Recent Playing: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Feb. 1st, 2025 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gamingSo, ten years since Inquisition released, eight years since I got into Dragon Age myself. I used to think the amount of time they were taking between that release and the next game was because they were taking their time, and I was happy to wait as long as necessary to give them the time to do it right. Nearing the end of my second playthrough of Veilguard, I don't think that anymore. It's disappointing, but it's what we have.
There are some spoilers below, particularly in terms of themes, but I've tried to minimize and warn for any specific spoiler content.
The Good
Veilguard undoubtedly benefits from the technological advances we've seen since Inquisition. The graphics are incredibly detailed and beautiful. Every location has been crafted with care and there's so much to look at. I've been playing in fidelity mode (as opposed to "performance," which prioritizes the performance of the game at the cost of some graphics quality) and haven't encountered any glitching or other issues. I've heard Veilguard called the least-buggy Dragon Age release yet, and I believe it. I stop not infrequently just to gawk at the scenery.
This extends wonderfully into the character creator, into which a lot of effort clearly went. What struck me first was the hairstyles. The hairstyles of Inquisition, frankly, sucked. Veilguard not only has far more options, they're just better: prettier, more diverse, with much better animation. More options for hairstyles that aren't long and loose, which I appreciate. More numerous and detailed options for scars and tattoos as well, which are fun to play around with.
Veilguard also finally builds in a way to edit your character in-game, so none of the decisions you make in the CC are permanent if you get into the game and decide you hate them. You can also override the standard appearance of any weapon or armor set with Rook's wardrobe, so they've done away with the dilemma of "this new armor is better than what I have but it's ugly."
These quality-of-life changes are helpful, as is the ability to port a Rook (and their accompanying inquisitor) from a past playthrough to a new one. It's not New Game +, but it does save you having to redesign the same Rook all over again if you just want to play your same character again.
In terms of the gameplay itself, I think it flows very well. Combat is smooth and responsive, and it's much easier in Veilguard to see which companions' abilities compliment each other, even just from the character select screen (which will let you know who primes what, and who detonates what as you choose your team for an outing). Rook's own ability tree is more of a wreath, so it's much easier to play minutely-adjusted builds and you're free at any time to fully respec Rook at no cost if the build you have isn't working for you.
The environmental puzzles have returned, and they are truthfully the best they've ever been in the series. Puzzles in earlier games often felt clunky and out-of-place, but in Veilguard they work well and are very self-explanatory just from taking a look around the area. I genuinely enjoyed them, and they're built so well into the game that I found myself starting to automatically look around for environmental tools whenever I was moving through a new area. Thanks to Rook's dagger, you also aren't obliged to bring the "right" party members to solve any given puzzle—Rook can simply use the dagger to tap into their unique abilities, saving you from having to run back to a fast travel point to change teammates for a specific puzzle. Once again, Veilguard provides convenience.
We get to visit a lot of areas in the game we've only heard about before: the Anderfels, Tevinter, Antiva, Rivain (sort of), Kal-Sharok (!!! My dwarf-loving heart be still), and in this way the game does provide a new canvas for us, and that was fun. The various armor and casualwear sets designed to fit specific regions and factions were fun too—I enjoyed being able to dress my Rook up in something that fit someone from her background (the armors are well-designed too, I liked looking at them).
You also get some unique, more familiar dialogue with the companion who shares your background, which really helped the story integration. I've shared backgrounds now with Neve as a Shadow Dragon and Emmrich as a member of the Mourn Watch, and I appreciated how their conversations often felt like two colleagues who are familiar with the same type of work. Mourn Watcher!Rook in particular stands out from the others by being interested rather than grossed out by much of what Emmrich enjoys talking about.
For me specifically, and I know for some other players as well, the thing we were most looking forward to in this game was a resolution of Solas' story from Inquisition, so I must address that here. While I don't think the game made the best use of Solas that it could (more on that below), I was still excited to dig into some of his past as the Dread Wolf, and I was happy with the conclusion we got, both for him, and for his story with a romanced Lavellan. There are, of course, multiple endings to the game, but for me, there is only one meaningful one. I don't want to give anything away, but as a longtime Solavellan shipper, that part of me was losing it over the finale.
