#solas we are all here because we love you and we are concerned

[buttsonthebeach]

I just. Love the "let's get this man into therapy" squad.

[glitteringdust]

Lucanis and Spite's reaction to Rook being trapped in the Regret prison, or, if someone already asked that, romanced Lucanis having to tell Viago (massive older brother vibes) that Crow!Rook is stuck in the Regret prison

Standing in the entrance of Rook's room, Lucanis closes his eyes.

For a moment, he swears he feels her right there— sitting on the couch, curled over her notebook making a sketch of something she couldn't get out of her head.

The room still smells of cinnamon spice from the incense she always had burning on the far dresser. Her clothes would be everywhere, along with loose notes and bits of potion ingredients scattered about.The fade window of swimming fish would remind him of the Ossuary like it always did— sending a sour storm of adrenaline straight to his chest. Only by Rook's sweet face murmuring soft reassurances would he return to the present, back in her presence.

The moment passes and he knows what he will see when he opens his eyes. Nothing is as it should be.

Rook is gone. Gone. Betrayed by Solas.

Spite bristles along his spine at the thought. Lucanis clenches a fist as he battles the demon's anger as well as his own. For once, they were both equally powerless to rescue her.

We find her. We find Rook.

Spite was angry more than anything else, bleeding into Lucanis' every thought. He wanted revenge, action… something to stab and kill and as far as the demon was concerned the team was doing nothing at all.

But they had no choice, so all they could do was bide their time, recoup their resources and figure out a plan to find Rook.

—

In the fleeting moments he's able to close his eyes and sleep, he still sees the flash of light in his dreams. A bright flash, Rook's horrified voice shouting his name, and then nothing. It was unnerving, seeing it over and over again. Spite seemed almost as incapacitated by the dreams as Lucanis was.

Emmrich once said spirits could experience intense mood shifts during stress, perhaps that was the reason why he kept bringing Lucanis' sleeping body to Rook's room. To feel better.

She always made things better.

Ever since she disappeared, everything around them had dampened. Colors, taste… all of it was muffled without her around. Was she even alive? How could they know? They killed one god, and faced two more. Who could say she hadn’t been vaporized by Solas?

No. I feel her.

“You feel her because this is her room, Spite. You don't know that she lives.”

You give up?

"Never. Not until I see her body."

There's a feeling of approval. Never again lose what's ours.

He should leave her room, if he plans to get anything done today. He needs to travel to Treviso still, update Teia and Viago about Rook. He'd already waited a week too long. He knows the conversation might end up with Viago trying to kill him, but they needed to know. They were her only other family, after all. As he turns to go, he spots a loose piece of paper peeking out from under the couch. Spite urges him to pick it up, stronger than ever.

It's a sketch of himself, outlined in purple. Underneath, the words vhenan as well as the following:

“Say it, before it's too late.”

He thinks to the night before she disappeared, how she'd come for their usual evening drink but was preoccupied. Nervous. Surely she was just anxious about the next day's events, but instead….

She loves him.

He told her not to make a promise she couldn't keep, yet here he was having broken the last half of his. He didn't keep her safe that day.

Should she not return, every blighted creature would feel his blade.

[jaal-ama-daravv]

dissecting the alternate emmrich romance path

dissecting emmrich graveyard scene dissecting the argument scene (lich path) dissecting the emmrich romance scene (lich path) emmrich x rook cinematic

Emmrich Romance | Choosing the Lich Path

we begin -

please do

oh this line. oh this line has to be my top 3 favourite in the game. the delivery is beyond perfect. Not only is Rook being direct with Emmrich, which he desperately needs in this moment, it encourages him and instills confidence in him. as emmrich is established as a bit of a coward, this is so important to me.

Rook once again inspiring and encouraging Emmrich to achieive his dreams of lichdom, even at the cost of our precious son, manfred. I do believe Rook is setting their feelings aside here and is being the person Emmrich needs in this moment.

okay vorgoth

as stated in my previous post, desire becomes a big part of this romance. emmrich becomes concerned that Rook will no longer find him desireable or attractive once he turns undead.

case and point as above

should also note that emmrich is predisposed to believe that Rook does not feel as strongly about him as he does, which doesnt really get resolved until Act 3. despite him being so wrong, imo this has alot to do with Emmrich being so blinded by love that he can't see past his fear at the moment, which again changes after the point of no return.

and here we have rook reassuring Emmrich that they do in fact love them an absurd amount. im teling you, its the equivalent of soulmates for necromancers.

man i love this part so much. 'we'll figure out the rest'. is just another way of saying 'our love knows no bounds'

At the end of this scene Emmrich tells Rook that he will never be too busy for them, inferring that Rook is a priority despite his yearning for lichdom.

chosen witness excuse me i have goosebumps

so you're saying, there's a chance that the Lich lords will notice rook later on - i am delusional, or am i

i am dead. at this point I just sobbed. uncontrollably sobbed. 'You are the most magnificant thing to ever happen to me"

no notes, perfect. emmrich establishes that rook is the best thing to ever happen to him. this man loves rook so much. so much it hurts him. he needs to tell her this before it is too late.

the first i love you for them. and of course its the 'in case you die love you'. this is such a huge moment for them. rook reaching out to emmrich for a final goodbye, the fear in their hearts must of been weighing something heavy. knowing that he may not survive - as we go on you can see that there is a moment of uteer grief that washes over rook - the 'what if he doesnt come back'. heartbreaking.

its no wonder they poured their souls out in this moment, even rushed, they needed to say they loved eachother, because despite fear, it was true. and in true, soulmate fashion, you just cant help yourself from falling and going all in, no matter what. youll see what i mean in later dissection posts.

the fear in their eyes as they say goodbye. because they both know this is something emmrich has to do, rook can do nothing but be supportive and hold it together as usual

rook, waiting to see if her love makes it out alive - will she get her love back

the delivery, the emotion, the choking in their voice. 'do you still love me, please still love me'. rook is terrfied in this moment.

sobbing. the relief.

I feel an incredible amount of grief and joy over this romance, it is, I am almost speechless for how meaningful it is.

I know Emmrich's romance isnt as full bombardement of an emotional warcrime like Solas was on us, but Emmrich's is so, so full of angst. and regardless of that dread, it is real, for both of them, forevermore.

bonus:

see you soon for the dreaded argument scene and then the romance scene breakdown

[krems-chair]

Something Something Yeah It's Still Solavellan Hours (Mythal is kind of here, too)

I've seen a few very beautifully articulated posts talking about the conflicted responses players are finding themselves having in regards to the decision by writers* to have Solas' atonement route possible because of his conversation with one of the remaining fragments of Mythal.

(*honestly I hesitate to put the weight of bigger game events on their shoulders because of how much I know bigger players in the company were involved, so when you read 'writers' know I just mean whoever had final say on plot)

I love reading where people are at on this, and having now breathed, re-played the scene, cried, read some more theories, and then played the scene again enough times I think I'm now able to figure out where I'm at.

TLDR: in my humble opinion, the conversation Solas has with Mythal doesn't bring him any actual closure at all. It is only the version of the atonement ending that has Lavellan in which he is actually set upon a road to redemption.

This, like everything else where I lose my mind, will be long. I tried to restrain myself and here we are, unhinged as ever.

I was unhappy at first that Mythal's incredibly brief conversation with Solas where she releases him from her service seemed to be what finally allowed him to make a decision based on his wants and not hers. My concern stemmed mostly from the fact that a lot of us are trying to be active participants in a society that recognizes patterns of abuse and seeks to establish channels through which individuals can pursue healing without the approval, consent, or demise of their abuser.

But the more I look at the scene, the more I wonder what would have happened in a world where Veilguard got just a little more time in development. Could we have gotten a scene that more elegantly conveys the theme that we cannot heal every part of our loved ones, much as we might like to?

In an imperfect world it isn't always up to us how someone finds closure, which really sucks when you'd like to ensure a loved one finds it in a way that preserves their dignity and limits exposure to the individuals who have harmed them.

And while it could be left there, I'd like to actually push back on the idea that Mythal is in any way responsible for "healing" Solas in this moment.

I went on a different tirade a few days ago about how at the end of Inquisition, Mythal says words to Solas that on their surface seem well-intentioned or placating, but they actually just serve to further bind him in guilt and a position of servitude. In Veilguard's finale, she still does not take accountability for exactly how much of a role she played in the pain that Solas, a man others have revered and feared as a god, has gone through as he cowers, actually cowers before her.

