Latest Posts by monolorialet - Page 4

dreadwolf tantrums

FUCK.

Dragon Age Veilguard, doodles 4

don't care + running + jumping + skipping + hopping + having fun + playing

They didn't let Solas interact with Kieran in dai bc he'd smell the June on him and have a melt down thinking about their own parallels and also Kieran would doxx him on fantasy roblox by accident

Fear, like every emotion, is a powerful thing.

𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒘, 𝒔𝒍𝒆𝒆𝒑𝒚 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

thanks to @pinacoladamatata for sharing the video capture of sweepy solas so i could gif it 🥰

reaches out and immediately holds her hands

caresses her hand with his thumb while they kiss

he holds on to her with both hands, doesn't want to let her go yet

HE MISSED HIS WIFE 😭

love all the concept art of lavellan just touching solas' chest. finally the answer to his ass grabbing

"Mais ma meilleure ennemie, c'est toi Fuis-moi, le pire, c'est toi et moi

Mais si tu cherches encore ma voix Oublie-moi, le pire, c'est toi et moi"

The Last Unicorn Elvhen

At first I liked the fact that Emmrich was mentoring Dorian, but the more I thought about it, the more questions I had.

Dorian: My family once took me to Nevarra, Cassandra. Cassandra: You undoubtedly saw more of it than I ever did. Dorian: I was young, and all I wanted to do was visit a necropolis. I was desperate. Cassandra: They're dark. And full of undead. And the smell of stale incense still makes me want to vomit. Dorian: Ah. There goes that childhood fantasy. ─────── Dorian: So tell me this: are Nevarran cities of the dead actually filled with undead? Cassandra: Of course. The Mortalitasi lure spirits to possess every corpse buried there. Dorian: And then what? Let them… wander around willy-nilly? Cassandra: Only in the abandoned areas. The rest are sealed up in their tombs, I suppose. Dorian: Forever? I almost feel bad for them. Cassandra: After a time, the moaning grates on the nerves. Trust me.

Dorian has never been in a necropolis, he doesn't even know what it looks like, which is why he sounds disappointed after Cassandra's description, and he doesn't know what the Mortalitasi actually do, but in DATV it turned out that he was taught necromancy at the Grand Necropolis.

I'm fully aware that it was only made up to connect Emmrich with him and has no deep meaning but that’s the problem. Any new piece of lore should not contradict to established story. Dorian's story is well thought out, so the careless addition of details just for the sake of a new character is not a good thing, and in my opinion is even disrespectful.

It may seem unimportant, but it defines DATV. Let's add some facts that contradict the old character lore for the sake of a few cute moments.

DA:TV Solas-themed narrative sketches and captions by Nick Thornborrow, under a cut due to spoilers and length:

[caption is for images below] Nick Thornborrow: "These sketches were tools of pre-production where we were exploring possibilities and challenging assumptions about the story of Veilguard without the constraints of production, or the birds eye view afforded by new iterations."

Nick Thornborrow: "I only say that because I've picked up on discourse lamenting cut content derived from concept and narrative art that isn't reflected in final game. Emphatically, I want to state it's not cut content. Pre-production is where ideas are weighed for going into production."

Nick Thornborrow: "When cuts are made, it's typically at a more advanced stage of production that involves multiple disciplines, Whereas scruffy sketches like these are useful in pre-production to see what resonates because they're quick to draw and the emotional toll of throwing them out is minimal."

[source thread]

Art by Nick Thornborrow.

requested a cameo from gdl and asked him to make solas say 'fuck'. enjoy.

The gentler spirits are far more rare

I see a lot of posts on here talking about the Solas/Elgar'nan segment in Blood of Arlathan and how it's one of the best scenes in the game, and they'd be right, but I don't see enough people talking about how comically the whole thing is undercut by quite possibly the most poorly-conceived, terribly-implemented looney-tunes-ass sequence in gaming history that surrounds it.

