I read a reddit post about Veilguard and how disappointing it was for the community. I could tell because I've seen you bash Veilguard over the head a bunch on the tl.
But I'm curious the reddit post mentioned that the writers chose to answer a lot of very important lore questions about the gods and religion
Basically like, "It was the Elves the entire time" they were just puking on humans for thousands of years.
Did they really do that or was it just an exaggeration?
Oh hi!
and yeah that's pretty much what happened.
The really frustrating thing is that to do that they removed the impact of any of the other big players on the lore as well. I think it's why it stands out so much while we already had information that it was where it was heading, because we went from "the Elves are responsible for some things but there's many layers to it" to "the Elves did it. the rest of the world are just victims."
The other frustrating element being that we're initially introduced to the Elves are a very oppressed group in Thedas. The legend says they were walking this world before the humans even arrived, but when the humans arrived, they lost their immortality and contact with the gods and the humans took advantage of the chaos to destroy their culture and make them slaves for thousands of years. Then, once Andraste freed the slaves and granted them lands for them to revive their culture, the religion born from Andraste's actions instead decided that the elves were subclass creatures who had strayed too far away from the Maker, and deserved to be destroyed and forcefully assimilited.
So in modern Thedas the elves basically have 4 different type of fate available that are all putting them in various level of oppression. Those who didn't want to submit became wanderers, known as the Dalish, who are trying to recover their history and still cling to whatever pieces of their culture they managed to recover. In Tevinter, the Slavery Capital, elves are enslaved and used as blood magic folder all the time, and they kidnap elves all around the world to force them to become slaves. In Andrastian countries, they are sub-citizen, living in alienages and being mistreated by the humans, mostly forced to become servants or manual laborer at very low salary. And where the Qun has spread, some elves can decide to join the Qunari, which is a whole can of worm i can't get into in detail but it has still lots of problems.
So we can't divorce the choice of making everything their fault from the fact that this is a heavily oppressed group in universe. In DAO, when a Blight is happening, you can hear NPC say "it has to be the fault of the elves, we should kill them all to punish them." out of pure bigotery.
It also doesn't help Andrastianism really is scared of spirits and demons, and believe in their creation myth that the spirits once walked the earth as created by the Maker, but grew jealous of humanity and therefore started to do horrible things, being twisted into demons, and so the Maker created the Veil to lock them in the Fade so they wouldn't hurt the humans anymore. (it's relevent for later).
DAI already introduced concerning elements. First, that the religion the Dalish remember is based on thousands of years of propaganda by their "gods" who were magelords who enslaved the elves for thousands of years. The markings the Dalish wear proudly? used to be slavemarks. It also introduces that something terrible happened to the Dwarves and the Elven Gods were seen on the scene of the crime, and they may have found a way to weaponize the Blight at the time. And on top of that, the reveal that the elves were in fact Spirits who took a physical form. Moreover we learn that the Veil happened because Solas tried to lock away the Elven Gods and his spell had the unfortunate side effect to just create a Veil between the spirits and the elves. And it's when the humans arrived on the land and took advantage of the chaos of the elves being separated from their nature to attack them.
But DAI had room for nuances still. We had limited information due to a lot of biased records, because prior to DAV we only ever learn history from biased sources: a journal page, a propaganda article, this type of things.
DAV let go of any nuance and any details. The codex all go in the same sense now so you don't really get nuances in opinions on why things were the way they were. We get "treated" to Solas' flashbacks to fully put all the blame on him and on the fact the elves took physical form to start with. And, worse of all, it totally disregards the Modern Situation in Thedas and especially the modern plight of the elves. And disregard the past slavery as well.
So now we learn the spirits became elves because they envied humans (? humans were never supposed to be this far before in the timeline. The artbook says it was because they were envious of the dwarves, which make more sense. but the moment they make it about humans, it just validates the Andrastian belief on the spirits). They stole the blood of the Titans to make their bodies, which made the Titans upset and start the war. (DAI had a situation of a spirit taking a physical form out of pure force of will, by virtue of becoming more complex than just the emotion he was embodying. So for decades we had reasons to believe that the Spirits became Elves in a form of evolution. But now instead their existence relies on stealing and destroying a culture.) They basically commited a genocide against the dwarves, cut them from their magic by making the Titans tranquil (aka cutting away their spirits), and the process of cutting those dreams *created* the Blight. Solas is directly blamed because he created the tool to tranquilize the Titans under the order of the goddess Mythal, and then the Elven Gods just took advantage of it and weaponized the Blight.
