#this is my veilguard experience so far if you even care

[vronism]

Lucanis please pick me. Love me. Choose me

[evanhereonearth]

The Insidious Cycle of the Abuser Who Says They Love You: Mythal and Solas

Likely goes without saying, but Veilguard spoilers all under the jump.

I have been absolutely wrecked by the end scenes in Veilguard for weeks now, and I want to do a deep dive into Solas's relationship with Mythal and how it absolutely reeks of abuse. Long post incoming!

CW for heavy discussion of cycles of abuse, trauma response, and abuse tactics.

When I finished my first playthrough, this moment hit me like an absolute freight train. His visceral response to her presence and the way he instinctively retreats and flinches back/puts out a hand to protect himself is a full-blown trauma response.

And then she starts talking and moving towards him, and it gets worse.

Solas curls in on himself; his body goes even further into self-protection mode. His face is downcast, not the way he bowed to his vhenan moments before with a straight back and open posture, but shrinking.

And then as she advances, he cowers.

He completely folds inward. He crumples; he shakes, he hyperventilates, and the moment she reaches for him, he fumblingly offers her the lyrium dagger to kill him with.

Is this shame? Yes, of course, but it's far, far more than that.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to limit this list to the four most widely recognised trauma responses:

Fight

Flight

Freeze

Fawn

As someone whose primary trauma response is fawn (wooo CPTSD), which is intensely common among people who experience complex trauma, especially through emotional and prolonged physical/mental abuse where their needs are discarded, pushed aside, or otherwise steamrolled, I felt this right alongside Solas. My own body responded to seeing it. This is, quite frankly, one of the most visceral and realistic (and extreme) fawn responses I've seen depicted in media.

Mythal in this scene is...phew, something else.

"She was the best of them," Solas tells us in Trespasser.

But she was not good, everything tells us in Veilguard.

Let's look at his regrets in chronological order.

Through Solas's memories of regret, we see this germinate in his foundational regret: leaving the Fade to take a physical form.

He does not want to do this. He tells her he does not want to do this. From the conversation, it's clear it's not the first time she's asked.

And the way she asks? Outright coercion.

"You have so long observed the world. Why not consider joining it?" [I want you to do this thing, so I will frame it as logical for you to make the choice I want you to make.]

"But I have no desire to live as humans. Besides, this talk of taking on a solid form. I think you underestimate the danger." [I don't want to do that. It does not feel safe to me.] "When you took the glowing stone to build your body, did the earth not shake?" [This is dangerous and selfish.]

"The lyrium gives us the strength we had when we were of the Fade; we are the best of both physical and Fade." [It makes us powerful, so I don't care about the risks.] "I need your wisdom, Solas, to withstand the louder voices like Elgar'nan's who would go too far." [If you do not come with me, a tyrant you abhor will make others suffer.] "I need you."

"This is madness. You must know that." [I don't want to do this at all. This will hurt me. I don't want this.] "I will always follow where you go." [Because I love you and trust you.]

Mythal's words in this part are classic abusive framing. When appealing to his natural curiosity does not work and he expresses strong rejection of her logical thought process (just because I have observed this place does not mean I want to go there, echoing his comments to the Inquisitor in DAI: "Many Orlesian peasants dream of travelling to exotic Rivain. But not everyone wants to go to Rivain!") and expresses that there is significant danger to continue to build bodies out of lyrium, she changes tactics.

Her second tactic is that it gives them power--she implies that he is limited and not enough for being only of the Fade. If he follows her, he will be the best of both, like she is. She clearly already sees herself as above him.

Her third tactic is pure emotional blackmail: "I need you. I will give in to the tyrants without your wisdom, and having your counsel in the Fade is not enough. If you don't go against your own nature and desires, people will suffer...and it will be your fault for not being by my side."

She doesn't say those things outright, but they are implied by everything she is saying. He says again he doesn't want it--that it is madness and that she must be aware of that despite her ignoring any suggestion that she actually is. All she is seeing is power and her desires: for Solas to do what she wants him to do.

So he agrees. Because she is his friend, and she says she needs him.

As far as core wounds go, this one is a doozy. It's absolutely brutal, because it's irrevocable. It's a point of no return. It's the first in what will become millennia of regret, of her ignoring the Wisdom she coerced out of the Fade to do what she wants regardless, to continue to push him to twist his nature under the guise of the greater good, to continue to cede to Elgar'nan and enable the very tyrants she promised him to balance.

This regret was deeply painful for me to watch. The nuance here is easily lost if people don't understand abuse tactics and how this sort of manipulation is used. It also serves to bind Solas to Mythal, an enormous sunk cost fallacy in the making--once he has made this choice, there is no going back.

And you see Solas curled in on himself in anguish and regret from the trauma of taking a physical form. It is in deep, painful contrast to his open, free wingspan as a spirit of Wisdom; he will never be the same.

"Have you created what we need?" From the outset Mythal is framing this as his idea as much as hers, when from everything he says, that is not true.

"With this, the proper ritual will sunder every Titan from its spirit. But you must know, those severed dreams will certainly be driven mad, a disembodied blight of pain and anger. It--is--awful what we are doing."

"And the only way to end this war."

Again, Solas offers the wisdom she claimed she took him from the Fade to listen to. He warns her, again, of the danger. He does not want to do this. Just like he warned her of the earth quaking when they made their bodies--they, the Evanuris, started this war by taking what they wanted regardless of who it hurt. He never wanted to participate in it, but now he is in the middle of that war. Mythal was one of the initial perpetrators of this war; she brought Solas into it against his will because he loved her, and now he's stuck. He is past his point of no return. And she is still using his heart against him. She has isolated him from everyone he knew in the Fade; he has no one to support him. He. Only. Has. Her.

This is another classic abuse tactic; if the person being abused has no one else, they will continue to enable that abuse even if it harms others, because they cannot see a way out. If you don't do what I say, it will destroy our children, our family. If you don't do what I say, this war will consume all you have, and you no longer have a home to return to. If you don't do what I say and hurt yourself and the Other, more will suffer, and it will be your fault.

Again, his posture, curled up and broken, appearing to cradle a now-tranquil Titan beneath him--and be embraced in return. This is an interesting artistic choice here, one that aches. It speaks to the depth of his own wound and how much it rent his own spirit to follow through with Mythal's wants here; that it sundered him from his spirit as much as it did the Titans.

"You cannot do this, Elgar'nan! You swore we would give up our commands when this war was over!"

"Our people need our leadership. If you are unwilling, leave."

From Elgar'nan, this is expected. From Mythal?

"Our people must rebuild. And we must help unite them."

Solas, once again, betrayed. He put his trust in Mythal and in the other Evanuris to follow through with their promise. Everything he has done thus far is poisoned in this moment; had the Evanuris indeed stepped back rather than stepped on necks, perhaps Solas could have healed, found a way to live with what he had done, maybe even to make amends. But this starts his war anew--and Mythal is standing with his enemy despite her promises, despite every wheedling word she's used to get what she wants from him over the centuries and longer, despite him turning from everything, everything, he loved to love her. This is the moment where he understands that he has only been a tool to her all along.

"So we did not fight for freedom, but to conquer this land and our own."

Let's pick apart Solas's words.

So we did not fight for freedom: He truly believed that he was fighting for freedom, that no matter how bad it got, that he could bear it for freedom.

But to conquer this land: Literally the land, I think, because of the Titans. To subdue them at all costs. This was not what he came for, but he believed Mythal.

And our own: Our own, our people, more spirits we gave bodies for this war, more who may not have wanted to leave the Fade. Our own, our people. To Solas, he is one of them. In this moment, he realises how much Mythal holds herself above all of them.

Elgar'nan's words are all too telling: "We fought to win. And now the Evanuris are as gods. I do not answer to Mythal's annoying lapdog."

They all--all--see him thus. As her pet.

Because he is. She has, until now, controlled him utterly with her manipulation and "need" for him.

