#obviously this is probably not the case lmao

[adonneniel]

Ok, after finishing Veilguard and sleeping on it, my final impression remains disappointment and frustration. Spoilerific thoughts beneath the cut. Long post. Maybe a bit ranty/incoherent in parts, but I don't feel like going back to edit.

Positives, in no particular order:

The game is beautiful, even on (mostly) medium settings. Despite wishing for a few more wavy options, the hair is perfection and I honestly can't complain.

On a related note, the character creator is amazing. Customizing body & face tattoos! Height and weight sliders!!! I wish the bust and glute sliders went a further, but whatever. I can live. I like that we can import our characters on a new save, and I hope they patch in an option to do that with the Inquisitor as well.

Mechanically it was fun to play

THE BLOOD OF ARLATHAN QUEST. Absolute perfection. Everything I wanted out of this game. I felt hopeless and overwhelmed. My skin crawled. My gut clenched. The horrors of the Venatori were on full display & served as an excellent parallel to the rise of irl facism. And Solas an Elgar'nan exchanging insults inside my head?? I was giddy. I felt the centuries of compounding animosity mixed with grudging respect. I felt utterly out of my depths and it was wonderful. (And LMAO at the one dude fangirling over Rook)

The siege at Weisshaupt was pretty good too. I like failing. It makes the stakes feel real.

I loved the fresh take on Necromancy. Like, yessssss, make it beautiful and romantic and haunting! It's such a interesting departure from necromancy = gross & evil. They even made it mesh with spirit lore and kept the question of an afterlife alive.

Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain's relationship. I was not expecting them to genuinely care for one another. It did a good job humanizing them & helped balance out the "muahahaha evil" vibe.

I actually didn't mind the magitech-ness. It makes sense that the ancient elves perfected magic to that point, and Tevinter really felt like a knock off version built on the elven empire's bones. It still looked fantasy overall.

I like most of the lore reveals. They were well foreshadowed and, no, I don't get the impression that they just decided to randomly make all the popular theories true. Even if that's the case for a few, they still make sense. (Though I can understand why people might be let down by all "the elves did it!!")

Fighting alongside Solas at the end was fun. Directing my companions during the final fight was fun. I liked that some of them could die (and did--poor Harding)

Solas in general honestly. I didn't find him out of character, just more openly desperate than he was in Inquisition. I also don't hate his dynamic with Mythal like some people, though I understand why it's divisive.

All that said, the negatives still outweigh the positives.

The writing felt timid. Like they were scared to offend anyone so they just decided to ignore the messy parts of their lore and/or hide it behind codex entries that most players probably don't even read.

All those lore drops and we barely had time to sit with them or deal with cultural consequences. Especially when religion is such a huge part of culture? You can't just disprove it and expect people to move on in a few conversations. The Dalish especially should be a wreck.

Tevinter was a disappointment after all the build up we've gotten over last three games. And no, I don't accept southern propaganda and events happening off screen as an excuse. It just reeks of lazy writing. Dorian and Mae's political party failed. Fenris and Dorian are primary sources. Tevinter is fucked up and we should've seen it explicitly on screen, not just limited to a few nasty individuals and codex entries. Instead of a racist, mage run slave state, we got a generic corrupt city with the unique bits alluded to. If you want to argue that it's just because we were in dock town, so obviously we wouldn't be seeing the decadent mage aristocracy...that's just an excuse. The writers didn't have to make that choice.

Wtf did they do to the Crows??? The assassins built on brutality and child slavery are now just being presented as freedom fighters??? Don't try to tell me Zevran reformed things behind the scenes. That's just another excuse for lazy writing (not to mention that he's dead in some player's worldstates). They didn't even deal with Lucanis' abusive upbringing! And it was right there!

The Lords of Fortune are a joke. Pirates Against Cultural Appropriation. Seriously? Combined with that codex entry trying to convince us that their fighting pit is purely volunteer based and death free?? Nah. I don't buy it. They were ultimately useless to the plot and even to the worldbuilding. I learned absolutely nothing about Rivain that hasn't already been told to us in past games (and they didn't even take the chance to show us those things! We just got an empty beach and a few background npcs.)

Tbh this all just feels like another symptom of the game's timid writing. We're good people who only ally with other good people. There's no "enemy of my enemy is my friend". There's no faction with ulterior motives. There's not even a political quagmire we have to navigate to get the Good Ones on our side. The closest we get is the First Warden. And tbh the Wardens are the only faction I felt was truly well written and well integrated into the overall plot. The Mourn Watch was interesting, but they mostly did their own thing over in the corner.

God, don't even get me started on the elves. No existential dilemmas when their gods are running rampant. Even the major god revelations happened off screen! The Veil Jumpers already knew! Lazy lazy lazy.

