The absolute rage I feel for destruction of dragon age can't be expressed in words. It was my comfort,absolutely beautiful escape into the world of Thedas in first three games.
Seeing all the devs moving from Bioware hoping for better tomorrow and shit...why am I supposed to care? You destroyed dragon age veilguard...Corinne, John,Patrick...wow just wow,they're about to ruin whatever they grab on next SUE ME we're not idiots lmao EA is pissseed that dav flopped and now all the incompetent people gotta piss off ...I'm just mad they had to pull dragon age down with them. They stole the joy I had in dragon age games. The anticipation,the intriguing characters,world building,romance...
For a game that had everything going for it now it's just a husk of its former self. Sometimes I go check how many views do DAV streams have on twitch and its always around 250ish...like,this game is dead. None of the lead writers/directors are heros or conquers. They're extremists who destroyed this game because they didn't love the fan base or even the game itself with all its flaws instead they wanted to tell their narcissistic stories instead of one story of world of Thedas.
End of Inquisition doesn't hit hard anymore at all. Search for Solas? Stabbing the map which told us we'll go to Tevinter? All the lore and world building? Like I don't even want to play previous games because I know the ending.
The only positive I have is I've been so lucky to have had Solas bc now he can rest with Lavellan and PLEASE don't bring him back don't associate his face with his shit game like leave him alone!
I'm so sorry for people who aren't solasmancers tbh,yall got nothing and I'm pissed for you too!! Because even tho I didn't romance others or had such attachments as I did with Solas,they were still amazing characters.
They did both Dorian and Morrigan dirty.
I don't care for those writers/directors they're awful people...EA is shit don't get me wrong but don't feed me the crap they were powerless in all they did.
me: i sure hope the crows are not gonna be solely depicted in veilguard as a brave force who 'fight for all' when they are at their core a criminal organization who is known to buy children to indoctrinate them and turn them into assassins, by putting them in overcrowded warehouses and making them fight for scrapes in order not to starve, to later torture those who reach adulthood to finish their initiations and kill them anyways if they dare to try getting out
There was so much space for a nuanced, beautiful exploration of one of the best and most complex characters they’ve ever given us, and instead he got reduced to a handful of regrets presented with zero empathy and a shit tonne of blame when Mythal was RIGHT THERE, dismissive comments about his trauma (“they were doin it” 🤢), and “god of lies”—not sure I will get over this aspect. There were many things about Veilguard I genuinely loved, but this? This can get in the bin.
To be honest this element of the game made it impossible for me to enjoy anything else about it. I can’t enjoy characters who spend the whole game rubbernecking another person’s traumas just to shit on him. Thats not something good people do.
Please hear me out and it's gonna be controversial and I'll probably get nasty comments but this nagged at me for so long thinking about treatment of the Chantry in Dragon Age Veilguard.
Chantry has been a huge deal in all 3 Dragon Age games. Andrastian faith (Christianity in our world) is what followed us in Ferelden,Orlais and Free Marches. Quest with Sacred Ashes being one of the main quests in DAO and also lore behind Tevinter Magisters raiding the Black city and The Maker turning them into Darkspawn.
Treatment of Andraste and her betrayal is great storytelling.
It's worth mentioning DA games are heavily inspired by the Bible.
DAO is Genesis,how it all started...sin (darkspawn) entering our world etc.
DA2 was supposed to be called Exodus but in last minute change it became DA2 as we know it.
Veilguard was supposed to be about the book of Numbers.
In Mass Effect which -as we all know- is even more inspired by The New Testament and specifically Jesus as we go through the Lazarus project,coming back to life,having 12 companions,places such as Eden club,Afterlife etc...
However.
I think it's safe to assume a lot of people are bitter about Christianity and I won't argue that,but the fact is..."the message" of gender ideology goes strictly against God and Bible teachings of gender (He created them male and female) which automatically contradicts the writer's own personal beliefs that we can be whoever we want no matter the logical facts and Truth (Yes there is only one objective Truth which is above all subjective ones) They had to self insert and put their own bitterness against the religion in the game and project it onto the Chantry and Andrastian faith because they are in their core deeply against everything Christianity stands for.
