#scout Harding

[ziriii]

Lace Harding ❤️

[elle-enasalin]

my creechurs :)

[immeria]

that's why you can't lead more than two

Emmrich and the kids

There's a follow-up with Harding on Emm reading a book she knows lent him and it's gold.

Bonus banter with fellow dad Davrin

A little bit of follow up here!

[proffbon]

EMIL MENTIONED

[aves-rook-laidir]

I can feel myself becoming more and more familiar with DaTV now, like, the characters are becoming more familiar. I find myself thinking about them when I’m going about my day, filling in the gaps of who they are with my own headcanons. Like, did you know Emmrich is deaf in his left ear? He got slammed in his first week of combat training as an Apprentice. He was so annoyed about this that from that point on he worked really hard to practice combat, and to his, and everyone else surprise, was brilliant at it. It’s funny really, that this calm, gentle professor known for floating around picking flowers can knock you off your feet if you test him. Taash was the first to pick up on it, they didn’t bring it up just started fighting on his left.

Or Davrin, he keeps pushing off Bellaras attempts to talk to him about the gods, because he just can’t think about it. If he did it would be like a waterfall. He spent the most formative years of his life caring for Halla in the forest, Ghilan’nain is the Mother of Halla! His clan lived and breathed her worship, whether or not he keeps religion now, her presence is interweaved throughout his childhood, and it was all crap, she was nothing more than a psychopath mage, he can’t think about it.

Hallas make Bellara sneeze, but she denies it.

Lucanis was so overwhelmed that he missed his shot at Weisshaupt it took him nearly a day to utter a word to any of them, he left to be on his own as soon as possible and the moment he was alone he had a panic attack.

Harding often thinks back to Haven, and when the inquisition was just stating out. How she had thought back then that Varric and Solas were old friends, they way they walked together in the hinterlands, chatting about nothing in particular, felt so…comfortable. She misses those days terribly.

Neve didn’t lose her leg in some fantastic battle against the Venatori or a Dragon fight, she was just born without it. Sometimes people are just born different.

When Rook awoke from Solas telling her the truth about the Archdemons, she was so stunned and in shock that when she walked down the stairs to discuss with the others, she fell down them much to everyone’s alarm.

Having to fight a dragon in Treviso almost immediately after meeting cemented a close connection between Rook and Davrin, literally thrown into hell together.

Dorian was the only one able to get anywhere close to that dragon in Minrathos, managed to get a hit square in its eye, but it wasn’t enough. The Iron Bull was in the city the week before, but by the time the dragon attacked he was halfway to the Free Marches.

They all regularly play cards and games around the dining room table.

Taash keeps a small sketchbook on them where they likes to draw all the dragons they meets, they also pets every dog and cat they come across. They sneak hugs from Assan when they think no one is looking.

Emmrich gets Bellara to talk academic theory with him a lot as a form of distraction because he knows she lies awake at night having a never ending crisis of faith.

Bellara often worries and frets that Lucanis isn’t eating enough even though he’s feeding everyone. Lucanis worries the same thing about her.

Lucanis is dyslexic as fuck got really self conscious about how long it was taking him to read one of Neves novels, well, until he realised he literally wasn’t being judge at all actually.

Harding grows elf root to smoke it. Dream blunt rotation to be honest.

Communicating with the dead the way Emmrich does is harder than it looks, it takes a lot of stamina and if the connection is held for too long he’s prone to nosebleeds.

They spar and practice combat in the courtyard in front of the dining hall, usually one v one with the others sitting on the steps watching. Neve keeps encouraging them to take bets.

When Aves sleeps on the green couch, she often wakes up to find Assan curled up nearby. Either that or Emmrich hovering over her because she was screaming in her sleep again and he could hear her in the next room.

Taash and Bellara I’m still working on.

[emmg]

Someone needs to draw Emmrich and Harding on their camping trip

And by "camping trip," I mean their camp is physically divided like it’s the Ferelden version of the Cold War

Emmrich’s chilling in his silk dressing gown, sipping Orlesian wine on a chaise longue he either summoned or carried like a psycho, surrounded by mosquito wards and his stupid bougie shaving station existing in the corner. His nine books are floating around him

Meanwhile, Harding’s on the other side of camp, half-feral, crouched in the dirt with jerky in her mouth like it’s a cigar. She’s muttering, “Sure, Emmrich, attract every horny bear in a five mile radius with your fancy-ass shaving cream. Love that. Can’t wait to fight off wildlife while you exfoliate your delicate princely ass.” She’s built a trash fire out of sticks and sheer rage, and at this point, she’s two seconds away from chucking jerky grease at his mosquito ward just to see what happens