Like you show up with your friends to this Venatori party, and you're like great, we're sneaking in! Time for disguises. How convenient that these Venatori guys all wear hoods, right? Should be a piece of cake if we're all, you know, wearing hoods that would helpfully hide our identities. But no. We all go waltzing in with our whole-ass faces exposed, you know, the group of guys that have been murdering Venatori left and right and who Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain have definitely all seen in person before. Oh, and don't worry about walking into this notoriously racist elf-sacrificing cult if you happen to be an elf! You're only here in disguise so that you can rescue a GROUP OF ELVES THEY'RE GOING TO SACRIFICE but it's ok because you're dressed as a mercenary and not a dalish so it's all good don't worry about it :) :)

Then you get into this fucking party and oh my fucking god it's like they decided to take all of the most comically over-the-top stereotypes of villainy and put them on display. Because why not! The Venatori are all sickos anyway so of course they'd be out here doing sicko things! There's some guys pulling a halla apart with blood magic! There's other guys using slaves as benches! They're all laughing and joking about how EVIL they are, hahaha, how cool is that? The fucking guy from D'Meta's Crossing is here if you don't let him die, because he's a fucked up evil sicko too! You're supposed to be shocked at this hideous display; recoil in horror, even!

And who do you bring with you to help get through this crowd of absolute lunatics? NEVE FUCKING GALLUS. You know, the person so well-known in Minrathous that a Dalish elf living in Arlathan KNEW HER BY REPUTATION. Yup, Neve Gallus with her INTENSELY RECOGNIZABLE PROSTHETIC just waltzes up to some guy and he just lets her in. Because being EVIL also makes you incapable of coherent thought, apparently.

And then. AND THEN. You walk across the bridge where Elgar'nan makes his thought-sounds at you, and YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING PARTY is already there, just hanging out nbd. Also not wearing hoods or any kind of disguises that couldn't instantly be seen through by a five-year-old with amnesia but ok, cool. Why did we bother walking through all those sickos then when we could've just taken the secret back entrance like the rest of them, idk.

But just when you think you've reached peak stupidity, it keeps going. You're now standing there, at the front of a crowd of about twelve people, approximately five feet away from Elgar'nan himself, inexplicably blending in, when the big guy puts the mind control whammy on everyone. Oh no, you think. We've been found out! Here's the part in the plan where things begin to go wrong! NO. Your mage friends SECRETLY PERFORM MAGICAL GESTURES to block the mind control, and then you LITERALLY FUCKING SIDLE OFF STAGE LEFT without ANYONE NOTICING. I should reiterate that at this point, you are still about FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ELGAR'NAN and his fucking ARCHDEMON.

And to conclude this absolute comedy of idiocy, as soon as you enter back into combat mode, you immediately ditch all of your disguises. And of course then, ONLY THEN, Elgar'nan notices you've been there. Cut to the end of the actual good sequence, this dramatic conversation performed by excellent voice actors and written miles better than most other things in this game, and you reach your final prize: about six guys trapped in a little cube. Cool, you tell yourself. This was definitely worth it. You take your fade-to-black teleporter back to the Lighthouse and they're never heard from again.

This was the quest that broke me. This was the moment that all hope for Veilguard finally snapped. I consider myself to be a very resilient person in the face of camp and goofy writing, but this was too much disbelief for my brain to suspend. The mental gymnastics necessary to make this whole sequence make any kind of sense were simply beyond me. Even Solas's dulcet tones could not salvage it for me after that.

looking at the pics in this post extra closely and um.... guys

this is joplin's version solas's ritual. first i thought oh how fun! the artifacts from inquisition were going to be relevant, heres a big one! and then i went. wait.

those headpieces look... familiar....

and then i counted the bodies around the table.

its 7, of course.

as he looks on in horror as the ritual goes wrong and it looks like... the blight interferes in some way? or just their spirits get released because rook interrupts?

so while ghilly and elgar'nan were always going to get released by solas's ritual, this literally shows solas using the evanuris bodies for the ritual. you can even see how the first is the most decayed and completely skeletal, while the 6th and 7th, edgar and ghilly, still have flesh.

so there was originally going to be some sort of explanation of what happened to the evanuris's bodies, and solas i guess was dragging them around to do blood magic on them. amazing. this is so much better than falling statues.