Add to it concerning details. For example, Solas rebelled because the Gods were enslaving his people to start with. the Elves were the first victim of the gods, per all logic. Not per VG's logic. We get people blaming Solas for even rebelling because he didn't trust Mythal would bring progressive change while being a slaver herself. (and VG goes out of its way to ignore an elephant in the room left in DAI that Solas used to be her slave. It's never mentioned now and they textually say that Solas has equal responsibilities for the things Mythal pushed him to do with never a mention on how he used to be her slave.). Neve slams Solas for not trusting Mythal who was actually doing progressive changee. Lucanis slams him for how he couldn't say no to Mythal about the genocide. Varric mocks Solas that he tried to rebel against slavery but he failed so maybe he shouldn't do anything anymore "for the good of others".
So in that case, the only thing that remains is that the original sin was for the elves to even take physical form. Where things could have been more complex about just evolution bringing two groups to clash, became textually about the Spirits/Elves becoming too greedy and bad.
it doesn't help that VG goes out of its way to undo the work the previous games, especially DAI, had done to humanize the spirits/demons. While the previous games were telling you to consider them people, VG is constantly framing spirits as bad and the Veil having to stay up to separate the good people from "a sea of demons", now considered to be the only threat of the Veil coming down. So when the game which refuses to acknowledge spirits' rights and humanity tells you "the elves were spirits and they took a body by stealing the blood of a natural creature", the implication is that the elves' greed is at fault for everything happening to start with.
Worse is the refusal of acknowledging the plight of modern elves. While Solas didn't like the Dalish very much for the way they revived all the propaganda Solas had been fighting against in the way back, Solas still had a goal in DAI to free people from any type of slavery, and especially "his people": the elves being mistreated across Thedas and the spirits being treated like subhuman and separated from the world.
Not anymore. Now Solas is only doing all of this because he believes he has a responsibility toward Mythal, and because he's "trying to fix his mistake" and "yearns for the good old days and wants to revive the old world for nostalgia". Which ignores completely the fight for the modern elves' survival.
Worse! Bellara, a Dalish elf, upon learning the truth, will suddenly confond herself in apologies to Harding, a dwarf, for what the Elven Gods did to her people, and then she says "maybe people are right to not trust us." This is one of the only mention of modern elves' issues in the game and it's to say "well they're descendant of evil elves so maybe it's all deserved". Ignoring that the elves were initially victims of the magelords to start with, and disregarding centuries of horrible oppressions, including slavery (as we spend our time in Tevinter, with Bellara being a huge fan of a human mage in Tevinter).
And it doesn't help that there is no mention of the various degree of oppression the elves go through. The Dalish basically disappeared offscreen and rejected their religions because "everyone knows our gods were evil but Solas was worse" they say while still wearing the slave markings they appropriated back on their face. Now they're replaced by Veil Jumper who also accepts people from any background, and they're just historians now. No mention of their struggle as a nomadic group who always had to be on the run because humans would purge their clans when they had the occasions. City Elves? No mention of them. Slavery? everyone knows slavery is bad so the devs decided to not talk about it because they had nothing else to say on the topic. The Qun is ignored.
So the elves are no longer defined by their modern struggles, but they are defined for the crimes that their leaders caused, and they have to take responsibilities for it, despite originally being slaves, and having been in the worst situation ever since.
The dwarves are no longer connected to the Titans, for sure, and the Blight has destroyed their land, and they have a fucked up society that is probably the result of trying to reproduce what it felt like to be connected to a Titan. The remaining citystate of the Dwarves though is still deep in tradition, standing strong and proud, and have deep connection with Tevinter as well. Will we talk about modern dwarves? No. No we won't. Even when we finally discover Kal Sharok which is supposed to have unique problems as dwarves go, we don't actually talk about all of this. It's entirely about Harding's feelings on the genocide that happened 8k years ago. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing per se, but it ignores completely the modern concerns of this world.
And so in the end it results on the fact the Elves Are To Be Blamed is the core fo the narrative. The dev says that in Tevinter they didn't want to show slavery and wanted to show the normal people who were just here buying bread, that it's what you have in Empires and it's why you shouldn't destroy evil Empire but strive to vote the evil out (Tevinter was never a democracy but whatever.) but in the same breath, The Elves, who were enslaved by the Elven Gods, now are responsible for what the Elven Gods did, and maybe it means humans are right to mistreat them.
