#where is he bioware where is my dorian

[emmg]

I need Dorian to show up in Veilguard for the sole purpose of shaming the egg. He'll take one look at Solas, flip him off for breaking his bff Lavellan's heart, and say something like "Ah, yes, the ultimate midlife crisis. Bravo! I'd spit on you, but frankly, I'm not here to help with your tragic skincare routine."

[pinacoladamatata]

if they Tamlen solas' ass, that might just be IT for me

[st0rm3tv]

HAS ANYONE FOUND DORIAN??????????? IS MY BOY OKAY????????

[divine-donna]

inquisition companions react to the inquisitor missing half their arm

because bioware didn’t wanna give it to us, i decided i’d just do it myself. (insert thanos meme) even though i am like years late to the hype.

the game is like 9 years old at this point, but spoilers ahead.

do keep in mind this is my own personal interpretation of each character. it may not be accurate to your own interpretations. (also i know leliana is technically not a companion in inquisition but i included her anyways)

cassandra pentaghast

if cassandra could plunge a knife into the heart of solas, she would. she would not let him get away with betraying you and taking the anchor along with your arm. you had basically fallen into her arms when you emerged from the portal and she had to carry you back to halamshiral. for the days you were unconscious, cassandra was anxious and extra prickly. there were many times where cullen would have to talk her down from her anger. even varric did too.

dorian pavus

the first thing he did was crack a joke. the atmosphere was tense and it just slipped out. “i asked you to come back in one piece, not missing one.” safe to say, the other companions did not approve of his joke. dorian was set to return to tevinter after being notified of his new position as a magister, but he delayed the return to his homeland for you. he sat in your room as you lied unconscious, barely breathing, leg anxious bouncing up and down. when you awoke, you were immediately met with a large and tight hug from him. he knocked the air out of your lungs from that.

blackwall

blackwall admires you. in fact, everyone would go so far as to say he adores you. he thinks of you as strong, capable, almost infallible. you closed rifts, you closed the big green tear in the sky, and you defeated corypheus! what couldn’t you do? all your feats proved to him that you were the strongest leader he could ever know. and yet, you were still mortal. you left the eluvians mortally wounded and exhausted beyond belief, your eyelids so heavy and ready to close so you may drift off into the black void of sleep. blackwall would not let you, not until you were taken away to be cared for. you found him sitting besides you, awake and on guard. your mortality was his reminder that you and him were the same, even if your lives appeared to be completely different. and he understood that the world would need a leader like you and that is dangerous.

iron bull

the bull could feel a stronger kinship with you that day. it appears that the both of you lost something. he betrayed the qun for the inquisition, thus losing a part of himself, his people. you lost a literal part of yourself, something you had to come to terms with after having the anchor for two years. to say iron bull was shaken up would be an understatement. he was getting cassandra to hit him with sticks for days on end while you lied unconscious. he wondered what would’ve happened if he was with you, if maybe...he could’ve stopped solas. but reminiscing never did anyone any good.

cole

as much as he wanted to help you, cole couldn’t. he also understood that you wouldn’t accept his help, no matter how much he insisted. so instead, he did the best thing he could do: help tend to your injuries. what was curious was that he could feel very little of your pain. when he felt your pain two years ago after forming the inquisition, it was concentrated in your hand and forearm. with it gone, you felt at peace. the primary source of pain for you had been washed away. perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, he thought.

sera

sera’s immediate reaction is, like dorian, to crack a joke. everyone is used to her eccentricity. but it felt different this time around. while you laid unconscious, recovering from the long battle, she occupied herself. she had to busy her hands and her legs, keep moving, keep her mind busy. because if she sat too still for even a second, then her mind would think about the worst outcome. she would get images of you, dead, because solas had betrayed you, betrayed her, betrayed the inquisition. hell, he betrayed the world! that knob! thinking he knew what was best! sera’s all the more relieved when it’s revealed you survived. she bursts through the door to see you and hug you tightly, complaining about how much you scared her.

varric tethras

in all honesty, varric should’ve been more prepared to expect...well, the unexpected. he had expectations of you coming out unharmed, untouched. obviously, that was not what happened. and he wondered if he was responsible for this. he had been one of the many people to support you as the inquisitor two years ago, suggesting it. he wondered if he made the wrong decision. but also, part of varric was relieved. he lost someone close to him two years ago. he didn’t know if he could handle losing you too.

vivienne de fer

the court would devour tales of the eluvians and how you managed to survive. that was vivienne’s first thought. people would be talking about you for centuries to come, certainly. and yet, she knew in her soul that was not what you would want. she does her best to minimize what rumors spread when you first emerge from the eluvians and help give you privacy. behind closed doors, vivienne checks on your injuries. part of her is amazed that the anchor was removed so cleanly.

josephine montilyet

josephine has seen many things ranging from serious to just plain absurd. when she was alerted that you had returned with many serious injuries, including the loss of half your arm, she sent messages to get the best possible doctors in all of orlais to help attend to you. the woman was definitely stressed beyond belief. but when she wasn’t trying to get everyone from backing off from you or getting people to look at you, josephine was attending to you herself. you awoke to find her wiping some sweat off your face and when she noticed, she muttered about how great andraste was and embraced you tightly.

cullen rutherford

your knight-commander appeared to take the news very well, much to the disapproval of cassandra. but the moment cullen was alone, in private, he flipped a table, causing everything to crash. all he could feel running throughout his body was regret, guilt, and anger. regret and guilt for not having gone with you. he should’ve. because if he did, maybe you would have came back alright. anger directed towards solas because the apostate had betrayed you, the inquisition. and everything you and him had worked towards was going to crumble. all of his hard work, leliana’s, cassandra’s, josephine’s, it’d all be for naught. cullen ends up spending a lot of time alone while you’re unconscious. he prays to andraste and the maker to distract himself from any wandering thoughts going towards lyrium. certainly the new mabari hound he decided to adopt on a whim helps with distractions at least.

leliana

the woman has seen many things in her lifetime, having experienced the fifth blight itself and been part of that fight against the archdemon. still, things aren’t easy when you come back from the eluvians missing half of your arm. even if it goes against all her duties, leliana stays with you until you wake up to make sure you’re alright. you’re the inquisitor after all and it’s vital that you’re still alive.

solas

he’s the one who took it. you think he cares?

in all seriousness, it gave him no pleasure to remove your arm for the anchor. even if his plan was...well, shoddy we should say, the anchor was going to kill you. he had no choice. carrying your hand and forearm around felt heavy. he could carry it just fine but what made it heavy was the burden that came with his plan to tear down the veil and bring doom upon the world in a desperate attempt to bring it back to what it once was. and also, the burden of having harmed you.

