#it’s a good game but it’s not a good dragon age game

[crossdressingdeath]

Because it's not about politics. Because it's about fighting gods as part of a ragtag team of experts. Which the game and devs have been very clear on since the start. DAO isn't "about Ferelden", it just mostly takes place in Ferelden and the politics that do appear show up only as they interfere with the main goal of ending the Blight and you can skip them (why does everyone forget that you can end the Landsmeet in a brawl if you can't be arsed to deal with the politics? The political side of DAO is mostly opt-in, the only exception is Orzammar). We don't learn shit about Ferelden or Orlais in DAI except in codex entries (mostly because they left that to supplementary materials, TME my beloathed, but the point still stands; WEaWH strips out so much of the political side of things that it basically becomes a popularity contest unless you know the lore before you go in). DA2 is an exception, but I already said that and it's working on a much smaller scale than the other games; DAO is about ending the Blight, DAI is about closing the Breach and stopping Corypheus, DAV is about defeating the gods, but DA2 is very much about Kirkwall. Us just going to Tevinter in a game that was very clearly not about Tevinter from the start is not an implicit promise of anything except going to Tevinter. Picking Tevinter's next Archon and helping the Shadow Dragons is about equal to the amount of political content we got in the previous game if nothing else! If someone is going to assume that going to Tevinter as part of a larger game that mostly takes place outside of Tevinter means a deep look into the setting's politics because when we went to Orzammar fifteen years ago we got to pick their king that's their prerogative, but the game never promised that. You can be disappointed that it didn't, sure, but there was never a promise, implicit or otherwise. Veilguard does plenty of things but it is not trying to do politics and it never said it was. Basically at the end of the day being disappointed that DAV wasn't what you wanted it to be is fine, it was never going to appeal to everyone (that's how making things works, after all) but it hasn't broken a promise by not about Tevinter politics because it never said it would be and the devs are at the end of the day not responsible for anyone's assumptions.

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT. Thank you Dorian for being the best once again and pointing out that hey maybe if the Chantry didn't treat their mages like shit and traumatize all of them they'd get possessed less often.

[sammakesart]

Castles in the Fade, or What Was the Point of the Veil Anyway

Something that will now haunt me until the end of time is why was the concept of the Veil ever introduced into this series.

We’ve been hearing about it since the very first game. There’s a codex entry about tears in the Veil in Origins. Tamlen mentions a thin spot in the Veil if you play a Dalish elf. Sandal has a prophecy in Dragon Age 2: “One day the magic will come back—all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see.” Admittedly, this is just one line said by a character who often says odd things, but it hinted to the fact they were planning to do something with the Veil from the very beginning. The state of the Veil is repeatedly brought up. It all had to mean something! Or so I thought. 

When I saw “The Dread Wolf Rises” quest in Veilguard, I said, “Oh, here we go!” The Veil is coming down, magic is coming back, and it’s going to set up such an interesting story for the next game. 

Alas, no. 

I hadn’t really enjoyed my time playing Veilguard up until this point. It felt like the game was ducking and dodging every bit of world building and lore that could possibly bring nuance or complexity to the story. Every returning character or faction was a cardboard cutout of themself. They shoved Solas is a time-out box and gave him nothing to do. They refused to let him have any impact or influence on the story when he had been set up to be our main antagonist back in Trespasser. This game used to be called Dreadwolf! And while we learn about his past… we never talk to him about it. In the present, he’s in stasis.

Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain are our villains. And they are your typical evil for evil’s sake villains. They are mad, bad, and only as dangerous as the narrative will allow as to not give Rook and co too much trouble. They are surprisingly patient while Rook fixes all their companions’ problems… until Elgar’nan moves the moon to cause an eclipse. A vital component in making his own lyrium dagger. For some reason. This guy can move a satellite!? And he just let Rook walk away in previous encounters… twice. Ok. Sure.

The Evil Duo need their own dagger ostensibly to tear down the Veil, because they want to unleash the full force of the Blight onto the world. Because they are evil. And they were thwarted last time they tried to Blight the entire world. Why do they think Blighting the world is a good idea? What’s the point of ruling a world if everyone is dead? I guess they haven’t thought that through, because of the madness and the evilness.

