#this game has some interesting... things...

[15depressedducks]

...

What

The what ship?

[egophiliac]

Final manifestations for Book 7?

I'm trying REALLY hard not to build up any solid expectations, because I wanna go in ~fresh~! they're already so far away from anything I thought would happen (not in a bad way, I'm just accepting that I'm on Miss Yana's Wild Ride at this point and we're seeing this thing through 'til the end, by gum). so it's nothing too major, but:

they've been handing new crying expressions out like candy lately, I want to see some delicious Malleus tears.

honestly I want everyone to cry buckets. their tears sustain me. the more Silver angst specifically I get the happier I am.

SILVER!!!! 👏 VANROUGE!!!! 👏

just let him have this. the poor boy's been through so much. let him have his big "I'm proud of you, son" moment with Lilia.

I'm 100% expecting Grim's arc (and probably whatever's going on with Crowley) to be its own episode, but a nice hook to leave us hanging on would be good!

a nice hook though, please, I don't think I can take another "Grim is attacking us! now wait eight months to find out what happens :)" cliffhanger...

some Meleanor? as a treat? just a little bit, a tiny quick flashback or something, please Twst I just, I just want to see her again. let her have a little ghost cameo like Dawnathan Knight got. Lilia and his kids are all having their big group hug or whatever and she can gently fade in to be all like

(turning asks off until I'm done playing, SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE Y'ALL)

[helioclipse]

after nearly a month of aggressively rotating kris in my brain i think i actually find it really fascinating to imagine them being this character that, like, has a soft spot for "boy things" (the pranks, their "idealised self" having a knight outfit, whatever) because they associate it with nostalgia and growing up with their brother, but actively hates (fears?) "man things"- or at least, the worst (arguably) masculine stereotypes...

y'know. kris "their personal hell nightmare scenario is using their girl childhood friend as a tool to carry out "their" violent impulses and forcing her to "fall in love with" them" dreemurr... kris "beats the boss from a video game representation of their Trauma Site who insists it's inherently in their nature to love fighting, and takes some sick delight in seeing "proof" of it" dreemurr... kris ""LV3 enjoying the youthful days" after visiting a cryptic area modelled entirely around their past called "mancountry" where "non-men are a-ok too" (i'm aware the "man" is the forgotten man but still)" dreemurr... so on so forth

the best part is that you can't even really tell where the "kris is transfem (= nonbinary and notably uncomfortable with the male gender role)" and "kris is scared to grow up" variations on this idea begin and end. it's not a bug it's a feature, at least for now they're inexorably linked. that's what makes the idea so yummy (...imo)

[bunnieswithknives]

Sam will never stop growing because the visitor will never stop thinking about them ♥

[sunlight-shunlight]

i feel like the entire premise of veilguard is such a... flop in comparison to the setup of trespasser, haha

like ok. you end trespasser with either:

high approval solas is grimly going "ough. i must destroy your world, but i would treasure the chance to be wrong again :/" and seems to at least somewhat hope the inquisitor can find another way to do [whatever magic bullshit he's doing] that's less destructive. so you get the sense that the solution to this will involve finding something solas doesn't know. he gives you a decent amount of information on his plans, and genuinely seems to regret what he sees as the necessity of them.

OR

solas is pretty cold and unflinching, and fucks off with only a vague hint of his plans that he's going to destroy the world. and now you know that he has very little sympathy for mortal people, and he's got his huge pervasive spy network, and massive magical power. so he's a threat! a huge, scary threat, bc he has all these fingers in every organization, and clearly has very few moral compunctions beyond a kind of bare minimum "eh, i don't want this world to suffer unnecessarily before i have to destroy and rebuild it :/" type of mindset.

but then they don't... deliver on either of these?

like the opening showdown at solas' ritual is such a "we tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!" type of situation lmao. after 10 Whole Years, nobody in the inquisition learned anything new about solas' plans or motives? the entire double blight thing and the purpose of his ritual is a complete surprise to them bc they never... managed to find ANY information on this? if "archdemons are sealing the black city and it opens after the blights" was a common fan theory and implied in previous games even before being confirmed, and the entire premise of the inquisition post-trespasser was "we're going to turn over every stone and figure out what this guy is planning" then how did they not find anything actually useful to bring to bear against him, besides varric's somewhat unconvincing ted talk?

