#mass effect andromeda controversy

[lastdayoffline]

I love ME2 and 3 but something about 1 will always hold a special place for me in the trilogy. The empty planets, the unhinged throw you into a completely unknown universe hashtag get good, meeting everyone for the first time, the choices in the game, developing your companions, citadel free roam, and so much more. It's so nostalgic, even as a game I played just last year.

I think the biggest thing was the ending to ME1. The final missions, Ilos, the Citadel in complete disarray, THE SPACEWALK[mybelovedouhh], the final battle, just everything about that final mission was perfect. M4 PT. 2 by Faunts being the credits theme was even better.

ME1 was just pure vibes and satisfaction to me, felt so much joy at the end and so hyped for the next game. I've never danced at the end of a game, but I did for ME1. Loved the other games in the trilogy and Andromeda in its own right, but me1 just knocked it right out for me.

[acealistair]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard GameInformer Article Transcribed

I saw some people lamenting that they had no way to read the GameInformer article, and while MVP dalishious posted screenshots of the article here, I figured that might be a little difficult to read, plus people with screen readers can't read it of course. So I've gone ahead and transcribed it! Full thing below the cut!

As a note, I transcribed it without correcting any typos, capitalization errors, etc. that the article itself had (as much as it pained me, omg the author capitalizes so many things that shouldn't be and vice versa). There may be some typos on my part as I did this as quickly as I could, so apologies in advance for any you might encounter.

I have also created a plot-spoiler-free version of the article for those who would like to learn more about the mechanics of the game without learning more plot info than they want!

Throughout my research and preparation for a trip to BioWare’s Edmonton, Canada, office for this cover story, I kept returning to the idea that its next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (formerly subtitled Dreadwolf) is releasing at a critical moment for the storied developer. The previous installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, hit PlayStation, Xbox, and PC a decade ago. It was the win BioWare needed, following the 2012 release of Mass Effect 3 with its highly controversial and (for many) disappointing ending. Inquisition launched two years later, in 2014, to rave reviews and, eventually, various Gameo the Year awards, almost as if a reminder of what the studio was capable of.

Now, in 2024, coincidentally, the next Dragon Age finds itself in a similar position. BioWare attempted a soft reboot of Mass Effect with Andromeda in 2017, largely seen as a letdown among the community, and saw its first live-service multiplayer attempt in 2019’s Anthem flounder in the tricky waters of the genre; it aimed for a No Man’s Sky-like turnaround with Anthem Next, but that rework was canceled in 2021. Like its predecessor, BioWare’s next Dragon Age installment is not only a new release in a beloved franchise, but is another launch with the pressure of BioWare’s prior misses; a game fans hope will remind them the old BioWare is still alive today.

“Having been in this industry for 25 years, you see hits and misses, and it’s all about building off of those hits and learning from those misses,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay, who’s been with the studio since January 2020, tells me.

As McKay gives me a tour of the office, I can’t help but notice how much Anthem is scattered around it. More than Mass Effect, more than Dragon Age, there’s a lot of Anthem - posters, real-life replicas of its various Javelins, wallpaper, and more. Recent BioWare news stories tell of leads and longtime studio veterans laid off and others departing voluntarily. Veilguard’s development practically began with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When I ask McKay about the tumultuousness of BioWare and how he, as the studio manager, makes the team feel safe in the product it’s developing, he says it’s about centering on the creative vision. “[When] we have that relentless pursuit for quality, and we have passion and people in the right roles, a lot of the other stuff you’re talking about just fades into the background.”

That’s a sentiment echoed throughout the team I speak to: Focus on what makes a BioWare game great and let Veilguard speak for itself. Though I had no expectations going in - it’s been 10 years since the last Drag Age, after all, and BioWare has been cagey about showing this game publicly - my expectations have been surpassed. This return to Thedas, the singular continent of the franchise, feels like both a warm welcome for returning fans and an impressive entry point for first-time players.

New Age, New Name

At the start of each interview, I address a dragon-sized elephant in the room with the game’s leads. What was Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Why?

“These games are reflections of the teams that make them, and as part of that, it means we learn a lot about what the heart and soul of the game really is as we’re developing it,” Veilguard game director Corinne Busche tells me. “We quickly learned and realized that the absolute beating heart of this game is these authentic, diverse companions. And when we took a step back, as we always do, we always check our decisions and make sure they still represent the game we’re trying to build.”

Dreadwolf no longer did that, but each member of BioWare I speak to tells me The Veilguard does. And while I was initially abrasive to the change - lore aside, Dreadwolf is simply a cool name - I warmed up to The Veilguard.

Solas, a Loki-esque trickster member of the Elven pantheon of gods known as the Dread Wolf, created the Veil long ago while attempting to free the elves from their slave-like status in Thedas. This Veil is a barrier between the magical Fade and Thedas, banishing Elven gods and removing Elven immortality from the world. But players didn’t know that in Inquisition, where he is introduced as a mage ally and companion. However, at the end of Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, which sets the stage for Veilguard, we learn in a shocking twist that Solas wants to destroy the Veil and restore Elves to their former glory. However, doing so would bring chaos to Thedas, and those who call it home, the people who eventually become The Veilguard, want to stop him.

“There’s an analogy I like to use, which is, ‘If you want to carve an elephant out of marble, you just take a piece of marble and remove everything that doesn’t look like an elephant,’” Veilguard creative director John Epler says. “As we were building this game, it became really clear that it was less that we were trying to make The Veilguard and more like The Veilguard was taking shape as we built the game. Solas is still a central figure in it. He’s still a significant character. But really, the focus shifts to the team.

“[We] realized Dreadwolf suggests a title focused on a specific individual, whereas The Veilguard, much like Inquisition, focuses more on the team.”

Creating Your Rook

Veilguard’s character creator is staggeringly rich, with a dizzying number of customizable options. Busche tells me that inclusivity is at the heart of it, noting that she believes everyone can create someone who represents them on-screen.

There are four races to choose from when customizing Rook, the new playable lead - Elves, Qunari, Humans, and Dwarves - and hundreds of options to customize your character beyond that. You can select pronouns separately from gender and adjust physical characteristics like height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how crooked your nose is, and so much more. There must be hundreds of sliders to customize these body proportions and features like skin hue, tone, melanin, and just about anything else you might adjust on a character. Oh, and there’s nudity in Veilguard, too, which I learn firsthand while customizing my Rook.

“The technology has finally caught up to our ambition,” Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes tells me as we decide on my warrior-class Qunari’s backstory, which affects faction allegiance, in-game dialogue, and reputation standing - we choose the pirate-themed Lords of Fortune.

Notably, instead of a warrior class, we could have chosen mage or rogue. All three classes have unique specializations, bespoke skill trees, and special armors, too. And though our Rook is aligned with the Lords of Fortune faction, there are others to choose from including the Grey Wardens, Shadow Dragons, The Mourn Watch, and more. There is some flexibility in playstyle thanks to specializations, but your class largely determines the kind of actions you can perform in combat.

“Rook ascends because of competency, not because of a magical McGuffin,” BioWare core lead and Mass effect executive producer Michael Gamble tells me in contrast to Inquisition’s destiny-has-chosen-you-characterization.

“Rook is here because they choose to be, and that speaks to the kind of character that we’ve built.” Busche adds, “Someone needs to stop this, and Rook says, ‘I guess that’s me.’”

Beyond the on-paper greatness of this character creator, its customizability speaks to something repeated throughout my BioWare visit: Veilguard is a single-player, story-driven RPG. Or in other words, the type of game that made BioWare as storied as it is. McKay tells me the team explored a multiplayer concept early in development before scratching it to get back to BioWare basics. The final game will feature zero multiplayer and no microtransactions.

Happy to hear that, I pick our first and last name, then one of four voices, with a pitch shifter for each, too, and we’re off to Minrathous.

Exploring Tevinter For The First Time

Throughout the Dragon Age series, parts of Thedas are discussed by characters and referenced by lore material but left to the imagination of players as they can’t visit them. Veilguard immediately eschews this, setting its opening prologue mission in Minrathous, the capital of the  Tevinter Empire. Frankly, I’m blown away by how good it looks. It’s my first time seeing Veilguard in action and my first look at a Dragon Age game in nearly a decade. Time has treated this series well, and so has technology.

Epler, who’s coming up on 17 years at BioWare, acknowledges that the franchise has always been at the will of its engine. Dragon Age: Origins and II’s Eclipse Engine worked well for the time, but today, they show their age. Inquisition was BioWare’s first go at Ea’s proprietary Frostbite engine - mind you, an engine designed for first-person shooters and decidedly not multi-character RPGs - and the team struggled there, too. Epler and Busche agree Veilguard is the first RPG where BioWare feels fully in command of Frostbite and, more generally, its vision for this world.

We begin inside a bar. Rook and Varric are looking for Neve Gallus, a detective mage somewhere in Minrathous. The first thing players will do once Veilguard begins is select a dialogue option, something the team says speaks to their vision of a story-forward, choice-driven adventure. After a quick bar brawl cutscene that demonstrates Rook’s capabilities, there’s another dialogue choice, and different symbols here indicate the type of tone you can roll with. There’s a friendly, snarky, and rough-and-tough direct choice, and I later learn of a more romantically inclined “emotional” response. These are the replies that will build relationships with characters, romantic and platonic alike, but you’re welcome to ignore this option. However, your companions can romance each other, so giving someone the cold shoulder might nudge them into the warm embrace of another. We learn Neve is in Dumat Plaza and head into the heart of Minrathous.

Rhodes explains BioWare’s philosophy for designing this city harkens back to a quick dialogue from Inquisition’s Dorian Pavus. Upon entering Halamshiral’s Winter Palace, the largest venue in Dragon Age history at that point, Dorian notes that it’s cute, adorable even, alluding to his Tevinter heritage. If Dorian thinks the largest venue in Dragon Age history is cute and adorable, what must the place he’s from be like? “It’s like this,” Rhodes says as we enter Minrathous proper in-game.

Minrathous is huge, painted in magical insignia that looks like cyberpunk-inspired neon city signs and brimming with detail. Knowing it’s a city run by mages and built entirely upon magic, Rhodes says the team let its imagination run wild. The result is the most stunning and unique city in the series. Down a wide, winding pathway, there’s a pub with a dozen NPCs - Busche says BioWare used Veilguard’s character creator to make each in-world NPC except for specific characters like recruitable companions - and a smart use of verticality, scaling, and wayfinding to push us toward the main attraction: Solas, attempting to tear down the Veil.

