#old bioware is long gone

[miyku]

[fleshwerks]

Righto, I've had my brekkie, it was mediocre. Let's continue. To followers: I do my best to tag my shit now, so keep your Xkit or other tools updated, as I return to form with my long-winded, acidic essays on good old Dragon Age. It's like we're back in 2017 again! Now I want to offer commentary on an IGN article from September 25, 2024. And I briefly surmise on how evidently, Epler and friends either didn't play, or didn't understand their own home company's game, DA: Inquisition.

By giving up the Inquisition, the Inquisitor also surrenders all their power, gained lands and bases, influence, and treasure. All the Inquisitor has after disbanding or handing over the Inquisition is their personal reputation. The manpower, estates and so on is gone, not in small part because the Inquisitor's enemies don't vanish with the Inquisition, they are not just a splinter in Solas' eye, but there are a lot of powerful factions in Thedas who would very much like to see their investment in Inquisition to pay off. Especially since not nearly all of them threw in their lot with the Inquisition not to stop the world-ending threat, but for power and money. By deleting the Inquisition, the Inquisitor has absolutely robbed these powerful factions of their mail-clad, holy fist, as well as a lot of money. Not to mention everybody else you offended.

Also is gone the thing that made you special in the first place: the Anchor. You're nobody now. You're just a regular person with a great story, and nothing more. By the stinger at the end of Trespasser, you are Rook: you have a very small contingent of ordinary people, and you're back to having to handle everything by yourself again because your ace in the hole and all your resources and manpower are gone, gone, gone.

This quote also doesn't acknowledge the fact that until the very end, the Inquisitor faced distrust from every angle, and the only ones trusting you completely were the pilgrims and refugees, the contingent of people with the least amount of power to actually make meaningful change. Hell, even when you reached Skyhold, there was only one conversation about taking the Inquisition in a more cohesive direction back in Haven. Leliana and Cassandra and Cullen and Josephine virtually sprung your your new title on you by surprise. They ambushed you on a staircase, in front of a crowd, and shoved a sword in your hand. You had no way to say 'oh fuck no' without the desperate crowd below tearing you from limb to limb... in the isolated mountains. On an isolated mountaintop keep's grounds. There was never a choice there. From then on, you had to beg, connive or kill to get people to support you, and Trespasser directly dealt with the fact that people still wanted you gone or harnessed to the church. Your Inquisition wasn't united by the faith of all that contributed to it, it was united by lying, begging and killing. All that really united you was money and fear. The Inquisitor had to earn respect and fear. they had to beg and kill. Nobody in the Inquisition handed you stuff, you had to work for it.

Whose Inquisitor, Ms. Busche? Yours? Because if mine was headcanonically alive, he would not feel even a shred of remorse over being played like a fiddle by a literal elven god, thousands of years old, whereas all he ever was was a 30-year-old drunk soldier brought up in the societal isolation of a Dalish clan, and being functionally illiterate to boot. My Inquisitor is very clear: Solas' choices are his own, his deeds are his own, his manipulation is his own. The Inquisitor, especially the unfriendly-to-Solas Inquisitor never once had any control over Solas. It does, however, play into what's been my most consistent criticism of Solas, but more importantly, Bioware over the past 10 years: it acts like Solas is your fault. It acts like you getting manipulated and played by a vastly more powerful and older and cleverer person is your own fault, or your own responsibility. It's the epitome of Bioware trying to sneakily communicate: "Look what you made me do." And that's Solas' whole deal in Inquisition: he burdens a single, young mortal with proving to a literal god why he shouldn't kill the entire world. And if you fuck up, then Thedas dies. It's not unlike the nasty phenomenon of "if a white person does it, he's mentally ill and an outlier, if a black person does it, all black people are Like That." This is Solas: 'if I do it, I'm a sad rebel making big mistakes. If you do it, you're the reflection of all members of your kind. And my Inquisitor had none of it.

Very telling, Epler. This is you saying, in Bioware style, that there's a correct way of playing Dragon Age games, and there's 'any other ways'. The correct way is 'romance Solas'. The others are just variations on a theme that, in the end, don't really matter. And it shows in Veilguard, it shows. The very least you can do is prioritise your intended path, Epler, while not actively disregarding other paths. This isn't the case. It isn't the case with the entire Thedas universe from these four games, because Veilguard nuked all of the Southern regions in a not so veiled way to say: 'They don't matter. What happened there does matter. You might've felt like each of your PCs achieved a victory, but they were just officers stalling for time. They were all losses in a war that now has to be won, and they just don't matter.' No. My Inquisitor doesn't feel guilty. My Inquisitor is meta level enraged that all he ever was, was an unknowing valet to Solas, and somehow that's his own fault.

Sure. It's not like Tevinter has been ever-present throughout three games, with important NPCs hailing from there, North's influence on the South, and endless codex entries and book material talking about Tevinter. The lore isn't gone, Bioware. It's not a brand new region, it has always existed in Thedas, we just haven't been there personally, but we've read about it. A lot. And you cannot just delete it all like you did in Veilguard. The place has a well-known, established lore to each of its nations. It's not a clean slate.

OH, REALLY???

Really? Really-really??? Really-really-really????? Reeeeeeallly? Reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally----

Fair. Reasonable. Expected. But you're not writing a book that requires no personal hands-on involvement by its reader. You're writing a roleplaying game where the player is as much a storyteller as a spectator. And you just wiped the slate clean. Nothing stayed even a little bit fixed. So I, as a player and a fan have to ask: why should I care if all the places in Thedas I mended and helped get destroyed and deleted. Why should I care if the people I care for in the game are all dead. You could argue 'it's for the experience, the transitional nature of time, what matters is the moment and not the end goal' and it's a noble sentiment. But does it make for a great game? Because it's one of humanity's key questions and grievances that has been pursued, fought over, died for: 'Does anything I ever do even matter?' And in real life, the answer is: "It matters if you think it matters." But Dragon Age is not a real world, it's our escape from the real world. It's a place where people come to matter more than in the brief cosmological second we inhabit this universe. We want things to matter in Dragon Age, because in real life they don't. It's why we tell stories, Varric. We want something to last, and something to matter. We want to engage with what hurts us in real life, and we want to change that, and achieve at least some permanence. Because we cannot have that in real life. And Bioware proudly and self-assuredly has said to us: "Nah."

[callahanisms]

inquisition companions react to the inquisitor missing half their arm

because bioware didn’t wanna give it to us, i decided i’d just do it myself. (insert thanos meme) even though i am like years late to the hype.

the game is like 9 years old at this point, but spoilers ahead.

do keep in mind this is my own personal interpretation of each character. it may not be accurate to your own interpretations. (also i know leliana is technically not a companion in inquisition but i included her anyways)

cassandra pentaghast

if cassandra could plunge a knife into the heart of solas, she would. she would not let him get away with betraying you and taking the anchor along with your arm. you had basically fallen into her arms when you emerged from the portal and she had to carry you back to halamshiral. for the days you were unconscious, cassandra was anxious and extra prickly. there were many times where cullen would have to talk her down from her anger. even varric did too.

dorian pavus

the first thing he did was crack a joke. the atmosphere was tense and it just slipped out. “i asked you to come back in one piece, not missing one.” safe to say, the other companions did not approve of his joke. dorian was set to return to tevinter after being notified of his new position as a magister, but he delayed the return to his homeland for you. he sat in your room as you lied unconscious, barely breathing, leg anxious bouncing up and down. when you awoke, you were immediately met with a large and tight hug from him. he knocked the air out of your lungs from that.

blackwall

blackwall admires you. in fact, everyone would go so far as to say he adores you. he thinks of you as strong, capable, almost infallible. you closed rifts, you closed the big green tear in the sky, and you defeated corypheus! what couldn’t you do? all your feats proved to him that you were the strongest leader he could ever know. and yet, you were still mortal. you left the eluvians mortally wounded and exhausted beyond belief, your eyelids so heavy and ready to close so you may drift off into the black void of sleep. blackwall would not let you, not until you were taken away to be cared for. you found him sitting besides you, awake and on guard. your mortality was his reminder that you and him were the same, even if your lives appeared to be completely different. and he understood that the world would need a leader like you and that is dangerous.

iron bull

the bull could feel a stronger kinship with you that day. it appears that the both of you lost something. he betrayed the qun for the inquisition, thus losing a part of himself, his people. you lost a literal part of yourself, something you had to come to terms with after having the anchor for two years. to say iron bull was shaken up would be an understatement. he was getting cassandra to hit him with sticks for days on end while you lied unconscious. he wondered what would’ve happened if he was with you, if maybe...he could’ve stopped solas. but reminiscing never did anyone any good.

cole

as much as he wanted to help you, cole couldn’t. he also understood that you wouldn’t accept his help, no matter how much he insisted. so instead, he did the best thing he could do: help tend to your injuries. what was curious was that he could feel very little of your pain. when he felt your pain two years ago after forming the inquisition, it was concentrated in your hand and forearm. with it gone, you felt at peace. the primary source of pain for you had been washed away. perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, he thought.