"The people are afraid. They must believe in something." Mythal does not even stand up for Solas here; she does not reject Elgar'nan's perception of him. All she does is further distance herself.

The people are afraid: The Evanuris made them. They are as controlled as Solas and more.

Elgar'nan asserts, "They need strength."

"And wisdom." Mythal has the absolute gall to attribute this to herself, when Solas is the source of the wisdom she "needed" for so long. (Belated addition: And another level here: she may also be saying again that she needs him, but doing so in a way that doesn't require her to stand up for him directly. Honestly, fucking gross.)

"They need gods who can protect them," Elgar'nan continues.

"We are not gods. You will learn that." Solas's voice here is pure defeat. The scales are falling from his eyes.

"Every lapdog holds a wolf inside," says Elgar'nan.

Solas knows that Elgar'nan's "protection" is hollow, based on subjugation. And I think in this moment, he learns that Mythal's is based only in her belief that she is better than those beneath her, who cannot possibly handle themselves.

So her lapdog becomes the Wolf.

"I was not certain you would come."

Solas's opening words in this regret show the distance between them already and how much he has realised he does not know this woman who called herself his friend.

And her response is to instantly blame him.

"You are the one who walked away. I never turn my back when my friend needs me."

In putting this post together, this line absolutely sucker punched me. I've watched these several times already, but the absolute audacity to blame him for standing up for his principles for the first time against all her manipulation? Hoo.

She blames him for doing just that, "turning his back when his friend needed him." She needed her enabler, and when he stopped, she turned bitter. Just like any abuser.

That he goes straight into "The Evanuris seek the magic of the Blight" instead of engaging, honestly shows that he's still Wisdom. That is one battle that is unwinnable, trying to stand up against an abuser's bullshit like that.

"Impossible," she says. "The Blight is safely sealed away forever."

Gaslight, girl boss, gatekeep.

"Though I wish I could believe you." [You have lied to me so many times.] "I have sensed the breaking of the wards."

And her answer is patronising. "I will investigate your claims." [I don't believe you.] "If they forget the danger of the Blight, I will endeavour to remind them."

Solas knows this is futile. "What if, instead, you left the Evanuris and remained with me? Do you not wish for freedom from this struggle?"

He asks her, again, to veer from the dangerous path. He desperately wants to believe he was not completely wrong about her, I think. If she were to leave, he could heal somewhat, for not having so thoroughly misjudged her character.

Am I enough for you? Was I ever enough? is the unspoken question here when he asks if she will remain with him.

And in return, he gets back even more patronising bullshit and hubris. "Be at peace, love. I will stop them."

(Can you tell Mythal pisses me off?)

She calls him love. What an unbearable insult after everything, to go on telling him she cares for him whilst ignoring his wisdom--the very wisdom she coerced him into leaving the Fade so she would have by her side--and consolidating her own power at the expense of his people.

"As you must," he says. "The Blight is our mistake."

Might be unpopular, but I do not think Solas bears a split fifty-fifty custody for whose fault the Blight is. Could he have said no about the dagger? Could he have pushed then? Maybe. But by this point, he'd already had probable millennia of complex trauma and a deeply abusive codependent relationship, probably also a level of magical bond. Like, sorry, Trick and BioWare, if you want to retcon everything you shared with us in Inquisition about being in service to the Evanuris ("You have given yourself into the service of an ancient elven god! You are Mythal's creature now. Everything you do, whether you know it or not, will be for her.") AND Mythal casually overriding her servants' will and Solas burning her vallaslin off his face and leaving a scar and devoting himself to freeing the elven people from the Evanuris's domination, fine, but I don't buy it. Even if there was no magical compulsion on him all this time, that is immaterial.

Complex trauma literally rewires the brain to survive. She spent lifetimes programming him, isolating him, stripping from him every bit of agency he had. This man did not have the capacity to say no.

When our no is trampled even for a few months or years, we stop trying to use it. We comply. We, as mortal humans, cannot begin to comprehend the compounded trauma of millennia of this happening with the stakes of worlds in the balance. Solas, quite simply, has lost the entire ability to consent. No one of us can even imagine.

Yet he managed to walk away from her somehow, when she chose Elgar'nan. This man is stronger than anyone gives him credit for.

The dagger was clearly Mythal's idea. The plan to sever the Titans from their dreams, clearly her idea. To end the war. For there to be "peace". For there to be "freedom". Except that never came.

His loyalty was to her and to their people; hers was only ever to herself.

And again, she walks away and lets Solas suffer.

What a good friend.

[screaming from the general direction of Scotland]

She put her trust in monsters instead of her oldest friend, and the monsters ate her face.

Anyone surprised? I'm surprised. (I'm not surprised.)

And on top of this, Mythal finally, finally giving Solas one tiny breadcrumb that she had any principles remaining? I think that cemented his bindings to her forever. Not just that the Evanuris killed her, but why they killed her: because after millennia, she listened to him.

For someone that deep into trauma and abuse? Well. We know what happened.

It cannot be overstated that with his imprisonment of the Evanuris and the Blight, Solas saved the entire world. The entire world. Every living being in Thedas had a chance at life because of him. Only because of him.

Morrigan says it early on in the game, that for all the consequences of the veil (which, it also must be said, was not supposed to be global!), "his imprisonment of the Evanuris was just. Had he not done so, all of Thedas would have fallen to the Blight."

And the world has hated him for it.

He woke after sleeping for millennia, exhausted by this immense act of magic, to discover that not only had it gone horribly wrong, but that it had cost his people everything. That Tevinter had come in and enslaved them, released a trickle of the Blight after breaking into the Black City, used so much blood magic that the veil itself all over Thedas has been in tatters--not least because in releasing the Blight, the survivors had had to face down and kill the dragon thralls (archdemons) of the Evanuris, rendering five out of seven of them mortal, and with their deaths over the intervening centuries, the veil had grown threadbare with only two Evanuris sustaining it.

The risks were catastrophic, the price unbearable.

Everything he'd ever done to protect the world could still come crashing down...and in a sick twist of fate, he would be alive to see it.

And, shockingly, so would Mythal.

Mythal, whose fragment has just been chilling in a swamp for centuries in human form. Mythal, whose abuse of him lasted through the entirety of the world's history. Mythal, who, due to the Evanuris's betrayal and her abusee's abandonment, has become little more than retribution.

Mythal, who could have set him free at any point in all this time and didn't, because he was hers.

Mythal, who is the only remaining person with the power to do what he feels must be done.

I find it interesting that they chose not to use the post-Inquisition dialogue at all. Interesting also that they used Mythal's voice actor and not Flemeth's. This feels like a retcon, but we'll go with it. Whatevs.

"I knew that you would find me soon enough. You need the power of a god, the strength that I alone still carry."

She's still asserting her own godhood.

He's not having it. "The blighted Evanuris will soon break free from their prison. I must make a stronger one that can contain them."

He's not wrong. Not even a little bit wrong. And he's also right that she won't help him. Why would she? She never has.

"While the prison is important, it is not the only goal you seek."

"Why should I not tear down the veil? And bring back immortality to all the elven people? They deserve it."

And this is where I get even more raging, because Mythal's answer is this: "The elven people of today do not deserve to see the world they love torn apart to salve your conscience."

I'm sorry, what?

The world they love? The world that has offered them nowt but literal genocide for thousands of years? The world where in Tevinter, they're chattel slaves and worse, fuel for blood magic without a thought? The world where in the "civilised", slaveless nations to the south, they're either confined to alienages and subjected to repeated genocide (that's what a "purge" is, if anyone isn't clear on that) or the remnants of the Dales, who are the descendents of another enormous genocide? The world where elven magic has been pillaged but elven mages in human settlements are confined to Circles and abused or made tranquil or also genocided by Templars invoking the Rite of Annulment? The world where they're called "elf savage" and "rabbit" and "knife ear" and cannot participate in Thedosian religious life because the Chantry erases every instance of elves from even the Chant of Light? The world where it took the Inquisitor installing a perpetrator of genocide on the Orlesian throne (both Celene AND Gaspard fit this bill) and either having Celene reconcile with Briala (Briala and Celene's relationship could be a whole other post. Boak.) and blackmailing them to give a single elf lands and a title? That world????