All hell is breaking loose. Pride Demons are rampaging through the city. Considering Pride Demons were bosses in prior games, seeing them roaming freely in the prologue of Veilguard speaks to the stakes of this opener. Something I appreciate throughout our short journey through Minrathous to its center below is the cinematography at play. As a Qunari, my character stands tall, and Rhodes says the camera adjusts to ensure larger characters loom over those below. On the flip side, the camera adjusts for dwarves to demonstrate their smaller stature compared to those around them.

This, coupled with movie-liked movement through the city as BioWare showcases the chaos happening at the hands of Solas’ Veil-break ritual, creates a cinematic start that excited me, and I’m not even hands-on with the game.

Eventually, we reach Neve, who has angered some murderous blood mages, and rescue her from danger. Or rather, help… barely. Neve is quite capable, and her well-acted dialogue highlights that. Together, Varric, returning character Lace Harding, who is helping us stop Solas and is now a companion, Rook, and Neve defeat some demons. They then take on some Venatori Cultists seizing this chaotic opportunity to take over the city and other enemies before making it to Solas’ hideout. As we traverse deeper and deeper into this hideout, more of Solas’ murals appear on the walls, and things get more Elven. Rhodes says this is because you’re symbolically going back in time, as Minrathous is a city built by mages on the bones of what was originally the home of Elves.

At the heart of his hideout, we discover Solas’ personal Eluvian. This magical mirror-like structure allows the gang to teleport (and mechanically fast-travel) to Arlathan Forest, where Solas is secretly performing the ritual (while its effects pour out into Minrathous).

Here, we encounter a dozen or so demons, which BioWare has fully redesigned on the original premise of these monstrous creatures. Rhodes says they’re creatures of feeling and live and die off the emotions around them. As such, they are just a floating nervous system, push into this world from the Fade, rapidly assembled into bodies out of whatever scraps they find.

I won’t spoil the sequence of events here, but we stop Solas’ ritual and seemingly save the world… for now. Rook passes out moments later and wakes up in a dream-like landscape to the voice of none  other than Solas. He explains a few drops of Rook’s blood interacted with the ritual, connecting them to the Fade forever. He also says he was attempting to move the Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, part of the Evanuris or Elven gods of ancient times, to a new prison because the one he had previously constructed was failing. Unfortunately, Solas is trapped in the Fade by our doing, and these gods are now free. It’s up to Rook to stop them; thus, the stage for our adventure is set.

The Veilguard Who’s Who

While we learned a lot about returning character but first-time companion Lace Harding, ice mage private detective Neve Gallus, and veil jumper Bellara Lutara, BioWare shared some additional details about other companions Rook will meet later in the game. Davrin is a charming Grey Warden who is also an excellent monster hunter; Emmrich is a member of Nevarra’s Mourn Watch and a necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred; Lucanis is a pragmatic assassin whose bloodline descends from the criminal House of Crows organization; And Taash is a dragon hunter allied with the piratic Lords of Fortune. All seven of these characters adorn this Game Informer issue, with Bellara up front and center in the spotlight.

The Lighthouse

After their encounter with Solas, Rook wakes up with Harding and Neve in the lair of the Dread Wolf himself, a special magical realm in the Fade called the Lighthouse. It’s a towering structure centered amongst various floating islands. Epler says, much like Skyhold in Inquisition, the Lighthouse is where your team bonds, grows, and prepares for its adventures throughout the campaign. It also becomes more functional and homier as you do. Already, though, it’s a beautifully distraught headquarters for the Veilguard, although they aren’t quite referring to themselves as that just yet.

Because it was Solas’ home base of operations, it’s gaudy, with his fresco murals adorning various walls, greenery hanging from above, and hues of purple and touches of gold everywhere. Since it’s in the Fade, a realm of dreams that responds to your world state and emotion, the Lighthouse reflects the chaos and disrepair of the Thedas you were in moments ago. I see a clock symbol over a dialogue icon in the distance, which signals an optional dialogue option. We head there, talk to Neve, select a response to try our hand at flirting, and then head to the dining hall.

A plate, a fork and knife, and a drinking chalice are at the end of a massive table. Rhodes says this is both a funny (and sad) look at Solas’ isolated existence and an example of the detail BioWare’s art team has put into Veilguard. “It’s a case of letting you see the story,” he says. “It’s like when you go to a friend's house and see their bedroom for the first time; you get to learn more about them.” From the dining hall, we gather the not-quite-Veilguard in the library, which Busche says in the central area of the Lighthouse and where your party will often regroup and prepare for what’s next. The team decides it must reach the ritual site back in Arlathan Forest, and Busche says I’m missing unique dialogue options here because I’m Qunari; an Elf would have more to say about the Fade due to their connection to it. The same goes for my backstory earlier in Minrathous. If I had picked the Shadow Dragons background, Neve would have recognized me immediately, with unique dialogue.

With our next move decided, we head to Solas’ Eluvian to return to Arlathan Forest and the ritual site. However, it’s not fully functional without Solas, and while it returns us to Arlathan Forest, it’s not exactly where we want to go. A few moments later, we’re back in the Arlathan Forest, and just before a demon-infested suit of mechanized armor known as a Sentinel can attack, two new NPCs appear to save us: Strife and Irelin. Harding recognizes them, something Dragon Age comic readers might know about. They’re experts in ancient elven magic and part of the new Veil Jumpers faction. The ensuing cutscene, where we learn Strife and Irelin need help finding someone named Bellara Lutara, is long, with multiple dialogue options. That’s something I’m noticing with Veilguard, too - there’s a heavy emphasis on storytelling and dialogue, and it feels deep and meaty, like a good fantasy novel. BioWare doesn’t shy away from minutes-long cutscenes.

Busche says that’s intentional, too. “For Rook, [this story’s about] what does it meant to be a leader,” she says. “You’re defining their leadership style with your choices.” Knowing that Rook is the leader of the Veilguard, I’m excited to see how far this goes. From the sound of it, my team will react to my chosen leadership style in how my relationships play out. That’s demonstrated within the game’s dialogue and a special relationship meter on each companion’s character screen.

Redefining Combat Once More

Bellara is deep within Arlathan Forest, and following the prolgoue’s events, something is up here. Three rings of massive rocks fly through the air, protecting what appears to be a central fortress. Demon Sentinels plague the surrounding lands, and after loading up a new save, we’re in control of a human mage.

Following the trend of prior Dragon Age games, Veilguard has completed the series’ shift from tactical strategy to real-time action, but fret not: a tactical pause-and-play mechanic returns to satiate fans who remember the series’ origins (pun intended). Though I got a taste of combat in the prologue, Veilguard’s drastic departure from all that came before it is even more apparent here.

Busche says player complete every swing in real-time, with special care taken to animation swing-through and canceling. There's a dash, a parry, the ability to charge moves, and a completely revamped healing system that allows you to use potions at your discretion by hitting right on the d-pad. You can combo attacks and even “bookmark” combos with a quick dash, which means you can pause a combo’s status with a dash to safety and continue the rest of the combo afterward. It looks even cooler than it sounds.

Like any good action game, there is a handful of abilities to customize your kit. And, if you want to maintain that real-time action feel, you can use them on the fly, so long as you take cooldowns into effect. But Veilguard’s pause-and-play gameplay mechanic, similar to Inquisition’s without the floating camera view, lets you bring things to halt for a healthy but optional dose of strategy.

In this screen, which essentially pauses the camera and pulls up a flashy combat wheel that highlights you and your companions’ skills, you can choose abilities, queue them up, and strategize with synergies and combos, all while targeting specific enemies. Do what you need to here, let go of the combat wheel, and watch your selections play out. Busche says she uses the combat wheel to dole out her companions’ attacks and abilities while sticking to the real-time action for her player-controlled Rook. On the other hand, Epler says he almost exclusively uses the combat wheel to dish out every ability and combo.

Busche says each character will play the same, in that you execute light and heavy attacks with hte same buttons, use abilities with the same buttons, and interact with the combo wheel in the same way, regardless of which class you select. But a sword-and-shield warrior, like we used in the prolgoue, can hip-fire or aim their shield to throw it like Captain America, whereas our human mage uses that same button to throw out magical ranged attacks. The warrior can parry incoming attacks, which can stagger enemies. The rogue gets a larger parry window. Our mage, however, can’t parry at all. Instead, they throw up a shield that blocks incoming attacks automatically so long as you have the mana to sustain it.

“What I see from Veilguard is a game that finally bridges the gap,” former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in 2021 before joining the Veilguard team last year as a consultant, tells me. “Uncharitably, previous Dragon Age games got to the realm of ‘combat wasn’t too bad.’ In this game, the combat’s actually fun, but it does keep that thread that’s always been there. You have the focus on Rook, on your character, but still have that control and character coming into the combat experience from the other people in the party.”

“This is really the best Dragon Age game that I’ve ever played,” he adds, noting his bias. “This is the one where we get back to our roots of character-driven storytelling, have really fun combat, and aren’t making compromises.”

Watching Busche take down sentinels and legions of darkspawn on-screen, I can already sense Veilguard’s combat will likely end up my favorite in the series, although admittedly, as a fan of action games, I’m an easy sell here. It’s flashy, quick, and thanks to different types of health bars, like a greenish-blue one that represents barrier and is taken down most effectively with ranged attacks, a decent amount of strategy, even if you don’t use the pause-and-play combo wheel. Like the rest of the game, too, it’s gorgeous, with sprinkles, droplets, and splashes of magic in each attack our mage unleashes. Though I’m seeing the game run on a powerful PC, which is sure to be the best showcase of Veilguard, Epler tells me the game looks amazing on consoles - he’s been playing it on PlayStation 5 and enjoying it in both its fidelity and performance modes, but I’ll have to take his word for it.

Pressing Start

The start or pause screen is as important to a good RPG as the game outside the menus. Veilguard’s contains your map, journal, character sheets, skill tree, and a library for lore information. You can cross-compare equipment and equip new gear here for Rook and your companions, build weapon loadouts for quick change-ups mid-combat, and customize you and your party’s abilities and builds via an easy-to-understand skill tree. You won’t find minutiae here, “just real numbers,” Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that’s as in-depth as the numbers get. Passive abilities unlock jump attacks and guarantee critical hit opportunities, while abilities add moves like a Wall of Fire to your arsenal (if you’re a mage). As you spec out this skill tree, which is 100 percent bespoke to each class, you’ll work closer to unlocking a specialization, of which there are three for each class, complete with a unique ultimate ability. Busche says BioWare’s philosophy here is “about changing the way you play, not statistical minutiae.”

