I've been wanting to find a way to articulate more of my thoughts about what Veilguard ultimately did with Solas and why it feels like they did and did not take him out of character to me, because said thoughts are a mess.
And fair warning that this is going to be critical of Veilguard (and Inquisition a little bit) because essentially I feel like what they did is soft-retconned key parts of the narrative to make Solas both more sympathetic and less sympathetic in ways that are (imo) a disservice to the character.
Let me explain,
Part 0: This is the page I am on
First off let me open by saying that I always thought of Solas as someone who, in regards to his main plans, knew exactly what he was doing. I think it makes the most sense that someone who has been waging a war against vastly more powerful opponents for literal millennia be intelligent, decisive, manipulative, and unwilling to leave things to chance. I think it makes the most sense for such a person to rarely be wrong in evaluating and executing his intended plans, because against someone with literal godlike power being wrong would presumably mean being dead.
I also think it makes the most sense that such a person, who was continually given extremely difficult choices during his years of leadership, to have gained a level of ruthlessness that few other characters in the setting can claim. I think it makes sense that such a character could become horrendously bigoted, as well as jaded, by their own (again, millennia of) negative life experience. I think it makes sense for such a character to become proud to a fault, convinced that they are correct in what they do, even at times when they don't want to be.
At the same time, Solas is also portrayed as being highly principled. At least, I think that was Weekes' intention with the character. You can see at multiple points in Inquisition, through banter and approval, what things he feels the most strongly about and how he does not like to compromise on them. Protecting and nurturing free will, doing your duty to your people, and never doing harm (without a good cause rlly important clause there lmao) are common points suggested with him. Slavery in all its forms is a particularly sore point with him.
I've always thought that Solas' biggest flaws interacted with his guiding principles in interesting ways. That both combined to make him into an extremely dangerous, but understandable (if not sympathetic) antagonist.
I don't vibe with takes that all of Solas' principles are a smokescreen and he's just selfish or just nursing a bruised ego. Don't get me wrong, he says some thoughtlessly cruel things in Inquisition that I can see why the most critical fans feel the ways they do about him. But imo there's a lot of stuff he says and does that is narratively meaningless if caring about people (his people first and foremost, but other people as well) is not a core part of his character. For all his flaws, I personally never got the impression that this was the intention.
Though I also don't vibe with takes that Solas, in his goals and plans to achieve them, is objectively correct either. I think a lot of it comes down to what Solas' actual plan for the veil is and why he's tearing it down in the first place.
Part 1: Solas' Plan (and Lack Thereof)
Veilguard portrays (or at least casts judgement on) a version of Solas who is going at the Veil without much of an actual plan. He is demonstrated as having made a prison to keep the Evanuris from escaping when it comes down, yes, but that's clearly a side concern. He claims he will try to minimize the damage to Thedas, and this is explained to mean that he planned to have spirits intervene to protect people from demons, which is an extremely uncertain method of limiting casualties.
The game refuses to even address what he thinks is going to happen to the elves when the Veil comes down. To go by Epler's AMA response, he seems to just be blindly assuming that all elves will become immortal again when exposed to that much magic, and the game does not suggest one way or the other if that is actually true--the motive to give elves back their immortality is only even suggested in one missable sidequest cutscene.
It's very strange to me that now, with the story finished and the franchise never planning to come back to it, we still don't get an elaboration on what Solas planned. What he was expecting to happen. Unless I missed it, the only explanations we get of what will happen when the Veil comes down, and thus the only thing we can accept as being true, is that the world will be "flooded with demons" and the result of this will be that "thousands of people" will die, and ostensibly the elves will regain their immortality (and command of magic, but iirc even that isn't stated and is just an assumption.)
I absolutely did not think that was the entirety of Solas' plan to bring back the old world. You know why I didn't think that?
Because we heard Solas' original plans in Inquisition.
Low approval dialogue, if you argue with Solas that he should be helping the elves, has this gem of a line:
PC: The man who has lived half his life in the Fade has no ideas?