Additionally, Veilguard explores more of Solas and Mythal's relationship, finally giving context to Inquisition's stinger scene from ten years ago, and it is tragic. There's so much depth going on there that it comes off, to me, more engaging than many of the main relationships in the game. I'm still tearing my hair out about the way Solas says her name in the climax. This exploration into Solas' past also gives depth and context to many of his scenes and reactions from Inquisition, and I absolutely plan to revisit that game with this newfound knowledge. It keeps in tact much of Mythal's ambiguity which has characterized her and Flemeth and Morrigan throughout the series. How sympathetically you view her (or not) depends on whose view of her you accept, and what you believe about her actions, and I enjoyed this rare refusal to give us a straight answer in a game that otherwise seems bent on removing all mystery from the world it's created.
The game is lighter on Solas' relationship with the other Evanuris, but I still loved getting to peer back into the drama of ancient Arlathan through codex entries showing communiques between Solas and Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain. I wish there had been more! Even these brief glimpses into the past tell us a lot not only about these elves but the society in which they lived, and it's fascinating. I also wish they'd told us more about Felassan—I know he's present in at least one of the accompanying novels (iirc Masked Empire?) but as noted on this blog I do not accept as canon things that don't make it into the actual game, and the game itself is sadly sparse on information about this interesting character.
I will continue to play Veilguard, but I suspicion it may be the last Dragon Age game I play, unless something radically changes in the development of the next game, for reasons addressed below.
The Bad
Other people have said before, and I agree, that Veilguard isn't a bad RPG. It's fine, it's entertaining, it works. But it is a bad Dragon Age game. Veilguard has jettisoned so much of what made the series stand out in favor of the broad appeal which it has courted since BioWare first found success with Origins.
Anything remotely edgy, controversial, or thought-provoking has been removed. This is a game that is trying painfully hard to avoid potentially upsetting or offending everyone; it is bending over so far backwards trying to be inoffensive that it's broken its back.
Large portions of game are set in Tevinter, a country that has for at least two straight games been synonymous with legal slavery and the abuses of an unchecked mage nobility. Yet despite the fact that one of your companions is from Tevinter, and that Rook themselves can be Tevene, and that we spend quite a lot of time running around Dock Town, a poor Minrathous neighborhood, there is little evidence of any of the abuses we've been hearing about, and what of them do occur are entirely the responsibility of the Venatori.
A fringe cult in Inquisition which now appears to control significant swaths of the Tevinter magisterium, the Venatori are, in Veilguard, responsible for all the ills of Tevinter (and much beyond its borders). Anything bad that happens will be traced back to the Venatori eventually. It's a cowardly out that attempts to alleviate the rest of Tevinter from any guilt or association with a system that sanctions slavery and derides non-mages as lesser citizens. It's not the system that's wrong, it's just this group of heartless evil people who've gotten control of it!
It's a kind of out that's repeated across the game: The agents of Fen'Harel—made up of elves from across Thedas leaving behind their lives at the end of Inquisition's Trespasser DLC to join the cause of one who claims he can restore their dignity—are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have the Venatori, and the rampaging Antaam—the Qunari military branch which has broken with the Qun and is storming across northern Thedas for plunder and battle (and for some reason, are willing to enthrall themselves to elven gods despite the Qunari's long history of despising and mistrusting magic). These are the only two groups ever shown supporting Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.
Anything else would allow a player to potentially ask questions about whether these supporters really deserve death (a premise undercut by showing the strength of Elgar'nan's mind, which nearly forces Rook into submission before a few companions intervene and raises a significant question of how much these followers of the Evanuris are even exercising free will).
For this reason, presumably, all of the elves you meet in game, Dalish especially, are quick to assure you their gods suck and they're committed to bringing them down. Dragon Age, a game that from its beginning has engaged with themes of religious faith, now seems to have wiped all that out of their world. The game never acknowledges that many people have and do worship gods who have done terrible things, because divinity frequently surpasses a mortal sense of morality, and that the term "god-fearing" exists for a reason. Nope, every single elf in Thedas not only accepts that these are their gods, but that they are awful and need to be destroyed.
It appears again in the blatant whitewashing of the Crows, an organization of Antivan assassins which some players will remember from the backstory of Zevran, one of your core companions in Origins. The Crows from the beginning have been a cadre of career assassins known for buying slaves, brutally abusing children, and keeping control with an iron fist over their charges. In fact, should Zevran survive the final battle of Origins and remain loyal to the Warden, his epilogue is him plucking off Crows one by one, determined to rid Antiva and the world of this vile organization.