Companion Customization

You can advance your bonds by helping companions on their own personal quests and by including them in your party for main quests. Every Relationship Level you rank up, shown on their character sheet, nets you a skill point to spend on them. Busche says the choices you make, what you say to companions, how you help them, and more all matter to their development as characters and party members. And with seven companions, there’s plenty to customize, from bespoke gear to abilities and more. Though each companion has access to five abilities, you can only take three into combat, so it’s important to strategize different combos and synergies within your party. Rhodes says beyond  this kind of customizable characterization, each companion has issues, problems, and personal quests to complete. “Bellara has her own story arc that runs parallel to and informs the story path you’re on,” Rhodes says.

In Entropy’s Grasp

As we progress through the forest and the current “In Entropy’s Grasp” mission, we finally find Bellara. She’s a veil jumper, the first companion you meet and recruit in-game (unlike Neve, who automatically joins), and the centerpiece of this issue’s cover image. Because our mage’s background is Veil Jumper, we get some unique dialogue. Bellara explains we’re all trapped in a Veil Bubble, and there’s no way out once you pass through it. Despite the dire situation, Bellara is bubbly, witty, and charming.

“When designing companions, they’re the load-bearing pillars for everything,” Rhodes says. “They’re the face of their faction, and in this case [with Bellara], their entire area of the world. She’s your window into Arlathan Forest.” Rhodes describes her as a sweetheart and nerd for ancient elven artifacts. As such ,she’s dressed more like an academic than a combat expert, although her special arm gauntlet is useful both for tinkering with her environment and taking down enemies.

Unlike Neve, who uses ice magic like our Rook and can slow down time with a special ability, Bellara specializes in electricity, and she can also use magic to heal you, something Busche says Dragon Age fans have been desperate to have in a game. Busche says if you don’t direct Neve and Bellara, they’re fully independent and will attack on their own. But synergizing your team will add to the fun and strategy of combat. Bellara’s electric magic is effective against Sentinels, which is great because we currently only have access to ice. However, without Bellara, we could also equip a rune that converts my ice magic, for a brief duration, into electricity to counter the Sentinels.

As we progress through Arlathan Forest, we encounter more and more darkspawn. Bellara mentions the darkspawn have never been this far before because the underground Deep Roads, where they usually escape from, aren’t nearby. However, with blighted Elven gods roaming the world, and thanks to Blight’s radiation-like spread, it’s a much bigger threat in Veilguard than in any Dragon Age before it.

I continue to soak in the visuals of Veilguard with Arlathan Forest’s elven ruins, dense greenery, and disgusting Blight tentacles and pustules; it’s perhaps the most impressive aspect of my time seeing the game, although everything else is making a strong impression, too. I am frustrated about having to watch the game rather than play it, to be honest. I’m in love with the art style, which is more high fantasy than anything in the series thus far and almost reminiscent of the whimsy of Fable, a welcome reprieve from the recent gritty Game of Thrones trend in fantasy games. Rhodes says that’s the result of the game’s newfound dose of magic.

“The use of magic has been an evolution as the series has gone on,” he says. “It’s something we’ve been planning for a while because Solas has been planning all this for a while. In the past, you could hint at cooler magical things in the corner because you couldn’t actually go there, but now we actually can, and it’s fun to showcase that.”

Busche, Epler, and Rhodes warn me that Arlathan Forest’s whimsy will starkly contrast to other areas. They promise some grim locations and even grimmer story moments because, without that contrast, everything falls flat. Busche likens it to a “thread of optimism” pulled through otherworldly chaos ravaging Thedas. For now, the spunky and effervescent Bellara is that thread.

As we progress deeper into the forest, Bellara spots a floating fortress and thinks the artifact needed to destroy the Veil Bubble is in there. To reach it, though, wem ust remove the floating rock rings, and Bellara’s unique ability, Tinker, can do just that by interacting with a piece of ancient elven technology nearby. Busche says Rook can acquire abilities like Tinker later to complete such tasks in instances where Bellara, for example, isn’t in the party.

Bellara must activate three of these in Arlathan Forest to reach the floating castle, and each one we activate brings forth a slew of sentinels, demons, and darkspawn to defeat. Busche does so with ease, showcasing high-level gameplay by adding three stacks of arcane build-up to create an Arcane Bomb on an enemy, which does devastating damage after being hit by a heavy attack. Now, she begins charging a heavy attack on her magical staff, then switches to magical daggers in a second loadout accessed with a quick tap of down on the d-pad to unleash some quick attacks, then back to the staff to charge it some more and unleash a heavy attack.

After a few more combat encounters, including one against a sentinel that’s “Frenzied,” which means it hits harder, moves faster, and has more health, we finally reach the center of the temple. Within is a particular artifact known as the Nadas Dirthalen, which Bellara says means “the inevitability of knowledge.” Before we can advance with it, a darkspawn Ogre boss attacks. It hits hard, has plenty of unblockable, red-coded attacks, and a massive shield we must take down first. However, it’s weak to fire, and our new fire staff is perfect for the situation.

After taking down this boss in a climactic arena fight, Bellara uses a special crystal to power the artifact and remove it from a pedestal, destroying the Veil Bubble. Then, the Nadas Dirthalen comes alive as an Archive Spirit, but because the crystal used to power it breaks, we learn little about this spirit before it disappears. Fortunately, Bellara thinks she can fix it - fixing broken stuff is kind of her thing, Epler says - so the group heads back to the Veil Jumper camp and, as interested as I am in learning what happens next, the demo ends. It’s clear that even after a few hours with the game’s opening, I’ve seen a nigh negligible amount of game; frustrating but equally as exciting.

Don’t Call It An Open World

Veilguard is not an open world, even if some of its explorable areas might fee like one. Gamble describes Veilguard’s Thedas as a hub-and-spoke design where “the needs of the story are served by the level design.” A version of Inquisition’s Crossroads, a network of teleporting Eluvians, returns, and it’s how players will traverse across northern Thedas. Instead of a connected open world, players will travel from Eluvian to Eluvian to different stretches of this part of the continent. This allows BioWare to go from places like Minrathous to tropical beaches to Arlathan Forest to grim and gothic areas and elsewhere. Some of these areas are larger and full of secrets and treasures. Others are smaller and more focused on linear storytelling. Arlathan Forest is an example of this, but there are still optional paths and offshoots to explore for loot, healing potion refreshes, and other things. There’s a minimap in each location, though linear levels like “In Entropy’s Grasp” won’t have the fog of war that disappears as you explore like some of Veilguard’s bigger locations. Regardless, BioWare says Veilguard has the largest number of diverse biomes in series history.

Dragon’s Delight

With a 10-hour day at BioWare behind me after hours of demo gameplay and interviews with the leads, I’m acutely aware of my favorite part of video games: the surprises. I dabbled with Origins and II and put nearly 50 hours into Inquisition, but any familiarity with the series the latter gave me had long since subsided over the past decade. I wanted to be excited about the next Dragon Age as I viewed each teaser and trailer, but other than seeing the words “Dragon Age,” I felt little. Without gameplay, without a proper look at the actual game we’ll all be playing this fall, I struggled to remember why Inquisition sucked me in 10 years ago.

This trip reminded me.

Dragon Age, much like the Thedas of Veilguard, lives in the uncertainty: The turbulence of BioWare’s recent release history and the lessons learned from it, the drastic changes to each Dragon Age’s combat, the mystery of its narrative, and the implications of its lore. It’s all a part of the wider Dragon Age story and why this studio keeps returning to this world. It’s been a fertile franchise for experimentation. While Veilguard is attempting to branch out in unique ways, it feels less like new soil and more like the harvest BioWare has been trying to cultivate since 2009, and I’m surprised by that.

I’m additionally surprised, in retrospect, how numb I’ve been to the game before this. I’m surprised by BioWare’s command over EA’s notoriously difficult Frostbite engine to create its prettiest game yet. I’m surprised by this series’ 15-year transition from tactical strategy to action-forward combat. I’m surprised by how much narrative thought the team has poured into these characters, even for BioWare. Perhaps having no expectations will do that to you. But most of all, with proper acknowledgement that I reserve additional judgment until I actually play the game, I’m surprised that Veilguard might just be the RPG I’m looking forward to most this year.

[madslasher88]

Thing I would very much like to see in Veilguard, even if it's probably a bit controversial, given people's dislike of Mass Effect: Andromeda:

You know how in Andromeda, if you picked the default name, your character actually got called by their first name in some scenes? And if you didn't, it wasn't really a big deal, because they just got called by either their surname or their title, like in every other Bioware game? I WANT THAT for Veilguard. I doubt it will happen, because it would require too many variations of voiced lines, given that there are going to be multiple possible default names, but still... It was SO nice hearing the character you're romancing actually call your character by their name, rather than just their last name, or worse, their TITLE, especially in more intimate scenes.

It would just be nice, is all I'm saying.

[moltensmusings]

Okay heavy spoilers as I talk about final thoughts in regards to veilguard now that I've completed my initial run.

Under the cut because it's long:

I think it is the best dragon age game and while that may be controversial let me explain.

It takes the best parts of each game for me and compiles. Similarly it felt like it took inspiration from Mass effect 2 and 3 in tone and outcome, however the endings we get for Veilguard leave me a lot more satisfied than they did with 3.

I think it's devastating that you can't come out of the game with all 7 companions. That Harding or Davrin has to die. But I also can acknowledge that this outcome is one that made the ending and messaging work. It made the threat of facing gods feel much more realistic and added importance to the decision to work through the game to get the best outcome.

I love all the companions and their interpersonal relationships. How so often in the game you get to resolve differences and mediate and we get to see how rooks words effect things. I loved each companion getting their own room that changed over the story and the devs choosing to have them move around the lighthouse for interactions which isn't something done in previous dragon age games but was something they did in Andromeda that I liked.

The decision to have companion quests be a constant appearing thing over the game is also great. It really helped me get a feel for the characters and enjoy them more.