Solas: Not unless we collapse the Veil and bring the Fade here so I can casually reshape reality, no.
At the time, this line is treated as sarcasm or an intentionally absurd suggestion he made because he's irritated with you. But in Trespasser, once you learn the truth about who he is, there is another line of dialogue that suggests that this was actually what Solas intended initially.
PC: What would have happened if Corypheus had died and you’d recovered the orb?
Solas: I would have entered the Fade, using the mark you now bear. Then I would have torn down the Veil. As this world burned in the raw chaos, I would have restored the world of my time… the world of the elves.
Isn't this wild?
His plan was actually even worse than Veilguard suggested it to be. It's not that he's okay with some collateral damage to (somehow) restore the elves. He was okay with the entirety of Thedas as being collateral damage. To me it doesn't even sound like the demons themselves would have been the problem, moreso the primordial energy that would spill back in.
And we'll get into what else Trespasser suggested about his plan in Part 2 but the point is that the Veil coming down is portrayed as only being step 1, and step 2 is something that Solas has to guide himself. Even the ending of Veilguard suggests this a little bit? I don't know if intentionally, though. Solas, in the ending where you attack him, has a throwaway line about the "enchantments" needing a "delicate touch" as he goes to finish his ritual, which strikes me as an odd thing to say when the Veil was already falling down and that was the only part of his plan that the game dwelled on. It only makes sense in light of the Trespasser conversation, but I feel like the rest of the game ignores parts of the Trespasser conversation, so I don't know what to think.
Veilguard just isn't interested in exploring what this guidance on Solas' part looks like or what it would actually do to the world. It's content to be vague about it. I am not. I did not want it to stay vague at this last stage of the story.
What enchantments? What are the limits to this reality reshaping he mentioned in Inquisition? How did he intend to restore the Old World? How, specifically, did he think this would be helping the elves? Is there a way that the Veil can come down and not kill everyone in Thedas?
The intelligence of Solas' plan, and therefore his character, depends on the answers to these questions and I never got them! The game won't reward me for making assumptions on them either because the overriding narrative here is "the Veil can't come down, no matter what" so there's no reason to examine what he wants to do with it.
I also think it's weird that they changed it to a comparatively flimsier "thousands of people will die" anyway. I've seen multiple players point out that likely way more people died in the Double Blight that came from disrupting Solas' ritual than the amount of people the characters say would have died if we hadn't. Players who suggest that the resultant disruption to Thedas was so great and the Veil coming down so undersold as a threat that they actually blame Rook not helping Solas with his ritual in the beginning. Which is obviously not the narrative the devs wanted here. If they'd made it clear that Solas planned to destroy all/most of modern Thedas (even if reluctantly) then we wouldn't have this dissonance with players so much, I think.
But in regards to "getting him his goals", I think the intelligence of the plan also relies on figuring out what those goals even are. Veilguard was not terribly interested in those either.
Part 2: Solas' Motivations (and Lack Thereof)
Much like Veilguard evades telling the player what specifically Solas was planning to do with the Veil coming down, it also doesn't really touch on his motivations?
Harding suggests at the opening that he wants to bring back the old world because it is "beautiful". Solas himself claims he has to take down the Veil purely because it is "unnatural", a neutral fact that doesn't address anything, and because it is a "wound" on the world, a negative phrase which is nonetheless not defined. What does it mean that it's a wound? What is happening to Thedas because the Veil is in place? What are the ramifications of leaving it up? I saw little explanation of that in this game, despite previous entries leaving a lot of interesting details to draw on.
We know from the introduction that Solas bringing the Veil up made the elves mortal and destroyed their world, and one of the mural cutscenes suggests that taking it down might give elves their immortality back. So that's another one.
