#veilguard critical ///

[knight-commander]

Observations on an Empty World

I recently started a new game in Dragon Age: Origins as part of the grieving process, and I'm struck by how allergic the writers of Dragon Age: Veilguard were to providing rich opportunities for roleplaying and exploration – fundamental elements of the franchise that previous entries excelled at and audiences clearly expected. It's extremely noticeable in the differences in how we interact with other characters in Thedas, and especially prominent in the first hours of each game.

While playing as a Dalish Elf in Origins, during the prologue alone, you can speak freely to and question:

Tamlen, your childhood friend

Keeper Marethari, the leader of your clan

Merrill, the Keeper's second-in-command

Maren, a gentle woman who works with the halla

Ilen, the clan's craftsman, who teaches you about the Vir Tanadhal

Paivel, one of the hahrens who raised you and Tamlen

Pol, a city elf come to the Dalish to avoid being hanged for theft

Junar, the hunter teaching Pol about Dalish life

Ashalle, who tells you the sad story of your parents (and the game lets you decide how to react to her telling you this)

Fenarel, who wants to come with you on your search for Tamlen with or without informing the Keeper

The 3 (nameless) humans encroaching on your clan's campsite, who you can choose to ruthlessly kill or scare off, but either way contributes to the clan having to leave

Duncan, of course

You can talk to many of these characters twice or more, once when you awake in camp the first time, and again after returning empty-handed after your search for Tamlen. They have different attitudes towards you and the politics of the world they live in. Often, you can interrogate them for more information. Some have interesting insights, others provide context for the world your character inhabits. Sometimes, you'll unlock codex entries from conversations you have with these side characters (or items in their vicinity), elaborating even more on what you've learned. All of this is in service to helping you roleplay: each interaction layers choices upon choices, building a picture of how your character interfaces with friends, acquaintances, and strangers, as well as how you'll fit them into the ideological jigsaw puzzle that is Thedas.

You will talk to none* of these characters again after the first two hours of the game. They are "not important", but they provide vital glimpses of a wider world that could exist outwith the boundaries of the main quest. The implications of the history they've lived – Paivel's sorrow at having to "bury babes he once held in his arms"; Ilen's recollections of his father's successful first-strikes against Ferelden tribes; Ashalle's reasons for withholding the sad story of your parentage – are all unnecessary to the plot of defeating the Blight, but they make Thedas feel lived in. Alive.

Before I move on: I could be very cruel to Veilguard here and count Ostagar as part of the prologue – which it is. In this case, the number of richly-characterised NPCs balloons massively. For the sake of the argument, I won't.

In Veilguard, the prologue has you interact with:

The nameless bartender, with whom you are given one singular dialogue choice (to persuade with violence or a silver-tongue).

Varric, whose goal in the opening fifteen minutes is to lead you to the next plot point.

Harding, who saves some nameless NPCs and comes with you to the next plot point.

Neve, who is the next plot point and who Varric and Harding already know, so they briefly introduce you to each other in between fights.

... Let's extend it a bit, otherwise that's a sad little list. In the follow-up mission to Arlathan Forest, you can talk to:

Strife and Irelin, faction leaders and darlings of the extended universe (aka, the heroes from another short story), who tell you who you're going to talk to next.

Bellara, who already knows who the Neve Gallus is, of course, and is all but ready to jump into action, even if you don't know who she is or her motivations for being out here in this pickle.

... Uh-oh, it's not looking that much better. Can we keep going? Including the D'Meta's Crossing section, you can also talk to:

Jahel, the surviving Veil Jumper you came looking for. This shouldn't really be counted, because it's not really a back-and-forth. He dies after approximately 2 lines of expository dialogue about the plot of this immediate section. His named Veil Jumper partner, Mihiva, is dead when you arrive.

Arguably, you could "interact" the nameless villagers afflicted by the Taint on the way there, but they do the 'crazed mutterings' and it's not really a back-and-forth, just an environmental button press when you approach.

Julius, the Mayor of D'Meta's Crossing, who you can lightly question, then decide his fate.

Morrigan, for the cameo, I suppose.

Look, I could tack Treviso and the Ossuary on. It might look slightly better. I could count the Caretaker and the faction shopkeepers with their AI-generated ass one-line introductions (but I absolutely will not, because that's ridiculous). The problem is, to me, transparent.