The whole camp screams “divorce court” and they’re not even married

She’s not telling him about the goddamn fucking bears in the Emerald Graves at the paws of which the whole Inquisition suffered mightily. He’ll discover that joy himself

[lyriumbaby]

being a photographer irl 🤝 spending half my time playing dragon age in photo mode

[angrykittybarbarian]

Things that bother me about Dragon Age: The Veilguard part 3 (final thoughts)

I have finally finished the playthrough. I endured because I wanted to give this game a fair chance. I wanted to see it from start to finish in the hopes it would deliver something, anything capable of redeeming it. But it just didn't. Or more precisely, not in a way sufficient to make its flaws easy to overlook. These are my closing impressions on the game. I have already done two posts about this in which I documented my observations and comments as I progressed. I will link the posts here: Part 1, Part 2.

Let's finish this ride for now.

!Spoilers below the cut!

The music

I don't know what the direction of the music was meant to take. When it was announced Hans Zimmer would compose the OST I had high hopes. Hans Zimmer is a houshold name in Hollywood and skilled at what he does. I listened to a number of movie OSTs of his making and they were all excellent. So what happened here?

The music sounds generic most of the time without a clear theme or a unique piece that got me searching for it on youtube.

The main theme has sort of a recognizable composition but isn't anything outstanding. Emmrich's theme sounds like a halloween piece written for Wednesdsy Adams and the rest of the OST seems to mimic Trevor Morris' work for DA:I, namely the Lost Temple and In Hushed Whispers themes, but without the emotional impact the original pieces created.

It's as someone has already pointed out and I agree: Bioware has bought the name Hans Zimmer but not his quality. It sounds like he didn't even seriously create something but half heartedly whipped something out of his sleeve and called it a day.

The facial animations

The main problem with these is they often don't fit the emotions the VAs are communicating.

The VAs actually did a fantastic job. The scene that touched me the most was the one Rook confronts Solas in after they escape the regret prison in the fade. That was the first time Rook felt involved, raw and real.

But what broke the atmosphere in an otherwise flawless scene was how unmoving their facial expression was. There was the VA shouting their lung out and the animation couldn't even give half a fuck about it.

I don't even see an excuse for this lack of facial animation. It was possible to do since DA:O, hell, even since the first Mass Effect back in '07. Why is it not possible in the year of our Lord 2024, when technology is presumably better?

The handholding of the player

The plot is tightly paced. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I didn't really like the Open World approach of DA:I since it stretched the main plot too thinly and the maps created weren't filled with interesting side content but boring and pointless fetch quests.

But Veilguard went into the opposide extreme as it leaves only little room for the player when and how to do things. The quests are activated and must be completed in a specific order. They have also only one outcome without room to make different decisions.

Rook can never be truly ruthless. They can never disagree and butt heads with their companions.

And I hate how on the side of the screen the game exactly tells you what you have done and how it affects your companions' behaviour. It doesn't bake it into the interaction organically. Instead it has yet again, explained to me what I did and why it has this very specific effect without any of the characters discussing it. But the beauty of consequential decisions lies in the very unpredictability of its outcome. That's what creates the emotional impact. It doesn't work if I am being warned and explained to like a small child.

It's this lack of trust the game puts into the intelligence of its players that is so experience breaking, insulting even. It doesn't trust its players to figure stuff out themselves. It assumes we are too stupid to get any of the things it tries to tell us.

The ting is though, dear Bioware writers, if you think you have to overexplain your story because you think your audience won't get it then that's a telltale sign of the story being actually badly written.

Another area where this becomes appearant are the "puzzles". I used the quotation marks because there isn't really anything to solve. The solutions are obvious and at times your companions go out of their way to tell you.

The romances

Romances have always been a nice bonus on top of the otherweise amazing game content. They added some enjoyable extra fluff purely for enjoyment and some cases even deepened the main storyline.

In Veilguard they don't do that. In almost all of them the flirting is so meaningless that your cutscene with them just proceeds as if nothing happened.

There is no shift or change to their tone towards Rook. You don't build up the relationship with them. There is no last goodbye kiss before the last mission or passionate affirmations of love and trust. It just leaves you cold.

The only romance that seems to have that old depth is Emmrich's. The rest however, they don't add anything significant. There virtually is no difference to the game without the romances.

Companion relationships

Let's begin here with the simple fact that all deeper interactions Rook has with the companions are strictly scripted which ties back into the handholding part of this criticism. Rook cannot initiate a conversation and ask them some general questions about their histories and opinions on certain matters.

