan dating (he didn't deserve Felassan tho fr. but then, does anyone..?)

I know that Felassan would treat Lavellan sooooo right. so well. so respectfully. felassan would pull their chair out for them at restaurants and open car doors and whatever

Betrayal of Felassan refers to Solas' betrayal of Felassan, not Felassan's betrayal of Solas

also i love how they made him DEVASTATINGLY handsome?? in the game (they didnt need to go that hard), but also how, at the same time - even before the TME Deluxe edition illustrations, we all just inherently knew deep in our bones that he was, you could simply just tell from his energy and vibes and dialogue even in only the written word. cool rolls off this guy in waves, and always has done

did his model have smoky winged eye makeup? love that. love that for him

I liked his sense of style. the hair his model has happened to be one of the ones I was debating using for my Rook. it's one of my fav ones from the CC

I appreciated the attention they paid to detail when making his model. Mythal vallaslin, violet/purple eyes, an undercut - as he was previously described or shown in TME, dev social media comments and the TME deluxe illustrations

I liked the actor they chose for him, his voice was cool

I felt like his codexes and notes that he wrote captured his voice and his character. you can see the depth of his loyalty and devotion to his friend, his concerns, and he retains his 'voice' in terms of some snark, wit etc

it's fun thinking about whether Felassan originally manifested from the Fade (and if so, what was he a spirit of) or whether he was born the usual way of other elves. (it could be either one)

Betrayal of Felassan as a manifested embodied regret and its lines like "his back, turned".. very raw. that fight was hard enough mechanically for me as it was, then the lines were like being hamstrung LOL. how could they??? (pos/lh)

I always thought that, a long time ago, Solas was essentially the player character in a different game, the main character of another story. the leader of his own group of companions and friends on their own quest (to stop the Evanuris), and that Felassan was one of those companions. Alistair to his Hero of Ferelden if you will. in DA:TV we learn that not only was he one of his companions, he was basically the second-in-command of his rebellion, a General, his closest friend aside from Mythal and his right-hand man.

he was so cool back in his heyday

pain. paaaaain. but like in a good way (I unironically love to be hurt by stories pls continue 💀...)

there are a few further posts containing more bits of my reaction and thoughts scattered through my Felassan tag. ^^

There were also a few other asks about this in my inbox, but Tumblr appears to have eaten them?? :< so if you've asked me about Felassan and my reaction since launch but the message isn't in this post, thankyou sm and I'm very sorry. 😔 pls feel free to re-send it. :)

I do remember that one of the vanished messages asked me what the Slaughter of the Pillars boss regret refers to - the Pillars of the Earth are the Titans. ("Hail Mythal, adjudicator and savior! She has struck down the pillars of the earth and rendered their demesne unto the People! Praise her name forever!") That undead boss embodies another of Solas' greatest regrets, namely what he and Mythal did to the Titans during the war with them - sundering every Titan from their spirit, severing them from their dreams, which resulted in the Blight as the dreams were driven mad. it also in a sense broke the dwarves in two and caused the fall of the fate of the dwarven people. Beyond the mural-memory that pertains to this in DA:TV, there are depictions of this time in the ancient past in the DA:TV artbook: [one, two]. Annotations there describe Solas rendering the Titans tranquil and capturing their souls; dwarves as a consequence then losing their connection to magic and fleeing into the now-Tranquil earth; and the Evanuris then building Elvhenan using the power of the captured Titan souls.

[notebooks-and-laptops]

HELLO ALL

Im back, I've finished the game and OH BOI do I have opinions about Dragon Age The Veilguard. They're nuanced, there's lots of them, and I'm sure I'll find more as I go into my second playthrough.

I'm also excited to see all of y'all's opinions.

My one line summary is: a good game, a bad dragon age game.

There are many, many pieces of this game I love and will talk about for weeks to come. I loved the expanded lore about the blight, elves and dwarfs, I loved the aesthetics of the game, I loved the ending. I thought that characters were wonderful (although I would have preferred some more controversial characters in there too as we've had in previous games) and the sense of building a team was so much more pronounced than DAI because these people actually talked to one another. The parts with Solas and Varric were well done as well. I ADORED the crossroads.

But overall there was a lack of true connection to religion and culture, and a softening of any moral ambiguity in some of the most interesting groups Thedas has to offer such as the Crows. The game refused to engage in true dialogue with some of the horrifying things it has done in the past, such as prejudice and slavery instead preferring to offer a sanitised world. And the theme of regret was not properly tied to the companions enough to make it feel all encompassing.

I know dragon age can do better because it gave us DAO and DA2 both of which feel very hydrogen bomb over this coughing baby. That being said I did really enjoy myself in this game and am going to be creating more Rooks and playing again. I just do think they pulled far too many of their punches and softened too many things about Thedas. It is unfortunately my least favourite dragon age game, but I still enjoyed it and still love dragon age.

I'm no longer tagging DATV spoilers! Please be warned my blog is not spoiler free!!!!!