Ok, I thought. Perhaps the gods will be the one to tear down the Veil. Or maybe we’ll have a choice to let Solas do it his way before they can, which will be less chaotic and less full of Blight. Because the Veil has to be coming down one way or another? Why introduce the concept of the Veil, especially a Veil that has been thinning and failing since the series began, if it’s just going to… stay.

There is a principle in storytelling called Chekov’s gun. If something is mentioned in a story, it must have a purpose. If you keeping mentioning that gun hanging on the wall over the fireplace, it’s because at some point in the story, someone is going to take it down and use it. The Veil felt like Chekov’s gun to me. Chekov’s Veil, if you will. It’s been here from the beginning of our tale, the spectre hanging over our protagonists’ heads for multiple games.

The Veil has been a character unto itself. It was the central focus of the third game, and its dissolution was set up to be the core conflict of the fourth game. We learn everything we thought we knew about the Veil was a lie. It was not created by the Maker to separate the Fade from this world because of jealous spirits, it was created by a guy named Solas to trap the elven gods and the Blight from destroying the world. Also, the elven gods were never gods, and they are also evil.

This reveal will surely throw the Andrastian religion into chaos! This puts the very existence of the Maker into question! The Evanuris are a lie; it’s only fair Catholicism—oh, I mean—the Chantry is a lie too. We briefly touch on that in Veilguard… then it is quietly discarded. Religious crisis averted.

But I digress.

When the title of the fourth game was changed from Dreadwolf to Veilguard, I started to see the writing on the wall. Still, I held out hope the Veil would have some greater purpose in the story. That its introduction as a concept was for a reason. That something in this world would change.

Instead, from the get-go, the question of the Veil is no question at all. We only get Solas and Varric making oblique or catastrophizing statements about it. Solas says little beyond he has a plan. If I ever wanted to hear a villain monologue about their plan, it was now! Varric, on the other hand, decries Solas’s plan. He warns that should the Veil fall, it will destroy the world and drown it in demons. And that’s that.

We never really learn why Solas wants to tear the Veil down, or why he thinks it will help anyone. “The Veil is a wound inflicted upon this world. It must be healed,” he says. And that’s basically all he says about it in Veilguard. In Inquisition and Trespasser, we learn it took the immortality from the elves. It cut most of magic off from the world. Spirits are trapped and are being corrupted into demons, and most of what we know about spirits and demons is wrong. There are ancient elves possibly asleep? That part is left vague, but ancient elves are still about. We meet some in Mythal’s temple. There seems to have been some merit in bringing it down, because elves were flocking to Solas’s cause at the end of Trespasser. He had agents working for him already. What do they know that we don’t know?

Apparently nothing, because by the time Veilguard rolls around, there are no mention of agents. He is working alone. His only motivation now seems to be he’s too deep in his sunk-cost fallacy. The Veil is unnatural, so it must be removed—consequences be damned. We are never given any reason to think Solas has a leg to stand on in his pursuit of tearing down the Veil. We never hear any kind of counter argument from anyone, not even Solas, as to why the Veil should come down. We are only told it will destroy the world. It will drown the world in demons. This is all Solas’s fault.

There is no nuance. No complexity. No moral quandary to mull over. The game gives us vague warnings with no explanation as to what exactly is so world-annihilating about the Veil coming down. We must take Varric’s word at face value. We’re the heroes; Solas is the villain. Stop him.

It makes me wonder why Solas was ever a companion in Inquisition, let alone a romance option. Solas was presented to us as a complicated character in Inquisition. We had the potential throughout the game to make him see the value of this world, to help him realize he was wrong about it. “We aren’t even people to you,” the Inquisitor says in Trespasser. Solas replies, “Not at first. You showed me that I was wrong...again.” He began the third game viewing the world as tranquil, seeing the people in it as nothing more than figments in a nightmare, just as we saw our companions in the In Hushed Whispers quest. He ends the game having made friends, having recognized he was mistaken. He might have even fallen in love. (Or he may still seen no merit in this world if the Inquisitor antagonized him the entirety of their time together.) But something makes him continue with his plan to tear down the Veil, despite recognizing this world is real. He must know something we don’t. Something we’ll learn about in the next game.

