Something I'm thinking abt in regards to why Veilguard feels so unchallenging in its messaging compared to like, inquisition. And media in general, on this theme:
Even if a piece of media wants to be didactic and Teach You Goodness, it does matter whether that is done through handholding (as Veilguard does) or challenge (as Inquisition does).
For example. You can argue with Dorian about slavery, and he will defend it; his arguments are even realistic coming from someone in his position, and. They're kind of hard to counter? Because he can turn most things around on you. "Poverty is not much measurably better than slavery. Is the concept of being free actually helpful to a man who is starving?" he'll say (not a quote but basically the sentiment).
The game asks you "do you like slavery? No? Well, are you able to ARGUE this?" and you may find out that you weren't prepared to. Even outside of the fact the dialogue is written into the game, I (when I first played this game as a teen) found that I did NOT in fact have much better arguments than "slavery is bad because it's BAD". That's challenging. That's the game, a piece of art, asking you a question. And it's going to trust you to come to the conclusion yourself. It trusts that it can ask you to think about slavery (or the other problems it tries to tackle) without having to restrict your thinking to make sure you only arrive at the right conclusion.
Veilguard does not do this. If it asks a question, it often presents you the answer right away, and then gives you three options for which tone of voice you want to use when learning the correct answer. It will show you the correct answer, modelling perfect didactic example of how you should behave. This is how you support people when they have problems! This is what makes it such a childish and grating game imo. Children are shown things this way. Morally and behaviorally instructive media is for kids.
Adult media can still teach you things, but like. Through asking a question, posing a challenge. I didn't feel like Inquisition was trying to teach me to Be A Good Person at all like Veilguard was. "What do you think?" versus "this is how you think".
This again I will bring back to the Antaam, finally. Inquisition asked you, in a way, where Bull's true loyalties should lie. The people he fights and dies with? Or the people he belongs to in a grander scale: HIS PEOPLE. Do small scale human connections matter more than grand ones? Are your friends more important than your society? Do you save the people you have met, or the ones you haven't met? It doesn't hold your hand. It asks you to choose. To think about that.
The Antaam are just generic bad military men. The game never examines much about them (outside the three minutes of the Butcher in Treviso, that could have led into a challenge but ultimately did not). The Antaam are bad because they're violent, and they're violent because they're bad. Wow.
And the Antaam are in effect child soldiers. Picked out for military service at young ages, told not to hone anything else about themselves but that. "What use does a soldier have for knowing how to sing?" or something such as Sten said. What use do the Antaam have for this new "freedom"? What would they DO with it? What SHOULD they do with it?
Die to your blade, of course. The game asks nothing more of you. It just repeatedly tells you the Antaam are violent and have no reasons for anything that they do. They do violence because they're evil, and they're evil because they do violence. The Antaam start and end at what they are. They could have been so much more! But they're not.
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