I think my favorite voice actor’s in any Dragon Age game is Felmeth’s, Kate Mulgrew. She carried the voice in a way that hinted at a double meaning behind everything she said, that she always knew more than The Warden/Hawke/The Inquisitor and even Morrigan. Her motivations were never clear and that was portrayed beautifully in her voice. Was she a force of good? Benign mischief? Apathetic logic?
She plucked at the strings of the narrative and bent them to her own ends while her voice gave a laissez faire attitude that said that she’d been doing this for a very long time. I’ll never get the bark of her laugh out of my head
And then we get to Veilguard and there’s…Mythal. Who’s tucked away with the voice of a filler npc and the appearance of a woman who would call me a slur in a Trader Joe’s parking lot. Try as I might, I don’t understand the reasoning behind what happened to the mythology/mystique of this grand and imposing character
An exchange between a fan and Trick Weekes, former lead writer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard (DATV), was recently leaked:
Fan: YEAH
Fan: i love that choice
Fan: to show how the empire is -- people
Fan: and how Southern Thedas is bigoted in other ways
Fan: yeah i'd have liked to see the slaves BUT Dock Town wouldn't have slaves! it's a working class place!
Fan: you have people peopling
Fan: probably -- the biggest thing i learned from living in the US is that USians are... regular people lol
Fan: I knew that of course
Fan: I had USian friends online I'd been to the US
Trick Weekes: Yeah, we DO have the slavery -- it's in the Blood of Arlathan plot, with Venatori sitting on people posed like thrones.
Trick Weekes: Yeah, "Slavery Bad" was a pretty simple message that didn't need a lot of space.
Trick Weekes: (Like, a good message! Slavery is bad! But after you show it, continuing to hammer it in stars to feel superfluous.)
Fan: and it was unnecessary
I would argue that this very exchange proves that it was, in fact, necessary. But that would require writers who actually care to risk bruising their white fragility, and we can’t have that now, can we?
Before tackling the root of this exchange, however, I believe it is crucial to take a step back and look at the Dragon Age’s franchise established history with depicting slavery. The state it in DATV has not always been the case, and it is baffling, after recently replaying Dragon Age: Origins (DAO) again, just how far things have progressively fallen in terms of quality on this subject matter.
Slavery in Dragon Age: Origins
Despite being released in 2009, I believe that DAO remains the best depiction of slavery in the Dragon Age franchise to date. I say this so easily, because the way in which enslavement is depicted starts first with the long-term damage done to a group of people, then works back to the history of it. Introducing slavery into your fantasy setting this way makes it easier to digest and understand the implications on a stronger level, both narratively and empathetically.
The player is immediately given the information that elves were enslaved to humans for a very long time, regardless of the origin chosen, through NPC dialogue or narration. While they may no longer be officially enslaved in Ferelden, the elves of current time still suffer from intergenerational trauma and ongoing oppression. While the effects of this worldbuilding are scattered throughout the entire game, it becomes an integral part of the story once you reach the main quest “Unrest in the Alieange”. In this quest, the player discovers that the antagonist Loghain has made an agreement to sell the elves of Denerim to slavers from Tevinter. This is accomplished through the slavers pretending to bring help for a plague, when in reality, they are trafficking the elves back to their homeland. When this is brought up to the nobility later, one of the reactions from a noble is “there is no slavery in Ferelden!” This one line of dialogue tells so much about how this slavery ring was even possible; because the humans would rather live in ignorance. We are shown time and again throughout the game how many humans treat elves like dirt, benefiting from their underpaid labour and lack of rights as people… only to turn around and yell “there is no slavery in Ferelden!” There was already slavery in Ferelden before Loghain’s deal with Tevinter; it was just dressed up prettier.
The depiction of slavery in DAO runs a brutally honest parallel to real life, and forces the player to see it. The player may make evil choices in their game – it is a roleplaying game after all – but in some ways, you could even say allowing the player to be evil enhances the showcasing of how slavery is wrong, by making it so unquestionable that those options are the evil ones. DAO does not bother to ask the question, “is slavery wrong?” It states as a fact that yes, it is, and then backs up that fact with examples of why.