In Veilguard, the Crows are reduced to patriots and community organizers. They are opposed by exactly one character—a politician who actually makes very salient points that Antiva should maybe not be controlled by these people—who of course turns out to be terrible, like anyone who's passingly rude to Rook does. There was room here to play with morality, to show the compromises Rook has to make to win allies against a greater evil, but Veilguard is not interested in that. There is never a chance to challenge Lucanis, your Crow teammate, or any of the Crows about the way they do things, and in fact Rook will speak out in their defense without the player's input at all.
Similarly stripped of any potentially uncomfortable associations with their work are the Lords of Fortune, a piratical organization headed up by Isabela—most famous in Dragon Age for stealing the Tome of Koslun—THE sacred text of the Qun—and running off with it, allowing Kirkwall to be sacked by the Arishok and his warriors if her relationship with Hawke is not high enough to gall her to return it and win Hawke the fortune of merely dueling the Arishok one on one.
In Veilguard the game assures you through Taash, the Lords of Fortune never steal from people. They apparently subsist and deck themselves from head to toe in gold entirely from swiping stuff no one wants anymore that is still quite valuable. And they never take cultural artifacts, Taash explicitly points out. Some fans have taken this to mean Isabela learned her lesson—I tend to be more cynical because it falls in line with the rest of the game's refusal to permit any remotely problematic behavior from its heroes.
Taash gets it on two sides: nonsensically assuring you that "the Qun isn't a prison, people can leave if they want to" even as they tell us how their mother had to smuggle them out of Qunari territory to avoiding having Taash turned into a berserker for the Antaam (and assuming, I guess, we forgot that when the Iron Bull in Inquisition chooses to leave the Qun, they send assassins after him, or that he himself has been subjected to Qunari reeducation programs back home, or anything about how the sarebas are treated, including that they are trained to self-immolate if they ever become separated from their handler).
On the flip side, the Grey Wardens grapple with a decision from their past which you are given no opportunity to sympathize with, and instead are forced to condemn repeatedly and ardently without ever acknowledging the circumstances within which the choice was made.
Rook themselves is also watered down into soup. Your dialogue options are generally three slightly different variants of the same response. Rook rarely deviates from their sort of dorky blithely naive but determined personality. The "tough/aggressive" responses are generally just a bit blunter version of the other two options; there's never an opportunity to get genuinely harsh with anyone, or seriously question them. The inquisitor could be positively draconic compared to Rook, and Hawke unconscionable.
It's very clear the game wants to avoid any opportunity for players to feel uncomfortable, which is why there's almost never a point at which your companions will disapprove, let alone seriously disagree with Rook, no matter what choices you make. Long gone are the days when companions would quit your party if you upset them enough, or where the companions of 2 yelled at Hawke for making choices they disagreed with—all you get from Veilguard's companions is blind support.
Similarly, the companions have no conflict among themselves. Some fans were unhappy with the sniping between the Inquisition companions, so BioWare has done away with it. Any potential issues between the characters are raised and solved in the same conversation, the game breathless to assure us that everyone is still besties no matter what. Dorian and the Iron Bull's relationship from Inquisition, as it progressed from antagonistic, to cautious friendship, to romance, could never happen here, because they would never be allowed to be antagonistic to start with. Anders and Fenris' banter with Merrill in 2 revealing the uglier sides of themselves would similarly not happen, nor Aveline and Isabela's hostility-come-understanding of each other. And forget the understandable distrust between a recruited Loghain and several other companions in Origins.
All of this has the effect of making the story feel blah. There's limited opportunity to roleplay outside of cosmetics, because the game doesn't let you play anything outside of Rook's essentially assigned personality. None of the choices you make significantly impact your companions and their attitudes towards you will be just as supportive no matter what you do. The only way you can really fuck it up is by failing to complete their personal quests to upgrade them to "heroes of the Veilguard." The companions themselves, usually the standout writing of any Dragon Age game, come off flatter than they should have been, because they aren't allowed to engage in or support anything that might even smack of controversy.
It also makes Rook an incredibly poor foil to Solas. Throughout the game Rook and companions have the chance to explore Solas' past actions as the Dread Wolf and his regrets, and condemn wholeheartedly as the meme goes. Yet Rook and their friends are speaking from a place that could scarcely be more removed from Solas'. For centuries Solas led a desperate rebellion against mages so powerful they were called gods—and he himself has always admitted he is far weaker than the Evanuris, advising Rook that if Elgar'nan takes the battlefield, their only course of action should be flee--and his story is a tragic one of someone who violated his principles again and again as the rock and the hard places he was pressed between squeezed tighter and tighter. In this sense, the inquisitor—romanced, friended, or rivaled—is a much better counterpart to him. Rook never has to make a difficult decision, the game ensures that. Rook is never in charge of anyone outside their tiny circle of friends. Rook never experiences betrayal by trusted friends and colleagues, never has their morals challenged, and is never pushed into a path they don't want to take. Rook, essentially, has no regrets, outside what a player might headcanon for their specific Rook. In short, Rook has no understanding of Solas' position, and it cripples the game's efforts to put Rook on the moral high ground above Solas as his judge and jury.