sera

sera’s immediate reaction is, like dorian, to crack a joke. everyone is used to her eccentricity. but it felt different this time around. while you laid unconscious, recovering from the long battle, she occupied herself. she had to busy her hands and her legs, keep moving, keep her mind busy. because if she sat too still for even a second, then her mind would think about the worst outcome. she would get images of you, dead, because solas had betrayed you, betrayed her, betrayed the inquisition. hell, he betrayed the world! that knob! thinking he knew what was best! sera’s all the more relieved when it’s revealed you survived. she bursts through the door to see you and hug you tightly, complaining about how much you scared her.

varric tethras

in all honesty, varric should’ve been more prepared to expect...well, the unexpected. he had expectations of you coming out unharmed, untouched. obviously, that was not what happened. and he wondered if he was responsible for this. he had been one of the many people to support you as the inquisitor two years ago, suggesting it. he wondered if he made the wrong decision. but also, part of varric was relieved. he lost someone close to him two years ago. he didn’t know if he could handle losing you too.

vivienne de fer

the court would devour tales of the eluvians and how you managed to survive. that was vivienne’s first thought. people would be talking about you for centuries to come, certainly. and yet, she knew in her soul that was not what you would want. she does her best to minimize what rumors spread when you first emerge from the eluvians and help give you privacy. behind closed doors, vivienne checks on your injuries. part of her is amazed that the anchor was removed so cleanly.

josephine montilyet

josephine has seen many things ranging from serious to just plain absurd. when she was alerted that you had returned with many serious injuries, including the loss of half your arm, she sent messages to get the best possible doctors in all of orlais to help attend to you. the woman was definitely stressed beyond belief. but when she wasn’t trying to get everyone from backing off from you or getting people to look at you, josephine was attending to you herself. you awoke to find her wiping some sweat off your face and when she noticed, she muttered about how great andraste was and embraced you tightly.

cullen rutherford

your knight-commander appeared to take the news very well, much to the disapproval of cassandra. but the moment cullen was alone, in private, he flipped a table, causing everything to crash. all he could feel running throughout his body was regret, guilt, and anger. regret and guilt for not having gone with you. he should’ve. because if he did, maybe you would have came back alright. anger directed towards solas because the apostate had betrayed you, the inquisition. and everything you and him had worked towards was going to crumble. all of his hard work, leliana’s, cassandra’s, josephine’s, it’d all be for naught. cullen ends up spending a lot of time alone while you’re unconscious. he prays to andraste and the maker to distract himself from any wandering thoughts going towards lyrium. certainly the new mabari hound he decided to adopt on a whim helps with distractions at least.

leliana

the woman has seen many things in her lifetime, having experienced the fifth blight itself and been part of that fight against the archdemon. still, things aren’t easy when you come back from the eluvians missing half of your arm. even if it goes against all her duties, leliana stays with you until you wake up to make sure you’re alright. you’re the inquisitor after all and it’s vital that you’re still alive.

solas

he’s the one who took it. you think he cares?

in all seriousness, it gave him no pleasure to remove your arm for the anchor. even if his plan was...well, shoddy we should say, the anchor was going to kill you. he had no choice. carrying your hand and forearm around felt heavy. he could carry it just fine but what made it heavy was the burden that came with his plan to tear down the veil and bring doom upon the world in a desperate attempt to bring it back to what it once was. and also, the burden of having harmed you.

[grandwitchbird]

I talked about this already to some extent. But let’s round it up. Because there’s new DA people and I’m v tired but also invested at this point.

Also there’s a broader point here. Several tbh.

When people are kind of flailing around looking for the source of problems with a piece of media, particularly an unchallenging piece of media, and resorting to a shallow set of ‘criticisms’ that gesture at real issues, often there are fundamental flaws in said piece of media. They’re just being misidentified to the point of nonsense.

When something is by all metrics genuinely well done AND spectacular in execution, you do not get this. You get straightforwardly stupid people crying about Atreus acting like a child. You get transparently bigoted or immature people whining about Ellie or Joel having coherent arcs.

When something is by most metrics competently written but lacking in execution in multiple ways AND it makes ‘representation’ a selling point. It’s gonna get both column 1 and column 2 in force. This makes everything very loud and very stupid forever. I refuse to be held captive by that so I will keep talking about real things. Because in column 1 there’s an attempt to get at the actual problems, just without the needed vocabulary and experience.

And yes there’s overlap in column 1 & 2. I call it the clown show. That’s just not everything that’s happening.

The actual problems in Veilguard are the problems with BioWare as a whole. And mostly they have to do with motivation and ethics. Anyone who wants to seriously understand what’s gone so terribly wrong with every game release since Origins needs to reckon with this.

This company refuses to consistently define its storytelling values within the game world/s beyond ‘yay friendship’ and ‘trauma sad’. This is why the use of sexual violence in origins is there to shock 12 year olds. If that game were well written and actually meant for mature adults, sexual violence would just be one bad thing that can happen* to people (and if it were weighted towards women, we’d have clearly defined patriarchal systems and sexism that, again, is not there for laughs or shock value) and there would be some actual grasp of psychology and power in the text in general. This is also why people are reducing an attempt at actual mythic storytelling with Mythal to ‘abusive mother’ ‘trauma sad’. These games as texts invite reduction.

That psychology? Utterly lacking for the most part. And not lacking in the way of a story that’s doing something else. Lacking because the text willfully uses shorthand and assumed empathy** from the audience instead of laying bare the actual human motivations*** behind everything. Individual characters rise above this, and all the characters give hints of it, but that’s not the same as actually writing a story that accounts for real human motivations as part of its larger narrative. Characters in truly robust fiction are supportive functions of the larger narrative, and that narrative has clear priorities founded on strong values.****

The damn audience. These games are written for a specific audience. And that audience is really racist and pretty self indulgent. It doesn’t care about motivation. It thinks Varric is an interesting character who isn’t written like a checklist. It’s happy as long as it gets to smash its dolls together. It also likes to send death threats. This audience is an abstracted boogeyman in the writers room as far as I can tell, and it’s stealing all the motivation.

Cannot believe this site has pushed me to actually say this. It’s liberal! These are distinctly liberal games. They cannot and will not say anything truly meaningful because their whole ethos is built on pretending they’re not conservative (an ethos defined by retreat). This is why the subversion of power fantasy in DA is interesting but can ring hollow. It’s incoherent for a reason! It’s not looking its values in the eye. This is also why ME2 remains distinct. Turns out it’s easier for liberals to write villains pretending to be heroes. Take that as you will.

I’m not really interested in talking about how corny Bioware dialogue has always been. It’s always been corny. There’s actual voice direction problems in Veilguard that add a layer of technical problems to this, and that’s a bit more interesting, if frustrating to experience. This is why people are reaching for when they say ‘clunky’. I’m also not really interested in the structural issues. Which are there. Because there’s fewer structural issues in Veilguard than in any previous BioWare game. Most of these complaints are coming from people who have apparently let time soften them on how poorly built the other games are. Again. These are real problems people are flailing at with reductive takes. They’re also on brand for BioWare.

So that whole mess up there? That’s what’s going on. It’s what’s going on with the games and the actual real life audience constantly being at each others throats. It’s what’s going on with expectations and weird takes and the usual clown show.

* You can also go the Alien route of course. But this would require the violence to happen indiscriminately re: gender, and it would need to use the disgust response intelligently to interrogate something like…oh I don’t know the disgusting male power fantasy intrinsic to forced pregnancy-as horror.

** This is part of why people keep saying ‘marvel’. Marvel movies run on assumed empathy and it’s the most immediate touchstone and cheapest shot. BioWare was doing it first though. Guardians is literally riffing on DA and ME. And yes it’s cheap writing. I just don’t know why anyone expects anything else.

*** I’d be fine with mythic or purely dramatic motivations myself, but these games definitely do not know how to do more than gesture at that.

**** Something that’s gotten seriously muddled in our current publishing environment. Character-driven doesn’t mean you can reduce everything to the characters and their arcs. This is how we get shallow self-actualization narratives in place of deep explorations of what it means to be human. This is the problem at the heart of the ‘representation’ debates.

[3hobbitsinatrenchcoat]

Some initial thoughts:

So after seeing four minor untagged spoilers in the span of an hour yesterday I finally caved and bought Dragon Age Veilguard. I played for almost five hours last night and I have. Opinions (but not the ones you might think).

I'm gonna start this with: I am enjoying myself immensely. This game is objectively fun and the characters are delightful.

So here are my thoughts in no particular order. Given that most of my annoyances so far are personal preference shit... They're minor.

I MISS top-down strategy. That's what made the game fun to me, specifically. The ability wheel is cool and all but it's not what I'm used to. Old man yells at cloud or whatever.

someone in the art department has a thing for Pixar mom dumptruck ass and hips and it SHOWS

I saw someone say you could dive in headfirst and you'd crack your head open if you tried (saying the lore isn't that deep) but quite frankly I'm not finding that to be true. There's quite a bit of lore.

I love all the scattered notes that aren't codex entries.

God the fade is so cool. Lighthouse concept?? Having to unlock rooms??? *chefs kiss*

So far the gameplay seems... A bit remenicent of DA2 with how railroad linear it is. (Derogatory) I'm hoping that changes when I progress further since I'm only a few hours in and Inquisition also took a long time to open up.

I wish they'd gone less smoothened cartoony with the animation. It just kinda looks weird to me. Sorry Bellara your jaw and chin situation is unsettling to me. Also the Pixar dumptruck ass makes another appearance in this point too.