Slavery in Dragon Age II
Dragon Age II (DA2) carries through with what was already established in DAO, when it comes to slavery in Thedas. The main difference is, through adding a companion like Fenris, who himself is an escaped slave, it takes a more personal and emotional approach to the subject rather than touching it on a larger systemic scale. The player can hear Fenris’s story, and learn how even though he is now free, he is severely traumatized from his experiences when enslaved. Narrowing the topic of slavery down to a single example this way, does a pretty good job growing what has already been pre-established when it comes to the worldbuilding in Thedas.
In addition to everything involving Fenris, there are just regular Tevinter slavers preying on the people of Kirkwall that Hawke fights throughout the game. Much like Ferelden, Kirkwall does not officially sanction enslavement, but apparently does not do much to prevent it either.
Slavery in Dragon Age: Inquisition
Storytelling involving slavery took a turn for the worse in Dragon Age: Inquisition (DAI). For starters, the only voices on slavery now come from Tevinter, in Dorian and Calpernia. Dorian, the companion with whom you are supposed to appreciate, does actually ask the question “is slavery wrong?” and follows up with disapproval if you tell him yes. Throughout the entire game, this is never followed up on. It isn’t until Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights where we get confirmation that he has actually changed his mind, and if you didn’t read that book, your only chance to learn it is if you find a specific codex entry in DATV. (But more on that later.) Calpernia, one of the antagonists, may not even appear at all in the game depending on if you choose to do the quest “In Hushed Whispers” over “Champions of the Just”. Calpernia is a former slave herself, and yet somehow believes that working with the Venatori, blatant slavers, are the key to her goal of ending slavery in Tevinter. It does not actually make any sense that Calpernia would be kept in the dark about all the slavery from the Venatori until the player tells her, yet be one of their leaders at the same time. I like Calpernia as a character in concept, but she definitely suffers from a weak personal plot.
So, there is no more personal level to discussing slavery from a character perspective. That must mean there is at least a systemic approach to addressing this part of the main antagonistic force in the game, the Venatori, right? Well, no! There is none of that, either! We only know that the Venatori are even actively using slaves through easily missed or avoidable side quests, and war table missions. DAI somehow accomplishes fighting slavery without actually saying much about slavery at all.
Slavery in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Despite the Tevinter Imperium taking up a large portion of the setting in DATV, there is very minimal discussion or depiction of the slavery we know from previously established lore the empire runs on. We know that the Shadow Dragons help free slaves through ambient dialogue and a few scattered notes, and if you play as a Shadow Dragon, part of your Rook’s backstory is that they helped free slaves personally. However, one thing is made very clear over and over: every time slavery is even remotely brought up, it is always blamed on Venatori alone… as if Tevinter in its entirety isn’t run on legalized slavery, and has been that way for far longer than the Venatori have even existed! There is no sign of everyday slavery; it is always exclusively the actions of the Venatori, or people connected to the Venatori. This is a blatant attempt to simplify or dodge altogether portraying systemic slavery; by putting the blame solely on one single cult, it both pretends that fixing slavery is a simple answer of just getting rid of a few fringe bad guys, and tries to rid the rest of the nation of culpability… and while I say “try”, apparently the attempt worked on some fans, because it sure sounds like the one in the exchange with Weekes is under a poor impression.
Slavery is NOT Simple
To claim that “Dock Town wouldn’t have slaves” because “it’s a working class place” is absolutely false in every way. The myth that only the rich were slave owners during the age of chattel slavery in the Americas is just that – a myth. While merchants owned the largest number, even your average farmers and the Church owned slaves. [X] Additionally, Dock Town has a dock, with ships. Ships that you would think transport a lot of enslaved people in and out of Minrathous. There is every reason to expect to see signs of slavery in Dock Town as much as anywhere else in Tevinter, if not arguably even more so.
What especially disgusts me from that anonymous fan though, is the classification of “regular people” apparently not including anyone enslaved. Going on to compare “regular people” of Tevinter to “regular people” of the USA is especially telling. Why does this fan believe that it is the privileged settlers of colonial empires who are the ones needing sympathy and normalization?