Nor is the game interested in actually engaging in a debate about the Veil. This is perhaps the most frustrating part of the main plot: we are never told why Solas wants this. All we hear from him is that he put it up, so he must take it down, because it's unnatural, and Varric's claim that it will "drown the world in demons" if this happens. That's it. There's never a deeper exploration of what Solas views as the reasons the Veil cannot stay, or any examination of what a Veil-less world might look like. Never once do we get a cost/benefit analysis of either side, nor does anyone ever make a cogent argument for either view. If you remember Solas' conversation with the inquisitor at the end of Trespasser, you have some understanding of what he wants, but Veilguard itself never really digs into it. This, combined with some commentary from the devs and the game's limited willingness to allow Rook dialogue options that genuinely sympathize with Solas, makes it feel almost as if they were worried players might side with Solas in feeling the Veil should come down. So we aren't allowed to look at it at all.
Veilguard defended its decision to port basically none of players' past choices into the game by claiming this was a "soft reset" for the series—yet it ends without any significant changes to Thedas itself. Because none of our decisions from the last three games matter, the state of southern Thedas is essentially a shrug. Because the games aren't interested in seriously engaging in the question of the Veil, nothing changes there either. In effect, we're just where we were when we started. If there was ever a time for a radical change to Thedas, this was it, but the game runs in the opposite direction from any of that.
(Furthermore, as others have pointed out—and endgame spoilers here—at least two of the Veilguard endings conclude with Solas still opposed to Rook's desire to maintain the Veil, and given his history, this suggests the Veil may still be coming down anyway, baby, because there's no way Solas won't devote the rest of his immortal life to trying to tear it down and free himself.)
While Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan are interesting villains to me--their trajectory from heroes of their people to enslavers who believed themselves to be gods is fascinating and not unrealistic--Veilguard makes a similar mistake as Inquisition: it fosters villain decay (albeit not to the same degree as with Corypheus). If E&G are so incredibly insanely wildly powerful as we are led to believe (and Solas' tale of Elgar'nan wiping an entire emotion out of existence is terrifying), why is it that Rook and co. can have multiple encounters where the Evanuris just...let them get away? Killing Rook is so easy for them it's a non-issue, so it beggars belief that they could kill the dragons of the Evanuris and not be promptly crushed. As with many story-tellers before, I think the game devs are just so eager to show off these villains that they put them out there so we can see more of them, and as expected, familiarity breeds contempt. The scariest villains are the ones we rarely see because if we're seeing them, things are about to get ugly (I'm reminded of the scene in Jedi Fallen Order: when Darth Vader appears on the scene, combat ends. You can't fight him--you can only run.) Here, it's baffling how Rook even survives long enough after multiple encounters with the Evanuris to get to the final confrontation. I can see E&G believing Rook's not enough of a threat to bother seeking them out to kill them--I struggle to believe with Rook right in front of them they declined to kill them, choosing instead to flee and let Rook live to cause more problems.
Conclusion
Apart from all this, the "secret ending" of Veilguard and dev John Epler's commentary about desiring to center the Executors has led me to conclude, unfortunately, that this will probably be the last Dragon Age game I play. The game has been divested of most of what interested me about it before, and is going in a direction I could hardly be more repulsed by (I despise "secret cabal controls everything" plots), so there is a grief in Veilguard for me. That said, as noted earlier, I am happy with the conclusion for Solas and Lavellan, and I'll count myself lucky for that, because I've worried for eight years about how they were going to wrap that up.
On the whole, it's a fine game. I'll probably keep going to try out the other factions and romances, but the only thing about it that truly stood out to me is Solas, a character from the previous game. Although I had fun playing it, its pervading disinterest in its own lore disappoints and occasionally frustrates me, and its overpowering refusal to allow the slightest nuance or complexity into its narrative tell me it's time for me to move on to other things.
Good thing I also got Baldur's Gate 3 over the holidays.
There are some spoilers below, particularly in terms of themes, but I've tried to minimize and warn for any specific spoiler content.