Just thinking about the scene with Solas and Lavellan where she tells him he doesn’t have to go alone, and he replies where he is going is terrible.

Yes, it’s a warning. But it is also disbelief she could want to follow him somewhere terrible. That she would still want to be with him, despite where he must go. Why would she choose freely to go somewhere terrible? For him? The concept is foreign to him.

The last time he loved someone, Mythal, he asked her to leave everything she knew behind to join him, and she refused. He did that very thing for her, but she would not do the same for him. He made her a place for her to be comfortable, and she never saw it.

Solas has nothing to offer Lavellan. No castle to gift her, no place for her to be comfortable. He is at his lowest. He is going somewhere terrible. He only has empty, bloody hands to give.

I’m reminded of that scene from Little Women (1994) when Professor Bhaer tells Jo, “But I have nothing to give you. My hands are empty.” Jo takes his hands in hers and says, “Not empty now.”

Lavellan does much the same. She reaches for his hands, bloody as they are. She tells him it won’t be terrible if he is with her. They make this journey together, always. She doesn’t need anything else. He is enough. Their love is enough. There is no fate but the love they share.

Why would she choose freely to go somewhere terrible? Because she loves him. It’s True Love. The kind that only can exist in stories. Good thing we’re in one.

elves fleeing the ruined city of arlathan and being welcomed with open arms into cad'halash thaig. the very spirits that stole the lyrium from their gods and used their newfound bodies to tranquilize them, and yet the dwarves said "come to us, we will shelter you". dwarves and elves alike being destroyed by kal-sharok so as to not jeopardize their alliance with the tevinter imperium. somewhere in cad'halash thaig a dwarf and an elf were holding one another when they died. ir sa tel'nal. isatunoll.

Look how into this kiss that man is. It’s like she is AIR and he is drowning. He can only have a single breath, because there’s no way this is real and there’s absolutely no way she’s coming too, but he’s in that breath.

Solas just had one of those cries and then he’s about to kiss his wife and that man looks like he’s about to die of sheer passion and they haven’t even kissed yet. Then in the other still, the way he’s just ever so softly lingering his lips against hers. Allowing a little space, savoring this. Like he’s drawing every single little millisecond into his mind. His soul.

But the greatest tragedy of veilguard is mythal just looking like some chick.

A mortal old biddy rocked up in a skin tight studded corset, a feather capelet, plate sleeves and hair styled to look like dragon's horns.

Meanwhile a fully conscious fragment of the actual prime, Mythals like

'Hi, I'm Kimberleigh.'

Idk. Maybe this particular fragment of Mythal didn't come with fashion sense software. It was Flemeth's fragment that evidently remembered having remembered that 'hey i was a fucking god, I can look as cool as I like.'

Edit: or as someone else put it, a dollar store angry!Galadriel.

I see people on reddit argue that as a fragment she doesn't have the bandwidth to choose anything but understated clothes and I'm like, sister, she can TURN INTO A DRAGON in that form and kick your ass to kingdom come, you're telling me she has no power to choose to wear skinny jeans with knee high boots and a plain summer coat?

But then the Inquisitor walks out of the shadows in their jammies like the only thing missing is a 'i hate mondays' coffee mug so...

URGENT!!!!! can anyone find the image from the art book of an inquisitor's gloved hand reaching out to pet a small dread wolf's snout???? i can see it so clearly in my mind but cant find it in my tags and @kraujuota must witness it

Sorry, but I just don’t buy the whole “actually Mythal decided after centuries of wandering Thedas as Flemeth that modern people deserve a chance” thing. Because the fragment of Mythal we’re talking about is the jaded old swamp witch who

-Inhabited the body of a woman betrayed by her lover(s) because they found common ground in their suffering and the injustices done to them. (“Once I was but a woman, crying out in the lonely darkness for justice.” - DAI)

-Resents that betrayal to the point she views men as disposable playthings that she can lure back to her hut, have her way with, and then… murder? I think? (Based on Morrigan’s own account in DAO)

-Abused her daughter under the guise of tough love in an attempt to prepare her for a cruel uncaring world. (Again, Morrigan’s account, DAO)

-Says during her appearance in Inquisition that she will have her reckoning.