You may question if perhaps the intention of the writers was to do what was done in DAO, and show that most people are blissfully ignorant of it. If that is the case, then they failed, because in order to do that, you have to actually show the slavery happening in tangent with the people not caring.
Weekes makes reference to the slaves shown during the “Blood of Arlathan” quest in their response. However, yet again I must stress the issue of only ever associating slavery with the Venatori: trying to turn legalized slavery into a problem only sourced from a single cult, diminishes the entire conversation about how slavery operates in Tevinter. In the heart of the slave trade in Thedas, we could and should have realistically seen and heard so much more.
Most white settlers are never satisfied with already always being the centre of attention; they need their asses wiped and baby bottles full at all times, too. Then the minute the conversation gets slightly uncomfortable, they either throw a tantrum or start to cry big tears about how they don’t like feeling so guilty. If the topic of slavery was as simple as Weekes claims, then why is it currently being banned to discuss in classrooms across the United States? [X] The only people who benefit from not learning about or discussing slavery, be it in media or in a real life, are the people who want it to continue.
i do have to say that i like elgar'nan and ghilan'nain as our primary villains. because they look like cartoon bad guys on the surface but if you look a little deeper and find all those hidden little notes and codex entries, it's obvious they actually do have complexity that they don't want us to see.
ghilan'nain is actively in mourning. not just for andruil, but also for her fucked up little experiment of an archdemon, her most perfect creation, razikale. at the end of fire and ice, she is ready to throw herself into a fight that she might not win because she's blinded by her own grief, and she only doesn't because elgar'nan holds her hand and pulls her away. protects her. we can find notes that talk about how elgar'nan is concerned that she's not taking time to mourn properly. we know she's checked in on her first creations, the halla, despite the fact that she writes about them in this sort of detached, almost patronizing way. she calls them something she made when she was "untraveled and naive" and that she could never make them again, but she visited them just to see what they might have become in her absence. like she cares more than she wants to let herself.
and elgar'nan calls her sister, despite the fact that ghilan'nain is the youngest of them. he lets her experiment on lusacan for the express purpose of cheering her up. and when she dies he seems legitimately torn apart by it. what should be an opportunity for the first of the firstborn to finally become the sole tyrant he was practically made to be is instead him becoming completely and utterly alone, the only remaining of his kind. i don't think it's coincidence that both he and solas drift to each other as they do, even if it is as enemies. they're too alike, and they're also the only remnants of the old world, their world, that either of them have.
i can't say that i'm particularly sympathetic to either of them—they're both unrepentant monsters who have committed atrocities across millenia, but the fact that they have this hidden depth reminds me that at the end of the day they are not really anything that no one else is. they are very powerful mages that other people called gods. and people can be very sentimental, indeed.
i am so in love with the city they designed but dont actually let us see.
so the city is essentially a bowl, built up both sides of the valley around river drakon. as in it's not just the fort and the palace that are higher than the rest of the city but it curves back up again across the river. all of ferelden's coast really is mountain, no wonder its so hard for orlais to invade.
here's the market district. its just the market itself and the distant ring of the city's edges at the highest points.
i understand Why they made the walls so tall, to save on rendering, but i wish we could see ANY of this its SO cool. I love how dense and alive this city looks. every other place we see is so sparse and empty
here is a close up on some of the prop filler buildings. while every human building we see up close in game is covered in crumbling debris that would make living in them almost impossible (why bioware. ancient ruins weren't ancient AT THE TIME) these look like functional medieval towers AND what i want to call tudor-ish town homes, mansions and apartments. love the mix side by side, shows a functioning but ancient city
here's fort drakon and its tiered approach. MUCH more realistic than the concept art's thousand meter mesa or whatever the hell they drew.
i'll be kind and put all the panoramas under a read more
as you play through the battle of denerim and move closer and closer to drakon sometimes they delete the mountain, so you can see the tower silhouette better. if you get flycam i suggest exploring from the alienage map because every denerim map has just the location and that distant outer ring of stuff. but because the alienage has an open side for the bridge its got a lot more filler in between.
the view out and around the alienage bridge
now i'll attempt to convey the full panorama, again from the alienage. this city is SO much bigger than the map they gave us im gnawing at the bars of my cage. look at it!