The Good
Veilguard undoubtedly benefits from the technological advances we've seen since Inquisition. The graphics are incredibly detailed and beautiful. Every location has been crafted with care and there's so much to look at. I've been playing in fidelity mode (as opposed to "performance," which prioritizes the performance of the game at the cost of some graphics quality) and haven't encountered any glitching or other issues. I've heard Veilguard called the least-buggy Dragon Age release yet, and I believe it. I stop not infrequently just to gawk at the scenery.
This extends wonderfully into the character creator, into which a lot of effort clearly went. What struck me first was the hairstyles. The hairstyles of Inquisition, frankly, sucked. Veilguard not only has far more options, they're just better: prettier, more diverse, with much better animation. More options for hairstyles that aren't long and loose, which I appreciate. More numerous and detailed options for scars and tattoos as well, which are fun to play around with.
Veilguard also finally builds in a way to edit your character in-game, so none of the decisions you make in the CC are permanent if you get into the game and decide you hate them. You can also override the standard appearance of any weapon or armor set with Rook's wardrobe, so they've done away with the dilemma of "this new armor is better than what I have but it's ugly."
These quality-of-life changes are helpful, as is the ability to port a Rook (and their accompanying inquisitor) from a past playthrough to a new one. It's not New Game +, but it does save you having to redesign the same Rook all over again if you just want to play your same character again.
In terms of the gameplay itself, I think it flows very well. Combat is smooth and responsive, and it's much easier in Veilguard to see which companions' abilities compliment each other, even just from the character select screen (which will let you know who primes what, and who detonates what as you choose your team for an outing). Rook's own ability tree is more of a wreath, so it's much easier to play minutely-adjusted builds and you're free at any time to fully respec Rook at no cost if the build you have isn't working for you.
The environmental puzzles have returned, and they are truthfully the best they've ever been in the series. Puzzles in earlier games often felt clunky and out-of-place, but in Veilguard they work well and are very self-explanatory just from taking a look around the area. I genuinely enjoyed them, and they're built so well into the game that I found myself starting to automatically look around for environmental tools whenever I was moving through a new area. Thanks to Rook's dagger, you also aren't obliged to bring the "right" party members to solve any given puzzle—Rook can simply use the dagger to tap into their unique abilities, saving you from having to run back to a fast travel point to change teammates for a specific puzzle. Once again, Veilguard provides convenience.
We get to visit a lot of areas in the game we've only heard about before: the Anderfels, Tevinter, Antiva, Rivain (sort of), Kal-Sharok (!!! My dwarf-loving heart be still), and in this way the game does provide a new canvas for us, and that was fun. The various armor and casualwear sets designed to fit specific regions and factions were fun too—I enjoyed being able to dress my Rook up in something that fit someone from her background (the armors are well-designed too, I liked looking at them).
You also get some unique, more familiar dialogue with the companion who shares your background, which really helped the story integration. I've shared backgrounds now with Neve as a Shadow Dragon and Emmrich as a member of the Mourn Watch, and I appreciated how their conversations often felt like two colleagues who are familiar with the same type of work. Mourn Watcher!Rook in particular stands out from the others by being interested rather than grossed out by much of what Emmrich enjoys talking about.
For me specifically, and I know for some other players as well, the thing we were most looking forward to in this game was a resolution of Solas' story from Inquisition, so I must address that here. While I don't think the game made the best use of Solas that it could (more on that below), I was still excited to dig into some of his past as the Dread Wolf, and I was happy with the conclusion we got, both for him, and for his story with a romanced Lavellan. There are, of course, multiple endings to the game, but for me, there is only one meaningful one. I don't want to give anything away, but as a longtime Solavellan shipper, that part of me was losing it over the finale.
Additionally, Veilguard explores more of Solas and Mythal's relationship, finally giving context to Inquisition's stinger scene from ten years ago, and it is tragic. There's so much depth going on there that it comes off, to me, more engaging than many of the main relationships in the game. I'm still tearing my hair out about the way Solas says her name in the climax. This exploration into Solas' past also gives depth and context to many of his scenes and reactions from Inquisition, and I absolutely plan to revisit that game with this newfound knowledge. It keeps in tact much of Mythal's ambiguity which has characterized her and Flemeth and Morrigan throughout the series. How sympathetically you view her (or not) depends on whose view of her you accept, and what you believe about her actions, and I enjoyed this rare refusal to give us a straight answer in a game that otherwise seems bent on removing all mystery from the world it's created.