Surprisingly I don't actually mind the change from 3 to 2 companions on a quest. Banter felt like it happened so much more and not having to focus on healing them made it so that I could still enjoy their conversations while running around.

The outfits and visuals were great and Rook felt like the most full of life main character we'd gotten because of how smooth the animations and lighting was for them.

The environments in inquisition were my favorite in any DA game until this one. I loved how lived in the cities felt. The maps were large and great for exploring which meant one of the things I liked about inquisition carried over without it feeling overwhelming for other players.

This was the first time I actually cried playing a bioware game. Varric's death, coupled with the loss of a companion, actually got to me. And they let you sit with it. You get to say goodbye to Varric. You get to see him off.

Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nan felt like terrifying and compelling villains. Incredibly memorable especially after Corypheus. All the while pairing it with the tense dynamic between Rook and Solas it fully left me wanting to rush through the story to see more of them. It's so clear care and thought was put into designing the main antagonists of the game and I'm appreciative of it.

I'm eager for the next game. Wanting to see how things will connect with the new big antagonist and who our protagonist will be. They have big shoes to follow once again but I have faith.

With that said, I want to add some notes on things I wish had been included. I say these with the understanding of why so much of it wasn't/asking everyone to be aware I still enjoyed and intend to replay the game.

While I fully think the choice they went with made the story more compelling, the "well drinking" not mattering at all is a bit disappointing. I get why they removed it but if inquisition ever got remade/remastered I hope they just remove the option if it didn't matter.

I wish more inquisition choices got carried over because I would've loved to see inquisitor show up with everyone left in the innercircle to assist rook. They wouldn't be in the main battle but more just them getting a side appearance before the final fight starts. Maybe if we got a party scene they'd show up then.

Same note: the person left in the fade never being brought up/us never getting Isabela talking about Varric or any of the da2 companions showing up before we say goodbye to him makes me a bit sad. We'll never see the kirkwall gang together ever again and it hurts.

The romance scenes felt very few and far between. We had a few flirt options and a small handful of proper romance scenes so (at least for Taash) I just didn't get as invested in it as I do for other da games. I wish there were a few more.

All in all: I would recommend this game to people. I'm an andromeda and Inquisition enjoyed which I know is controversial in the fandom, but I feel like this one is actually a game I could see a lot of people liking.

I wish we had a celebration party scene for the characters. Lucanis mentions it to Bellara while fighting to get to Elgar'nan and I was so excited only for it to not happen.

[flowerandthesongstress]

hi here's some youtube video essays and such

The Ouroboros of Grief

Esperanto Explained

TomSka's guide to Plagiarism (the Somerton Scale)

David Foster Wallace and the Problem with Irony

An introduction to Semiotics

Ghosts of Mark Fisher: Hauntology, Lost Futures, and Depression

The true and incredible story of Merkel's favorite song and its singer

Planned Obsolescence Will Kill Us All

The Rule of Three

How you all we all became the Big Brother

The art of Semantics

Bo Burnham, Arcade Fire, and the infinite dread of the internet

Actually properly analyzing ‘Inside’ by Bo Burnham

The fictional vampire has always been sexy

Peter Singer and the most controversial ethics paper ever

How the internet kills your creativity (and what to do about it)

Movie monologues that changed my entire worldview

Wings of Desire — the epic of peace

My cluster b parent died and I felt nothing much

Why Bonnie and Clyde is Hollywood’s most revolutionary film

Paterson: embracing the poetry of the Everyday

Melancholia: depression on film

The gift of letting go and Ted Lasso

Fighting cosmic horror with charts and graphs

Poker Face: more than just an homage to Columbo

White Oleander: toxic beauty and narcissistic mothers

An ardent, unironic defense of Edward Cullen

A beginner’s guide to Soviet animated cinema

Dream Scenario — Kristoffer Borgli & the Dream Machine

How to think about your narcissistic parent

The politics of ‘Parks and Rec’

The Lincoln Highway: across America on the first transcontinental motor route

Elden Ring and the Art of Knowing Less

Explaining Europe to Americans

An avoidable disaster: the tragedy of Mass Effect Andromeda

Scrubs: My Retrospective

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas is Beautiful

okay bye

[ferusaurelius]

Mass Effect Universe Meta - 1

I suppose I should call this ‘mass effect critical’ but it’s really more a meditation on the questions that the series poses and the ones it chooses to ignore ... with a focus on ‘choice-based’ narrative, character-driven storylines, and geopolitical philosophy. 

If any of the above annoys you, I’d recommend not hitting the read more. This’ll probably be the first part of a series. xD

This first one is just a meditation on the choice-based narrative implementation in ME as a series. 

I’m sure I’m not saying anything someone else hasn’t already covered, in fairness, probably better or more extensively than I’m doing here ... but this is kinda where I have to begin in order to tackle my other themes.

If you just get annoyed by this sort of navel-gazing, probably best not to proceed past the cut. I’ll totally understand!

So You Want Choice-Based Story In Your AAA-Shooter

Starting with the above: much ink has been spilled on the way that gameplay implicates and frames morality. Back in the day, Mass Effect (2007) on release was stirring up controversy because it let players choose a lesbian relationship with Liara! We’ve come a long way since then. 

In some respects, Mass Effect is a product of its time and also another milestone in BioWare’s narrative portfolio. Which, before Mass Effect, included other games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Worth noting is that BioWare as a development house has refined its use of morality systems and mechanics over time! We’ve seen everything from lightside/darkside sliders, to paragon/renegade, to the innovation of ‘party approval’ ratings in the Dragon Age franchise. Of note is that once BioWare establishes a canon morality or choice-rating system, those mechanics tend to remain in place or consistent throughout a particular world.

There’s a notable (and expected) departure in Mass Effect: Andromeda because the writers felt like the Paragon/Renegade system was too tied to Commander Shepard, specifically, to be used as a basis for Ryder.

What makes these game narratives so engaging from a player viewpoint will also be necessarily limited by the under-the-hood mechanics of the systems and how they are capable of responding to the player. Without a set of key markers to help the game function and implement narrative choices, and without a highly-structured narrative framework that can accommodate or reflect those choices on-screen in ways that are emotionally resonant, we get ... whatever happened with Starchild.

... but we didn’t get there all at once.

Mass Effect 1: Cosmic Horrors and You

At a very high-level read, Mass Effect 1 sets the scene for the rest of the trilogy to follow and makes very clear the stakes and the plot-related questions it’s going to tackle. In the first five minutes of the game we’re confronted with eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, the return of the geth, AND Saren Arterius killing his friend, Nihlus Kryik!

I kinda knew right about then that the game was not going to be tackling plot questions (and cultures) in ways that were interesting to me, since if they were going to do that ... it would have made more sense for Nihlus to live. I have been (politely, affectionately) boo-boo-the-clown ever since.

While I still loved the aspects of universe exploration and getting to know my human and non-human crewmembers (Ashley, Kaidan, Wrex, Tali, Garrus, and Liara), the shocking moments of Virmire where you -- and I’m pretty sure this isn’t a spoiler at this point -- have to determine who lives and who dies and it’s a scripted loss? 

Narratively powerful because you’ve spent a while getting to know both characters, but problematic from a mechanics standpoint because now you have to maintain a universe that more or less hangs together throughout the game no matter “who” you chose to survive. Death-as-choice becomes a notable proxy in Mass Effect’s storyline for morality and impact.

Mechanically, you’ll also note that a lot of “moral choices” are framed as kill/don’t kill, to various and sundry effects. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the binary choice framework underpinning most of the game’s critical moments.

And rather than be totally critical I’ll just spotlight the one choice I DO remember: with enough paragon points, talking Saren into shooting himself before he gets reanimated as a Reaper abomination.

In fairness, I think it would’ve been nice for that moment not to be gated behind a Paragon points check, since it was a NEAT narrative flourish that I didn’t see structurally repeated in other areas in the game.

As much as I fell in love with the universe, the idea of the Protheans, and what Vigil and Ilos implied about the murky past ... I was less enamored of the Reapers as a universe-ending threat and more intrigued by the internecine conflicts between the various species of the galaxy. Other game-defining options which carried over into ME2 included whether or not to save the Council (cake or death?), who to appoint as humanity’s first Councilor (slightly less death-driven), whether or not to shoot Wrex (also cake or death).

The amount of “save or kill” decisions and the lack of other equivalents (and those that WERE provided being given less narrative weight than the life-or-death elements) clued me in to the design philosophy that what the game and the narrative would most remember about the world state was who was still alive.

On the one hand, the narrative impacts of presence or absence are obvious for the player! We know these decisions are significant. On the other hand, as you’ll see in my description of ME2, this design choice did start to paint the team into a corner.

Mass Effect 2: About That Suicide Mission

Much as I loved the new squadmates for ME2 and the overall pacing of the story, as well as the interim character development for each former squad member, the clue that most of this was going to happen off-screen or not at all was that these developments occurred while Shepard was not present -- conveniently killed by the Collectors.

Again, this was my hint that this story was going to focus on different questions!

Cerberus, who played the role of minor mooks in the first game, were upgraded to a level of influence that would be a conspiracy-theorist’s dream. One of my personal soapbox “dead dove: do not eat” elements is “but the conspiracies were REAL!” So this was honestly my bad.

Favorite moments in this game included getting to know new squad members, reuniting with old characters (including Wrex! and Grunt, who has one of my favorite arcs in the game alongside Garrus). YMMV about which characters and squadmates you connected with the most/least, but we can all agree that The Suicide Mission was Certainly A Choice.

With that said, it’s possible for no-one to survive and to avoid recruiting the new squaddies. Because choices, remember?

Unfortunately this also has the impact of “kill/save” being, once again, the primary impactful narrative game mechanic. 

One can forgive the developers and narrative designers for getting a little tired at this point, because we’re not sure who survived or how much narrative content we’re going to have to adapt to another totally new character in the third act, based on who survives The Suicide Mission. Which does rather put a crimp in the amount of relational development we can presuppose in the third game.

One gets the idea that Liara was the favorite child in part because she is more or less impossible to kill. She will survive all the games no matter what choices you make, unless that choice is getting killed by Harbinger’s laser beam at the very end of ME3 and failing the game.

Small wonder that, in many respects, one of the ways the game develops Liara’s character is actually taking away player choice to avoid having to do an “impactful kill/save” option that would otherwise render her permanently inaccessible to the narrative.