What the fuck, Mythal, die faster.

I got real mad there for a second. I'm fine. I'm fine!

Solas, once more, simply says, "I must fix what I have broken. I am sorry."

More than she deserves, frankly. Man's a mess, but at least he tries. She's been chilling in a swamp and pulling puppet strings for ages and abusing her kids. Nudging history like it's some sort of hobby, because it has always just been pieces on a board to her. They have never been people in her eyes like they are in his.

"As am I, old friend."

Aye, get tae fuck. Friends don't treat friends the way you treated Solas. The closest thing to an apology Solas will ever get from her is that she pretty much just lies down and dies when he comes to kill her. And she still won't set him free before he does. Has to continue to twist her own knife.

This scene has me riled.

And this takes us back to the beginning of this post.

To her essence showing up to release him from her service.

In what is, to me, the least accountable, bare minimum non-apology (she never actually says she's sorry) I've had the displeasure to witness in a videogame, with Solas literally cowering before her and offering her a knife to kill him with since this is the first time he's seen her actual, non-Flemythal face since she died.

This was never a friendship of equals. Ever.

She got one thing right. She did break him. But she knew it all this time, and she never took a single step to put it right until pushed. Her corner of the Crossroads, which he built for her in the desperate hope that she would show a glimmer of the friend he believed she was, notably has a pair of wolf statues. Both beheaded.

She's spent all this time punishing him further.

He never went to visit her? I wouldn't either. I could not blame him.

This has gone to an angry place. So let's conclude with what is, I think, the entire point.

Grace.

"I lied. I betrayed you."

"I forgive you."

Has anyone--anyone--in all his long life, ever said those words to him?

I'll say that again: has anyone--ANYONE--in all his millennia of existence, EVER said those words to him?

I forgive you.

Mythal certainly didn't.

The world certainly didn't.

He has shouldered all the blame of an entire pantheon, a war that broke the world, a blight, everything, always, and while people have come alongside him to help him, I am not sure anyone (certainly not anyone he cares about) has given him the grace of forgiveness.

The beauty of this final scene for me wasn't just Ilaana, wasn't just Ilaana reuniting with the man she has loved for a decade who has spent all that time pushing her away so he couldn't--in his mind--inevitably poison the love of the only person who has seen his spirit and cherished it without twisting him.

It was the slow realisation that Rook trusted his love enough to try.

It was Morrigan, who carries all Mythal's memories and her own of Flemythal's abuse and machinations, who responds to Rook's question about her views of Solas with: "Or do you mean to discover if I would stand directly against the Dread Wolf, were there a need? I shall aid you in any way but that. What has passed between Solas and Mythal...I beg you: do not ask this of me again."

Morrigan knows. She will not raise a hand against him. She will not try to stop him. She will let the veil fall. She will not fight with Rook. Because she knows this being whose memories she holds has harmed him enough.

Solas, in these final moments, even before Mythal shows up to gut punch him, realises all these people have somehow, somehow, banded together to help him.

Not work for him.

Not be his agents.

Not worship him.

Not follow him blindly.

To help him. To help Solas. To help him, after all this time, take the first steps towards himself. Towards his own essence, so long twisted into something he never sought or wanted.

The Inquisitor and Morrigan certainly understand what it's like to be seen only as the symbol others raise in your image. Rook will learn that someday, but is still naive.

But even with that naivete, willing. Present. Able to put aside being a chess piece on his board. Able to see that they would never have succeeded without his help. Able to trust two people who know him better than they ever will.

Able to offer him grace.

And when they produce Mythal's essence, how that must brutalise him; to think that perhaps all this has been to let his abuser kill him back. He clearly thinks that's what's happening. He breaks. He fawns. He offers her the blade that has caused so much pain.

Her release of him is the bare minimum she owes him. I've already railed about that.

What is transcendent here, transformative--it is the mortals.

The mortals offering grace to a god who never wanted to be a god.

It's them together showing him a way out of an endless cycle of trauma and abuse. No one of them alone is enough. Without Rook, they wouldn't have Mythal's essence; Morrigan can't go get it, and she can't do what is needed because she's not actually Mythal, only has her memories. Without Morrigan, who can stand there with those memories but from the compassionate perspective of someone who has watched them in horror from the outside. She's far from objective, but she can do this one thing to help.

Without the Inquisitor (romanced or not, still someone he let know him as he most desperately wanted to be known--the Fade-walker, the Dreamer, the humble mage who desperately needed a friend). The Inquisitor, who kneels before him to comfort him. Who sees his hurt and responds.

If romanced, without Lavellan, who kneels to repeat back words he once shouted at the Nightmare in the Fade after Adamant.

"Dirth ma, harellan. Ma banal enasalin. Mar solas ema mar din." (Speak, traitor. Your victory was fruitless. Your pride gives way only to your death.)

To which Solas replied, "Banal nadas."

On the surface, nothing is inevitable, but can also be taken to mean that nothingness is inevitable, entropy, the final void. (Thanks to Dumped, Drunk, and Dalish for this excellent long post on this scene.)

And here is Lavellan, kneeling beside him with those words. "Banal nadas ar lath, ma vhenan."

Nothing is inevitable but the love we share, my heart.

I see everything you are, all you have done, and I love you. I forgive you for the pain you have caused me. I understand, see, and forgive.

No one has ever shown him grace like this.

Ever.

And Solas, this shattered man, sobs.

He sobs.

Someone has taken the trouble to isolate his voice in the video. This man has nothing left. And, after millennia of this trauma cycle repeating over and over, he is finally free to make the choice he wants to make. It's not the outcome he wants; that has to be said. He doesn't want to leave the veil up. He doesn't want to be bound into prison forever with no hope of seeing the world he fought for ever return.

But he is done.

In the Fade after Adamant, there is a cemetery with the worst fears of every companion scriven on shrines and stones. Solas's is dying alone.

After all of this, he is willing to face just that--and would, if not for her.

She knows his deepest fears. She has faced the demon Mythal made of the man she loves. She has given unwitting comfort to the spirit of Wisdom still within. She has seen his sweetest self. Nurtured him, cherished him, and has been nurtured and cherished in return.

Does she want to leave the world behind and spend eternity in a Fade prison? Probably not her first choice. It's not my Ilaana's; she has been on his side all this time, dreaming of a world where the spirits she loves can be reunited with the world in peace and ready to make that happen.

But it was not supposed to happen this way. It did happen this way anyway.

He has sacrificed everything--everything--including his own spirit self, his soul, his life. How could she not offer him what no one ever has? A friend forever, a lover willing to walk the din'an shiral by his side, a companion to ward off the forever alone.

Together, the two of them can begin to heal, with their counterpart who has always seen through the burdens of the world to the soul within.

This is the only thing I've ever had any faith in. Grace I know you carry us Grace And it was such a mess Grace I don't say it enough Grace You are so loved

[hattedhedgehog]

My (spoiler-free) thoughts on Dragon Age: The Veilguard

The review embargo has lifted and I can officially say that I've played through Dragon Age: The Veilguard early! 

Here are my spoiler-free thoughts and personal opinions on the overall gameplay experience: 

Narrative:

Rook's dialogue and decisions impact SO MUCH of the game, and come into play later on. From companions remembering your beverage preferences, to whether someone you spared shows up later to help or harm you, it feels like the game is paying attention and that you matter.

The stakes are unbelievably high. The Evanuris are utterly terrifying villains, in ways that Corypheus wasn’t. You really feel the magnitude of their power on a personal level as well as a worldwide level.

Whatever your thoughts on him, Solas is FUN as a character. He’s fun to talk to, fun to talk strategy with, fun to rile up and verbally spar with and fun to grudgingly ally with. Now that he can drop his former act and appear to you as the Dread Wolf, and you get to see his memories, you and he team get to decide how to utilise his knowledge and how far your trust extends.

