#northern thedas

[illusivesoul]

“For Dragon Age: The Veilguard, among many reasons why we moved to Northern Thedas is it becomes a little bit more of a clean slate for us. There's not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what's happening in Northern Thedas. And we don't have to speak directly to things like who is the Divine? Because again, that's happening in the South" Northern Thedas regarding everything that has happened over the last 20 years:

[flowersbane]

day 24 of posting random dragon age headcanons until veilguard to cope with the arduous task of waiting

we got some sollavellan angst this time around so, spoilers for da:I

after exploring so much of southern thedas, the continent is littered with lavellan’s memories. after the events of inquisition and trespasser, solas has to be careful when traversing the past because sometimes he catches glimpses of lavellan’s memories, laced with her feelings for him. even the barest brushes with them are distracting and painful.

[zazikels]

the fact is, if varric lives (and that's an if bc maybe solas does kill him lmao idk how much to trust that minimap reveal) it IS weird that you can't customise a hawke or account for the decision because it would be a little weird if a man who has lived through a wannabe god + blight dragon attacking warden fortress has nothing to say about ghilan'nain and her blight dragon attacking a warden fortress, especially if he potentially lost his best friend (Hawke). It's not outlandish for people to be a little disappointed to not get some customisation there because the choices are not equal to varric. the loss of hawke is obviously a bigger impact on him than whichever warden is there. given varric's personality, it's not outlandish to expect him to talk about it with Rook either especially considering weisshaupt is a thing that happens in the game. if he dies beforehand it doesn't matter, but if he's going to be around? yeah you'd think he'd be talking about it here.

speaking of weisshaupt, A PLACE YOU GET TO GO, a hero of ferelden who made the ultimate sacrifice IS FUCKING INTERRED THERE. But it's just "whining" to expect a nod (esp one that you can customise so it's your hero of ferelden) i guess.

regardless of whether morrigan has mythal or not, who she is as a person does change based on whether she was romanced and whether she had a child. it is natural that this matters and people aren't stupid to be tentatively concerned that nothing of her history is "required" but she's apparently this important vip character who will have more involvement in the game than you expect. like you are allowed to ask: okay what does this mean, what will she be like, will she be the same character i've loved across multiple games?

people are allowed to be upset or concerned that a game series that historically took your choices and your decisions into account has watered that down to 3 choices when certain choices that WOULD impact characters that appear in THIS game aren't. (and to be clear being upset does not mean harassing the devs, don't do that).

[lafaiette]

going from the detailed keep to just three decisions is such a drastic change, not to mention it says nothing about dao or da2? are those games just gonna have one default worldstate? i wonder how's that gonna work with varric literally being in the game is he just never gonna mention hawke?

Yes, I admit it bothers me, too - I hope it really was an early build used to avoid spoilers, and that more options will be available in the full game, but I doubt we will see choices from DA:O and DA2.

Iirc Epler said the focus will be on northern Thedas, and consequently choices from the two earlier games won't be addressed. I can understand this tbh - after all, I doubt Tevinter, Rivain, or the Veil Jumpers in Arlathan would discuss or even care about the ruler of far, rustic Ferelden.

Divine Victoria can simply be mentioned with her title, and since mages and magic are seen in a different way in northern Thedas compared to the south, it makes sense for them not to mention the fate of the Circles in Ferelden and Orlais. And considering there are two crazy elven "gods" wreaking havoc and corrupting the land, I doubt Rook, Antaam-occupied Antiva, and Weisshaupt have the time to pay attention to these "distant" things (even though I WAS expecting one of the available choices to be about the Wardens, since the Inquisitor can choose to exile them to Weisshaupt).

Speaking of Varric and Hawke, yeah, I have no idea how that will be addressed. Twelve years have passed since someone was left in the Fade, and it's pretty much confirmed that this person is dead and won't come back at this point, despite all the fans' funny pictures of Hawke coming out of a Fade rift we saw over the years. So, if Hawke was left in the Fade, Varric would have no reason to mention them, since they are long dead and there are much more "important" things to focus on at the moment.

If they're alive... we know that Hawke goes to Weisshaupt after the events of Inquisition, but again, many years have passed since then, so they probably went there to check, saw that things were weirdly quiet, and went back home, their mission concluded. No way they remained in the Anderfels for more than ten years - so even in this case, Varric would have little reason to mention them.