-Spent centuries consolidating her power as well as cycling through different human women’s bodies via questionable means for the sake of bringing about said reckoning. (“I have carried Mythal through the ages ever since, seeking the justice denied to her.” and about the Inquisitor: “A Herald indeed. Shouting to the heavens, harbinger of a new age.” - DAI)

-During her scene with Solas at the end of Inquisition does NOT say ANYTHING about disagreeing with Solas’s plans, just that she considers him and old friend and is sorry things are going the way they are. (Seriously, is the dialogue in that regret scene in Veilguard supposed to be from a mental connection they had? Because that dialogue just isn’t in the Inquisition scene.)

And I’m supposed to believe that in her last moments, Flemythal backed off and went “actually I think we need to maintain the status quo”????

None of this paints a picture of someone who has gone soft over time. At least not to the degree that is presented in that regret scene in Veilguard. Sure Flemeth wasn’t all bad, she had some tenderness to her. She shows some genuine care for Morrigan and Kieran (if present) and seems hurt when Morrigan implies she was trying not to be the kind of mother Flemeth was to her.

At the end of Inquisition, we can’t tell for certain to what degree she approves of Solas’s methods. But it seems like a step in said methods was to absorb her power and doom her, an embodiment of Justice, to take a passive role once more. And we know what happens when a spirit is denied its purpose. Justice denied its purpose could turn to Vengeance. Which, to me, feels like it would better echo the themes of Solas’s pride/wisdom duality, inquisition’s themes around what it means to become a god-like force of nature, DA2’s question of whether violence is necessary for revolution (which literally has the Justice/Vengeance duality in it with Anders), and DAO’s theme of sacrifice for the greater good.

Castles in the Fade, or What Was the Point of the Veil Anyway

Something that will now haunt me until the end of time is why was the concept of the Veil ever introduced into this series.

We’ve been hearing about it since the very first game. There’s a codex entry about tears in the Veil in Origins. Tamlen mentions a thin spot in the Veil if you play a Dalish elf. Sandal has a prophecy in Dragon Age 2: “One day the magic will come back—all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see.” Admittedly, this is just one line said by a character who often says odd things, but it hinted to the fact they were planning to do something with the Veil from the very beginning. The state of the Veil is repeatedly brought up. It all had to mean something! Or so I thought. 

When I saw “The Dread Wolf Rises” quest in Veilguard, I said, “Oh, here we go!” The Veil is coming down, magic is coming back, and it’s going to set up such an interesting story for the next game. 

Alas, no. 

I hadn’t really enjoyed my time playing Veilguard up until this point. It felt like the game was ducking and dodging every bit of world building and lore that could possibly bring nuance or complexity to the story. Every returning character or faction was a cardboard cutout of themself. They shoved Solas is a time-out box and gave him nothing to do. They refused to let him have any impact or influence on the story when he had been set up to be our main antagonist back in Trespasser. This game used to be called Dreadwolf! And while we learn about his past… we never talk to him about it. In the present, he’s in stasis.

Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain are our villains. And they are your typical evil for evil’s sake villains. They are mad, bad, and only as dangerous as the narrative will allow as to not give Rook and co too much trouble. They are surprisingly patient while Rook fixes all their companions’ problems… until Elgar’nan moves the moon to cause an eclipse. A vital component in making his own lyrium dagger. For some reason. This guy can move a satellite!? And he just let Rook walk away in previous encounters… twice. Ok. Sure.

The Evil Duo need their own dagger ostensibly to tear down the Veil, because they want to unleash the full force of the Blight onto the world. Because they are evil. And they were thwarted last time they tried to Blight the entire world. Why do they think Blighting the world is a good idea? What’s the point of ruling a world if everyone is dead? I guess they haven’t thought that through, because of the madness and the evilness.