Mythal's interaction with Solas conveys exactly two things to him as far as I am concerned (I'm going to botch these quotes but my laptop is dying so please accept some paraphrase as I rush to finish this before I go cry about this analysis to my uncaring dog):

"The terrible things we did, we did together." You are forever tied to me.

"I release you from my service." But what am I releasing you to?

Because up until Lavellan joins the fray here, all I take away from the physical and unwilling emotional cues Solas gives in this scene (he is a master in trickery, for goodness' sake, the thought of so many witnesses seeing him unable to hide behind a mask has to leave him feeling anguished on top of everything else) is that Mythal has once again reminded him of everything he did in her name and telling him that all that's left for him is to go back to the fade prison and, as he as always done, endure the crushing weight of his failures alone.

To me, in my interpretation, the Solas that hears this from Mythal with no Lavellan intervention may choose to willingly step down from his original plan (and yeah, that's gonna do some damage) but he is certainly not free of his past. He's going to be reminded of it every time he turns a corner and finds more blight to try and soothe, and even the moments that he rests will be filled with more manifestations of his regret. He says it himself: where he's going? It's terrible.

Enter Lavellan. Yeah, he couldn't bring himself to listen to her at her first plea (but like damn how many times are we going to have to watch her give a heartfelt speech only for him to be like 'something something beautiful elven rejection'). But I know that you know that our clever icon knows better than to take what Solas says at face value. She tells Rook plainly that he's absolute dogshit at lies of the heart, and she says it with her whole chest.

Lavellan sees the way his shoulders slump (in resignation yes, but you can't convince me there's not a little bit of relief there, too), she hears the agony in the "vhenan" that escapes his lips (which, don't even get me started on the fact that it's been like nine years and he has no hesitation at all calling her his heart, it just spills out of him). It is not the sound of a man delighting in the steps he's about to take. They're certainly not steps he does not dislike that lead to a destination he enjoys.

And then she watches Mythal (who I can't imagine she feels any sort of fondness or respect for) pull some weird nonsense on her love one final time, and she knows it's her moment to shine.

Mythal, I would argue, pushes Solas down one more time, shames him into seeking atonement, into once again being alone.

It is the romanced Lavellan that kneels so that he cannot fail to meet her eyes. It is she who invokes their connection, not to remind him of his failures but to reaffirm his greatest strength: their love and their love alone is inevitable. Not the consequences of his past, not the regret he thinks will consume him as he seeks to mend what has been broken. It has only ever been them.

"There is no fate but the love we share". We are forever tied together.

"There is no fate but the love we share." *I* am releasing you from everything else save for this love.

Put colloquially: get absolutely fucking wrecked, Mythal.

Body language comparison to chase up the dialogue one, anyone? The way Solas shrinks before Mythal as opposed to him walking off into the fade with Lavellan at his side and standing tall, and he does not flinch when she lifts a hand to his shoulder?

Ultimately, Mythal is a part of the atonement endings no matter what. But it is only Lavellan that refuses to let him walk alone. It is only Lavellan that guarantees that his dinan'shiral ends not in a prison of regret, but a place of promise.

Mythal bends Solas until he breaks one last time. Lavellan takes each piece, claims it as hers, and uses them to build the beginnings of a future.

[cursedcola]

DAV: Spoilers for Final Act! Don’t read if you haven’t finished the game!

I know it goes without saying that all companions are concerned when Rook is pulled into Solas’ prison. Some held more confidence in their escape than others (Example: Davrin’s final cutscene is very….well, 100% Davrin. He walks in as if Rook hasn’t just been missing and possibly dead. He bleeds confidence, because in his mind Rook is here. That’s what matters. It’s in his character to live in the present and now is daring for a future, the past cannot linger. They’d just discussed the chance of one of them not coming back before heading to fight. Rook gave him hope, told him to fight for what he wants most, and so he did - and it worked.)

Yet then there’s Lucanis. In the moment before fighting, he expresses such anxiety over having Rook’s life in his hands. He swears to protect them. He takes that responsibility onto himself. In the final talk before ending the plot all together - he admits to being scared to care for Rook. Worried from the earliest stages. You can hear it in his voice - how words cannot carry the depth of his emotion. Isn’t it spite who says to Rook ‘You open doors. You don’t close them’?

So imagine that period of in between while Rook is trapped. All the words that went unsaid because he was frightened. Too consumed. Behind a door that opened too late, and Rook couldn’t come to make him listen. To help. He succeeded in his contract as a crow, yet failed his promise as Lucanis.

When he walks into Rook’s chambers, his gaze is disbelieving. As if in those short steps he’s convincing himself that they are alive. When he reassures them that it isn’t the fade, he’s reassuring himself at the same time. Not just for that moment, but for all the ones that came prior. That he hadn’t made them up. That he’s no longer in the Ossuary, that everything he’s experienced up until that moment is indeed real and -

Lucanis’ romance might not be the most delved into. Other companions might have more content and interactive scenes - but out of them all, Lucanis is hands down the most impacted when Rook is sucked into Solas’ prison. Even if you do not romance him, it’s his image that Rook sees dead in place of Varric at the start of Solas’ mind game. He’s so overcome with spite and sorrow for failing to kill Ghilan’nain the first time. With their life in his hands, with his walls stopping him from baring all his heart to them before - a second failure at a price much too heavy.

He owes Rook for aiding his city, saving him from himself - he loves them so deeply that the first time we hear it is raw and the most assured line Lucanis’ has in all of his cutscenes. He kneels to them. Every line spoken from this cutscene onwards, even the small in-battle concern he says, is filled with more conviction and meaning than his delivery before. He makes sure they know his feelings because the chance almost slipped through his fingers.

If not romanced, they are still one of the closest companions he’s ever let near. Even spite went to them for aid above all the others - and their loss would be on Lucanis’ head. If Rook did not escape Solas’ prison, romanced or not, Lucanis would never walk as he did before. Thank fuck Solas didn’t end up in this man’s head instead, because the prison of regret would branch on as an endless chasm.

[veilkeeper]

Act 3 Emmrichmance: Lich Edition

alt title: if you're really determined, "'til death do us part" is only a suggestion

okay so, after the point of no return some pretty major stuff happens in the romances. @/crossdressingdeath and i talked in DMs about how, as far as we can tell, all the romances have some sort of unfinished business going into the endgame. in the lucanismance, it's him cutting rook off from saying they love him, in the davrinmance it's a discussion about davrin's fear that one of them is going to die just as he's starting to imagine a future with them, and with emmrich it's The Argument™—which as i've discussed before, is emmrich and rook having an argument about his insecurities. in the lich path, which is what i'm specifically talking about here, the argument is about his concern that rook is going to die at some point, and his fear that he's going to mourn them forever. the argument is left unresolved after some pretty intense back and forth, where rook calls him out on pushing his insecurities and fears onto them, and they have to shelve it to head to tearstone island.

to their credit, they do try to apologize to each other. in banter on tearstone island, emmrich very clearly regrets starting an argument, but he and rook both agree that now isn't really a good time and that they'll talk when they get home.

and then rook almost dies in front of him and gets thrown into fade jail by solas.

uh oh!!!!

if this isn't the manifestation of all his fears, i don't know what is. for all intents and purposes, he has lost rook. he's sure they're alive—trapped in a prison meant to hold gods, but alive—and since he's a lich i have every confidence that there was not a moment of rest in the weeks it took to rescue rook. he's their fade expert, he's the best equipped to find them, and he has to, because otherwise the last real conversation they had was an argument he never got to apologize for, and he will have to live with that guilt for an eternity.

i really have to wonder if he ever would have been able to bring himself to stop looking for them.

and while i suspect their LI is always the first person to grab a hold of rook to pull them out of the fade, there's a special flavour to it when you're romancing emmrich. knowing that he's probably been obsessively trying to find them. the sheer relief he must have felt when he reached through the veil and was able to get his hands on them, to pull them through and back into the safety of his arms.

he fusses after them, too. urgently takes them to the necropolis so he can be extra certain that solas' hold on them is gone. he was afraid he'd lost them forever, he wasn't going to waste any time making sure they'd be as safe as they can be. and then he says,

"I will let nothing part us again, my love. Not in this nor any other world."

he says it in that level, sort of indulgent tone that he says all his romance lines in, so it's easy to mistake this as him being poetically hyperbolic. but let us never forget that this is the man with such a profound fear of death that he became a lich just to avoid it. he's not half as well-adjusted as he likes to appear.

when he says he would not let anything separate him and rook again, he is dead fucking serious.

he wakes them up at dawn despite knowing they need rest—i think, perhaps, because it isn't enough to have them breathing in front of him. that he needs to hear their voice and have the reassurance that they're here and real and alive and safe, at least right now. "I would move the world before I lost you again," he says later. before the final fight against elgar'nan, he says he has plans he wants to make with rook, that he wants to be safe and at home with them. if i had to guess, i'd say rook i going to have a hard time shaking him for anything after this. i don't think he's ever going to feel like they're safe if he can't see them. hope you like a clingy boyfriend.

it's kind of the inevitable conclusion to what i was talking about in my sacrifice of souls meta—none of his actual fears around death and dying and grieving have been addressed, and he's hitched his wagon to immortality. and now that he's almost lost rook, he's realized that there is no universe where he's ever going to survive losing them for real.

and we all know the lengths he's willing to go to stay alive.