Dragon age: The Veilguard Review links

Part One: Why Fenris Could Never cameo in Dragon Age The Veilguard

Anarcharisms, LGBT+ characters and cultures and How I'd Write Taash's Storyline

Why The Veilguard Handles Grey Wardens Better than Dragon Age Inquisition: The horrors of the Blight, the Calling and the Cauldron

How to Formulate Companion Quests: Why a Lack of Theming and Overstressed Game Mechanics Got In The Way

Why Rooks Backstory's aren't Good Fits for this Game (and how I'd fix them)

Why the Dragon King Sucks: an Exploration of What Makes a Good Villain and a satisfying Story Conclusion

"If we use force against our enemies, our allies will remember it": an exploration of the Archon Quest in DAtV.

Main OCs you may here me talking about:

I am currently playing Mass Effect for the first time with Cassiopeia 'Cassi' Shepard:

[strawberry-halla]

now im probably the many few people who actually agreed with the way bioware handled varric’s death and here’s why:

varric has been one of the most prominent dragon age characters since dragon age 2’s release. he’s basically the mascot (well, i think solas has stolen this role now but i digress), the character everybody loves! varric has been there since almost the beginning, over 10 years of our favorite dwarf.

this is the thing that hangs people up on his death in veilguard. why did they do it? why did it happen? what was bioware thinking? well i’m not expert but i think i have a pretty good idea.

varric has always been the friend who supports you no matter what, the one to pull you away from the heavy decisions the player makes to make you laugh or try to see the bright side. he made the player feel good and your character feel good, no matter who you’re playing as.

we saw this lovable dwarf go through so much tragedy in every media possible. he was dealt a bad hand at every corner but the good parts were the friends he made along the way. even if they did something bad in the end (anders and solas), varric still sees the person they were underneath everything.

so yes i think his choice to talk to solas, only to end up dying, was how it was going to end for him. varric cares so much about his friends and eventually, one of them was going to fuck that up. he got lucky so many times, escaping death at every turn. if varric would have went home to kirkwall as viscount for the rest of his days, i don’t think that would be a good end for him.

it’s a pretty thought to have, but it’s just NOT varric. he wanted to help the inquisition and he wanted to help save/stop solas because he knew him. they were friends. good ones. so of course it makes sense varric is the one to go after him.

now i think it would have been worse if varric was dead from the start of veilguard (well, he is but we don’t know that yet) because it definitely doesn’t ease the player into the reality of it. so making him a figment of solas’s blood magic on rook was a very clever way to ease them and us into accepting his death. i cannot think of a better way if i tried.

varric’s relationship with rook was so important. he was basically a mentor, a father figure for some. his role in veilguard is not a waste. rook as a character needed their mentor to ease them into this leadership. i think it would have been incredibly jarring to just have rook suddenly know how to lead the veilguard without having someone to talk to about their struggles. solas would have worked fine, but his role as the antagonist for most of the game would have made a really unrealistic connection.

and yes. i know varric’s memory is being manipulated by solas’s hand, but solas himself says that varric would never say anything to rook that they already didn’t know from him. varric’s guidance was still at play here, not solas. he just kept up the illusion varric was still alive to make sure rook would succeed. it’s incredibly shitty of him to goad this at rook, but he was never entirely wrong that rook had varric to help them. they did have varric, even when he wasn’t there. varric’s lessons and memory alone were enough.

and when rook and the player finally come to this realization in the regret prison, it just hits you all at once. i cried for about two hours once the scene ended. i had to pause my game, get up, and walk away. it was like losing a best friend. and i know how silly it sounds to mourn the loss of a video game character, but varric was more than that to many. to me. i just needed a bit to recover from the realization.

varric made a choice. one that got him killed. but he knew that it was the right one to make. solas regrets what he did to varric. he even says if he could, he wouldn’t have done it. it was an accident. a horrible accident that doesn’t justify what solas did. there is no glory in needless death. but this isn’t about solas.

varric in all his goodness as a person FORGAVE solas for this. he knew solas was still good. deep, deep down. that solas ‘wants to be the hero’ and would tear himself apart to make things better. i don’t know about you but it’s incredibly insane that someone forgives their murderer. especially varric! who said in inquisition: ‘nobody forgives someone for killing you!’ like it came full circle.

varric’s death was necessary for us and for solas’s story. i know it sounds incredibly silly to us that one character’s redemption is another’s downfall, but isn’t that how things work sometimes? you don’t have to like it or agree with it, but that’s just one thing i find so fascinating about dragon age’s characters and how they interact with one another throughout the series.

there’s an incredible post by @/corseque that explains the parallels between varric and solas that really ties this all together. please go read it if you haven’t!

i’m so so glad we had so many good memories of varric and his legacy will forever live on in-universe and amongst fans. now’s the time to make new ones with our new favorites, shall we? and we can still honor varric’s memory by writing stories, of course.

[diminuel]

I know that the baby dragon (roger garp coparents) comics are so silly and fun and i ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM but i was trying to remember all the characters in the crowd in the live action (im only in dressrosa in the anime) and then i thought too much about about your comics and now im SAD!!!

