#this is my Complaining Hour guys sorry

[firebird-legacy]

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[itzmellooo]

Futurama slop

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[steveharrington]

even the people most outspoken about workers rights clearly view workers in certain professions as less deserving of a work life balance. yes it’s frustrating that business hours are 9-5 and you typically have to take time off to go to the dentist or doctor or bank, but employees at those places deserve to go home at 5 too! it’s one thing to advocate for daytime and nighttime shift teams but as someone who works in a fast paced customer service administrative role with a LOT of people trying to get through to us, i constantly hear “well i emailed after 5 but i guess you guys were closed by then 🙄” like yes. we have to go home. we can’t work 24/7, even if it would be more convenient for you if we did. and you wouldn’t expect that of every profession so you shouldn’t expect it of ours. i have friends who are always encouraging work life balance but then when they need to visit the dmv or the bank or whatever and it’s open 9-5 they get visibly annoyed like….its still People who work at those places. yes people who do jobs that are urgent and important to your life, but people all the same. i swear like the same people who (rightfully) won’t work a minute past 5 PM would happily agree to have employees in certain professions working around the clock if they deem it the kind of service that they feel entitled to have constant 24/7 access to

[moeblob]

Ananza realizing that Deacon's mom was a devoted follower of hers THEREFORE that's her son now, too! And she will dote on him and love him and never pick on him like all the other deities tend to do. That's her precious little boy who lives in another city and rarely gets to see her!

[mysicklove]

whoever thought that “reverse style” classrooms are a good idea in a college environment deserve to be in jail

[kijosakka]

Assistant Noah AU: How would Alejandro react to Assistant Noah mocking him for losing both the 'Egyptian River Race' + the 'German Slap Dance', because the Charmer decided to be a gentleman/simp for Heather? 😏

as established in the one going deeper into alejandro/noahs respective attitudes about egypt, there are a few key differences between then and germany:

first being that — this, what alejandro does in germany, is a move first and foremost for heather. deeper reasons are debatable but it all boils down to being for heather. < meaning, noah has not been established to alejandro as a kind of confidant who knows what he’s about, but it has been long enough for noah to see alejandros evidently clear dislike of owen.

^ previously, in egypt, noahs teasing or taunting of his behavior was something more lighthearted and holding neutral-positive connotation — however, from then to now (being notably: japan, NYC, and now the first half of germany), it’s fair to assume that noahs opinion would sour considerably.

this isn’t helped by the fact that his needling and dig for more information about alejandro personally won’t come until around-post london, when the eel comment is made — his perception of alejandro boils down to ‘antagonist hiding behind good intention who’s a real dick to my friend’

and on alejandro’s end, depending on how many interactions they’ve had between egypt, his opinion of noah would remain mostly unchanged; this would effectively be the inciting incident. added onto with that i doubt alejandro would have eyes on noah before the eel comment, simply because he’s got better and bigger threats to take care of.

so say germany comes around, alejandro dives and noah goes out of his way to taunt him again about it — however unlike in egypt, there’s no friendly quality to it, and i’d wager to say alejandro would definitely notice the wild pivot from ‘lighthearted ribbing’ to ‘acidic barbs and nearly-malicious taunting'

at this point in time it's mostly just character conflict, alejandro wondering why that changed, if it did change or if noah was just off then, how/if it would affect the game, etc etc. there's 5 'spaces' of time between germany and london (presumably when the eel comment takes place even in this continuity), meaning a good chunk of potential interactions to be had between the two.

because it would alter their dynamic at least to some degree — this person who you've only ever had a generally positive interaction with is suddenly harsh and mean and there's no real space to talk it out? especially with someone as prideful as alejandro, that's not going to fester well at all.

[iiusia]

i think there is just something fundamentally wrong with my brain that makes it and school not mix

[hacksawboy]

playing casual solo without my friends for the first time for 6 hours straight has taught me that spy mains are some of the most devious people on the planet

[misspickman]

I am generally a summer enjoyer but i cant keep waking up at 7am to 30 degrees. What do you mean

[anothermonikan]

yknow I've been in Subterranean a LOT the past few hours of this game. wonder if I'll ever encounter the Fog Demons I got called a massive L gamer for not knowing about. :)

[altruistic-meme]

shoutout to all the coworkers who decided to make small talk with me today (??) im so sorry that i was the worst person on the line for you to come up to talking about the 10hr shifts and saturday as the one person on the line who ALREADY DOES 10hr shifts and saturdays. i appreciate the effort though.

[daz4i]

hi. i am in so much pain i feel like I'm gonna throw up. how's everyone doing today

[mymelodyisme]

My sister’s graduation day 😤 let’s go 👏🏽

[forget-me-ghost]

I'm back in my "Jason Todd deserves better" era and I want to thank all of my friends who patiently listen to me rant about how much this boy deserves happiness and how that damned tv show 'Titans' did him dirty.

I wish such great friends upon every single one of you, weird people on the other side of the screen.

[gongedtornado]

help girl i got too silly <\3 (overthought every interaction ever)