[hyperions-light]

Rook’s notes on the Lighthouse/Caretaker for the codex ask!

Thank you for asking! [Codex prompts here] These are very fun so far!

- This place is alive? Moves to accommodate guests, changes layout. Many places accessible using acrobatics. Some inaccessible currently (tried, dangerous).

- Seems to have assigned me Fish Room. Think they are watching me (good?). Able to rearrange furniture but not request more. Annoying.

- Solas lived here? Depressing. No wonder he’s so miserable. Found weird, sad little room with his stuff in it. Going to ask him if he’s bored in the Fade Jail next time. Maybe he will be less annoying if he has something to do? Can try to mentally recreate books, maybe.

- There’s a. Ghost? Demon? Spirit? Asked Bellara, she says spirit. Very turquoise, many eyes, bad clothes (do spirits wear those? Ask Solas). Seems helpful? Provides gondola rides and is more polite than gondoliers in Treviso. And it’s free!

- Spirit is in Lighthouse now. Very cryptic, even more than Solas. Wonder if that was a requirement in Arlathan (ask Solas). Still not dangerous. Seems to help with accessing new parts of Lighthouse. Asked why I couldn’t just go everywhere now, got vague nonsense. Ugh.

- Should bring random Crows + civilians here to see if it does anything. Viago? Might be funny!

- Found out Library is covered in depressing murals of things Solas regrets. Probably impolite to bring up. Does he like being miserable? I don’t cover my walls with all the missions I fucked up. Strange, sad, bald man. Going to ask him if he wants to play cards next time. Maybe letting him win would cheer him up.

- Manfred is my new best friend. We’re exploring the Lighthouse together.

- Who’s Felassan?

- Solas says to stop contacting him about unimportant things (no).

- Spent indeterminate amount of time trying to convince Lighthouse to replicate animal habitats. Did not work and Davrin looked concerned.

- Was having Davrin show me how to carve animals (looks fun) but got distracted by Assan and impaled my hand. Davrin was upset about this. Said it was fine, but he insisted we visit Emmrich. Discovered Lighthouse speeds magical healing. Worth it.

- If I start bringing cats here will it make a room for them?

- Tried bringing cats. One almost floated away. Do NOT bring Neve’s favorite.

- Bellara and I were using the magical floating ornaments above her room for target practice, and one of them suddenly exploded! Practical applications?

- How come no one else ever visits Varric? Tried to ask Harding if she’d been to see him, but she didn’t hear me? Strange. Visit more-- maybe others will come with? He must be lonely in there.

- Remember to ask Solas if he needs to eat. Think I could manifest Lucanis’ paella if I tried hard enough.

- Taash and I are going to try and build some traps. Borrowed explosives from Antoine. Think Lighthouse is sentient enough to identify intruders if I talk to it.

- Tried to ask the fish about Solas. Maybe they saw him while he was here?

- One of the wisps left Neve’s room suddenly, so we followed it around-- they are DEFINITELY the ones moving people’s stuff. Also maybe causing books to appear? Neve says we need more evidence.

- Emmrich said Harding made the plants grow because she loved them (of course she did). Going to ask her to make me taller via caring about me.

- Sat in the pantry for a while trying to talk the Lighthouse into manifesting a new bed for Lucanis, now that Spite isn’t a problem. Convinced nobody can sleep on that thing. No luck. Try carrying couch from library?

- MANY, LOUD objections to Taash and me building traps. Still think it could work, but promised Davrin I’d return explosives. No one here lets me have any fun (except Taash, Bellara, and Spite).

- Spent a while trying to see if the Lighthouse would let Harding move any of the giant floating chunks of rock. Also attempted exploding arrows + asking politely. No luck.

- Emmrich brought Johanna’s skull here! Amazing! Asked Emmrich to carry my skull around with him after I die so I can see new stuff. Did not understand the reasons he said he couldn’t. Will keep bothering him.

- Friends keep leaving things in my/the fish’s room. Need more drawers.

- Lace says Taash and Bellara can put up memorials to Cyrian and Shathann in her garden, if they want. Think it’s a good idea. Emmrich agrees.

- Made it to the top of the Lighthouse! Made Assan promise not to tell the others how to get up there. Reminds me of the rooftops in Treviso.

- Makes sense now, why Varric never got his own room. Going to put his stuff in Lace’s garden. I think she would have liked that.

[tiredassmage]

veilguard thoughts!

rook + solas parallels edition

spoilery ofc because my head's not full of cotton balls today and i haven't stopped chewing on it all since i finished the game! so! this is a little endgame heavy; you've been warned for what's below the cut <3

the final first playthrough counter has come in just over 67 hours and i am all but physically holding myself back from launching right into another one with another rook because i had a blast. i'll concede it was a bit heavy on the exposition in the first several hours, but what followed has certainly won my heart, and i think the game is visually beautiful.

but i'm not even looking to do a full review here, but i think one of the most fascinating things this game did was set up rook and solas. so, two parts of preface then: one, i was a little determined to love this game and hoped it would at least perform decent. that's my spite about it, lol, but that's not the point, so we're not here about that. two, one of my admitted concerns when they had first announced this game having its own protagonist was... that i wasn't sure there was another person to finish solas's story other than the inquisitor, and this isn't a solavellan thing for me, though my beloved canon inquisitor is a lavellan. solas's friendship wasn't the biggest hitch in inquisition for me, but it was important to my inquisitor. he wanted to prove his friend wrong.

i don't believe hallaren had a plan at the time for how to achieve that. he wasn't sure it was actually possible to convince solas the dalish were not as lost a cause as he seemed to believe, but he had to try.

and when i started veilguard, i wouldn't say i'd have anticipated the parallels of solas and rook, nor how well they ended up working for me. i admit: they got me. i didn't see that twist coming. and the hindsight of losing varric from the beginning makes a lot hurt (i say that as a compliment). i think it's easy enough to explain why i didn't see it, why (my, at least) rook didn't puzzle it out, but i also readily admit i'm historically bad at seeing these kinds of things, so you're free to be amused on your own time, lol.

anyway. regret. not becoming what you hate, what you claim to fight against. not being beholden to what you were or what you've lost. the game hits these beats several times, and i think its a real beautiful repeating thing they've done if you hammer all the companion's stories with the main deal, and i did the memories of the dread wolf as well. rook and the inquisitor have a conversation about it that about touches on all of it way more eloquently than i could summarize.

and, of course, part of the reveal is solas did dabble with blood magic on the matter of varric's death, did set rook up for the level of regret and grief they must settle with to trap them in the fade - a prison fit for gods, a prison fit for a god's regrets.

and this is where i transition into blorbo-specific thoughts. because i think part of what fascinates and delights me so much about the rook and solas, potentially two sides of the same coin deal is how tyr's relationship with solas starts and then develops.

tyr does not trust solas from the outset. which i think is where a very interesting presentation of similar (at their roots) choices begins, as varric says: in a bar, as all good stories. one of the first story notifications we get is how rook chooses to handle the bar owner: charm your way out, or a more direct approach, and we're told varric takes note of this.

varric's own plan is an appeal to solas's nature. to talk his way out. as is varric's way.

normally, i'd call tyr the kind of character (having played with him as an oc in various medias for oh... going on 2 years, is it? maybe 3? time's fake, different post) to also prefer talking his way out. but he doesn't believe solas will listen. so he rebukes varric's plan of just waltzing up and charming him with his babygirl eyes.

then at d'meta's crossing, he spares the mayor. not because he doesn't hear the concern that the greedy bastard will fall to said greed again, and not out of an entirely conscious mandate for live with the consequences of your actions, but... in hindsight with other choices, i'd argue it's... from at least a little of that kind of place.

he tries and fails to reason with the first warden. several times. in the heat of weisshaupt, and with the recent conversation with solas about whatever it takes on his mind, he ends up decking the man. the stakes are too high for risking the first warden staying on his high horse again if another attempt at reason fails, is the driver of the decision.

