#it had choice like a dragon age game

[ionomycin]

archfey warlock

[incoherentchanting]

this shit is so funny

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[mythalism]

call me crazy but there is a difference between treating your adult players like they are new to the world and treating your adult players like they have the memory of a goldfish and the vocabulary of a 9 year old

[citrusai]

taash said "they were doing it" and people ran with the interpretation of an npc that doesn't know solas or the history of the elvhenan even when bellara interjected and said, no, that's not right. that's not how it was for the elvhenan. they formed bonds before they had physical bodies. and people ran to doompost or create weird anti-solavellan shit even though mythal & solas refer to each other as old friends and when she releases him there is no tenderness or love in it. it is the act of unchaining a dog from his post, the stepping down of a general. but to each their own ig.

[waspgrave]

Also not to defend a company but people saying veilguard had 10 years...they had 3.5 at best considering how they had to work on flops like Andromeda and Anthem and then had to scrap the original game. I get being disappointed but some of you are being embarrassing little redditor-tier theorists about veilguard. I truly do think they did the best they could with whatever corporate nightmare scenario was happening behind the scenes

[danielnelsen]

i think what’s frustrating is that you’re kinda required to have a strong opinion about solas to potentially get the most out of your choices for dav. having one of only three worldstate options be how you want to handle him is so strange for something that, to me, just felt like a pretty random inconsequential dialogue choice during trespasser. it felt like an immediate reaction to the situation, not an action plan

because honestly my inquisitor wouldn’t really care. he’s done saving the world and has just had a pretty major traumatic post-saving-the-world adventure while dealing with what is basically a very painful terminal illness… he wants nothing to do with any of it anymore! solas can be someone else’s problem! he would NOT spend the next decade trying to figure out what solas is up to, he would get as far away from all that bullshit as possible and try to live a peaceful life now that he’s suddenly no longer dying.

like idk i’ll probably choose that he wants to stop solas. but it doesn’t feel like so significant a choice to make it one of the only lasting impacts of the previous games. he already hasn’t seen solas in a few years by trespasser and wasn’t that close with him before and would like to take a nap

[m-m-m-myysurana]

Was anyone going to tell me that Lucanis and Neve get more romance content than Lucanis and Rook agdjdhjddhk

After Lucanis makes Neve Her favourite dessert, they get to actually have a talk about their feelings!!

Where was my talk Bioware???

[assblastergaster]

dragon age “critical” people have some fair points, obviously, but the thing that grinds my gear about them (on tumblr and reddit in particular) is that they think the writing mistakes of the bioware team are made to offend them, personally. never will you catch them acknowledging that the bioware writing team is actually a real world group of people that has been absolutely eviscerated by EA.

dozens upon dozens were laid off, control over development was removed, and the newest game had to be remade TWICE. so why are fans, who instead could be making reasonable, analytical complaints, pretending as if they’re personally victimized because a rushed game—made under labor law violating timecrunches might i add—doesn’t have the levels of fantasy racism they’ve come to expect? this is dragon age 2 all the fuck over again

[luciasatalina]

Which Dragon Age game would you recommend someone that never had any contact with the game to play first?

Veilguard really caught my attention but Idk how much the past games would impact my experience.

In my personal opinion, playing Dragon Age: Inquisition at first would be beneficial.

I think Veilguard is alright on its own if you've never played any DA games, but playing Inquisition would help you connect to the characters that are coming back a lot more and getting to know the setting. (You can always b-line the main quest while doing a few romance+friend quests, very good ones, and add the mod that skips the time at the wartable)

Though if you don't want to do that either, you can always watch Ghil Dirthalen's guides on the lore of DA:

Basics 101 of the Dragon Age setting +(whole playlist if you want all the non spoiler guides)

and if you're not planning to play the other games, 5 mins recap of each : DAO DA2 DAI

And also, there is a glossary in Veilguard to help with all the different words you're not familiar with.