Garp and Roger at the very least being friends and co parents and Garp essentially KILLING HIM in front of DRAGON. Like roger may or may not be his bio dad but thats his PIRATE dad (a la shanks) and that being the dissolution of their family unit. Also fem!croc (possibly) being in the crowd???? Maybe they meet again there. Do you think roger looked at their "son" when he died? Do you think garp couldn't look at him?? And then for garp to stand there on an execution platform with ace???? His friends kid?? His grandson???? But this time instead of standing silently like dragon did, luffy refused to save himself.

And rayleigh, RAYLEIGH couldnt be there in his best friends final moments, couldnt be there for dragon, his nephew/godson/whatever. But finally he was able to help luffy after marineford. Finally he could help his family after so many years, even if luffy didnt know.

Anyways, love your comics and art, its all very fun and cute, even if the implications get me.

Also i guess this wasnt really a question, but i wanted you to know what you inspired in my brain and kinda get your thoughts!

I’m always happy to know that my silly comics get you to think! I do enjoy drawing fun stuff but as you said, most of them have more serious or angsty implications if you do continue spinning the universe a bit.

Like with the Baby on Board comics (the coparenting one) I imagine that even though Roger and Dagon’s relationship starts out easy and light-hearted, there eventually must be a moment where Dragon no longer feels welcome among the Roger Pirates (most likely when he joins the marines at a young age). I can imagine that Garp and Roger both (not very gently) teaching him that choices have consequences – he chose the path of the marine, which means that pirates like Roger will now be his enemy. And Garp is, his situationship with Roger aside, kind of hard-headed about his sense of justice.

Still, in an AU where he spent a portion of his childhood on Roger’s ship, he’d be upset about watching the execution, whether Garp is up there on the execution platform with Roger as in the live action or not. Maybe Dragon has to endure this without having gotten any closure with a man who had once claimed him as a son. And Rayleigh isn’t there to offer comfort or platitudes. Shanks and Buggy are too caught up in their own emotions to spare any thoughts on the feelings of a guy who occasionally looked after them.

I don’t know if it’s a spoiler to you, but we do know that Crocodile was for sure at the execution in the manga/ anime. So at least Dragon wouldn’t be entirely alone. I don’t know exactly which of my AUs the Baby on Board comics apply to (most of them?) but in some of the AUs this would certainly be a moment where Dragon and Crocodile meet/ see each other again/ enjoy a night together, toasting to the old era and welcoming a new one in their own way ;3

So if Dragon wants to drink his complicated feelings away, there’s someone there to do it with, even though I doubt he’d tell Crocodile that he knew the man who died today as more than just the King of Pirates.

And yes, of course I also like the idea of just how the Baby on Board concept would weave the threads of these people even closer together.

[grandpasauce]

"bioware's doing the best they can" "they have to trim the fat SOMEWHERE" "they have to move on from the previous games EVENTUALLY" "they ALWAYS have disregarded things from past games" guys........... (ramblings under the cut)

my man on earth....... morrigan is literally claimed By The Devs to be a prevalent character in datv and ur telling me NOTHING that happned to her is worth putting into the background of datv?

you can claim bioware is just doing their job and have all the excuses in the world for them but when u get down to it.... they really just didnt want to deal with anything from the past three games... they didnt want to put the work in to add even CODEXES (one the the easiest cheapest forms of implementing background lore) to this game... the literal game director barely even knows who ZEVRAN is (a MAIN CHARACTER from the FIRST of the series) because they didnt bother going back to replay or research dragon age as a series beyond dai... like... i understand the devs wanting to simplify their jobs and i actually totally agree, they needed to get rid of the keep, that was too much info for them to keep up with.

But they cut back SO MUCH, like an unnecessary amount. Three? THREE choices? AND ALL OF THEM ARE SOMEHOW RELATED TO SOLAS? NOTHING the inquisitor did was notable beyond their relationship to Solas? Nothing??

people are using leliana as an example of something bioware has retconned before because shes alive regardless of if u killed her in dao or not. except the problem with that is that the games DOES address the fact that she's supposed to be dead. like it very much does that??? hello?? id rather they bring her back and address it than just totally retcon it and never explain it

this is such a horrible, disrespectful decision on bioware's part and making excuses for them is WILD. like. the devs are fine i promise u. stopppp telling people to **touch grass** and **take some deep breaths** after I myself have invested over half my life into playing these games just to get slapped with "lol actually none of that matters now hehe" jfc

like i understand fandom can get a lil crazy but im telling u this isnt an overreaction lmao let people be upset about things that theyve poured their lives into for 15+ years

im still buying the game, im still playing it, ill still love it, but MAN this has kind of totally ruined my trust in the devs and im back to being nervous about how they will address things in this game and beyond because it really feels like a big fuck u to long time fans and idk how they wouldnt think it would be perceived as such.

[divorcedwife]

Im especially interested in your opinion of the companions! Did you like any, how would you rank them, how did they compare to other games.

I did enjoy veilguard myself cause admittedly im a combat enjoyer (boo me now) and the combat was great to me. But what is usually good in dragon age/bioware even if everything else sucks are characters and their stories and interactions and that was so bad in veilguard imo.