The setup and payoff of the story beats are absolutely superb. The emotional turmoil as a player of being ensnared by things that was foreshadowed earlier in the game is utterly exquisite. Every thread of the larger tapestry has been woven with so much love by the writing team, and every character’s arc tie into the larger story in interesting ways.

The characters feel like they have full lives outside of the player character. You frequently go exploring their home turf and can meet their friends and family. They interact with each other on their own and move about the Lighthouse to spend time together, leave notes for each other, and talk about each other even when the other isn’t there. The team feels like they all really care about each other as well as you. 

You can tell what your approval rating is with characters, but if you want to romance them you have to put some thought into it. Interactions and world events besides the heart on the dialogue wheel influence their attraction to you.

Gameplay:

The combat is very engaging, and I enjoyed how unique all the enemies were.

Abilities in the skill tree can be refunded so you can redirect to a different specialization, which is really handy if you’re indecisive and overwhelmed at first (like I get when choosing abilities).  Most companions can get healing abilities no matter what class, so you don’t have to worry about balancing your rogues/mages/warriors (most of the time).

Climbing, balancing on ledges, using ziplines and sliding down slopes made environments feel more immersive. Additionally I like how each companion has unique abilities that let them interact with the world (fixing mechanisms, breathing fire, summoning bridges from the Fade, etc), and learning their abilities alongside them helps you grow closer.

The wayfinder light makes everything feel streamlined, so it's way harder to get lost while exploring an area. I hardly had to look at the mini map at all, and usually I’m glued to it! This meant I could actually look around at the beautiful environments and appreciate how lively they were, even without NPCs.

The upgrade system is far less overwhelming than in Inquisition; there are a finite amount of weapons/armour/accessories to be found, which are designed for each specific character like in DA:O and DA:2. There's also no longer crafting from scratch. If you loot an item you already have, it automatically upgrades the single item rather than giving you duplicates.

You know that frustration of coming across higher-level armour that just isn’t as flattering as your current one? Not to worry, you can collect “appearances” which you can toggle on as the visual for the armour while still retaining the benefits of the original.

I cannot stress enough how simple and easy to use the inventory is. It's heavenly. 

Using the shops of specific cities increases your reputation within those cities, which is a good incentive to explore and use the shops. I usually hate in-world shopping but here it was simple, and thinking about it tactically worked pretty well.

Quests sometimes reach a point where you can't continue at your current place in the story, and must return to in later acts. When re-exploring familiar areas, everything feeling big enough to be fresh with each visit, and new loot and codex entires appear.

Edit: something I forgot to mention. In character creator, you get to make your Inquisitor after you make Rook. The build menus are all the same, so manage your energy accordingly for doing it all again immediately after for your Inky. I spent an hour and a half building my Rook and wanted to get right to playing, and had to re-wire my brain a bit to be patient and keep going with the CC. (Seeing my Inquisitor with new graphics was awesome though).

A couple little things I appreciated:

The control sounds are very pleasing. From the whoosh of opening the combat wheel to the clinking of upgrades to the subtle whir of holding the decision button, they're a nice touch.

If companions are interrupted in conversation by combat, they resume it afterwards with a "what were you saying before?".

Photo mode is so fun to play with, and you can adjust blur/brightness/lens/depth within the scene. You can also toggle on and off the visibility of your Rook, your party, NPCs and enemies!

Assan learns new interaction tricks at the Lighthouse as the game goes on.

Nitpicks:

Overall I had an incredibly positive experience. The gripes I had were tiny things like:

I genuinely like the new art style of the game as a whole. However, the blurriness of some of the features in contrast with some elements being very crisp was distracting.

When trying to sell valuables for faction points without using Sell All, it takes quite a long time to count up all the individual sales, and it isn't a live counter. So it's kind of annoying if you get +3 points for each item you sell, need 150 points to get the next tier of items, and over 10K worth of valuables that you want to sell to other factions. 

If you do lots of quests without returning to the Lighthouse often, occasionally companions at the Lighthouse will have dialogue pertaining to the quests you've just finished as if you haven't done them.

You can pet the dogs and cats in the cities, but Rook turns their back to the camera to do it and it blocks most of the action unless you rotate quickly.

Gender stuff:

I was incredibly moved that not only can Rook be trans/nonbinary in the character creator if you so choose, but they get options to feel differently about their identity and journey, and it impacts their dialogue and how they relate to other characters! To access this make sure to interact with Varric's Mirror in your room in the Lighthouse. There are many conversation options throughout the game to discuss your identity with other characters, or relate your change of self to other situations. Crucially, it comes up when entering a romance and you have to communicate with your partner about it, which I never even THOUGHT of including in a game because it seemed impossible to even allow trans main characters to begin with.

There are also multiple trans and nonbinary characters throughout Thedas. What I found the most realistic was that just like in life, it is a consistent presence in any character's life, and comes up in conversation more than once. I have never seen a game this forthcoming and open about the topic of transitioning, and it was so validating. 

Final thoughts:

I adore the other games in the franchise. Something about The Veilguard affected me in a way no other game has. I cried multiple times while playing this game, both from joy and sadness. What struck me most is that the people who worked on this game REALLY listened to feedback from previous games, and were very set on making a piece of art that meant something to people. Even during the last few years of me testing the game, things have been adjusted and changed in direct response to our reactions and suggestions. It's surreal and quite touching.

Mileage will vary, but my playthrough was 70 hours on very low difficulty and I haven't done every side quest yet. I could easily have spent more than 100 hours in the game if I wasn't pressed for time.

I hope you enjoy this game as much as I have. See you in Thedas.

[thedinanshiral]

Bellanaris.

After witnessing Solas' regrets through his murals in The Veilguard many wondered, what exactly was his relationship with Mythal?

Even the Veilguard members had questions and discussed about it.

Spoilers for everything. Goes with this one too, if you want more of Solas analysis from me.

He followed her without question -or reserving the ones he had- and maybe reconsidered that love in their friendship when her crimes with the evanuris outweighed what Solas could stand, when he asked her to run away with him and she declined, and by the time she listened and tried to stop the others it was sadly too late. When Solas started his rebellion he was already carving his own path away from her, but their love was still present and it was because of that love that he warned her, and that she finally decided to listen. She may have been his dearest friend and he did everything for her. When he writes to Ghilan'nain and says "you would not be the first to sacrifice your morals for love" he was talking about himself, he was referencing his personal experience because that's what he did with Mythal.

I'll be blunt, i don't think they were romantically entagled. It's been mentioned in past games that the ancient elvhen related with each other on different levels that present Thedosians may struggle to comprehend. Now knowing they were originally spirits helps understanding things a bit better; spirits are beings of raw, intense emotions, whatever they feel they do so on a much higher degree, and whatever words they used to communicate it once translated fail to convey their real, full meaning.

I think Solas and Mythal were friends, but friendship for them was felt much strongly. There was love between them but not in the sense we'd imagine it now.

They were not equals, there was an imbalance neither were truly aware of until Solas rebelled and maybe then he started understanding their differences and from there his feelings for her changed, as he changed, his purpose twisted from Wisdom meant to guide in times of war, into a rebel leader fighting in what were supposed to be times of peace. He went from being a friend to becoming the enemy.

The romance with the Inquisitor may have been a last minute addition to the game (I have my doubts, it's too perfect and fits too well with everything to have been improvised) but it makes perfect sense only a female elf Inquisitor can sway him like that..because it's reminiscent of his relationship with Mythal, that past bond coming back to haunt him except this time the roles are a bit reversed: he's the powerful god, she's the simple mortal. But Lavellan is far from being a simple creature and she reminds Solas of all he ever loved and cared about and changes a terrible broken world into something that can be fixed, She turns his despair into hope, the fact she came out in such a way from the same world he broke tells him something may still be saved..

