Latest Posts by monolorialet - Page 5

UHM EXCUSE ME but did any of you know that the elven woman from that Gaatlok barrel scene in Trespasser who turns out to be one of Solas’ agents is present in that very last cutscene at the Winter Palace when the Inquisitor declares the future of the Inquisition, standing all by herself behind a pillar in the back corner of the room eavesdropping without anyone noticing….. or was I supposed to discover this with the flycam just now???

So, full disclosure, I haven't been a Solas fan before.

I am now.

And that's because of Veilguard and the many, many ways in which I felt let down by this game.

The aspect that bothers me most is the reduction of nuance and complexity.

Rook's hero's cakewalk (because “journey” really isn't the right word) is a ready-made path that offers no deviation at all and never challenges the player in any meaningful way.

Sure, you can spend some time pondering the pros and cons of saving Treviso or Minrathous. Ultimately, it makes no difference. Rook does their best, they just can’t be in two places at once.

Same with the companion character arcs. What does it mean if you decide to you turn Emmrich into a lich? For the most part, it's idle musing. Indulgence. He’ll be happy either way, there are no real stakes. Yeah, your actions do have consequences, just not the sort of consequences that make a substantial difference. It’s the illusion of choice – reduced to cosmetics.

The problems with decisions that cost nothing is that they don’t feel like an accomplishment. They also don’t allow for character growth. Rook doesn’t change, they remain static. Even the section in the Fade where Rooks faces their regrets is easy and comparatively lightweight. Varric was killed by Solas, Harding resp. Davrin died in combat and either Bellara or Neve was abducted by Elgar’nan. It’s not like Rook’s decisions actually caused these events, it’s not like Rook actually failed through a choice they had to make that turned out to be the wrong one. Everyone was there willingly and volunteered to fight the good fight. Rook’s regrets are not about real guilt, they are about feeling sad and guilty. And that – it needs to be said – is not the same thing. At all.

At the same time, the story carefully avoids any kind of true ethical dilemma.

It's not even about the lack of mean or edgy dialogue options; that’s just a symptom. The cause is the writers’ unwillingness to let realism intrude in Rook’s fairytale – the lack of anything that would require Rook to compromise on morals, or fight temptation. Rook is never faced with any sort of moral conundrum, or allowed to act out any kind of vice that realistic characters have. In its straight-path simplicity, Rook's story is apparently written for children and people who remain child-like in their yearning for simple, uncontested truths.

Of all the sorts of conflicts that a story can offer, Veilguard carefully avoids the most realistic and (in my opinion) interesting ones: Character vs. self and character vs. society, aka, politics. The game firmly refuses to go there. To the point where it creates a completely unrealistic consensus on all sides that eliminates yet another sort of conflict: character vs. character.

If Rook and their companions would talk politics, they’d all be on the exact same side. In a two party state, they’d all cast the same vote.

I am sure that there are many players who feel comforted and reassured by that fact, who sincerely believe that this is how stories should be written. That stories should reflect the world not as it is but as they think it should be. But for everyone who likes their stories a little more realistic, that lack of meaningful interpersonal conflict, that lack of real diversity which comes not from appearance but from different cultures and opposing viewpoints amounts to a frankly cringe-worthy, artificial and juvenile surface-level interaction between characters. Or, to phrase it differently: the diversity remains skin-deep and doesn’t extend to the philosophical, and even in the few instances where it does, it shies away from the political.

Which means that the only conflicts that remain are the most boring and stereotypical ones: character vs. monsters resp. the supernatural, where all foes are evil in the blandest way (Supremacist Venatori! Fascist renegade qunari! Power-hungry necromancers!). These conflicts are resolved through exploring maps and endless, repetitive combat.

The only thing that brings a bit of nuance to the game is Solas’s story. And there is an element of character vs. character in Rook’s and Solas’s relationship, but the sad truth is that what could have been a fascinating mirrored character journey falls flat for all the reasons already explained – because where Solas is a character as layered and controversial as it gets, Rook is anything but.

Solas’s story shows how even people with the best intentions and the greatest integrity are ultimately broken by what life throws at them, both by the decisions that are forced upon them and the choices they make on their own. It shows how a prolonged war is always a sunk cost fallacy: I’ve gone this far, if I stop now, it was all for nothing.

Rook’s victories, on the other hand, come without a cost – both in terms of moral corruption and in accountability. The guilt Solas bears is real. The fight against the titans, followed by his war against the Evanuris, requires compromising his own morals, one day at a time, one century after another, he’s trying to save the world yet doomed to fail. Sacrificing the spirits to win a battle after the war has gone this far? Every single war leader around the globe would make the same decision. In fact, all of them do: They do sacrifice the lives of others if it will help them win, they do send soldies into the trenches to die, whether these soldiers want to or not, and they are rarely, if ever, truthful about the reasons why.