[vigilskeep]

since we’re heading to minrathous in veilguard i’ve been thinking abt a tevinter rook - do u have any thoughts on tevinter’s gender roles? i was wondering abt the male chantry structure + dorian’s talk of the magister/altus class being obsessed w bloodlines and heirs… ik dragon age gender lore is inconsistent lol but i’d love to hear your opinions anyway 🙏 i absolutely trust u more than i trust bioware

i DO have thoughts!!

i think the most sensible reason for tevinter to have its more patriarchal structure is religious. in the south, andraste is venerated above all else, and this is (canonically) the given reason that women are looked to for spiritual guidance, whereas men are considered vulnerable to the dangerous passions of maferath. however, in the tevinter chantry, they like to put another male figure front and centre: archon hessarian, the tevinter leader who mercifully(ish) slew andraste on the pyre rather than let her suffer, and later converted both himself and the imperium as a whole to andrastianism.

everyone andrastian likes this guy; it’s his blade of mercy on the templar uniform, and so on. but the tevinters like him even more so (again, canonically) and consider him the most important of andraste’s disciples. (because he’s the tevinter one, obviously.) ergo, more important than maferath. so my line of thought would be a) they do not have the aversion to male spiritual guidance that the south does, because their leading man is hessarian not maferath, and b) hessarian was an archon of the imperium and the leader of andrastianism in tevinter in his day, so of course all future archons and tevinter divines should follow in his footsteps.

i can see how that would cause a serious religious divide in the early schism days. from the southern perspective, spiritual leadership is being handed over to the untrustworthy, and hessarian is being falsely idolised. from the northern perspective, perhaps the female leaders of the southern chantry are going too far by assuming themselves as heir to andraste herself, which i can see being considered blasphemous compared to simply following in the example of one andraste’s disciples. we do know canonically that one of the big pre-schism issues was the sunburst throne refusing to recognise tevinter’s male grand clerics. (which is why another big reason for initially choosing a male divine when the schism began would have simply been defiance. i’m trying to think through why that decision lasted aside from dorian’s comment that they’re still doing it just because it’s the done thing.)

anyway, it for sure makes sense for that to filter into culture more broadly, especially given that it affects who gets into the top seats of power in such a status-driven society. and as soon as that’s true of a group, the people who do have access to those seats are rarely quick to open them up to more competitors. i can see altus women instead taking political roles where their primary ambition is to push their husbands, sons, brothers, etc. into these positions. classic scheming mother historical archetype

the altus obsession with bloodlines makes perfect sense to me, it’s kind of the natural progression of venerating something that can apparently be inherited by blood, and seeing that thing as a sign of literal divine favour that puts you into a special class above the rest. the only thing i would dislike narratively is any implication that this actually works to increase ability, lmao. tevinter may produce more powerful mages because the study of magic is so much more supported there, and because they’re not, you know, preventing the mages having families and thereby decimating the natural population, but let’s not start acting like fantasy eugenics actually makes mages from these mage families inherently more powerful, because that would be incredibly stupid writing. they’re just more likely to be mages because their family are all mages, and then they have far more training resources at hand. and less religious hangups. (luckily all the evidence so far supports dragon age for once not taking a weird angle. it’s not like any of our randomly born mages are somehow not a match for dorian or danarius or whatever other altus we’ve seen in a fight.)

that got a bit distracted but those are some thoughts :)

[midorisudachi]

“Living a lie…it festers inside you, like poison. You have to fight for what’s in your heart.” – Dorian Pavus

I recently beat Dragon Age Inquisition for the third time! I love that game immensely: everything about it is wonderful. I chose a male Inquisitor - as a rogue - because I wanted to romance Dorian. The first time I played DAI, it was the female elf Lavellen – whom I named Zephyra – and she was a mage, and the romance with Solas was a bloody disaster & heartbreaking. (Damn you, Solas!) The second time I played as the human female Trevelyan – named Bryony (who you have seen me do two fanarts of) – a warrior, and romanced Cullen. (Cullen is so hot for a video game character…where can I find a man like that? Lol.) I hope you like this artwork!

Also: Happy Pride Month! 🌈 It’s actually a perfect time to submit this artwork. This was a lot of fun to create (a full colour piece). If you haven’t played the Dragon Age games, it is actually very LGBTQ friendly. You can make your characters gay, lesbian, or bisexual. There is even a transgender male in DAI, named Krem, who is a cool character. Bioware is open-minded, that’s for sure, so the DA series is for everybody. And omg, let me tell you that the conversations & bantering between the characters is hilarious!

⚠️Warning: Spoilers Ahead!⚠️

Dorian is quite the character…a sarcastic & witty lad. He is complex at first, especially regarding his history (how his father tried to “erase” who he truly was, when it came to his homosexuality). It was fun romancing him with Cedric (Trevelyan), who I made a rouge/assassin. So off course I had to draw my OC [male] Cedric Trevelyan with Dorian! Cedric is Dorian’s “Amatus”. I made them wear simpler outfits when I drew them, because near the end of the game, they were wearing complex armour. That stuff is hard to draw! I chose to draw Lilies by Cedric & Dorian, because if you romance Dorian, his tarot card shows him holding what looks like a Lily.

The two of them had this conversation near the end of the Trespasser DLC:

Cedric: “Whatever happens, I wouldn’t trade the years we’ve had together for anything. I love you.”

Dorian: “I knew you would break my heart, you bloody bastard.”

Lol! Awww, jeez, Dorian, just say you love my Inquisitor, too. I honestly really think that Dorian loved him, as stubborn as he was to admit it. At first I was annoyed when Dorian chose to go back to Trevinter, and I thought, “Darn you, don’t you dare pull a Solas on my Inquisitor, after all you've gone through with him!” However, after the game ends, it tells you what happens to the characters (depending on your choices). For me, the game said that Dorian’s “greatest strength lay in the lover he left in the south, but still conversed with via message crystal”, and “some claimed to have seen the Inquisitor on the streets on Minrathos on rare occasions, sneaking into the heart of Trevinter to aid his Amatus.” It made me happy to know that the Inquisitor and Dorian stayed together. I wonder if that will show up with the 4th game.

