my thing with the south being destroyed is that before the game released, they were on and on about how we're not talking about the south in this game guys, we're in the north, don't think about the south, we're not even doing worldstate choices.
and i made my peace with that y'know? like ok it sucks that we won't get to see ferelden or kirkwall or orlais or whatever again, but yeah its the north i GUESS it makes sense.
and then i open the game and suddenly my inquisitor is teling me about how the south is being attacked. like my small moment of joy for hearing the word Denerim is completely killed by the following other terrible words. And like ok. the south is in trouble but they're gonna be fine, rigth?
and then every single letter afterwards goes on and on about how shit is absolutely terrible, how they're fighting a loosing war, how ferelden has been SO decimated that its ENTIRE POPULATION FITS IN SKYHOLD. That the Avvar and the Chasind are still hunting but there probably won't be anything left to hunt soon. That Kirkwall had to be evecuated.
and they do make a point of naming Every Location That Might Be Important To The Player. They mention Redcliffe and Denerim and Lake Calenhad and Kirkwall and Skyhold, all places you've gone too and protected in the past, that most players have an attachment too, and they proceed to tell us that this place that is important to you is fucking razed to the ground, and that the people are fucking dead. its hard for it not to feel like a goddamn spit in the face.
and from what i gathered, this was apparently something added during the Alpha? I have this memory of one of the devs saying that halfway through they were like oh shit we need to show how the blight is affecting the south too and how big and bad this blight is and i'm like you really dont need to, i can see how bad it hurts the north and just imagine that on the south. and the worst part is that it feels like ONLY the codexes talk about it bc even the inquisitor is just like "sigh yeah its tough down there but we're managing" and i'm like by your letters no the fuck you're not, why the fuck is harding going to redcliffe with emmrich when you just told me redcliffe is fucking gone
and people saying the south will rebuild and like i have SERIOUS DOUBTS about that because remember, the blight fucking destroys the land. and in inky's last letter, they explicitly say that the population of ferelden has been cut down to Skyhold's size and that they all might starve soon. Kirkwall is essentially fucking gone considering it was evacuated and is now overrun by blight.
like seriously who the fuck thought anyone would be happy to read that places they spent 3 fucking games protecting are now destroyed WHO
Thing is, the devs could have stayed away from the south entirely - made its destruction dependent on whether Rook succeeds - and that would have made far more sense to the history of the world given that the explanation for everything being gone is that "places where the blight once spread have become corrupted again". Except for the Fifth, every single Blight has taken place north or west of Orlais. Why isn't Antiva already gone, considering how long Andoral was squatting there? Why aren't refuges flocking into Minrathous because the Silent Plains are overrun?
I keep thinking about how badly Veilguard wants to be Mass Effect 3, thinking what a good job that game does of showing the slow grind of a war against an overwhelming enemy - points of hope and victory, sure, but for every Tuchanka there's a girl in the refugee dock desperately sure her parents are going yo be in on the next transport.
And then in Veilguard we get told how terrible our enemy is, how badly our allies are losing, but not so badly our companions can't go for a picnic in the thick of it, or decide they need to put solving their personal issues ahead of saving the fucking world.
It feels so... disconnected. Nothing matters, nothing is achieved, and so much of that could have been avoided if the writing had just let the story's focus be on the north