Bellara's arc even amount to a choice about an archive she had found about the history of her people (though heavily biased for Anaris, whole case of worm not worth talking about but picture me boiling with rage at this mention), and the dilema for her is that "this history is dangerous actually so maybe we should destroy it". The implicit thematic here being that the elves' history is to throw away. That the struggle of the Dalish to reconnect to their history is inherently pointless because don't you see? the elves were evil and so they need to create a new future.
And it neglects the fact a lot of the Modern Elven Culture is not just based on trying to retrieve informations from when they were an Empire, but also trying to revive the time of the Dales, when they were granted freedom to rebuild before the Andrastian culture destroyed them again. The culture of the Dales is in itself maybe even more important than the old Empire days. It's never mentioned in game. Actually since their Empire days are bad they should never look back into the past. Not even the time of the Dales.
So the game goes out of its way to frame the Elves as responsible for everything while removing any of the things that could have added nuance (that the elves were oppressed, that they didn't have a choice, that they tried to fight against it anyway), and ignoring the modern plight because "well you see their past is bad so :/"
So what i think everyone says by saying "the elves are blamed for everything" is that, yeah, ok, it was set up in previous games that the Elves may have been responsible for a lot of things. But the previous games were more nuanced as it was. It wasn't just Solas And His Series of Blunder With The Evil Elves Who Shouldn't Have Existed.
But Veilguard was terrified to talk about the modern politics of thedas that weren't absolving Tevinter from its horrible way. So we don't actually get to address how these reveals would impact modern thedas, the modern fight, the modern plight.
Instead we just get Bellara's white guilt of "maybe people are right to not trust us."
And meanwhile the crimes of the others are not acknowledged. Tevinter gets the grace of "some people are just living here buying bread" and there will be no mention of how they scavanged and destroyed the elves. Hell, the biggest sin of Tevinter, which is to have unleashed the Blights into the world after Solas had locked them away, is now blamed on the elves because the elven gods were whispering to the mage lords to come and unleash it, instead of it being pure hubris on their part. So Tevinter especially gets absolved from its sins because the elves take responsibilities for them now.
So if you go by VG content only, everything is the fault of the elves and the modern elves have to pay the price. Oops.
And the conclusion of the game is to keep the Veil up so the nasty spirits don't get into our world (because the whole focus is about not letting "demons" in the world of normal people) without ever addressing that Solas' goal was also the freedom of his people (Solas having giving up on hiis group of rebel fighter because "actually he realized he wasnt a good leader and didn't want that" and then spend the ending locked away so he can himself fuel the Veil that keeps his people separated), and instead Slavery is stopped thanks to a Vote (a storyline you may miss completely if you didn't save the Tevinter City in the first big decision of the game, and will only learn about in a slide in the epilogue then. Again Tevinter is not a democracy what are we even doing, and the fact we have to rely on two ex-slave owners for it is just so. dlkhfdlkfjdklffdlk.). And i'm sure no one will ever be mean to the elves anywhere else now that the last two blights literally destroyed the entire south and made Tevinter the hub of diplomacy, while they were conducted by two elven gods, which everyone knows about this time :) "the elves deserved a win!" the devs said.
(in DAO people talk about killing the elves over the SUSPICION of them being involved in the Blights but the moment two Elven Gods unleash a double blight and destroy the whole world i'm sure people will be super chill and won't blame the elves for this. A win!)
VG abandoned all nuance set up in previous entries to provide the player with a quick and easy feel-good power fantasy
precisely <33333
isn't it fun. isn't it so fun. why aren't you smiling. aren't you having fun. you're a hero. the greatest of all time. you saved the statusquo from those gods. they were super duper strong so it means you're super duper strong. slavery who.
Seeing people make fun of Solas for being so into the Fade always made me sad as an autistic person, because by god can I relate, but it feels extra bad since the Veilguard reveals.
god same
i also can relate a lot to it. i think i swing more on the ADHD side but i'm technically not diagnosticed with that, i have hyperfixation and bad cptsd though due to many things including neglect and trauma from bullying, so the whole idea to make fun of someone for being into something they like just makes me so infinitely sad and makes me feel alienated as well. Like even without the Reveals, the man is just happy to talk about something he likes. what's so bad with that. And he rarely does so without being prompted and/or because he faces something that excites him. That's just cruel to me to hold it against him.
(there's also how sometimes people make fun of the fact Solas and Cole get along so well in game like leave them aloooone they understand each other at least!!)