Rook only gets to interact with them when they happen to want something from them. Otherwise they cannot be bothered to acknowledge Rook with more than a one sided oneliner.

And then there are the relationships between the companions themselves. They either get along swimmingly or the game feels the need to stage some immature conflict between them without any deeper purpose.

Like Harding not understanding why Emmrich brings so many books on the road despite it literally not being any of her damn business bevause it doesn't personally affect her in any way.

Or Taash not understanding his profession as a Mournwatcher as they call him names so Rook has to point out Taash in turn likes dragons which is an interest he doesn't share only to culminate the discussion with a "We need to respect our differences" sort of statement.

These are not conflicts, these are squabbles of children and like children Roik talks to them which is brought ad absurdum with Emmrich because he is literally old enough to be Rook's father.

Why bother at all with writing conflict if it is only to be something as inconsequential as this?

Varric's death

This one is a .... choice.

I won't go into why the decision to let him die or not is good or bad because I feel like this is highly subjective.

However the impact of the reveal of this fact is only partly executed well.

Why?

Because it only hits hard when the player has known and cared about Varric at least since DA:I if not DA 2. The execution of this plotpoint thus relies too heavily on nostalgia instead of building the tension up within its own setting.

When thinking about Bioware also wanting to be newcomer friendly with this game I am left to wonder then why they didn't introduce Varric properly and didn't give the players time to build up the relationship? Why would a new player care about Varric? They don't know him.

Bioware cannot in good conscience claim they designed the game to be new player friendly while simultaniously heavily relying on knowledge from previous games, dlcs, comics, novels and other spin-off media. They cannot claim this and have anything but DATV do the heavy lifting when it comes to executing their plot.

The final mission

For my final point I also want to lose some positive feedback about this game.

The ending was actually well written.

In relation to Solas it comes full circle. You can actually feel what's at stake and the decisions Rook makes actually matter.

The final questline roughly follows a Mass Effect 2 approach where it is classified as nothing short of a suicide mission.

Companion quests essentially function as loyalty missions and Rook gets to assign various posts in battle. Just like in Mass Effect 2 assigning a companion a post completely outside of their expertise may get them killed.

The dialogue is actually written well at this point in the game. There isn't really much to complain about.

But even this part is not entirely without faults.

For one I don't like the non negotiable sacrifice that has either to be made by Harding or Davrin. Rook doesn't even get a chance to save any of them. But again these non negotiable companion deaths where you only make the choice who's it's going to be isn't anything new (i.e. Hawke and whatever Warden you happen to get, Kaidan/Ashley in ME 1). So maybe a bit if a bummer but nothing experience breaking.

A stronger point however is that Rook will always keep the Veil intact in the end.

I suppose this outcome already is part of the game title itself but was it necessary to take it so literally?

With everything the elves have lost and the discrimination they faced it should absolutely have been an option to agree with Solas and tear the Veil down.

But since we don't talk about racism and slavery I guess Rook doesn't reflect on these points either. So I guess keeping the Veil intact is in line with the game's general sanitization of the world.

So in conclusion?

The game is far from great, not gonna lie. It feels like the devs actually wanted a new IP but were too afraid of the risks that come with such an endeavor and thought gutting an existing franchise that already did the heavy lifting of building a fanbase and using it as a package would save their ideas from flopping. Surely no one will notice it is actually something else if we market it as Dragon Age, right?

But we are not that stupid. This behaviour is insulting to put it plain and simple and I am heartbroken, angry and said that this was done to Dragon Age. I wanted to love this game. I was optimistic before the release. Everything looked fine, nothing in particular to worry about.

But I cannot continue to defend this without breaking my basic brain function.

The most frustrating part is that with the ending the devs showed they can write a story and meaningful dialogues. It left me wondering why it couldn't be done like this for the rest of the game and living with the reality that I will never get what this game could have been.

All in all this is not a good Dragon Age game. It is a massive disappointment and does not live up to the promises made by the devs.

I am sorry for everyone who preordered.

I am sorry for everyone who paid the full release price.

Nominating it for Game of the Year is not justified no mattee how you look at it.

If you are genuinely enjoying the game, I hope you continue to do so and all power to you.

For the rest: let's stop excusing Bioware's disrespect towards the fans and enabling them by paying them too much money for it.

Don't buy at release. Don't buy spin off media. Wait for sales. These people only understand the problem when you give them a good run for their money.

[rook-apologist]

I could write pages upon pages about how fucking cute and adorably awkward this scene is. But the image of two strangers watching these love-struck weirdo's fumble around with their first kiss does more justice than anything I could type.

