#bjk plays datv

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Shoutout to the little handdrawn nug stuffed into Bellara's notebook in this epilogue cutscene. <3 <3 <3 <3

I love her your honor.

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Codex unlocked during A Pinnacle of Its Kind:

Honestly Taash is so valid for this. XD

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Highly recommend turning around on a balance beam if you would like to inject some mild unintentional humor into your playthrough. XD

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OK, I'm guessing we don't have to (and perhaps even shouldn't) do that showdown with the Mythal fragment yet, so back to doing companion quests!

Next up is our dinner with Taash and their mom, which I'm pretty sure is going to be the world's most awkward hangout ever. Let's go.

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lololol okay so two things

First of all, the scene immediately kicks off with Shathann instantly criticizing Taash and the fact that Helena is here. So we're definitely going for Tense Vibes right off the bat.

Second of all, something HELLA bugged in loading in on this scene, because the game loaded in TWO Taashes:

One of them is lit like they're supposed to be in the scene and is wearing their current armor. The other is lurking behind doing their idle animations, is wearing their default starting armor, and bizarrely appears to be about two inches shorter. O.o

[reload]

OK, here we go for real.

-----

Helena isn't really sure what to expect from this meal invitation. She is here because Taash wanted her here, but beyond that, she's pretty much just here for the food, and to enjoy being out of the Lighthouse for a bit. Shathann's home is a large, comfortable place, rather more decorated than Helena might have expected from a qunari house. However, it becomes immediately apparent that Shathann is not only not particularly pleased that she's here, but didn't know she was coming.

"You are late," the qunari woman says stiffly as they enter the house. "And you brought a guest."

Helena winces. She hadn't exactly expected to be waltzing in here as an interloper, but she tries to make the best of it. "I brought wine!" she says brightly, pulling the bottle from behind her back.

Shathann glowers at it. "I do not drink alcohol. Taash did not tell you, just as she did not tell me that you would join us."

Helena winces again, harder.

Taash, for their part, seems unembarrassed, but their eyes narrow in mild frustration. "I don't smell the isskapp. We always have isskapp on Tuesdays."

"I am not yet finished with my studies," Shathann says calmly. "I thought you would help me tonight."

"And by help, you mean 'do it all,'" Taash says irritably, glancing over at the kitchen area at the far side of the room. "You haven't even chopped the melons!"

"You swing axes all day," Shathann shoots back promptly. "Do you lack the strength to chop a few melons?"

Taash's jaw works, and they grumble angrily under their breath. But then they shrug and stalk away across the room, leaving Helena standing alone before Shathann and feeling rather more awkward than she has ever felt in her life.

Helena is not, really, the sort to be easily embarrassed, and she isn't really embarrassed on her own account here either, in spite of the wine mishap. But she's not good at being involved in difficult conversations at the best of times, and this isn't even HER difficult conversation, but instead the secondhand embarrassment of being stuck watching her friend's. She can't help the distinct feeling that maybe she shouldn't have been brought here in the first place, and really hopes she isn't going to end up just making things worse.

An awkward silence stretches for thirty seconds or so, broken by the sound of Taash beginning to chop melons, and then Shathann breaks it, looking at Helena matter-of-factly.

"The runes on the tablet are written in the old Qunari tongue," she says, and Helena realizes that she is holding in one hand the artifact which Isabela showed them at their meeting with the Lords a few weeks earlier. "But they are incomplete."

Helena relaxes a little as the subject turns to more practical matters. "So they never finished it?"

Shathann grunts pensively. "No. It is clearly finished, but parts of letters have been hidden somehow, rendering the tablet unreadable."

Helena perks up a little at this. "What if it's got some kind of secret code, so that only the right people can read it?" She's carried no shortage of of coded messages like this in the Dragons; this would be a subject she could speak on with some authority.

But Shathann shakes her head. "That is unlikely," she says flatly. "I have studied the First Expedition for decades. I have never seen the writing encoded."

Helena deflates a little, but pushes ahead gamely. "What do you mean, the First Expedition?" she asks.

"Your history teaches that qunari landed on Thedas three hundred years ago, in the Steel Age," Shathann says. "This is true - but incomplete. Almost a thousand years earlier, the First Expedition came, only to vanish. They were qunari who predated the Qun itself. That is what I study."

Helena's eyebrows lift. This is mildly interesting - especially just in the wake of all they've been learning about Solas and other elements of the world's history that don't fit with established stories. But it's also another thing utterly outside her wheelhouse, and she hasn't the foggiest idea of anything she can say in response that would sound remotely intelligent.