After the Reveals however this is even worse. Like i was rereading his banters the other day and like, there's one where Bull makes fun of the Fade and then adds that demons are not people like, almost verbatum, and Solas gets so annoyed and sends it back at him "wouldn't people also say the same about the Qunari" and that gets Bull upset. And i'm just.. bro... you insulted him as a person over his own nature first....
Like he goes from hyperfixating nerd who really wants to share what he loves, from literally the last remaining person who truly knows what was lost from the disconnection to the Fade -- one of the last "spirit made corporal", the one who still see spirits and the awakening world, and is trying to reunite the two, and in a way i feel like it's... almost like he's trying to act as an ambassador for spirits. Like the way he talks about them in DAI where everyone also kinda come representing their "faction"/"background", he feels like he's begging you to consider how spirits feel, and he'll assume what you think of spirits is also directed at him too.
and it just... feels so bad.
I keep thinking about the banter where Dorian says "since you love spirit so much why don't you bind them, we love binding spirits back home" and Solas gets so cold and it's like. my god Dorian. King of putting both his feet in his mouth at the same time.
Cozy game in Dragon Age: You try to farm crops but those fuck ass main characters keep ruining your shit
DLFDJLFKJDFLKDFJD
Cozy Game where you're a cleaner in the Necropolis and everyday Rook just come in and breaks all the pots and vases and everything around, giving you more work.
haha if we're all solasposting i always thought of the "indomitable focus" line meaning that he wanted to not necessarily "dominate" lavellan. but more like, see her entire focus get drawn into one thing, or be very distracted. you know.
I was ACTUALLy replying that to Shades too!! it's a bonker line out of context in general and it drives me insane, because the mind Goes There, but it feels so.... Like i struggle to believe Solas genuinely wants to dominate her. I know sometimes people have kinks that contradict their deepest beliefs because kinks are make-beliefs and they exist into specific context where ideally it's scripted and in a context where both parties agreed to it and all
but Solas has such a strong moral principle over Freedom For Every Being, being a breaker of chains and bondage, and especially trying so hard to not be like Elgar'nan (who WOULD be into being a daddy dom, you know it.) that i don't actually see him being into bondage? personally?
But yeah therefore i think there's more to it in the sense of. As someone who mostly freed people who were dominated there's this fascination with seeing someone who doesn't look so. And what type of things could bring down such a person? Isn't it fascinating to think about? What is the breaking point of someone who is unbreakable? Maybe at this point he's thinking about it more like a curiosity, still distant enough that it can be something to analyse with emotional distance (that he would NOT want once he's madly in love).
Or, exactly what you say. Wanting to see more facets of her in that way and everything.
sO i do think that it's not exactly that sexual when he says it, but my god what a thing to say as a first flirt.
"Writing flirty dialogue is impossible unless you're a flirty person irl"? That's hilarious
mind you Bellara's romance is the romance with the least content for instance
in the game adverticized as the most romantic of the franchise which then has the least romantic scenes to start with, and multiple characters who can't flirt which justifies why they have even less content than others.
but you know, "it's okay the romance i wrote is bad and awkward, i don't even know how I got a wife" is a foolproof reason to write underwhelming romances.
What's your favorite thing about each Dragon Age game (excluding Veilguard)?
omg.... hi.... thank you for asking <333
For Dragon Age: Origins, it's the roleplayability. I think it's the game where you feel the most the consequences of your actions and the way it really shapes up your character. You have plenty of opportunities to really just roleplay, and the Origins really allow for the MC to really be fleshed out. It makes every interraction a blast and it's a gem to play.
For Dragon Age 2, it's its tension and stakes. Because the scope of the game has smaller stakes than the others games, it also means the stakes are felt in every single action. Where every games struggle with an apocalypse, DA2 struggles with the ongoing system and the way it slowly crushes people. You can never forget that the system is here and ready to plant its claws on you. IT makes the game very tense and stressful, but in a good way, in a way where you have no choice but feeling invested.
For Dragon Age Inquisition, it's its Themes and therefore also its companions. To me some of the biggest themes of DAI are identity and the way it can be stolen away from you: you belong to others before you belong to yourself. Each characters have a mask, and half of them have accepted this mask in their lives, while the others half is struggling with where that leaves them. The MC is left in the same struggle, and so come the theme of what it means to be Divinity. Is it others? is it power? is it benevolence? or is it meaningless to start with? And finally the fact the past will always catch up to you. You can't just ignore it. ITs roots will crack on the fondations you built over it and it will come to haunt you. You cannot move on until the past is acknowledged for what it is.
Those are all things i find extremely compelling about each of the games. Guh i love this franchise. Shame they never made a 4th game.