Ok, I thought. Perhaps the gods will be the one to tear down the Veil. Or maybe we’ll have a choice to let Solas do it his way before they can, which will be less chaotic and less full of Blight. Because the Veil has to be coming down one way or another? Why introduce the concept of the Veil, especially a Veil that has been thinning and failing since the series began, if it’s just going to… stay.

There is a principle in storytelling called Chekov’s gun. If something is mentioned in a story, it must have a purpose. If you keeping mentioning that gun hanging on the wall over the fireplace, it’s because at some point in the story, someone is going to take it down and use it. The Veil felt like Chekov’s gun to me. Chekov’s Veil, if you will. It’s been here from the beginning of our tale, the spectre hanging over our protagonists’ heads for multiple games.

The Veil has been a character unto itself. It was the central focus of the third game, and its dissolution was set up to be the core conflict of the fourth game. We learn everything we thought we knew about the Veil was a lie. It was not created by the Maker to separate the Fade from this world because of jealous spirits, it was created by a guy named Solas to trap the elven gods and the Blight from destroying the world. Also, the elven gods were never gods, and they are also evil.

This reveal will surely throw the Andrastian religion into chaos! This puts the very existence of the Maker into question! The Evanuris are a lie; it’s only fair Catholicism—oh, I mean—the Chantry is a lie too. We briefly touch on that in Veilguard… then it is quietly discarded. Religious crisis averted.

But I digress.

When the title of the fourth game was changed from Dreadwolf to Veilguard, I started to see the writing on the wall. Still, I held out hope the Veil would have some greater purpose in the story. That its introduction as a concept was for a reason. That something in this world would change.

Instead, from the get-go, the question of the Veil is no question at all. We only get Solas and Varric making oblique or catastrophizing statements about it. Solas says little beyond he has a plan. If I ever wanted to hear a villain monologue about their plan, it was now! Varric, on the other hand, decries Solas’s plan. He warns that should the Veil fall, it will destroy the world and drown it in demons. And that’s that.

We never really learn why Solas wants to tear the Veil down, or why he thinks it will help anyone. “The Veil is a wound inflicted upon this world. It must be healed,” he says. And that’s basically all he says about it in Veilguard. In Inquisition and Trespasser, we learn it took the immortality from the elves. It cut most of magic off from the world. Spirits are trapped and are being corrupted into demons, and most of what we know about spirits and demons is wrong. There are ancient elves possibly asleep? That part is left vague, but ancient elves are still about. We meet some in Mythal’s temple. There seems to have been some merit in bringing it down, because elves were flocking to Solas’s cause at the end of Trespasser. He had agents working for him already. What do they know that we don’t know?

Apparently nothing, because by the time Veilguard rolls around, there are no mention of agents. He is working alone. His only motivation now seems to be he’s too deep in his sunk-cost fallacy. The Veil is unnatural, so it must be removed—consequences be damned. We are never given any reason to think Solas has a leg to stand on in his pursuit of tearing down the Veil. We never hear any kind of counter argument from anyone, not even Solas, as to why the Veil should come down. We are only told it will destroy the world. It will drown the world in demons. This is all Solas’s fault.

There is no nuance. No complexity. No moral quandary to mull over. The game gives us vague warnings with no explanation as to what exactly is so world-annihilating about the Veil coming down. We must take Varric’s word at face value. We’re the heroes; Solas is the villain. Stop him.

It makes me wonder why Solas was ever a companion in Inquisition, let alone a romance option. Solas was presented to us as a complicated character in Inquisition. We had the potential throughout the game to make him see the value of this world, to help him realize he was wrong about it. “We aren’t even people to you,” the Inquisitor says in Trespasser. Solas replies, “Not at first. You showed me that I was wrong...again.” He began the third game viewing the world as tranquil, seeing the people in it as nothing more than figments in a nightmare, just as we saw our companions in the In Hushed Whispers quest. He ends the game having made friends, having recognized he was mistaken. He might have even fallen in love. (Or he may still seen no merit in this world if the Inquisitor antagonized him the entirety of their time together.) But something makes him continue with his plan to tear down the Veil, despite recognizing this world is real. He must know something we don’t. Something we’ll learn about in the next game.