Still I liked Davrin and Emmrich and Bellara myself, rest were very mixed, and these three also suffered from bad dialogue and Bellara also from some overt cutesiness.

hehe noooooo i wouldn't boo you! this game really made me realize that i prefer video games as a form of interactive storytelling rather than purely for gameplay, but i mean, i feel like im the weirdo here if anything. video games are games first... as much as i like the combat (especially when it's in big open fields, with opportunities for cover ; god is it satisfying to slowly take down a mob of enemies through clever dodging and hiding, i wayyyy prefer that to spamming the flashy special moves), it feels empty to me if i dont feel connected to the world. ideally, i'd love to play games where i enjoy both, but if i have to pick, i'll prefer a game that i find unfun to play but where i like the writing

i think it's a pretty weak cast, yeah. individually, but also as a group, they lack chemistry to me. most of them get along just fine, but not in a way that's particularly fun or exciting. their relationships aren't interesting to me because they're very samey, both in that most people are friendly and also that they start out friendly and end up friendly. dai isn't a game i love, but for all its flaws, it definitely had fascinating character interactions to me. blackwall's friendship with sera is so different to his friendship with cassandra or with solas, and he's initially wary of cole but grows to like him after a while. and these people all have their opinion of blackwall changed forever by revelations. that's what's lacking to me in companion relationships! growth... change... i did enjoy davrin and lucanis's bickering at least. i also did like how emmrich talked to companions, his therapy talk was actually charming every time i liked emmrich and davrin the most! my only problem with davrin is how often he felt shackled to assan, like the writers felt the need to remind us that he has a cute griffon every three seconds in case we were losing interest. but as a character, i found him really cool. i like how level headed he is, i love how he can't tell when lucanis is messing with him on purpose, those feel like great warden traits. emmrich, i really liked that he had the flaws to match his qualities - i love it when he complains about needing to teach TEN students (gasp!), or when davrin asks him if he knows how to wash dishes and he responds like someone who hasn't washed a dish in ten years, and so on. that's definitely what i found lacking in most companions - actual flaws! it's mind boggling to me how much of the lucanis banter i heard was spent clarifying how unproblematic he is. like he doesn't kill children, doesn't kill people who acted in self defense, doesn't kill innocents. what??? he doesn't even have flaws from growing up rich in a mansion... or being the ultimate nepo baby.................... that made most of the companions feel pretty shallow to me, like they were born right before the game began and had lived nothing

lucanis has enough little things about him i like that i would still say i liked him, but he's not getting honours from me. i like his design (it's very satisfyin to draw somehow), i liked spite, i liked the idea that he's trapped in the ossuary in his mind, i loved going to the mansion and seeing how barren and sad it is there. but i think his romance is my least favorite of any i've done in any dragon age games, and i would say that he was a worse boyfriend to have than the one who tried to kill me and also than the one who turned out to be an axe murderer in disguise, cause at least these two liked talking to my characters! lol

i'd put neve next but if im being honest with myself, i disliked more about her than i liked. i liked her bitter cynic pessimist traits, but i found her somewhat inconsistent on that and generally too friendly. the remaining characters, i didn't find anything compelling about them, i dont remember any moment that i liked with them :-( i really wish i did! i gave everyone as fair a shot as i could, i didn't start out this game looking for things to hate, but they really didn't do anything for me. i think bellara suffered from the fact that i dont really like all the technology in this game, i prefer low magic sad unwashed fantasy. at least she was very beautiful so she does get point for that

[jams-sims]

So I just finished Dragon Age Veilgaurd and I'm convinced some very loud Gamers just don't want to play a game that just feels nice to play. Its like a nice bag of chips, I ate the whole fucking thing.

Anyway spoilers- spoilers for my ending and romance and general yappin.

I shoved Solas ass into veil- I have no history with him from the other games. Back when (the other da games) they were first released. I understood that Solas was one of the fan favorites, so I kind of went into this thinking I was going to become a fan- nah. At every turn this game chanted change is better. Letting go of the past, just means creating something new. Solas refused to change and at every turn betrayed Rook. I faught Mythal for no fucking reason that hard ass fight. Because I just tricked him, it felt way better for my scrappy Mourn Watcher.

There were moments where I could see the vision of Solas fuckers. He had some of the best witty dialogue. Also just the aguring between them was tasty at times. An then the ending happened and I was so fucking stunned. I kept saying "imma kill him," an even as I said that i was STILL feeling sorry for him. I stood firm though, locked his ass right up.

Hes the prefrect manipulator, he played on my emotions to the very end, very good job game.

My romance was Lucanis- I love him and idk how im gonna do other playthrough to romance anyone else. When he is so devoted and i love that so much. I talked about being emmrich girl and he turned out to be more of a best friend character for my Mourn Watcher.

All in all i liked this game- everyone giving it shit is just allergic to story thats not just fucking bleak all the gotdamn time. Sad shit still happened in this game. But damn- its like you can't enjoy some shit thats corny with out someone in your ear telling you how you shouldnt like it. Nah- we ball it was good i enjoyed it. This has been the first game i've completed this year.

