#to be clear i love da2. but it has problems

[the-fallen-blue]

No, absolutely not, and in fact in retrospect being able to marry Sera in Trespasser was a huge red flag for the mutilation of the worldbuilding that we saw in Veilguard.

Now, to be clear, the Chantry obviously does not have the slightest sliver of a fuck to give about who you sleep with, which implies a lot about contraceptives and property law and child labor that we don't see on screen. So "permits" is not actually the word I would use, here; they're not looking to interfere with any romantic or sexual interaction of any kind. But everything we see in DA:O and DA2 and even in base DA:I makes it clear that marriage itself, as a Chantry-backed institution and as performed by a Chantry mother with legal ramifications recognized across all Chantry nations, is about inheritance.

In fact probably what you'd see is the exact opposite of exceptions being made for politics or influence; you'd only see it happen at the bottom end. Kids in a small town who don't matter and who the local Mother likes and has been rooting for and of course Andraste and the Maker bless your love, boys, why you've been sweet on each other since you were knee-high to a cabbage and tripping on your stoles volunteering for candle service, what could be purer? The same way Malcolm and Leandra eventually convinced some rando to marry them, because they don't really matter. The Inquisitor, on the other hand, is under a certain level of scrutiny and has a great deal of power to worry about; she could marry a woman, in the same way that Henry VIII could divorce his wife, but only because she also basically just built an entirely new fucking church over it, and you would see every bit the same kind of fallout.

Which is not to say queer relationships wouldn't have any kind of social recognition at all at a formal, legally-relevant level, but that seems like something that would diverge based on local culture, not Chantry precepts. Orlesians, for example, the problem with Viv was that she was a mage, not that she was a mistress. Being Bastien's lover in and of itself was not a scandal, and in fact was an established path up the ladder, securing her connections and a level of authority within his social sphere. There's no reason to think that would be different if he were the Lady Bastienne, instead; either way, as long as the de Ghislain line is secured, Vivienne is welcome to her side benefits. Ferelden comes across much less forgiving of infidelity, but also much more forgiving of non-blood inheritance, so they might have more tolerance than Orlais for a pair of same-gender nobles simply cohabiting and never marrying and letting the estate pass where it may. Rivain gives us both "a woman sold her preteen daughter to an adult man in 'marriage' and no one thought a thing about it" which is about as Maximum Patriarchy as you can get, and also "the Chantry has a hard time there because they won't give up their super-woke Matriarchy Hedge Mages," so who knows what's going on there, but either way I bet it's weird.

I would also expect mages to have a non-legal handfasting type commitment that they make that still presumes the authority of the Maker but does not otherwise attempt to invoke any Chantry trappings, which may or may not be used by queer non-mages for the same purpose in parent cultures that are more hostile to committed monogamous queer relationships. Implications for queer Hawkes and Andersmancers and their relationship with Malcolm at your own discretion.

i go back and forth on this and would love to hear other's thoughts

[notebooks-and-laptops]

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[felassan]

David Gaider on Cassandra (the last of these retrospective character threads), under a cut for length:

"This is the last of the (major) characters I wrote during my time on Dragon Age. I could go into others, and considered moving onto Stray Gods... but I feel like fewer would be interested, and I honestly can't keep up the pace. So let's make this the last, for now. So, yeah. Cassandra. We knew early on that Cassandra would come into DAI as a companion, along with Varric, that this was part of what DA2 set up for the sequel. Now, I'd written Cassandra's short scenes in DA2, yes, but I wasn't her writer for DAI. Initially, she was Jennifer Hepler's character. By mid-project, in fact, Cassandra was more or less fully written. Jennifer did a great job - solid character, solid quest. The sticking point, it turned out, was her romance. Now, to be fair, Jennifer told me straight up when we began that writing romance wasn't her forte, but she'd give it a go. The problem with the romance as she wrote it wasn't in its execution but more a clash between the character as Jennifer envisioned her and the requirements of her being a romance. See, I mentioned previously that a romance arc inherently limits the kinds of stories you can tell with a companion. Many responses I got can be summed up as "lol skill issue", but consider this: a companion romance isn't a fic you can just throw up on AO3. It's an investment of a lot of resources. If a companion has one, most of their resources need to be devoted to it - it's not "now let's ALSO add a romance"."

"That means it needs to take priority in who they are as a character and their arc. What's more, they need to be *appealing* to a big chunk of the player base - or at least someone we can imagine being broadly appealing, anyway. Thankfully, there are still many many stories this can accommodate. 😊 This, however, wasn't one of those. Was Cassandra a fascinating character? Absolutely. Her romance, though... Well, Jennifer DID warn me. She'd written Cassandra as a serious, self-righteous, pious woman who put the Inquisitor on a messianic pedestal. Romancing her meant changing her view of you. You did this by being... pushy. Jennifer didn't mean it to, I'm sure, but sometimes it came off as, at best, negging. At worst, a bit harassy. And Jennifer would have fixed it. This was a 1st draft, and the issues - while serious - were something a skilled writer like her could handle. No problem. Thing is, Jennifer left. You may not remember, but this was around the time a bunch of GamerGate dudes decided Jennifer was somehow responsible for ALL of BioWare's faults. Oh, the power she wielded! She, a writer, could even command the combat Bio made! The result was a LOT of ugly harassment. 😞 Is this why she left? You'd have to ask her, but it undoubtedly didn't help. The important thing is, she left - and there was nobody as senior nor as superhumanly fast as her to take over any unfinished work. This is where Patrick Weekes comes in: a solid, senior writer who could fill her shoes."

"It was great timing - not only did Cassandra need a writer, I'd slowly fallen more and more behind. It was clear by that point that I'd never be able to write Dorian AND Cole AND Solas as planned. They needed to pick up two. And I let them choose the ones who interested them, like all my writers. Patrick taking Solas was no surprise, and while I had Big Plans for Solas in the future I knew at least he'd be in good hands. I was reeeeaaaally hoping Patrick would then pick Cassandra... but they wanted Cole. My baby. Who I created in Asunder. I grumped, but Patrick clearly loved the character. They had ideas for Cole which... yeah yeah, sounded cool. Fiiine. 😅 Now I had to figure out what *I* was going to do with Cassandra. We couldn't move the romance to someone else, all the other female characters were well underway, and I didn't know the character well enough to fix her with tweaks. That meant a re-write. I didn't WANT to erase all that good work, but I needed to start from scratch. Yet how? A pious, self-righteous character was already a risk in terms of romantic appeal. There are only a small number of traits sorta considered universally unappealing but they're on that list. In this instance, Cassandra already being a known character helped. I came across a webcomic (by aimo, I think? AHH I wish I could find it now) that made a joke about Cassandra reading Varric's books. Off-hand, no basis for it, but funny. 😆 And I thought: YES. THAT'S IT. THAT'S WHAT I'M MISSING."

"I sat down and wrote the "fangirl" scene, just to test it out. Everyone loved it, and it served to change my image of who Cassandra was - a view of the inside, at the idealistic and awkward passion she felt, for so many things... AND the Maker. "Yes," I thought. "I could fall in love with this." Who knew Cassandra could be funny? Not anyone, coming out of DA2, yet here we were. It worked so well and her voice came so easily. Miranda Raison was game ofc, and amazing. Though Caroline did gripe that, if we ever met more Nevarrans THAT accent meant we'd have the Tali Problem all over again. 😅 Cassandra's romance is burned into my brain as the time when we THE most awkward conversation with the animators ever. See, that moment during the sex scene on the picnic blanket when she leans back and... there were suddenly these strategically-placed candles, juuuust covering the Sordid Bits. Thing is, they were so obviously placed just to do that. Plus, we'd already decided to do full nudity in DAI, hadn't we? WHY WERE THEY EVEN THERE? Turns out, the nudity thing was still pretty new to the team. They'd forgotten and put the candles there almost as a reflex. So prudish. So Canadian. 😂 I do find it kind of funny that, these days, what I mostly hear about Cassandra is from female fans upset at me because she wasn't a lesbian option. I mean, right? Who wouldn't want that? Technically not my decision, but I guess I WAS behind the companions having set preferences so... fair enough?"

"Some of them do take it to an entitled place, though, like Cassandra *should* have been a lesbian. Why? Because she looks like one, apparently, and that that's a bit of stereotyping which feels... odd? But it's not as if lesbian players are spoiled for choice left and right, so again: fair enough. It did lead to the best end credits VO perhaps ever, and overall I'm pretty happy with how Cassandra panned out. Things never end up like you expect, right? But such is game dev lyfe. 🥸🖖 Did you know Cassandra was THE most-romanced DAI character, by a good margin? Least, by a good margin? Dorian."