For a truly full experience I would always recommend playing all the games but not everybody has 200h+ free to do that

Hope that helps!

[0ccuria]

I think Veilguard would've been better as a bridge between Inquisition and a game that's about the final stand against the Gods.

By that I mean, ONLY focusing on gathering a team of people that Solas doesn't know (as stated by The Inquisitor themselves). The entire game would be just that: creating and building up "The Veilguard" as an established group sworn to stop Solas and all that comes with him. The devs were very adamant about making friends with our companions and experiencing their stories this time around, but it feels SO out of place next to literal reality/world ending circumstances.

The focus on Solas and the "Dreadwolf" is still SO heavy that the game should've just stayed "Dragon Age: Dreadwolf".

Hardly anywhere within the game did I feel like a "Guard" was truly being made for this purpose. It was just.. "well I'm here I guess idk I just heard from so and so he has to be stopped lol. I'm good with *insert class abilities here* so I'm perfect for the job!"

This is a whole other can to open about how Rook just feels undeserving to be here. They did not deserve to experience Varric the way that they did. I will always love my OC's etc but a lot of the time I just kept thinking "and who tf are YOU to be doing this?" WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO BLAME THE INQUISITOR FOR EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED?? HELLO?? TF WAS THAT ABOUT???

BUT, I digress.... I almost just wanted them to just go full GOTG, look at the camera and say to our faces: "We're creating The Veilguard, we need experts *Dreamworks grin*"

Establish The Veilguard, as ordered by The Inquisitor, gather your allies across Northern Thedas, since The Inquisition, whether dismantled or not, still holds ground within Southern Thedas. Get to know our team on a personal level, go through their personal trauma's and drama's and all of that. Learn to become a family of people sworn to protect the immaterial at ANY cost, as The Inquisition was sworn to protect politically and systematically at any cost.

THEN and only then, can the Veilguard feel like it belongs in this mess, and not just stumbled within it.

Following that within the next game, can The Veilguard and The Inquisition forces join TOGETHER to stop Solas and the Gods.

[corvus-frugilegus]

The way my heart drops every time I visit Minrathous after saving Treviso. The sorrow in Rook's voice, the destruction, the way the resistance has been so brutally dismantled. The absolute horror in the streets of dock town presented so matter of factly by the game. They don't need to put a spotlight on it or show us a cut scene of the brutality because it's everywhere. You're immersed in the sheer scale of violence every step you take in dock and hear so much about the atrocities in the ambient dialogue. Walking the streets of Venatori controlled Minrathous feels awful.

The very obvious rise of facism that has been simmering beneath the surface in the magisterium all along. The dragon gave the magisters a chance to throw off the veneer of civility and stop acting like finding a middle ground with dissenting voices was something that mattered to them. Finally, they had concentrated power to an extent that they could inact their vision for Tevinter out in the open. (Probably if it weren't for Elgarnan taking over, reclaiming Tevinter from the Venatori would have been a monumentally difficult task).

If this isn't an Excellent social commentary and reflection of the increasing polarity in Western Politics I don't know what is. The rise of hard right leaning leaders epousing a return to traditional values when really their priority is the interest of capital and the ruling class is exactly what the Venatori represent here.

A criticism I've seen of the games writing a few times now is that the problematic elements of each faction feel either defanged or glossed over. And while I don't disagree that there are definitely some deep tensions and polarities in each of the groups Rook works with, I don't necessarily think it's poor writing to not talk about them here. It's just not the scope of the game- and I think actually underscores a very real issue we have in real world organizing and progressive spaces. If the Crows refused to work with Rook because they work with the Wardens who happen to keep terrible secrets (and so on and so forth about every faction and their tensions with one another) the gods would never have been stopped. In the case of the gods the people representing these factions and Rook's comapnions all recognize that their common cause is more important than their disagreements. Not working together because the Veil Jumpers rightly have qualms about the Lord's of Fortune pilfering elven ruins only lets the gods win. Working with someone who see's the world differently is a tension everyone in the veilguard has to hold. And it's a tension real-world progressives / the left very often struggle to hold.