[translucio]

more veilguard thoughts! minor spoilers below cut

stuff im liking:

still having fun with combat

level design has been good, tons to explore, solid puzzles. beautiful environments. im liking how distinct and lived in the big cities are feeling.

i am liking lucanis more than i expected.....i know Everyone is simping over him but.. i might have to as well and romance him instead of bellara 🙈

im liking how bite sized the codex entries are. makes it easy to read them all on pickup whereas in inquisition sometimes it was like godddd i want the lore but i dont wanna read five pages right now

petting cats and dogs! i love the haptic purring, that's a really good way to do it (i would honestly love to see that polished even further with variations + meowing/whining/sniffing/licking sounds thru the controller but hey, it's a tiny part of the game and what they have is fine)

the resource economy is feeling pretty decent to me, im motivated to seek out collectables, i buy stuff from vendors often, i understand the upgrade system enough to inform my decisions. it feels very god of war or ghost of tsushima. so my only worry is that i might just get bored of it after many hours as i did in those games (which, i think the solution to that is for the level design to keep things interesting and satisfying enough that theyre rewarding even without the collectibles. so we'll see)

stuff im not really liking

overall plot so far feels Just Okay. but i felt that way about 2 and inquisition too lol

it is actually starting to really bum me out that you can't talk to people at will. like, the lack of dialogue choices in it, for a bioware game, is troubling to me. these settings and characters are interesting and filling me with many questions! i want to be able to dive deeper into them, but i just cant. you just get barks for all the world npcs. and the lack of choices really makes rook feel more like a prewritten/predestined character rather than one that's really yours to characterize. i realize it's a lot of writing and voice acting $$ to have that many dialogues, but that's one of the main selling points for bioware games for me... and it feels weird that other games are now doing it better than dragon age.

similarly the lack of continuity of choices from previous games makes me sad.

i still haven't gotten all that far, but i am several hours in at this point, and i gotta say i am kinda missing side quests a bit... related to the point about lacking world dialogue, but the world is feeling a little bit underwhelming in terms of the character and lore context/depth that i find myself wanting. which was a big problem for me in inquisition as well. like sure, there are collectables and hidden paths and puzzles to navigate through, and those are absolutely a huge improvement over inquisition's. but those don't give life and flavor and narrative depth to the environment the way that having meaningful interactions with npcs does. the barks are nice, but they leave me wanting significantly more in terms of interaction and depth.

im gonna keep comparing it to god of war (2018 - haven't played ragnarok yet) since that's really the closest thing its reminding me of. and while i loved god of war, i did feel like its world was very lonely. it made up for it with its extremely honed in narrative focus on the journey of the two established characters, and the quality of its writing and voice acting both for their dialogues and the few quests with other characters. it's not a game about the setting or how it shapes the characters that live there, it's about a grieving father and son who happen to be gods.

whereas dragon age IS about its world almost as much as it is about its characters. and with such a rich setting with three prior entries to build on, it seems kind of a shame to let players explore all these places we've heard about but not meaningfully interact with the characters there outside of Big Epic Story Moments or companion-focused quests, especially when you could in the previous games.

anyway.... much to think about... still enjoying it, still have more thoughts as i keep playing

[depresseddepot]

SO THERE'S THIS APOSTATE NAMED MORRIGAN.......

[aricr0cs]

It all started in 2022 when my girlfriend used pictures of qunari pectorals to shamelessly tempt me into being interested in dragon age. I’ve never been into rpg on console. I like racing games and shooters. Stuff like that. But in my defense…. The Arishok.

She convinced me to watch her play. And I did. All of it. She began with dragon age origins. A completionist, She played it all, recording it for me in 30 minute increments which I consumed with growing interest. Every game. The dlc. Every quest. No chest was left unlooted (giggity). I’m sure I saw more in the last two years than yall will ever see here thybyht.

And boy did I consume it. I fell in love with every character. I fell in love with her ocs. I fell more in love with her for giving me this wonderful little piece of her head. It felt like a very special gift. And I gobbled it up.

And naturally, being me, I crafted my own ocs inside my head that were there too. Developed my own ideas of what I would do. My considerations of the actions I would take. The choices I would make. I became very invested.

They dropped the veilguard trailer and it was a new experience for us I think. She has loved this game for so long. I have never played it. But we were both squealing with excitement and buzzing about what we think will happen.

And then the playthrough aired. The one where we see Varric lose his Bianca and here I am having never played and yet my heart still hurt with worry for this little fictional man.

And so the itch began. The desire to make those choices for myself. To see Thedas being shaped because of my actions.

I have been sucked in.

On June 30th 2024, in a discord call with my gf, I downloaded origins and began my first playthrough. There will be some catching up posts of how I felt and the choices I made and then once I’m caught up I’m going to consider this my online da diary lol.

There has already been shenanigans and NOTHING IS GOING THE WAY I THOUGHT IT WOULD AND IM SO EXCITED TO PLAY EVERY DAY.

It's a juxtaposition. I know what is going to happen. I know the story. I’m already spoiled. But this is still very much my first playthrough of these games. So if I post old news or theories I apologize ynynyh. But I figured I’d share my joy and idiocy with the world. And I thank you old dragon age veterans for putting up with newbies like me.

Also my girl. Thank you Leah for giving this old gay a new world to become a part of. As always I’m dragging your ass with me uwu.