[source thread]

User: "Did you have any hand in her writing for Dawn of the Seeker?" David Gaider: "No, none. Nobody at BioWare had any hand in Dawn of the Seeker, outside of maybe Mike approving the script or direction? Only he could say for sure." [source]

User: "Was Miranda a specific casting choice by anyone on the team (similar to your picks for Merrill/Fenris/Solas), or was she simply a lucky find? I loved Miranda on the BBC series "Spooks", so I was very pleasantly surprised to learn she voiced one of my favourite DA characters" David Gaider: "I don’t remember how Miranda was cast. Auditioned, I expect, and she had a good “steely warrior voice” which is surprisingly uncommon among actresses. The accent she made up was all her, as well." [source]

User: "What's the Tali Problem?" David Gaider: "When Tali was the only Quarian, the actress doing a made-up accent was fine. Once there were others… do we get them all to mimic her? That’s a tall order!" [source]

User: "I'd say Solas is the most popular nowaday, but you need to be such a specific race/gender combo + most straight guys wouldn't go for him, i get hes not on top of the list, but I'd have expected Josephine over Cass." David Gaider: "You can’t go by how fans online talk about playing the game. There is almost zero correlation between the playstyles of the vocal hardcore and the masses." [source]

User: "I was a Dorianmancer. The cut content in Trespasser DLC was sad to read, it definitely felt short/abrupt for Dorianmancers. Anyway to share what was cut at all?" David Gaider: "I don’t know what was cut out of the conversation, as I never played it. I just heard about it after the fact." [source]

User: "Those end credits are truly incredible. Do you remember who wrote them? I'm guessing a combination of Mary Kirby & you?" David Gaider: "I wrote them, but I recall the entire team kind of took part in brainstorming the pieces of it." [source]

User: "I’m very curious- Do you know what direction you would have taken Cole and his story if you’d kept him?" David Gaider: "It's hypothetical at this point, but I suspect I would have been less willing to lose the serial killer aspect... or, at least, would have made that transition occur as part of his arc in DAI. Yet that's easy to say from this side of the divide. Who knows, really?" [source]

User: "With Cassandra you created one of the best characters in DA history." David Gaider: "Personally, my favorite response of hers is where she gets mocked for loving romance and she comes back with a retort about how it's a strength - how loving something and striving for the ideal takes courage. To me, that's central to her core." [source]

User: "inquiry: did you not write any of the Awakening characters?" David Gaider: "I wrote Anders, Justice, and Nathaniel in Awakening - but it was such a hurried project, my memories of it are pretty much a blur. "Yes, I worked on that" is almost all I can say about it, I'm afraid." [source]

[pyrrhiccomedy]

a collection of thoughts about Veilguard

it's pretty good! it's a fun, straightforward adventure story where you play the good guys, the bad guys are bad guys, and there's one morally ambiguous character but don't get scared, you have the whole game to decide what to do with him. the combat is fun, the cast is likable, and the world is pretty. if you like fantasy rpgs, you will probably like this one!

I said the cast is likeable. I didn't say they were interesting. everyone kinda comes off like they've been to therapy for at least six months, and have put in some effort to "do the work." Your party's character flaws are things like "people pleaser" or "rude (but still well-intentioned)" or "justifiably cynical." These are all more or less functional and mature adults who want to get along and experience very few obstacles to doing so.

The obstacles they do experience to getting along are pretty flimsy, and are sometimes resolved in under a minute.

Le wokisme is a problem with the factions, which is a problem with the game, because the game revolves around the factions. None of the factions are allowed to be - again - morally ambiguous. There's a faction of treasure hunters, but don't worry, they have experts to make sure they don't sell anything important to anyone's culture. There's a faction of assassins which in a previous game have been shown to be harsh mercenaries who traffic in slavery in order to acquire children to raise into professional killers, but don't worry, they've mellowed out a lot since then, and now they ~don't kill innocent people~ and all of the members are excited to be there. There's a faction of death-worshipping necromancers, but don't worry: they're pretty much treated as a joke faction, and they don't do anything darker than raising some friendly skeletons to do custodial work.

A lot of the game takes place in the Tevinter Imperium, which we know from previous games to be a racist imperial power built upon the labor of a mostly-elven slave force. I say we know that 'from previous games' because it really doesn't come up in this game. The Tevinter faction is a group of slave abolitionists, but you don't actually help them free any slaves. In fact, you never even meet any slaves. In fact, you never even see any slaves. In Minrathous, the capitol city of the slave empire.

We also never see any anti-elf racism, in Minrathous or anywhere else, or meet any elves anywhere who have much of anything negative to say about the current world state. I think it would have been interesting to engage with why some elves might actually support the Morally Ambiguous Guy Who Is Looking To Tear Down The Current World Order In Order To Restore The Elves To Their Bygone Glory, but then your protagonists might have been placed into an ethically dubious situation at some point, by opposing a guy, who is, among some more alarming intentions - let me be so clear - trying to free the elven slaves. And god forbid we make the player uncomfortable!

There are no titties in this game. You do fuck your love interest on the eve of the final battle, as is traditional, but there will be nary a titty in sight. That, like ethical conundrums or moral ambiguity, is evidently too grown-up for the target Veilguard audience.

Whoever it was on the writing team who was interested in the Qunari has either left the team, or is no longer interested in the Qunari. They are a non-presence, and the Big Grey Guys With Horns who you fight are just violent assholes who don't follow the Qun. They've also been redesigned again. They basically just look like tieflings, with even more awkward foreheads. RIP to a genuinely original fantasy race. We'll always have Sten and the DA2 Arishok.

Fans of previous games will, however, be pleased at how generous the writers have been with answering outstanding questions! You will learn what the titans were, what happened to them, what the Blight is, what caused the Blight, what the Golden/Black City is, why breaching it unleashed the Blight, who the Tevinter old gods were, what the deal was with the elven gods, and (not that anyone was in doubt of this after Inquisition anyway) that the Maker is fake for sure for sure.

Every religion in Thedas is proved to be fake by the end of the game, though, so it feels a bit less like "kids raised evangelical stick it to Big Church" this time.

Morrigan is back! Isabela is back! Dorian is back! Welcome visitations.

People are being shitty about there being an explicitly non-binary character. Fuck those people obviously, but I do wish they'd found something better to call this character than "non-binary," such a modern term that it slingshot me out of my fantasy world full of dragons and magic into a corporate diversity and inclusion training module.

Being a mage doesn't matter anymore. Sorry if you were hoping it might, but honestly that's on you. If they chickened out of doing anything with the mage conflict set up in DA:O and DA2 in Inquisition, I don't know why you expected they'd find a renewed interest in engaging with it now.

You can't be a blood mage. You can't actually do anything evil. Your PC is a Hero. I don't have a problem with this, exactly, but it contributes to the feeling of the series having moved to the kiddy end of the pool over the years.

Overall, I think this is almost surely going to be the last Dragon Age game, and I think that's almost definitely a good thing. It's a fun send-off that takes you on a whistle-stop tour of nearly all the places left in Thedas you haven't seen yet, ties up nearly all of the loose ends, and lets you hit an ogre with a warhammer so hard that he goes flying like he's full of packing peanuts.

Time enjoyably, but not meaningfully, spent.

[veilkeeper]

honestly, really hard to put my final thoughts down because i'm not done this game by a mile. hell, i'm not even done with corentin—i need to see the human emmrich romance path before i decide what's canon for him there, and then i'm going to romance davrin with him. and i'm already getting inklings for a warrior to romance bellara with. and i know i need to play a rogue at some point, too.

i liked it. i liked it a lot. origins and da2 will always have a special place in my heart and idk if i'll ever be able to say another dragon age could beat them as my favourites, but veilguard is so good. and more than that, it's fun to play. mechanically. my playthrough came out at over 100 hours because i liked just dicking around and fighting respawning enemy encounters and clearing the map.

i can get a lot of mileage out of a game if it's fun to play and if it has characters i like. i mean, i have hundreds of hours in fallout 4 because i just turn on the radio and wander around, and i hate the plot of that game. veilguard is great mechanically and has a whole cast of companions that i really like, and that alone would make it a candidate for me wasting a ton of time in replays.

but i also liked the plot. they fixed basically all the problems i had with DAI—elgar'nan and ghilan'nain feel present and dangerous. it feels like rook and their team are barely making it out of every encounter by the skin of their teeth. your friends do come to mean something to you, and you to them. when you all hold hands and jump into the fray together, it feels like they're all willing to do whatever it takes, and they are. the ending when all your companions and faction allies come together and storm minrathous feels so good and heroic because you earned that. you put in the work to earn their loyalty and it pays off and it feels so fucking good.

is it perfect? god no. but every DA game has had clumsy handling or bad decisions included, and they've all been accepted into the canon of Dragon Age and someone loves them. and i'd be willing to say i love this game, too. i'm excited to keep poking and prodding at it and i'm excited to keep talking about it. and probably writing about it, too. so stay tuned.

[sundogsandrainbows]

Hi, I'm sorry to write to you out of the blue, but Of Elves and Humans was the first DA longfic that got me hooked back in 2011 when I, as a dumb teen, happened to pick up DAO. Ever since then, the DA universe has been a constant fixation of mine and my admiration for you as a writer as well as someone who isn’t afraid to call out the franchise's flaws has never wavered. Now that Bioware decided to take a massive shit on everything pre-DAV and their oldest fans specifically, I'm really devastated and feel like a fool for having been so invested in DA and its lore for those past 13 years. It’s incredibly encouraging, however, to see you keep on keeping on. "So since they spat in my face like this I ignore this atrocity of a game even exists" is where I hope to be at soon, too. Thank you.

(First of all apologies for the late reply, I put it in my drafts when i was too tired to complete it, and then my adhd brain forgot it existed due to being distracted by new shinies 😂☠)

But aww omg i cannot believe i was the gateway drug into dragon age, or rather the old version of my story on FFN was. I am so very honored <3 And nonnie, I feel you. I am invested in DA as a series since DA:O's release in 2009, like I bought it on a whim for XBox because I liked Mass Effect 1 sm. So that is 15 yrs of my life i spent loving and discussing a thing while still being critical of the thing, but now i feel so very protective of the world, lore and its characters that "New Bioware" has decided to take a massive dump of shit on, and not only the games but the old fans I feel are treated with disdain too and do not matter to them any longer.

