#really good and make me tear up like all of davrins quests and the end of emmrichs and bellaras

[pentaghast]

hey you just spent 60 to 70 hours getting to know these characters and possibly romancing them? well lets throw in a suicide mission for them where at LEAST one of them dies! teehee this is goooood gaming folks love a shock value death

[bratgoatswiss]

Apologies for length, have to save the cut for spoilers.

I FINISHED VEILGUARD!

I have. So many thoughts and emotions about it and I'm still processing but I just wanted to counter some of the vitriol I'm seeing from people who are doing the Fandom thing with what I hope are reasonable, normal thoughts. Ha. Haha. Anyway. Mostly spoiler free but there's one small thing and one BIG thing that is that I'll put under the read more.

There was a lot to like about this game. The combat was fun and I think upon a 2nd playthrough it'll be even better. Some of it could get repetitive but its not a big gripe.

The characters were very endearing and felt well fleshed out as people and I enjoyed spending time with them. Most of the side quests were related to your companions in some way and I thought that was clever. Some were more interesting than others.

The writing has been contentious and I can see why. It can get cheesy and predictable in places, but overall I thought it was very similar to DA2. I enjoyed it and thought it reflected some realistic responses to what was happening around you. If you're here for gritty edgelord shit 24/7 go play Dark Souls you weirdo.

I can only speak for the Lucanis romance cause I love an angsty man, but it was perhaps, underpadded. It was slow and sweet and I did like it very much but I could have used some...more you know? I didn't even get to see my own tits and that's tragic.

Solas. I did not romance the egg in DAI. I do not like the egg. I liked how I got to handle the egg. So much. I've seen the Lavellan romance scenes and if there's any uproar from the Sollavellans (one l or 2?) it's because they didn't let you see the 2 of them fuck nasty in high definition for an hour. It's Rooks story now. You're fine. Go write fanfiction.

The lore. Hoo boy. Honestly they really did put everything in a blender and fished out what they liked. Everything is made up and the points don't matter. I don't LOVE that they retconned so much of what was in Origins. Zevran and the Crows especially seems really odd. I THINK the idea is that it's been like 20-30ish years since all that and stuff has changed or information was wrong or inaccurate or whatever? But that seems lazy. I wish they'd addressed it more with SOMETHING. But also there's 3 games worth of lore, not to mention comics and novels and like. I get it. But consistency guys. Add more codex entries or something. This is my biggest gripe. It did not impact my enjoyment too much. I loved what was added.

Spoilers below

That ending was so ABRUPT?! At least with DAI you got a ending party and final scene with your LI but here you get some end cards and voice over? I would have accepted that if we were getting DLC but this?? This is insane! Bioware I am begging on my knees to give us at least a "well we did it!" scene. The ending was epic but the ENDING was a disappointment.

Now. The suicide mission. I spent [redacted] number of hours investing blood, sweat, and tears of friendship into these 7 assholes and there is NO way to save 1 of them?? And you have to choose between Harding and Davrin??? Just those 2?? There should be a way to save them! Don't give me the no matter what crap! I don't want CONSEQUENCES I want FRIENDSHIP. If you could do it in ME2 you should be able to do it here. Also. Can we not have it be 50/50 heroic sacrifice with a black man? Like. I know you can technically choose but like why make it an option. It just feels weird.

So yeah. Initial thoughts and feelings. Overall good with some stuff I really disliked. I will be normal about this eventually.

I'll probably regret sending this out into the world when the sollavellens find me. Oh well.

[thekorcariwilds]

okaaay just finished veilguard, spoilery thoughts below the cut. tldr is i liked it a lot :-)

dao=da2>dav>>>>dai

i have a handful of critiques and nitpicks that i will inevitably complain about in the future because this is a dragon age game HOWEVER i also had a great time and i am overall quite happy with it.

neve was my favorite character, surprising no one. second favorite was probably harding or lucanis, but i feel like i need to do everyone's romances before i make up my mind on that

sera-blackwall friendship mention from harding was huge for me

isabela cameo was better than i feared in all ways except clothing. we should all throw rotten tomatoes at whoever decided to put her in that fuck ass bikini loincloth thing. hoping eventually someone will make a mod that keeps the top (which i think is cute) but with Actual Pants like she had in dai's multiplayer instead.

choosing between treviso and minrathous was maybe the first time a dragon age game has forced me to make a choice where both options felt impossible to live with and also made me nauseous in real life. so i liked that.

had harding sacrifice herself killing ghilan'nain and thought i was handling it well and then as i was running around talking to everyone before the final series of quests i started heading towards her room on autopilot, remembered she was dead, and just burst into tears immediately. and then taash was like "everyone i love dies" and i started crying even harder. and then right after that i had sex with neve.

i'm probably doing harding romance next so i'm intrigued to see the sacrifice with davrin instead. will probably also make me cry.

probably my biggest story issue in the entire game is that i think what they did with the crows was sooooo boring why are only the wardens allowed to be flawed and morally corrupt why can't the assassin league that kidnaps and abuses children also be a little bit evil. as a treat. for me. >:(

didn't like varric's little narration montages that happened throughout the game, i felt like they could've been cut entirely and we wouldn't have lost anything

i was spoiled about varric being Dead The Whole Time and was expecting to find it annoying and contrived but i really liked what it did for solas's characterization so i'm mostly okay with it

speaking of solas, i looooved what they did with him this game. i did the tricksy ending and his "you are a mortal! a mortal! and i am a—(bitter laughter) i am a fool" was very good

ghilan'nain and elgar'nan were also very fun villains

non-story stuff: the combat was fine, the paraphrased dialogue wheel still annoys me, the cc isn't perfect but is soooo much better than any other bioware game that i can't complain too much, wish you could tint clothing/armor because i dislike the default color schemes for most of them lol