In both instances Solas finds himself in the service of a powerful elven woman in a position of leadership trying to save the world. But with Lavellan there's no protocols, there's no real hierarchy, with Lavellan they're more like equals, they're partners. There's no master and servant, there's people on equal standing fighting together for a common goal.

Lavellan becomes Solas' partner in a way Mythal could not and would never be able to.

Mythal was possibly Solas' first relationship, whatever label you'd like to apply there, a loyal friendship sustained mainly on his one-sided devotion to her that he eventually grew out of. While Lavellan is real, realized love, a relationship that may have started out of necessity, finding mutual respect that turned it into friendship, later developing further into something both wanted and neither could ignore. There's no one-sidedness with Lavellan, there's only mutual desire, this love unlike the past one is overwhelming, requited and wanted. Lavellan makes the first move, she's the one that isn't running away and in fact, in Trespasser and later finally in Veilguard, she shows him she's the one willing to run away with him. She's the one willing to do for him the sacrifices he once made for Mythal, even when she doesn't have to, when there's no ancient bond, mandate or obligation of any kind. Lavellan is willing to be with him out of her own free will and for the love she holds for him.

For roleplaying and replayability it would have been great if Solas could have been romanceable by more Inquisitors, but by his nature and personal history it makes absolute perfect sense that only a female elf could. Now we know he was a spirit and spirits are at their core very simple and fixed creatures, interestingly ironic considering they come from a realm where nothing is fixed. Solas isn't just stuck in his ways, he's a spirit! There's a limit to what he can understand and experience, even if he's a spirit of wisdom and is very knowledgeable, his nature is still limited (as we all are), his focus is singular, and a female elf Inquisitor fits right into that singular focus of his. Making other races romanceable for him would have broken that and it would have taken away from the Thedas pattern and his personal pattern as well.

He left the fade to enter the physical world because an elvhen woman he loved asked him to, and he followed her loyal to a fault until he had to break away from her when she chose an abusive status quo over his desperate cry for freedom and justice.

He destroys the world as a result in a desperate attempt to save it, and wakes up thousands of years later to find one person who shows him something of all he loved lives on and in doing so gives him purpose. Spirits need and crave purpose and Lavellan gives him just that.

He falls in love, something he could have never foreseen, an event completely out of all his calculations, but the pattern is shifting, there's no longer an evident imbalance, he's treated as an equal, even when she learns who he is she still talks to him like he's just the man she loves.

And on his lowest point when he's about to repeat a past mistake and destroy a world trying to save it, he returns to the Fade accompanied by the elvhen woman that loved him back with a devotion he was never shown before. Some may argue they're not equals, because he's Fen'Harel and she's a mortal elf he lied to for the better part of a year, that they're not equals because he always kept that secret from her and maybe took advantage of her affection to get what he wanted. But they are equals in the end in the sense that they feel the same way, and are capable of the same sacrifices for each other, and their respect is mutual in equal measure.

Solas may have been mistaken, but had their circumstances been different you know he would have stayed with her, as he wanted to. Most of his dinan'shiral is fueled by monumental guilt, regret, shame and a hurt sense of duty and that's what prevented him from giving in to his feelings for Lavellan, just as he understood Lavellan wouldn't abandon the Inquisition for him, and wouldn't just let him burn the world without opposition. Because Lavellan also has duties she's devoted too as much as she's devoted to him. They're an unstoppable force and unmovable object clashing against their will and if it weren't for the people around them you know a Lavellan that is on equal standing with Solas would have confronted him, maybe neither would have succeeded, maybe they would have died in each other's arms if it came to it.

But fortunately it didn't have to end that way, and yes, I'm sure Solas knows too well he doesn't deserve her (because she's too good), that she doesn't deserve him (because he's such a mess), but Lavellan has always been there to prove him wrong and he welcomes that with a smile.

I headcanon my Gallia Lavellan would be a spirit of Devotion. Wisdom and Devotion make an odd pair, but she's Devotion all around, mostly for him, their love that endured everything, but she's also devoted to the truth, to their causes, to the people, to Thedas, she's devoted to doing the right thing and to doing it as best as possible; she's devoted to continue learning about the world, protecting those she love, and those who have no one to look after them.

She does all that by following him into the Fade, by becoming the fixed point in his life, his North, his Anchor, to remind him what should be done, not only what must be done, to remind him of what truly matters. She doesn't simply follow him into the Fade out of love for him but out of love for the world, which is another thing they have in common.

Lavellan is truly his match, and Solas is aware of it in a way that makes him more ashamed for everything he's done and feel more undeserving of what is yet to come for him by her side.

I don't think Wisdom turned to Pride, I think Wisdom became Pragmatism in the wars, later turned to Regret for most of his life and through Devotion's love and perseverance he returned to Wisdom with a renewed love for life. Maybe he's become Love now, love for her, love for the world he's protecting, love for his people, and for all that love he decided to sacrifice himself, his own freedom, to spend in eternity with his one true love.

And for once in his very long and troubled life i think this time he made a choice he does not regret.

[lesmurples]

Pretty good article by Lauren Morton - it articulates the lackluster character writing in Veilguard quite well. She brings up some of the in-universe debates of past games for comparison, and I think it really encapsulates what is missing from Veilguard:

“I really miss some of the touchstone debates of past Dragon Age games. Fenris and Anders in Dragon Age 2 are both messy loose canons who resent one another and disapprove of Hawke's leaning too far for or against the rights of mages in Kirkwall. Origins gives its hero the awful choice of what to do with a child who's been possessed by a demon, and Alistair is livid if you choose to handle it in a certain way, culminating in a steep disapproval hit. I even enjoy Vivienne in Inquisition, hotly debated as she is, for effectively being a scab who believes her fellow mages should be relegated to the Circle towers. Those are just a small sample of the ways that Dragon Age heroes have wrestled against the morals of their party in the past.

“[…] By the end, Rook's companions are all pretty much goodie two-shoes characters with uncomplicated beliefs. There's a ton of groundwork to each character that could have made them morally complex and interesting but, frustratingly, that all goes unrealized.”

I guess I wouldn’t be so hard on Veilguard if I didn’t have the far more compelling writing of the previous games to compare it to - its writing is pretty mediocre in my estimation, but I’ve seen worse. But the main thing I liked about Dragon Age was the character writing and the sociopolitically complicated lore, and both have been extremely minimized (and sanitized) in DATV to the point where it’s deeply boring.

The only thing that feels consistent with the Dragon Age Experience is that the gameplay still kinda sucks. So uh, that doesn’t help much.

[curioussubjects]

i started my mourn watch playthrough the other day, and so far it's exactly what i wanted from the veil jumper origin. don't get me wrong, im loving the mourn watcher origin, i just wish a veil jumper rook had gotten a similar treatment. honestly, this might just be my biggest complaint about veilguard.

the special interactions when you reach the necropolis really make you feel like a part of the faction. emmrich has so much special dialogue with a mourn watch rook and he doesn't treat you like you're ignorant of knowledge you should have. instead, he takes your knowledge for granted, based on your likely rank in the watch, and talks to you like a peer. there's also a real sense of kinship between him and rook as fellow necromances dealing with a world that largely misunderstands them and finds their art off-putting.

i also liked the familiarity between rook, myrna, and vorgoth. they're not as close as rook and the crows, for instance, but that makes sense considering the dynamic of the different factions.

meanwhile, as a veil jumper it seems like strife and irelin barely know rook, and bellara talks to you as if you're completely unfamiliar with the workings of arlathan. playing as a mourn watcher now, i barely noticed a difference in dialogue/interaction between rook and the veil jumpers. or even that much difference in how a veil jumper rook behaves in arlathan forest versus a non-veil jumper rook.

it's a huge disappointment too because i can see so many ways that the veil jumpers could've been more developed, letting rook shine regardless of lineage and class, and without overshadowing bellara:

rooks who are tinkerers and can "yes, and" bellara with their knowledge and enthusiasm, historian rooks who are curious about ancient elves and are more focused on the culture than the relics, fade nerd rooks who really care about the metaphysical wonkery in arlathan forest, explorer rooks who really know their way around the forest despite all its weirdness. real missed opportunities here!

and while the veil jumpers aren't as close knit as the crows or the watchers, maybe there could've been more npcs with ambient dialogue who have worked with rook before, or more general commiserating between veil jumpers and their experiences in arlathan forest. i also think it could've been really interesting to lean into strife being strict with rook and irelin being an actual friend who goes behind his back to keep rook in the loop or something.

seriously, bioware, what the hell.

i'd be curious to hear from players who did the other origins. are they as well crafted as the crows and mourn watch origins or are they like the veil jumpers?