Long, subjective rant about current bioware aka the shambling corpse of its former self and talent incoming. Spoilers for Veilguard bc i don't give a fuck to avoid them :D You (general you, not you in particular dearest nonny <3) should use your time better than to play this shit anyhow 😂

It feels like calculated malice of new Bioware to apply the scorched earth tactics to offscreen destroy everything that old fans and fans of the other games in general held dear, and was supposed to suck out the enjoyment of DAO, DA2 and DAI. Like it is obvious they plan to create a sequel on DA's scorched bones, but jfc, you can do so story-wise without spitting everyone loving what old bioware has built in the face after dropkicking them. But to me that is part of the problem, since if i remember correctly and i wish i could find the bit... they praised Veilguard as "The best Dragon Age game ever", with the most interesting companions and best most improved combat system, comparing it to the other three games in a near smug fashion. There is marketing and there is putting the other games down to prop up your most favorite and only child mattering and they were definitely doing the latter. And don't get me started on the whole "Who is Zevran" debacle or we are gonna here all day.

Bottom line is new/current devs and writer do not give a shit about and very possibly have never played any other game than Inquisition, and you cannot tell me otherwise. And since a lot of devs/writer have left since the start of this project that would become this abysmal game, I also have the impression that there is a lot of underlying resentment toward what these former colleagues have created and so they piss on it in order to make it fully theirs now. Like dogs marking their territory, and well that did not work out, imo. At all.

Ever since they announced respecting our past choices by ignoring them (????) it was clear to me that I would not play Veilguard but just watch a playthrough and all spoilers and then move on. And everything i saw before release was shocking... like i was flabbergasted at how baaaad the dialogue was, which as a writer myself is super important to me in my story. There was no subtext, characters just blurt out everything they think and feel, like a lifeless doll you squeeze and words tumbling out and just as natural. It is stilted, awkward and 80% of it exists for info dump or info dumb rather as they keep repeating the same shit they just told you a few seconds ago as if you as the player are braindead. Here is a good example of what i mean.

Jfc, who edited this crap? There is so much superfluous dialogue that adds nothing to a scene but annoyance for the player and says nothing at all. Just pure senseless yapping in the most cringy way. Why was no one there to trim this nonsense as you should as a writer/editor? Hell, they really disregarded every simple and basic writing rule (everything is told never SHOWN for example especially in dialogue) which really made me question their competence in what they were doing and thus the quality of the upcoming game but i still held out hope for it to not be that bad.

Well shit, it was even worse. In all regards. Especially the writing that cringed this writer into a new dimension with its incoherent incompetence. Jfc. they got paid for that? I'm convinced the majority of fandom writer can do much better, even unpaid. Hell my cat just by walking over the keyboard can manage a better draft and script...💀

But I digress. That is a rant for another time. Point is, nonny, despite my defiant words, I struggled too for days after i got to know the full extent of Bioware's spiteful fuckery to even look at anything da related, in my case my Alistair/Mahariel longfic. I was really down for a few days, ngl. Then again, there is nothing better than spite fueling my creativity to prove "i can write better" soooo in the end and with the help of the much better first version of DA4 in the artbook, I was able to exorcise the demons and feverdream-mindfuck of mediocrity sold to me as a turd with gold-glitter that is this game.

I have successfully now rejected its existence, filled the void with the version that should have been from the artbook and vowed to give no fucks what bioware is doing or saying and infinitely more fucks when writing my own version of thedas and the version of DA4 that should be. REWRITES BBY hell yeah. So OEAH:R is just the beginning of a verse-wise rewrite. But if you need a pick me up, nonny, you are very much welcome to take a trip down memory lane to Dragon 9:30 and see how much this iteration of the story differs from my first one back in the days. Because in this house of mine, we grow and learn as writers, unlike bioware where writer ego reigns surpreme (oh boy and does it ever show in VG) aka eating their own turds and tell themselves it is the finest chocolate 💀

There is still a lot of good about DA out there, but we have to accept it does not come from Bioware any longer. Instead it came, comes and will come from the fans and creators of art and texts and words defying their bullshit with their love and respect for the world, its lore and characters. Also very unlike Bioware.

As we should <3

[barufisher]

okay i finally got all the companions last night. gonna write my current thoughts about the game under the cut (sorry it's long lol)

so far i've really enjoyed the gameplay the most. i like the combat (im playing as a dual wield rogue) and i really like all the new ways to move around in-game (ziplines, climbing, etc). i really love the maps and the way we can explore all the areas, this is what i've spent most of my time doing lmao and in general i'm having fun playing!

but this tone change in this game is Rough. there's a real lack of depth, there's no friction at all (for some reason every faction just loves Rook and trusts them completely) and so many characters and groups have just been completely defanged. there's this weird vibe of like... GOD i hate pointing it out cus it feels like i'm complaining about the game being "woke" but there's such a weird vibe right now where it feels like the factions arent allowed to be "problematic." the crows act like a found family rather than the brutal assassin organization we've learned about previously that buys slaves and tortures their recruits into perfection (in any previous game Rook's mistake as a crow would have resulted in their death or extreme punishment. but this time it doesn't even feel like it matters, you go back to the crows and everyone there automatically loves you. jacobus is being babied and protected when before they would have just let him get himself killed. there's just no power struggle, no competition, no urgency.)

i also noticed it with the lords of fortune. Taash making a point to emphasize that the lords aren't Thieves and they're sooo correct and return cultural artifacts to par vollen (and Isabela is a part of this for some reason despite the fact she can run off with the book she stole from the arishok in da2...?) there's this weird over-correction happening where past companions are having their flaws completely ironed out. you find various codex entries all written by Dorian arguing against slavery now (and to be clear. i have my own criticisms of his weird pro-slavery rant in inquisition, but this just feels so forced)

Varric has been completely stripped of his role (and personality tbh) and relegated to a mouthpiece that just constantly gives Rook positive affirmations and almost treats them like a child despite Rook at the very least being established in whatever faction they've come from. and then there's also Rook themselves...

there's barely any roleplaying allowed, Rook is just a Good Guy and everyone loves them and trusts them immediately and you're forced to be invested in fighting Solas no matter what, you can't even choose your own motivations. and you can't really be aggressive or "mean" (at least in inquisition you could resist the herald title and question the inquisition's existence). which i don't necessarily have a problem with on its own but why am i allowed to play a crow then? and why is Rook so naive and insecure when they clearly were headstrong enough to go against their faction in their origin? the first few hours are so "the power of friendship!!!" and it's very bizarre considering Rook doesn't know any of these people except Varric and Harding. if you choose to leave the mayor in dmeta crossing, Neve challenges Rook's decision (good!) but this causes Rook to go running back to Varric and suddenly be extremely insecure about their choice (bad!) my Rook is an assassin and has no qualms about letting some guy die regardless of whether Neve likes it or not.

but it's like the game won't allow there to be any kind of tension or friction between characters, no disagreements or disapproval... it's all just so BORING!!!!!! it feels so silly!!! why are we so worried about these factions being Right or our characters being Correct but then you still depict the qunari as this faceless bloodthirsty monolith that only want to Kill. the venatori are all evil and abuse their slaves (but dont worry, none of US have slaves now!!!)-- it's SO black and white. this is like, the opposite of what i play these games for... everyone is toothless and inoffensive and boring. and nevermind the fact that the game is still racist, anyways 😭

also . not as serious this is goofy but i can't even imagine how they're going to do the romance scenes in this game. so far everything has felt geared towards a younger, new audience (which doesn't make sense, this game has to feel nonsensical if you've never played any other dragon age game, so little is explained properly) and i can't even imagine romance scenes happening like they have in previous games. are there even any? lmao

[johaerys-writes]

You've got brainrot over Constantin d'Orsay and De Sardet. Would you mind sharing why you love them? Is this a ship we should be getting into too?

Oh my god dear anon thank you for this ask 😭😭🙏 I am literally dying to talk about them rn lolol and I fully get that this isn't easy to do with a rarepair in such a small fandom but YES thank you for indulging me haha

So for starters, let me just talk about how I got into Greedfall: I was looking for a new game and my friend Baejax recommended this one as being somewhat similar to Dragon Age, and it was also on sale so I was like why not! And starting off it really gave me that old school DA vibe which I LOVE (but with better graphics) so I've really enjoyed playing so far. Like, in my head it's sort of a crossover between DA2 and maybe the Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb, which I get might be kind of obscure references but it felt very familiar for me right off the bat so that was a huge plus haha.

Now as for the characters: De Sardet is the main character, and they're customisable so you can make them look however you want. Constantin is De Sardet's cousin (but they're not blood related afaik) he's the son of the Prince of Serene (i.e. the person who governs Serene) and is sent by his father to New Serene to rule over the new colony there. De Sardet is a diplomat and also Constantin's right hand man as Constantin tries to sort of wrangle things into order there and keep good relations with their neighbouring nations.

I'm still very much at the beginning of the game but it was love at first sight tbh 😭😭 Constantin is such a messy, beautiful disaster and even before he appeared on the screen I was like "oh boy.... he better not be cute bc we'll have a problem" and then he appeared and he WAS cute and so lovable but also relatable and I just can't 😭😭 and it's so so obvious what a soft spot he has for De Sardet (and vice-versa), like even though I haven't seen too many interactions between them so far in the game it's clear how much they both care about the other and are concerned about the other's wellbeing, the voice actors have done a phenomenal job at this btw. We know that they've grown up together and were tutored together; Constantin is the brilliant, flamboyant one while De Sardet is the more quiet and sensible one (it's an RPG so you can sort of play your character differently, but as a diplomat he generally tends to be, well, diplomatic lol and not react in extreme ways so the game hasn't really given me many opportunities to fly off the handle); they have a very close bond and are always very happy to see the other, and De Sardet has been running himself rugged to assist Constantin with anything he needs. They literally hit all of my buttons LMAO I couldn't not ship them together they're perfect 😭🙏

As for whether ppl should be getting into them, I really can't say. I know that other pairings in the game are more popular than this one, and also since I'm still at the beginning of the game I don't even know how things will turn out between them or if anything terrible will happen (though I have some suspicions and they are NOT good.....) But I do think that ppl are generally sleeping on this game and this pairing in particular and I think they both have a lot of potential.