Thankfully, she's saved from having to think of something by Taash trudging back over with a sullen expression.

"Here. Food's ready."

Shathann squints at Taash, then at the food spread out on the table. Helena follows her gaze to take in the meal, which appears to be some spread of shrimp and couscous and which, frankly, smells fantastic.

"This is not isskapp," Shathann says slowly.

Taash's jaw works defiantly. "Wasn't feeling like isskapp," they say. "We're in Rivain. Might as well eat like it."

Helena watches both Shathann and Taash's faces as they look at each other. Taash, clearly, expects a fight, but none materializes. There is some frustration flickering across Shathann's face, but something like sadness, too, or regret.

"I see," is all she says, and walks past Helena to sit down at the table.

-----

It's a strained meal at best. The food is surprisingly good, given Taash's limited contributions to the Lighthouse's meals; the conversation, however, is stilted and tense in the wake of Taash's decision to ignore what Helena can only assume is a qunari tradition.

Eventually, after what seems like several thousand years, they get up to leave.

"The new bookshelves should be here next week," Taash offers abruptly as they step outside. "Got 'em for you with some of the gold from the dragon."

"You need not trouble yourself," Shathann says stiffly, turning away. "My studies are clearly of little importance."

" 'Kay. Bye," Taash says flatly to their mother's retreating back.

Helena winces again.

Taash sighs heavily, and a long silence stretches as they stare out towards the nearby water. Then they turn towards Helena with a rueful grin. "Thanks for coming."

Helena grins back. It was an excruciatingly uncomfortable meal to say the least - but she's glad Taash wanted her to be there, and that she could show up for it. "She used 'she'," she points out conversationally as they begin to walk away down the path from the house. "You haven't told her yet."

Taash grunts. "I was going to. Then we got here, and she was... like that." They cast a quick, frustrated glance at the house's closed door.

Helena nods slowly. The truth is, she doesn't really know what to say about any of it. Shathann and Taash's relationship is so clearly strained and difficult, both of them seeing the world so entirely differently - and yet there is still love between them both, struggling up between the cracks of the conflict.

She thinks about her own mother and father. Good people, but they raised her among a number of other rescued slave-orphans, and their affection could be a little impersonal at times. In a way, she suspects that Taash is far closer to Shathann than Helena is to her own mother; there's just so much mess in the way that neither of them can see it clearly.

But her job isn't to fix Taash's relationship, and she's not sure she'd be much good at it anyway; her job is to support however the hell Taash wants to handle it. So she flashes her young friend a crooked grin to lighten the mood as they walk away. "I almost gave it away when I realized she didn't know."

"That would have been bad," Taash mumbles ruefully. They sigh, shaking their head. "I'll tell her soon. She deserves to know."

Helena gives them a sideways look. "This isn't about her," she says firmly. "You do what's right for you."

Taash gives her a small smile in return. "Thanks."

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Update: Bellara's level 7 bond title has arrived...

AHHHHHHHHHHHH

In other news, there's a delicious sounding cake situation happening in the codex:

Has anyone tried making this? It sounds fantastic.

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I just realized that Harding's greenhouse has a fuckoff-huge flower growing from the ceiling.

That's a fun touch. The pollen situation in that room must be Severe, however. XD

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Well, that was unexpectedly devastating. :( Final conversation back at the Lighthouse to close out Taash's questline.

Helena finds them hunched in front of a makeshift little altar in the storage room, unmoving, shoulders slumped. They don't look up when they hear Helena's footsteps, but they do speak after a while, very low and flat, betraying none of the emotion - anger or grief - that Helena saw back in the cave.

"We went there to save her," they mutter.

(A/N: Not to be pedantic, visual artists, but why the halla statue?)

Helena sighs. She's starting to get better at not running like hell from these sorts of conversations, but it doesn't mean she's any good at them. "Taash, I'm... so sorry," she mutters, feeling the inadequacy of the words as she speaks them.

"You didn't kill her," Taash says bitterly. "She made the decision for all of us. Same as always." Their lip curls with an air of frustration. "Shokra toh ebra. What kind of last words are those for someone you're supposed to care about?"

"She also said you were stronger than the Dragon King," Helena points out softly. And called you 'they'...

"And that I misunderstood the qunari crap. Like always," Taash shoots back. A pause. Their shoulders sag in a heavy exhale. "We never got to yell it out," they whisper. "We never get to fix it..."

A long silence falls for a little while. Then they reach out, resting their fingers on the makeshift altar next to a small curved shape dipped in gold.