AND. AND they somehow projected their white guilt onto the most persecuted minority in Thedas! I wanted to crawl out of my skin every time someone apologized for what their people (the gods) did to the world. And to make it worse, they barely, barely, showed anti-elf racism on screen. A few throwaway lines are laughable in the face of that. As a jew--one of the groups DA elves are inspired by--I'm insulted and disgusted.

And someone pointed out that a Crow codex used the phrase "Never Again" in relation to the Dales? Get that phrase out of your mouth, Bioware.

In a similar vein, their treatment of the Antaam reeked of racism and orientalism, even moreso than usual. Big brutes yelling in a scary language with artificially low voices?? Barely dressed? We don't even get to talk with one until the end of the game? Other people have explained it better than me, so I'll leave it at this.

"Why do you want racism in your game? Are you secretly a racist edgelord in real life? Do you get off on people calling you a knife-ear? Do you just want an excuse to be a piece of shit?"

NO. I want good writing. I want realism. If you're going to include racism in your worldbuilding (which Dragon Age does), you have to own it. You have to deal with it. You can't just sweep it under the carpet because you want to avoid more controversy. The absence in Veilguard makes it look worse. You can't pat yourself on the back for angering the anti-woke brigade while perpetuating your own racist tropes. Do the writers even know they're being racist, or do they think it's all ok because the player isn't allowed to be fantasy racist?

Taash's story is a good example. Why the fuck are we put in charge of deciding their culture for them? Why is it tied to their gender? As a cis person I won't comment on the gender bits (I've heard conflicting opinions), but the culture aspect is handled terribly. Seriously. What the actual fuck, Bioware?

The companion situation has been beat to death, but I mostly agree with the criticism that everything is too HR-friendly. And I honestly can't believe those Taash/Emmrich and Harding/Emmerich intervention scenes actually made it through editing. I felt like a fucking preschool teacher lecturing children on how to play nicely. bad bad bad

I don't, however, think the companions are awful. They just kinda bored me. Or maybe not bored, but...didn't grab me? I like some of them, but I don't love them. There's no one I latched onto that makes me go feral. But I can accept that it's a matter of preference. I'm glad some people are happy, and I don't mean that sarcastically.

Maybe I'd feel differently if the game wasn't marketed as "found family"?

More personal preference: I don't like Rook, and I don't like their relationship with the companions. It feels too sterile & corporate, and Rook feels simultaneously too blank and too defined. And the defined bits of their personality are not for me. Dialogue options weren't diverse enough in feel.

LOL at not allowing the player to asshole options, but then the best we can give Harding is "Haha, no idea what you're talking about but good for you. Bye."

Also the game couldn't seem to decide whether my Rook was Dalish or not? According to the mirror I'm not, but then Rook outright says she's Dalish later in the game... Which is it, Bioware? Which is it?

THEY DELETED SOUTHERN THEDAS OFFSCREEN.

The illuminati secret ending is an awful decision. Way to take agency away from some of the more interesting antagonists. And this was obviously a retcon? There was no buildup to this. At most they were toying with the concept in DA:I, which is when the Executors were introduced.

It's hard to think of this game as a love letter to the fans when these last two points feel like a huge middle finger to everything that came before.

Yeah. Just...yeah.

Disappointment and frustration. All the building blocks for a great game are there, but they just...didn't come to fruition.

I might do another playthrough, but I also I might just take what I like from the lore and go back to previous games + my silly crossover fanfic. And BG3. That obsession was only just taking root when DATV came out, and I didn't get a chance to sit with it.

I'm sad.

[resizura]

i have a crack theory that capcom purposefully didnt make re1, not just because it already had a remake but because they wanted more opportunity to reboot the series without making it obvious

[laugtherhyena]

Oh right uhh, Kokoro lives in -2+2 (And Emma, and also Hibiki)

[morningmask27]

Tonight, right now, not even ten minutes ago, might have been the closest I got to an outright hatecrime

[lesbiansanemi]

I am so fucking sick of living with my roommate and his fuck ass boyfriend. Also watching my roommate burn every single one of his (already rather minimal, I might add) bridges for this guy is also kind of painful but also his relationship with me is one of said bridges so I'm almost past the point of even feeling bad for him lmao

[moontrinemars]

just checked for the first time, somehow, and discovered that the asteroid for my first name and the asteroid for my last name aligned exactly with a difference under one degree in not just longitude, but also speed, latitude, and declination

and smack dab in the middle of my 8th house stellium. like. that's so weird it's borderline dumb. girl (universe) what are you playing at

[g8d]

thinking about guy who said that a day (while he was hanging out with me.) was wasted because it wasn't "productive" and when i objected, he said he doesnt consider building relationships to be productive. and i think we talked about it after and got to some kind of understanding about what was meant, but i don't remember that now, and we're not in touch anymore, and it's actually exactly because he did not value me, my time, or my effort.

anyway can u imagine ? guy was like big into acid and stuff . whenevr i took acid/shroomies, i usually came out of it thinking "man, other ppl are what make life worth living" & like i may be aroace+apl but bro... spending all day chatting with my awesome ppl is a day well spent.