⚠️Spoilers Over!⚠️

Speaking of the 4th game, who is excited to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, to be released later this year? I watched the gameplay trailer and I am excited for it! I hope characters from DAI will be in it (so far, Varric & Solas have been shown).

Drawn with sepia Sakura Pigma Micron pens, then coloured in with a mixture of Copic Markers, Ohuhu Markers, & Zenacolor coloured pencils. White accents done with a Sakura gel pen & the gold accents were done with Golden brand acrylic paint.

Dragon Age Inquisition/Dorian Pavus/Inquisitor Trevelyan © Bioware & Electronic Arts

Artwork © of me, Jacqueline E. McNeese

[vangold]

Day 11 - Wander

Nother Even one. And I must say, to this prompt with Dragon Age as a theme nothing really felt more fitting than fracking Solas.

Let me be honest, not the biggest fan of the guy. As a person he kinda effed up in my eyes during my first playthrough with Carl as an Inquisitor - where they ended up to be very close friends before Solas did his thing there. I'm no big fan of betrayal and manipulation. And he was an absolute bitch towards Dorian souuu, yeah, I am so gonna pull his fracking ears from Mr Spock- to Roger Rabbit size next time they meet >:|

Anyway, apart from that, on a storytelling perspective I deeply appreciate Bioware throwing this dude after us. Check it, Disney! This is the whole "Good guy was the villain all along"-trobe done right. An adversary with depth and a refreshing plotline with all that dramatic development towards Inky and all that. I can't wait to see how this is gonna continue in Dragon Age 4 :3

I'm really satisfied how this one turned out....although I'm glad the gras swallowed that sad excuse of a foot XD

Ivy is always such a pain in the ass to add as a detail into a picture, but boy is it worht it everytime <333

[unsettlingcreature]

RIGHT OK SO thoughts. i have them.

MINRATHOUS. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. MINRATHOUS!!!!

It's beautiful. I want to see more of Minrathous and Tevinter in general, I am SO excited for the environments and buildings and- (muffled screaming).

Also Minrathous? Do you know who else might be in Minrathous? 🥺🥺🥺 i'm sorry i just want to see dorian again. But also, I hope we'll see Maevaris too! So badly!

edit: actually, I realised what the started segment where you run through the city with demons Fucking Shit up reminds me of! The scene in Origins where you are running across the bridge to get to the beacon at the battle of Ostagar! Having to ignore the carnage around you as you push forwards because the end goal is ultimately more important...

I love that we get a background for our Rook that seems to actually come up outside of the rare dialogue option. And speaking of dialogue, I like that we're keeping the dialogue wheel with contextual icons! I'm not a massive fan of the UI but it's by no means bad.

As they walked through the streets of Minrathous, I was for some reason reminded of Assassin's Creed. But once combat began, I was reminded of Shadow of Mordor...? I think it was the switching between blade and bow.

I can already tell that the combat is not really my thing. I'll cope. I'll suffer through it. I will say that it looks very fluid and makes me hope that we'll get a similar flow of combat (for rogues at least) similar to DA2 (which I think has the best dual-wielding combat of the three games imo). I'll probably still pick a mage for my first playthrough but rogues are tempting me.

The warning lines for ranged attacks is... interesting! I've seen something similar in a few games and it'll definitely make dodging a lot easier to figure out timings, even if I personally hate dodge-heavy combat. Again, I'll cope.

The music... oh my god, it's beautiful. As they approached the ritual site, you could hear the same motifs that were present in the Tresspasser's soundtrack (specifically Dark Solas Theme) (I go feral whenever I hear those strings btw). Very excited by the music, even the song that was present for the countdown before it started was beautiful!

Some of the dialogue was a bit... quippy. It was way better than the character reveal though. For the most part, it felt fine but then now and then I'd pull a face at a cheesy line or the odd sentence that felt stilted to me.

I didn't realise Neve was an amputee! I love the stylised prosthetic. I definitely need to get around to reading the comics.

The new direction with demons is interesting. They seem to be going more wraith-like, with even the pride demon no longer have legs and just kind of floating. The fiery dog-like are what I assume are meant to be rage demons? I actually love them, far more than the weird blobby things we've seen in past games.

The facial expressions are very good. Definitely not having the same issue as ME:A. Honestly, the animation in general is brilliant. I enjoyed watching Rook dart about during combat and his movement was very fun.

Whenever the pride demon teleported away just as Rook went to strike, I kept thinking "nah that would piss me off so much".

Seeing Varric approach Solas, I was like haha wow, imagine if they killed off Varric really early on in the game. I don't think Bioware would but it did genuinely put me on edge for a moment. Destroying Bianca though... Nah, somehow that's worse. Where's he going to get another one? :(

Also, hi Venatori! You're still around after ten years? Fucking hell, you'd think they'd have given up considering Corypheus was dunked on over a decade ago. Learn to take the L.

Finally, that shout from Solas as the ritual was disrupted... I think it's the angriest I've heard him, at least put against how he was in Inquisition. Also are we going to talk about the purple eyes? I think I'd like to talk about the purple eyes. Solas could get it. WHAAAAAT WHO SAID THATTTTT, THAT'S WILDDDDDDD...

[therookandthecrow]

Of course, my canon Rook will be a long-haired male elven mage with silver/white hair and either lavender, golden, silver or red eyes, high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, a sharp chin and if we can be blood mages he is definitely going to be one.

Hopefully the RP lets my Rook be a grim, sardonic, edgelord kind of a character so he can irritate his more chipper, bouyant companions and develop tension between him and Lucanis who is apparently a mage-killer.

He will still flirt with everyone else for the lolz before picking out Lucanis as his romance partner since it's a tradition for me to make my player character flirt with everyone before picking out my canon romance.

I will be transfering my world state where my Dorian romanced mage Lavellan Aedanthir is the Inquisitor, along with those where my chaotic, blood-mage Red Hawke Serenity who rival-romanced Anders was the Champion of Kirkwall, and the one where my megalomaniac, blood mage Warden Surana Mathalin who became the chancellor of Ferelden and romanced Morrigan was the Hero of Ferelden.

