the thinggggg about Dragon Age. is that while i do believe almost all the writers have only ever had good intentions there's no escaping that the worldbuilding has always had underlying threads of racism/colonialism, just because at the end of the day. it's created by mostly white people from North America. that's just stuff that is going to come through in the stories they choose to tell and tropes they are gonna follow. but in the first 3 games, these things (like islamophobia and depictions of the Qun, or the parallels between the Dalish and indigenous/Jewish/Romani people, or the Circles and slavery, etc etc etc) were also surrounded by incredibly complex characters who in turn either refute or emphasize different aspects of those assumptions. In Origins we hear about the Qun in codex entries and from people who only have second/third/fourthhand knowledge of it, but then you can recruit Sten, our window into how it's seen from the inside. And rather than a giant bloodlust barbarian, the huge warrior is the most disciplined and reserved member of team, with an enduring appreciation for art and a secret love of sweets.
the worldbuilding always felt deep because just like real life, you see people who have all manner of opinions about things that are shaped by their own experiences with them. Vivienne's reaction to life in the Circle compared to Anders. Merrill's experience with the Dalish vs Minaeve's. On some level, all of the lore inconsistencies we get in the games are softened by the fact that they are plausibly influenced by the perspective of who we are getting the information from, and there were almost always other characters expressing different viewpoints--not always with the same narrative weight behind them, but in a way, that made it almost feel more realistic. the frankly largely unbacked fear of mages leading to them being imprisoned for life in towers, there being no perfect option for who will rule Orlais because everyone involved is at least somewhat corrupt, etc--all of this reminds me of the real world. I do in fact disagree with many things going on large scale in my country, but feel powerless to stop them as an individual. I don't always like my options for who i have to vote for in elections.
when a narrative takes itself seriously, and is willing to engage with heavy topics like the cost of war, should the individual be prioritized over the masses, how can different cultures with different values meet when they fear each other--the biases within the narrative are easier to take as part of the world overall even if it's not what the writers intended. I do not mean that this makes them in any way excusable. In some ways, it's worse, because when done unintentionally they usually hide darker implications than the creators ever intend. But it DOES mean they do not detract as starkly from the rest of the narrative. Often, in the dialogue options, many even become "in-world" viewpoints your character can respond to and in engage with. Outside of the game, they're another thing that people can discuss and compare to real world events and history. like, why DOES Sten find sugar such a novelty, and what might that say about the writer's assumptions about the cultures the Qun is based on?? these are debates we have been having since Origins came out. not every fan chooses to engage with it but these threads have always been part of the larger discussion around the games.
what was different about Veilguard is that the unintentional centrism, colonialism, and racism remained part of the world when the writing otherwise attempted to strip out all of the darker complexities that were put in on purpose. the creators told us "this will be a brighter, happier, more hopeful game--no more huge focus on slavery and inevitable corruption and religious differences!" so sure the game doesn't show the specific mistreatment of elven slaves in Tevinter, or the Crows buying orphans to run through the murder gauntlet. But it does show the Qunari reduced to crazed soldiers who only follow orders and don't think for themselves. The elves are framed as responsible and even deserving of their own downfall. Bringing up these criticisms is just carrying on the larger conversation that has always existed, it's simply that there is barely any in-world way to hide it anymore. to me, this is what made playing the game so jarring and tonally inconsistent. the framing of "hurray! it's all hopeful now!" paired with what colonialism/centrism/etc that remains, means those things feel like an intentional statement now instead.
and frankly: learning about the work conditions at Bioware/EA, the upheavals during game development, their massive levels of burnout--only REINFORCES all this, rather than excuses it. the lack of time for writing means that first-draft decisions became ingrained rather than reviewed and edited, and even more implicit bias can slip through. rushing a plotline they don't have time to develop fully means that complexity cannot make it into the end product, resulting in simplification of previously complex portrayals of other cultures/lineages. last minute massive cuts like losing Kal-Sharok outpost as a location means we barely get any dwarf reaction/perspective to massive lore dumps about their history, and Rook's default to flat, joking dialogue mean the player can't respond to them with much variation themselves, even if you pick different dialogue wheel options--there's 1-2 lines of variation, and then the scenes play out identically every time. the player/protagonist can no longer respond to these things in world, limiting how much they can be handwaved as intentional worldbuilding vs development oversight. and i DO think the departure from wanting to tell complex, deep stories itself was a decision at least in part influenced by these conditions. why WOULD they want to spend so much extra time and effort adding those layers when in real life they were overworked, jerked around, and repeatedly seeing all their previous hard work scrapped?
yes, it's a miracle the game shipped at all. no, this does not mean it is for some reason exempt from the same conversations fans have had about the series for years. yes, it became way more noticeable to many of us in this installment. no, that does not mean everyone hates the individuals who made it. people can have multiple opinions. they can enjoy the characters while also criticizing their framing or the limited growth the plot allows them. many of us are perfectly capable of acknowledging the devs were backed into a corner in many ways--but the end product is what we got. It's the content we are going to be analyzing and discussing in context with the other games for however long interest remains in the series. I have the deepest sympathies to the people who worked on it, and I think they were failed by editors, managers, and higher ups who put them in that position. I also do not enjoy a great deal of what they ended up creating in as a result of that situation.
burned out writers/devs cannot create art to the same quality as healthy ones. saying "and look at how well they did in spite of it all!" feels, to me, more like a slap in their face than admitting this game did not match the complexity and standards seen in previous entries in the series. i don't want to cheer on how brave they were in the face of it all. i want to show the higher ups and corporations who put them there that it was inexcusable, and leads to products I'm not going to enjoy or support to the same degree anymore, in hopes that this stops happening in the future.