[moonlight-at-dawn]

I hate when companies use "We're family!" as an excuse to ask too much of their employees, or the nepotism towards family members. I have strong feelings because when I was a kid, my family owned a small printing company that my grandfather had started.

It was going through hard times (another gripe there, as it relates to the destruction of many small businesses), and this was how it was dealt with:

The non-family workers got priority for getting paid. When it got REALLY tough, they were encouraged to find work elsewhere. Not fired, just a "We don't know what's going to happen, so you should make sure you're taken care of" deal.

Then the in-laws, like my mom, and children, like my eldest cousin on that side.

Then the non-management immediate family (it was owned by my dad and uncle, while my two aunts - their sisters - worked in different positions).

When one of my aunts thought being family was enough to secure a steady paycheck and didn't actually work, they did the tough thing and caused some family drama by firing her. It was tough, the relationship has never been the same even though that was decades ago, but it needed to happen.

My uncle and father went months, even as much as a year, without paychecks, to ensure that everyone else got paid and the business could keep running.

THAT'S what "We're family" SHOULD mean. It means everyone gets taken care of. It means sacrifice by the HIGHEST, not the lowest.

Fuck companies that use it to demand sacrifice from the ones already with the least.

[yloiseconeillants]

hi! what's the story with your Azem's name(s) 👀

oh so uh

i have an extracurricular interest in the myth of ariadne - and like, due to some pretty severe brainrot caused by too much free time at work and access to academic journals, i spent a LOT of time turning over concepts present which like, i immediately started grafting over my newly created ffxiv protagonist (i started the game a couple of months after starting my new job) - attempting to do so in subtle ways at first until the game gave me the concept of ancients like some kind of narrative birthday present

by the time that happened, though, i was pretty into the idea of splintering personas for my wol (as a by-product of both the drk quests and the shadowbringers motif of masks and deliberately choosing to embody certain narrative roles) that it all snowballed into deciding that my ancient, who otherwise self-isolates in amaurot as a labyrinth of her own making, takes on a different persona when she accepts the seat of azem to interact with other people in the world as the theatrical dionysos (always arriving, always leaving).

[lady-harrowhark]

debating between two lyrics from the same song to use for a fic title where one of them is more applicable content-wise and adds a sprinkle of levity without tipping the balance too much and the other is just a straight up gorgeous heartbreaker and still applicable but at a more abstract level. no one suffers as much as me.

[fingertipsmp3]

Thinking about how my granddad damn near went through the five stages of grief the first time he saw me knitting baby clothes, but now his gut reaction is to be like ‘so which of your friends is expecting’ lol

[lesboylycan]

(also psst before we sleep, if we're mutuals with you we are always willing to chat in DMs. we may not always respond right away because the anxiety gets to us a lot, butbutbut! we will try our best and we are up to chat about genuinely Anything)

[fridayyy-13th]

oh so tonight's one of those Yearning nights, huh

[girltomboy]

Wow, I just had the least productive conversation with my bf in the longest time lol. He called me to "apologize" I guess? And I tried to have a more in-depth conversation about what happened, and why he thinks his reactions/habits are normal, and he once again saw this as an attack, a 'versus' type of situation rather than an opportunity to communicate, so he kept giving me these abrupt and half-sarcastic responses, and it was pretty much going nowhere. And then he started telling me he "said what he had to say" AKA the same concise & repetitive apology, and I was like why did you even call me if you had this little intention to actually talk to me?? To which he replied idk and I had to hang up otherwise I'd have exploded or something lmao like idk what his brain is going through but I'm so over this and not knowing where the hell this relationship is even going?

[florbelles]

sigh so i can’t decide if i should merge nessa’s canon with síle’s because unlike. say. celemina there’s nothing INCOMPATIBLE there and they theoretically could have known each other before/nessa in many respects works better as a tagalong than an infected party member/tav but hmm i don’t want to like. bloat the verse too much

[tenrose]

I'm reading Rebecca for the first time, and ignoring the obvious gothic inspiration, psychological thriller (which I'm way too early in the book to comment on), from the very first chapter, the style of narration vividly reminds me of The Haunting series.