Later on I'd make other Rooks to romance everyone else. Although I am not a huge fan of Bioware as it is, I am still going to buy the game, because it's Dragon Age.

[v-arbellanaris]

irt the sera discussion from yesterday I would like to add that she's also dismissive of city elven culture—it just doesn't come up as much bc inquisition does its very best to ignore city elves' existence. the most memorable example for me is a quote from her WOT entry—"stupid tree. didn't go, didn't stay" or something like that. You're definitely right, her whole deal is just internalized racism, it's not strictly prejudice against the dalish like some people claim lol. (I believe anneapocalypse has a meta on this exact subject actually) very frustrating that there's barely a hint of growing out of it though—if it were some other flaw, maybe id be fine with it (I do love when characters get worse.), but given that it's a white writer writing internalized racism. well. but that's a subject that's been meta'd to death by better writers than I.

yeah, i love @anneapocalypse's sera meta, it was very compelling to think about!!! and idk! unfortunately, i DO know people irl who are like this (and don't seem to be getting any better about it). again, on its own, i think there's a lot of value to sera's story, even if it's not my story - the problem comes when we look at specific details in sera's writing and how her writing fits into the overall portrayal of elves - and dalish cultures, as well as city elves which as you've pointed out are almost entirely erased in dai which is truly horrific when you are directly dealing with the aftermath of the slaughter of thousands of elves in WEWH.

from that perspective, coupled with how minimal sera's growth is (especially if you're a lavellan that didn't romance her but had to deal with her internalised racism with no way to call it out as the PC without resorting to ableist insults) (and i use minimal here not to discount that her growth exists but how tiny it is compared to what we have to face in-game in terms of her internalised racism, and how most of her growth is shoved into codex entries or into trespasser and even then it's a couple of throwaway lines, at best)... it starts to feel a lot less like a well-intentioned portrayal of internalised racism, with some hits and misses, with the intention of resolution and self-love being the outcome.

and again, what IS IT with bioware and having their white characters dealing with fantasy racism??? like, i'm sorry, but sera is literally white. there's a black woman IN GAME and no one even ACKNOWLEDGES that racism/colourism towards her exists except for one tiny banter with cole for a SPLIT SECOND... and vivienne, a black woman growing up in a heavily andrastian-influenced circle of magi with chantry values... literally has no character arc... even though she's a black woman supporting incarceration of her own people... but the white elf's got an entire arc about internalised racism???????????????? what is the narrative reasoning behind this???

AND ANOTHER THING! the issues with sera are also an issue present with a lot of the other characters in dai - you discuss slavery once with dorian, where he gets defensive of it, and even as a lavellan romancing him, it never gets brought up again until bloody tevinter nights, which isn't even in-game material. you can't argue with cassandra to disseminate the cure for tranquility or get to change her mind on ANYTHING; you can't argue with cullen about mages; you can't argue with vivienne about the circles (not with actual logical arguments with any kind of nuance, which is a limitation OF THE GAME when they can give vivienne lines of nuance for her arguments for why the circle should exist); you can't argue with varric's centricism, etc, etc. even if you do get to confront them, it's one or two lines that are then mysteriously never touched on again in game. in da:o and da2, they didn't do this well either, but at least they had leliana come up to an elven warden after they correct her to apologise - there's clearly an acknowledgement of where she went wrong, and an intention to be better, etc, which is SUCH a fascinating writing direction. you don't have that in... any of the other games. none of the characters are allowed to be wrong, unless they're pushing for justice or equality or freedom in which case they will do something evil (like slavery or mass murder) to make you doubt the validity of their argument. instead they're representations of a specific stance and you're expected to just accept what they say as fact - which is incredibly ironic for a game that hides most of it's deep lore via conflicting codex entries for a sense of realism when it comes to reporting real life events.

it's incredibly exhausting.

[emmg]

If Dorian Pavus isn’t in Veilguard, I will physically implode and take the entire goddamn neighborhood with me. If October 31st comes and there isn’t at least a single pixel of that suave, wine-sipping bastard, I will personally knock on Bioware’s door, slap the nearest developer with a fish, and request an immediate lobotomy. And if Dorian “I’m too pretty to die” Pavus doesn’t waltz in, spits on Solas, flips him the bird, and blows him a kiss before setting his smug, egg-headed ass on fire, I will ascend to the astral plane just to haunt this game until it crumbles into dust.

[crossdressingdeath]

Cole: Your hand hurts. It's pulling you apart. Dorian: Why didn't you say something? I could have... I don't know, something! Alaris: Whatever happens, I wouldn't trade the years we've had together for anything. I love you. Dorian: I knew you would break my heart, you bloody bastard. Cole: We helped. All of us. I won't forget. Blackwall: One more fight, then. Let's finish this.

DIDN'T NEED MY HEART ANYWAY.

Everything about this is awful and painful. It's fine! Starting from the top, Cole is once again dropping all the metaphors and twisty speech in favour of the simple truth: Quiz is in pain. I mean, what else is there to say at this point? It's a lot more straightforward than the trauma he spends the main game pulling from people's heads: they're dying, and it hurts! Although the description of the Anchor as pulling Quiz apart is definitely interesting; I mean first off I hope he's not being entirely literal there (messy), but also that does fit with my theory that the Anchor is fatal to Quiz because it's not designed to be embedded in a mortal person who exists solely in the waking world. Even setting aside the possibility that the ancient elvhen (who the Anchor was likely designed for) might have been spirits, the orb was likely created pre-Veil (given Solas's post-Veil nap and all) and so the Anchor likely wouldn't work as intended in the post-Veil, separated world. A purely physical being like Quiz likely would be pulled apart in some sense or another as the Anchor tried to exist across both the waking world and the Fade like it was supposed to while attached to someone who Could Not Do That.