[marybeatriceofmodena]

Spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard under the cut (with a bit of criticism, nothing dramatic though)

I'm enjoying the game so far and all the lore reveals on Solas and the Elven gods (which are the best part of the game so far, hands down). I'm also liking the companions we're meeting so far (BELLARA <3), they're all very charming, but I think my one complaint is that... they're all too nice to each other? Not that there's anything wrong with that (I lied. Friends are USELESS IN MY PLANS FOR WORLD DOMINATION), but I'm really missing all the delicious little nuances the previous games had between the companions. Like, sure, players will tend to choose the "good" options for companions and make sure everyone gets along well, but you don't even get the option to, I don't know, set the can of gasoline on fire, or even get an occasion to even just put out the can of gasoline on fire.

Like, if Baldur's Gate 3 is anything to go by, players LOVE exploring tragedies, to the point there have been so many people who just replayed the game, again and again, just to see how different outcomes go. And I mean, I went in not expecting BG3 quality (as sad as it is say, because Dragon Age has been such a formative experience for me as a story). There's the nuance of Lae'zel and Shadowheart hating each other in part because of, yeah, racism, but also in part because they're much more like each other than they'd care to admit. There's the nuance of Astarion making fun of Wyll and dismissing him as an idealistic idiot, when you know it all stems from envy. There's the nuance of Karlach being hands down the most beloved person in camp, yes, but because all the companions see a little something of their own suffering in her, and see that despite it all, she decided to be kind. Like, yeah. They bicker. They argue. They might try to stab each other. But it makes them feel real, and it makes them becoming fire-forged friends all the more satisfying.

And maybe I'm just too early in the story for now, but it is... weird that everyone is just completely okay with Lucanis being possessed by a demon. Like, you'd think at least one companion would get a bit panicky about it (understandably so)? Like, maybe Neve feeling queasy around demons due to fears surrounding them/blood magic/insert tragic backstory element here? Hawke and Co. were maybe a bit too chill about Anders being a potential abomination, sure, but there was still tension there.

It ultimately feels like Mass Effect: Andromeda (except I'd argue the characters in DATV are actually interesting lol), where I just wish I had *something* to chew on lol. I'm not asking for a catfight, just something!

(There's also the fact that the Crows are way too nice as well but that's a topic for another day lmao)

[livingthedragonlife]

about 50 hours into veilguard so far, and as many problems as i have with the game, the trans inclusion absolutely is not one of them. i have never seen a triple-A game so invested in exploring a character's identity—i don't think i've ever played a game this interested in exploring a trans character's identity without the game being about being trans.

the first conversation with taash, the one where they insist that "nobody likes being a woman," and your rook can choose to respond with their experience discovering their trans identity, made me cry a little. the dialogue option that i chose for my rook to say spoke to my experience incredibly well, almost exactly what i went through. i can't imagine the scene being even half as impactful with a cis rook, which speaks to how much the writers cared about this experience of trans identity actually being about trans people, not just cis allies.

the scene where taash chooses to accept their transness and start using they/them also punched me in the feelings. getting to watch my character, my transgender character, look directly at a non-binary character and say that being trans/non-binary does not make you broken, ugly, or wrong—i just can't stop thinking about the potentially hundreds of trans people, maybe even closeted trans people, who might be hearing that for the first time in their lives.

obviously there are games by and for trans people that go into identity in greater detail, but i think this level of trans inclusion is important. being able to tell your love interest that you're trans and have them say "no big deal, i like you" (or at least, that was my experience romancing davrin) is important. being able to pick and choose from multiple "flavors" of trans experience is important, even if it's just dialogue.

i'm really excited to see what else veilgaurd has to offer in this respect. i hope other triple-A companies are taking notes here. that's probably wishful thinking, but a bigender guy can dream.

[nobodyexpectsthe]

wait one more and then i'm leaving this alone and getting to drafts.

warning for major veilguard spoilers.

i have to be honest, i haven't gotten out of the prologue yet but i knew varric was dead the minute neve came up and spoke to rook and not varric. further cemented when harding was very clearly talking about him like he was dead.

blame the adhd pattern recognition or blame the fact that the writing was spraypainted on the wall. but this did not stick the landing and is a big reason why i think i immediately started running out of steam. it wasn't subtle.

like... maybe if varric was on his deathbed at the start of the game and then later on everyone is extra fucked up about varric's condition there'd be more room to question it, but like

that fucker was dead

and i think this has been my consistent issue with the game when i try to sit down and play it. i know i'm early into the game, but the exposition dumps are nonstop. in the other games you had to ask questions to be told things, in vg most of the dialogue is just people telling you shit rather than showing it to you and nothing throws me out of an experience faster.

compound that with rook just... being a good person who can't do bad things, the lack of choice carry over, and a myriad of other little things which just break my experience - it's gonna take me a while to beat it. at this point i'm just playing for more older pirith icons.

like if you can't tell from how i write pirith, i care immensely about the ability to fuck up and get a complex character story from it. pirith as a character came from a small wartable mission that didn't even have dialogue, but the ability to use that to make a bunch of cascading choices that build to something more meaningful.

but if none of your companions can leave you and there's no rival system, there are no low approval scenes where your party members leave because they can't stand the person you are or the choices you're making - is it really a dragon age game?

rook is already a whole ass character who ties and connections to multiple existing party members, it makes it so hard to make that character mine without deliberately ignoring huge chunks of who they are.

and i dunno, i dunno. i just want to understand the design choices that happened here because it's so far removed from all the things that drew me to the franchise.

[blankd]

DA: dogguard Veilguard opinion (crossposted + expanded from twitter)

I only know about dragon age through osmosis, my friend is playing it while I sit in, and so far my major criticism of VG is that the game is flanderizing its own characters at breakneck speeds and the banter feels incredibly weak DESPITE that aspect being one of the more signature traits of DA

regardless of how the journey ultimately goes, it's an experience that I'm taking notes on as a game/narrative designer for MushRush since you will be carting around a similar number of fantastical companions

read more has more scattershot, but specific thoughts; contains spoilers up to after having JUST finished recruiting all of the companions

disclaimer: I don't know shit about DA LORE, so I'll probably misspell locations, etc., I don't care enough to correct any of it.

the early game has real "shaky first draft" issues where characters repeat themselves or say nothing insightful or at least entertaining. it's gotten better since after the mayor in d'meta, but there have still been some instances of dialogue triggering that makes rook come across as hilariously unobservant such as them noting there are "a lot of undead" in the necropolis you pick up emmrich in. dead bodies in MY NECROPOLIS???

another part that sticks out to me is that the female characters are getting shafted hard since they are all (mostly) introduced before the male characters, so the "1st draft writing pains" get assigned to them

however, neve is unfortunately the Worst Companion so far, followed by harding (will elaborate on her later).

