#the shadow dragons' bodies lie a-mouldering in their graves

[cygnahime]

Bioware made some Decisions about softening factions/moral disagreements/etc in Veilguard, but to me the one that's simply bizarre is...Tevinter slavery???

Because it's so incredibly unnecessary. Because the faction you connect with is the Shadow Dragons, abolitionist agitators. You really wouldn't have to deal much with people who think slavery is ok, because they are hardly going to be your allies. Neve is your Shadow Dragon contact, so whatever else, she shares those beliefs enough to be in good odor with them.

(And there is nothing unbefitting of her noir nature in "fighting the injustice in the very structure of society that one person cannot overcome". Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown Minrathous.)

They wrote Dorian as having pulled his head out of his ass and incorporated "you can't treat people well and enslave them" into his worldview, which isn't much of a stretch considering. He and Maevaris are, in fact, abolitionist politicians, not powerful enough to get anything done but just too powerful to easily get rid of. Real life has had plenty of those.

So...why bother to soften or erase that Tevinter is a slave state? It's not like we have any friendly characters who support it, including the Tevenes, unless I've missed something. They could not have party arguments about slavery the easy way!

So - I made an elf mage Shadow Dragon, okay, because that seemed interesting, but in practice the game doesn't give me much to work with. No conversation about what happens to elven slaves who manifest magic. About how far just "mage" doesn't get you around here. Hell, in the backstory they had her bust up an underground Venatori slave market, which is, frankly BS of the highest order! There don't need to be underground slave markets; there are regular markets for that! The whole point is that she and they took down completely legal places of business, because the law in Tevinter is evil! The Venatori don't have to coup Minrathous to go after them; the government already should be.

Softening it is so wildly unnecessary compared to e.g. the Crows, to the story they wanted to tell, that I'm just ??? confused more than anything.