Mass Effect 3: Enter the Starchild

So, what are we to make of the “kill/save” and “presence/absence” dynamic as the most narratively impactful and important? Ironically, these choices have impact only insofar as they determine what resources and relationships your Commander Shepard has access to in the game. The narrative does not so much branch as continue on, with slightly different details, depending on who you saved or recruited.

There will still BE a Tuchanka mission with or without Mordin or Wrex, and you will still conquer the Reaper capital ship alongside Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws (which is a pretty cool moment, let’s be real).

From a narrative design standpoint, these moments are what’s absolutely critical to a functioning storyline -- the character-development bits are secondary, as they must be in a game where the suicide mission can deplete your squad so thoroughly that nobody is left.

I won’t spend too much time on the original choice to lock Javik behind a DLC gate, but that’s another unfortunate choice that limited the baked-in narrative options for the third installment of the game.

Outside of the Commander-Shepard-Driven set pieces on each world, at this point, character relationships were more the icing on the cake than the narrative bedrock, something as a consequence of deciding early in design that killing characters is the clearest way to communicate narrative impact.

However, the other side of this choice, is that killing off characters when you have no narrative attachment to them and no stake in that sacrifice, ends up having progressively less and less impact, even in a AAA-shooter where the whole point is to reduce endless waves of mooks into a fine mist...

... which is where Starchild comes in.

Commander Shepard is locked into a final color-coded narrative choice of who to kill and who to save. That’s the narrative’s way of making sure you know that the choice is important -- because, without that design choice, there’s really no other established way for the game to communicate significance.

Which is a tragedy in and of itself. So many other moments are often significant or meaningful ... and I really think the choice to go with life-and-death as the biggest, baddest, most narratively-supportive element is what essentially painted the team into this final corner.

If You’re So Smart, What Would You Do?

This is easy, since it’s ultimately what BioWare and its narrative designers decided to implement in its next games: party-based approval and relationship systems that operated separately from a Paragon/Renegade personal scale.

Yeah, yeah, a cop-out. I know. Essentially, this is just external evidence that the narrative designers learned from the limitations they encountered in the Mass Effect universe and applied those lessons to their Dragon Age games.

Which again is not to say that I’ve seen concrete evidence of leaning LESS into the “kill/save” dynamic as impactful (remember the Witherfang quest in DA:O?). But it’s the thought that counts!

Branching out to other choices being signaled and framed as impactful is a key to choice-based game design and storytelling being able to incorporate character-driven narrative alongside the raw individual plot.

While this ultimately didn’t happen in Mass Effect, I am interested to see how the mechanics will be implemented in DA4 to detail and interweave other motives and questions into that storyline.

That’s What Fanfiction is For

Watching the canon Mass Effect universe default to “kill/save” decisions as the framing morality structure is pretty much why I write fanfiction designed to fill in and detail out the other blank spaces in background and backstory, and to imagine what other questions might have arisen in a more flexible approach that would not have been possible before the relevant lessons for narrative design were learned in these games.

My motivation as a writer is to expand in areas that were dropped because they wouldn’t make the cut in a AAA-shooter on a protagonist-driven schedule.

For the same reason that narrative significance eluded the final “controversial” ending of the series, I find that there are enough other aspects of character-driven plot and geopolitical philosophy that remain interesting (and implied-if-you-squint by the codex material) to keep me sufficiently occupied for a number of WIP fanfics. ;)

Which, in the end, is more a testament to the strength of the central thesis of the game (what if humanity is the new kid on the block in a galaxy full of advanced alien species?) rather than the questions the narrative ultimately chose to center.

-Ferus, out.

[ziskandra]

Fanfic Author Self-Recs!

@haljathefangirlcat tagged me to rec five of my own fanfics with you all — thank you, friend! 💖 I've tried to go with a variety of different fandoms and have mostly focused on older works. I also purposely haven't recommended any of my Dragon Age works as I feel DA has been occupying a lot of my brain space lately, and I wanted to give some of the spotlight to my other fannish interests! I'm gonna tag @mxanigel, @barbex, @joiningthefandomeightyearslate, @chocochipbiscuit and @fandomn00blr to share five of their works with us (if you so desire!) Without any further ado, I present my self-recs: 1. Retrospect - Mass Effect: Andromeda - Alec Ryder/Ellen Ryder (10k, rated M)

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die and he's about to find out just how right they are.

A series of vignettes exploring Alec Ryder's relationships with his nearest and dearest, and the faltering steps he took to bridge the gaps between them.

Every time any sort of self-recommendation meme comes up, Retrospect is always the first fic that comes to mind. To this day, I still consider it my magnum opus, as I feel it really captures my strengths as an author. Character study of a morally grey, controversial character? Check. Non-linear narrative? Check. Experimental prose? Check. Vignettes? Check. Themes of family and struggling to fit in? Check check. If anyone ever wants to make my entire fucking month, please read this fic and tell me your thoughts on it. You will have my undying gratitude! 💖

2. Grounded - Mass Effect Andromeda - Calvin Kosta/Joelle Kosta (2.2k, rated M)

Calvin remembers the first time he held Liam in his arms. Big baby, nine pounds. His son is an ugly, wrinkly thing and yet also the most beautiful sight in the world. He smooths down the infant’s hair, kisses the soft spot on his head and whispers, “You’re gonna do great things." During the Reaper War, Calvin Kosta reflects on his relationship with his son.

This fic did really well on Tumblr (one of the few times I'd ever gotten over 100 notes on a post), but didn't quite get the same level of traction on AO3, which was quite interesting to me at the time as I'd never had that happen before (or since!) Honestly, it covers a lot of similar themes as Retrospect, but this time focused on Liam's family and how they deal with the Reaper War when they're left behind on Earth. IDK, I'm just obsessed with examining the human drive to live and survive, and what we struggle for, and how both our past experiences and our hopes for the future shape our actions, whether we're willing to admit it to ourselves or not.

3. Best Served Hot - Ace Attorney - Miles Edgeworth/Franziska von Karma (2k, rated E)

Franziska's gloved fingers seized Miles's jaw, digging into the sides of his face. "We were never siblings," she said. "Papa made sure of that. But if I can't best you in any other way, then I will have this."

If Retrospect is my ultimate magnum opus, then Best Served Hot is my franmiles manifesto. It truly is all of my feelings about this complicated and messy relationship dynamic carefully distilled into a fanfic! Anyway, I'm obsessed with the fact that Franziska regularly refers to Miles as her little brother, but Miles never refers to her as his sister.

However, the way that Miles acts with Franziska is SO sibling-like, whereas Franziska's a bit... weirder. She never really had normal familial relationships modeled to her (Miles, on the other hand, at least had something of a normal upbringing before his father's death).

Franziska is also a character who, for lack of a better term, weaponises her femininity. She's so young but she's built this whole aesthetic around tight miniskirts and kitten-heeled boots and carrying and using a fucking bullwhip. So, I 'm particularly fascinated by the cross-section of Franziska's obsession with Miles Edgeworth and her insecurities (and how she over-compensates for them).

Of course, if she stopped to think about it for a minute, she should have realised that Miles Edgeworth is perhaps not the ideal target for her feminine wiles, but Franziska's not exactly known for keeping a cool head in a crisis.

Finally, this fic also explores another point in Franziska's life that I'm fascinated by, which is her reaction to Phoenix Wright's disbarment. Phoenix is the only lawyer who has ever bested her (if she can even admit that much), and I think she would be INFURIATED by the insinuation that he owes his career success to forgery. Franziska von Karma would NOT be bested by a fraud! (And also she would be furious that Klavier Gavin got the chance to do what she's always wanted to do -- that is, defeat Phoenix Wright -- but that's a topic for another fanfic.)

4. Intermission - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Audra Levine/Greg Serrano (2.3k, rated T.)

Recently divorced Audra Levine visits West Covina to provide moral support during her frenemy’s open mic night. Greg has always had a type.

While gregaudra (graudra?) might be something of a random ship, I was really surprised by how well they worked together (although in hindsight, it should have been obvious -- Greg really has a type, huh). I love Audra as a character, and I'm always obsessed with giving her room to grow and move on as a character and determine the shape of her own life, the way she wants, much as Rebecca (and Greg) got to do in the course of the series. (Also, its sequel, Realization, still has one of my favourite lines I think I've ever written: Audra's been busy filing away the parts of her life that don’t spark joy while retaining the parts that do, like she’s Marie Kondo-ing the weight and burden of everyone’s expectations instead of her household possessions.

I so rarely write in contemporary fandoms that it was a fun exercise to write stories where the popculture references actually help ground it in time and place.)

5. Sink or Swim - Harry Potter - Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood (12k, rated T.)

Percy has always struggled to keep his head above water.

(Or: the story of Percy Weasley, from his youth, through to his estrangement with his family, to the end of the war.)

It feels weird to be recommending HP fic in this day and age, but my complicated* feelings towards the fandom aside, I'm still really proud of how this fanfic turned out and how I was able to cram all of my Percy Weasley analysis into a coherent story. I particularly loved delving into how Percy was pushed into positions of responsibility from a young age (and then simultaneously derided for the very same qualities his parents reinforced), and how he struggled with his conflicting desires to fit in but also to succeed and be recognised for his talents and efforts. There's a couple of sentences from the fic which really encapsulate how I see Percy's relationship to his family, which I'll quote here:

In bits and pieces, Percy tells Oliver all about the estrangement to his family: how he’d always gotten along with his dad best growing up, no matter how his mother had doted on him. How when he was younger, he’d wanted nothing more than to be the next Arthur Weasley. How he’d always thought that his dad deserved more.

How it was easier to blame his father’s idiosyncrasies and personality for his family’s struggles with money, than to acknowledge it as a failure of the society he’d been raised in.

How he’d foolishly thought that if he studied enough, worked enough, succeeded enough, he could change it all.

Percy's story really is that of every working-class child who's sought to improve their life (and their family's life) through education and I just... relate to that a lot!!

[sapphim]

@beansprouts replied to your post

as solely a Dragon Age fan these posts are really doing a great job at convincing me not to play Mass Effect lol

oh noooooooo was it the blowing up a planet thing 😅 we're not really supposed to talk about that part

dragon age and mass effect get lumped together as bioware rpg series that came out concurrently with each other and share a lot of design sensibilities, but they really were created with different target audiences in mind and it shows lmao. mass effect is a console shooter aimed first and foremost at the typical gamer audience (cishet men with xboxes), while dragon age is more of a crpg and far more willing to embrace its female and queer player base.