i'd chewed for a while on how that would seem to make tyr's commitment to "talking things through" indicated by that first choice in the bar inconsistent. it all seems justifiable at the time, and he didn't get to the place with the first warden he was out of intentional malice, but he still wound up there.

much of that is natural by the circumstances he was presented. by making calls with the information and under the conditions that were present at the time, as anyone, not just rook, would have to do under such circumstances, if they traded places. sure, some of it is also by solas's engineering of his conversations with rook. by setting them up to be a leader asked to make those hard calls. maybe even for arguably goading them a bit into a situation where whatever it takes was their only feasible option. which neve has a great comment on:

this is, i think, most directly about varric's death, but also, personally, i have to say is applicable for solas's intervention during blood of arlathan.

so, back to blorbo for a moment. tyr begins from a place that mistrusts solas's motives. the I'm quoting you here, "lies, treachery, and rebellion" kind of mistrust. and then, as things progress, as the team unveils more about solas's past in the crossroads and through the murals, it circles back to what I think motivated much of his comment to varric that talking with solas wouldn't work: that even if solas has any regret for what's happened, he's too stubborn to concede, too trapped by the mistakes of that past to ever admit fault, to hear himself sound like the 'gods' he claims to despise. tyr continues to take solas's advice into consideration the whole time, true, because it's... hard to discount the only potentially close to the problem kind of advice and knowledge they don't... exactly otherwise have themselves. he's not sure what the other shoe dropping in that equation is going to look like, but he's more convinced it'll happen than he is entirely happy with the situation.

the murals create... a hunch. or develop it. that rather than just being too prideful about the harm he'll cause by tearing down the veil, that solas is trapped in this plan by his regrets and guilt for actions of the past. at that point, tyr... has a better understanding about how they got to this point, but it kind of only solidifies his reservations that solas might actually be reasoned with.

the one moment this is changed, then, is during blood of arlathan. because frankly i think that was one of the worst experiences tyr has in the entire game. elgar'nan's influence in their minds, and an incident where they're trapped with no conceivable way out and potentially facing down an archdemon again, not so long after weisshaupt that the losses have stopped aching.

whatever his reasons or motivations and whatever else happens, solas saves their lives. tyr can't find a way around that one, and he's not even certain he wants to. because it's one of the definitive moments where he didn't have a plan, and he was terrified the tables had finally turned against them, and they'd fail.

it's not... trust. but tyr's also spent all this time working with his team on this concept that change shouldn't exactly be beyond anyone if there's a little effort put in. and whatever his own feelings are, varric wanted to believe in his old friend, and so does the inquisitor - both people he respects greatly, and he's constantly calculating their desire for a better outcome into the rubix cube that is trying to figure out how to stop the gods.

the problem then, is that solas all but instantly takes advantage of this... lapse. this faint relaxation of tyr's guard against his manipulations. that whole little incident with the fade after ghilan'nain's fall is all but immediately after, and its a betrayal nearly thrice or so over in rapid succession: that varric's been dead this whole time, that solas has manipulated him and how he feels responsibility for the team and the regrets that arise out of having to make hard choices, especially in times like these, and then on the other side of the fade, that solas has gone to minrathous, solas is playing "hero" about it all in tyr's and the shadow dragons' backyard. and to add salt to the wound, in minrathous, it's been blood magic all along.

and, y'know. solas says sorry, says he won't tear down the veil by his own hand, but hands rook the weapon to do it for him. sets them up again. so maybe that's more like... four or five times, depending on your count and categorization of it all.

and rook has a choice about all of this to make, a certain level of peace they have to make with it all to even get out of the fade. and how much to follow varric's advice about don't become what you hate - what you were fighting all along, or trapped by what you lost.

here's tyr's opinion that solas has more than likely been beyond reason because he's too far gone on his own path to even see that he's done exactly that: that he talks like elgar'nan's control, he's just dressing it up in a different way. that he's trapped by what he's lost and sacrificed and admitting that will be too much.

and here's tyr's inescapable bitterness of having been betrayed, of having spent so long trying to be careful with the god of trickery only to have danced right to his tune the whole time. a fiery emotional response for a threat to his home, to minrathous that he's tried very hard to protect and leave a smidgen better than he found it in this whole fight.

by circumstance... and by a little of solas's own design then, rook and solas confront the same trouble of what sacrifice being a leader demands. what cost is too high? how much is too much?

i had the pieces at that point for the ending with mythal, but now i had tyr bitter and a bit more resentful about solas - in a kind of pain about betrayal that was still asking why? about it rather than worried about if regret was present or meaningful. which is where this came from in my head akdfnas;dfnsadf

you're both thinking it. and the endings directly focus on whether or not solas succeeds in tearing down the veil, but the thematic part of it, to me, was... do rook and solas recognize where they might be held back? does tyr act on the pain and resentment of betrayal and swing blindly at solas as repayment? or is it bigger than both of them? is it about posing the question to solas about regret? how much is it like what drove solas to this point to act on that resentment? is it just retaliation? or did either of them learn anything from that prison in the fade?

and that's what makes the parallel, and it's what sets them apart.

and that's how, still, in the end, i have tyr who is willing to choose trying to reason one last time. for the sake of the advice of an old friend. for the people that brought them this far, the ones who chose to believe against the odds. and maybe, even, a little bit for himself. a choice against letting regret and resentment rule.

for the sake of it and because i couldn't get this game out of my head, i checked out the other endings, just to see, and i... think i like sticking with convincing him the best for both of them.

the trick with the dagger swap i think is the only other fitting course of action tyr might've taken from that point, and i think some of its elements reflect similar beats here about... learning from the past, if you will.

the accusation of likeness to the gods is still there. the banter about wits. i am a fool who finally met his match. one might argue that's for underestimating rook, which... fair enough, but i think... it also falls in line with solas's regrets, the appeal to be made to his nature, the... want, in the end, to be proven wrong. to find a 'better' way, as once he suggested to the inquisitor, and as mythal's release from debt and rook and the inquisitor's forgiveness, if you will, finally allows.

and that is... very satisfying to have said between them, when it's been on tyr's mind the whole time. and... they can both be proven wrong this way: for tyr, that solas wasn't beyond listening, and for solas, that there was another way.

for both of them that they could move on from what these trials have made of them, what they have done, and what they endured.

and man... man that was good. and so, so satisfying. it worked, veilguard. you sold me on these two as parallels to each other.

and that's just... one of many things in this game that gave me a lot of emotions, but this has already been. a helluva ramble, so if you've made it this far, congratulations and i salute you, lol.

i'm sure i'll do it all over again and have even more thoughts about even more rooks to throw around and chew on with this and what it'll reflect about each of them and that's. MMM. that's delicious. i loved this game. if my brain and time cooperates, i'm sure i'll have more thoughts and maybe even some writings for it in the future, we'll see where the blorbos take me. xD

[ashenlavellan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Personal Thoughts from a COMPLETED Playthrough. [MAJOR SPOILERS]

[Major spoilers ahead - all I will say to those of you that are on the fence with this game? Do it. This game is so worth it and I have just finished it. Like, literally an hour ago - while it's still fresh on my mind.]

Leave this post if you don't want to be spoiled - story-wise and specifically if you want to romance Lucanis. There will be MAJOR spoilers ahead.

So, I just finished DA: The Veilguard and I was utterly blown away. I will admit that I was amongst the crowd where I would play this game, but was very hesitant to and had my reservations. I had my expectations low.

A lot of reviewers and DA enthusiasts on other platforms had me discouraged to give this game a chance and I'm glad that I spoke of this with mutuals and decided to give this game a chance.

Now, my first concern that I will address - the combat.

I was a bit concerned about this when I initially heard some people describe it as a 'hack-and-slash' and while I have no issues with that (MAJOR Devil May Cry fan here - I love that shit so much!) - it's not what I would usually associate with Dragon Age.

My experience may be different that others, but I played as a Shadow Dragon Mage - mainly followed through with the Evoker specialization, too. I mainly played with orb/mage-knife and sometimes I switched to the staves if the fight was a bit too difficult to play closer. I'm glad that this was implemented because I disliked playing as a mage in Origins and enjoyed that it was faster pace in DA2/DA:I - this felt like I could choose if I wanted to continue with the faster pace (orb/mage-knife) or a little slower, but stronger attacks at a distance (staff).

It will certainly be different if you play as a rogue/warrior, but I loved the duality as a mage and I think I'd play as one again since I grew very comfortable/adept with the controls.

Now, the concern that most people had - tactical use?