We’ve been hearing about the Veil for three games now. We’ve set up our complex antivillain for the next installment, and he’s going to tear the Veil down. We swear to stop him or save him. But it has to be more complex than that. It can’t be so straightforward. Uncomplicated. Simple. Boring. Right? Right?

Nope. He really is just the villain, mustache-twirling and all. He apparently had no greater motivation, no as of yet unrevealed knowledge that would put this whole Veil thing into a new context. It was really as simple as the Veil falling will destroy the world, so Solas must be stopped. There is no new information that is revealed which makes us question what we are doing. Solas is never given any nuance or complexity to his actions. Nuance and complexity have actively been taken away. Both him and the Veil are looking like they are the worst things to be in a story: pointless. Why introduce the Veil if it’s just going to remain unchanged? Why introduce a character like Solas, bother humanizing him (for lack of a better term), giving us his backstory, setting him up as a cunning antagonist, only to make him look stupid, then put him on a shelf until the last ten minutes of your game?

Solas was the trickster archetype of this tale. He was our version of Loki from Norse mythology. What is the role of the trickster archetype? To challenge the status quo. To bring about events of extreme change, like say, the tearing down of a Veil that holds back all of magic. Loki is a huge contributing factor in Ragnarök. Through his manipulation, he causes the death of the beloved god, Baldr. This ushers in a long winter, which signifies the beginning of the end. Loki is imprisoned for this crime. When the final battle between gods and giants begins, the sun and moon are swallowed, plunging the earth into darkness. The earth shakes and Loki is freed to fight on the side of the giants. The world burns in raw chaos, falls beneath the sea, and is reborn. The world is remade, and a new realm of the gods and a new, better earth is formed.

It really felt like this was the setup they were going for. Solas causes the death of Mythal, and this is his catalyst for creating the Veil, which ushers in a world without magic. This could be seen as equivalent to the long winter. Solas falls asleep, trapped in dreams. He wakes and sets in motion bringing about the apocalypse. It’s not a perfect one to one, but it’s there if you squint. We have a war against the gods in Veilguard. I was expecting a few remaining Titans to wake and join the fight. But we don’t get any of that. There is a final battle, but it does not end in the end of the world. Or a better world. It just ends, and everything is the same.

It seems our trickster god caused his apocalypse thousands of years before our story started, when he created the Veil. His role in this tale was over before ours began, and he really is just some relic from a long-past age. He has no role, no purpose in this story. He is here to be thwarted. He is no Loki at all.

If you can’t tell, I wanted the Veil to come down. Did I think the Veil coming down would be painless? Have no negative consequences? No. Of course not. But keeping it up has negative consequences too. And it made for an interesting story. Or at least it could have. But we never explore that. The game presents no counter argument to having the Veil stay up, which, again, begs the question: what was the point of introducing the concept of the Veil at all?

Did I think the Veil coming down was actually the best solution to help Thedas become a better place? I don’t know, and I never will, because the game never argues for it one way or another. It just tells you to want it in place and to stop asking questions. In real life, a catastrophic event is not the best way to solve any of the world’s problems. But this is the realm of fiction. We have gods and monsters, magic and myth. We have introduced the status quo of Thedas, recognized it needs to change, then our trickster god appears ready to fulfill his role in the narrative. 

Instead, it all comes to nothing.

I got to the end of Veilguard… and everything was more or less the same as it was at the start of Origins. Veilguard actually tries its hardest to pretend any previously mentioned problems don’t exist, so of course the Veil coming down has no merit. There are no problems to solve in this world, apparently. Solas is just stuck in the past and can’t get with the times. Silly Solas.

