It’s not even about Solas, per se. It’s about the visceral feeling that you’re walking through a ruin of a world, that you’re witnessing desperation, it hammers in a message of being lost in time, lost to time, much like the best Deep Roads bits in the series have managed. You hear a dying civilization, you feel their disbelief and anger - what did he do, what did he do, the Evanuris will come for us - and you piece together the puzzle of what happened through fragments and murals (GOD THE MURALS) and conversations and Cole and the whole time there is immense pressure on the Inquisitor because the political landscape is imploding now that the urgent threat of Corypheus is gone and the bloody Qunari invade and your hand, your damn hand is killing you and you still have to chase these leads through the Deep Roads that are always evoking emotions of fear and beauty and the tragedy of history and through Crossroads that are broken and beautiful and haunted. The first time, I had tears in my eyes for large chunks of the playthrough simply because it was so emotionally charged. And when you replay it you realise Solas is there the whole time, telling you the truth, offering a trail to follow and you see another dimension of the wreckage, sees his grief, his desperation. My people were wrong about you, you can tell him and he protests, saying that what you’ve seen is just another version of the story, painted in desperation to give him more credit than he ever deserved. The score in the background is killing you with its emotions and the view from where you stand is so gorgeous you could cry as Solas tells you - in fucking Hallelujah cadence no less because poetry - what he did, how he caused the fall of his own people and must heal the wound he inflicted and you can tell him you would never have thought him the kind of person who could do what he is now about to do. Thank you, Solas says, as though it’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to him and it probably is. And it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change anything though the epilogue hints that it might still be a fraction of hope left because even if a tragedy states that the main character is doomed, his downfall must not be brutal, perhaps there is a path through all the debris and broken worlds, perhaps you will find it.