[redjennies]

i see you sometimes in different dragon age tags like "oh yeah the lae'zel fan with the redjenny url. who also likes oghren. extreme good taste" and then as an anders girlie i see your "anti"-anders post and im like "yeah they even have good taste in the way they hate my guy"

aw I really appreciate this! I'm really glad people like my takes on Oghren. I almost posted this long ass meta about him while doing my Brosca playthrough but ended up saving it to the drafts because I was like "girl you are the only person going to bat for this man and everyone else is just tolerating your right to be ornery about disliked characters." I just think about him at the Temple of Sacred Ashes a lot. to anyone reading this, if you've never brought him there, you are truly missing out on some fucking wild character work. he is a gem.

truthfully I'm not even really that anti-Anders when I'm not actively in a mood about how much this fandom annoys me. I'm extremely critical of him as a person and full disclosure, without trauma-dumping too much, I do have a personal history that makes it hard for me to not see him as very manipulative if not outright abusive. but I actually quite enjoy him as a character. I think he's got a lot of flaws and strengths that are really interesting to examine how they coincide with Hawke's larger story. how Anders and Hawke are arguably more intrinsically linked to each other than Varric and Hawke are. it might surprise people but I intentionally max out his friendship every time with my main Hawke because I think their particular story is more tragic if she has fully drunk the Anders kool-aid because he's the first unapologetic apostate she's met outside of her family and because he saved Carver in the Deep Roads and she feels like she owes him. even more of a surprise possibly, I love Sebastian and don't like Anders, but my canon ending is Hawke sparing him one last time and asking him to leave because I think that's the best ending for how I play their relationship. like "no, you have asked so much of me and I have done it for you over and over but I'm not going to give you this, even at the expense of my other friendships. you don't get the easy way out. you have to live with this and you have to do it far away from me." like fuck man! the drama! the poetry! the divorce!

honestly most of my vitriol towards him comes from over a decade now of having an extremely negative experience with what I fully recognize are not all his fans but a vocal group of people who plague the Bioware fandom who are just as bigoted as your average fanboy but in a way they can dress up as "social justice." I've said a lot about how I think the Circle and apostates is just straight up a bad metaphor for systemic oppression (see also: any setting with supers and/or legitimately dangerous monsters as stand-in for oppressed people.) and I won't get into it too much here, but it's worth mentioning because I believe the mage rights discourse and Anders particularly attracts this crowd because you know he's a cute queer whiteboy with legitimate problems and pseudo-radical politics. but I was in the DA Tumblr fandom when Inquisition dropped I remember what group of fans on Tumblr who were particularly rabid in their hatred towards characters like Vivienne and Sera (who are both critical of mage freedom, mind.) 'Twas not primarily the Cullenites calling Vivienne an Uncle Tom, no matter what people will tell you now.

and I also get that there's this way Anders haters talk about him that makes even more otherwise reasonable fans dig their heels in about him. like any critique of him that boils down to "Anders bad because he did a terrorism and terrorism bad" is not really useful to me because yeah, I'm not super keen on bombings as the best course of political action, but terrorism is a very politically loaded and at this point somewhat meaningless term that is mostly used to justify extreme violence against a person or group by the state. I don't need to bring up real life examples because the politics of who is and isn't labeled a terrorist being shorthand for who is and isn't a person deserving of basic human rights has become so obvious over the last three decades that everyone knows at least one example of what I'm talking about. on top of that, I'm a big believer that fiction does not and should not exist in a vacuum and good art should provoke discussions about how we view people who do similar things that these fictional characters do. who are we being asked to give empathy to and who are we not? who are we naturally extending empathy to and who are we not? how do we immediately feel about these things? are we outraged? disgusted? moved? does sympathizing with these characters change our understanding of our personal ethical lines? are certain actions justified under dire circumstances or are there certain lines that should never be crossed? are people forever defined by it when they cross said lines? etc etc. none of these questions can be meaningfully answered by "no, thing bad because thing bad."

that being said, I still come down on the side of Anders is a shitty person at the end of the day. not because he blew up that church or even because he tried to kill that girl, but because there's a consistent lack of compassion for the suffering and/or oppression of others the second someone doesn't fit his mold. because he's honestly pretty sexist and racist in universe. because his romance plot is just a series of progressively worsening red flags in a way that's in my opinion, less sexy and more like he's gonna start punching holes in the wall right next to you. because he's lowkey a tankie. and I've said it before and I'll say it til the day I die, we can have a discussion about how ableism influenced his writing, but at the end of the day, as a mentally ill anarchist, I know buckets and buckets of mentally ill leftist whiteboys who act like this. shit I know women and nonbinary people who act like this too. while I can understand that Bioware wasn't necessarily coming from the same perspective I am and think people are right to call his overarching storyline a tired centrist liberal take on the dangers of radicalism, his character writing still feels not only coherent as a character but very true to a particular type of ain't shit anarchist boy I have encountered over and over. i cannot dismiss his flaws and worst moments as bad writing because I feel like I personally know this asshole.