Realizing that the common cause is more important than individual differences is a very real theme in Veilguard.

[revvethasmythh]

So I went and watched all the possible endings, and it confirmed something I had been thinking, which is that the redemption ending choice is, perhaps, the most immediately regretful one--but that they all come with some form of regret. In the redemption ending, Rook has to knowingly deny themselves the catharsis of retribution (should they desire it, which, at least for me it felt difficult not to) in order to offer Solas one last, painful chance to do the right thing. That willful denial of your own catharsis feels like an immediate regret. Giving Solas the opportunity to pursue atonement might very well be the best choice all around, but it is also incredibly painful to offer that to someone who has done so many terrible things (not a small amount to you personally). Why does he deserve another chance? Especially when so many dead (including a beloved mentor) lie in his wake? Which, I suppose, is the point: he doesn't. But you offer it anyway and it SUCKS ASS, because how could it not?

I don't know how this plays with other story choices (a sacrificed Davrin or a Harding who embraced her anger, for example), but within the context of my own choices, I can imagine an immediate satisfaction to either tricking or fighting him--especially the trick ending, where you can actively name drop Varric--but it feels like the sort of thing that would feel worse as more time passes. Once you've calmed down and are able to ask yourself if that's what the people you've lost really wanted. Varric, in Regret Superhell, didn't want vengeance. He just wanted his friend to walk a better path. And Harding always believed there was another chance for anyone, so long as you kept reaching a hand out for them--even when it sucked ass. So the redemption ending feels like a sort of indignance, an instant regret for not doing worse, for not getting comeuppance, for being forced to eschew satisfaction (related: I wonder if the Inquisitor feels those things as well coming out of this ending, considering how long they've lived under the shadow of Solas' actions). Conversely, the other two endings feel like an immediate satisfaction, because you got to trick the trickster with all the wits Varric taught you, or because you finally got to punch him in the face and it felt really good. But I feel like those endings would come with a creeping regret, something that sneaks up on you later, especially when remembering the fallen and what they would have wanted you to do. Ultimately, because of that, it feels like no ending is devoid of regret. Which I suppose, is rather thematic.

[cybershock24601]

Something I really love about Veilguard's companion quests is that there is no "right" answer as both options are always equally valid. It's not like there's a best path or you're choosing between the obvious good and evil option or even paragon or renegade like in Mass Effect. You're being presented with two equally valid and viable solutions to a complex issue and you the player have to make a choice based off your own morals and values as to what you think the best path forward is and I think that's great. A lot of games make it pretty clear about what the devs think the best option is and while Veilguard can do that too at points, when it comes to the companion quest lines they sit back and make the player grapple with what they personally believe is the best choice for these characters they've come to know and care for over the course of the game and I just think that's neat.

[cookiescr]

Goddamn just finished dragon age inquisition and it was so fucking goood omygod like I did not expect to get so into it like I originally just started playing it for friend who couldn't play it and streamed it for her by mygdo it was so good

SOMEONE COMMISSION ME SO I CAN BUY VEILGUARD ON NOVEMBER ! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

This quest annoys me. A lot. So far, I've never done it. I intend to try with another character at some point. I originally thought I'd try it with my human noble for RP, but he's a relatively nice (and rather religious) guy, so I feel like the disrespect of desecrating an ancient burial site, even if it's a culture he may not understand, is still a bit too much. I mean, I don't see a problem with being able to do it as an option, I guess. I just feel like that being the only solution to the "puzzle" is kind of stupid. Hell, at least don't lock the damn mosaic piece behind it. I don't even need the loot.

On this playthrough, I managed to exploit the mount glitch that lets you clip through the door of the crypt without destroying the graves, just to retrieve the mosaic piece. Also, found out too late that there is a mod for this.