Thank you once again so much for this! And if you get into greedfall or this pairing I'd love to hear about it 😊

[fersrsbizniz]

I’m not going to say too much, so there’s not really too many spoilers, but damn…

I am really trying my best to like this game and it just isn’t it.

I’m sure others have said things better but I really am trying my best not to spoil myself as I’m not done so I haven’t seen who might have yet. I’m also reserving final judgement until the end, but I’m struggling 20 hrs in and figured laying it out quickly might make it clear what my damage is with it.

Some good:

I’ve grown to not mind the art direction so much (would place it above DA2–remember poor Bethany’s hands there???)

I really enjoyed the character creator and I thought I did a pretty good job of making my Inquisitor (Carwen, my boy, I wonder when I’ll see you…), and my Rook looks pretty spiffy, too.

It’s ticking the box of I have to find all of the things on the map

I like Neve and Lucanis so far but that really doesn’t surprise me

I think I’ve only had one glitch so far and that is where it reset me finding the chests in the Lighthouse for some reason (unless there are two new chests I don’t know about…)

Meh:

I need more time with Bellara. I like her voice actor’s work, and her general everything else, but she is very very bubbly (sans one moment so far where I felt I got to know her a little better) and that always takes me a minute to adjust to.

I like my Rook, but I can’t tell where I get to headcanon and where they’ve done it for me so my understanding is disjointed. (I’m weird though, and prefer the Inquisitor/Tav experience where I’m a blank slate)

I don’t hate but I don’t love the game mechanics for fighting, which, tbh, means nothing to me because I’ve played all of the Dragon Age games and this is constantly changing and has never colored my opinion of the game.

Some not so good:

Not digging the writing so far for things (certain behaviors make no sense, what would have been reactive in all other games is sort of a shrug here)

My Rook is so positive during awful situations I specifically want to ask him if he is okay because he is acting like me when I am at my limit at work. Did not want to play a game where I am reminded of bottling up my stress for the sake of others, and idk if that was even the intention.

Not digging the general direction of the Crows (I like the characters, not liking the change of the established system that ignores the nastier side)

Why is everyone after me??? The rogue??? (I have heard it’s worse for mages and oof) Lemme hide and backstab. I am no tank.

If I have to find and shoot one more red crystal…(at least the shards in the other game were optional—yes, I did find all of those, but it was self-imposed!)

Not liking how the elves are totally blasé about some stuff that really would have affected them before

Not liking how they made Bellara apologize for something she didn’t need to (it did not read like a personal problem, it sounded like the writers kinda being racist actually)

For all they talked about Tevinter I thought there would be more to see of the fancier side (maybe there will be??? But somehow I’m still pressing x to doubt)

Harding, what did they do to your character ;-; (there’s a straight up tonal shift in her character, I am not imagining it…this is not the same Harding that had that discussion with my Inquisitor during and at the end of the Jaws of Hakkon DLC)

Why am I locked out of areas if I’ve found a route there????? Let Me In!!! I must find all of the things!!!! Let me clear the area like I did in the Hinterlands, dragons be damned!!! (Have not seen a dragon yet, just saying, I learned the hard way and survived in DAI) What can I say? I don’t like incomplete maps.

Maybe I’ll grow to love it with time, but this is just what I’m feeling now…

[warmhealerr]

1, 12 and 18 for Oulmat and Juofos!

Thank you Rook! :)

Joufos

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

Joufos kind of spawned out of thin air. My first BG3 run lasted until the beginning of the Underdark, Selûnite temple, because for some reason, the whole campaign got corrupted. I stilll have no idea why, as I had no mods, no corrupted in game data files, or anything of the sort. After getting over the initial disappointment, I decided I wanted to really give this game a chance, as I was finally starting to get into it. I knew I was going to play a Blue lightning draconic sorcerer, I just love indulging my dragon love. I was messing around in the character creator, did kinda whatever I pleased on a Deep Gnome. Pink? Sure, fun, whatever, I don't care the scales should be Blue, that's a cool palette. I fell so, so in love with his appearance. I sat there for a second, laughed at how lore unfriendly he looked, and embarked on my second attempt at the journey to Baldur's Gate.

12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)? 

Nailing down Joufos' face was the worst. A long, arduous journey, that taught me to have fun with facial shapes again. It took me months to nail down something that I liked. A comparison of my first art of him, October 10th 2023. The portrait where his head finally began to develop that distinctive shape I love so much, April 27th 2024. And August 14th 2024, the refs he got post Art Fight. I don't have recent art of him that allows clear reading of his Shapes, but know some of his features have changed now, like a DA2 elf style nose bridge. It was a frustrating designing process but I think it was worth it. He's very fun to draw now that I "get him".

EDIT : Another version of the answer to this question focusing on writing here.

18. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

His birthday LOL. I only very recently canonized it's May/Mirtul 9th, which is...Today, hilariously enough. The number 9 is a big recurring thing with him, and I don't just mean because I can make childish 69 jokes. The 9 lives and his lichdom parallel is an especially important thing to me. There were once 9 Hayhoof siblings, too, though I cut that down to 7 to better focus on each individual, regardless of who lived and died. I associate Joufos with the warmth of Spring, and what better month than May to illustrate that?

Oulmat

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

I had planned Oulmat for a while. It came to me early in backstory writing Joufos must have a big family. Oulmat was always meant to be the exception to the "draconic girls" rule; the runt. Her name and appearance came pretty fast though. I had already figured out the phonetics I was going to lean for, and BG3's character creator proved satisfying enough, using the SAFT heads mod for her face, "Gnosephine", and the Corrupted Alt eyes from the Ghastly Ghouls Undead Race mod. She was included in my third replay of BG3, March 5th 2024.

This was my first art of her from the following day, if you are curious :

12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)? 

I'm a sketch artist, I don't do in the details. Armors notoriously look like fucking shit until you add those details. Big problem when Oulmat wears some gaudy ass spikey fantasy armors. I find Oulmat to otherwise be very fun to draw. Her writing comes to me very naturally, too.

18. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

She has a few moles here and there now. I don't know I think it fits her perfectly and it's very charming. Feels like they've always been hiding from me in plain sight.

[icharchivist]

Veilguard Spoilers

at the time i joked about "ahah the Lucanis/Spite situation will totally revive the "is that a threesome" debate from da2 with Anders/Justice" but honestly the more i let the game sit in in my brain, dating Lucanis IS a polyamory relationship. Because yeah Spite is involved. Spite wraps Rook with his wings when things get sexy and Lucanis confirms he has no control over it if he romances Neve (and that Spite doesn't actually do it with Neve for instance)

I mentioned at the time meeting Spite that it looked like the beginning of a love triangle but in retrospect Spite established right away that Rook caring for Lucanis means Spite would also be at peace and it's why he cared for them. And Mary Kirby mentioned that since Spite is a derivation on passion he would NOT understand why Lucanis pulled away from kissing Rook while it was clear the two of them wanted to.

and we know from general abomination lore that feelings can get mushy and mixed between spirit and host.

And after the sex scene at the end of the game Rook jokes about just playing cards with Spite while Lucanis sleeps.

... so they're totally a polyamory relationship. Me, you, and the demon that is possessing your body. Spite IS taken care of as a member of the relationship.

tbh i kinda want to replay davg to romance Lucanis again knowing that, bc not knowing if Spite was going to stay a problem or not made me wary of him a huge part of the romance but like. he's actually chill. He just sucks at expressing himself and Lucanis is too deep in his PTSD to understand what Spite is saying.

But yeah like it's totally a poly with Lucanis and Spite. Two for one.

And i think it's esp noticeable compared to the Anders romance because you know Justice hates every single moment Anders is "distracted" with his romantic interest. There's multiple comments on that and it's the reason the ending also happens... this way, even when romancing him.

So when you have sex with Anders Justice is probably just trying to tune everything out and make himself small because he does NOT want to be involved in it. not a poly. we'll give Justice the mercy to not think it's a threesome.

but with Lucanis? with Spite wrapping Rook in his wings during sex? yeah it's a poly. and a threesome. carry on.

[annoyed-galaxy]

Fictober 2024 ~ 15

"let's try this"

Fanfiction: DA2 I know my fictober stuff seems pretty random, but I'm kinda just writing what's on my mind and I just finished The Masked Empire and it set up a lot of stuff and I just got eluvians on the mind. Writing a thing every single day has been very interesting, but good practice even if what I produce seems random or noncohesive. Just lots of thoughts and I honestly should just write more because I don't do it enough. So fictober is definitely helping with that. But also just posting without a care has been helping to. I don't expect most people to read what I make and I'm kinda just hyperfixating into the void, but eh you know how it be. Anxiety is a bitch. Can also be found on Ao3

Seth had never expected himself to explore ancient ruins as a hobby, but since leaving Kirkwall, a man had to find something to do as a fugitive. Being this close to Tevinter, however, caused him to be a little on edge, but nothing he couldn’t bury beneath a charming smile and well placed joke. 

His partner, on the other hand, seemed to relax a little bit more the closer to Tevinter they were. In some regards, Anders respected Tevinter and even sometimes idolized it. But Anders was no fool and knew there was as much corruption in the empire as other places. Still, mages were more free there than in other parts of Thedas. 

If someone were to ask why Seth and Anders were poking around in some random ruin near the border of Tevinter, neither man would have been able to give an answer. They may have alluded to things such as finding some artifacts to sell, but they didn’t need money, or studying some ancient text on the walls, but Seth found that too boring and Anders wasn’t that interested. Honestly, it was just an excuse for the two of them to do something that didn’t involve running away from their problems. 