The Veil isn’t even a permanent solution. It wasn’t to begin with. It was some duct tape wrapped around a broken pipe, and we’ve just slapped an extra piece of tape on it. It’s still leaking. It is still unnatural, and will fall eventually one way or another. Large amounts of bloodshed weaken it, so I guess Thedas better achieve world peace real quick to avoid any battles. There were seven super-powered mages holding it together… now there is just one. Ironically, the Veil was going to fall after two more Blights anyway. The Wardens were doing Solas’s work for him! It would also have released the full force of the Blight at that time… which Solas was trying to avoid, I presume.

It feels like keeping the Veil up just pushed a big problem onto Thedas’ future generations. We’ll keep slapping bandaids on it until it all falls apart. Someone else can deal with the fallout, but we’ll be dead by then, so who cares.

Primarily, I wanted the Veil to come down from a storytelling perspective. The Veil was an interesting concept and I wanted the story to do something interesting with it. Conflict is what makes stories stories and the Veil coming down could create so much compelling and complex conflict. And the Fade is weird, and I like weird. Stories are also about change, and I wanted to see Thedas change. Yet, Veilguard is over, and barely anything has changed. Instead of magic coming back being a conflict for the next game, they went with Fantasy Illuminati. Oh.

The Veil turned out to be a nothing-burger, and no problems in this world are even close to being solved. Slavery is still rampant in Tevinter. The elven people are still oppressed everywhere. Mages have no more rights in the South than they did in Origins. Spirits are still trapped and being corrupted. The Calling still exists, though might be different somehow now? They don’t really get into that. The Chantry’s validity is still not allowed to be questioned. The Blight still exists in some form, but again it’s vague. Oh, and we learn the dwarves have been gravely wronged, and the Titans are still tranquil. At least if you redeem Solas and a romanced Lavellan joins him, they can work together on healing the Blight and helping the Titans. Oh, good. One problem is being acknowledged and some action will be taken. Offscreen. Hurray? Solas doesn’t have a really great track record of fixing problems, so Lavellan is definitely going to need to be there to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.

For some reason, this game seemed terrified of letting us think about anything for more than two seconds. It shied away from complexity or nuance at every turn. The game is called The Veilguard—ironically, that word is never uttered in the game—but we are given no real motive for guarding the Veil. We’re unquestionably the hero. The villains are uncomplicatedly evil. Save the world… never wonder what you are doing or why.

I wanted the game to make me question if the Veil staying up or coming down was the right choice. I needed to be given a real counter argument. Convince me the alternative would actually be better or worse, because as I mentioned… things suck quite a bit in Thedas already for a lot of people right now. Let the Veil’s fate be a difficult choice to make. If the conflict cannot be what to do about the Veil, it should be am I doing the right thing about the Veil. If the heart of your game is so thin on motive, everything else falls apart around it.

I hoped they were setting up a complex, Thedas-sized existential conflict for this game in Trespasser, but no. I wanted something to happen, but nothing did. 

I want to feel challenged and changed by a story, not left feeling empty. I’m tired of superficial entertainment. I want to sink my teeth into a narrative that doesn’t paint the world in broad strokes of black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains.

Ultimately, I think my issue is why even introduce a concept like The Veil if you’re not going to do anything interesting with it. Or anything at all. What I thought was Chekov’s Veil turned out to just be a MacGuffin. And that’s disappointing.

[ann-chovi]

Art vs artist: 2024 edition

in which i try to pull the Jim Carrey face

Massive shift in interest at the end of the year there huh?

[vaguely-concerned]

just for fun this time during 'sea of blood' I counted out all the venatori corpses I think we can be pretty sure were lucanis' handiwork before we show up (not including the ones he kills in his initial cutscene, and with an assumption that he's been at work mainly up and down in the areas we move through until we find him, not behind the locked door -- I think that's mostly the work of rampaging undead and other venatori-hoisted-by-their-own-petard suchlikes). can thus happily inform you lucanis has killed at least 32 venatori before rook and company get there. at least one of them he's impaled on their own weird crystal spike things the venatori mages cast as an AOE attack and that they're trying to keep him contained with when we find him. so he's clearly been keeping busy lol. that's my boy dispensing poetic justice and claiming some enrichment in his enclosure while he's at it good for him!