Anyway, potential lore implications aside. Dorian. Oh poor, poor Dorian. The way he's audibly right on the very edge of tears the whole time (and might actually be crying a bit on "you bloody bastard") is what you might call incredibly fucking sad! Like, he's accepted that Quiz truly loves him and intends to stay with him and even if they're physically apart for a time they will always have each other and Corypheus has been dealt with and he thought everything was working out fine... and now this. The man he loves is dying and there's nothing he can do and Quiz didn't even tell him. That "Why didn't you say something?" is heartwrenching. There was nothing he could've done, but even looking and failing to find a solution would've been better than looking back on the past two years that he spent blissfully ignorant and knowing that while he was enjoying their time together (and eventually left Quiz in Skyhold to go to Tevinter, thinking they had all the time in the world!) his lover was slowly dying. And of course there's the kick in the teeth that is that Quiz isn't even how he found out; it's Leliana who informs the companions, not Quiz. Bioware why wasn't it Quiz, Quiz should've told the companions, where is my cutscene where Quiz tells the companions what's happening, I want my angst.

And that "I knew you'd break my heart, you bloody bastard" is like... yeah! Dorian more than any other LI possibly across the whole series is very aware that even if Quiz never willingly leaves him the role of hero is an incredibly dangerous one. But by Trespasser he seems to have settled on that front; he's talking about leaving for Tevinter for the foreseeable future and while he's clearly not happy about it there's no sense that he's bracing himself to lose Quiz! So he finally starts to get past the fear of Quiz breaking his heart by leaving or dying, and that's when this happens! Dorian always knew the odds that falling for the hero of the story would end in heartbreak, and just as he's beginning to think that maybe they're getting past that danger he learns that Quiz is dying, and was quite possibly aware he was dying the whole time they were together. Although of course the biggest tragedy is that we don't get to really get into that because this is all we get because Bioware didn't bother to include even a cutscene where Quiz tells just their LI what's going on- I am just never going to be over that okay.

Also Blackwall is here. I actually like him so much more than I did having been using him as my primary warrior this run (I'm actually kind of tempted to change my planned order and do a Blackwall romance next, I'm thinking mage Trevelyan for that?), and I do love how he's very much down to business about the situation. His friend is dying, but before that they have one last fight to get through. If this is the last time he'll be able to fight alongside his dear friend and comrade in arms, the person who gave him another shot at life after everything he did, someone he respects above all others, he's going to make it one hell of a last fight. He can't save them, but he can give them the send-off they deserve, and dammit he is going to do it.

[fthechantry]

So a post by @zevsurana reminded me of my anger toward Bioware for not giving you the option to marry Dorian at the beginning of Trespasser, or at any point during Trespasser. Like.. Dorian and the Inquisitor is one of the best romances in that godforsaken game and the only marriage options are Sera and Cullen. Even just a quick little proposal from the Inquisitor when he thinks he is dying and Dorian accepting while crying and thinking his love is going to die. Just some sort of promise of the continuation of their relationship.

Dorian has never loved/been loved before so he doesn’t think that marriage is in the cards for him and the Inquisitor proves to him that he is worthy of love and that he can do anything he sets his mind to. Instead, they have him leave the love of his life to go back to Tevinter without him because he “needs to do it on his own”. I just can’t get over this fact at all. 

When the mark is killing the Inquisitor, Dorian has some of the most heart-wrenching dialogue that proves he cares SOOOO much, but no, can’t marry the man. Even though he deserves it.

Dorian: *clearly holding back tears*  Why didn’t you say anything? I could have done.... something. 

Inquisitor: I wouldn’t trade the years we’ve spent together for anything.  I love you, Dorian.

Dorian: *stifling crying* I knew you would break my heart, you bloody bastard. 

They even hint at the fact that they could have/should have been married in Trespasser with a romanced Dorian stating:

Dorian: Cold stone, dark tunnels, and surrounded by extremely hostile Qunari.

Dorian: Not the place I'd have chosen for a romantic homecoming.

Inquisitor: Wandering into peril is practically how we met.

Dorian: Oh, yes. Practically a second honeymoon.

Like this is so not fair and shows Bioware’s opinion that mages are not allowed to be happy and that love is only a game for them. There is literally no other reason for you not to be able to marry him. If it was because he would appear in later games, this makes no sense because you can marry Alistair and he shows up without the Warden giving an excuse as to where they are at all times. So, Bioware, explain.

[icespyders]

i honestly really really hate being so negative. dragon age is my very favorite video game series; KotOR was my first bioware game, and i had a lot of fun in mass effect, but i fell in love with dragon age, warts and all. my favorite of the three is DA2 for god's sake, clearly i'm a very forgiving soul when it comes to these fucking games; i've always been so taken by the character writing and the lore that i don't mind all the jank. the gameplay never got in the way of my exploring and romancing and codex-hunting. and some part of me was truly desperately hoping i could find it in my heart to get excited about Veilguard after the first trailer like ruined my entire sunday but i watched this gameplay video twice and i just hate it. the second time i watched i kept notes and i didn't realize how long it ended up, like, it's just this infinite depressing list of things that i didn't like. so i'll try to organize my word vomit. let's start positive.

STUFF I LIKED:

Minrathous looks cool, though i'm pissed we seem to spend so little time there. but it looks totally different from everywhere else we've been in the series and that's cool! the neon-y magic lighting, the big ominous circular floating tower, the narrow streets - some of the layout reminds me of kirkwall which is apropos since kirkwall was originally a tevinter city. so that's nice

Neve is hot! her design is cool and very tevinter and I like that. but the dialogue is so generic high fantasy garbage that I feel like I only got a sliver of her personality (confident + sense of humor which is honestly not much to go on for personality but i'm searching for crumbs here). i'll definitely be interested in getting to know her better, once i inevitably get brain damage and trick myself into playing this shit when it's on sale for like $3 in a year and a half

We only got a little bit of it but I like the reactivity/mention of backstory, anything that acknowledges player choice! Like neve's response to rook's stoic/direct dialogue line, and all the mentions of rook's faction in dialogue, that's all very nice

I don't mind the map markers/waypoints broadly but they're not necessary for this railroaded gameplay segment we see in the trailer. it'll be useful for other quests i guess

I also don't care that we're back to the DA2/DAI-style dialogue wheel with tone tags. i'm glad it's the same icons from DAI so i don't have to learn new hieroglyphics. i know a lot of people bitch about it but it's the neatest way to express the options imo

LORE????