But his main motivation in Veilguard is presented to be simply the fact that Solas regrets having put it up in the first place. In the ending of the game, when he is trying to explain his reasons to (potentially) the literal love of his life who is begging him to stop what he's doing, the reason Solas gives is that if he doesn't take down the Veil then Mythal will have died for nothing. It's the Sunken Cost Fallacy. Yes, he also says that he will "destroy the world [Mythal] loved" but he doesn't elaborate on what this means, just like the "wound" comment, even when it would have been extremely relevant and helpful to his cause to lay his cards on the table here and be honest about what he wants if there is more to it.
So players who have never played prior games are forced to conclude that Solas has no good reason to take down the Veil.
Which might work well enough for Veilguard's narrative of Solas, but it certainly makes his "don't you think if I had another way I would have done it?" to Varric and his "I would treasure the chance to be proven wrong" to a friendly Inquisitor meaningless phrases in retrospect. I personally don't find it more compelling when a heretofore intelligent and principled character breaks their principles for no good reason. I prefer a principled antagonist who breaks their principles for an understandable reason, a reason that the protagonists will have to put in real work to challenge if their goal is to redeem said antagonist.
And I think prior to Veilguard, Solas' motivations were ones that were worth challenging.
Part 2A: Solas' People (and Lack Thereof)
For example, he wants to bring down the Veil to help spirits. There is dialogue between him and the Inquisitor early on that in the days of Elvhenan, spirits were everywhere in the waking world because the waking world was filled with magic. Cole in Trespasser can suggest this too, as a spirit Cole is ecstatic to realize that he "belongs" in the mortal world as much as he does the Fade once they learn that the two were once the same thing. There is an implication that spirits who wish to visit the mortal world become demons because they can't do so without possessing something (unless they are extremely powerful.) Similarly, in Inquisition many spirits were forcibly pulled into the mortal world and twisted into demons in places where the Veil was torn, because they couldn't handle the existential crisis that is a world without magic. The most spirits who show up in Thedas in this setting, do so in places where the Veil is thin, and the Veil is only ever thin in places of great suffering, meaning those spirits reflect that suffering themselves.
Not only does Veilguard never examine this concept as one of Solas' motivations, but they seem to have tried very hard to erase the validity of it from previous games. You would not know, playing Veilguard, that most spirits cannot enter the mortal world without a physical vessel, or that the Veil has been detrimental for spirits. Spirits are all over the Crossroads, and the implication is that they could always go there. You encounter plenty of them in Rivain, Nevarra, and Tevinter, and they are happy, healthy, free, uncontained to a vessel, and even largely capable of retaining their selves under pressure. This is entirely at odds with previous depictions of Thedas and its relationship with spirits. Yes, Nevarra and Rivain have more welcoming cultures and so it makes a little more sense (though not terribly so imo) for you to see more of them around and treated better, but it's not like anyone acknowledges this as outside the norm for the rest of Thedas. Inquisition in particular made a point about how much people hate and distrust them because they're such an unknown to mortals. In Tevinter, they are technically as much victims of magister slavery as elves, at least so Dorian and Solas' banter suggests.
Solas wanting to make the world better for spirits is a particularly important goal for him in retrospect because he was once a spirit, so it's a low blow to his character that it's never acknowledged in this game about stopping him.
But anyway, now we have the whole deal with the elves. This is where I see a lot of the discussion divide. I've seen people argue that Solas should have been allowed to enact his plan because it would end the very real oppression and cultural genocide that elves are facing, and I've seen people say that his plan would not have actually helped the elves at all and so it was a bad plan. I'm not sure how I feel about these takes.
Mostly because I personally did not think that Solas' plan, at least initially, was to end the oppression of elves. I think that if he'd been allowed to carry his plan out, the oppression of elves would end, but only because the entirety of Thedas' oppressive power structures would cease to exist along with its society. I did not think his true goal was to give modern elves their immortality back either, though I guess I can say I judged him wrong on that front in Veilguard. I thought, at best, that helping modern elves became a secondary goal for him later down the line, once he realized modern Thedosians are people--and for a low approval Solas may he rest in retconned peace it was a benefit to help him recruit. In The Dread Wolf Take You, for example, he does have a comment to Charter that the "elves that remain" like her might think his world is a better place when he's done. This could have been a lie to let her think better of his goal, or it could have been the truth and his intention was to somehow spare at least some of the elves what is coming.