We’ve been hearing about the Veil for three games now. We’ve set up our complex antivillain for the next installment, and he’s going to tear the Veil down. We swear to stop him or save him. But it has to be more complex than that. It can’t be so straightforward. Uncomplicated. Simple. Boring. Right? Right?

Nope. He really is just the villain, mustache-twirling and all. He apparently had no greater motivation, no as of yet unrevealed knowledge that would put this whole Veil thing into a new context. It was really as simple as the Veil falling will destroy the world, so Solas must be stopped. There is no new information that is revealed which makes us question what we are doing. Solas is never given any nuance or complexity to his actions. Nuance and complexity have actively been taken away. Both him and the Veil are looking like they are the worst things to be in a story: pointless. Why introduce the Veil if it’s just going to remain unchanged? Why introduce a character like Solas, bother humanizing him (for lack of a better term), giving us his backstory, setting him up as a cunning antagonist, only to make him look stupid, then put him on a shelf until the last ten minutes of your game?

Solas was the trickster archetype of this tale. He was our version of Loki from Norse mythology. What is the role of the trickster archetype? To challenge the status quo. To bring about events of extreme change, like say, the tearing down of a Veil that holds back all of magic. Loki is a huge contributing factor in Ragnarök. Through his manipulation, he causes the death of the beloved god, Baldr. This ushers in a long winter, which signifies the beginning of the end. Loki is imprisoned for this crime. When the final battle between gods and giants begins, the sun and moon are swallowed, plunging the earth into darkness. The earth shakes and Loki is freed to fight on the side of the giants. The world burns in raw chaos, falls beneath the sea, and is reborn. The world is remade, and a new realm of the gods and a new, better earth is formed.

It really felt like this was the setup they were going for. Solas causes the death of Mythal, and this is his catalyst for creating the Veil, which ushers in a world without magic. This could be seen as equivalent to the long winter. Solas falls asleep, trapped in dreams. He wakes and sets in motion bringing about the apocalypse. It’s not a perfect one to one, but it’s there if you squint. We have a war against the gods in Veilguard. I was expecting a few remaining Titans to wake and join the fight. But we don’t get any of that. There is a final battle, but it does not end in the end of the world. Or a better world. It just ends, and everything is the same.

It seems our trickster god caused his apocalypse thousands of years before our story started, when he created the Veil. His role in this tale was over before ours began, and he really is just some relic from a long-past age. He has no role, no purpose in this story. He is here to be thwarted. He is no Loki at all.

If you can’t tell, I wanted the Veil to come down. Did I think the Veil coming down would be painless? Have no negative consequences? No. Of course not. But keeping it up has negative consequences too. And it made for an interesting story. Or at least it could have. But we never explore that. The game presents no counter argument to having the Veil stay up, which, again, begs the question: what was the point of introducing the concept of the Veil at all?

Did I think the Veil coming down was actually the best solution to help Thedas become a better place? I don’t know, and I never will, because the game never argues for it one way or another. It just tells you to want it in place and to stop asking questions. In real life, a catastrophic event is not the best way to solve any of the world’s problems. But this is the realm of fiction. We have gods and monsters, magic and myth. We have introduced the status quo of Thedas, recognized it needs to change, then our trickster god appears ready to fulfill his role in the narrative. 

Instead, it all comes to nothing.

I got to the end of Veilguard… and everything was more or less the same as it was at the start of Origins. Veilguard actually tries its hardest to pretend any previously mentioned problems don’t exist, so of course the Veil coming down has no merit. There are no problems to solve in this world, apparently. Solas is just stuck in the past and can’t get with the times. Silly Solas.

The Veil isn’t even a permanent solution. It wasn’t to begin with. It was some duct tape wrapped around a broken pipe, and we’ve just slapped an extra piece of tape on it. It’s still leaking. It is still unnatural, and will fall eventually one way or another. Large amounts of bloodshed weaken it, so I guess Thedas better achieve world peace real quick to avoid any battles. There were seven super-powered mages holding it together… now there is just one. Ironically, the Veil was going to fall after two more Blights anyway. The Wardens were doing Solas’s work for him! It would also have released the full force of the Blight at that time… which Solas was trying to avoid, I presume.