i know a lot of these plot points are set up in supplemental novels and whatever and i personally feel like bioware needs to be banned from putting plot-critical information in novels and comics that nobody in the world wants to read. i've been playing and re-playing dragon age games regularly since 2018. i have never ONCE wanted to read any of this material. but apparently neve and one or two of the other companions are featured in Tevinter Nights and The Missing and whatever and i'm just fed up. no. i play the games. include the information there

so the shadow dragons faction is linked to tevinter/based in tevinter, but broadly, not just in minrathous, based on rook's dialogue about how he's unfamiliar with the city when the others expect him to know more. probably they're also linked to dorian? maybe shadow dragons is dorian's faction of non-horrible magisters?

bioware said in the developer Q&A that it's been 8 years since trespasser. that is absurd. wtf took solas so long to do whatever he's doing, what was he waiting for. the end of trespasser made it seem like disaster was imminent, but apparently solas needed 8 more years to find his little plot knife and set up all those incredibly unstable pillars

Where is the Inquisitor/inquisition??? Why is varric in charge of this???? Esp talking to solas, the end of trespasser makes it very personal between the inquisitor & solas and now they're just AWOL. the fact that inquisition isn't even a faction you can pick according to the developer Q&A is such a mistake, them saying inquisition isn't a major faction in the game is shocking to me. why does nothing matter

The venatori?? The venatori????? they're back but not the inquisitor?????? i thought i killed you losers

so who's that at the end, two of the other evanuris. Solas accidentally freed them from their prison bc rook fucked up the ritual. that's a fine hook but i hate the entire retcon of the evanuris lore but that's a longer rant

ART STYLE/UI

oh boy

the rain effect/puddle effect looks like it's from another game + why is it raining everywhere??? the huge ghibli rain droplets on everyone's clothes look weird, they're ginormous and so prominent. why is everyone is wearing hydrophobic clothes lmao

the interact button is ew. the approval/disapproval UI looks weird and it's in a weird place on the screen. the demon designs are bad. the hair textures are suspect. again, what's up with the hydrophobic clothes. but i lost it with neve's snowflake spell effects hahaha oh my god it looks so cartoony and weird, it's so unserious. those snowflakes are SO BIG!!! and SO PROMINENT!! everything has its moments of looking weirdly cartoony; the walls in minrathous stuck out to me as just looking odd in a way i can't quite put my finger on, the walking through the eluvian effect looked SO bad that my immediate thought was "oh wow that can't be the final version"

the lip-sync is...weird sometimes. I can't quite put my finger on why that's bugging me either but it's disturbing my eye

they got rid of so much of varric's chest hair, it's a felony. i also don't like harding's re-design, i feel like they tried too hard to make her pretty and i barely recognized her at first glance

it looks better than the reveal trailer but i don't love it

it's so funny how rook changes armor mid-cutscene. they clearly cut out a menu of the player setting equipment but the first time I watched the thing, I blinked and rook had fully changed clothes and it made me bust out laughing

finally: lol you can see texture pop-ins even in the gameplay reveal video (rook's armor around 8:00) they still can't optimize a game for shit

DIALOGUE

how did they fuck up the dialogue sweet god

right off the bat: the exposition is really clunky, enough so it made me wonder whose benefit it's for. do they really think people will pick up this game without playing at least DAI first? varric is explaining shit that no one in their right mind in-universe wouldn't already know, like "solas bad! breaking the veil bad!" i know that. bioware hates making games for people who already like their games

the dialogue overall is just...boring mostly. super predictable and utilitarian. i get like zero personality out of anybody, like i noted with neve in her intro. i get the SENSE of a personality but it's like. drinking la croix. just a hint. harding is particularly boring (and, side note & apparent hot take: everyone is acting like harding was a big fan favorite and i'm like. she's fine. it was nice to chat with her in DAI in every new region, just to see a familiar face, but narratively she brings very little to the table for me, she's not that interesting. and I don't get how everyone's acting like she was an obvious choice for a returning NPC who gets the promotion to companion. I'd rather have like. Josephine or somebody who had an actual character arc in DAI. Krem from the chargers (i know he can die so it can't be him but i'm dreaming here, sue me). Briala from WEWH. fuck, I'd be more interested in maryden the minstrel honestly, then we have half an excuse to bring cole back too, I feel like he probably has some reaction to all this veil-destroying shit. cole is better friends with solas than varric ever was, why isn't he here talking to solas. isn't varric still the viscount of kirkwall. why is he here at all). the delivery of the dialogue is really bland too, it's like all the actors are reading their lines for the first time and whatever idiot at bioware's in the booth with them was like "ya that's a wrap" bc they wanted to go to lunch sooner

DISHONORABLE MENTION: the entire dialogue exchange in arlathan forest btwn neve and harding is egregiously bad. "I've never seen anything like it!" "The tremors are getting worse!" "We've got demons!" it sucks

COMBAT

i'm just so pissed off

it uh. i hate it. it's my least favorite thing by far and it dashed my hopes the hardest. i can tolerate ugly UI and questionable art and a dumbass story, it's dragon age, that's what i'm here for. but it simply doesn't look like a game i'd enjoy playing. it reminded me of God of War 2018, like the leakers said way back when, and also like the Batman Arkham games with that little alert effect around rook's head and the dodging/parrying and the combos. but it's not what i come to dragon age for and i'm really bummed out. the additional details from the developer Q&A didn't make me feel any better (3 abilities??? i thought DAI was stingy with just 8, to say nothing of DAO and DA2 which, by endgame, grant you so many abilities that you can't even use them all in one fight. i like playing mages, i only get 3 spells? fuck that). it looks like a fixed camera focused on rook in combat, so you're getting attacked from offscreen and there's nothing you can do about it. the little lines showing you how projectiles will move is lame. the pop-ups about picking up gold are silly. i can't control companions??? what the fuck game even is this

I hate the action wheel. I hate that it takes up the whole screen, and it seems you can only pause when you're doing the action wheel. gross

so I see the little line with the dots on the bottom during combat that indicates when you can use special attacks. question: does each companion get their own bar for their own abilities, or does the whole squad draw on that one pool of points/resources/whatever. bc I have a bad feeling it's the latter

lol @ fighting those venatori goons on the edge of a cliff and you can only knock them off once their health bars are empty, you can't shove them off to kill them quicker. you wish you were bg3

it's like they made it to be played on consoles/controllers not PC

10 xp for killing like 8 demons?????