The reason I believe that it is only secondary, however, is because Solas for most of Inquisition does not consider modern elves to be his people. He makes it clear he does not identify with the Dalish early on, but even when it comes to non-Dalish elves, which he ostensibly is, he has this line towards the Inquisitor after the Wicked Hearts quest:
PC: I hope Briala uses her position to help your people.
Solas: How would helping Briala help… Oh, you mean elves!
Solas: I’m sorry, I was confused. I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves.
PC: Nor should you. You’re not defined by the shape of your ears. They’re not your people.
Solas: No, they are not.
This whole exchange can be kind of dfgkdfkgksd ehhh but I think the salient point is that Solas does not identify with modern elves and slipped up when he made this clear.
And yet, he does have people, he isn't just a solitary misanthrope like he tries to shake that off with. He clearly does have people and moreover it is for them that he is doing what he's doing.
Trespasser has this line, for example:
PC: You’d murder countless people?
Solas: Wouldn’t you, to save your own?
Consider also that there is an aspect to his motivations that he deliberately refused to tell the Inquisitor at the end of Trespasser.
PC: Why does this world have to die for the elves to return?
Solas: A good question, but not one I will answer.
Solas (high approval): You have always shown a thoughtfulness I respected. It would be too easy to tell you too much.
Solas (low approval): You will survive this day, Inquisitor, and though I owed you an explanation, I will not give you tools to use against me.
I find this exchange so very interesting. There is a reason why the restoration of his world has to result in the end of ours, but he won't tell us because he believes it would give us the tools to stop him. Even on low approval he is comfortable with us knowing that he intends to destroy the world, but not the reason why he has to.
As far as I can tell Veilguard didn't do anything interesting with this. But originally I thought it had to do specifically with his people, the ancient immortal elves, and what he would do to get them back. To bring it back to a previous point, I did not think that it was just in giving the modern day elves their immortality back because I can't see how telling the Inquisitor this would give them the tools to use against him, especially if you yourself are an elf.
I know I saw some people speculate that Solas was trying to bring them back with time travel, as a reference to the Hushed Whispers quest, but even though I could see the Dragon Age devs doing that because the time travel stuff was silly in the first place and yet they decided it was a good plot point anyway I didn't think that was it either? It didn't feel thematically punchy enough.
And as a warning the next section will be getting into more speculative territory, but
Part 2B: The Ancient Elvhen (and Lack Thereof)
So, I don't think it's a huge secret that Inquisition presented the idea that the immortal elves of Arlathan never entirely went away.
We see this in the fact that there are immortal elves, obviously. Solas, Felassan, Abelas, and the rest of the sentinels at the Temple of Mythal are all elves who lived in the days of Arlathan, and yet are still alive thousands of years later, walking about in modern day Thedas. Furthermore, Solas in particular hints to Abelas that there are even more immortal elves than him. Consider the fact that if you're a Lavellan in the temple, Abelas distinctly denies that you number among his people, and in fact if I'm remembering rightly, calls you a shemlen regardless of your race.
And yet when speaking with Solas, he has this to say:
Solas: There are other places, friend. Other duties. Your people yet linger.
Abelas: Elvhen such as you?
Solas: Yes. Such as I.
Solas who is, of course, an immortal elf. It's even possible that he is one Abelas knows personally, given the importance Solas once had to Mythal. My Lavellan listening to that like wtf :(
Consider also the banter that Solas can have with Cole, if you romanced him and got to the breakup scene after this quest:
Cole: He hurts, an old pain from before, when everything sang the same.
Cole: You're real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can't.
Cole: They sleep, masked in a mirror, hiding, hurting, and to wake them... (Gasps.) Where did it go?
Solas: I apologize, Cole. That is not a pain you can heal.