for example, I once made a post about Dissent years and years ago where I was talking about Anders/Justice/Vengeance/whoever we're calling him depending on what's most useful in the moment's outburst of violence towards Ella through the lens of male entitlement even in leftist circles and like yeah I was being a little tongue in cheek about it because a) I'm pretty tongue in cheek in general, b) I have a tendency to get even more tongue in cheek when I'm talking about things that hit a little too close to home to me, and c) that quest is frankly terrifying if you've lived a life that makes you relate more to Ella in that scene than to Anders. I think it was something along the lines of "people can call Anders a revolutionary all they want but when a mage girl was afraid of him instead of grateful for his rescue, he tried to kill her. [insert anarcho-feminist ranting here]" and I remember someone arguing with me about how that's not what happened at all and how even though I was being pithy, their take on the situation was so utterly removed from what occurs that I had to go back and watch the scene to make sure I wasn't the one completely misremembering it which made me realize just how much Anders has been completely rewritten in parts of the fandom consciousness.

which in and of itself is not really a problem. I know some people just don't care for interacting with fanon at all and want to stay as true to canon as possible and I'm like that sometimes, but there are lots of characters I'm like "oh, I don't like how their story went in canon or think the writer had a neat idea but is too misogynistic to handle her in a way I like and I'm going to basically put them in an AU where they developed their traits in a different way and I can recognize this is more or less my version of them." there's characters I don't care for in canon but I love someone else's fanon version of them. I'm even fine with people doing this with Anders, if they want. I've read really good fic with him that is not my take but hey you do you, this is what transformative fandom is for after all. but I do get more than a little prickly when I'm interacting with my reading of canon that is of course informed by my experiences but still discussing something that just literally happens and someone tells me I'm wrong because of what basically amounts to their fanfics, you know?

anyway that's my very long post about my complicated and extremely nuanced Anders feelings. great character, shitty person, his fans are either really cool or really fucking not. also it's been almost fifteen years, and I still think we should've had Jowan in DA2 as a familiar face helping out in the mage underground to both flesh them out more and to serve as a middle ground between the more circle-aligned Orsino and the initially representing the mage underground before getting progressively more Kaczynski-esque, Anders, instead of Cullen just kind of hanging out in the templars not really doing anything.

[fereldanwench]

i'm still holding off final judgement until the gameplay today, but seeing some stills on twitter kind of helped me solidify what i found so off-putting about the style in the companion trailer

although before i post those, a few counter arguments because i'm already tired of ppl bashing the ppl who aren't vibing with it, and my head is clear enough to put these thoughts down:

"cinematic trailers rarely look like the actual game" - true to a point. however: 1) typically cinematic trailers strive to look like a higher definition version of the game, which seems to be the opposite here. in the case of DAO and DA2, i would say the cinematic trailers actually strived for more realism, not stylization, as that was the trend at the time. 2) this is a cinematic trailer, but it is also done in the game engine so it's not unreasonable to assume that the end product is gonna look somewhat similar 3) this was supposed to be their best foot forward so suddenly going "don't worry, it's gonna look better in-game" is just a bad marketing move. it's not on the audience to give this company the benefit of the doubt (particularly in light of all the shit that has gone down there in the past decade)

"not everything has to be super realistic!" - agreed! not liking elements of this particular style doesn't mean i'm opposed to stylization in DA at all. i think DA2 is much more stylized than DAO, and not only does it look nicer, it looks more distinctly dragon age. DAO visually is also very generic, especially for its time. i still love the almost painterly look of DA2, even all these years later

and i think DAI has issues with the character models, especially the uncanny valley disconnect between the really stiff animations and realistic faces (having played it within the past year, they've aged pretty roughly), but in terms of environment and armor and whatnot, it did build off the style presented in DA2 in a way that effectively modernized it for that era. it did go for a more realistic look, but it was cohesive and still distinctly dragon age

"people reacted like this to DA2 and DAI's trailers too" - no, they did not, lmao. DA2's trailers were the reverse--they looked more realistic than the actual game. now there was some backlash against the stylistic choice in the actual game. i remember david gaider talking about it in a panel at dragon con in 2012--apparently ppl were upset that the companions looked like they were made with cosplayers in mind, which i thought was an interesting criticism. but no, the trailers did not get this sort of response.

and DAI's trailers used a lot of in-game footage, and the cinematic ones were both pretty accurate to the game and well-received by the audience. DAI's marketing was also absolutely bonkers and nonstop for like 9 months before the game was released, which in hindsight i think was way too much, but in terms of visuals, we knew exactly what we were getting.