VARRIC & SOLAS??? STORYLINE?????

seriously, can anyone explain to me why talking solas down is varric's job. for real. it's been 8 yrs since trespasser and we're only just now getting to the evil plan???? the fuck is solas waiting for

harding & varric are suddenly besties with solas??? lmao. are harding and solas ever in the same room together in DAI, seriously. i know varric and solas have friendly banter exchanges but all of that content is determinant, the only actual quest that links them is cole's quest and they spend that whole quest respectfully disagreeing

anyway. varric goes to talk to solas (it should be the inquisitor doing that but ok) and solas destroys bianca (death penalty for that alone tbh) and then they just like...keep standing there talking??? why isn't solas trying to hurt him or anything. also, why is he so dumb that rook can sneak around and knock over a pillar to ruin his ritual. how does this ruin the ritual. he's so stupid. why can't varric just tackle him, we're all just STANDING THERE waiting for the world to end

"The veil is a wound inflicted on this world!!" ...yeah inflicted by...you...right solas...come the fuck on. shut up

this intro in minrathous is basically the beginning of me3 including walking across thin planks and doing lame auto-platforming with a recurring character from a previous game while the world is getting exploded around you. come on

THIS IS JUST FUNNY

Varric about Solas, a career liar who he knew for maybe a year and is now actively trying to destroy the world: he's my friend!!! Varric about Anders, who he hung out with every day for 6+ years and merely blew up a church to start a war, which was not a world-destroying event: hes dead to me!!!!!!!

man oh man i'm just. aaaaaaaugh

i think a real big problem in dragon age that bioware clearly has no idea how to handle is...hmm how to describe it. narrative compounding?? the weight of all these games filled with choices that somehow have to cohere over one narrative despite being written and developed by whole teams of different people over the course of like 20 years. it's a problem mass effect doesn't have, at least not in the original trilogy, since the original trilogy is all about shepard. so it's easier to cohere all those choices together, and in ME3 i was actually really satisfied by the sensation of continuity and completion i ended up with, how many characters reappeared and remembered how i'd interacted with them before. i've always liked playing someone new in dragon age, but it makes it really difficult for the story to track all these previous decisions and ensure they have weight. and everyone's gonna get attached to different characters and questlines and outcomes and feel like they're important, but not all of them can actually BE important. i understand that. that's just part of the RPG experience. but i feel we're reaching a point in dragon age where each subsequent game disregards increasingly critical aspects of the previous game's story and it's making so much of the prior games feel retroactively...worthless. like. where's the inquisition? did nothing i do in that game matter? the developer Q&A mentioned that you'll design your inquisitor in the character creator, so clearly they're part of the game, so why ALSO say the inquisition's not a significant faction in the game? wtf are we DOING??? and obviously the Warden's been AWOL since DAO and i doubt that'll change, and the developer Q&A mentioned the Here Lies The Abyss choice won't make an impact so that possibly rules Hawke out too, and as the games go on it just feels more and more absurd that these past heroes have nothing to do with current crises, and all the timeskips create increasingly long lengths of time between each game, making new appearances from old characters seem more and more unlikely. and so many of the companions/old heroes can die in their respective games, so if bioware decides, hey, let's bring merrill back or whoever, how do we write around that? there's just too many choices, but the POINT of the games is the choices, and it's just become impossible to account for everything, but ignoring past plot beats/decisions/characters is frustrating for people like me, who play and replay and try different options and speculate about what might happen next based on their own specific choices. and some of it is understandable. like, i'm biased in favor of my preferred characters and questlines, obviously, and i can't always get what i want. but it's such a bizarre choice for something like...oh idk THE ENTIRE INQUISITION to stop mattering. ugh. augh!!!!! i can't take it

IN CONCLUSION

if varric dies in this game you will see me on the news

[rivilu]

Watched absolution because I saw a certain spoiler and was intrigued, loooonggg post of spoilers and thoughts under the cut

Are we are really surprised the supercop zealot is bioware's canon divine? lmao.

I generally liked the cast of characters quite a lot, Roland Lacklon and Qwydion most of all, Miriam is cool too, just not top spot for me. she's like. Number 4 on my list. Of surviving characters that is.

Rip Fairbanks. Made the rookie Ser Jory mistake of mentioning his loving wife more than once within the intro of the series. You will be missed.

The writers really said make them think we will finally switch up the Mage Is Always The 'Traitor' reveals (that aren't even true for games 1 and 2 but the joke is marketable so who cares for accuracy right) but then just do the same thing again. I have a feeling they think they are playing 4d chess when really it's just predictable.

The action was well executed and I liked the romance with Roland and Lacklon, it was cute :)

The show handled Tevinter better than I expected but my expectations were subterranean so that doesn't mean much.

Still don't care for the way bioware deals with blood magic. With Dorian we finally had a smart opinion on it [that the writers didn't try to stamp out or treat as stupid, sorry Merrill]- that it's simply a tool as long as there's no victims, but here we backpedal again into the narrative going 'anyone that even THINKS of blood magic is and always will be evil full stop'. Yes we're talking about a Magister here i'm not defending Rezaren in specific I'm just weary of how they'll treat it going forward.

Speaking of the guy, he was fine as a villain. pretty decent portrayal of a guy whose position of power deludes him into thinking his goal is noble and righteous no matter what, even to the detriment of the people he's supposedly trying to help, because well. He never saw them as people in the first place. 'Family' maybe, whatever that's supposed to mean to him, but still property. Things he gets to do whatever he wants to do with.

Miriam using his harrowing as an example of a moment he chose not to defend her or her brother though, is kinda meh. Bc girl, he was actively trying and failing not to get possessed, his mother's the one to blame for that specific instance and you KNOW it, I know we had to see that scene for exposition but i'm peeved jdshfjd I bet there were maaany more backstory examples of him being shit to choose from anyhow.

There was an Attempt at moral grayness at least two times in the show, with Tassia and Hira, and they are both... interesting.

Tassia imo does it better, as as the knight commander she can be safely [and firmly] put in the villain box, but the added levels of grey with her caring for her people's safety, opposing the venatori etc make her interesting to watch in a way where I may not be rooting for her but I don't want her to die either, yanno? She's a bit like if Aveline were an anti-villain, and actually decently well written at that. She gets spot 5 of my list.