Their staffs lit up the area in blue and red colors, causing the shadows to retreat as they walked through crumbling halls. They held each other’s hand and just looked at the walls around them. Something about this place seemed so…ancient. Anders squinted at some script on the walls that his light managed to catch. He stopped and Seth staggered back when Anders’s hand pulled him still. Seth looked at what Anders was looking at and brought his staff close, illuminating the script more.

“What is that?” he asked, tilting his head examining the odd text. Seth didn’t grow up in the Circle. He was an apostate his entire life and everything he learned about magic and history was through his parents. Compared to Anders, who had the entire knowledge of the Circle at his disposal, Seth was less knowledgeable about most things. 

“I think it’s elven,” Anders replied, his face still scrunched up in thought. 

Seth’s eyes widened in surprise. “Elven ruins? This close to Tevinter?” 

Anders looked at his lover with a soft smile. “The elven empire once covered the entirety of Thedas, love.” He turned back to the script. “I am not surprised we managed to stumble across one now.” 

“Can you read what it says?” Seth asked. 

Anders shook his head. “I only studied the basics of elven and this seems super ancient.” He groaned. “All I’m getting is ‘crossroads’, but I don’t know what context that could be used in.” 

Seth shrugged. “Maybe it’s a metaphor.” 

Anders shook his head. “Maybe, but who knows.” 

They continued on, seeing more of the elven script along the walls, but Anders’s still couldn’t decipher any of it. 

At the end of the corridor they walked in, it was a dead end. At least, it was now. Rubble covered what might have been a large door into, presumably, a larger room. They approached the debris and let go of each other’s hands as they examined around the rocks, looking for any possible way to clear the debris. After determining there was no way, Anders sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat. 

“Ah well. End of this journey I suppose.” He looked over and saw that Seth was still looking at a spot. 

Then Seth put the blade end of his staff in between some rocks and a foot against the rock next to the staff. “Let’s try this,” he muttered to himself. Anders felt the air shift as Seth summoned mana to him. Anders backed up a bit watching as Seth began to pry the rocks apart with his staff, using some force magic to make them looser. Anders looked up at the top and saw that some of the rocks had begun to shake. 

“Oh no,” Anders just whispered to himself as he realized what Seth was doing. He ran to the side of the corridor, pressing himself up against the wall just as Seth finally pried the rock free with his staff. The debris came crashing down after that and Seth used his magic to push it all away from him before he was crushed. Once the dust settled and rocks had stopped moving, Anders opened his eyes, not realizing he had closed them and looked at Seth who was wiping himself off of dust, but had a wicked smile on his face. 

“That worked easily!” he cheered, looking at Anders. 

Anders sighed and just smiled softly. “You’re reckless.”

Seth winked. “S’what I do.” Then he grabbed Anders’s hand again and they entered the large chamber. What they saw, they couldn’t believe. 

They were in the largest chamber either of them had ever been before. All around them were sarcophagi and epitaphs, reduced to illegible text that neither of them could read. Along the walls were columns where torches were still lit with a blue fire, casting the entire room in a haunting glow. Seth stamped out his staff and Anders followed suit since they no longer needed to light their way.

What was the most impressive thing in the chamber was at the far end of where they had entered. 

Standing tall and surrounded by carvings of dragons and large wolves was a ornate frame surrounding a cloudy gray glass. As they approached the curious object, Seth’s eyes widened with recognition. “This looks just like Merrill’s mirror,” he said, examining the cloudy gray that seemed to slowly move across the surface of the glass.

“The eluvian?” Anders asked and Seth nodded in confirmation. “Wasn’t that thing dangerous?” Anders took a step back, tugging on Seth’s hand.

“I think that one was dangerous because it had been corrupted by something. This…This looks dormant.” Seth approached the mirror, dragging Anders behind him despite Anders’s slight protests. He put his hand against the surface and it was cool to the skin. “She never did get it working, though,” Seth wondered out loud. 

“Maybe it’s because whatever magic powered these things is gone,” Anders offered, looking at the mirror. “After all, the eluvians are ancient elvish.” 

Seth shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he considered for a moment. “Do you think she’d like to know about this?” 

Anders looked at Seth with a frown. “You want to give this location to Merrill?” 

Seth shrugged. “Why not? She’s been through a lot, maybe studying a place that belonged to her people will help her find what she’s looking for.” 

Anders was about to say something in protest but then just sighed. “I don’t think there’d be any actual harm to it. Though,” he looked around, “you feel it don’t you?”

Seth nodded his head as he turned from the mirror. “The Veil is thin.” 

Anders eyes the sarcophagi around them with concern. “If we’re not careful, or if she wasn’t, I have a bad feeling this chamber could be flooded with corpses or worse.” 

Seth agreed and then slowly walked away from the eluvian, Anders’s following suit. 

That night, Seth drafted up a letter that he then gave to a local barkeep to send to Kirkwall. 

Varric, 

Found an interesting place Daisy may be interested in if you still got contact with her. Something to do with her people and might help with that mirror she had been working on for so long. Location’s on the map attached. 

Also, hope you’re doing well. Miss you buddy. 

- H.

[tuwasduwillst]

Can you not do post titles on mobile? Bizarre. Anyway, this is just more thoughts about Veilguard, now that some time has passed since my first playthrough.

After my first playthrough of Veilguard, I tried to go back and play again. Typically, the different choices and love interests (and world states) can wrangle at least a good four playthroughs out of me before I decide to move on to something else.

This time, I'm almost considering ending it at one.

What changes between Veilguard playthroughs? My world state is virtually the same no matter what I pick in the CC; for the factions, reactivity is minimal and only a select handful of factions even feel like they're worth playing as to see what changes. If you're an elf, you're some amalgamation of a Dalish/city/other elf and have no real clear way of even setting your background to begin with (which is a bit of a problem for every Rook, but it especially stands out for elf!Rook IMO).

And the romances... to say I'm disappointed with what I've seen and heard would be an understatement. I've seen so many people zealously praising and defending the way that Veilguard handles its romance and I can't even begin to fathom how or why, when you compare it to how it was handled in other Dragon Age games. Admittedly, my first romance was Lucanis and I've heard he's worst off, but comparing notes with friends has shown that even for the "best" romances, it just feels like things are missing. BioWare devs were boasting about this being their most romantic game yet; Lucanis in particular was described as a "bisexual disaster" (and I'll get into him more in a bit). But I saw no proof of either of these things in the game.

Every major issue or faction in Veilguard was entirely defanged. The Crows are your friendly neighborhood watchdogs; the Lords of Fortune are "good" pirates who would never ever steal anything culturally significant to anyone else (this is where I stare pointedly at their leader, Isabela. Can I buy that she's more careful after DA2? Maybe, since apparently they canonized her being BFFs with Hawke and returning despite them claiming they wouldn't invalidate world states*. Do I think she bothers checking everything she finds to make sure it's okay to take? Hell no).

They didn't even take full advantage of the hooks their characters naturally had in their backstories! Lucanis is, essentially, heir to the Crows (or at least one of their houses); he brings up his restrictive life once over coffee, and you get some stuff in the mind prison quest I guess, but outside of that he's more well-adjusted than literally any of the DA2 companions despite being possessed by a demon of Spite! Who was horribly underutilized, by the way; his main job seemed to be to sniff and growl at things like a tiny and ineffectual dog. I have no idea why any of the companions were worried about him being a problem in the slightest, because after making that nosebleed happen super early on, he did literally nothing! He didn't even kill Illario or cause any problems at all!

Honestly, I have so much to say and basically none of it is good. I liked how they handled Solas (and his reunion with Lavellan). I liked the Mourn Watch. It was a very pretty game and combat was fun. That's about it and every time I play more of the game it makes me like it less because I notice more things that just don't hold up.

I might talk about it more when I'm not on my phone, but I just wanted some of my thoughts here now. 😔

* this was a lie, by the way, since Harding brings up two Inquisition members that potentially weren't even recruited (and Solas brings up one of them as well potentially); Morrigan drinking from the Well of Sorrows seems to be a canon choice, and the thing with Isabela seems to have had a canon choice made as well because otherwise her line about "learning what family meant" or whatever makes no sense at all.

[felassan]

GamesRadar: "It felt like we needed to do something": How Varric Tethras went from nearly being left out of Dragon Age: The Veilguard to becoming a foundational character

Interview | Exploring the role of Varric Tethras in Dragon Age: The Veilguard with BioWare's creative director, John Epler

Excerpts under cut due to spoilers.

John Epler: "Varric is such a fan favorite, and has been part of Dragon Age since Dragon Age 2 – it felt like we needed to do something. At the end of the game, it's very clear that a chapter of Dragon Age is being closed, even as a new one is being started, and having Varric involved in the ending and that final beat in the way that he was felt right to us."

""While it may have "felt right" for Varric to be in Dragon Age: The Veilguard and factor into its ending in this way, says Epler, it took some time for the team to come to that conclusion. With such a long development cycle, the loveable dwarf wasn't even part of the story at one stage. "It's interesting, because in some of our earliest versions of what we wanted to do for Dragon Age 4, Varric was not actually involved. Varric was doing his own thing as the Viscount of Kirkwall," Epler says. "But I think especially as we got to the version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard that shipped, it felt very strange to have a story about Solas not also include Varric. For us, having them [Solas and Varric] exist in contrast throughout the story - obviously, with Varric being something existing entirely in Rook's mind - provides different ways of looking at the core theme, which is regret." As Epler explains, Varric is "not someone who does a good job of confronting his regret", whether that be in Inquisition when it comes to his love interest and crossbow namesake, Bianca, or with his brother in DA2. Rook, on the other hand, is forced to confront them, while Solas's regrets "drive everything he does." He's a character that "refuses to be happy, refuses to feel joy, because he feels it'd be a betrayal of his people, of what he's done". But as Epler adds, having Varric "be the kind of linchpin" around which all the regrets hinge "felt powerful". Varric may not be good at confronting his own regrets, but his death and role eventually pushes Rook to face theirs, and in turn, you can try to help Solas get past his own if you so choose.""