Next point is that,it's deeply narcissistic. Even if the writer's of DAO,DA2,DAI and ME weren't Christians they still used the themes of the Bible and every companion had other religions. It was done well. It wasn't about them and their personal biases to such radical extents (not to mention gender ideology started harshly appearing in 2020 during Covid) and I-and a lot of other people- can see a shift in gaming. Veilguard won't do good because it's not good. Nobody wants to be manipulated into being educated by having these things shoved down everyone's throats. It's not how that works- that's how religion works and the movement I'm seeing is a religious one. You're not one of us? OUT. You have different opinion? You're this,that and the other and it's "hate" speech. Hm. But everyone loves to say love is at the core of things.
People say "I'll believe it when I see it" but all I'm seeing are men and women. No in-between and normal,day to day people see that as well. So when they're being told that what they're seeing is wrong-even though it's rooted in facts- they get upset when a codex entry "Transwoman IS a woman" appears on their screens in a fantasy medieval game.
The entire talk about Maker not being real is what these writers ultimately wanted to say.
No God. No Jesus. No one having a say against it. No annoying Christians who will stand on their way, backtalk, spreading faith and speaking about the Truth...
That's heaven for these people. Because others,silent majority,keeps to themselves and let's a small group of people make the rules,oh but it's democracy. The only ones who speak against lies and lawlessness are true Bible believing Christians who stand on the Word and personal relationship with Jesus.
So that's why the Chantry wasn't mentioned. It is hated. Not because of the facts learned in the game- but because of the real life Christianity and people who rebel and hate it- and God (Maker) Himself.
Sidenote: many games promote rebelling against their gods...and they're all made into tyrants,obviously dislikeable characters.
I genuinely want Solas so far away from Failguard and those dumbass writers as possible. I don't want his face associated with that stupid game.
Usually,with all 3 previous games...as soon as I finished a playthrough I RAN to do 2nd and maybe even 3rd runs!! They were so good!! Each had their problems sure but the charm and essence of dragon age stayed.
With Veilguard? I played it once cuz I wanted to see Solas and his ending. And I did.
I made a second character and then thought to myself...what would I do differently? Turns out I CANT do anything differently so I never continued. One playthrough...of a supposed "Dragon Age" game...only Dragon age in name.
do you know what? no, i do not understand. no, i have no benefits left for the doubts. no, i will not adhere to voices of reason. i will rage. i will riot. and i deserve a moment of selfishness--you, have not, in fact, lived up to expectations, and i will not make any more excuses. i am entitled to this disappointment.
Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.
About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.
How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.
So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.
But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.
We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.
None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.
The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.
Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.
Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.
Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.
And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.
Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.
This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.
Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.
And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.
I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.
y’all remind yourselves your account is your space. you’re not a performance. you’re not annoying by being yourself. if people aren’t into it they can leave. you’re not obligated to please anyone, especially at the cost of your personal expression. the worst thing you can do for your online enjoyment is to filter or censor yourself.
So in short: bioware really gave us a shit product (the writing team SPECIFICALLY) with dragon age veilguard and gaslit us that it was come to form game. I genuinely hate what we got and I hate it even more knowing what could've been. I can't believe how a company had such guts to absolutely destroy their game this hard with little to no regard of fans. Like these same people gotta make ME4 IM GONNA KILL MYSELF
But to be so honest I'm kind of happy they fumbled because of this. They lied about everything. Game being dark,the illusion of "choice" in the game,romances,having the most dialog in the game even tho we can't even go up to companions and talk to them...and thank God they weren't awarded for this shit. I hope they sink because of their hubris and arrogance.
All they wanted was to get rid of this game so they can move on to ME4 so they did little what they could do. Push their political agenda (sorry gotta pull a Bharv now🤭) and reuse what seemed more like a ME version of DA. It never felt like a DA game. ME is an amazing game but very different to DA. They took completely different approach in every way possible when handing the Veilguard and its BAD it's just hot pile of crap.