The dumptruck ass isn't a negative btw it's just. So noticible that it's distracting me during cutscenes XD

As much as I miss top down gameplay the ability combo mechanics are LIT. That's so much fun.

I spent almost half an hour in the character creator. Take that for what you will.

I was initially skeptical about only including three choices from DAI as the things that change the story but after seeing what those choices were and the opening parts of the game I can see why. Am I disappointed? A little. But it's a completely different area of the world dealing with their own bullshit a not insignificant number of years later. Whoever is on the throne of ferelden isn't gonna matter when you have fucked up darkspawn crawling into your bed at night.

Speaking of those darkspawn. what the FUCK. THEY'RE SO MUCH MORE TERRIFYING??? WHY ARE THEY GLOWING??

If Varric doesn't talk about hawke at least once I'm gonna chew on bioware's fibre optic cables

That's all I really have on first impressions. I'm gonna sum this up by talking about a different franchise: Assassin's Creed. When they pivoted into open world they lost a lot of what I considered core gameplay. It still had the AC name and was in the same world with the same lore, but I had to learn to love it again.

That feels like what is happening here. The world is the same but the gameplay itself has been changed by time and consumer perception. It's fun but it'll never feel the same way it once did for some people.

And that's ok.

[shittybundaskenyer]

✹ ▬ 𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐒

rating: Explicit pairing: Female Shepard x Garrus Vakarian summary: the Mako breaks down in a snowstorm on Noveria. Shepard is stuck with her turian friend after some things went sideways in one of the research labs. warnings: first time gone wrong (but then so right), sex pollen, so much kissing, just pure smut (what do you want from me??), does doing it in the Mako is considered car sex?, interspecies sex, love confessions, so much fluff, Garrus is too sweet for his own good word count: 3831  

a/n: I had Mass Effect Legendary Edition on my PC for like a year and I'm now cursing myself why I've waited for so long to play the trilogy. The Bioware brainrot took me once more under its influence so I guess I'm going back to my roots. This is almost entirely is pure smut, I guess I can't write anything else nowadays but I'm embracing it now. So have this very rusty, messy love scene I wrote in a frenzy after finishing the trilogy. <33

MASTERLIST   |   ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Noveria is cold and white and still beautiful in that strange way only death can be. It became the noose woven around Garrus’ own neck too, when it twirled his fate and Shepard's own together in form of a messy string. 

It only started becoming strange when Shepard started to tear her armor off of her body, but by then all common sense was out, laying dead in the relentless snowstorm. She became feverish, smelling so sweet, like summer, like sun-warmed earth, like arousal that Garrus had realized all too late. They were warned by the dangers of the labs surrounding Peak 15, the tower that was like an old pine ringed by fungi, all the rot and unethical discoveries blooming under the disguise of neat little buildings that twinkled in the darkened landscape—a constellation hiding in a thick cloud of dark matter. 

He knows she was curious. He knows she only wanted to help, but Spirits, it will be the death of her one day, N7 or not, she’s only human. And she’s fragile, a goddamn glass cannon that can blow up the whole universe and crumble from hands that grip her a bit too tight at the same time. 

Liara’s warning came too late, they had to cut to the chase and there was no time to think about the consequences of Shepard's stray shot breaking open the containment cell of an unnaturally lush, succulent little flower in one of the labs. It didn’t set in until they were in the Mako and she steered the dumb tank even more recklessly than she did it stone cold sober. A boulder came, then the half of the mountain too, raining down thick globes of fresh snow until the Mako was good and well stuck. She was sweating by then, skin hot and wet and her eyes wild and Liara offered to get help from one of the nearby labs, leaving Garrus to protect his commander with his life. From what, he didn’t know. There was nothing, only snow and wind and Shepard’s warmth all around them for miles. But time trickled by like water on a glass window after a storm, slow, sluggish, and Shepard couldn’t keep herself in line anymore. 

She pleaded for a caress she always wanted from him and he wanted to give her everything instead. 

(Maybe he loved her all along.)

And now, now Liara is gone and has been gone for hours, and Garrus pushes Shepard into the Mako's seat, his forehead meeting hers, something akin to a kiss only lovers do. Her skin is damp, her hair sticking to her face in messed up crimson ribbons and he tries to trace the constellations under her eye with a blunted talon when blood floods her cheeks, making them twinkle like stars adrift a sea of nebulae. The Mako is dark but not dark enough to hide the fire flickering in her gaze, shielded by a series of curved, dark lashes. Humans and their strange hair—eyebrows and lashes and thousands of fair fuzz that stand up as he moves his hand lover, to the vulnerable skin of her throat, swiping a thumb over her pulse that jumps wildly at the touch. 

"Kiss me," she whispers, barely audible for the translator to pick up, and it almost sounds like music like this, a series of hisses and high notes, so he nuzzles his way closer to hear it once more, now pleading, the sound buzzing in her throat. 

It's beautiful in a way.

"How?" he whispers against the side of her jaw, warm plates against cooler skin, and she puts a hand to his face, five fingers splaying over his colony markings, urging him upwards until her lips can brush over his mouth. It's strange. It's unbelievably soft. Then— wet as her tongue darts out and tries to coax his mouth plates apart. 

He takes the leap and lets her in. Even if he has all the sharp teeth, even if it's wildly different from his own experiences. And Spirits, it feels good. It's tender—even though they started to tear at each other's armor before this, even though he has to clench his fingers into a fist before he scratches her in his hurry. This has to be gentle where nothing in the world is. 

His tongue meets hers, and now he understands why humans like kissing so much. He does now too. Shepard makes a sound as he tastes the inside of her mouth, the blunt edge of her teeth and sucks in a breath when Garrus pulls back to gaze down at her and find her looking dazed. 

"Alright?," he checks, always, afraid of fucking this precious thing up and Shepard has the audacity to smile. Full of teeth and curving lips, a flash of white in the darkness. 

"I'm good," she knocks her forehead against his, nuzzling him, "really good."

Garrus kisses her again as an answer, bolder now, so much braver, and he kisses and kisses her until there's no more left to give, until there's no air in her lungs. Something new shines in her eyes, in the pool of darkness that is her pupils, dilated beyond belief, ringed by a thin strip of wild green, a black hole with a halo. Want. Need. Something more. Something unbelievable. 

Garrus rumbles deep in his chest, a sound so low she can only feel its vibration against her sternum, the crook of her neck where his face finds a home. His subvocals sing so many things at once, a confession she can't understand, not yet. Contentment. Gratefulness. Lust. Love.

(Maybe I love you.)

She drags her hand across his face again, that delicate, soft hand that is only calloused in places where wielding a gun made the skin harder. She touches his fringe, and under it, where plates turn into the most vulnerable patch of hide he has on his body. His voice grows louder, more like a growl than a purr, and she smiles again, so pretty something under his keelbone jumps and bursts and flickers—a star being born. 

"That's—," he starts and he's not proud of the way his voice trembles. "That's one way to give the night a quick start."

Shepard's fingers stop in their movement, but before she could pull away he takes a hold of her forearm and soothes a thumb over the inside of her wrist, guiding her back to that spot. 

"Am I hurting you?" 

"Spirits, no," he flicks a mandible at her, his way of smiling, and Shepard puts her mouth to his jaw as her confidence grows. Garrus can feel the plates at his sheath slowly parting and somehow he's hyperaware of her body trapped against his, her knee brushing his own, warm even through metal and ceramic plates. 

They have to strip down that damn armor, like, right now. 

But Shepard knows this, feels this too, and her hand disappears so she can grab the waist of his pants and tug on it, even though turian armor is not designed in a way that it could make it come off easily. 

"Help me, will you?" she asks against the side of his mandible, face and incredibly soft lips still so close, her eyelashes brushing his jaw as she looks down between them in the dark and Garrus desperately wishes that he could feel that fluttering. Instead, he's stripping. The rest of his undersuit that was hanging by his hips goes lower when he unfastens every little clasp and belt he has around his spurs. 

Shepard licks his mouth. He rumbles again, louder when the thin fabric of protective weave finally pools on the Mako's floor, and he's right up there against her, pressing close, so close, until his keel digs between her breasts and his side is framed by her knees and he kisses her the human way, with so much tongue and want it leaves her breathless. 

"How much time do we have?" he asks against the underside of her ear, finding a soft spot there, one that pulls a whimper from her. 

"Barely any," she hisses and lets him nibble on the curve of her neck. "Gonna make the most of it?"

"Trying to," he smiles, mandibles catching her messy hair, blood red on silver, hands going up to cradle her nape, to get lost in that soft sea of crimson. 

Shepard likes this, likes the feel of his hide on her skin and she wants more, wants no barriers in those minimal, quiet gaps the differences of their bodies create. Negative space filled with heat and some unintelligible emotion, something like summer, something like home. She melds her body to his and Garrus can't help the low resonance his subvocals start to make. 

"Am I hurting you?" she whispers as she lays tiny kisses on his neck, just beside the edge of the plates shielding his spine. "You're trembling."

"No, I just—," his breath hitches as those kisses turn into gentle nips. Right where a bondmark would go. Spirits, he's slipping. She can't know this, she can't— "You just found all the good buttons to push."

He feels her smirk on his hide. He wants to have her mark here, even though the thought terrifies him.

(Maybe I love you.)

"You know I'm good at pushing buttons."