[night-orchids]

[hopearefeatheredthings]

Love our girlies who can break a god's hold so easily

[vhenan-writes]

The list of reasons why Veilguard fails, not just as a Dragon Age Game, but as a narrative in general is too long and too frustrating to itemize so I’ll just say that no, you’re not alone in feeling the need to mourn this game.

Because this game didn’t need to be perfect to be good. It didn’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable. All it had to do was just be Dragon Age and it couldn’t give us that bare minimum.

Long story short, turns out that I don't really like Veilguard. Like at all. So it's been cathartic to read some of the criticism here to feel like even if I still love the series and I'm mourning the lost lore and worldbuilding, I just can't say "hey I respect this game" cause... I don't. No, it's not a Dragon Age game.

Like for example, I can't believe that I just read a post in which op rightfully critics how big of a problem it is the lack of the Southern (or as a whole, honestly) Chantry representation in this game, and the tags are full of comments like "Good. I hate the Chantry anyway, it sucks"

Well you are exactly part of the problem here. Because it seems you are saying "it sucks so Im glad it is not there" and that's exactly what they did with every complex problem in DA in this game.

Because you know what? The core of this franchise is that, YES. It HAS to be there and it HAS to suck. This is exactly what the original setting was telling us. You don't get to ignore it because you, as a character in that world, has to live there and it affects you. And like a player, it had the goal to make you think and feel complicated stuff.

And also religion is a fundamental pillar of fantasy medieval settings like??? Wtf are you talking about being fine with being non-existent here? Did you ever like Dragon Age at all? Because you sound like the big questions in ethics and faith it always presented bothered you enough to be okay with this game erasing it.

Sure, let's gonna devoid of every representative aspect that made Dragon Age the setting we all enjoyed, sure it will be the right choice to do.

[lizzybeeee]

Bann Teagan Guerrin: "Did he also do what was best for your husband, your Majesty?"

The single hottest line in all of DAO - you can't convince me otherwise.

The amount of sass, the audacity of that man to backtalk Queen Anora in her own court, in front of dozens of nobles, before fucking swaggering off to go get his brother to plan a coup against her and Loghain.

Incredible.

[mllemaenad]

The longer this game goes on, the more I feel like I'm in favour of bringing down the Veil. Mostly because ... well, I've got to be well past the halfway mark, right? And so far no one's given me a good reason why it should stay up. They're just assuming I want to preserve the status quo, because Dragon Age is the "No, don't rebel, it makes you as bad as your oppressors :(" series.

We know the Veil is a mistake. Not just a mistake in the sense that it was the best thing Solas could come up with at the time, but in the sense that he fucked up the ritual and accidentally sort of trapped all the spirits in with the evanuris.

We know that the Veil can be thinned by: death, magic, bloodshed and strong emotions ... so it doesn't feel like a permanent solution to anything anyway. It's going to fall apart eventually. We might as well take control of it.

And Elgarn'nan is apparently punching holes now, so there's that.

While it was initially presented as something more dramatic, so far the only consequences for bringing it down anyone's brought up is "we might have a demon problem" and:

We already have a demon problem

Some demons are created by being forcefully summoned through the Veil, so at least that would stop

Demons aren't always a problem – we have one on the team!

There are now so many groups present who could effectively deal with demons if we brought them on board

I recognise there are ways to do this that could be bad, so we should prep for it and not let Solas just do whatever ... but I really don't see how the Veil is helping.

If they want to change my mind, this game really needs to start presenting some evidence as to why I'm "guarding" this Veil in the first place. "Varric says so" doesn't work for me. I like Varric just fine, but he didn't approve of blowing up the Kirkwall Chantry, whereas I have never in my life seen a more cursed building that needed to go right now than that bloody thing.

[thedissonantverses]

If you sincerely think that previous Dragon Age games are more mature and you list the Broodmother, the City Elf Origin, or the serial killer with Hawke’s mom as examples, you just like cheap shock value and not good writing.