hopefully those are in order lol. i'm running out of pictures so i will save analysis of the river for a second post, and instead leave you with ferelden's ridiculously tiny palace and the palace district up to fort drakon
top: the palace (?) itself on its tiers (its so small??). bottom left: the view over the front side wall. bottom right: the view over the back gate up to drakon. there's so much city between the palace and fort, wow
Look I absolutely get people missing codexes in inquisition but when people mischaracterize Solas as an asshole or what have you. All I do is look at the codex in the Emerald Graves where a hunter (or someone) slept in the arms of his statue and said that it was the safest they ever felt sleeping. Then I sob for twenty minutes.
I know, I know, I love Spite, I'm always talking about how much I love Spite, but can we be real for a second?
Home? Smells like dust and linseed oil.
Spite says this is Villa Dellamorte and Lucanis turns it into a joke, "Don't let Caterina hear you say that," and I'm just. Floored by the voice direction here. It's so funny, and also tragic. "Oh! this is home? This is what home is?....Hmmm, this is what home is, though? Are you sure? Really really? This musty bitch??"
Like Villa Dellamorte, in Lucanis's mind, to an extent has never stopped being home, and Spite knows that, and being there (especially post-Inner Demons when Spite literally understands space now) is kind of exciting! This is Home! It's what a Home is, which means (and represents) So Much to Lucanis! But it's... just an old, empty house. It's too big, and smells like dust. Full of Venatori because there wasn't Love to keep it out.
This is Home? Are you sure, Lucanis? Home is a dusty house full of stale fear and disappointment? Are we sure it isn't something else? Hmph. Well. Maybe if we keep following Rook, they can figure out how to fix it. They open doors, after all.
Ok I need to get this out with the news about devs being fired dropping.
There will be spoilers for Veilguard here so proceed with caution.
EA fucked the game, and the more I think about it, the more angry I am with them.
It all starts with one choice- the devs wanted the veil to come down in that opening, and EA told them no. Told them they couldn’t bring the veil down at all.
It was never going to be a player choice- it couldn’t, it would create two entirely different worlds leading forward, so it would have to be something outside player control, and they were told no.
The veil coming down was outside forces and the veil staying up was Rook’s choice. And had to be Rook’s choice.
Because of that, our Rook could never see the veil coming down as a worthwhile option. Which means we could never engage with it as a reality. We could never ask what that would look like, or question the morality of the veil, either practically, or as a thought experiment. No companions will bring up what it might be like in any positive way or even just as an “I wonder.”
We only get to see veil =bad so Rook must be right.
They cut Solas’ elven followers because having even *one* npc on his side for noble reasons would make us question too much, and we were not allowed to have an opinion other than veil =good, because the devs were hamstringed by it.
No companions ever discuss what it could be like without the veil, and they *should*. Can you imagine Emmrich and Bellara debating it? Emmrich absolutely fascinated by how it would impact spirits and they wouldn’t need to possess anyone or anything, Bellara leery after seeing so much wild magic in Arlathan but wondering if uninterrupted etheric flows would create more stable magic over time. Taash surprising the party by being way more cool with it than expected due to their Rivaini upbringing, and more open to that than necromancy.
Lucanis and Harding being firmly against it to the point it causes some friction in the team, Davrin just staying out of it because he doesn’t get it and doesn’t want to. Harding has a moment of questioning at a weak point after reminiscing about Cole, and wonders how many like him there could be if the veil did come down.
Neve feeling extremely mixed about it, between it possibly allowing a reshuffle of power in Tevinter, removing the ability for mages to make deals with demons, but also upset at the potential raw chaos.
But we never even get to look at that. Because there was no option there. Even if each character landed on veil=good, we never even got to have the discussion, because we couldn’t do anything with it.
And we can see how that spirals out and created a much less morally complex game than we’ve previously gotten. Rook is the good guy because they said so, Solas is the bad guy who, despite being beyond willing to talk to anyone who will listen to him, refuses to expand on what the veil coming down looks like. Because he can’t. Because then we might agree with him.