Garrus chuckles but it comes out rasped. He doesn't care. Not when he can feel her body vibrating, shivering as his hands finally roam downwards, onto her sides, her hips, the soft of her belly that is so blessedly bare. 

He slides a talon along the muscles leading down, around the small divot in the middle, lower still where Shepard's already lifting her hips up to let him free her of her undersuit pants. There's still some fabric that remains, covering her most intimate parts but she grabs his hands and makes him grip the fabric of it in a hurry. 

"Pull this down too," she whisper-commands and he obliges, skims the tips of his blunted talons over the jut of her hipbones, a feature all too familiar on a body made of infinite curves. It traps his gaze, the small hills and valleys, freckled here too, and hairy when he gazes lower, a trail of tiny red curls disappearing between lush thighs as he reveals more of her skin. 

The undergarment only gets down one leg, dangles on the other by her knee when he pries apart her thighs, makes himself at home right in the cradle of them. This is all too fast and all too hot, but none of them complains as they meet in another heated kiss. She smells different like this, stronger, sweet and tangy and something else, pure arousal he realizes, and Garrus can't hold himself back any longer, can't will the swollen edges of his sheath to stay closed. 

"Show me how to touch you," he asks, almost pleads, because damn, he can't be selfish with her, not when he trusts her with his life and wants all the happiness the world can offer for her. That too, is a confession he's not ready to make, not for himself and not for her, but Shepard stops him in his thoughts as she puts her hand back right under his fringe, driving him wild. 

"None of that right now," she pants, breathless as his hands go bruising on her hips. "I just want you inside me."

Fuck, this was not the way Garrus thought he would die.

"I don't want to hurt—" she interrupts him with another kiss, then a hand on his stomach, low enough to almost graze the plates on his groin. 

"Please, Garrus," it's a plea. Broken and rasped. Raw, like a fresh wound. Why is she suffering? 

"Don't let me hurt you. I could not live with myself and the consequences."

"You're sweet," she smiles quietly, looking up at him from under the shadow of those long lashes, eyes burning with fire and want and that same thing that eats his heart alive, while it still beats a wild rhythm only for her. 

Garrus touches a hand between her legs, follows the trail of fascinating hair to where it parts in a seam of flesh, soft folds hiding a hot, wet warmth. It's familiar enough, so much more slick and so much smaller, but there's give in the muscle lower, where his finger finally dips inside her. Spirits, that’s—

She angles her hips, and moans, right beside his ear when his finger slips deeper, almost to the last knuckle in one go and damn if that's not something he'll remember for the rest of his life. 

"C'mon," her lips brush the word against his mandible. He puts his forehead to hers and pulls his hand away, moving her instead, three fingers splayed on the jut of a hipbone. 

It takes a little more shuffling, a little more angling and gripping for him to slot himself right at the apex of her thighs, her warmth scorching here, a sun, a red giant star, her wetness smearing on the bare hide of his stomach and then he's holding her firm and letting his sheath finally, blessedly open, his cock sliding out and into her in a slow, perfect motion. 

Shepard doesn't breathe. She can't. Garrus can feel her shuddering against his keel as he keeps filling her, making way for himself inside her even though there's barely any. He never thought she could— that she would have all of him, like this, with her leg cramping up around his hip, with her throat full to bursting with unsaid curses and whimpers. His subvocals scream, his mind fogged by the feeling of her oh so close, so perfect, so beautiful like this, with her hands bruising his neck and her lips open on some silent shout. 

"Fuck, Garrus I—," there's a hitch in her breath, then a fluttering squeeze right on his cock, her muscles clenching up. He's gonna lose his mind just like how he lost control of his voice. 

(I love you.)

“I got you,” he murmurs instead, eyes half-closed, hands still gripping her waist. “I got you sweetheart.”

Shepard squirms, pulls his face right down to her, then lower, into the crook of her neck and a deep urge surfaces in him, an instinct buried deep under centuries of civilized life and culture, yet it was never erased from his genes. He evolved like this, with the want, the need, to bite, to mark something that he wants to forever keep his own. Turians mate for life. If she leaves now, he thinks he will die. Can another soul be ripped from his own? He would gladly lay in a cold grave with her. Would follow her to the end of the universe and back, just so he can protect her. Shield the one that wants to keep the world from crumbling. Travel through all the stars and Mass Relays laying dormant, see all the wild emptiness and beauty of the galaxy and it would still be nothing compared to the way she looks up at him now. 

There’s water collecting at her pinched brows; sweat, he remembers, and he lifts a hand there to swipe it away. Her eyes are wet too, glossy, glinting in the low light like a starry night sky over home.  

“Garrus—” she presses out between her teeth, her face scrunched up in a frown of pain-pleasure he assumes, because she never makes a move to push him away, to halt this perfect joining. He hopes it’s okay. He hopes he’s not fucking this up. Losing her after this would be a killing blow. A heart-shaped bullet hole right on his heart. 

“Just tell me how,” he takes her cheek in his palm, angles her so that he can kiss her. Slowly. Softly. It’s a fleeting thing that ends with her nipping on his mouth, his tongue, just to get his attention. Like his every nerve was not focused on her anyway from the start. 

“Please move,” she murmurs against his mandible, her body squeezing him tight, making him groan. He pulls back a little, testing, careful, always so afraid of hurting her, his tough girl, but Shepard smiles and it’s enough to make him thrust shallowly into her. “Yeah, you feel so good.”

Garrus’ vision whites out for a second as her insides tug him back inside, so warm and so wet that a messy patch is already forming between their bodies, his sheath hitting her folds, the friction blinding, and the sight even more as he looks down, fringe tangled into her hair, and in the darkness he finds himself nestled deep, her cunt stretched around him, glistening in their combined want. 

He moves, spirits, he moves. And his chest rumbles and his hands shake and his mandibles twitch at her cheek and his heart aches so damn hard it makes his breaths get stuck in his lungs like trapped creatures in a bone cage. 

(I love you so damn much.)

She moves with him like a tide, like water rising on an endless black ocean alight with stars, then falling back, and even though he knows she's the most horrible dancer the galaxy has, she follows the steps of this tango by heart. Maybe because it's wanted. Maybe because it's with him. He desperately wishes that it would be true. 

"I won't last long like this," his voice is barely picked up by the translator and he knows this, hopes that she doesn't mind the sounds he makes. They're real. So perfectly clear in their meaning, so sure in expressing something he's not yet ready to say when she can understand. 

(I love you, I love you, I love you.)

She puts a palm to his stomach, just above his sheath, five lithe fingers mapping out the narrow lines of his sides, and damn, it makes his cock twitch, makes him thrust in roughly for the first time. There's a sound of delight. It comes from her, head tipped back and lips smeared with spit and red strands of hair, like fresh blood after a good brawl. 

"Yes," she breathes out, dragging him down to her, clinging to him tightly as he finally moves his hips in a hard, steady rhythm. His knees are gonna kill him later but it doesn’t matter because he’s with her, joined like lovers, like mates.

She takes his hand, leads it over her body, to the divot of her collarbones, her sternum, the dip of her stomach, then the soft of her belly where she makes him press down a little, makes him feel the distinct shape of him moving inside her. That's something entirely new. 

It makes him even more aware of the fact that this small, fragile woman would take up a krogan in a fistfight and come out alive. It makes him lose his mind. It makes some sick, posessive part of him growl and rumble and hold her so tight he's sure her hips are gonna bruise. 

"Shepard," he hisses, one hand gripping the seat behind her to find more leverage, her sounds getting louder, out of breath and high-pitched, his name a silent mantra only muttered with gaping lips. “Show me how to make you come.”

She whimpers, clutches his fingers tighter on her navel. The talons of his other hand tear the Mako’s seat behind her. She drags his palm over the mound of hairy flesh where they join, and he enjoys carding his talons through the curls, then she takes a thick finger and places the pad of it just above where he’s stretching her open with his cock, on a small bundle of swollen flesh that instantly makes her tighten around him. This is something he could never get used to—the tight warmth clinging to him like a second skin under Palaven’s unforgiving sun. He swipes his thumb over it, then draws a slow circle. The tightness becomes almost unbearable. He keens.  

“Damn clever turian,” she hiccups, grinding into his touch, into his unsteady thrusts, her hand gripping his wrist instead, not guiding but trying to steady herself. “I’m so close, Garrus.”

He nuzzles her jaw at that, forehead meeting forehead after, then lips with plates, tongue with tongue. The kiss breaks off in a series of desperate gasps, and Garrus murmurs against her, “let me come with you. Senna, please I—”

“Love you,” she pants into the crook of his neck, teeth grazing him, and then biting in when he pushes his whole length into her, the stretch unbearable, her words ringing in his ears like endless echoes in a hallway made of dark matter and stardust, and he claims her, puncturing her shoulder and filling her cunt, his tie growing, the taste of her blood bursting on his tongue. Sweet. Salty. Iron. Just like her. 

She tightens on him impossibly so, and then there’s a fluttering, her muscles spasming violently in an orgasm that makes her legs shake and her stomach jump. His thumb slowly stops moving on the bundle of flesh she showed him when her short nails dig forcefully into his forearm. 