[chaoticdumbsorcerer]

Just finished The Veilguard and here's how it went

Spoilers

I love it when a game gives me the opportunity to be a matchmaker.Im just in love with all with my companions. All the different scenes with them left me in awe. For example, I played as Mourn Watcher Rook and just loved how she, Emmrich and Bellara were nerdy about spirits and Fade

In the end, we still make him to be a good guy or something, but only because I didn’t want my running around the Crossroads to be for nothing

Anyway love this game so much

[jays-after-hours-blog]

I'd like to think that the Veilguard all got together and taught Rook how to swim.

Additionally here's what I think the DAV team would be like at the beach:

Rook - Definitely can not swim. This was the biggest contender (other than falling) for random deaths. Will make many attempts to swim though

Lucanis - Excellent swimmer, but I think he's a little weary of the water because of the Ossuary. He would pack a picnic for everyone and make sure they (Mainly Taash) wait 30 minutes before swimming

Neve - The best swimmer on the team. Graceful and poised. I think she'd be really into building really elaborate sandcastles though, like one people can live in basically.

Davrin - I fully believe he hates the beach, however will get into a swimming competition with Lucanis. Probably gets Assan to catch fish or crabs so they can make dinner later

Harding - Decent swimmer from all her years as a scout. She loves the beach and is the one that got the team together to go.

Emmerich - Can swim, but prefers to sit under an umbrella with a book. Judges the swimming and sandcastle competitions.

Taash - Loves the beach too, but can't swim. To quote my friend, "Why would I need to swim, that's what boats are for?" Harding tries to teach them to swim but Taash pretends to drown so Harding can save them. Volleyball champ

Bellara - Professional Mermaids player, chunky goggles, and everything so she can see all the little creatures under the water. She would have a shell collection or maybe a bottle with color coded rocks (I liked to do this) that she takes home as a keepsake.

[jukkariart]

DA: Veilguard screenshots [10/?]

Lace Harding + Lighthouse

[revenantttt]

i don't think she actually wants to hang out with me 😭

[proffbon]

So Harding's quest, huh.

[aves-rook-laidir]

The way I CRIED when Hardings hero armour was revealed to be a simple Inquisition Scout armour?? No no, you see, I LOVE that armour and would craft it as soon as I could in new playthroughs, my Lavellans old official portrait that I painted in like 2018 was her in that armour. I was always so disappointed that there was no Transmog system for armour for DAI so I could continue wearing the pretty low level looks throughout the game.

[magesforthedas]

Ooh okay, so here's my take on this:

The blight is the Titan's emotions, caged and tortured into something that just wants to destroy. So red lyrium, the Titan's blood infected with the blight, is basically, "angry lyrium".

But Harding says this isn't the blight. And as you find out what the monster is, and what's controlling/causing the lyrium to be angry, you find it's a version of Harding; her negative emotions turned to a solid form.

Earlier in the game, Harding asks why she isn't angrier, after knowing all she does about what Solas did to the Titans. Could that be because she was literally unable? Because the Titan's magic, so inherently linked to their emotions (and magic Dwarves have never had, because the Dwarves came after the Titans were killed) did what it thought it was supposed to, and separated from her? But Harding isn't actually a Titan, so her emotions weren't fully gone- just maybe the ones she would rather do without. It also might have been like a slow leak, where her emotions were draining away.

So Harding's emotions, not unlike but also so different from the Blight, the Titan's emotions, infected the lyrium. But it never actually hurt any of those dwarves, because Harding would never want that, she just wants to protect her people.

That's how red blighted lyrium, and red "really angry" lyrium sound the same but are actually so different.

It begs the question then as well, of a possible way to restore emotion to the Titans. If the blight could be cleansed, and the emotions restored; or if the dwarves were able to give the Titans new emotions. Or, maybe they're best left as they are, since who knows what could happen to the dwarves, or any of the peoples of Thedas, if the Titans woke back up?

I think the one moment that stands out to me as indicative of Veilguard's writing problems is late in Harding's personal quest when you're about to reach the heart of the titan.

You've been seeing more and more red lyrium mixed into the blue, and I was thinking oh boy, with how the blight is changing I wonder if that will have any effect on red lyrium! Now that we know the blight is the disconnected and angry dreams of the titans (lol), what does it actually mean for lyrium to become infected with it? Is the blight infecting this lyrium the same thing causing that ghostly figure to appear?

And then as you're running Harding says something like "red lyrium is usually lyrium that has been infected by the blight, but this lyrium is just... really angry." Oh, ok! So forget everything about what this would have meant previously, we're throwing that all out for some visually appealing color symbolism.