(the potential this game had after seeing the art book is crazy) I'm so disappointed,angry and sad. After 10 years...yes they had ups and downs but c'mon...THEY HAD THE ARTWORK RIGHT THERE!!! how could it be possible that they removed ALL THE ACTUAL INTERSTING THINGS?! They're incompetent but hey at least we got "educated" and "preaced to" on what really matters in the world (and the world of Thedas) ! Thanks Bioware. What a shit show.
no because actually i don’t think we talk enough about how solas gets on his knees in the trespasser finale with a romanced lavellan. his name literally means pride. he EMBODIES pride. but his name also literally means “to stand tall”. HIS NAME MEANS TO STAND TALL. god of rebellion. and he is on his knees cradling her face and telling her he’s sorry. i have to go walk into traffic
wow they sure gave us one hell of a reversal to this huh
i saw ppl saying they don't like how she gets on her knees for him but honestly that is just such a misread of this moment to me and i am actually so obsessed with it. i get why upon first glance it could seem submissive and weird because of the power dynamic that existed between them in inquisition and the fact that he is a god, and i agree that it would have been weird any other time, but the context in general and the nature of their relationship in this moment is so different from the one they shared 8 years ago, it has been flipped completely on his head.
he had to kneel down to her level in trespasser to bring balance to their dynamic as he revealed the extent of the power differential and the guilt he carried for enabling it. he had complete power over her in that moment, he had lured her there in the first place, he had just turned someone to stone in front of her eyes, he outmatched her in terms of knowledge, power, age, understanding, magic ability. he was the reason for the anchor that was debilitating her and he was the only one who could stop it from killing her. kneeling to meet her on the ground where she writhed in the pain that he caused her brought them as back into balance as possible for just a moment. he had to get down on his knees to kiss her one last time as solas, before standing up and walking away to be fen'harel.
this is truly the inverse of that. we have never seen him like this. we have never seen him bent over like this when his name literally means to "stand tall". and it is not lavellan who gets him to this state in the first place, but mythal as she releases him from a burden he has carried for thousands of years.
he is absolutely powerless in this moment. he is not fen'harel or a god. he did not lure these people here to set a trap for them. he is not at all in control of this situation. if anything, he is the one trapped and being forced to face something he could not bring himself to face for thousands and thousands of years; mythal. she is the one in power here, and though her words are kind and her intention to free him is noble, notice that she does not make any sort of attempt to get onto his level, to look him in the eye. she looks down upon him as she releases him, and then she disappears.
i know a lot of people are also upset at some of the parallels drawn between lavellan and mythal, but honestly i think this moment puts all of them to rest. they are not parallel but opposite, and their dynamic with solas is completely different. while mythal puts him in this almost disturbingly submissive state that is so at odds with what we have seen of him ever, she is the god here, unapologetically, and him the man at her mercy. by contrast, lavellan sees his agony and does not hesitate to get on her knees before him. not in any act that implies any sort of submission or supplication, or to encourage any sort of mortal x god power dynamic, but so that she can see his face and look him in the eye as she reminds him of her love for him. she equalizes herself before him in his moment of powerlessness and vulnerability the same way he did when he knelt to kiss her goodbye as he took the anchor in trespasser.
and it is lavellan addressing him this way and her words that give him the strength to stand up tall again. it is also the final push to abandon his goal, as she tells him the only thing that is inevitable is their love.
he tells her in the unsent love letter we get in the codex how badly he wanted to be with her as just solas. we learn from his memories and their conversation earlier in this scene that mythal made him into fen'harel. the body language in this scene is the perfect visual representation of that dynamic. her kneeling to look at him is such a powerful act of love and support in a moment where he was so painfully vulnerable, and it reflects his own willingness to kneel for her eight years earlier as she found herself in a similar state. he is at her mercy, with his fate lying in her hands. kneeling before him and looking into his eyes rights the balance between them that was just so disturbingly thrown off by mythal. it is reciprocal rather than submissive. it says, "you are hurting, but i am with you". it reminds him of who he is, allows him to stand tall.
genuinely 10/10 i will never be over this
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