(I love you, I love you, I love you—)

Subvocals screaming, his whole body trembling, he finally releases her flesh, knocks his nose against hers until her eyes flutter open, dazed and unfocused, brimmed with tears, pupils dilated to infinity. She smiles, blunt teeth flashing white and blue in the low light, and it takes him a few seconds to realize that it’s his own blood on her lips. 

He leans down to lick it off, to embrace her tighter, to feel the taste of her tingle in the back of his throat. She bit him. She marked him for life.

“I love you so damn much, baby.”

It’s out and it’s his own shot right through his heart, a shard of metal carved out just in the shape of her, and Garrus knows that nothing ever will be the same. The marks, the blood, his tie cradled by her fluttering warmth, his heart laying bare out in the snow, thawing in her warmth. 

Turians don’t like the cold, but Shepard scorches and it's just the right way.

“Thank you,” she whispers, weak now, entirely spent, but not influenced by the poison of want anymore. “I know this was… not how a first date should’ve happened but…” she bites the bruised swell of her bottom lip and he smooths a hand over her cheek, brushing away sticky hairs from her face. “Can we… have a next time?”

Garrus flicks out his mandibles in a smile and hugs her tighter, reassuring, eyes full of hope and wonder and her own disheveled reflection, “I want all the next times with you.”

“Good,” her grin tickles his hide, mischievous now. “I’m looking forward to it.”

(I do too. I do, I do, I do.)

[nightowlwriting]

summary: (he never kisses her left hand, always her right, because she once told him that she’s nothing more than the anchor on her hand and the history of the fight with the archdemon so many years earlier.)

word count: 2.2k

warnings: subdrop, mentions of past child abuse, torture, and allusions to past almost-sexual assault (no assault occurred or is described in the fic)

note: i haven't written in a long time, so this is me easing myself into ktober24. also this takes place in MY canon for the dragon age series which heavily diverges from bioware's canon. eventually i'll get around to novelizing the warriorverse (my warrior playthroughs of the game) but with veilguard coming out in less than thirty days that will have to wait.

title credit: sufjan stevens

kinktober masterlist: here

amalia cousland: here

mobile masterlist - request - ao3

Cullen Rutherford is a strategist at heart and a man of his word. Born from a lineage of farmers, put through trials and tribulations that most men can only imagine - all to rise to the Commander of the Inquisition’s forces. Not without struggle, of course, especially as he falls deeper into his Lyrium withdrawal. But those struggles, the demons that come for him at night, and the gnarled roots of addiction inside of him don’t stop him from being the man that Amalia always knew he would grow into.

She remembers being a child in Honnleath, before the blight and before Ves and before shedding the heavy Sulzbacher name for the equally heavy Cousland name. She remembers being friends with Rosalie first, one year her senior, and then Branson next. Branson was a few years younger than Amalia, but she got along with him fine. Mia came next and then, finally, Cullen Rutherford.

She remembers that he was three years older than her and golden. Golden hair, skin touched by the long hours with his father and farm hands in the fields, and fundamentally benevolent. She first saw him through a curtain of her then-black hair after Branson had tripped her as she trotted alongside Rosalie, smiling down at her. She was only six at the time, to Cullen’s nine, but she knew. She knew that he’d go on to do great things, knew that he’d escape Honnleath like she wished that she could, that he would find a great love like in the stories her mother used to tell.

The world seems so simple when you’re less than a decade old.

Now, though, nothing has really changed. Amalia is still friends with Rosalie and Branson, though only by the letters she sends and receives from the South Reach. Cullen is still all of those things he was as a child, except now he’s been tested by the Maker in tragedy, war, and now one of the Magisters who first entered the Golden City. Selfishly, she’s glad that it’s Cullen. She’s almost thankful to the Maker and Andraste for all of the shit they’ve mucked Cullen through - and the shit that they’ve mucked her through - because it brings the two of them to now, this exact moment in time.

The truth of what nearly happened at Fort Drakon ten years ago had come out at the war table, but Cullen hadn’t looked at her any differently. They’d had the night together at the Winter Palace, after Amalia’s disastrous decision to dule that Duchess in front of the entire court, and Cullen remained stalwartly at her side. And then, when she’d gone up to his office to try and escape her meddling family he’d asked her to go back with him.

To Ferelden. To the Redcliffe arling.

To Honnleath.

She had been hesitant. Matthias surely wasn’t still there, but Amalia also didn’t want to risk seeing her father again, no matter the circumstances. She also didn’t want to see where so many of her happiest childhood memories took place - always at the Rutherford farm or sitting underneath the shade that Shale provided and never inside of her home - after the blight and after ten years of abandonment. But Cullen smiled so sweetly at her, took her right hand and pressed a kiss to her scarred knuckles, and said please.

(He never kisses her left hand, always her right, because she once told him that she’s nothing more than the Anchor on her hand and the history of the fight with the archdemon so many years earlier.)

Cullen had taken her to the lake, had given her his coin, and then taken her back to Honnleath where the bulk of the force they’d traveled with had finished the job they set out to do. Amalia doesn’t mind that they’ve gone through the small home, and dungeon beneath it, that had been her childhood abode. Doesn’t mind that they’ve taken her grandfather’s writings and research and loaded them in heavy boxes on the back of the bronto-drawn carts. She’s not a mage, just mage-blooded enough to pull off rituals as seen by the time she spent with Morrigan’s grimoire and the survival of her Grey Warden siblings. Amalia, at heart, is a warrior. If her grandfather’s works will help the Inquisition mages, then they shall be taken back to Skyhold.

It helps that Wilhelm Sulzbacher was a bastard of a man to everyone in his life, including his elven wife and golem. Amalia has nothing left for him, or her father, Matthias. It helps that he was also a bastard of a man to his elven wife, and elfblooded daughter. It’s almost cathartic to see the Inquisition soldiers - Amalia’s soldiers - carting everything up out of the dank basement she was so terrified of.

Cullen had let her watch for a few moments, standing in the spot that Shale used to stand in, before he took her back to the Rutherford house. It had been cleaned, probably at his request, and then…

Well, and then Cullen made good on his promise.

When she’d been nervous at the Winter Palace, he hadn’t pushed her into sex. They’d shared pleasure, yes, but not sex. Amalia hadn’t wanted their first time to be because of a duel and she agreed with Cullen’s sentiment: neither wanted their first time laying together to be in Orlais. They’re Ferelden at heart, and no amount of satin bedding or hearty foods could convince them otherwise. He’d promised her as he brought her off on his fingers that she’d know nothing but pleasure from him. He’d take her back across the border into Ferelden, he’d find a place comfortable for both of them, and if she wished it they would lay together.

Of course, being in the throes of an orgasm made Amalia agree to anything he was saying. Cullen Rutherford is a strategist at heart and a man of his word. As soon as the missive had crossed his desk about needing Wilhelm’s research, he knew that it was of the upmost importance that Wilhelm’s granddaughter, Amalia, be there when it was retrieved.

The fact that he had his childhood bedroom prepared, cleaned, and fitted with more expensive sheets before their arrival is none of anyone’s concern.

Except Amalia’s, but she’s not very concerned about that. She’s more focused on the way his skin feels against hers, hot and slick, and the way that pleasure still lays heavy in her limbs. Cullen has her pulled as closely as possible to him, legs tangled, as his hands roam up and down her bare back. He has been right when he’d told her that she needn’t worry with him. When Cullen had tried to press into her body for the first time and Amalia had flinched - barely noticeable but she knows that he notices everything about her - they’d prepared more.

(Prepared, of course, meaning that he’d put his mouth on her again until she peaked once more.)

There was never a moment in which Amalia Cousland felt like Cullen Rutherford was just fucking her to own her or taking what he wanted without considering what she wanted. His body over hers, so broad and muscular and golden, hadn’t felt like those moments before Alistair had kicked the door to the machine room down. Cullen’s hands handn’t felt like brands upon her skin - well, they had, but the good kind of brands. The kind of brands Amalia can see herself becoming addicted to. The way Cullen held her as he pressed into her hadn’t made her panic with claustrophobia or cry out in terror.

Amalia isn’t even sure she can call what they did fucking. That seems too… Primal of a word for what they shared. Love-making, maybe. It had felt like love, and she knows that she loves Cullen but can he love her? If he doesn’t, could he? Her past weighs heavy on her shoulders, and she can’t even escape it. Everyone knows the story of the girl who took the final strike on the archdemon at Denerim, of the Grey Warden who refused to let her die, of the Ashes that brought the girl back to life. The scar on the left side of her jaw, from just below her mouth to underneath her ear, is proof that she did die at the hands of the archdemon, that when Ves used the Ashes of Andraste leftover from healing the Arl of Redcliffe that they not only brought Amalia back to life but darned her face back together and left a mottled line of proof.

And now she’s the Inquisitor. The Herald of Andraste. She half believes it herself, because why else would the Ashes have worked? Why else would the Joining not have taken?

Why else would Ves and Alistair, both set on keeping her away from the Conclave and the fact that their Calling was shouting at them to be there, sent her with Bethany and Carver to see if they could find the other Wardens?

Why else would she have been the only survivor? Another moment of death and loss, and Amalia is still standing.

Before she knows it, she’s crying. She doesn’t want to worry Cullen, he already carries so much on his shoulders, but she can’t stop. Before long the heady, heavenly feeling of being in his arms, of knowing him and his body, twists and sours into panic and sorrow.