"It's a bit of her horn," they say, half to themselves. "I cut it off when I... when I left her. I should... do something with it."

They sit back on their heels, jaw working in thought. "A Rivaini would wear it as jewelry. But she hated when I acted Rivaini." They shift their weight, then clamber slowly to their feet. "A qunari would graft the horn to their own. But she didn't want me to stay in the Qun." Their eyes flick to Helena, a helpless, longing question in them. "What would make her happy?"

"It's not about her," Helena murmurs.

Taash scowls, looks away, staring down at the flickering candlelight. "Yeah."

Helena thinks for a little while before answering. In the end, she doesn't really know much about Shathann. Or even really about parents. But she thinks she knows Taash pretty well at this point. She thinks she knows that Taash would chafe under any attempt to match the Qun's ideals. Taash has their own road - and just at the last, Shathann made it clear that she honored that path.

Even if she hadn't, it would still be the right call, but as it stands, the answer seems pretty clear.

"Did your mother want you to be a qunari who happened to live in Rivain?" she asks with a slight smile. "Or a Rivaini person who happened to be qunari?"

Taash snorts softly. "She wanted both," they say. "But... she brought me here." A slow breath - in, out. "She wouldn't want me to become more qunari for her." A ghost of a smile tugs their lips. "She'd want me to be... me."

Helena grins slowly, poking at that smile, as if stoking up a fire that doesn't quite want to light. "Is that what you want to do?"

Taash lets out a heavy breath... and then smiles back. "Yeah," they murmur, a bit shakily. "I can do that."

A pause, and then they reach down, picking up the heavy tablet sitting on the table. "And I can do this," they add. "She wanted me to have it."

Helena raises an eyebrow curiously. "The Dragon King said the full message would be revealed by dragonfire," she points out. "Do we need to find a dragon?"

Taash's eyes glint with a flicker of dry humor. "Nah. The Dragon King was stupid," they say briskly and, opening their mouth, release a burst of flame onto the stone.

Helena gives a startled laugh as she sees glowing orange letters begin to shimmer into existence across the tablet. "Dragonfire," she mutters.

Taash grins, looking rather pleased with themselves. "Let's find out what it says."

-----

\o/

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Congratulations on finishing Veilguard! What are your thoughts on the game itself now that it’s over? Where would you rank it against the other three? And even though another playthrough is a long ways off, is there another faction/romance you’re leaning toward exploring next?

Thanks! :D

I've been chewing over my answer to this question since Saturday and I think... my thoughts are complicated haha.

Veilguard felt like a game that had a lot of good ideas and knew very much the things it wanted to say and didn't always execute them well. The early part of the game in particular felt like a slog, and a lot of the writing felt utilitarian; I felt very conscious of the writers acting through the characters to get between plot points or get a message across, rather than the characters feeling intrinsically motivated.

(I don't actually really blame the writers for this; it sounds like the development environment for this game was an atrocious experience deeply hampered by bad management, and overall the impression I got was of good writers desperately bailing water trying to get at the story they wanted to tell before the whole thing fell over.)

That said, there was a lot I really enjoyed about it as well. The visual design was pretty uniformly stunning, and the big set pieces in particular were excellent. Weisshaupt stands out to me, as does the entire endgame; I had spent the first half of the game being told by multiple people how good the third act was and it really did not disappoint. It felt like classic Bioware in the best way, very reminiscent of peak moments like the ME2 suicide mission.

Overall - I think that had the earlier parts of the game more uniformly served the ending, VG would have had the potential to be the best game in the series. As it is... it reads as a game with the potential for greatness that wasn't quite able to capitalize on it.

It's difficult for me to rank the DA games in general because I have liked all of them for different reasons and also bc it's been ages since I played the others. XD So it's also hard for me to say where VG stacks up in comparison. I think I can safely say it wasn't my favorite, but it's also difficult for me to say it's my least favorite bc there was a lot I enjoyed. XD This isn't a very satisfying answer, I suppose, but it's all I've got.

As far as future playthroughs - I definitely want to try all the romances eventually, but Emmrich is likely next on the list, probably followed by Neve. And I've heard the Grey Wardens have the best overall connection with the plot so they'd probably be my next faction to try.

(I'm definitely open to suggestions in this regard though!)

TY for asking (and triggering this ramble, lol). :D And ty for reading! I hope you enjoyed my take on the VG adventures. :3 I'll try to post some of my thoughts on future PTs even if I don't do a full liveblog.