I love mass effect, I think it's a great (if deeply flawed and very controversial) series with great gameplay, great characters and some really great moments. it also has very passionate modders who have done incredibly impressive work to improve it further

in a heartbeat I'd recommend dragon age to mass effect fans who are specifically interested in the character interactions and romances, especially if they're queer. mass effect is a harder sell to the typical dragon age audience because if dragon age's politics are a centrist dystopia, mass effect is a military warcrimes hellscape lmao. it's great. hands down some of my favorite problematic war criminals of all time. but you do have to realize it was competing for attention with every other shooty space marine game on the market ca. 2007-2012.

I'd argue that mass effect andromeda would be the best jumping-in point for dragon age fans wanting to explore the series, as it's less gruff military, the protags are optimistic and cute and dorky, and it still has some top notch characters on par with the trilogy. it got absolutely thrashed on release but I think it's got the best "mass effect" vibes of any sequel in the series. ME2 & 3 didn't spark that same sense of wonder that exploring the universe at the start of mass effect did, but MEA hit those vibes again for me just like old times. just my two cents!

[gulyas069]

controversial gaming opinion but Mass Effect: Andromeda was a fun, even if not special, space opera and if it saw another half year of development it would've been great. a large part of the criticism of the writing of the game stems from comparing the writing of a single game to that of a whole trilogy.

[vault81]

i think my most controversial mass effect opinion is Andromeda wasn't as bad as people thought it was, it definitely had issues but nothing that wasn't impossible to fix.

[acealistair]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard GameInformer Article Transcribed SPOILER-FREE

I've gone ahead and transcribed the GameInformer article about DA:TV for those who can't read it from screenshots/on GameInformer for whatever reason. This version specifically is the PLOT-SPOILER-FREE version! I've removed all references to the main storyline of the game (even those revealed in the gameplay footage already released, just to be sure) to mostly focus on mechanics and the author's general impressions of the game. It does still include some references to companions and their personalities/mechanic abilities, as well as a couple locations that we're already confirmed to be visiting. However, further details on specific locations are hidden.

As mentioned in my full version of the article, I've transcribed it as accurately as I could, which means including typos, grammar mistakes, improper capitalization, etc.

Throughout my research and preparation for a trip to BioWare’s Edmonton, Canada, office for this cover story, I kept returning to the idea that its next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (formerly subtitled Dreadwolf) is releasing at a critical moment for the storied developer. The previous installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, hit PlayStation, Xbox, and PC a decade ago. It was the win BioWare needed, following the 2012 release of Mass Effect 3 with its highly controversial and (for many) disappointing ending. Inquisition launched two years later, in 2014, to rave reviews and, eventually, various Game of the Year awards, almost as if a reminder of what the studio was capable of.

Now, in 2024, coincidentally, the next Dragon Age finds itself in a similar position. BioWare attempted a soft reboot of Mass Effect with Andromeda in 2017, largely seen as a letdown among the community, and saw its first live-service multiplayer attempt in 2019’s Anthem flounder in the tricky waters of the genre; it aimed for a No Man’s Sky-like turnaround with Anthem Next, but that rework was canceled in 2021. Like its predecessor, BioWare’s next Dragon Age installment is not only a new release in a beloved franchise, but is another launch with the pressure of BioWare’s prior misses; a game fans hope will remind them the old BioWare is still alive today.

“Having been in this industry for 25 years, you see hits and misses, and it’s all about building off of those hits and learning from those misses,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay, who’s been with the studio since January 2020, tells me.

As McKay gives me a tour of the office, I can’t help but notice how much Anthem is scattered around it. More than Mass Effect, more than Dragon Age, there’s a lot of Anthem - posters, real-life replicas of its various Javelins, wallpaper, and more. Recent BioWare news stories tell of leads and longtime studio veterans laid off and others departing voluntarily. Veilguard’s development practically began with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When I ask McKay about the tumultuousness of BioWare and how he, as the studio manager, makes the team feel safe in the product it’s developing, he says it’s about centering on the creative vision. “[When] we have that relentless pursuit for quality, and we have passion and people in the right roles, a lot of the other stuff you’re talking about just fades into the background.”

That’s a sentiment echoed throughout the team I speak to: Focus on what makes a BioWare game great and let Veilguard speak for itself. Though I had no expectations going in - it’s been 10 years since the last Drag Age, after all, and BioWare has been cagey about showing this game publicly - my expectations have been surpassed. This return to Thedas, the singular continent of the franchise, feels like both a warm welcome for returning fans and an impressive entry point for first-time players.

New Age, New Name

At the start of each interview, I address a dragon-sized elephant in the room with the game’s leads. What was Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Why?

“These games are reflections of the teams that make them, and as part of that, it means we learn a lot about what the heart and soul of the game really is as we’re developing it,” Veilguard game director Corinne Busche tells me. “We quickly learned and realized that the absolute beating heart of this game is these authentic, diverse companions. And when we took a step back, as we always do, we always check our decisions and make sure they still represent the game we’re trying to build.”

Dreadwolf no longer did that, but each member of BioWare I speak to tells me The Veilguard does. And while I was initially abrasive to the change - lore aside, Dreadwolf is simply a cool name - I warmed up to The Veilguard.

Solas, a Loki-esque trickster member of the Elven pantheon of gods known as the Dread Wolf, created the Veil long ago while attempting to free the elves from their slave-like status in Thedas. This Veil is a barrier between the magical Fade and Thedas, banishing Elven gods and removing Elven immortality from the world. But players didn’t know that in Inquisition, where he is introduced as a mage ally and companion. However, at the end of Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, which sets the stage for Veilguard, we learn in a shocking twist that Solas wants to destroy the Veil and restore Elves to their former glory. However, doing so would bring chaos to Thedas, and those who call it home, the people who eventually become The Veilguard, want to stop him.

“There’s an analogy I like to use, which is, ‘If you want to carve an elephant out of marble, you just take a piece of marble and remove everything that doesn’t look like an elephant,’” Veilguard creative director John Epler says. “As we were building this game, it became really clear that it was less that we were trying to make The Veilguard and more like The Veilguard was taking shape as we built the game. Solas is still a central figure in it. He’s still a significant character. But really, the focus shifts to the team.

“[We] realized Dreadwolf suggests a title focused on a specific individual, whereas The Veilguard, much like Inquisition, focuses more on the team.”

Creating Your Rook

Veilguard’s character creator is staggeringly rich, with a dizzying number of customizable options. Busche tells me that inclusivity is at the heart of it, noting that she believes everyone can create someone who represents them on-screen.

There are four races to choose from when customizing Rook, the new playable lead - Elves, Qunari, Humans, and Dwarves - and hundreds of options to customize your character beyond that. You can select pronouns separately from gender and adjust physical characteristics like height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how crooked your nose is, and so much more. There must be hundreds of sliders to customize these body proportions and features like skin hue, tone, melanin, and just about anything else you might adjust on a character. Oh, and there’s nudity in Veilguard, too, which I learn firsthand while customizing my Rook.

“The technology has finally caught up to our ambition,” Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes tells me as we decide on my warrior-class Qunari’s backstory, which affects faction allegiance, in-game dialogue, and reputation standing - we choose the pirate-themed Lords of Fortune.

Notably, instead of a warrior class, we could have chosen mage or rogue. All three classes have unique specializations, bespoke skill trees, and special armors, too. And though our Rook is aligned with the Lords of Fortune faction, there are others to choose from including the Grey Wardens, Shadow Dragons, The Mourn Watch, and more. There is some flexibility in playstyle thanks to specializations, but your class largely determines the kind of actions you can perform in combat.

[SPOILER]

Beyond the on-paper greatness of this character creator, its customizability speaks to something repeated throughout my BioWare visit: Veilguard is a single-player, story-driven RPG. Or in other words, the type of game that made BioWare as storied as it is. McKay tells me the team explored a multiplayer concept early in development before scratching it to get back to BioWare basics. The final game will feature zero multiplayer and no microtransactions.

Happy to hear that, I pick our first and last name, then one of four voices, with a pitch shifter for each, too, and we’re off to Minrathous.

Exploring Tevinter For The First Time

Throughout the Dragon Age series, parts of Thedas are discussed by characters and referenced by lore material but left to the imagination of players as they can’t visit them. Veilguard immediately eschews this, setting its opening prologue mission in Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Empire. Frankly, I’m blown away by how good it looks. It’s my first time seeing Veilguard in action and my first look at a Dragon Age game in nearly a decade. Time has treated this series well, and so has technology.

Epler, who’s coming up on 17 years at BioWare, acknowledges that the franchise has always been at the will of its engine. Dragon Age: Origins and II’s Eclipse Engine worked well for the time, but today, they show their age. Inquisition was BioWare’s first go at EA’s proprietary Frostbite engine - mind you, an engine designed for first-person shooters and decidedly not multi-character RPGs - and the team struggled there, too. Epler and Busche agree Veilguard is the first RPG where BioWare feels fully in command of Frostbite and, more generally, its vision for this world.

[SPOILER] The first thing players will do once Veilguard begins is select a dialogue option, something the team says speaks to their vision of a story-forward, choice-driven adventure. After [SPOILER], there’s another dialogue choice, and different symbols here indicate the type of tone you can roll with. There’s a friendly, snarky, and rough-and-tough direct choice, and I later learn of a more romantically inclined “emotional” response. These are the replies that will build relationships with characters, romantic and platonic alike, but you’re welcome to ignore this option. However, your companions can romance each other, so giving someone the cold shoulder might nudge them into the warm embrace of another. [SPOILER]

Rhodes explains BioWare’s philosophy for designing this city harkens back to a quick dialogue from Inquisition’s Dorian Pavus. Upon entering Halamshiral’s Winter Palace, the largest venue in Dragon Age history at that point, Dorian notes that it’s cute, adorable even, alluding to his Tevinter heritage. If Dorian thinks the largest venue in Dragon Age history is cute and adorable, what must the place he’s from be like? “It’s like this,” Rhodes says as we enter Minrathous proper in-game.