Veilguard is only interested in interactions with the "main characters" of Thedas – the cast of action heroes that surround your Rook. These include your companions, characters from previous games (Varric, Morrigan), and names from the comics or tie-in novels who you are supposed to whoop and cheer for when they appear without ever getting to find out who they are. If I was being unkind, I would even say it is uninterested in providing opportunities to converse with these characters given the superficial, skin-deep nature of the dialogue.

Of the short, sparse interactions you are allowed to participate in during Veilguard's opening, you can have a brief back-and-forth with at most three characters who are not other party members (past or present) or faction leaders. Two are named. I won't do the labour of counting lines of dialogue, but there are only a handful for all of these characters combined.

Throughout the game, these "other characters" exist to be beaten down in service to the plot, as quest markers in service to the plot, or to be saved in service to the plot. If you are lucky, they might have names, but they will never be so fleshed out that you could imagine an internal world for them. You can never imagine what their place in Thedas might be beyond the context you meet them in. They stand or sit or lie stationary at map markers, waiting to be talked to, and cease to exist once their dialogue tree is concluded.

The game tells you, at every possible opportunity, to keep moving. Move onto the next plot point, it says. Forget who you just talked to – they're not important like Neve, or Harding, or Lucanis, or Emmrich. You don't even need to know their names. They don't have an exclamation mark above their head. They weren't here five minutes ago, and they're not going to be here in five minutes. The words they say don't matter, it's just padding for the script to get you from Point A to Point B. Varric says you've got the elven gods Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain to take down, isn't that thrilling?

[joudama]

And this, I think, is why DA2 is my favorite game on the series and DATV is…the literally opposite of that.

I think it's absolutely wild how DATV and DA2 are complete opposites of each other almost down to the letter. I find this super interesting because both were 'rushed' (DAtV as it stands today only had a few years in development, even though there was a ten year gap because they kept scrapping things) and yet the developers chose to focus on completely different things when they knew they wouldn't have as much time as they'd like.

Like.

DAtV is an absolutely beautiful game in terms of graphics. Stunningly so. Even for the time it came out, DA2 had bad graphics.

DAtV has multiple interesting maps; even those without a lot of content are still varied and again, quite beautiful. DA2 reuses all it's dungeon maps without shame.

DAtV allows you to create a Rook with a unique backstory, race and appearance. DA2 you have to be human and you'll always have the same backstory.

HOWEVER DAtV doesn't give Rook a lot of real choices or personality options. Rook acts the same basically no matter how you play them. Hawke has three main personalities and when the game doesn't let you pick dialogue it will make Hawke speak in whatever of these three you most commonly pick.

DA2 is a game about systematic injustices, power and how you deal with both. DAtV scrubbed all systematic injustices from Thedas and made all that stuff background at best, completely ignored and forgotten at worst.

DA2 is full of companions who can be genuinely antagonistic with the player; they even have a rivalry system to account for the fact. A lot of cut scenes can end with you shouting or being mean to each other. DAtV everyone is nice and speaks in therapy speak. There's no real way to lose approval or to get mad at your companions.

DA2 has companions who hate one another; they're antagonistic if you bring them out and they are just mean a lot of the time. The closest DATV gets to this is Taash and Emmrich and rook 'solves' their fight super easily and then they get along great. Also, the reason they're arguing is just Taash finds Emmrich creepy not you know. A big political difference in opinion.

DA2 gives Hawke the chance to pick 'evil' options. You, personally, can kill your companions and you can also just be a dick. DAtV forces you to play as a hero all the way down to the heroic pre-written backstory.

There's I'm sure more contrasts. But I think what it comes down to is that DAtV prioritised being a 'good' game in terms of things like graphics, maps and had a more sanitised version of Thedas so 'everyone' could enjoy it. Whereas DA2 dropped the graphics and maps almost completely so it could focus on conflict, politics and interpersonal relationships.

And I think this kinda mirrors a LOT of modern gaming compared to games made 10 - 20 years ago. But it's even more starkly obvious because of the fact that they were both rushed so it's very clear what prioritises they picked.

[sailwiththedragonsatdawn]

watching choice based RPGs have a genre resurgence/comeback with 10/10 releases back to back only to have BioWare release garbage like Veilguard is so fucking disappointing

[blackberry-sage-tea]

To blame the individual developers instead of the dumbass executives at bioware for the destruction of Dragon Age as a franchise is just incorrect.