The game is lighter on Solas' relationship with the other Evanuris, but I still loved getting to peer back into the drama of ancient Arlathan through codex entries showing communiques between Solas and Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain. I wish there had been more! Even these brief glimpses into the past tell us a lot not only about these elves but the society in which they lived, and it's fascinating. I also wish they'd told us more about Felassan—I know he's present in at least one of the accompanying novels (iirc Masked Empire?) but as noted on this blog I do not accept as canon things that don't make it into the actual game, and the game itself is sadly sparse on information about this interesting character.
I will continue to play Veilguard, but I suspicion it may be the last Dragon Age game I play, unless something radically changes in the development of the next game, for reasons addressed below.
The Bad
Other people have said before, and I agree, that Veilguard isn't a bad RPG. It's fine, it's entertaining, it works. But it is a bad Dragon Age game. Veilguard has jettisoned so much of what made the series stand out in favor of the broad appeal which it has courted since BioWare first found success with Origins.
Anything remotely edgy, controversial, or thought-provoking has been removed. This is a game that is trying painfully hard to avoid potentially upsetting or offending everyone; it is bending over so far backwards trying to be inoffensive that it's broken its back.
Large portions of game are set in Tevinter, a country that has for at least two straight games been synonymous with legal slavery and the abuses of an unchecked mage nobility. Yet despite the fact that one of your companions is from Tevinter, and that Rook themselves can be Tevene, and that we spend quite a lot of time running around Dock Town, a poor Minrathous neighborhood, there is little evidence of any of the abuses we've been hearing about, and what of them do occur are entirely the responsibility of the Venatori.
A fringe cult in Inquisition which now appears to control significant swaths of the Tevinter magisterium, the Venatori are, in Veilguard, responsible for all the ills of Tevinter (and much beyond its borders). Anything bad that happens will be traced back to the Venatori eventually. It's a cowardly out that attempts to alleviate the rest of Tevinter from any guilt or association with a system that sanctions slavery and derides non-mages as lesser citizens. It's not the system that's wrong, it's just this group of heartless evil people who've gotten control of it!
It's a kind of out that's repeated across the game: The agents of Fen'Harel—made up of elves from across Thedas leaving behind their lives at the end of Inquisition's Trespasser DLC to join the cause of one who claims he can restore their dignity—are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have the Venatori, and the rampaging Antaam—the Qunari military branch which has broken with the Qun and is storming across northern Thedas for plunder and battle (and for some reason, are willing to enthrall themselves to elven gods despite the Qunari's long history of despising and mistrusting magic). These are the only two groups ever shown supporting Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.
Anything else would allow a player to potentially ask questions about whether these supporters really deserve death (a premise undercut by showing the strength of Elgar'nan's mind, which nearly forces Rook into submission before a few companions intervene and raises a significant question of how much these followers of the Evanuris are even exercising free will).
For this reason, presumably, all of the elves you meet in game, Dalish especially, are quick to assure you their gods suck and they're committed to bringing them down. Dragon Age, a game that from its beginning has engaged with themes of religious faith, now seems to have wiped all that out of their world. The game never acknowledges that many people have and do worship gods who have done terrible things, because divinity frequently surpasses a mortal sense of morality, and that the term "god-fearing" exists for a reason. Nope, every single elf in Thedas not only accepts that these are their gods, but that they are awful and need to be destroyed.
It appears again in the blatant whitewashing of the Crows, an organization of Antivan assassins which some players will remember from the backstory of Zevran, one of your core companions in Origins. The Crows from the beginning have been a cadre of career assassins known for buying slaves, brutally abusing children, and keeping control with an iron fist over their charges. In fact, should Zevran survive the final battle of Origins and remain loyal to the Warden, his epilogue is him plucking off Crows one by one, determined to rid Antiva and the world of this vile organization.
In Veilguard, the Crows are reduced to patriots and community organizers. They are opposed by exactly one character—a politician who actually makes very salient points that Antiva should maybe not be controlled by these people—who of course turns out to be terrible, like anyone who's passingly rude to Rook does. There was room here to play with morality, to show the compromises Rook has to make to win allies against a greater evil, but Veilguard is not interested in that. There is never a chance to challenge Lucanis, your Crow teammate, or any of the Crows about the way they do things, and in fact Rook will speak out in their defense without the player's input at all.
Similarly stripped of any potentially uncomfortable associations with their work are the Lords of Fortune, a piratical organization headed up by Isabela—most famous in Dragon Age for stealing the Tome of Koslun—THE sacred text of the Qun—and running off with it, allowing Kirkwall to be sacked by the Arishok and his warriors if her relationship with Hawke is not high enough to gall her to return it and win Hawke the fortune of merely dueling the Arishok one on one.