There is an ability wheel, reminiscent to the one that Mass Effect has, but it offers suggestions for what moves can be used as a combo if you select them for your companions. It's best if you try to avoid having two rogue/two warrior companions because they will have the same affects that their abilities can do. If you have a mage/warrior or mage/rogue, then it's easier to combo their moves.

To be honest, I never truly used the tactical options in the earlier games and just played as is. I know others like the earlier games because of these things, but it wasn't the biggest concern for me when it came to that... It was mainly going from three companions down to two of them, and how the combat flow would feel like.

Combat? 9.5/10

My second concern that I will address - the cameos.

Now, because of the trailers and what-not, we already figured out that Morrigan, Varric, Harding, and our Inquisitor would show up. [I'm still so happy that I had the chance to customize my Inquisitor and luckily enough, I'll just try to match her appearance as close as I can when I officially play.]

I was NOT expecting my dear friend, Dorian Pavus, to show up when he did and the fact that he had a link to the faction that I picked! I was so excited to see him once more, but...

I was even MORE excited to see my favorite, sassy pirate-lady Isabela! But, she's now one of those in charge of the Lords of Fortune!

These were the only cameos that I had not expected, but there were mentions of other characters!

Like Merrill, when talking with Isabela after a fight in the Hall of Valor! Or, a note during a loyalty quest with Taash that shows that Sten [from Origins] had joined with the Antaam. Hell, even Aveline posted up as the acting-Viscount of Kirkwall!

As well as the fact that Harding mentions members of the Inquisition, and at some point, Solas reflects on the memories he had during his time with the organization as well.

I do wish that we had more cameos, but I'm actually pleased that there were mentions of characters from earlier games that hadn't been mentioned again beforehand.

Cameos? 8/10

Now, my third and final concern - the story.

So. Much. Story.

I had been concerned about this game before its release and how it would handle the story - especially after Trespasser and when Solas first revealed himself to be Fen'Harel. Which was groundbreaking when it happened!

Some of the fandom had concerns, myself included, when we realized that only three decisions that mattered when it involved earlier games and it was all from DA: Inquisition. Nothing from Origins or DA2 - even then, however, it was not much to really tip the scales in DA: The Veilguard.

The decisions being - who did your Inquisitor romance, did they disband the Inquisition, and were they wanting to save/stop Solas?

Now after finishing the game?

The amount of thought that went into side-quests that actually had an impact on the plot/major decisions? The faction quests? The loyalty quests?? The impact from past decisions affecting the last portion of the game???

There was so much writing that went into this game, obviously, but I hadn't realized how much thought each decision you make plays a part within this story - whether small or big!

I sincerely and whole-heartedly enjoyed the writing and the companions involved in our story - I was so excited each time a loyalty or mission specific to them popped up and we delved deeper into their backgrounds, their factions, and everything else involved!

There was so much newer lore to consume, especially with Minrathous/Tevinter since we've never been this far north in Thedas, but I absolutely devoured each little piece I could get and would sit there... reading the missives and codex! However, I can understand that some may be frustrated since it doesn't delve deeper into past lore with some cases.

As one final side-note for this - even if you do all of the side-quests and content, you will have an ending just like my own... At least one person on your team will die. I did everything I could and chose, basically all of what seemed like the right decisions, and I still lost one person on my team that resulted with me sobbing like a baby with how brutal the death was in the scene...

Story? 9/10

Now, the best part of this post - the romances.

Where do I begin with Lucanis' romance?

It's like, the second I found out that there was yet again, another assassin from Antiva who was aligned with the Crows - I was immediately sold.

Before I continue - everyone? Thank his writer, Mary Kirby, from the bottom of your heart for writing such a thoughtful, protective man - whether or not your Rook romances him.

Now, continuing -

His romance is so fucking good that I have over 100 saved clips on my console of shared moments between Lucretia/Lucanis to the point where my console was like - you need to make space if you want to be a fiend for the scenes.

You bet your fucking ass I made space.

I want to completely gush over his romance and spoil things, but I'm holding all of that back because I plan on writing those scenes and then some since I AM a fanfiction writer. I'll only share one thing with all of you...

When Lucretia and Lucanis slept together, you can bet your ass that he brought out those damned wings. [Also naked/semi-naked cuddling in the scene afterwards.]

So yeah, those are my final thoughts after playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard and after finishing the game... I'm so glad that I decided to give this game a chance and I certainly feel like it was worth the price, for the amount of content there was and story-telling.

I'm also glad that I listened to some of the reviews - there were reviews from a couple of the devs from BG3 and had plenty of praise for this game! I'm glad I gave this game a chance, especially since there's so many options to choose from and replay-ability like BG3!

[galadrieljones]

Gala! I need to hear all your thoughts about seeing Solas again!! (When and if you’re willing to share ofc) ☺️

Omg. Honestly, I don't know. It's been so long, and in so many ways, I've moved on completely, but also, like, no. I will never move on lol. It seems I will probably need to go back and replay DA:I this summer, which is perfect, because I'm just about done with Death Stranding, and this will be a great way to pass the time between now and the Fall (at which point Daryl Dixon season 2 also starts so idk how I shall survive the inundation with characters I love--I will just have to find some sort of balance LOL). I really do need to brush up on the lore and try to even remember what was happening, and also get back into Sene's POV, because I do believe the Inquisitor is going to make an appearance in this story, and I am very excited for that but also very anxious. I do actually trust Patrick Weekes to give closure to the DAI fans and Solavellan shippers, particularly knowing how hard he worked to give us that notorious "COLE GREATLY APPROVES" moment in Trespasser 😭 Tbh though, I'm just not sure entirely what that will look like. I'm nervous!

I will say that I am really very happy to see how Solas is portrayed in this scene with Varric. He's actually nowhere near as cold as he seems at the end of Trespasser. He seems much more reluctant than he did back then, like he legitimately doesn't believe there's a better way. He doesn't seem evil or beyond repair. I wonder if that's because he's spent so many years alone, plotting, and it has actually served to soften him. In those first two years, after Corypheus, it's clear he was able to scrub his experience with the Inquisition from his heart, but most likely what he's learned is that it was merely a cosmetic fix. The connections he made back then are still with him, and seeing Varric again bubbled them up to the surface, even if only briefly.

I won't lie when I say that I actually really did not like the reveal trailer at ALL, which came out a couple days ago. It gave me like, Fortnite vibes and I was really concerned, because I've been out of the loop and not paying attention to the development of the game at all. Like this came completely out of left field for me, and then the name change...yikes. BUT the gameplay trailer fixed all of that. The game looks dark, gritty, and EXTREMELY fun. I love that they will start us out with Varric and Harding. I love them both so much, like old friends I haven't seen in such a long time. It filled me with warmth when Varric tried to reason with Solas, because that is EXACTLY what Varric would do, and even just hearing his voice, and Harding's voice, and of course Solas's voice, it made me tear up. I cannot wait. I am SO excited!!!!!!!!

I'm also really excited to reconnect with some of our old crew on here. I know lots of us are still around to various degrees even as we've all dispersed to different fandoms and real life circumstances for years. But Solavellan was my first real ship and Dragon Age was my first true fandom, and in my heart, we and our Lavellans will always be the GOAT. 💫

HOW are you feeling about all of this @bearlytolerant??????

[bitethebulette]

Lighthouse Paintings

So, I wasn't sure I was going to write this, because this is a blog about writing mostly, but I'm also an artist so this has honestly been bothering me. And yes, it's about Dragon Age: The Veilguard!

People keep bringing up the "frescos" in the Lighthouse and I'm questioning if these are actually frescos. These look more like paintings to me or in technical terms - murals. Examples and explanations under cut to save my timeline and minor spoilers if you haven't seen the game:

I will be the first to admit I know nothing about frescos. However, after playing Inquisition, I was really confused by the meaning of the paintings Solas had done and so I kind of did a deep dive and read everything other people have said about them.

(Please click this if you want to know more. This blogger really covers it all. I recommend it if you don't already know about how frescos are made or anything about the frescos from Inquisition.)

Based on the reading I've done that goes into depth about the frescos Solas paints in Skyhold - I find it really hard to believe that the walls of the Lighthouse are also frescos. From what I can tell these are done with bare bones paint. My reasoning is as follows:

You can clearly see the lines of the stone blocks. If this was covered in the layer of plaster needed to make a fresco, you wouldn't see the stone blocks behind it. Yes, plaster can crack over time, but it wouldn't crack perfectly at the points where the stone meets. And you see it's very consistent - you can see every block behind the paint.