If Mark Darrah's video is to be believed, canceling Joplin and making Morrison into a multiplayer game wasn't EVEN motivated by profit or thinking it would sell better it was literally to create a post-hoc justification for stealing DA4's resources for Anthem by pushing it back into pre-production.

These people had contempt for and actively sabotaged their best selling game franchise because it was a narrative fantasy. It's not even greed, I don't know what the hell that is.

[ephemeralinstance]

immortality etc

The only thing Solas is ever allowed to say explicitly in VG about why he thinks the Veil should come down is to restore elven immortality. And while that isn't the most interesting of his motivations, there's still a lot of depth to this topic and I really wish they'd let us actually speak to him about it.

I don't think that everyone being immortal is necessarily a good thing. But I can definitely see that for someone born into a world where immortality was the default, the idea that death is now an inevitability would seem horrific and unbearable. And this would have been such an interesting conversation! Is the inevitability of death a good thing that gives meaning to life? Or does it just make everything futile in a sort of existentialist way? What would happen if one race of people were immortal while others were still mortal? What is the optimal length for a finite life? Can we convince Solas that he should accept the inevitability of death? Can he convince us that we shouldn't accept it? 

It's just ... even on this one topic there is so much richness. And that's not even touching all the deep ethical and metaphysical questions about his other motivations: spirit personhood, the idea of a 'natural state' of the world and what value that has, whether the generic use of magic adds to or takes away from human/elven/etc flourishing, what a good life looks like anyway. This is one reason why it's so frustrating that Rook is never allowed to discuss Solas' motivations with him; even putting aside the way in which it weakens his characterisation, there are just so many fascinating conversations we could have had with him while he was a captive audience and gosh it would have been a lot of fun to have them.

[0alix0]

based shit alreadyjaded.bsky.social.

it's funny how epler calls these comments "unhinged garbage", yet all the post was doing is criticizing his (un)professional behavior and asked questions about the narrative and the story HE created.

That's it!

and the questions are very spot on, actually. because the DA universe is build on coding and real-life parallels. so regardless if epler is just ignorant or actually believes in... all what we see in the VG. it's still his mistake and he should still learn to take accountability as a big boy he is

i chose to spend a decade of my life getting the game out there because it mattered to me that we finished telling the story we started in DAI.

do you??? is this why you abandoned literally EVERY set-up created in previous games? solas's agents, well of sorrows, mage-templar war resolution, divine victoria, fate of inquisition (because veilguard just changes 3 lines of dialogue for it)? and many more??

the idea that i 'hate Solas' and chose to sabotage him is brain rot to a level i cannot imagine.

ah but you can't really disprove of this, can't you? because all the behind the scene info just proves the opposite. you two are the Lead Writer and a Creative Director, who else are fans supposed to held accountable for all the bullshit in the story?

also a 40-something y.o. unironically says brain rot lol

i will be dealing with the burnout i developed for years.

pfft cry me a river you get more money and fame than you deserve

Congrats, dipsticks. (a way to treat your followers btw) You came in with enough spun-up-in-fandom-until-toxic takes to alienate the guy who sacrificed his mental and physical health fighting to have past Dragon Age respected as much as it was and give people who cared about Solas's arc a respectful ending. Great work, no notes.

and the "respectful ending" is basically gaslighting a former slave into believing he needs his master's """forgiveness""" to heal and lock himself into a eternal solitary confinement (unless of course you decide to punch him into solitary confinement first)

also grow some spines, you two. criticizing your behavior and your work (that you're paid for from our purses mind you) is not a personal attack

[marniethelordwizard]

I swear, there's such a niche place in the Dragon Age fandom for those who: 1) are critical of Veilguard and recognize the game's flaws, 2) realize the development process was plagued with ten years of mismanagement and mistreatment of Bioware employees, particularly the writers, which created huge limitations for what they could realistically achieve within that environment and time frame, and 3) believe we need to ultimately center our critiques within the context of highlighting those working conditions to avoid reproducing narratives that erase the pervasive abuse within the video game industry.

We should really just care more about workers than fictional characters.