No matter how the devs try to spin this, it can't denied that the events of Veilguard wouldn't exist without Inquisition's. It's basically a direct sequel, even though Bioware is clearly doing their damnest to try and lure in new players unfamiliar with the series, doing everything they can not to scare them off with too many unfamiliar references and characters.

It stands to reason that the events of Inquisition are those that should majorly affect Veilguard's, but it's really odd how simply one (!) choice from the main game and two from its Trespasser DLC are offered.

The biggest concern is the Well of Sorrows - both Morrigan and the Inquisitor are in the game, so how is the game going to address that event? Will it be completely ignored, like a soft-reboot? Will they force Morrigan to be the canon choice no matter our world state?

Or maybe the Inquisitor won't have a very big role (and there's the problem of their personality, too, which wasn't a "fixed" one like Hawke's) or maybe there's something about the Inquisitor's character creator Bioware is hiding/didn't share on purpose to surprise the fans.

[tuxedo-rabbit]

Hey do you guys remember the conclave that Grand Enchanter Fiona calls for in Asunder?

It was held in a different location do to the war, but do you know where a conclave of first enchanters is usually held?

Cumberland. In Nevarra. Where the Grand Enchanter lives.

But Nevarra is soooo separated from Southern Thedas that the choices we made in regards to the Divine don't matter there. Apparently.

[villainanders]

Maybe just me but was anyone else’s eyes rolling to the back of their head during that neve and Harding banter about the Templars. “What happens when you can’t trust the authorities to do the right thing…..” girl you were there for the entire mage-templar war were you napping

[bellara-lutare]

veilguard really is putting in perspective that corypheus had the threat level of wet tissue paper

[princehendir]

alright I'm reading the actual epler quote re: worldstates and I'm gonna be honest unless I'm missing something huge I think maybe some of you are catastrophizing a little.

[vaguely-concerned]

Neri de Acutis looking Directly into the camera like they're in the office as they transcribe Teia and Viago's Crow legalese bickering-cum-foreplay (sixth new draft of the evening)

[immren]

not really enjoying the way with how the majority of the fandom (game devs included) treat solavellan as the One and Only ship. because first of all. my inquisitor is a man

[minthara]

sorry if you talked about this before and i just haven't noticed it.. but can i ask for your opinion about the seemingly confirmed world state choices? personally i'm still coping that what they confirmed now is just for the PR/media early access and when the game launches we will have the option to do more :( what do you think?

sighhhh yeahhhh i made like one post abt it expressing sadness but didn't say a lot more.... but i'm very very disappointed :( especially bc of the "who's left in the fade" and the well of sorrows choice. which they could have tied beautifully into datv :(

also there's romances with different endings which are fucked now - i know how much that hurts because it actually happened before! from da2 to dai, i know no one fkn cared about that one, but i romanced sebastian whose romance has HUGE differences depending on if you rival or not 🤡 and i got fucked over so hard with that one. i actually directly talked to mike laidlaw bc of this once on twitter LMAO he said sowey we not gonna patch this </3

[gxldencity]

Anyway tbh one good thing I could potentially see about datv not being so invested on the socio-political aspects of Southern Thedas is I am curious to see how an outsider would look at that and Southern Thedas as a whole (if that even is a convo worth having). I can assure you none of my Rooks think about Ferelden and Orlais in their day to day. none of the people they're interacting with in their day to day is that even invested in Orlais and Ferelden. my rook is trying to fix the socio-political problems in Tevinter, do you think she has time to wonder about the Queen of Ferelden?

[doomeddoodles]

A thought. Since Morrigan appeared, i was surprised that the choice for the dark ritual was left out. And I tried to see why it didn’t matter. Then thinking of where veilguard takes place and her design, maybe Rook wouldn’t meet Morrigan the Apostate but Asha’bellanar, the Witch of the Wilds, the Inheritor of Mythal. She’d not be the woman who traded jibes with past companions or the mother watching her son play in the garden.

She’ll be what Flemeth was, a mysterious witch who assisted the hero, giving knowledge in cryptic riddles. What ends she’d seek who knows?

[hauntedgarden95]

If they can destroy all of [redacted] then I can give Loghain back some of his years to have more time with his younger wife after curing the calling 🤷‍♀️

[minweber]

Clearly someone on the Veilguard writing team thought that they can just drop "Dalish settlements" into a conversation and act all casual about it.

But guess what, fuckface? I've been thinking about it for the past 12 hours.

[fivehundredsporks]

decided to create my hawke and trevelyan in this picrew as well! (darevas included as well so they can all be together)