"Without a mark on your hand like the Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition, or an army you can bring together like the Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins, Rook is "just a person with a team", as Epler puts it, so you have to make sure that they're as ready as possible to face what's to come. [...] Epler says Varric felt like a natural character to juxtapose Solas. Acting kind of like "the angel and the devil on your shoulder", Solas - while not actually a devil - is the one who's more focused on the mission and goal of stopping the gods, while Varric constantly reminds you that your team matters and you need to take care of them first and foremost. The decision to kill Varric early on was partly fueled by a worry that people would find Solas "a little too sympathetic in his goals". From past experience, Epler says the team saw a lot of that with The Trespasser DLC, where many really wanted to help Solas and believed he was right. But he is going to end the world, after all, and once you realize the twist about Tethras' true fate, Varric serves to demonstrate that "Solas will sacrifice almost anyone or anything in pursuit of what he sees as the greater good." But even if he is willing to go to extreme lengths, Solas does still regret what happens to his old friend. In fact, Epler explains that he even finds it comforting to think that Varric is still out there in some form. "Varric's a complex character," says Epler. "He runs away from his problems, he likes to shade the truth, even to the people that he's working with. The Varric that you see, the Varric that Rook experiences, [are] the best parts of Varric that Rook remembers. It's just this mentor figure that's always there for them. And I think even Solas finds some comfort in knowing that there's still a piece of him out there, even though he knows that it's manipulation, it's not the real Varric."

""DA2 starts with a character death about 45 minutes in, when your siblings dies. And the feedback we got, which was very fair feedback is, 'okay, but I don't care, because I've known this person for like, 45 minutes'. So having Varric die at the beginning, originally that was it. He was going to die, and it was going to be this big, shocking moment," Epler says. "But part of the problem with making a game 10 years after the last one, and needing to make it so existing players – but also new players – can get in and feel a lot of the same things, is you can't bank on two games worth of built up memories, built up attachment, to make the death land. For a lot of players it would have been like, 'okay, but I've only known this guy for 45 minutes. So why do we care?'" In order to still have the death at the beginning of the game, the team eventually landed on the idea of his not-so-real presence in the Lighthouse in order to give players more time with Varric. "And that's the beauty of game development," Epler adds, "something that you start off with as a way to solve a problem actually becomes so core to the identity game.""

"Varric Tethras was originally brought to life by Mary Kirby, a veteran developer who has worked on the Dragon Age series for many years at BioWare. Sadly, she was part of the layoffs last year, but as Epler fondly highlights, Kirby wrote the vast majority of the conversations you have with Varric. "She was one of the first people we told 'Hey, so we're talking about killing Varric, you're okay with this, right?' Because at that time, she wasn't even on the project," Epler says. "But Mary was fantastic to work with, she and I worked [together in the past]. I was Varric's cinematic designer for Inquisition and for DA2. There are a couple of things that came up towards the end of the project that I had an opportunity to write. And it was lovely to remind myself how Mary had always written Varric, and how that character came together.""

[source]

[houseaeducan]

I never posted this on AO3 bc I wanted to rework some of it and never ended up doing it, but I like enough of it to post here. Basically - DA2 The Boys AU. I wrote when I was watching The Boys for the for the first time (still haven’t seen the new season RIP)

Summary: Hawke has been the best partner Fenris has had in years, aside from one thing: he insists on working with supes.

Hawke goes over the plan again, but Fenris knows everything he needs to. He’s trying to keep focused, to stay ice cold and exact. If there’s ever been a time he couldn’t afford to fuck up, it would be now. Hawke takes another look out the van window and says in a low voice, leaning slightly to the side in that way people do when they’re speaking into an earpiece, “Bela?”

“Quiet, sweet thing.” Her voice comes crackling into Fenris’ ear as well. “Any second now.” There’s a thump, some rustling, a long minute, and then – on the end of the table, the computer lights up, dim gray rectangles of mild movement. The security footage. Must be for nearly every room in the compound.

Hawke laughs at this, an infectious sort of excitement that feels a bit like victory before they’ve even started. “I could kiss you.”

“Hmmm,” Isabela says, pleased with herself. “Maybe later.”

“Cute.” Varric pulls the computer into his lap, eyes scanning the screen. In an upper corner, Fenris can just make out Isabela, tucked away in some tiny security office, feet already kicked up on the desk, over the body of whoever was there when she broke in. “But if any of us are going to be kissing each other, then we better get moving now.”

Hawke nods. He slings his guns over his shoulder, and Fenris, of course already armed, finds himself adjusting his. “Right,” he says. “Merrill and I will take the lower entrance after Bela fucks with the lights.” He nods to Fenris. “Then it should be a straight shot through at the top. I think we should be able to keep casualties to a minimum, at least until we’ve grabbed the V and you’ve dealt with Danarius. But Anders, I need you backing him up just in case.” Next to Hawke, Anders rolls his eyes – this part of the plan is bad, everyone knows it, especially Fenris. Unfortunately, it might also be necessary.

As everyone prepares to move on, Fenris can hear Anders muttering to Hawke, low enough to be a whisper without the intent of one. “He’s just going to kill him and leave as soon as he gets what he wants.” Hawke replies, “He wants the same thing as us.”

–

This isn’t the first Vought facility Fenris has snuck his way into. There have been years of this – or at least something like this. Years of failure, dead ends, a hopeless searching he struggled to put a name to. There had been other partners – good ones, shitty ones, dead ones mostly. Hawke had been the best, lasted the longest, brought him the closest to justice he had felt in a long time. It’s why he’s stuck with him all these years, even when they fight, even when he makes Fenris work with people he can’t stand.

A few paces behind him, Anders glowers at Fenris. He’s holding a handgun, but arming the supe was a moot point on Hawke’s part – Anders is a terrible shot. If they are attacked, then Anders can heal them both while Fenris deals with the problem, and if that’s not enough, then he’ll start doing far more damage with far less control than anything a gun could give him.

His earpiece crackles to life once again. “Hawke and Daisy are in,” Varric says. “Broody, Blondie – I can’t see you.”

“Shit,” Fenris says, “Blindspot? Did we know about this?”

Anders walks forward a few paces and looks up, scanning the ceiling for cameras. “I’m giving you and Isabela a wave, do you see it?”

“Clear as day,” Isabela says pleasantly. “It’s only a few feet, nothing to worry about.”

“And now you’ve given anyone with this footage a full view of your face,” says Fenris. “Lovely.”

“Right,” says Anders. “Because Vought doesn’t already know who we are.”

“Play nice, girls,” says Isabela. “Varric, if you’re all set up, then I’m going to go find Hawke.”

There’s some back and forth as Varric and Isabela coordinate, but Fenris tunes it out. Right now, already so close, just one wrong move away, he needs to be more alert than ever. It’s too quiet up here. Fenris knows that this area is corporate – the real action is downstairs, but that’s no reason for it to stand so empty, even at this hour. He can’t let that stop him, though, not now. Be cautious, not deterred. Danarius is somewhere in this building, and by the night’s end, Fenris will have his revenge and maybe even answers. Or he’ll be dead. Either way, it ends here.

He touches his scarred skin without thinking. It’s painful, but not in any way he hasn’t learned to expect. Anders says, “It’s too quiet.”

It’s taken him long enough to notice, or maybe he’s only just now decided to bring it up. Anders is even more suspicious of Fenris than Fenris is of him.

“It is,” says Fenris. He twists the gun off his shoulder, holding it slightly more at the ready.

“It looks clear enough,” Varric says. “There’s a few guys up ahead, a few doors down, but we knew they’d be there.”

Fenris and Anders exchange an uneasy look, but there’s nothing else to say. For now, Varric is right.

They continue forward quietly, avoiding the guards as well as they might have planned. Fenris is almost glad Anders is his partner on this – if it had been Hawke or Varric or god forbid, Merrill, they might have tried to ask him how he was feeling right now, did he know what he would say to Danarius when he saw him, what he might do. Anders and Fenris have long since given up on any amiability in their relationship, so instead Fenris can concentrate, not on finally confronting the man who ruined his life – he’s had a lifetime for that, nearly two painful decades – but on getting there in the first place.

It goes to shit immediately. Of course. Fenris barely has time to register the first gunshot before the second shot sends a bullet straight at Anders, barely leaving a mark, fucking supes, and Fenris has time to take cover and start shooting.

Their attackers are coming from a door ahead of them, in what Fenris is willing to bet is the cameras’ second blindspot.

“Shit,” Varric says on the other end, “What am I seeing here? Are you being shot at? Broody, are you okay in there?”

“Shot at?” asks Hawke, at the same time Anders says, “Fenris is fine. I’ve been shot, thank you for asking.”

Fenris rolls his eyes – Anders has already healed his already mild scrape – and Hawke crackles briefly on the other end, the sounds of violence just behind him – “Fuck, us too. They knew we were coming.”

There’s no time to worry about Merrill and Hawke, though, and probably little point. Merrill can take control of the blood in someone’s body, make them do what she needs them to as long as they’re in a close enough range. It’s not the most gruesome thing Fenris has seen supes do, at least not the way Merrill uses it, but he thinks it might be his least favorite. He keeps waiting for the day Merrill decides she’s sick of working against her own side.

Fenris makes short enough work of this wave of attackers, with the exception of one, a low-level supe, who sends waves of electricity shooting through the air. This one isn’t dangerous enough to be more than a grunt, and unlike some supes Fenris has dealt with in the past, she does take damage from his bullets, slowly but surely. He knows what Hawke would say if he were here, to leave her to Anders, that there’s a reason why we work with supes, Fenris, but Fenris stays focused in his attack. Fenris has only seen Anders use his non-healing powers a handful of times, but he’s seen enough to not give him any reason to use that ticking time bomb.