I still don't have a grasp on what neve's companion hook even is- even AFTER letting minathrous get dragon nuked. all I got was "neve is sarcastic and dry and job-oriented, followed around by sprites???" which is a shame since a mage detective should BE ENOUGH but she doesn't have the GRIT of a noir detective or the clever observations of one who is more holmes-aligned. her room does more to characterize her, which is good for the art team but a shame to the writers (even as they try to pepper in more interesting traits about her through other characters)

so we have to fall back to what the game DOES tell us, such as approval/disapproval, of the 2 instances of her showing disapproval, we couldn't figure out WHY she disapproved. (1st was doubting varric could convince solas to stop fucking up everything, 2nd was for leaving the mayor in his fucked up town)

my friend and I formed several theories for something internally consistent:

-neve doesn't like it when you assume the worst of people (tall ask considering what solas was actively doing, but it's a BELIEF) -neve doesn't like it when you doubt/question authority/authority figures -neve believes the gods truly override people (my friend joked "SECRET CHANTRY GIRLIE??") -neve doesn't like that we are "being mean to a man" (this is a joke I made) -neve is a contrarian because when you only have two characters, someone HAS to have a different opinion (this is purely meta and still poorly executed)

whatever it is that makes neve tick, we're probably not going to find out since she's HARDENED or w/e because we chose birdbatman over her (my friend was aware of the effects of the choice locking out Neve/Lucanis content, but debated over the choice because of the LORE, the tipping point occurred when I asked if they cared about Neve content which was an obvious NO)

TL;DR: we are currently getting more mileage/chuckles out of "NEVE DISAPPROVES" during choices than from anything the game intends, UNFORTUNATELY

----

next up is harding, harding is a perfectly normal character with some obvious insecurities and now having to grapple with magic. unfortunately the writers have tipped their hand that they care more about harding's LORE ties with the titans/gods than as a character

the most awkward handing of this is when we did harding's personal sidequest of trying to get a handle on her powers (perfectly fine!), but then it just abruptly STOPS because we help some random fucking guy in the forest

the real nail in the coffin came when she (essentially) went "solas seems sad tho )8", despite being the same character that hated she didn't shoot him to stop the inciting incident. I personally would have appreciated if she had more doubts/expressed conflicts about her action/inaction, about it but as-is, the exchange feels WAY too much like the writers taking shortcuts to make solas grey (or god forbid, "GOOD", ACTUALLY). varric is already running interference, having harding do it too just tells me they're willing to throw other characters under the bus to accomplish this annoying goal.

as an aside: when this conversation occurred I said something to the effect of "Harding, no!! Don't make us throw you into the basement with Neve!!!"

----

returning back to the point of how the female characters seem to be suffering a lack of writing effort compared to the male ones- bellera is a noticeable example of this.

her characterization is purely fixated on magictech (fine), she gets more character as soon as emmrich gets introduced (not bad in a vacuum), but despite being present with harding and neve, the most conversation she seems to have is that she can cook different foods and neve wants in on some of the cooking. again it could have been "1st draft" pains, but given how fixed the party is at the start, they should have something more going on, ESPECIALLY since harding and bellera disagree with neve on how the mayor and d'meta was handled! bellera supposedly had people she cared about in this town and she glosses over it fairly quickly. also there's a relative lack of reaction to harding (or neve)'s injuries from the solas event.

----

character flanderization as mentioned WAY back at the start, this problem is (too) quickly made apparent with lucanis

I thought the mention of the coffee (WRT to dealing with spite) was intended as a throwaway line and something that would stay confined to the sidequest, instead it comes up in the banter as well, in addition to him being the demon of whatever (and now having a literal demon, har har). the 'most' interesting banter so far is when bellera asks how lucanis's situation even happened, and it's not BAD but I felt there was flavor missing to the exchange

since both characters are noted to be the "good" cooks of the companions, I thought it could hint at how lucanis's favoring of cooking is NOT out of niceness but because he doesn't trust other people to it since he is 1) a fucking assassin ("he stabs people", I don't care, poison exists and he's the grandson of the crow mafia), 2) was force-fed something that saddled him with spite

like I know there's more parts here, but SURELY something spicier and/or more natural than just the point-blank answer, the man was betrayed and landed in prison for a year AND is supposed to be operating on a lack of sleep because of spite, he can be a little snippy about how his bodily autonomy was violated

----

the last recruits:

davrin (at this time) ends up being on the upper end of characters since he's the MOST GROUNDED/NORMAL. he's fine and closest to what neve was probably intended to be, skeptical, has a dry sense of humor, but can trip up rook (our rook didn't recognize that a name davrin held a grudge against is historical). it probably helps he has assan to bounce off of so he can tread closer to have a 3rd dimension of personality (it's TOO early to tell)

emmrich is a professor of necromancy, he's polite/nice but also has no problems with magicking skellieboys into servitude, I'm hoping this old man has some spice going on. also it's a crime he puts on his human face when he has a SKELLIE FACE. COWARDS. I'll forgive it a little since at least he still gets to be OLD, instead of some freakishly smooth bishonen.

taash is a horse girl(TM) but for dragons. they also have hints of relationship with a controlling mother, I have no expectations of this. I'm hoping this isn't another lucanis flanderization situation but that's probably a different game.

the lords of fortune thing is bullshit however, "yeah we steal items but return cultural artifacts" that better be a PR thing purely b/c rook is in the room, otherwise, holy shit I'm dying. like, writers, I could understand some cultural favoritism, but ALL cultural artifacts? what the hell are you talking about??

---

now a main plot writing quibble, just to round it out:

the treviso occupation is driving me insane that they really said with their full narrative mouth that the place with NO military but an ASSASSIN'S GUILD couldn't figure out how to deal with the MOST hierarchy-based military occupying them??? like I get that wouldn't instantly (or permanently) end it, but it just feels absurd!!! what kind of assassin guild doesn't know how to kill ONE GUY, especially when he gives speeches in open areas!

it's just such a HARD SELL that the assassin guild can be so bad at assassination short of some 5d chess backdoor dealings involving the mindrape potions that the antaam were apparently cooking up while avoiding having it traced back to them or something

as for the minrathous/treviso choice, it feels like a missed opportunity to have the macguffin knife be what actually drives the dragon off

like, I KNOW that rook/the player is the center of the world, but you don't LOSE anything by tweaking that detail either, it just comes off as ridiculous that "3" (1) people really would make a difference

anyway, thanks for reading, that was a mountain, we'll see how DA:VG continues

if there's additional DA LORE you think would season my experience (baffled/piss me off/etc.), feel free to comment!

[cyborg-squid]

Veilguard is going to be real fucking weird for me, because like, I was 15~16 when Inquisition came out, and it was my first real experience being... super conflicted about a game/media. I subjected my dad and sister to SOOOO much rants about Inquisitions flaws (and merits as well). Mostly about the failed resolution of the Mage and Templar conflict. At the end of all things, I do like Inquisition, of course, and in large part due to Trespasser, but it wasn't exactly easy.

So with Veilguard, I was already let down once by the franchise, and that was with the work in itself; and now I know a lot more about how shitty and mismanaged of a company Bioware's been, and how they fired almost all of their good writers, and I see fans bring up a not insignificant amount of lore mistakes/retcons, and how talky the dev and/or PR team is being, and I see how fucking badly it wants to be the next Baldur's Gate 3.

And I know that the multitude of choices in Keep would be hella hard to export into a new game again (and it's note like the carryover into Inquisition was a smashing success either), but. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are known as sorta choice-based RPGs, and this isn't always a good thing, as I felt that even Inquisition had a fair amount of choices that don't really... do anything, that feel like they're there just for the sake of having them. There's some choices that you want to make, to have the ability to affect the world, and then there's some that the game forces you to make, that you don't want to (the Inquisition does NOT have any sort of authority over the Grey Wardens. Neither should the Inquisitor have any over Hawke or Alistair/Loghain/Stroud. That was a choice almost solely there for the 'players', yet makes little and less sense for the characters involved).

And then only ~3 choices will be present in Veilguard. and it makes you go "Ohhh, no one but me really cares about these choices then." Which has kind of always been the case, but it kinda smacks of. the current devs really just want to make their own thing with Veilguard; which does make an amount of sense given how the team has been switched up, and they likely want to make Dragon Age: Veilguard, not Dragon Age Origins+II+Inquisition. But in distancing themselves from these choices and worldstates, it feels like it's (like unintentionally, but I can't be sure) distancing itself from the rest of the franchise as well. And I might actually like that, if that was the case, in writing this out, I'd had that the thought that maybe Veilguard might be more appealing to me if it wasn't Dragon Age: Veilguard. But it seems to me now like it's in this really weird sort of Limbo, where it's not close enough to DA to be the game we've all been waiting for, but neither is it far enough away to be something truly new.