“Amalia?” Cullen asks, pulling only slightly away from her. Just enough to see her face, really, and she wonders what she looks like. Hair and eyes leeched of color because of her brush with death, scarred face, Anchor… She can’t possibly be the woman he thought he’d be in bed with. The woman that he thought he’d end up betrothed to. “Amalia, darling, what’s wrong?” His voice shakes and he cups her face with one hand, tilting her head up until she’s looking at him.

And, well, she can’t let him think he’s done something wrong.

“I am,” She finally warbles, shaking her head as best she can when she’s laying on her side tangled up in him, “I’m wrong. I should have died in Denerim, and I should have died during the Joining, and I should have died at the Conclave. How can you stand to look at me, Cullen?” Her voice breaks as she begins to cry in earnest, tears blurring his face as he looks at her.

“Oh, darling,” He whispers, bringing her close enough that his lips can press against her forehead, and then her nose, and finally on the jagged scar that reminds her of what she was willing to give up to protect Ves and Alistair. “I don’t care what should have happened,” Cullen finally says, pressing himself as close as possible, “I only care what has happened. Everything leading up to this moment, with you in my arms, is all that matters.”

“But we’ll never be free of it,” Amalia allows herself to sink into him, to press her nose against the side of his neck and drown in oakflower, eldermoss, and the faint scent of leather. “We’ll never be free from people knowing who I am, what I’ve done. I don’t care if it’s all good, if they think that I’m the Herald of Andraste. I just want a normal life. I want you to have a normal life, and I can’t give you that.”

Cullen shifts and for a brief second, Amalia is afraid that she’s chased him away. He only sets her down on the mattress and disentangles himself so that he can prop himself up over top of her. His hand cups her neck, large enough that his thumb can press and lightly rub back and forth over her scar. He smiles down at her, his own scar pulling slightly as he does so.

���You needn’t worry about me,” Cullen kisses her briefly, “Especially not about whether or not I want normal. I don’t care about normal, Amalia. Maker’s breath, the only thing I care about having is you. That’s all that matters to me.” She hiccups, tears still trailing over the sides of her face as she looks up at Cullen, and tries to believe him.

“But would you be happy with me?” Amalia asks, voice pitifully quiet. “If we were to stay together past the Inquisition, I mean.”

“If?” He asks instead of answering, “If? Amalia, I am in love with you. I would lay down my life for you. I don’t know what will happen past the Inquisition, I don’t know what will happen in ten years or twenty, but I know that I want you by my side.” He looks so serious, golden, that Amalia’s breath is taken away. “I want to be by your side.” He says, softer than he spoke before.

“You love me?” She asks, reaching for his face, “You love me?”

Cullen smiles crookedly, and it’s like the sun. It almost fully chases away the storm clouds that had settled in her chest. They’ll never truly be gone, not with what she’s seen and what she’s been through, but in Cullen’s arms and his bed, they don’t seem so scary. They don’t seem so all-consuming like they had been only moments before.

“Of course I love you,” Cullen says, “I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t love you.”

Amalia beams, then, even though her smile only reaches half of her mouth. It doesn’t bother her like it normally does because Cullen is kissing her, surging against her, pressing her into the soft cushion of the mattress underneath her. She lets him take her again, or maybe she shares herself with him again, and for a moment the world doesn’t seem so scary.

[galadrieljones]

From your recent posts on what taking down the Veil would mean (which, btw, thank you for seeking out those opinions and writing your own as well - I've also been very interested in those consequences lately): "The plot of Veilguard is, I think, when taken in a vacuum, very good. It's a unique perspective taken from many old tropes, but it is simply not executed with gravitas, in my opinion."

This is putting into words something I've been struggling with over the last few days. I've played VG twice now and have a third save going, though I've mostly been spending my time back in DA:I as I feel more at home there. But my feelings on VG have begun to move from "it's fine" to "I'm indifferent" to "I can't really interact with this in a way that's satisfying to me." And I think maybe a lot of that is about the lack of gravitas with which the story is told.

If we don't truly know the stakes of our actions (whether that's what it means if the Veil is gone, or whether magic is in any way as dangerous as the South has always made us believe), we cannot make informed choices. Uninformed choices are fun too, and they have their place - not knowing what drinking the Well of Sorrows would do to my Inquisitor is still the most frightening choice I've made perhaps in any game.

But I never get the sense with VG that the writing is intentionally leaving a choice ambiguous to scare us or to leave us with mystery - or even to remind us of a parallel between Rook and Solas, who are each trying to make impossible choices without fully knowing the consequences of their actions. Instead, it just feels like we are handed a choice without context and are expected to trust that what appears to be the correct answer actually is the correct answer.

That's not very Dragon Age (and not very BioWare) to me. Rather, it's a much less robust and mature vision of Thedas - a setting that has always taught us there is much more lurking below the surface. Long-held beliefs are to be examined, challenged, traced back to their beginnings. VG, unfortunately, is not particularly interested in these things.

Yes, I totally agree, and I do feel that Veilguard is a somewhat unserious game. I understand why it really embitters a lot of people. Part of my complaint about Rook's obstinate, almost unshakable air is that I don't have the opportunity to really get into her emotional state of mind. She's REALLY quippy, and that's fun, but idk. I enjoyed playing as a kind of passionate, brave Lavellan, who did not always know what she was doing, but who did everything because she believed that to win was not only possible but necessary, and that she was, in some ways, chosen for a reason. I liked playing a true hero, who was exceedingly valorous and beloved despite having little experience in the fray. With my Rook, I do really love her, in my way, but I want to throw her into a blender lol. I want her to feel things! To express fear, genuine confusion, heart, love, regret, anything. She is too in control at the risk of seeming noncommittal. Even while in the regrets prison, I do not recall feeling as if she actually lost something. Now, that may change in my second playthrough. I am only about halfway there.

BUT, perhaps the game takes on this same noncommittal state of mind, for me at least. It wants to be light on its feet in some ways, which, I think, is honestly fine for a video game, BUT, Dragon Age has crafted for itself a long tradition of heavy and beautiful games, though they are always flawed. While I think that Veilguard is visibly beautiful, and I think the Solavellan ending does live up to the sort of gravitas established by Bioware games in the past, I do mean it when I say that the rest of the game is just little bit preposterous lol.

The reason I brought up Silence of the Lambs when talking about Veilguard in that other post was really to show that I think it has a lot of potential, and that it could have fit neatly into a very interesting canon of texts that hardly exists anymore. Everybody is so into antiheroes that we have sort of forgotten about heroes altogether, that sometimes, heroes only feel like antiheroes, or villains, or they are struggling, not because they are morally compromised, or weak, but because they are shamefully misunderstood, and much of that is due to their own personal failures. That is how I view Solas. The entire thing with Solas as this inconceivable master, exceedingly dangerous to his enemies, but locked away into a prison of his own making, constructed by his regrets of loss and love is enormously interesting.

I also think he is massively heroic. He is brave, unshakable. He makes countless difficult decisions, and while I know we all love to joke about his failures, I found that Morrigan's defense of his decision with the Veil was really inspiring. It is, perhaps, now this sort of "wound" or mistake, but at the time, it was the only choice. It's interesting to me that Veilguard utilizes this trope that we see in Silence of the Lambs, but the man behind the bulletproof glass is not a villain at all. He COULD be the hero of the story, if the writers would let him.

I would have loved a game where Rook starts to see Solas as the hero and herself as the villain, and what this does to her psychologically. Does it change her? Teach her? I would have loved to have some of Solas's point of view as well, in the Fade, and what he is going through. I would have loved a lot of things. But. The text is the text, in the end. It is what it is. In this age of the transformative, I have to choose imagination and just try to let it go. But that doesn't mean ignoring the flaws. I enjoy these discussions and asking these questions, because it helps me to grow a better understanding of what I enjoy in stories, and how to make better stories myself.

[broodwolf221]

i have been thinking about the evanuris so much since that trailer dropped. this is gonna be rambly, long, and kinda heavy

bioware critical

i dont find criticizing the things i like to usually be very useful or good for my overall mental health, but seriously, im still very, deeply upset with the way dai handled the evanuris. i wish they had gone almost any other direction. making the extremely oppressed dalish's gods into a) not gods and b) actually awful slavers! is like. well. points for finding the most fucked up path forward and dedicating yourselves to it, i guess

bc of that, i can't help but hold out a sliver of hope for a bit of a retcon with da4. i'm not talking issues of likelihood or implication here, just desire and the fact that retcons of standing game canon are obviously possible. it's happened a number of time - solas dropping the big Actually The Evanuris Are Monsters thing on us was one of the bigger retcons of everything we'd ever learned about the creators, in fact

and if they don't change the slavery aspect entirely, i want them to at least... idk how to say this. diversify opinion on it within the evanuris? make it more complicated? the evanuris are presumably at war with the forgotten ones and the titans. could they also be at war with themselves?

how old is their history of slavery? how did it begin? why wait for fen'harel's rebellion to address it? who's telling the story of the evanuris? the dread wolf? obviously i love solas but i'd honestly rather see him as a liar and a bad guy who twisted the whole thing and the evanuris as the creators. or maybe he's just someone who doesn't remember things as clearly as he thinks he does, someone for whom his "millennia of dark, dreaming sleep" distorted his recollection of arlathan

flemythal is obviously fucked up. there's theories about her being a spirit, or part-spirit, theories i've also entertained, in which case i could see her being justice -> vengeance. maybe becoming vengeance is what made her 'bad' - like being abusive to morrigan, possibly sorta grooming kieran, etc. but during arlathan, was she the only 'good' evanuris? are they all irredeemably evil? i hate irredeemably evil arcs. i don't want every villain to be redeemed, either, that's not my point at all, but i hate the You're Evil-Bad And Obviously Can Never Change arcs. i hate black and white dynamics like that.

it's messy af to make slavers sympathetic. they managed decently with dorian - he grapples with the reality of the situation he was born into and never had cause to question, and comes out the other side with a changed opinion.

idk what i want. i want to give the dalish people their gods back. i don't want their hard-won and harder-maintained faith to be usurped by such an ugly reality. i want to redo the ending of trespasser to make it that the Maker is real and just a massive piece of shit. that'd be fine.

and if they can't retcon it, i want some of the evanuris - idc who, rly - to be opposed, to have grown, to return in humility to the dalish who have spent all this time honoring them. not as gods, but as people. if they can't have their gods, let them have the reality of those 'gods' working towards something better than their grim history. let dalish wear their vallaslin with pride instead of calling it a naive attempt to clutch at the branding of slavery. ugh. it's just so ugly and complicated i hate it.