We’re only allowed Varric’s point of view, which makes sense for the beginning, but there was never an option to expand it. There is one single dialogue option where we can tell Solas “whoops didn’t know that.” But that’s the beginning and end of that train of thought.
They even set us up as this FANTASTIC foil to Solas, having meddled in a ritual we didn’t understand and unleashing multiple blights and elven gods, essentially destroying the south, blighting most of the north, partially destroying a city, and a countless death toll. But taking actual responsibility with that isn’t allowed- because we may sympathize too much with Solas. Because we clearly did the right thing because the veil is still up. It’s not even addressed in the regret prison! Solas tells you thousands would still have died if he took down the veil, but thousands did die as a direct result of Rook meddling. And nowhere can you acknowledge that.
Davrin's past and his Dalish clan and his vallaslin (all mentions I could find)
So much in the game is hidden behind banters between companions (which is ahhhh a bit annoying) so I compiled all the banter and information I found about Davrin's past.
Not really plot spoilers, just Davrin spoilers.
At the end I will summarize everything in a bullepoints list.
Bellara and Davrin banter:
Text here (link)
There are also a few other banters I did not record where it is implied Davrin does not care about the gods or some other late game revelations. The only thing he cares about (and mentions again later in game, in a main scene) is how people see Dalish and elves, and how to minimize the risk of humans hating elves even more.
Taash and Davrin's banter (text in description for each image)
Davrin's quests information:
Here are other mentions from Davrin first quest:
Rook: How did it go?
Davrin: Poorly. They felt like I rejected them.
Rook: Did you?
Davrin: Yeah, I suppose. Clan life wasn't for me. I had to get away.
Rook: So then what happened? You're out in the world, looking for adventure…
Davrin: Got my ass kicked. Went broke.
Davrin: I couldn't go crawling back to my clan a failure. Doubt they'd take me back. It forced me to figure out what I was good at. Always had a knack for hunting.
Other info we get from the Halla quest is that: Davrin spent summers tending Halla as a kid alongside Eldrin, who is not his uncle, but like an uncle. So this is a case of Davrin wanting to spend time with Hallas, or being made to by his clan.
Eldrin's vallaslin is Ghilan'nain:
So it could be that Davrin's new vallaslin might be Ghilan'nain too. But I think it is Andruil's or a mix of the two.
Davrin could have gotten the vallaslin to honor Eldrin (we know he is the only member of his clan - if he is part of his clan - Davrin has no trouble contacting, even if they seem to have not met each other's in a while). But we also know Davrin was a hunter.
Eldrin was also the one who taught Davrin what to hunt basically. In his first quest Davrin says "When I was a kid, I'd hunt just about anything. Rabbits, deer, fox. Eldrin gave that purpose. Taught me the Way of Three Trees. The Way of the Arrow, Way of the Bow, Way of the Wood."
This is from Andruil and if we look at all three vallaslin:
Emmrich and Davrin:
(they have some discussions about Davrin not believing in the Fade or liking it, this is the one which mentions the Dalish clan)
There are also a few other banters at the Lighthouse that mention the Fade and the sky. Mainly they are about Davrin being uncomfortable with the open space and stuff about him disbelieving the Fade: "Good. Because it's not the sky. Emmrich says it's the Fade. Me, I don't know what to think."
Final banter with Davrin:
So basically, the summary of what we know for certain is:
Davrin left his clan voluntarily because he felt restless, he did not care about tradition and lessons, and he wanted to see the world
He felt like he did not fit in his clan since he was a kid
He was also hunting everything he could find until Eldrin taught him the way of the Three Trees and to protect life by hunting darkness (monsters)
Eldrin is like an uncle for him and lives isolated (unsure if he is part of Davrin's clan) and Davrin used to spend summers helping him with the hallas
Davrin feels like he pissed off his clan, he rejected them and both Davrin and Bellara agree it would be hard for him to go back
In another dialogue, he says he actually did not think the clan would take him back at all even if he crawled back asking for help ("Like a failure" he says)
He does not regret joining the Grey Wardens and looking for adventures, but he seems to regret that came at the cost of leaving the clan and not being able to return or keep in contact with them
Also, he says the outside world was different from what he imagined