Minrathous is huge, painted in magical insignia that looks like cyberpunk-inspired neon city signs and brimming with detail. Knowing it’s a city run by mages and built entirely upon magic, Rhodes says the team let its imagination run wild. The result is the most stunning and unique city in the series. [SPOILER] Busche says BioWare used Veilguard’s character creator to make each in-world NPC except for specific characters like recruitable companions. [The level utilizes] a smart use of verticality, scaling, and wayfinding to push us toward the main attraction: [SPOILER].

[SPOILER] Something I appreciate throughout our short journey through Minrathous is the cinematography at play. As a Qunari, my character stands tall, and Rhodes says the camera adjusts to ensure larger characters loom over those below. On the flip side, the camera adjusts for dwarves to demonstrate their smaller stature compared to those around them.

This, coupled with movie-liked movement through the city [SPOILER] creates a cinematic start that excited me, and I’m not even hands-on with the game.

[SPOILER]

Here, we encounter a dozen or so demons, which BioWare has fully redesigned on the original premise of these monstrous creatures. Rhodes says they’re creatures of feeling and live and die off the emotions around them. As such, they are just a floating nervous system, pushed into this world from the Fade, rapidly assembled into bodies out of whatever scraps they find.

[SPOILER]

The Veilguard Who’s Who

While we learned a lot about returning character but first-time companion Lace Harding, ice mage private detective Neve Gallus, and veil jumper Bellara Lutara, BioWare shared some additional details about other companions Rook will meet later in the game. Davrin is a charming Grey Warden who is also an excellent monster hunter; Emmrich is a member of Nevarra’s Mourn Watch and a necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred; Lucanis is a pragmatic assassin whose bloodline descends from the criminal House of Crows organization; And Taash is a dragon hunter allied with the piratic Lords of Fortune. All seven of these characters adorn this Game Informer issue, with Bellara up front and center in the spotlight.

The Lighthouse

[SPOILER] Epler says, much like Skyhold in Inquisition, the Lighthouse is where your team bonds, grows, and prepares for its adventures throughout the campaign. It also becomes more functional and homier as you do. Already, though, it’s a beautifully distraught headquarters for the Veilguard.

[SPOILER] I see a clock symbol over a dialogue icon in the distance, which signals an optional dialogue option. We head there, talk to Neve, select a response to try our hand at flirting, and then head to the dining hall.

[SPOILER] From the dining hall, we gather the not-quite-Veilguard in the library, which Busche says in the central area of the Lighthouse and where your party will often regroup and prepare for what’s next. [SPOILERS] Busche says I’m missing unique dialogue options here because I’m Qunari; an Elf would have more to say about [SPOILER]. The same goes for my backstory earlier in Minrathous. [SPOILER]

[SPOILER] The ensuing cutscene, where we learn [SPOILER], is long, with multiple dialogue options. That’s something I’m noticing with Veilguard, too - there’s a heavy emphasis on storytelling and dialogue, and it feels deep and meaty, like a good fantasy novel. BioWare doesn’t shy away from minutes-long cutscenes.

Busche says that’s intentional, too. [SPOILER] “You’re defining [Rook's] leadership style with your choices.” Knowing that Rook is the leader of the Veilguard, I’m excited to see how far this goes. From the sound of it, my team will react to my chosen leadership style in how my relationships play out. That’s demonstrated within the game’s dialogue and a special relationship meter on each companion’s character screen.

Redefining Combat Once More

[SPOILER] After loading up a new save, we’re in control of a human mage.

Following the trend of prior Dragon Age games, Veilguard has completed the series’ shift from tactical strategy to real-time action, but fret not: a tactical pause-and-play mechanic returns to satiate fans who remember the series’ origins (pun intended). Though I got a taste of combat in the prologue, Veilguard’s drastic departure from all that came before it is even more apparent here.

Busche says player complete every swing in real-time, with special care taken to animation swing-through and canceling. There's a dash, a parry, the ability to charge moves, and a completely revamped healing system that allows you to use potions at your discretion by hitting right on the d-pad. You can combo attacks and even “bookmark” combos with a quick dash, which means you can pause a combo’s status with a dash to safety and continue the rest of the combo afterward. It looks even cooler than it sounds.

Like any good action game, there is a handful of abilities to customize your kit. And, if you want to maintain that real-time action feel, you can use them on the fly, so long as you take cooldowns into effect. But Veilguard’s pause-and-play gameplay mechanic, similar to Inquisition’s without the floating camera view, lets you bring things to halt for a healthy but optional dose of strategy.

In this screen, which essentially pauses the camera and pulls up a flashy combat wheel that highlights you and your companions’ skills, you can choose abilities, queue them up, and strategize with synergies and combos, all while targeting specific enemies. Do what you need to here, let go of the combat wheel, and watch your selections play out. Busche says she uses the combat wheel to dole out her companions’ attacks and abilities while sticking to the real-time action for her player-controlled Rook. On the other hand, Epler says he almost exclusively uses the combat wheel to dish out every ability and combo.

Busche says each character will play the same, in that you execute light and heavy attacks with hte same buttons, use abilities with the same buttons, and interact with the combo wheel in the same way, regardless of which class you select. But a sword-and-shield warrior, like we used in the prolgoue, can hip-fire or aim their shield to throw it like Captain America, whereas our human mage uses that same button to throw out magical ranged attacks. The warrior can parry incoming attacks, which can stagger enemies. The rogue gets a larger parry window. Our mage, however, can’t parry at all. Instead, they throw up a shield that blocks incoming attacks automatically so long as you have the mana to sustain it.

“What I see from Veilguard is a game that finally bridges the gap,” former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in 2021 before joining the Veilguard team last year as a consultant, tells me. “Uncharitably, previous Dragon Age games got to the realm of ‘combat wasn’t too bad.’ In this game, the combat’s actually fun, but it does keep that thread that’s always been there. You have the focus on Rook, on your character, but still have that control and character coming into the combat experience from the other people in the party.”

“This is really the best Dragon Age game that I’ve ever played,” he adds, noting his bias. “This is the one where we get back to our roots of character-driven storytelling, have really fun combat, and aren’t making compromises.”

Watching Busche take down [SPOILER], I can already sense Veilguard’s combat will likely end up my favorite in the series, although admittedly, as a fan of action games, I’m an easy sell here. It’s flashy, quick, and thanks to different types of health bars, like a greenish-blue one that represents barrier and is taken down most effectively with ranged attacks, a decent amount of strategy, even if you don’t use the pause-and-play combo wheel. Like the rest of the game, too, it’s gorgeous, with sprinkles, droplets, and splashes of magic in each attack our mage unleashes. Though I’m seeing the game run on a powerful PC, which is sure to be the best showcase of Veilguard, Epler tells me the game looks amazing on consoles - he’s been playing it on PlayStation 5 and enjoying it in both its fidelity and performance modes, but I’ll have to take his word for it.

Pressing Start

The start or pause screen is as important to a good RPG as the game outside the menus. Veilguard’s contains your map, journal, character sheets, skill tree, and a library for lore information. You can cross-compare equipment and equip new gear here for Rook and your companions, build weapon loadouts for quick change-ups mid-combat, and customize you and your party’s abilities and builds via an easy-to-understand skill tree. You won’t find minutiae here, “just real numbers,” Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that’s as in-depth as the numbers get. Passive abilities unlock jump attacks and guarantee critical hit opportunities, while abilities add moves like a Wall of Fire to your arsenal (if you’re a mage). As you spec out this skill tree, which is 100 percent bespoke to each class, you’ll work closer to unlocking a specialization, of which there are three for each class, complete with a unique ultimate ability. Busche says BioWare’s philosophy here is “about changing the way you play, not statistical minutiae.”

Companion Customization

You can advance your bonds by helping companions on their own personal quests and by including them in your party for main quests. Every Relationship Level you rank up, shown on their character sheet, nets you a skill point to spend on them. Busche says the choices you make, what you say to companions, how you help them, and more all matter to their development as characters and party members. And with seven companions, there’s plenty to customize, from bespoke gear to abilities and more. Though each companion has access to five abilities, you can only take three into combat, so it’s important to strategize different combos and synergies within your party. Rhodes says beyond  this kind of customizable characterization, each companion has issues, problems, and personal quests to complete. “Bellara has her own story arc that runs parallel to and informs the story path you’re on,” Rhodes says.

In Entropy’s Grasp

[SPOILER]

“When designing companions, they’re the load-bearing pillars for everything,” Rhodes says. “They’re the face of their faction, and in this case [with Bellara], their entire area of the world. [SPOILER]” Rhodes describes her as a sweetheart and nerd for ancient elven artifacts. As such, she’s dressed more like an academic than a combat expert, although her special arm gauntlet is useful both for tinkering with her environment and taking down enemies.

Unlike Neve, who uses ice magic like our Rook and can slow down time with a special ability, Bellara specializes in electricity, and she can also use magic to heal you, something Busche says Dragon Age fans have been desperate to have in a game. Busche says if you don’t direct Neve and Bellara, they’re fully independent and will attack on their own. But synergizing your team will add to the fun and strategy of combat. Bellara’s electric magic is effective against [enemy], which is great because we currently only have access to ice. However, without Bellara, we could also equip a rune that converts my ice magic, for a brief duration, into electricity to counter the Sentinels.

[SPOILER]

I continue to soak in the visuals of Veilguard [SPOILER]; it’s perhaps the most impressive aspect of my time seeing the game, although everything else is making a strong impression, too. I am frustrated about having to watch the game rather than play it, to be honest. I’m in love with the art style, which is more high fantasy than anything in the series thus far and almost reminiscent of the whimsy of Fable, a welcome reprieve from the recent gritty Game of Thrones trend in fantasy games. Rhodes says that’s the result of the game’s newfound dose of magic.

“The use of magic has been an evolution as the series has gone on,” he says. “It’s something we’ve been planning for a while because Solas has been planning all this for a while. In the past, you could hint at cooler magical things in the corner because you couldn’t actually go there, but now we actually can, and it’s fun to showcase that.”

Busche, Epler, and Rhodes warn me that [location] will starkly contrast to other areas. They promise some grim locations and even grimmer story moments because, without that contrast, everything falls flat. Busche likens it to a “thread of optimism” pulled through otherworldly chaos ravaging Thedas. [SPOILER]

[SPOILER]

Busche [performs combat] with ease, showcasing high-level gameplay by adding three stacks of arcane build-up to create an Arcane Bomb on an enemy, which does devastating damage after being hit by a heavy attack. Now, she begins charging a heavy attack on her magical staff, then switches to magical daggers in a second loadout accessed with a quick tap of down on the d-pad to unleash some quick attacks, then back to the staff to charge it some more and unleash a heavy attack.