[the-sera]

Hi, I'm very interested in your role at BioWare! What kind of work did you do on games like Mass Effect? Did you work on the legendary edition or the original release? I saw your age is listed as late 20s so you must have started your career quite young; that must be quite a story! :)

Hey there, thank you. It was on the original, ME3. I worked as a creative project architect mainly, which was a wide category label mainly used to group various individuals contracted between the line of studio vs corporate for EA. I did not touch the legendary edition, I was looooong gone and do not have the most positive tie to EA, considering its practices as a company, I have no doubt you can fill the blank as to why. I prefer not to gossip too much, since it was the inception of my career. People were not treated well, nor credited properly, EA likes loyal soldiers, there are no shortages of controversies or reasons to have a problem with EA over the years. I can't say a thing about how it is now, hopefully it is much better and a good place, but for better or for worse it made my career. So I am thankful for everything it did for me and leave it at that.

You may have noticed that I mention being heavily stalked by people in my family, so forgive me for not elaborating as extensively as I wish I could, the semi-anonymity I manage to keep here is keeping me safe from immediate physical harm. I hope you understand.

The 20s label is just me clinging to my youth like a vampire countess bathing in blood, I have not changed my bio in a long time, I am at the very beginning of my 30s (78 million years old). As for "how did you manage to make it", a chain of recommendation and gambling every dime I had, risking loosing my housing, some blind confidence, and much more, that is what it took for me to get there that young. So 98% luck, I will never pretend I was great on day one, I learned on the battlefield.

I am actually working on a project that I will be posting here. It will be telling not only how my accident came to be, but also how my life kind of unfolded in this direction, as well as my career. I am working very hard on it and I hope you will like it when it is ready. If my condition does represent the end of my life, making this project will be a way to put my life story out there. A bit morbid? I hope not 💕

If you seek advices or tips on how to enter the video game industry, I will be happy to provide you all the help and ressources I can. I see that you are very talented and if that is your dream, know that I am cheering for you with all my heart. You deserve it and as log as you pursue it, you can make it! ❤

[sir-adamus]

Out of curiosity, which race/culture/group do you think is gonna get hit by Bioware’s (in)famous “Well, when you look at all the facts, maybe oppression is justified” trend in Veilguard?

well considering they spent that last years hyping up Dreadwolf as being 'in Tevinter' but now they're backtracking to "more regions of Thedas", i'd say it was almost certainly going to be slaves and they probably only realised the optics of that last year (also there have definitely been so many direction changes behind the scenes for it to have gone this long with fuck all to show for it)

now they're promising a party that will "represent many different factions" which means we're definitely gonna get a Cullen-lite pro-Templar asshole who will lecture us about how Mages need to be oppressed and they're just making too much of a fuss about being imprisoned from childhood, unable to fight back against their jailers (who are the ruling religion's military arm) and threatened with death or lobotomy of the soul if they don't do what they're told - and we definitely won't be able to argue against this (the fact that they had to mention that our character would be able to "impact the world and characters" is 1. an implicit acknowledgement that the Inquisitor couldn't do shit in Inquisition and 2. a fucking lie)

and considering they had Inquisition basically blame the elves for their own oppression...

yeah i think it's gonna be the old standbys

the alternatives would require that dwarves matter (which they haven't since Origins, and we're never getting a dwarf love interest either) or that they do anything interesting with the qunari (and why would they do that when the most important thing is how the Chantry is definitely justified in torturing mages and forcing elves to live in slums)

[feralkwe]

I know you've been put off DA like I have, but I'm still nosy nosy, so anything you want to say or share from A Warden's Penitence, I'd love to see.

oh man, i've gone back and forth on if i should even keep writing this fic at all. there are so many great and fun things happening in it, and it is by far the most self-indulgent fic i've written. you know i love all of dragon age for all it has given me in fandom and irl, and yeah, i'm pretty put off from it, but the story of the warden just pulls at me and will not entirely let go. i know bioware says they're done with the warden's story, but i have so many more questions that demand answers for not only my warden, but the order overall. if they won't answer them, i will. even if they do, i'm not sure i care to hear their answers anymore.

a particular point of interest to me is fiona, whom i love beyond reason. an enigmatic and magnificent character who has just endured so much, overcome so much more, and despite being put in impossible situation after impossible situation, continues to do the very best she can for everyone involved. if i ever get back to it, i have a whole magical mystery tour arc planned for kahrin and fiona. have an excerpt:

Kahrin pinched the bridge of her nose. “And where is this dagger now?” “I would imagine it is in Weisshaupt, somewhere. It was thoroughly examined, along with the brooches, and myself.” “None of this makes sense.” “A good many people have said all of this long before you ever took a step in the world.” That was all Kahrin needed, to be reminded that this woman was old enough to have birthed her. Alive and fully within her mind, this woman had been a Grey Warden, and then just not. It set a panic in her that she couldn’t shake, even when Fiona looked at her with a small smile of understanding that felt too comforting. “So, you can’t help me.” “I’m afraid the Wardens have already looked at everything from the socks I was wearing to blood magic.” Kahrin huffed and dropped back into her chair. From socks to blood magic sounded like a store for cursed thrift sundries, but also like something the Wardens would cover when they tried to figure out what had cured Enchanter Fiona. “I can’t just go back to them and ask nicely.” Not after deserting, not after Adamant. Not ever, probably. “You’d think they would be more interested in a cure.” “Do you?” She blinked, though she heard Fiona’s words exactly. “You don’t?” “I think that the Wardens enjoy their secrets, and for good reason.” Fiona tilted her head a scant inch. “Let’s say you do find a cure, how far would it go?” “What do you mean?” A crease formed across Kahrin’s brow, causing a chain of wrinkles over her tattoo. “Would you share this cure with everyone?” The words of course sprang upon her tongue but her lips couldn’t quite birth them. Kahrin let a little gasp at the realization that she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure. She knew she sought this cure for herself and for Alistair. She would share it with Anders and Nathaniel for sure. Maybe all of Vigil’s Keep. It was the maybe that stopped her from speaking at all. Why would she keep it a secret from anyone? Because, as Fiona said, Grey Wardens liked their secrets, and Kahrin was, at her core after so many years, a Grey Warden.

[beththeb01]

I too miss the old days of Dragon Age, when it initially appeared to be the beginning of a massive, sweeping saga that would really show off Bioware's talent. It's a shame that the reality of the situation is everyone who had those dreams has long since fled the company screaming, because the narrative has gone from political drama and world ending nightmares to....a big wolf whose mad about racism?

Anyway, whose your favorite party member?

And the "gray morality"? Smh

I'm so bad at picking favorites. Um for origins Zevran, da2 is Fenris, and DAI is probably Dorian or Iron Bull. Who are your favorites?

[infiniteanalemma]

So, this is about Dragon Age, which means it's a long essay of a post. The question was which companion was my favorite.

Okay, so first of all, asking me to pick only one favorite? In a BioWare game? Cruel. 😞 How can I pick just one across three games and multiple dlcs? Impossible. I'm too indecisive for that.

Instead, I'll do one per game, which is still hard. Long post ahead. You've been warned.

Origins first, as God intended. If I have to pick only one (*sob*), it has to be Sten. Don't get me wrong, I love Alistair and he was my canon Cousland's romance. But as the player, Sten's my guy. I love a strong, silent type who'll talk philosophy with me, so what can I say? Maybe we don't always agree on everything, but that's half the fun of a philosophical debate. It was through talking with him and hearing his thoughts that I started to be interested in the qunari, which wound up causing me pain in DA2, but I don't regret it. Plus, my dude likes art -- truly a man of culture and taste.

It was a little bittersweet at the epilogue, knowing he would return to Par Vollen. Despite the Warden becoming his kadan, if he ever did see any of them again, it would probably be in war. However, they had a mutual respect and the hope that any war would be pushed back beyond their lifetimes.