The fight long and brutal – Fenris grabs the supe by her hair and crushes her face into the wall, she sends a wave of potent electricity through his leg that Anders is only able to heal just in time to keep it from frying him alive, but eventually, he finishes his work.

One of the attackers is still alive, albeit barely – his heavy breaths moving slower and slower as seconds tick by. Anders grabs him before Fenris can, pushing him against the wall, his hand just under the man’s chin, somewhere between a throttle and a caress. Slowly, the gash across his chest begins to knit together. It’s a familiar sight, though slower than usual – with this, at least, Anders can be very precise.

“How did you know we were coming?” the supe snaps. The man coughs and shakes his head, so Fenris gives him a kick in his healing flesh.

“I don’t know, I don’t know! I swear – they don’t tell us, just–”

“Is Danarius here?” Fenris interrupts. Anders looks at him dangerously. “Is Danarius here, or was this all just a trap?”

“I –” the man sputters out some blood. “He’s here, he’s here. In the control room in the back. He said he wanted to speak with you, after everything you’ve done he, he wanted to –”

Fenris nods at Anders and the supe lets go of the man, the healing ceasing as he slides to the floor. Fenris shoots him one more time for good measure.

Anders is saying something into his headset and Hawke and Varric are responding – Fenris’ thoughts are too loud to hear any of it. Danarius is still here. Danarius is waiting for him. It chills Fenris a bit, when he really thinks about it, but invigorates him more than anything else, that he’s turned himself into something of an even-footed opponent, risen past being one more piece of collateral damage in a long, bloody career. His mother’s life, his sister’s, Fenris’ body had all been dismissed as an unfortunate but worthwhile side effect, but Fenris knew what he had seen the night he had lost everything. It had mattered. It would matter today too.

“Fenris,” Hawke says. “Are you listening? We need to retreat.”

“Pussies,” Isabela says at the same time Varric mutters, “I knew this whole thing was a bad idea.”

Fenris shakes his head. “No,” he says. There’s no question to it. “I came here for a reason.”

“I told you,” Anders says, looking at Fenris but obviously talking to Hawke.

Hawke ignores him. “It’s too dangerous. You won’t get anything done if we all get ourselves killed here. We have to regroup.”

It makes sense, it’s the smart thing to do, and it’s utterly unthinkable. Hawke can make these decisions from a distance, removed but empathetic. He’ll say, “I’m sorry it happened this way, Fenris,” and take too much blame for something that isn’t his fault, that’s no one’s but Danarius’, and for a moment Fenris hates him for it. “You would ask me to leave now? When it’s the only chance I’ll ever have?”

Hawke is replying but Fenris has already pulled out the earpiece, allowing it to fall to the floor with a violent clatter.

“Fenris –” starts Anders.

“Go,” Fenris says. He leans over his gun, reloading before he’s ready to move on.

“You selfish piece of shit. You know he’s not going to leave you.”

Fenris rolls his eyes. He slides the weapon back over his shoulder. “He should leave. This isn’t his business anymore. And so should you.”

“Don’t have to ask me twice.”

But a minute later, after Fenris has moved on, making his way through the compound as silently as possible, still certain he’s being observed, he hears the door open and shut behind him again.

“I told you to go,” he says, frustrated.

“Yeah and Hawke would kill me if I left you without backup,” the supe snaps. “Do you even know where you’re going?”

He doesn’t, but these suddenly empty hallways, the crushing silence around them, is obviously a choice. Fenris nods ahead to a solitary door waiting at the end of the hall. “Forward.”

It only takes them a few moments to make it there. “Hawke ran into some trouble,” Anders says, listening to his earpiece. Fenris regrets throwing his to the ground. It was a childish outburst, not fair to Hawke, who has changed his own plan, the safest plan, to help Fenris now. Embarrassing. “But him and Merrill and Isabela will be here in a few minutes.”

Fenris nods. He needs to back off while they wait, find a place to take cover, but he can’t wrest his eyes away from what’s in front of him. He thinks Anders is about to say something else when the door opens. It is not Danarius.

–

Fenris remembers very little of his sister. This is what he remembers: an apartment – small and shitty, his mother – someone who loved him, his sister – someone he loved. He remembers losing them: his mother falling to the floor, Danarius laughing, Fenris – a child and nearly crushed behind rubble, unable to do anything about it, Varania crushed because he had not been able to save her and because when he had opened his eyes, she had been gone. It had been collateral damage, an unfortunate tragedy, and Fenris too young and too traumatized to know what he had seen.

He knew.

He knew Varania, now, for what little he remembered. He knew that red hair. He had learned to braid on it. He had tied it into pigtails on her first day of school. It was longer now, pulled back, a crimson offset to her white button-down and gray slacks. Very professional. Very Vought.

“Varania,” he says. He feels stupid for it, but what else is there to say?

Anders stares at him, taking hardly any time to look shocked before he looks furious. He thinks that Fenris has known who they’ll find here all this time. Of course he jumps to the most damning option.

“Leto,” says Varania. It’s an old name, one on government papers that Fenris hasn’t used in a very long time. She sounds sad. That’s when the world opens up and falls apart, when the floors turn in on themselves and Fenris is sent crashing down to his knees, on his face, smashed against cold tile. She says again, still sad. “You look like I remember.”

Anders raises his gun – the idiot, what is he going to do, shoot her? – but Fenris glares at him and somehow, that makes him hold his fire.

“You were dead,” he says. The fact that she’s a supe barely registers, but it will later. All of this time – did his mother know? She had to have known, she had to have chosen —

“You assumed,” she says. “You assumed a lot, Leto.”

“Danarius –”

“Took me with him,” she says. “They knew I was a supe, and I was more powerful than they expected. They needed me, needed to work with me, our mother didn’t want to give me up, it was complicated, it – it was easier this way, Leto, necessary. It needed to happen.”

Her words feel like a low tide, washing over Fenris with a meaning he cannot bear to begin to unpack. He wants to say: This never needed to happen. He wants to say: Leave this place. He says, “And you gave yourself to these people? After what they had done?”

She’s angry now; it’s the first time he’s really seen it. “You can’t possibly understand,” she says. “Do you think you’ve suffered? Do you think you’re making a difference? I’ve seen the things you’ve done – things you’ve done to good people, people who were just doing their jobs. You don’t understand the first thing about the way the world works. Staying here, where things really happen, that’s the way things change.”

Her breath hitches when she finishes speaking, and though Fenris is still pulling himself from the ground, face bloody, her hands are shaking.

“You think you’re making a difference in Vought?” It’s Anders, and Fenris could punch him for it. “I’ve been where you are, and if you think they think of us as anything besides a product, as disposable –”

“Maybe you,” says Varania. “I’ve read your file.” She looks at Fenris. “I’m surprised you’re working with supes, from everything I’ve heard.”

“Get out of this place,” he says suddenly. “Leave with me. This doesn’t have to be your future. You know what they did to us.” He means it – he really does. There’ll be time to hate her later, but right now she’s alive, after all this time, after so many years of being alone.

She blinks. He thinks for a moment she might agree. “I can’t, Leto.”

“Varania –” he doesn’t even notice stepping forward until another blast of her powers hits him full force, even more powerful than before, sending him and Anders crushing against the wall. Later, he and Hawke will go over old reports of bodies crumpled like flies with a terrible understanding, but now, Fenris hardly has the time to aim his weapon, firing a round directly into her chest.

She staggers, she sways, she lands upright, hand to her chest, but otherwise unaffected. Anders fires at her – missing once, making it the next time, the time after that, missing again – it gives Fenris just enough time to reload before Varania hits him again.

This time, Fenris thinks he may have hit his head badly. His vision is swimming, his eyes already clouded with blood. He knows Varania can hit him harder than this, though. He knows he’d already be dead if that’s what she meant to do.

“Just come quietly,” she pleads. “It won’t be so bad, it really won’t. You know I don’t want to hurt you, Leto.”

It’s a lie. There’s no way this ends without being hurt. “My name is Fenris,” he says before he shoots his sister and gets ready to die.

Varania steps forward, hands shaking but ready to bring them down with terrible finality, when –

In the moment just before Fenris takes cover, he can still make out Varania’s face in the blue light, outlined with confusion. He doesn’t give himself a moment longer than that before hitting the ground – he knows the supe has no ability to control himself, that everything around him is fair game until he comes to.

That his first instinct is to shield himself is what saves him, because his next is the bizarre compulsion to grab Varania, to protect her like he should have when they were children watching the walls fall in.

This episode of Anders’ doesn’t last long, and though Fenris has been hit some from the fallen debris, he is mostly whole when he comes to. Varania, crushed into the floor, is hardly recognizable, though she looks like the other people Fenris have seen be unfortunate enough to be in the same room as Anders when he loses control. He tries to register her presence there, his sister, what’s happened to her, what didn’t happen all those years ago, and fails. The cold, empty fury in his chest is so devastatingly familiar.

A few yards away, Anders has stopped glowing, stopped distributing uncontrolled violence, crouched over hyperventilating like he isn’t a walking war crime, like he shouldn’t be locked away in some government facility where he can’t do this to anybody else. The supe doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at Fenris, just stares at what happened to Varania, walks to the other side of the room, and vomits.

When he’s done, he walks back to Fenris, still not saying anything, and lays a hand on his shoulder just long enough to heal. Fenris doesn’t realize how badly it's needed until his wounds have been repaired.

For the first time in as long as Fenris has known the supe, he seems to have nothing to say for him. Finally, mercifully, Hawke and Merrill and Isabela kick in the door, looking like they’ve barely managed their own battles. “What was going on in here?” Hawke asks, out of breath. “Varric said he could see – some kind of –” He looks to what happened to Varania, he looks, worried, to Anders.