[mythalism]

it's crazy to me how even though the shadow dragons are a prominent faction in thw game there's literally not a single side quest that involves setting free a group of slaves, hell why is neve's personal quest about some random boring ex enemy of hers and aiding a criminal syndicate instead of something involving helping the slaves (or even the poor) of tevinter??

they thought they couldnt be criticized on twitter if they didnt put any topics in the game that they had the potential to mishandle. amazing that they managed to be racist and weird about like 17 different things anyway

[sunlight-shunlight]

me staring into the distance:

so the evanuris/blight situation is that: solas managed to, at the height of his power + with all his ancient elf besties helping, seal them into the black city and make the veil. and this took so much out of him that he was basically comatose for 5000 years. ok fine.

but then in vg, his initial plan was to put them in a different jail, while the veil is still up (despite that weakening all magic significantly and making it difficult to even access the black city). and then he wants to tear down the veil afterwards, presumably expecting to still be awake to do so. despite not having his original orb or his ancient elf besties anymore? so it doesn't particularly make sense in general. similar to how he described what he wanted to do with the orb, you'd expect him to take out the veil first and then reseal/move the jail?

(and then he wanted to put them into a Regret Prison when he is the ONLY one out of that entire situation who feels any regrets... 😭)

then his more ambiguous-sounding veil removal motives of being depressed about elves/spirits and unable to see the modern world as worthy of existence... become almost irrelevant. bc it's kind of necessary for him to Do Something? or else everyone fully dies of turbo blight when the archdemons die and the black city inevitably opens?

but then no one really mentions the looming catastrophe of the blight part, and they handwave it at the end, and all act like he's being very unreasonable. which he is! but only bc they made him dumber than a rock and weirdly inconsistent in his capabilities, not bc his motivations were actually proven to be wrong. aaaaa.

[joudama]

This drove me absolutely fucking NUTS. It’s like there were no editors at all involved.

Oh, but remember, they didn’t want to force role play on you!!

Which one is it Bioware I'm begging you 😭

[thenevarranaccord]

What’s really jumping out at me on my second playthrough is that the writers of the first three games understood that your character was the main character. The Veilguard writers clearly thought that the main characters were their characters, the companions.

Every scene is about setting the companions up as cool or competent or sympathetic. Often, this is done at Rook’s expense. The companions get all the witty one-liners; Rook’s attempts at humor not only frequently fall flat, but are frequently called out for falling flat (even when they’re completely automatic and the player has no say in them).

The companions have all the knowledge and skills; Rook just brought them all together and gives them all pep talks so they can focus. I’m trying to edit out all of the comments where Rook is like “Um… what????” from my videos, and let me tell you, it takes WORK. There are A LOT of them. I can count on one hand the number of times when the Inquisitor or Hawke comes across as dumb, but it seems to be a built-in, unavoidable part of Rook’s character. I have not selected a single “purple” option in all of Act 1, and Rook is still coming across as the kid who tries to be the class clown to cover for the fact that he’s always confused. Rook’s role in most scenes is to say “Uhhh… what?” so that the companions look smart.

Rook is always the one offering sympathy and never the one getting it. No one actually comes to comfort you after Varric’s death. No one asks you how you’re feeling about having to lead the team now that Varric is gone. No one tries to reassure you or give you advice for dealing with the trickster god haunting your dreams. We’re told that Neve could keep Solas out of your head, but she never actually offers to do this for you. No one comforts a Shadow Dragon Rook when Minrathous is destroyed or a Grey Warden Rook when Weisshaupt is destroyed. Rook’s problems don’t matter. Only the problems of main characters matter.

Rook is a secondary character in their own story.

[joudama]

Now that Veilguard is out, this feels like he was trying to warn us.

[justanotherflemethstan]

veilguard is the most finished unfinished game ever. it's hard to explain if you haven't played it but it's the most polished half-baked experience I've ever had with a game

[joudama]

I can see so many of these.

A non-exhaustive list of things in Veilguard which might have been corporate mandates

"Solas is too sympathetic, make him more villainous"

"Make the language more modern so it appeals to The Youth TM"

"There are too many politics in this game, and politics cause controvercy and hurt sales, make it less political"

"Slavery is an icky subject, mention and depict it as little as possible"

"Cozy games make a lot of money, make it cozier and about found family"

"Still too sympathetic, have him kill off a major character or something"

"Gamers don't want to make choices, they'll be on their phones all through cutscenes anyway, limit roleplay as much as you can in this RPG"

"The kids like funny characters, make the main character funnier"

"Make it more like [current game in the news that's selling well]"

[ofwolvesandshatteredshields]

yoinked from here. losing my shit, [CROSSED ARMS] is so real