This is an edge lord’s idea of horror and it shows you have a poor grasp of the violence women face day in and day out. You’re either a child or a misogynist and I don’t have the patience for either. This isn’t rad fem bullshit either. The fact anyone thinks that returning to how we wrote women in the 2000’s, all women, is disgusting and cruel, and you need to do better.

If you’re going to say I can’t handle “dark” fantasy, one of my favorite horror movies is Cuddly Things. If you know you know. Go watch that and put your money where your mouth is and keep these stupid ideas away from Dragon Age.

[la-porte-bleue]

To keep focusing on the positive aspects: The action scenes, the big battles, are so well done! I just replayed the Siege of Weisshaupt and it’s really good (and the final battle is of course epic, creative and exciting)!

Neve, Emmrich and Bellara are actually great characters. In the version of Veilguard that excludes the condescending bullshit, they would have thrived and been remembered as some of the best rpg characters of all time.

[wolfwhisperertf]

Rook, Davrin, Assan, Lucanis 🤝 Warden, Alistair, Barkspawn, Zevran

The best praise I can honestly give this game is that it feels like dragon age... and it feels so good to be home.

[redwyvernan]

“You are interested in Rook,” Lucanis said by way of introduction as he walked into Neve’s office one day.

Neve (who had just a moment before been attempting to piece together the connection between the Warden-Commander and the Scarred Queen for Bellara’s serial obsession) barely had a moment to register her shock and try to restrain it from appearing on her face before defeat settled in.

She sighed as she settled her head in her hands. “Bel told you.”

(It had been a moment of weakness a few nights previous that Neve hadn’t been able to bring herself to forget. Neve had just finished her second glass of wine, and Bellara had asked her about why she kept watching Rook so closely, and…well, it had just slipped out. It had been…good. To talk about it. Even if Bellara had looked like she were about to write her own serial about Neve’s infatuation with their de-facto leader.)

“No. You did—just now. Bellara has been shockingly tight-lipped about it all.”

[persephoneggsy]

my first fic in almost a year, and it's angst about Rook dying before Emmrich! :V Sorry.

Anyway, here's a preview:

Emmrich awoke to the sun warming his face, and a heavy but comforting weight curled by his side.  He breathed in deeply before cracking open his eyes and looking down. He could see the top of Phryne’s head, pillowed against his chest. Same as every morning.  He smiled softly and pressed a kiss to her hair. She didn’t stir. She usually didn’t, the night owl to his morning bird.  Still, he murmured a good morning to his wife.  And normally, he would be content to lie there for a few more moments before beginning his day, soaking in the domestic bliss even after almost twenty years of marriage.  But then he realized something was wrong.  Phryne was cold. And still. Too still.  “Darling?” Emmrich sat up, panic slowly coursing its way through him. He pushed Phryne off as delicately as he could manage — her sleeping visage beheld a serene smile, but her eyes remained closed.  Emmrich brought two fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse. He could hear his own pounding in his ears.  Nothing. 

[tundrafoot]

Thank you @buttsonthebeach for the tag!

It's been awhile since I've done one of these. I also got a new followers on both this account and my fanaccount @somevirtualnolife , so it's probably good to do this!

Get to know me

Favourite colour: Pink and Green!

Last song: NISSAN ALTIMA by Doechii

Last movie: I just watched Wicked in theatres a few weeks ago and it was a good time!

Last TV show: Does House Hunters International count? Lol

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Last thing I googled: I was checking to see if my local bookstore had a specific book available so I can get it as a Christmas present for my mom.

Current obsession: Dragon Age The Veilguard. I just am in LOVEEEE with this game and have gotten into coming up with more detailed pasts of my Rooks.

I am also constantly obsessed with Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side and am currently debating getting some new merch for it lol.

Looking forward to: Chilling for two weeks as I am now on holiday.

Tagging: No pressure but if you want @b1narysol0 @quyeningellvar @dergun

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Favorite Color: big fan of the 70s color palette and Halloween colors (black/red/green/purple/orange/white)

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Last TV Show: Vox Machina

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Current Obsession: The Ukrainian production of Caberet, the sour Shaq gummies, prana clothes, sleep token

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I was tagged by @circescircle. I tag @appalachiancowboy99.