“Nothing,” says Fenris. “Danarius isn’t here, it was a dead end.”

He doesn’t know how he must look right now, how he must sound. He just hates the way everyone is looking at him right now.

“Are you alright, Fenris?” Merrill tries.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he says. “Let’s get moving.”

[twilightoftheapprentice]

I keep seeing Veilguard negatively compared to BG3 over this and like, lol. I love BG3 but it is NOT a morally complex game. I can think of two major choices where you can make a strong argument for either option being right, but for all of the big main plot decisions and most of the big companion quest decisions, the game itself takes a very clear stance on which is the good choice and which is the evil choice. Do you help the refugees or kill them for funsies? Should Shadowheart double down on following the goddess whose followers slaughtered a whole town for refusing to convert and who gave her a torture wound or should she leave? Should Astarion condemn seven thousand souls to make himself more powerful or should he let them live/allow them to pass peacefully? I love these decisions and I think they have a lot of depth and impact for those characters, but they are not morally ambiguous at all. The clear throughline is "ally with a powerful but evil entity or do the right thing even though it's harder."

If people got over the idea that the presence of a cruel option makes a decision morally complex, they'd be able to see that Veilguard has some of the most complex decisions in the series. Giving the griffons to the wardens or to Arlathan? Keeping versus erasing the Archive? Who becomes Archon? These are all decisions with major lore implications where either choice has significant benefits and significant risks or drawbacks. Including a choice where Rook kills the griffons or puts Aelia on the throne wouldn't have added to the complexity or the quality of the game. It would have just been having an evil option for the sake of having one. Additionally, if you really want those outcomes, you can literally get them by just not completing the companion quests. It's just that the game doesn't allow Rook to choose evil in universe because the main plot requires a character who is generally doing their best (just like DA2 doesn't allow Hawke to help Anders blow up the chantry because the plot requires them to be doing their best to hold the city together).

The Archon decision in particular I think is one of the strongest choices you're given not just in the game but in the series. You spend 20 hours doing quests in Dock Town that give you insight into what life is like for the poorest people in Minrathous and what their most pressing problems are, and then you decide between two candidates who ultimately want the same thing but have different ideas of how to achieve it based on which method you think will ultimately bring the most benefit to the people of Dock Town based on what you've learned from spending all that time with them.

Compare that to picking the ruler of Orlais. You're dropped into the quest with little prior knowledge about the situation or either of the people you'll be choosing between (unless you read TME). Your advisors tell you up front that Gaspard brings military strength and Celene is a reformer. Then you spend ninety minutes talking to a handful of nobles and finding evidence reiterating that Gaspard is better positioned to assist your army but Celene would be better for the people of Southern Thedas, and you decide which is more important. I love that quest, but there not much complexity there, and it basically has the same components of "powerful but bloodthirsty ally versus think about someone other than yourself" that most of the big BG3 choices fall back on (not to mention that the underlying theme of military strength versus reform is lifted and retooled from the Orzammar decision from DAO).

The Archon decision at it's core also poses a question about whether the ends justify the means, but it poses it in a way we haven't seen before from this series and it adds the additional caveat of "Would the undesirable means actually yield a better result? Is it worth it to try something else first?" which gives the player something new to think about.

Ok here we go. On the topic of the overstated significance of the evil choices present in the DA games.

DISCLAIMER this is purely my personal opinion and isn't intended as a serious analysis or anything like that. just exploring my own thoughts on the topic👍

also another mini disclaimer. i will be honest my dai replay is at a standstill, and i dont want to go thru like 100 hours of gameplay just for a simple post. if anyone remembers dai better than i do feel free to contribute to the discussion etc etc

With that out of the way.

So here’s my hot take. I do not think that a DA game absolutely NEEDS to give you the option to do some atrocities. That is not what inherently makes them RPG games, or Dragon Age™ games.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I'm not arguing that these options shouldn't be in the games. My main point is that their absence is not as terrible as people like to say it is.

Of course, the more options there are, the more types of player character you can develop. And I’m an OC guy, i love that shit, i get it. But i also tend to make the same damn choices in each of my playthroughs, and that hasn’t stopped me from developing several very different protagonists for DAO alone. 

The power to make a compelling character does not lie solely in the options the game provides you. It also lies in this thing called ‘imagination’. But i digress.

Thing is, mostly the cruel options don't really contribute anything special to the narrative. There are no real consequences in the overall arc of the game. The Warden is still going to save Ferelden. Hawke is still going to be the Champion, and is still going to defeat Meredith. The Inquisitor is still going to seal the breach and kill Corypheus.

You have some consequences re: companions, but that's about it. You cannot FAIL because of the choices you make.

And, another hot take? I think that playing a cruel character in DA is actually less interesting/compelling than playing a kind one. 

It is easy to be cruel or indifferent in the shoes of the Warden/Hawke/the Inquisitor. It makes things more straightforward, less complicated. It is much harder to be kind, to be hurt each time you fail to save someone, and persevering anyway. 

I think what a lot of people who argue that ‘kindness doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a choice not to give it’ miss, is that kindness does not need to come in the same package every time. There are many ways to be kind, and for it to shape you. Kindness absolutely has value and complexity on it’s own.

BUT. That is me taking a detour. Let’s get back on point. 

And to do that, let’s talk about the first Dishonored game. There will be spoilers.

For those who don’t know, Dishonored has a chaos system that is affected by how many people the protagonist, Corvo, kills during the game. The more you kill, the higher the chaos rises. It starts affecting gameplay, too: more guards, more corpses in the street, more disease and more infected. The city reacts to your actions. Violence breeds more violence, and at the end it all but forces your hand to keep killing.

On the other hand, you have low chaos. It is possible to go through the game without killing a single person, even the main targets you need to eliminate to advance the plot. The less death there is, the less the city itself suffers.

On the surface, this is kind of very straightforward. Killing bad, the game says. 

But let’s look at one of the non-lethal options the game offers. 

First target. High Overseer Campbell, the head of the main religious organization of the Dh setting. Despite holding this position, the man is rotten to the core (or, perhaps, it is exactly why he holds this position). He blackmails, he kills, he conspires. Killing him is the right thing to do. And if you don’t care about all that moral stuff, killing him is going to be revenge. 

For the non-lethal elimination, however, you can brand him as a heretic. By quite literally burning the heretic brand onto his face. 

It leads to him becoming a total outcast, because even offering food to him is counted as a crime. You meet him later in the game as a weeper - someone so far in the plague stages, he is practically a zombie. 

But! That is not all. 

I once wanted to do a playthrough where i only kill the main targets. I killed Campbell, all was well. 

At the start of the next mission, there was an announcement throughout the city about the passing of their beloved High Overseer Campbell, who was a righteous man taken from this world too early- and other such nonsense. 

And i couldn’t do it. I reloaded the game and branded that motherfucker instead. 

If you kill him, he does not suffer. He is remembered fondly. 

If you ‘spare’ him, he suffers for months before succumbing to the plague, and his crimes and rotten nature are revealed to the city. 

So, the message isn’t as simple as ‘killing bad’, after all. There’s nuance here. 

And, most importantly. One of the things that i love about Dishonored’s handling of the chaos system and how it contributes to the gameplay and the overall narrative.

Is the fact that Corvo can fail. 

In the high chaos ending, if you don’t do it carefully, Emily, THE person Corvo is supposed to save and protect, can die. Corvo fails. The one thing that was the goal of the game, and he can fail. 

There’s way more nuance to Dishonored as a whole that i am NOT going to get into right now, or else we will be here all day. But my point here is, compared to that narrative significance of cruel/kind choices? DA could never compare. 

What happens if you take away the chaos system in Dh? The game becomes a shell of itself. Everything complex or interesting is immediately gone.

What happens if you take away the cruel OR the kind options in each of the DA games? Nothing much, really. The story stays largely the same. You just get there in slightly different ways. 

Of course, comparing Dishonored to DA is kind of an unfair thing to do. The genres are different, for one. The approach to continuity in the following games is different, too (with Dh using it's own canon for the sequel, while DA has to account for player choices). 

But i used that comparison mainly to illustrate that the significance of the cruel options in DA is…really overblown. 

The choices they offer are not complex. It’s easy to understand which is the morally better option: sell people into slavery or Not Do That. It’s not a grey choice, it’s pretty black and white. 

Genocide a people for the benefit of another or broker peace between them? Ohhh what a hard moral dilemma. 

Kill a lot of innocent people just in casies or come to their defense? Hmmm, however can i tell which one is the morally good choice here….

I can’t say that no one should ever enjoy playing the villain in an RPG game, nor do i want to say that. Go, be free, do whatever you want! I am also not saying that DA games are made worse by the presence of these choices. 

What i AM saying is that a lot of people mistake the mere presence of cruelty for complexity, and that Veilguard not having cruel choices (besides that one with the mayor i guess) does not make it less of a dragon age game than the other three. 

I love DA, i really do. Fucking. Look at my blog. 

But they’re just games, at the end of the day. They’re flawed, and some of them really don’t age well. But each one of them was made by people who care about the setting, the series, and the story being told in each game. You can feel that care as you play. So, what makes a dragon age game…a dragon age game? It’s not the cruelty available, that’s for sure.

I don’t know how coherent my point with this post is. My eyes kind of hurt so that definitely isn’t helping me concentrate. I think it’s silly to uphold the presence of cruelty as THE hallmark of a series, or what makes a good game. Sometimes it’s not about the cruelty. Sometimes it’s about people, and perseverance. 

Maybe one day I will actually go through the games with a fine tooth comb and make a proper analysis. But other people probably did that already, and better than i could.

At the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions and preferences. But these? These are MY onions <3 🧅🧅