The way the paint is flaking off. Painting on stone isn't exactly permanent. I did some quick searching and the durability of paint on stone is pretty weak. For outdoors they give it about 5 years at most - and this is with masonry paint, which I doubt he used. Since these are inside they lasted quite a bit longer. And the paint is flaking off in thin sheets, instead of chunks. If this was plaster it would leave a noticeable texture on the wall as it fell off, since the paint is part of the plaster.

He left behind a paint palette. If you read the above blogs you will have seen the colors for frescos and mixed in pots. This is regular paint. What kind? I can't tell. It could be oil or it could be egg tempera, if we want to pick another old painting medium that no one really talks about anymore. I don't see anything else laying out to suggest this, though. My gut feeling is oils. (Seeing these giant paintings and those small brushes, though, are giving me a headache. Solas, we work smarter, not harder!)

It's possible that here in the Lighthouse Solas wasn't as concerned about longevity when it came to the work he decided he wanted to surround himself with. I think he saw all of this ending in his death, per words he spoke to a romanced Lavellan - "I walk the path of death" (loosely translated, of course). He's obviously painted other moments of his life and taken it down, too (at least the best he can. Let's be real, paint might not last forever on stone, but it sticks just enough that it doesn't disappear completely, either). Maybe he thinks it'll be another regret, eventually, and he'll want to be rid of it.

Or, maybe, he also just loves to paint. It's a different technique from the frescos and maybe isn't as time consuming so he doesn't have to spend as much of his free time working on it, because, gee, it sure is hard and busy work trying to tear the Veil down!

OR - this one might be a reach - these were him testing out the designs he wanted to put onto the walls of Skyhold! How he would have access to all of this during Inquisition - I don't know! He starts the frescos in Inquisition before Morrigan shows up with her eluvian. I haven't read any of the related novels, but I've read blurbs that might lead us to believe he was still working with his agents even as he was helping the Inquisition. How? Again, no idea. This is all speculation on my part.

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading, I guess. Let me know what your thoughts on this are, because the paintings being called frescos in the Lighthouse have been driving me crazy. If you have additional info that might lean more towards these actually being frescos, let me know. The evidence that I see, though, states otherwise.

As a treat: Here are some more pictures of the paintings in the music room. I am doing a 2nd playthrough on my main PC so I can get better quality images for references, so I do not have pictures of the "Regrets" yet.

And some small grafitti-esque paintings found in Solas' hideout in Minrathous.

[roseofblogging]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard liveblog

Hello! I often post Splatoon stuff here or reblog Tales RPG stuff, but I'm currently sucked into Dragon Age: The Veilguard and want to dump my thoughts on my game somewhere that I can look back on later.

If you want to avoid these either because of spoilers or because you just do not want to see it, I'll be using the tags: rose plays veilguard and dragon age: the veilguard spoilers, and you can blacklist those.

With that said, here we go!

The background for my Rook: She's a mage originally from a Dalish clan that greatly worships Elgar'nan, the father of the elven pantheon, god of vengeance, justice, retribution, and the sun. She grew up eagerly taking the vallislin and vowed to help the helpless, invoking Elgar'nan's name when doing so. (All the while, I, giggle at the sheer irony of how she'd hate the Evanuris--whom she currently worships--for them having been slavers.)

After she moved away to see more of the world, she found herself loving both the glitz and the grime of Minrathous in the Tevinter Empirium: the street markets were nothing like she'd ever encountered at home, and she became enamored.

Then she learned about the much darker side of Tevinter, and the fact that slavery was still legal there infuriated her. That's when she joined the Shadow Dragons and eventually made a name for herself freeing a bunch of slaves, going against the Shadow Dragons' plan to go slower and avoid attention. She doesn't regret freeing people, but she recognizes her actions had consequences for the Shadow Dragons and probably endangered a lot of people after she was forced to flee the city.

She's looked up to Varric ever since he found her and asked her to help them track down Solas. She's not fond of essentially being the leader in his place now, and she goes to him for advice a lot. He always manages to cheer her up no matter how much she beats herself up.

We're still early in the game's story, and while Solas didn't outright say at the start that the elven gods enslaved people, she got the sense the stories she'd grown up learning weren't entirely true. Now that she's lived through a couple of Solas's memories of fighting back against Elgar'nan, she has very mixed feelings about her prior hero-worship of the Evanuris father (she still does not know the truth about vallislin's origins). Time will tell how she'll feel eventually having to face Elgar'nan himself, now that he's escaped Solas's imprisonment.

She finds Solas pretty irritating and full of himself, but her conversations with him in the Fade have made her see him for more of who he is: a very old man who wanted to save people but is ultimately fallible and prone to mistakes like anyone, including severe lapses in judgment and an inability to listen to people he views as far younger, far more inexperienced, and deluded by a millennium of lies passed down as culture. For which he's right! That irritates her even more.

Where we're at now: Varric is injured and out of battle for what seems to be a long time. Harding has become a sweet friend, and Rook is looking forward to learning more about this strange stone magic she acquired from Solas's ancient dagger.

Neve, oh my gosh *swoon* aaaa. Kinda crushing hardcore. Excited about working with another person from the Shadow Dragons, especially someone with such fantastic inductive reasoning skills. We're aligned on some major core values. Both fiercely love Minrathous.

Bellara is incredibly sweet! Crushing--not sure if romantic or platonic, but definitely wanna learn more about her. The way she rambles is adorable. She's a fantastic tinkerer, brilliant, and full of life with a sense of adventure. Her enthusiasm is infectious!

Lucanis...yet another *swoon* He's only just joined, so Rook doesn't know much about him yet, and having a contract killer with a demon living in his head is concerning, but she's trying not to be judgmental about it. After her first one-on-one with him, she's feeling like he has a really good handle on that situation, though she feels awful for him and how he's constantly sleep-deprived because of that situation. She plans to sit down with him for coffee on the regular. (My own thoughts from being able to see the interactions with Spite: OH MY GOSH LOL he's hot) Plus, he takes his work seriously, and it's not like he wants ancient elves unleashing the worst Blight upon the world, worse than any of us can imagine. So, she can work with him, and she's got a good vibe about him at the moment. It's not like she hasn't killed people before.

[carabas]

Dragon Age Veilguard liveblogging -

Third and apparently final mysterious circle, and it's the outer two rings together -

...so the whole mysterious circle is a set of five rings? Earlier Anaris said about the Forgotten Ones "The sixth and the seventh roam free," and now here's a Forgotten Ones thing with a set of one through five... Also hey, Clan Sabrae mention in the codex! What were they even doing in the Deep Roads? How many completely cursed locations can one clan discover?

Tour of Villa Dellamorte!

Rook: What was it like? Training under the First Talon? Lucanis: Torture.

Vague! He answered that question in more detail in Tevinter Nights: Memories of sweat-filled days without food or water came unbidden. Lucanis's back tingled from where his grandmother's cane had bruised his flesh for letting his guard down or fumbling his footwork. And that difference in detail when it comes to training/torture methods is making me really curious what kind of faction-specific dialogue you get if Rook's an Antivan Crow.

...Wow, that is a whole lot of people who are shockingly okay with a possessed man becoming First Talon. As close as Treviso is to Rivain, maybe they're used to Rivaini-style possession? Or the possessed Avvar mage that Josie sent on a cultural exchange tour was a bigger hit than previously realized? Or everyone's just that intimidated by Caterina? Rook just tried to convince Spite not to sleepwalk Lucanis out of the Lighthouse because nowhere is safe for a possessed man, but apparently Treviso is fine actually.

SOLAS'S VOICE TALKING ROOK THROUGH THE MAZE, Rook has been slow to trust his god of lies and I've enjoyed all the verbal sparring between them that resulted but in this moment Rook just honestly asks Solas for his help and Solas sounds genuinely happy both to be asked and that he can in fact do something to help, this remains the most intense relationship in the game, SOLAS PICKING A FIGHT WITH ELGAR'NAN, SOLAS TALKING ABOUT THE OTHER GODS WHO HAVE BEEN LOST, I wasn't positive they were dead until now, that's upsetting, I mean it's probably better that we're fighting only two evanuris rather than all of them but it's upsetting, also if killing the archdemon results in the death of the evanuris in their prison why did solas think wardens killing the archdemons could make things even worse, or did he really not know what might happen - ANYWAY, A CHANCE FOR THE DREAD WOLF TO HELP FREE HIS PEOPLE ONE MORE TIME

"You have earned the respect of the Dread Wolf" popping up on the side of the screen, this is the perfect game actually

Ooh, the Butcher is fun now that we finally meet him, finally a supporting villain who seems to be motivated by something other than a desire to sacrifice people for power aaaaaaaaaand he's dead already. Okay.