Now Hira. Is a prisoner of that good ol Mage Betrayal Russian Roulette. I'd seen a small spoiler about her being up to no good before watching, but even without that, when Fairbanks stabbed her I could just SNIFF that red herring. Again, the writers may think they're playing 4d chess but I know not making a mage (or more) the villain, is to them what apples are to doctors. Then her motivation is just. Not convincing to me. Her family was influential tevinters that wanted to improve conditions for the oppressed, then they were killed and/or ran out the country by the venatori for it. so... she jumps right to ethnic cleansing as the solution?

(And I do mean right to it. She did go to the inquisition first but that's what she wanted to get out of it.)

Collateral damage is a funny way of referring to innocent people's lives queen!

Idk something about that feels familiar. Betrayal, a mage that jumps to genocide, yet said mage is somehow granted more lenience by the narrative than that stance should EVER allow? Because here's the thing. no matter HOW fucked a country is, how terrible the politics and power structures are, 'wiping the country out' IS NEVER A MORALLY GREY THING. IT'S AS BLACK AS IT GETS. it is the power structure itself that must be targeted. (you know, the thing Anders tried to do and gets eternally condemned for?) Wanting to massacre an entire population is not an opinion that's up for discussion, it is not worthy of redemption, and it should not be written as if it is. This pattern of character writing is just. Concerning to me. Some of the characters with the most morally bankrupt stances being passed off as grey. And I could get far deeper into it here, nearly did in fact, but It's a tad too late in the night for a 5 page essay on fantasy and real world politics intersection. I'll just leave it at ''bioware's centrism is doing what centrism does best and blinding them to their world's actual political power dynamics and I think it's going to bite them in the ass sooner or later''

But enough of that, let's try to get back to something funny shall we?

The cheese jokes. Bioware please, the horse, stop, stop it's already dead!

(i dont actually mind but that was my original reaction so here you go sdfhjs)

Dragon cool. Like that it stays alive.

ok, sorry that's all I got. We have to tackle the elephant in the room now folks and i'm afraid I am not optimistic.

So. Meredith motherfucking Stannard is still alive and kicking. And while I can completely understand why people are excited, AN ACTUALLY GOOD VILLAIN IS BACK, WOOHOO! -i just can't help but think. When? When will this plot thread be handled? Because as much as I wish the titular character of dreadwolf would drop dead by act one, I highly, highly doubt it hjsdfjf. And if she can't be the main villain, or at least what Howe was to Loghain, then I don't want her to be in da4. Because that game has SO MUCH SHIT to tackle, with Elven Gods and Titans, the egg and also Antiva and the Qunari now for some fucking reason? Frankly I don't think they can even do THIS sum of things justice in a single game, unless things with the gods take a different turn and they aren't what solas said/villains for us to fight (please I hate the slavery thing so fucking much just for once retcon something to the benefit of religious minorities bioware i'm fucking BEGGING) so adding Meredith to the mix is not something I can picture working out. I don't want to get excited for her to be back (She was the spoiler that got me to watch the series) only to have it be a repeat of the templar/mage war in inq where she's lukewarmly taken out by act 1.

Also before I do an all in all, we all got that Hira is getting Played right. Like I dont like her much(at all), as stated previously, but she's still a mage. working for Meredith motherfucking Stannard. Is it too early to call her eventually dying from that dumbass decision orrr..? Because yes girly, she also wants to genocide your home country, but she has VERY different reasons from you and you're almost guaranteed to be first on the chopping block the moment the red lyrium cracks. (i dont find this bullet point bad writing btw this is just razzing the characters for fun jhsdj)

ok so all in all. the show's alright. I highlighted more of the bad than the good here because anything past da2 has that effect on me sadly, but the characters do Carry as per usual. And i'd say it's worth a watch for the action shots alone. Some of my fears of Bioware's direction were confirmed, and i am still not at all enthused about da4, but if a season two comes out I'll probably watch it. unnecessarily long post over, adiós.

[midorisudachi]

"The Storyteller"

Here is the 3rd art piece for my “Countdown to Dragon Age Day” (which will be in December), where I plan on submitting artwork like this (for each playable character) every other Monday. If you could so kindly visit/view my previous Dragon Age fan arts, I would greatly appreciate it. Also, PLEASE let me know if you have done DA artwork as well, that way I can view it.

It's been a bit of a fun challenge to figure out what kind of background to create for each character. I am inspired by the DAI tarot artwork. Also, have you noticed I draw plants from DAI next to the names? With Inquisitor Bryony Trevelyan, it is Embrium. For Solas, it is Royal Elfroot. And for Varric, it is Dragonthorn!

I find Varric to be quite the intriguing character and he indeed brings comedic relief to the game (besides Iron Bull). I was so excited to see Varric the first time I played DAI, since I liked him in DA2. (I've played DAI twice!) His commentary is funny when using him in the battle party, especially the bantering between he and Cassandra:

Cassandra: How do you write as you do, Varric? I can never find the proper words.

Varric: You. Write. Really?

Cassandra: I've needed to describe events in reports. They always come off as...

Varric: Dry? Boring? Lifeless? Stale?

Cassandra: You... are an ass.

Varric: (Chuckling) Just... helping you find those words.

And one of the best between Varric & Iron Bull (which made me crack up):

Iron Bull: Hey, don't most dwarves have beards? Or at least mustaches or something?

Varric: I make up for it elsewhere.

And between Varric & Dorian:

Varric: I see you eyeing Bianca, Sparkler. Hands to yourself.

Dorian: I wouldn't worry, she's not my type.

Varric: Huh. And here I thought you're a man of refined taste.

Dorian: For fine wine and literature, Varric. Not for… whatever that contraption is.

Varric: Contraption!? Don't listen to him, sweetheart. His people are vilified for a reason.

Drawn with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, then coloured in with a mix of Copic Markers & Ohuhu Markers. White accents, crossbow bolts, & lines were done with a gel pen. The gold is Golden Paint acrylics, Font & glowing effect around the red lyrium was done in Photoshop Elements.

Fan artwork © Jacqueline E. McNeese

Dragon Age Inquisition/Varric Tethras © Bioware & Electronic Arts