After a few more combat encounters, including one against a [enemy] that’s “Frenzied,” which means it hits harder, moves faster, and has more health, we finally [SPOILER]. [Boss enemy] hits hard, has plenty of unblockable, red-coded attacks, and a massive shield we must take down first. However, it’s weak to fire, and our new fire staff is perfect for the situation.

[SPOILER] It’s clear that even after a few hours with the game’s opening, I’ve seen a nigh negligible amount of game; frustrating but equally as exciting.

Don’t Call It An Open World

Veilguard is not an open world, even if some of its explorable areas might fee like one. Gamble describes Veilguard’s Thedas as a hub-and-spoke design where “the needs of the story are served by the level design.” [SPOILER] Some of these areas are larger and full of secrets and treasures. Others are smaller and more focused on linear storytelling. [Location] is an example of this, but there are still optional paths and offshoots to explore for loot, healing potion refreshes, and other things. There’s a minimap in each location, though linear levels like [SPOILER] won’t have the fog of war that disappears as you explore like some of Veilguard’s bigger locations. Regardless, BioWare says Veilguard has the largest number of diverse biomes in series history.

Dragon’s Delight

With a 10-hour day at BioWare behind me after hours of demo gameplay and interviews with the leads, I’m acutely aware of my favorite part of video games: the surprises. I dabbled with Origins and II and put nearly 50 hours into Inquisition, but any familiarity with the series the latter gave me had long since subsided over the past decade. I wanted to be excited about the next Dragon Age as I viewed each teaser and trailer, but other than seeing the words “Dragon Age,” I felt little. Without gameplay, without a proper look at the actual game we’ll all be playing this fall, I struggled to remember why Inquisition sucked me in 10 years ago.

This trip reminded me.

Dragon Age, much like the Thedas of Veilguard, lives in the uncertainty: The turbulence of BioWare’s recent release history and the lessons learned from it, the drastic changes to each Dragon Age’s combat, the mystery of its narrative, and the implications of its lore. It’s all a part of the wider Dragon Age story and why this studio keeps returning to this world. It’s been a fertile franchise for experimentation. While Veilguard is attempting to branch out in unique ways, it feels less like new soil and more like the harvest BioWare has been trying to cultivate since 2009, and I’m surprised by that.

I’m additionally surprised, in retrospect, how numb I’ve been to the game before this. I’m surprised by BioWare’s command over EA’s notoriously difficult Frostbite engine to create its prettiest game yet. I’m surprised by this series’ 15-year transition from tactical strategy to action-forward combat. I’m surprised by how much narrative thought the team has poured into these characters, even for BioWare. Perhaps having no expectations will do that to you. But most of all, with proper acknowledgement that I reserve additional judgment until I actually play the game, I’m surprised that Veilguard might just be the RPG I’m looking forward to most this year.

[antisocialxconstruct]

For me it's kind of like... 90% of the time "bad" dialogue options just don't make sense to me? Or they're not engaging. Sure, Shepard *can* nuke that council in Mass Effect 1, but that doesn't make any sense within the story and they just get carbon copy replacements. Sure, I could nuke megaton, but that side quest is poorly placed and isn't as interesting as just... letting the town exist with its normal quests. Disco Elysium and Pentiment are some of the few exceptions, in that yes, there are "bad" options (IE, being a fascist in DE) but the "bad" options are well written enough to be interesting and serve as commentaries about their content instead of being mindless endorsements. DE and Pentiment truly manage to nail ambiguity in a way a lot of RPGs don't, IMO: by letting the player voice a multitude of opinions, they're able to engage with a number of ideas in way more nuanced ways and actually let the player *play* a character instead of "choose a route". (I actually love Mass Effect, but I have a lot of feelings from a writing and game design thoughts about the way its morality works. My most controversial opinion is that Andromeda handles this better than the main games.)

Yeah that all makes sense for sure, and I think a lot of games' ideas of "gray morality" really do end up being like "do you want to do something comically evil for no particular reason, or... NOT do that?" and that's a perfectly valid reason to just default to being civil and reasonable 🤷‍♂️

Games with enough depth to the writing to give you a distinct and unique reaction to your "bad" choices are definitely few and far between, so it's hard to really assess what you would "usually" do in that situation when you can only think of a few examples. But tbh I think a game like Mass Effect is an interesting example to me specifically because there isn't much material difference between trending toward paragon or renegade. The Shadowrun games also kinda fall into this category for me, because there's enough writing to make you feel like you're roleplaying despite the plots being pretty linear. So when being chill versus being an ass doesn't actually change too much beyond the way individual characters think of/act toward you, that's when it's kind of intriguing to me to see how many people will still default to being nice. Or, for instance, games like Fallout or Elder Scrolls, where you can go out into the open world and commit atrocities and sell your allegiance to a whole host of sketchy people, and very rarely face consequences from anyone who wasn't in viewing distance of you doing that... I wonder what compels some players to Not Do That.

And I mean. Intellectually I know the answer is probably "I don't want to?" and that's where they lose me LOL

[edgepunk]

like I'm not happy with Peter's face change either but some of y'all need to get a reality check and stop harassing the developers, it's not their fucking fault, they're just doing their jobs given by the higher-ups.

AAA game devs are already treated like absolute dirt, they don't need you sending them death threats and insulting them for something out of their control. no I'm serious - read any article about the mistreatment of AAA devs, it's the same story in every studio. I bet Insomniac & Sony aren't exempt from overworking their employees and pushing impossible deadlines on them.

Here's an article by Jason Schreier, a well-known investigative game journalist, about Naughty Dog employees being mistreated, which is also a Sony Playstation studio. (think of him whatever you want, but he's one of the few journalists who actually reaches out to the developers whenever there's a big controversy in the AAA game industry i.e. Cyberpunk 2077; Mass Effect: Andromeda and most recently, Redfall)

stop harassing the devs and acting like they murdered your dog go touch some grass. I don't know how else to explain that the devs aren't those all-mighty people that always have the final word

[moltensmusings]

Okay heavy spoilers as I talk about final thoughts in regards to veilguard now that I've completed my initial run.

Under the cut because it's long:

I think it is the best dragon age game and while that may be controversial let me explain.

It takes the best parts of each game for me and compiles. Similarly it felt like it took inspiration from Mass effect 2 and 3 in tone and outcome, however the endings we get for Veilguard leave me a lot more satisfied than they did with 3.

I think it's devastating that you can't come out of the game with all 7 companions. That Harding or Davrin has to die. But I also can acknowledge that this outcome is one that made the ending and messaging work. It made the threat of facing gods feel much more realistic and added importance to the decision to work through the game to get the best outcome.

I love all the companions and their interpersonal relationships. How so often in the game you get to resolve differences and mediate and we get to see how rooks words effect things. I loved each companion getting their own room that changed over the story and the devs choosing to have them move around the lighthouse for interactions which isn't something done in previous dragon age games but was something they did in Andromeda that I liked.

The decision to have companion quests be a constant appearing thing over the game is also great. It really helped me get a feel for the characters and enjoy them more.

Surprisingly I don't actually mind the change from 3 to 2 companions on a quest. Banter felt like it happened so much more and not having to focus on healing them made it so that I could still enjoy their conversations while running around.

The outfits and visuals were great and Rook felt like the most full of life main character we'd gotten because of how smooth the animations and lighting was for them.

The environments in inquisition were my favorite in any DA game until this one. I loved how lived in the cities felt. The maps were large and great for exploring which meant one of the things I liked about inquisition carried over without it feeling overwhelming for other players.

This was the first time I actually cried playing a bioware game. Varric's death, coupled with the loss of a companion, actually got to me. And they let you sit with it. You get to say goodbye to Varric. You get to see him off.

Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nan felt like terrifying and compelling villains. Incredibly memorable especially after Corypheus. All the while pairing it with the tense dynamic between Rook and Solas it fully left me wanting to rush through the story to see more of them. It's so clear care and thought was put into designing the main antagonists of the game and I'm appreciative of it.

I'm eager for the next game. Wanting to see how things will connect with the new big antagonist and who our protagonist will be. They have big shoes to follow once again but I have faith.

With that said, I want to add some notes on things I wish had been included. I say these with the understanding of why so much of it wasn't/asking everyone to be aware I still enjoyed and intend to replay the game.

I wish more inquisition choices got carried over because I would've loved to see inquisitor show up with everyone left in the innercircle to assist rook. They wouldn't be in the main battle but more just them getting a side appearance before the final fight starts. Maybe if we got a party scene they'd show up then.

While I fully think the choice they went with made the story more compelling, the "well drinking" not mattering at all is a bit disappointing. I get why they removed it but if inquisition ever got remade/remastered I hope they just remove the option if it didn't matter.

The romance scenes felt very few and far between. We had a few flirt options and a small handful of proper romance scenes so (at least for Taash) I just didn't get as invested in it as I do for other da games. I wish there were a few more.

I wish we had a celebration party scene for the characters. Lucanis mentions it to Bellara while fighting to get to Elgar'nan and I was so excited only for it to not happen.

All in all: I would recommend this game to people. I'm an andromeda and Inquisition enjoyed which I know is controversial in the fandom, but I feel like this one is actually a game I could see a lot of people liking.

[ashjafari]

finished mass effect legendary edition just in time for far cry 6, which arrived today.

[ziskandra]

28 and 30 please? :)

28. Favourite work I wrote this year

Ooh, this was a toughie, because I don't think I really had like, a stand-out favourite this year. When forced to choose, I think I have to go with either Between the Lines (Mass Effect: Andromeda fic where Sara dies instead of Alec), or fire at the heart (short Meredith character study I wrote for the horror exchange)! They're both fic ideas I'd had swimming around in the back of my brain for a little while, so it was satisfying to get them down on paper and explore some controversial characters that we don't see as much of in fandom! 30. Biggest writing surprise of the year Honestly, how much I identify with Orsino. It was while I was hashing out the backstory for the Meresino fic where they'd had a failed relationship when they were younger that made me realise that I was pouring a lot of my own thoughts and observations on relationships into my writing, haha. I definitely was not expecting to find him easier to write than Meredith (I first wrote him on a whim for a Meresino exchange fic!), but... here we are. [AO3 Wrapped: Writer's Edition]