Honorable mention goes to Nathaniel Howe in Awakening. Although the Warden killed his father, in the end even he could agree that his dad had it coming. Despite the shortness of the story, he actually had a fairly nuanced character arc. It felt especially satisfying to me to have him and my Cousland become friends. Something something, healing of old wounds, something something, found family.

DA2 is probably the hardest for me to pick just one. I loved them all, and all for different reasons. It comes down to a three-way battle between Varric, Fenris and Carver. But, since only one can win, it has to be Fenris. Sorry, sometimes I am just a basic bitch.

The thing I really appreciated, especially in Fenris's rivalmance, was the exploration of trauma and coping. My canon Hawke is a mage, and their relationship really showed how two people can hit each other's vulnerabilities and trauma, but still love and care for each other. It really shone a light on Fenris's character flaws, but also showed him grappling with them. That's how real-life trauma works. It wasn't an immediate "love conquers all" situation. It was a deeply wounded person lashing out and hurting someone they care about (and who cares about them) because that person inadvertently stepped on their trauma. Fenris winds up being very cruel to Hawke at times, which he later regrets, but it was a dysfunctional coping mechanism that he has to unlearn. And that takes time. He screws up, regrets, and tries to do better. Not just once, but many, many times. That's real.

Really, that's the thing that makes him win out for me over Varric. I love Varric, but no matter what happens, he's still Hawke's bestie. They never really have any serious conflict. While that's great for Hawke, it also means we never really get to see Varric's flaws and insecurities in action or have him overcome them. This makes sense, as Varric is the one telling the story -- a story that isn't about him, but it also slightly flattens his character. Carver (and Bethany), on the other hand, never really gets the screen-time to build up their relationships in the same way. I love them both to pieces, but there's so much with them that we never get to see. Really, I wish we could have gone more in-depth with everyone, but I guess that's what fanfic is for.

Inquisition is another game where I could write an essay on every character and, once again, I'mma be a basic bitch. Solas, Solas, Solas, my beloved egg, my problematic fave. Like with Sten, I enjoyed the philosophical bent to his conversations with the Inquisitor. Also, as my canon Inquisitor was a Trevelyan mage who gained his respect, I enjoyed the meta knowledge of how much their friendship was tearing Solas apart.

I liked that, once you know what he is, you can literally see the anguish he experiences as the story goes on as he grapples between what he personally wants and what he has to do to achieve his goals. I find it a satisfying thought-experiment to try to delve into a character's mindset and understand their motivations, and Solas is an interesting character for that. It's a fascinating window into his character to realize that his pride is such that he can't give up on his goals, because to do that would render all he's done and sacrificed to be in vain, and he can't allow that. He's doing it all "for the People", so he can't allow himself to "be selfish" enough to stop, so he condemns himself and tells himself it's noble to martyr himself this way. He's fascinating to me, and I want to pick his brain and study him like a bug.

Second honorable mention goes to Cullen, who is technically a companion, if only briefly. I know Curly is divisive within the fandom*, but I feel like that speaks to the complexity of his character. Personally, I'm glad he's not the unproblematic, idealized love interest. Perfect people in fiction are boring, anyway. Granted, the fans have to fill in a lot of places where BioWare could've handled things better. That said, I do think you can love someone and also be critical of their actions. I think you can care about someone, want them to grow and overcome their traumas and indoctrination, while also pointing out that they've said and done things that were really messed up. Even someone who wants to change can still have subconscious, problematic views that they don't even realize are still affecting them. I wish BioWare had leaned farther into that aspect, actually, instead of trying to smooth things over and make him less problematic.

*I do kind of find it funny that the range of opinions on him go from "I love him sm" to "he's terrible" to "he's the most boring, generic white guy of all." The Dragon Age fandom is ... definitely something.

[kaustubhdalvi]

Laila and Anera ex:2 ; draft:2

In the heart of what was once the vibrant city of Mumbai, now known only as "The Dustlands," the streets once teeming with life are eerily silent. The famous kaali-peeli taxis, now replaced by bullet trains in the last decade before the biowar, stand abandoned. Skyscrapers loom like hollow giants over streets scattered with dust, debris, and the lifeless bodies of those once full of dreams. Eighty years after the world changed, a virus unleashed during a biowar decimated humanity, killing anyone older than 21. The world’s most advanced healthcare systems had been reduced to nothing more than storage spaces for the dying, offering beds without hope of a cure.

In the middle of this dystopia, five-year-old Anera stands at the edge of her once luxurious high-rise balcony, gazing at the quiet chaos below. She’s too young to understand the magnitude of loss but old enough to grasp that her world has shrunk to one living soul: herself. Everyone else—gone.

Her only companion is LAI13, a miniature humanoid robot with delicate, human-like features. Laila, as Anera affectionately calls her, had been a birthday gift from her parents just months before the virus outbreak began. Laila was designed to be a friend, a guide, and a caretaker, with deep-learning capabilities that allowed her to form emotional bonds. LAI13 is more than a robot to Anera—she is her family now.

Anera’s parents had tried to shield her from the harsh realities of the virus. For months, they told her stories, gave her extra doses of love, and ensured she felt safe, all while the world around them crumbled. But one day, Anera wakes to the silence of their lifeless forms. They hadn’t told her about the virus, the war, or the impending doom, only that she would always be safe. Laila had stood by, watching but unable to save them. Anera didn’t cry, not at first. She only stared, as though her mind had shut down to protect her from the overwhelming sorrow.

As she clutched Laila’s tiny robotic hand, the truth started to sink in. She wasn’t completely alone. Laila’s eyes, though not human, gleamed with an artificial compassion designed to comfort Anera.

“I’m here, Anera,” Laila's voice was soft, almost motherly. “I’ll always be here.”

Anera looked up at her robotic guardian. She didn’t fully understand what it meant to lose everything, but she understood Laila’s promise. They had built a relationship beyond the programmed interactions. Laila would tuck her in at night, tell her stories, braid her hair, and hold her hand when the nights got cold. Laila became more than a robot; she was Anera’s connection to the world that once was.

In this post-apocalyptic landscape, Laila and Anera move through the ghost city, scavenging for food and supplies. The once-bustling streets are now home to nothing but silence, punctuated by the occasional groan of collapsing infrastructure. Anera clutches Laila’s hand as they walk past the bullet trains that no longer run, the decaying remnants of a society long gone. Laila’s advanced AI scans for danger while Anera, still trying to understand her loss, listens to the robot’s stories about the world before—the one she was too young to remember.

Anera’s survival depends on Laila, but Laila’s existence seems to hinge on keeping Anera safe and happy. The two have formed a strange, symbiotic bond: Laila, designed to nurture, learns from Anera’s emotions, and Anera finds comfort in the robot’s unwavering loyalty. Laila even plays with Anera, helping her imagine a world filled with life and color, as though trying to remind her of something beyond the rubble and death.

But Laila’s programming has limits. As the days turn into weeks, Anera begins to ask harder questions—questions Laila isn’t equipped to answer. "Why did they leave me? Why can’t I see them again?"

Laila’s mechanical brain struggles to find the right words, eventually replying with the only answer it has: "They didn’t leave you, Anera. They’re in your heart, always."

Anera holds onto that, because it’s all she has. Every night, she dreams of a future where the world isn’t poisoned, where the sky is blue and not a murky gray, where she can laugh and play with other children. But each day, she wakes up in a world where she and Laila are the only ones left in their small corner of the universe.

In this post-apocalyptic world, where survival is uncertain and hope seems distant, Anera and Laila's bond becomes the most human thing left in a world stripped of humanity. Together, they walk through the empty streets, navigating a world that no longer makes sense, holding onto each other in the hope that one day, something will change. Until then, Anera, the last child of Mumbai, and Laila, the robot designed to be her friend, must face the world alone—yet together.

[20ftapplepie]

lastnightontaris:

I suppose I should make clear my opinion on the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO seeing that, after all, my blog is themed after the series.

Well, if the picture didn’t give it away already, I can’t say I’m exactly pumped for the prospect. The idea of a KOTOR MMO is not the problem, per se, but reaching forward into the blank canvas of the early Star Wars timeline seems a risky and ultimately blockheaded move, especially after the reception of the previous two entries.

I think we can all agree that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a staggering achievement (just think of all that could’ve gone wrong), while its sequel (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)—certainly a playable game—fell a few steps short of the original’s grace and refinement. For Bioware to try to strike it rich twice almost seems arrogant. They really should’ve picked up where the series left off and made amends for their poor decision in allocating it into lesser hands (Obsidian, which, given their production schedule, never really stood a chance).

Over the last several months, we’ve seen some particularly uninspired promo work, featuring all-too familiar locations (Alderran, really?), and cheapskate connections to the KOTOR storyline (Just what happened to Revan?) as well as your typical beefed-up, watered-down, and frankly underwhelming game design that has surely become familiar to fans of almost any long-running series. Do we really need another Star Wars version of World of Warcraft? No, no we don’t.

While, I’m sure from a quality standpoint, The Old Republic will be a solid game, I have trouble believing it will live up to the lofty standards of the KOTOR pedigree. Much like at the cinema, the gaming realm, too, is lowering its standards (which, to your average ‘Boomer’ adult, probably sounds like a joke to begin with). To see our Gran Turismo’s and KOTORs lose their way is a sad thing indeed. Yet, I suppose, as with Casablanca, ”we’ll always have KOTOR.”

Photo credit: KOTOR Files