The second conversation with Lavellan, all about her relationship with Solas, offering the chance at maybe some kind of happy ending for them - this is more than I'd hoped for, we just keep winning. I was worried her brief cameo earlier might be all we saw of her, she and Solas both referred to their relationship as if it was firmly in the past, I'd been lowering my expectations! Foolish of me, this is the Dread Wolf game built entirely on love for the Dread Wolf, no idea why they ever changed the title.

The only remaining quest in the journal has a warning that it will lead to the endgame, so I'm just running around wrapping up treasure hunting things now. I'm deeply concerned that none of my companions seem to be preparing to betray me reveal some secret plan of their own that will drive the endgame plot in a new and more interesting direction. None of them seem to be troubled by a hidden secret! Everyone actually talks to each other openly about their problems like adults! Except Varric who's been stuck in the infirmary by himself this whole time - Varric, is it you, are you the shady apostate??? Is it the Inquisitor???

My money had been on Harding - the memories of the Titans are surfacing, the specific people who killed them have returned, we're working for Solas who was there and part of it, that could lead in all sorts of interesting directions - but she's dealt with that already! She wasn't even sneaky about it! Or Neve fits the Anders-Solas pattern, the cynical Darktown Dock Town mage fighting for freedom for the enslaved and downtrodden - but there's been no sign from her of secretive plans in the works at all! Unless you count that one newspaper that claims she can talk to cats and they are her secret informant network. I did get approval points from her when I pet the cats at the cat cafe when she wasn't even present, how did she know. Suspicious.

I don't believe any of my companions are about to betray me at all. Where am I, what's happening, is this even Dragon Age?

[inquiscissors]

!!!!!

LOVED the gameplay trailer! Now that it's been a minute, so for posterity, here's my first take on it all:

- I'm choosing to enjoy the stylized-realistic art style, glad everyone looks like they belong in the same game (was a little confused after the trailer, bc especially Harding and Emmrich kind if seemed to be in pretty different styles? but all seems to be in order after all✌️)

- to be entirely honest, I was a little worried that it would be hard to take things seriously in a more stylized game (despite origins looking, well... like it's from 2009, DA2 looking like it was made in about a year, and inquisition's over the top sad face™️, but somehow my nervous shit brain chose to completely ignore all that and worry anyway), but that scene at the temple hit me HARD.... I could write a whole thing about how Varric goes into it so boldly and jokingly and how this persona just evaporates when he sees how serious and SAD Solas is... All that just to say, I'm not worried about that anymore🙏

- so excited to see all the different ways we can move compared to earlier games!! balancing! vaulting!! (climbing and swimming, maybe?? hopefully??👀)

- incredible scenery, VERY cool atmosphere in Minrathous - it feels big and imposing, and like you could really get lost there

- on that note, I'm really hoping for day/night and weather cycles, though I'll be fine with keeping to the zones rather than an open world - but I hope we get to see Minrathous in daylight as well❤️

- I could honestly do without the sci-fi leaning design elements, but I don't mind them - I am hoping for a creative in-game explanation for them though👀

- LOVE the return to having both short and long range weapons equipped! I've really missed this since Origins, so it's cool to see it return🙏

- You actually have to aim with a bow! And you have limited ammo! in general the combat felt more up-close and personal than inquisition, and I feel like things like limited ammo lends itself really well to the small, grassroots-like group like the Veilguard, where you don't have the unlimited resources of an organization like the Inquisition (the Inquisitor can't really be seen running out of arrows in the middle of their heroic moment, surely), as well as from a game design standpoint where you can do limited ammo BECAUSE you have the option of melee, which you couldn't do in DA2 or inquisition

- the ability/tactics screen seems a bit daunting, and I'm glad the game pauses when you go to use it😅 I'm confident it'll be easy enough to get familiar with though, as figuring out the mechanics hasn't really been part of the challenge of beating the game before

once again, my most pressing concerns have been put to rest, and I'm so excited for this game🙏 completely unrelated to the game-play trailer, one of the biggest assurances I've seen these last few days is that BioWare has been keeping council with a selection of prominent fans of the franchise for the last few years(!) of development, meaning that they have made a big effort to actually stay in touch with what the fans want from the game, which was HUGE news (to me at least, idk I'd this was kind of an open secret that I hadn't picked up on or smth, but I had no idea lol)

[krems-chair]

Losing My Mind Over Veilguard 6/?? Aka the Dread Wolf Double Bind

These posts are getting up here in number (yes ma'am that is 1 2 3 4 5 instances of me not being able to get my shit together and coming back again for more)

and quite frankly there's nothing I can do about it until the "we've been treated and tormented by this game" demon has been exorcised from my body, so here we go again.

Today I give to you:

(Modeled after Inquisition Solas and his sad, bald-ass basset hound mage bum glory becuase I think it's important that newcomers know exactly who his fans fell in love with/who inspired his enemies to conduct speed-runs to punch him. Yassified Solas ran only because this mangled membranous man crawled first)

Part of what's making me lose my mind here, I've discovered, is a strange sort of survivor's guilt where everything I really like or really hate about Veilguard can be traced back to Solas and I don't know how to deal with it because we've never had such a divide before between one character getting ALL the content and everyone else from their game being left in the absolute dust.

Disclaimer: Yeah, no one from Origins has had more screen time across games than Morrigan at this point, and therefore no one has gotten more robbed of the substance of their character, but even the damage done to her wasn't the kind that warped an entire game. No, the devs saved that all for the Dread Wolf in the Room.

Even putting it down on paper and comparing the two in-game versions of him, it took me a second to work through why I'm so conflicted, but I think I've finally settled on a few key points.

Concern #1: Solas Haters Were Robbed.

Part of the allure of Solas is that if you want to punch that man in the face, you're gonna get the chance to punch him in the face. Is that my personal preference? No. But in a game where your companions are built to make you think instead of letting you turn your brain off, you're bound to have personalities that clash against yours. To have such a non-descript-looking iambic-pentameter-talking apostate be able to inspire strong emotions across the whole spectrum of players was part of his appeal. Now, as far as I understand it, you have four options at the end of Veilguard.

1. Solas lives and he might actually not hate himself some day.

2. Solas lives and he's absolutely going to write a diary entry a night about why he hates himself.

3. Solas lives and he's going to write a diary entry a night about why he hates YOU.

4. Solas lives and you better hope he never again figures out how to live in your general vicinity

Do you see my concern here? I, shamelessly, can admit that I would do unspeakable fictional things to get that man his happy ending (within reason...mostly...), but I feel like the game took the opportunity away from the players who threw that knife in their map at the end of Trespasser and vowed to take a bitch down for stealing their best armor and waxing poetic about the Grey Wardens while seemingly sitting on his ass and having no inclination to stop the blight (help). This, then, leads me into my second issue.

Concern #2: The Game Refuses to Give Solas room outside of its own agenda

In the near-decade it took for Solas to slip back into his trickster god persona, he seems to have forgotten why he began his quest to tear down the veil in the first place. I like that Rook gets to experience the version of our favorite hard boiled egg that near-singlehandedly tore down several empires by being an absolute terror to those with bigger egos. I like that new players are going to hear Solas tell them that they've earned his respect and actually believe it until they inevitably get their first taste of ancient elven betrayal. What I don't like? When a nuanced yearning for a world in which three majorly mistreated groups (spirits, elves, mages) would be free from many of the constraints that enabled their oppression suddenly becomes "I am doing this because if I don't I have betrayed my friend. Which friend you ask? Oh, the one that was on board with my plan until it no longer suited the story."

The combo of few characters from previous games and a sanitized near-blank slate for the setting of this game was deadly to one of its best-written characters. Because of it, Solas is forced to abandon his double-speak, the joy he takes in giving you scraps of an answer that, by the time you get it, you will already have missed the chance to piece it together from separate clues that he ALSO dropped. He's not going to get to show you the loyal followers the epilogue of Inquisition made clear that he has, because the game wants to usher you into the new future of the series. You're not going to get to ask him (or any NPCs for that matter) a bunch of questions so that you can form your own opinion of him, because all that matters is that he isn't Elgar'nan or Ghilan'nain so let's move along, shall we?

Because the game needs exposition and a foil to its two other baddies, and needs it FAST, the mythic Dread Wolf becomes a plot device designed to get you where you need to go when you need to be there. It doesn't work purely for that reason alone, at least in my opinion, but it gets so much worse when a game that promises you that it's going to work for players new and old relies on someone experienced players want a personal reckoning with to guide every Rook through the game only to realize that those questions of morality regarding whether the veil is torturous for a subjugated few or the only thing preserving most of life as we know it are going to have to remain questions.