and i don't think this is a "well, solas is just SO secretive and SO great at hiding info, that no one ever guessed what was going on😌" type of thing, bc... the entire point of inquisition was showing that "divinity" is a construct, and everyone is fallible? so it's actually counterproductive to that theme to show him as having this infallible knowledge that no one else in the world has? no one else in thedas ever thought "hm, there are 7 gates to the black city, in the well known chant of light that i read every day, and there are 7 archdemons! why do these numbers match?" even as a conspiracy theory? no one in the inquisition went "hm, weird that solas got so upset about the archdemons when he was with us! what was he thinking about?" to investigate as a lead? the grey wardens have never looked into "hey, what does happen after we run out of blights?" as a question? obviously blackwall would not know if they had, but they're not stupid, they should have been curious? the elves and the dwarves know absolutely nothing useful about their own divine/historical figures that are locked in the black city/generating blight?

and solas is SUCH a dick to grey wardens and dwarves and dalish and tons of other people! and the entire point of his character is to show that his wisdom is limited by his prejudices and ego and isolation! and it is likely for the wardens and dwarves and dalish to have actually useful information that he never had access to, but the inquisition could get to, if it looked. bc these factions are far more layered and important than what solas sees them as. but now the conclusion is... well.... no one but solas knew jack shit about these topics. so, was he technically correct in dismissing everyone else from the start(?) low approval and xenophobia win(?) never listen to anybody if you think they're lesser than you, bc they don't actually know anything useful(?) 😭

and the entire premise of the high approval inquisitor/solas relationship is them proving a lot of his biases wrong! they're not intentionally setting out on a mission of "i am going to force this 10 000 year old sunk cost fallacy immortal to reckon with the fact that i'm a person with equal rights to him", but they do so regardless! varric nearly wins the whole "what if you were a lone survivor on a desert island" argument, without even understanding what they were arguing about! so, if they're actually setting out with the goal to change his mind, and with knowledge of who he actually is besides "weird hermit with bad opinions on every race including his own," then... they should continue that thread and have the inquisition make a genuinely compelling attempt to show him information he doesn't have?

and also, i don't think this necessarily has to work! if they need to keep him as a villain, it would be interesting if solas, even if given some new info - still tragically refused, became as prideful in his own ideology as the evanuris, and continued on his same antagonistic course, and then had to be stopped by force. and it would be EXTREMELY heartwrenching if he killed varric after that genuine attempt! but the fact that it's never even tried is such a ???. why even dangle the option in previous games, then?

but ok! let's say they wanted to get rid of the high approval "prove me wrong" vibe entirely, and just make solas a straight out villain.

he has no agents! no schemes! no terrifying dream sequences! his only crime onscreen is... accidentally killing varric in a somewhat dumb way that makes both of them look bad? tfw varric, an extremely charming, eloquent guy from the most mugging-prone city in thedas, decides to do a "your plans are bad, bc even the ones that were successful and objectively decent, sucked. stop doing anything" ted talk, to his friend that he otherwise has good success in arguing with. and then wanders into melee range. and then solas, 10 000 year old magical being who doesn't even want to exist in a physical form, while holding a priceless mystical artifact, decides to stab him with the artifact. instead of casting Any Spell. i would totally buy it if solas blasted varric into a wall and broke his neck, or turned him into a statue, but knife fighting each other like level 2 rogues is.... cringe for both of them 😔

and then the only scheme solas has is luring rook into a prison that... they escape within weeks? he doesn't even give them fucked up nightmares or anything? for some reason, despite making them hallucinate varric while he's trying to foment regret in them, he has varric be... fairly nice to them? why? make fake varric guilt trip them constantly instead to intensify their regrets, if that's his angle? guilt trip them about releasing the blights, and then he could even parallel their regret about that, with his regret for destroying arlathan? if he's supposed to be cold-bloodedly manipulating rook to escape, then commit to it! he's SO useless in general!