It feels like keeping the Veil up just pushed a big problem onto Thedas’ future generations. We’ll keep slapping bandaids on it until it all falls apart. Someone else can deal with the fallout, but we’ll be dead by then, so who cares.

Primarily, I wanted the Veil to come down from a storytelling perspective. The Veil was an interesting concept and I wanted the story to do something interesting with it. Conflict is what makes stories stories and the Veil coming down could create so much compelling and complex conflict. And the Fade is weird, and I like weird. Stories are also about change, and I wanted to see Thedas change. Yet, Veilguard is over, and barely anything has changed. Instead of magic coming back being a conflict for the next game, they went with Fantasy Illuminati. Oh.

The Veil turned out to be a nothing-burger, and no problems in this world are even close to being solved. Slavery is still rampant in Tevinter. The elven people are still oppressed everywhere. Mages have no more rights in the South than they did in Origins. Spirits are still trapped and being corrupted. The Calling still exists, though might be different somehow now? They don’t really get into that. The Chantry’s validity is still not allowed to be questioned. The Blight still exists in some form, but again it’s vague. Oh, and we learn the dwarves have been gravely wronged, and the Titans are still tranquil. At least if you redeem Solas and a romanced Lavellan joins him, they can work together on healing the Blight and helping the Titans. Oh, good. One problem is being acknowledged and some action will be taken. Offscreen. Hurray? Solas doesn’t have a really great track record of fixing problems, so Lavellan is definitely going to need to be there to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.

For some reason, this game seemed terrified of letting us think about anything for more than two seconds. It shied away from complexity or nuance at every turn. The game is called The Veilguard—ironically, that word is never uttered in the game—but we are given no real motive for guarding the Veil. We’re unquestionably the hero. The villains are uncomplicatedly evil. Save the world… never wonder what you are doing or why.

I wanted the game to make me question if the Veil staying up or coming down was the right choice. I needed to be given a real counter argument. Convince me the alternative would actually be better or worse, because as I mentioned… things suck quite a bit in Thedas already for a lot of people right now. Let the Veil’s fate be a difficult choice to make. If the conflict cannot be what to do about the Veil, it should be am I doing the right thing about the Veil. If the heart of your game is so thin on motive, everything else falls apart around it.

I hoped they were setting up a complex, Thedas-sized existential conflict for this game in Trespasser, but no. I wanted something to happen, but nothing did. 

I want to feel challenged and changed by a story, not left feeling empty. I’m tired of superficial entertainment. I want to sink my teeth into a narrative that doesn’t paint the world in broad strokes of black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains.

Ultimately, I think my issue is why even introduce a concept like The Veil if you’re not going to do anything interesting with it. Or anything at all. What I thought was Chekov’s Veil turned out to just be a MacGuffin. And that’s disappointing.

Veiltober - day 26, Ghilan'nain

Our new mommy figure, AHHHHH!!! I don't know what else to say here except that I am READY TO MEET HER!!!

I've got Internet problems so I wasn't able to upload this one to Redbubble, but everything else is there right now!

Prompts for Veiltober by @lynnerdo as always!!

Thinking about this data and seeing red.

There was so much space for a nuanced, beautiful exploration of one of the best and most complex characters they’ve ever given us, and instead he got reduced to a handful of regrets presented with zero empathy and a shit tonne of blame when Mythal was RIGHT THERE, dismissive comments about his trauma (“they were doin it” 🤢), and “god of lies”—not sure I will get over this aspect. There were many things about Veilguard I genuinely loved, but this? This can get in the bin.

Epler: “It’s really fucked up that you have the option to kill a clan of Dalish elves in every game!”

Epler: “That’s why, in Veilguard, we’re killing DOZENS of Dalish clans no matter what you do!”

Epler: “The majority of the Dalish elves in Thedas are dead now, since they mostly lived in the south (where the Dales are).”

Epler: “The elves needed a win. 👍🏻”