You don't get a choice of whether Solas is in your party or not, and you can't advance in the game without talking to him. You don't get to choose not to impress him. You don't get to choose whether you're going to work with him in the final battle, and as previously mentioned, your only real choice in how his story ends is one of four options in which he lives every time in varying states of self-loathing. You're still going to love him or hate him, but just how strongly you're able to show those feelings towards him is severely curtailed. And that's an absolute shame for a character that commanded such fierce attention.

And that's where, ultimately, I find myself with a weird amount of survivor's guilt.

When I finished my Veilguard playthrough, I had barely a moment to fully contemplate the amount of whiplash and disappointment I felt going from a Solas that I had spent almost a decade knowing to a One Dimensional Fen'Harel who threw out his core values and goals like they were chilling in a cup of tea before. Why? Because I very quickly felt guilty. And then I got angry for feeling guilty!

The game's failure to adequately represent its other characters and lore has created a world in which I don't like the Solas we've been given, but I can't live without him either. Who am I to complain that his most complex and compelling features are gone when other players are mourning the fact that the last they may ever hear of their favorite character is reduced to a scrap in the codex? How can I be frustrated at how the Lavellan reunion scene goes down when other players would kill for the chance to have their Inquisitor seemingly give any sort of shit about being in the game aside from being told it was mandatory to earn participation points? How can I lament the fact that his storyline seems to share all the wrong lessons to be learned from a toxic friendship rooted in a never-equalized power imbalance when someone else is watching Morrigan pull a complete 180 and wondering why the fuck they spent so much time researching whether or not her accepting her mother's choices as her own was what she truly wanted? At least Solas still loves Lavellan, even though we needed to ask Trick Weekes several follow up questions just to double check. At least Solas gets more in the epilogue than one empty "we remember the heroes that came before" platitude.

And to suddenly fear any appearances of past characters from a studio that used to make me stay up theorizing about how a character might grow and evolve and continue to impact the world I helped shape? It's depressing as hell, and it's why I was too scared to get attached to any of the new companions once I finally got past the writing and lack of complexity.

The people that hate Solas, deserved better.

The people that valued what he brought to their Inquisitor's small but strong group of friends deserved better.

The people that love Solas more than Sera loved pissing him off deserved better.

And new players, who had a chance to engage with one of the most powerful storylines in the game and instead got a heaping dose of Deus Ex Machina Lite, deserved better.

If taking a character that had the potential and power needed to shape an entire continent and banishing him one of four different ways to Fade jail so that the book could quickly be closed on a years-long legacy is what the studio is calling a return to their roots, I'll stick with the efforts of fans to create art and theories that aren't afraid to double down into what actually keeps people coming back for more.

[immobiliter]

okay okay, *cracks knuckles* let's do this~

don't click if you haven't finished the game because this is HUGE spoiler territory. don't fucking do it. don't ruin it for yourselves. i'm watching you all

so let me preface this by saying that i did not expect varric to leave this game alive, and i've said from the start that he went into that confrontation with solas fully prepared to either stop him or die trying, and i was right. he did die trying lmao. i thought it was kinda wild and unrealistic that they managed to somehow get him back to the lighthouse ( and assumed that bioware were maybe too cowardly to kill off a fan favourite ), but i was glad that he made it through the prologue and hoped for some kind of meaningful close to his arc. because i still expected him to not leave the game alive

varric is then a non-entity for the entire game, barely involved in group discussion aside from being a generic life coach to rook, and i continue to blame bioware for shoddy writing choices ( especially given the way they write morrigan, which i'm still not entirely on board with her being a walking talking plot device, but w/e ). i didn't make the connection that he was already dead if only because it didn't make sense to me, considering that harding and neve were also at the ritual site and would surely have had a reaction if he had died there ( especially harding, and i'll come back to this ). plus we meet dorian, isabela, the inquisitor over the course of the game — people who might not have withheld their thoughts on varric's death to a grieving rook because they don't really know them and have no reason to.

if varric died, it would have a ripple effect across the entirety of thedas and i'm not exaggerating here because he has friends all over the place. he's been in three ( two and a half now? lmao ) games, and he is purposely well connected. he has a spy network, he was the viscount of kirkwall, he's a bestselling author and celebrity. even if the south is in fucking chaos ( and i still hate everything about that btw. the moment i started getting those missives from the inquisitor i was ready to eluvian portal hop my way over to denerim and kirkwall and play that game instead, fuck the north lmao ), this would have huge ramifications that meant it didn't make sense for him to be a figment of rook's imagination for that long. and i think that's also my problem. that this went on for the whole fucking game without anyone pushing against this fantasy that solas used to manipulate rook.

but he was dead all along. so instead, i get bioware pulling the rug on you during the final endgame like "oh so he was never alive at all actually btw" and on its own, that's a good twist. their final conversation together made me cry, it was lovely. but the more you question that twist the more it starts to unravel and fall apart because there were no meaningful hints at it throughout the game. i romanced harding, which is the romance where the ghost of varric's death should have actually had some bearing on things because they both saw it, they both went through it, and there was NOTHING from harding whatsoever. no cryptic conversation between the two about grief, not even concern from harding that rook is apparently hallucinating varric in the infirmary and they've been doing this for weeks??? months??? however long the timescale of the game's events is.

and sure, there were subtle things. bellara using varric's full name when talking about him, varric never being addressed when he was a part of the group. but nothing about this should have been subtle. he's the wrong pick of a character if you intend for this to be subtle, bioware. even solas says he had a tenuous connection to rook at best in his attempt to manipulate things, and there's no way he could have maintained that illusion that varric was still alive and with rook if their companions ( or the cameo characters like dorian or the inquisitor ) had actually pushed against it like it would make sense for them to do.

then there's the argument that rook's "regret" in causing varric's death is meant to be big enough to counter solas' own regrets so that they could escape the fade prison but..... rook has only known varric a year. there are other characters for whom varric's death would have weighed way heavier, surely. i feel like it was way more about the player's own emotional attachment to varric as a fan favourite honestly than it was about rook. arguably SOLAS should have regretted that more than rook, like come on.

it also means that he gets a death in the narrative but the ONLY people who get to have meaningful reactions to that death are solas and rook. so varric's death becomes all about them, which didn't sit right with me and still doesn't. when i say that i was fully prepared to punt solas back into the fade and not give him his solavellan ending, i stg lmao. and i do also hate that rook could only confront solas about this at the 11th hour because of when this plot twist was placed in the narrative. like if rook had managed to figure out that varric was a manifestation of their grief earlier and confronted solas about it 2/3 of the way through the game ( via their fade connection ), i think it would have hit more on an emotional level. because i don't want to hate solas and never have hated solas as a character, and i understand the rationale behind why he would have done this to manipulate rook as a failsafe but ?? good job game, you're making me hate solas at the last fucking moment despite wanting to pursue a "save him" ending. i don't think that necessarily did solas any justice as a character either in all honesty. there was surely another way that they could have done a switcheroo and had him escape the fade prison, surely.

anyway, moving away from the giant fucking elephant in the room lmao. i did enjoy the game for what it was. the companions were fun, i don't think the end mission for veilguard hit the same heights as the suicide mission from me2, but it was nice to see an endgame sequence from bioware that carried big consequences for companions and forced you to play through their stories first ( even if their questlines were very long and unwieldy at times. like trying to get to their final quest but just being handed various conversations and outings was frustrating. i like being able to get to know the companions better but my god ).

i enjoyed the factions, i think the cameos were incredibly superfluous and wish they'd actually carried more weight in the game ( i do think bioware had this issue where they wanted to make the game accessible to a new audience but didn't want to commit to their own canon and piss off those purists who wanted all of their 329843 choices in the three previous games to matter. like bioware should have just said, it's been ten years, this is the canon we have decided on for the past few games sans these three choices you pick in the cc screen, and ran with it. i think the game would have been better off had they done that and i think that's why they blitzed the south as they did. so that apparently nothing mattered anyway ig ).

sans the varric thing, i think solas's ending was handled well. i liked his final conversation with mythal a lot. i'm not a big solavellan shipper but i can see why people are happy with what happened there for him.

like it was a good game and i had fun playing it. i just think they fumbled a lot of things and the varric one is just so fucking BIG that i'm over here like ??? i somehow have to fix this and it's gonna be such an ordeal on my part i did not ask for this. it also means i can't write anything set during veilguard until this is no longer a spoiler lmao thank you bioware, truly