In Veilguard the game assures you through Taash, the Lords of Fortune never steal from people. They apparently subsist and deck themselves from head to toe in gold entirely from swiping stuff no one wants anymore that is still quite valuable. And they never take cultural artifacts, Taash explicitly points out. Some fans have taken this to mean Isabela learned her lesson—I tend to be more cynical because it falls in line with the rest of the game's refusal to permit any remotely problematic behavior from its heroes.
Taash gets it on two sides: nonsensically assuring you that "the Qun isn't a prison, people can leave if they want to" even as they tell us how their mother had to smuggle them out of Qunari territory to avoiding having Taash turned into a berserker for the Antaam (and assuming, I guess, we forgot that when the Iron Bull in Inquisition chooses to leave the Qun, they send assassins after him, or that he himself has been subjected to Qunari reeducation programs back home, or anything about how the sarebas are treated, including that they are trained to self-immolate if they ever become separated from their handler).
On the flip side, the Grey Wardens grapple with a decision from their past which you are given no opportunity to sympathize with, and instead are forced to condemn repeatedly and ardently without ever acknowledging the circumstances within which the choice was made.
Rook themselves is also watered down into soup. Your dialogue options are generally three slightly different variants of the same response. Rook rarely deviates from their sort of dorky blithely naive but determined personality. The "tough/aggressive" responses are generally just a bit blunter version of the other two options; there's never an opportunity to get genuinely harsh with anyone, or seriously question them. The inquisitor could be positively draconic compared to Rook, and Hawke unconscionable.
It's very clear the game wants to avoid any opportunity for players to feel uncomfortable, which is why there's almost never a point at which your companions will disapprove, let alone seriously disagree with Rook, no matter what choices you make. Long gone are the days when companions would quit your party if you upset them enough, or where the companions of 2 yelled at Hawke for making choices they disagreed with—all you get from Veilguard's companions is blind support.
Similarly, the companions have no conflict among themselves. Some fans were unhappy with the sniping between the Inquisition companions, so BioWare has done away with it. Any potential issues between the characters are raised and solved in the same conversation, the game breathless to assure us that everyone is still besties no matter what. Dorian and the Iron Bull's relationship from Inquisition, as it progressed from antagonistic, to cautious friendship, to romance, could never happen here, because they would never be allowed to be antagonistic to start with. Anders and Fenris' banter with Merrill in 2 revealing the uglier sides of themselves would similarly not happen, nor Aveline and Isabela's hostility-come-understanding of each other. And forget the understandable distrust between a recruited Loghain and several other companions in Origins.
All of this has the effect of making the story feel blah. There's limited opportunity to roleplay outside of cosmetics, because the game doesn't let you play anything outside of Rook's essentially assigned personality. None of the choices you make significantly impact your companions and their attitudes towards you will be just as supportive no matter what you do. The only way you can really fuck it up is by failing to complete their personal quests to upgrade them to "heroes of the Veilguard." The companions themselves, usually the standout writing of any Dragon Age game, come off flatter than they should have been, because they aren't allowed to engage in or support anything that might even smack of controversy.
It also makes Rook an incredibly poor foil to Solas. Throughout the game Rook and companions have the chance to explore Solas' past actions as the Dread Wolf and his regrets, and condemn wholeheartedly as the meme goes. Yet Rook and their friends are speaking from a place that could scarcely be more removed from Solas'. For centuries Solas led a desperate rebellion against mages so powerful they were called gods—and he himself has always admitted he is far weaker than the Evanuris, advising Rook that if Elgar'nan takes the battlefield, their only course of action should be flee--and his story is a tragic one of someone who violated his principles again and again as the rock and the hard places he was pressed between squeezed tighter and tighter. In this sense, the inquisitor—romanced, friended, or rivaled—is a much better counterpart to him. Rook never has to make a difficult decision, the game ensures that. Rook is never in charge of anyone outside their tiny circle of friends. Rook never experiences betrayal by trusted friends and colleagues, never has their morals challenged, and is never pushed into a path they don't want to take. Rook, essentially, has no regrets, outside what a player might headcanon for their specific Rook. In short, Rook has no understanding of Solas' position, and it cripples the game's efforts to put Rook on the moral high ground above Solas as his judge and jury.