So there's a lot of things I'm pretty concerned about with Veilguard. and not pre-ordering it is a gimme, but for me, for the first time in a while, this really feels like a "wait and read the reviews" sort of release. Because, in some ways, if VG ends up being a truly bad entry in the franchise or something like that, I personally could live with Inquisition and Trespasser being my personal ending with the series. Because I'd rather go out on a high note (or at least a medium-high note) with Dragon Age than a low one. (though hopefully VG will actually be good and this bit here will all be moot).

God, posting several paragraph long posts about Dragon Age on my tumblr blog, it really is like I'm 16 again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(I also still think Dreadwolf was the better title)

[icharchivist]

some veilguard spoilers rumination

after sitting on the horror for a while i feel more confident to say that the game wanting you to mirror Solas is pushing further something i always said about Solas, which is, that he's like a DA protagonist gone wrong, who made a choice to save the world, without being prepared for the consequences that will follow, and he's just trying to fix his mistake.

I always compared Solas' situation to In Hushed Whispers from DAI where your choice of seeing the mages led to you disappearing from one timeline and then seeing a future of horrors you unleashed into the world. while Dorian and you decide to go back in time because "none of this is real, we can fix it", Leliana will reply "it's all pretend to you, a future you hope will never happen. I suffered, the whole world suffered, this is real."

Especially the focus on "real" here, which is something that comes back with how Solas doesn't see this new world as real. He just thinks he can remove the veil, reset everything, none of this is real, the same way you would in the future timeline.

Buuuut because you fix it and the timeline was already doomed anyway people never really picked that one up.

And DA's choices so far have been..... simple. Like, wait not really, they have their emotional weight! but in term of lasting consequences? like the Mage vs Templar debate in da2 or dai? The mages are inherently oppressed by their birth, of course they rebel, while the Templars exist to jail magic, and while they're chained to the Chantry and its propaganda and its drugs and its why they can't just go back down, when you're asking "who do you want to side with? the people who just want to live, or the people who are wondering what their lives will become now that they don't have a purpose left?", it's pretty easy to pick the Mages. Sure, you're dooming the templars and they become your main enemy. But like. Better than the alternative right? It's heartbreaking if you care, but that's all.

So i don't think people specifically weighed their decisions or why it should parallel to Solas, and it's why we just had various takes about Solas being bad for multiple reasons.

In this game they confirm that the Veil itself wasn't planned, it was an aftereffect from locking down the Gods. So it's really an unplanned consequences that totally destroyed the world.

and i see the unplanned consequences of picking Minrathous vs Treviso. By saving Treviso, i came back to a destroyed Minrathous, with our leader dying from the Blight, with our enemies having made a coup, and now everywhere i go i see the corpses of my friends being hanged in the public place for insurection. that people who just helped us before are being chased to die. all of that.

Considering Ghilan'nain was attacking Treviso and the threat here was health related because of the river, and that Ghilan'nain is the specialist of making experiments in pools of liquids, i have no doubt Treviso would have suffered an even worse fate. One you would have to see nonetheless.

Those are unintended consequences from you picking what you want to protect, what you priviligize. Do you priviligize saving the people from the Blight and its experiments by stopping Ghilan'nain, or do you priviligize saving people from tyrany by stopping Elgar'nan?

Solas tried to stop both, and instead he destroyed the whole world. He woke up wanting to fix it. when you walk in the city you abandonned, don't you want to fix it? when i shared my despair with friends they asked me if i should go back to my save to do things differently. And while i'm pretty confident it would be hell either way, i can't help but chuckle how hearing the horrors make people go "go back in time! fix it by erasing the current version of the world you created!". Do you think maybe lifting the Veil would have been Solas' attempt at save scumming?

And i think it's so efficient in showing exactly the type of no winning situation Solas was in.

On top of that the game confirms that Solas was trying to minimize the damage, so it's not like the WHOLE WORLD would have burn from him removing the Fade, it's just that since the two worlds haven't existed in common for so long, there will be a period of destruction that will inherently follow, as people who weren't mage now will discover magic, as demons can now walk freely, this sort of things. In DAI there's a banter with Cassandra about how freeing people from tranquility will make them a danger to themselves and they may die in the process but it's a risk they want to take. it's not any different to Solas, who used to see this world "as walking through a world of tranquil"

He would restore "the world of the elves" aka the world where we lived in harmony with spirits. It didn't mean just that only the elves would survive it. He still would need to kill a lot of people for it to happen. but he did want to minimize the damages as much as possible.

And idk i think the lense "he is a DA protagonist trying to fix the unintended consequences" do a lot to understand why he's scrambling to save the world. He's basically trying to return to his past save, trying to work with the consequences of his actions in this new worldstate. Like how my warden put Bhelen on the throne to help the casteless, but my Hawke helped the Harrowmont's descendant to run away from Bhelen's forces who were trying to root out the last Harrowmont's supporters. You try to scramble to minimize the consequences of your actions one game to the next.

And yeah Treviso or Minrathous was a good choice to make to really make you think in how similar you are to Rook. You tried to stop a mad god, instead unleashed worse into the world, and now you have to make difficult decisions that will lead to the death of countless of people and a horrible change to the statusquo. what would you do? will you let the Venatori be tyrant over your people? because people sure said about Solas "well people are being used to the world now so it's not worth trying to restore the old world". do you say the same about what happened to Minrathous? to Treviso? "just get used to it"?

So yeah point is that i think this whole thing is meant to vindicate ME in particular as i've been fuming for years about this whole idea of unintended consequences and the loss that will inadvertently come from change.

Also i am looking at how so many spirits we meet in the fade looks like elves. Im looking carefully.

anyway, game for me fr fr. even if it destroyed my heart at least it did the best thing it could: reminding me how cool Solas is of a character as a concept.

[tojustforart]

Im gonna respond to this response in this chain bc I think it is kind of proving my point and why I disagree:

1st: Sorry you felt that way in your gameplay. It can suck when a character doesn't react in a similar fashion as the others, but I also do think in the Veilguard specifically the companions have been some of the nicest and most chill out of the franchise and so maybe that is one reason I find it so jarring ppl find any of them to be ignoring their Rook when I stg Morrigan in DAO would all but tell you to jump off a bridge if you said something she didn't agree with.

2nd: I noted Spite recognizing the care from Rook once Lucanis was initially recruited, Lucanis being on edge with Teia flirting with Rook and not enjoying her doing that, and him flirting with Rook at the cafe and making a note of Rook's fave drink before Illario was overt about his betrayal. Never read him as ignoring Rook, more that some of Rook's flirting was "Wrong time and wrong place" for Lucanis.

3rd: Lucanis is in a pretty self deprecating state and you can see it during his companion quest and even the banter between others during the game. He flat out at some points admits he doesn't have the best experience with romance and with giving advice. His biggest skill to himself is being an assassin; when it comes to his personal relationships he makes pretty clear he fumbles at them. 4th: I think the biggest thing a lot of ppl are not adding into Lucanis's romance that does really explain his reserved nature or deflection is that Spite, a demon who until you get pretty far into his quest (if you dont get locked out of it) he does not trust or like, sees and shares every experience of Lucanis's life. Of course Lucanis is quiet when Rook catches him off guard with a flirty line or expresses open compassion with him. Of course he pulls back and hides his emotions and of course he deflects to the main subject; He doesn't want Spite to have that information. He doesn't want Spite to get to experience that intimacy that Lucanis wants for himself. Like...if you don't see that and you don't agree with me I don't know what to tell you. It felt so on the nose to me...

"I want more complex romances that are not handed to me" y'all cannot handle Lucanis deflecting your flirting bc he is currently struggling with the fact someone he thinks of as a brother betrayed him...like...