i was expecting some horrible, galaxy brain schemes of making the tevinter and qunari armies fight each other to cover for his agents. assassinations, blackmail, court intrigue, idk. stuff that really makes you think about how brutal he must have been during his rebellion, and how easy it is for him to slip from "arguing with iron bull that people shouldn't relish in killing bc it's wrong to devalue anyone's life" to "welp. time to get my hands bloody again to do the job :/" dread wolf mode. but instead he's just in a shitty fade terrarium for most of the game? what was the point of hyping him up as this ruthless mastermind with tons of hidden followers, then?

and at the end, rook can... punch him out? the guy who was turning people to stone by looking at them, before? this is just boring fjdhdjdjsf. my boy should at least get a boss battle 😭

[taffywabbit]

so like. at what point are we going to stop listening to game companies saying "the game was poorly received and didn't meet our sales targets, and that's why we're removing it from storefronts and taking down all the servers mere months or even weeks after release" for titles that had a long expensive development, were barely marketed, and nobody knew they'd even released until after they heard they were getting shut down and couldn't be played/purchased anymore?

I feel like the prevailing takeaway for anyone who doesn't just conclude "yeah, game was pretty mid, makes sense to me" has usually been "this company just has unreasonably impossible sales expectations and treats every project like a failure if it doesn't print a trillion dollars". but these ARE allegedly experienced business execs who aren't complete idiots, and after this most recent debacle with Concord I'm starting to wonder if a bunch of these "games getting wiped out of existence when they underperform instead of just being allowed to persist as they are and maybe improve with time" cases in recent years might be more of a Warner-Discovery type situation, like nuking an entire animated series or film that was worked on for years and preventing it from being sold because it has to be officially unprofitable for the company to use it as a tax write-off. I look at a game that was worked on for 8 years and only made available for 2 weeks, and it's hard not to see the parallels.

great work, AAA games industry, really normal and sustainable stuff you're doing over there as usual

[mollysunder]

I'm really curious about how Paige and Pocket's dynamic will be characterized. They're both some of the most openly empathetic heroes on the roster, but their motivations are completely opposite. Paige is trying to save her family by saving her brother Bryce, who based on the few hints we have, is implied to be at best unpleasant and makes bad decisions of their own volition. Meanwhile, Arin has entirely given up on their family. Pocket has accepted their parents can't be changed and must be stopped.

Whenever someone knows even a little about Paige's situation they tell her to give up on her brother (except the patrons). On the flipside, Pocket's has been repeatedly lumped in with their parents even though their set against, and often even told to go home to them. Dynamo, their own godfather, tries to defend Maximilian's complexity to them and Pocket won't have any of it.

I could go on about their parallels I'm most interested with how they both ended up at the Maelstrom to complete the Ritual. They both individually decided there was no possible other way to solve their problems with their respective family than by committing insane levels of violence on others because it has to be them who does it. To them it's the only way. And they both don't like have to be there, and yet clearly enjoy the ease in which they progress through the ritual and make monsters of themselves.

Do the ends justify the means? Are they the only ones who can for eachother?

[arcturianview]

I think the craziest thing about Kazuma as a character to me is how the same thing that happens to Susato and Ryunosuke happens to you the player. You play the first case and go "dang that guy is so cool and epic and my good friend!!" and then you get to 2-4/2-5 and you think "wow. my good friend was hiding so much from me. he's changed so much. who could have seen this coming?

and then you go back to 1-1 and you think "oh. he was always like this, huh? i just smoothed the memory out and made him out to be the ideal because of course I did."

And then you realize that Ryunosuke, in fashioning himself in Kazuma's image, is far closer to the ideal he created of Kazuma than the real thing.

i think about the devotion he inspires in Susato who's known him for so long and in Ryunosuke who's known him so briefly and then i think about the character popularity poll he won after just DGS1. Because he pulled the same act on all of us.