Nor is the game interested in actually engaging in a debate about the Veil. This is perhaps the most frustrating part of the main plot: we are never told why Solas wants this. All we hear from him is that he put it up, so he must take it down, because it's unnatural, and Varric's claim that it will "drown the world in demons" if this happens. That's it. There's never a deeper exploration of what Solas views as the reasons the Veil cannot stay, or any examination of what a Veil-less world might look like. Never once do we get a cost/benefit analysis of either side, nor does anyone ever make a cogent argument for either view. If you remember Solas' conversation with the inquisitor at the end of Trespasser, you have some understanding of what he wants, but Veilguard itself never really digs into it. This, combined with some commentary from the devs and the game's limited willingness to allow Rook dialogue options that genuinely sympathize with Solas, makes it feel almost as if they were worried players might side with Solas in feeling the Veil should come down. So we aren't allowed to look at it at all.
Veilguard defended its decision to port basically none of players' past choices into the game by claiming this was a "soft reset" for the series—yet it ends without any significant changes to Thedas itself. Because none of our decisions from the last three games matter, the state of southern Thedas is essentially a shrug. Because the games aren't interested in seriously engaging in the question of the Veil, nothing changes there either. In effect, we're just where we were when we started. If there was ever a time for a radical change to Thedas, this was it, but the game runs in the opposite direction from any of that.
(Furthermore, as others have pointed out—and endgame spoilers here—at least two of the Veilguard endings conclude with Solas still opposed to Rook's desire to maintain the Veil, and given his history, this suggests the Veil may still be coming down anyway, baby, because there's no way Solas won't devote the rest of his immortal life to trying to tear it down and free himself.)
While Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan are interesting villains to me--their trajectory from heroes of their people to enslavers who believed themselves to be gods is fascinating and not unrealistic--Veilguard makes a similar mistake as Inquisition: it fosters villain decay (albeit not to the same degree as with Corypheus). If E&G are so incredibly insanely wildly powerful as we are led to believe (and Solas' tale of Elgar'nan wiping an entire emotion out of existence is terrifying), why is it that Rook and co. can have multiple encounters where the Evanuris just...let them get away? Killing Rook is so easy for them it's a non-issue, so it beggars belief that they could kill the dragons of the Evanuris and not be promptly crushed. As with many story-tellers before, I think the game devs are just so eager to show off these villains that they put them out there so we can see more of them, and as expected, familiarity breeds contempt. The scariest villains are the ones we rarely see because if we're seeing them, things are about to get ugly (I'm reminded of the scene in Jedi Fallen Order: when Darth Vader appears on the scene, combat ends. You can't fight him--you can only run.) Here, it's baffling how Rook even survives long enough after multiple encounters with the Evanuris to get to the final confrontation. I can see E&G believing Rook's not enough of a threat to bother seeking them out to kill them--I struggle to believe with Rook right in front of them they declined to kill them, choosing instead to flee and let Rook live to cause more problems.
Conclusion
Apart from all this, the "secret ending" of Veilguard and dev John Epler's commentary about desiring to center the Executors has led me to conclude, unfortunately, that this will probably be the last Dragon Age game I play. The game has been divested of most of what interested me about it before, and is going in a direction I could hardly be more repulsed by (I despise "secret cabal controls everything" plots), so there is a grief in Veilguard for me. That said, as noted earlier, I am happy with the conclusion for Solas and Lavellan, and I'll count myself lucky for that, because I've worried for eight years about how they were going to wrap that up.
On the whole, it's a fine game. I'll probably keep going to try out the other factions and romances, but the only thing about it that truly stood out to me is Solas, a character from the previous game. Although I had fun playing it, its pervading disinterest in its own lore disappoints and occasionally frustrates me, and its overpowering refusal to allow the slightest nuance or complexity into its narrative tell me it's time for me to move on to other things.
Good thing I also got Baldur's Gate 3 over the holidays.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-11 09:39 pm (UTC)A problem that infects way too many big-budget RPGs nowadays, it feels like--your dialogue options all come down to basically "Yes", "Yes, but sarcastic", and "Tell me more."
why is it that Rook and co. can have multiple encounters where the Evanuris just...let them get away?
They still haven't learned from Mass Effect, I see (thinking of how for millions of years the Reapers always took the Citadel first, and then in ME3 they didn't, because if they did winning would be impossible). Or I guess what they learned is "The fans will buy it anyway no matter how little sense the plot makes."
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-13 05:32 am (UTC)Ugh...I think a lot of sci-fi/fantasy stories have this problem, but video games feel especially egregious with it. The scariest villains (to me) are the ones you see the least--it makes it a BIG deal when you DO see them, and you KNOW this is a serious encounter!