"you guys just think anything with a style to it looks like fortnite" - lmao, okay, yeah, describing it as fornite is probably unfair and inaccurate, but i know for me, i kind of use it as a shorthand to reflect my general dissatisfaction with the way so many 3D styles (in both games and movies) just have this bland, cartoonish look to them. the pixar-ification of everything. i just don't like it.

and the logo with the bright purple and overly smooth text doesn't really help here either. i think a less saturated and darker purple paired with a grungier font would also help in making this feel like less like fornite season 3458345: dragon age avengers.

plus it was originally gonna be a live service game and i think that it still has some of that dna artistically

SO ANYWAY

these stills, which i think are also in-game engine but im not entirely sure if they're from cinematics, gameplay, or just renders but they seem to be in-line with the trailer:

and seeing emmrich and to a lesser extent neve in these pics solidified why the stylization didn't work for me on a visual level (never mind it being paired with the light-hearted planning-for-a-silly-little-heist vibes)

so when i first saw the trailer, and i saw varric, i was like "nice"

he looked like a higher definition, older version of a DA2/DAI hybrid of his model. he looked really good. i thought harding looked good, too. it did take me a minute to realize who she was, but it really wouldn't be a DA trailer if we weren't left wondering who tf a returning character was lmao (remember the confusion over alistair's appearance in one of the DAI trailers? this is actually tradition now)

but as the trailer goes on, the style doesn't even stay consistent--it just gets progressively more cartoonish right up to emmrich, which is the exact moment that made me go WHAT

he looks like a cartoon character. the hard lines in his face, the stiffness of his hair, his overall proportions--he looks like he should be a villain in a pixar movie. like i'm digging his overall vibe and as a concept of a character design, i love it. but this execution of it next to fellow old wrinkled man varric looks so off

and then we go right into davrin who is beautifully rendered and designed--he doesn't look out of place next to varric or harding

some characters have the soft, wispy hair while others have hair that looks like a hard shell with lines carve into it. some characters have finely detailed wrinkles while others have thick, cartoonish ones. some characters have realistic proportions while others have more exaggerated features.

stylization is only effective when it's purposeful and consistent, and from what i've seen so far, it's not. it's all over the place.

so there's my thesis about why i dont like the art direction in the trailer lmao

and like i've been saying since it dropped, i am reserving full judgment for the gameplay reveal, but based on the other stuff bioware has teased, i'm not expecting this aspect to change too much. i've seen other ppl who were on the fan council thing say the tone in the game is more in-line with the tone in the other games, so maybe that'll help smooth out this disconnect

[oflorelei]

One thing that annoys me so hard is whenever i see people boil down grrms writing to be the most bland, MEDIOCRE, boring ass take ever 😭 guy LOVES fantasy, he LOVES to worldbuild with mythology in mind, he LOVES prophecies- characters like Dany are literally the walking embodiment of his love for fantasy and the fantastical. YET I have to keep seeing the most braindead, tumblresque, BLANDEST takes ever. "hOTD IiS aBOuT tWO sPoIlED dAdDy iSsUED bRaTS", first of all we all know grrm sold his soul to hbo like faust sold his to the devil- but he literally DENOUNCED the show 😭 to think this everburning car accident that plagues the screens of the times square in nyc is an ACCURATE depiction of georges work is laughable. Im not gonna tell you what the dance is about, BESIDES that with removing the fantastical aspect (literally blood betrayal, dying of the dragons, the long night coming again), also removing the obvious aspect of womanhood in westeroa something that is DRIVING FORCE ON WHY THIS CONFLICT EXISTS, is fucking laughable. Especially because George DOES write about this misogyny, internalized or not so much, to completely ignore that point to push the fucking stupid "holier then thou because i hate the targaryens BC they are conquerers despite the people they conquered literally comitting two mass genocides together with forced conversion" (on that point who tf of yall think u can seperate the hightowers from the faith pre-dance?), is literally my achilles heel. I need some of you all to use your brain and THINK, very hard and long, and READ thru awoiaf or one of the DOZEN OTHER NOVELLAS we have on the dance, the blood betrayal, the long night.

Also another quick rant: this wannabe 'historian' pov of "im just boiling it down to the most blandest, white toast bread, ignoring and misinterpreting the lore the the extent that it would make the dumb and dumber PROUD" is so annoying- coming from someone who is studying history with a focus on pre-modern era (aka middle ages) atm. This doesnt work for a world in which *dragons* and *magic* not only EXISTS but also indirectly or even directly influences the fade of the world.

My take? The blood betrayal definitively definitively is there, was written to resemble the dance of dragons (or the other way around). Yeah ignore a younger brother betraying his older sister who was the rightful heir to the throne of an empire only ruled by men till then. Yeah ignore how that sister is called amethyst empress (in a line of a thousand different gems names there could be), while her brother is called the bloodstone emperor (which is btw a GREEN STONE WITH RED FLECKS). Yeah ignore that this betrayal is what caused the Maiden-made-of-LIGHT to turn her back on the world meanwhile the Lion of the NIGHT came forth with demons (with what the others are compared to btw) to the realm of MEN. Yeah ignore that Dany is also suppose to mirror/parallel the amethyst empress and that fixing the wrongs of her ancestors is also her whole thing. Yeah ignore that the breaker of chains, the Prince that was promised, the one who has an dynasty resting on her back, whose downfall started with the dying of dragons in a war fought over the heir not having a dick, is also a (very) young woman, her womanhood also playing a part in her whole Story. Am i saying Rhaenyra or Dany are the AE reborn? Hell No, and if id bet my money on Dany. But both of them and their conflicts get so extremely paralleled with the Amethyst Empress History that you have to be literacy blind to not see that.

But thats my opinion, you can believe what you want as long as you dont boil hotd down to being the "truth" and ignoring the existing fantasy/magic as well as the world building relevant extreme misogyny.