This banter is never examined in Veilguard! Who is hiding? Who is hurting? The fact that "waking" them is on the table suggests to me that it is sleeping elves, perhaps like the sentinels who only woke to defend Mythal's temple and slept the rest of the time. In the context of Cole trying to explain to Lavellan why Solas broke up with her (and more important, Solas wanting to make sure she does not know this information,) I thought this line referred specifically to Solas' true people, the reason he was doing all of this.
The idea that there are other ancient elves out there, sleeping somewhere, suffering for some reason, as they wait for the Dread Wolf to bring the Veil down and wake them. The "masked in a mirror" part felt especially interesting to me because there's a part in the Masked Empire novel where Briala and Felassan (among other people) come across a couple elves that were allegedly sleeping in Uthenara, in a location they were only able to get to by traveling the Crossroads, which are located through eluvians. In that scene, Felassan gets very upset to see that these particular elves have apparently been killed in their sleep.
It makes me wonder if this is why Solas had to hide this possibility from the Inquisitor at all costs, especially from a low-approval Inquisitor. His motivations for doing all of this are the countless elves, his version of elves, who are scattered all over and currently helpless as they sleep. I can't help but imagine that a particularly desperate modern Thedosian might consider if removing the Dread Wolf's reason to bring down the Veil might not be the only way of stopping him from doing it.
Veilguard doesn't follow up on any of these plot threads. In fact, someone who has never read the novel might even come away from the game with the impression that Solas and the Evanuris are the only immortal elves that survived to Modern Thedas, as even Felassan's role in The Masked Empire is obscured from the player.
It's a shame because if they'd kept this plot point relevant it would have been a major challenge to overcome in persuading Solas not to bring down the Veil. Presuming he is talking about the ancient elves, Cole's dialogue suggests to me that it is the process of waking them, or some element of it, which necessitates that Solas destroy the rest of Thedas.
This brings up an important question, potentially even a difficult choice. Which society do you think is worth saving? Would you be willing to let an entire people sleep and suffer for eternity just to preserve your way of life? Could you convince Solas to allow that? Solas, who sees Thedas as so corrupt and terrible to elves and spirits, who fought so hard to give his fellow elves a more ideal world which never came to fruition?
Also yes the sleeping and suffering to preserve your way of life thing IS ironic because that is exactly what he did to the titans but the game was so uninterested in exploring that too.
And like, to be clear, I never thought that Dragon Age would actually have the player make that kind of terrible choice. Even in Origins you were sometimes given the chance to take a third option that benefited everyone if you did a bit of digging. And both Inquisition and the opening of this game teased the idea of you convincing Solas there was another way. I guess what that third option actually looked like would have depended on more specifics. Mainly, why waking them requires that modern Thedas be destroyed.
Ehh I wonder if any of this was even on the table when Trespasser was written. Maybe I read it all wrong.
Edit: crying and screaming because I apparently DID NOT read it wrong and Veilguard did intentionally retcon that plot point.
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All in all, I personally did not really have a problem with what Solas was willing to do in this game. But when it came to the "why", I found myself really struggling with it after thinking about it for a while.
At the very least, I feel as though what I speculated above would have made Solas' motivations more understandable, even if, again, it did not ultimately make them sympathetic. Going just by what is shown in the game, Solas' actual motivations in Veilguard are not nearly as understandable to me, especially because not even a single elf or spirit is shown as wanting him to do it dfkgksdfk.
And clearly that is what they wanted for this narrative, but I can't believe it makes him more compelling as an antagonist in the franchise as a whole. I like him as a classic trolley problem dude.
Also he literally ignored Mythal when she told him not to do it in the regret mural and yet it's Mythal telling him he doesn't have to do it later that finally makes him stop? I guess Flemythal didn't realize the code word was "I release you from my service" or smth
Also,
Idk man. Thinking about it and I'm still so sad the ancient elves were a dropped plot point. I guess it's possible, with all the racism already shoved offscreen in this game, that onscreen racial tension between even these two different factions of elves was too tall an order.
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