In a certain way, the story of the spirit of wisdom turned flesh is reminiscent of the biblical Fall of Man: the original sin. Solas has fallen, and he’s broken. In trying to heal the world, he’s trying to heal himself. The burden is too heavy, the responsibility to great, the knowledge that he is responsible for all of it too devastating. Solas’s greatest conflict is character vs. self. It has the potential to be great. In a way, it is. It’s the single redeeming quality that, depending on your interpretation of what went on behind the scenes, the writers managed to salvage from the original concept of Dreadwolf or the lone pillar that withstood all their attempts to bring it down.

Only sadly, infuriatingly, in the end, that fallen hero’s ending is put into the hands of a protagonist who judges him from the perspective of someone who has never even stumbled – not because they are wiser, braver, or kinder. No, just because the writers were gracious – or cowardly? – enough to never let them fail.

The game gives Rook a moral high ground which isn’t earned in the slightest because Rook never had to walk even a quarter of a mile in Solas’s shoes. They don’t know what they would have done in his stead, they have no idea what it actually means to see the sorry shape the world is in and know that it was your hands that shaped it. And even where Rook might actually be culpable – the interruption of Solas’s ritual that freed the remaining Evanuris – anyone is quick to assure Rook that it wasn’t their fault.

Whatever regrets Rook carries, they’re born from self-doubt and trauma response. Survivor’s guilt, mostly. When compared to Solas’s immense guilt, Rook’s regrets are, for lack of a better term, insignificant. That Rook manages to face them doesn’t mean that they are more truthful or emotionally mature, it just means that Rook’s story is a tale for children and Solas’s is not.

It’s not that I’m necessarily opposed to the idea that the player decides Solas’s fate through their actions. It’s the injustice of it all that bothers me: The player is led through a game that provides a safe space for their character, one that is devoid of any interpersonal conflict and any ethical quandary. Rooks succeeds through kindness and heroism and taking their companions on team bonding exercises.

As if Solas could have won the war against the Evanuris if he’d taken the time to take his companions on coffee dates.

The juxtaposition – Rook vs. Solas – fails, simply because of this deep divide. Rook’s story is detached from reality and yet Rook gets to be Solas’s judge, jury, and executioner. On what grounds?

As I said, right in the beginning, I haven’t been a Solas fan before. But by the end of Veilguard, I was firmly, irrevocably, Team Solas, just because I was so annoyed that the narrative put Rook in a position of moral superiority. I detested my own character. Jesus, what a goody two-shoes! I was rooting for Solas simply because his story was so much more: a genuine tragedy, a study in complexity. Rook, on the other hand, remains bland, snotty, unchanged. Untried.

The thing is, I don’t believe that my reaction was one the writers had intended. I strongly feel that they didn’t mean for me to pick up on their double standard, that they expected me to walk away fully satisfied, convinced that Rook and The Team were the Good Guys because they went on picnics and petted the griffon, their final victory well-earned and just. If only Solas had had a Team and taken care of their emotional needs – he could have taken down the Evanuris with nary a scratch!

It’s all so very disingenuous.

Rook and, by extension, the player exist in a bubble of sanitized content. That is clearly deliberate. The player is meant to like it there. (In that sense, it’s only logical that they changed the title from Dreadwolf to Veilguard.) And clearly, it does resonate with a certain kind of their player base: mostly with people, I think, who would like their real life to be a bubble too and whose only experience with moral corruption is when they find it in others.

Something something elvhen spirits brutally using lyrium to create physical bodies for themselves, as a war crime, and generations later the dwarves, now overrun by darkspawn aka the embodiment of their own anguished severed dreams, brutally using lyrium and stone to forge vessels for enslaved dwarven souls in an act of war and desperation.

Something about how much was taken from the dwarves, how much they forgot, Orzammar's obsession with ancestors and bloodlines and recording their history in lyrium, how they were once all a part of one whole and now the worst punishment they can conceive of is a dwarf's existence being erased, forgotten, severed entirely or never remembered at all.

Looking for a good post on why we should just let Solas tear down the Veil. I'm just interested in the perspective.

I know I saw a few arguments for this maybe a couple weeks back. But I have no idea where they went or who wrote them.

Friends Are Never Truly Gone

BioWare posted this dreadpuppy sticker in their Discord and I had to rush to draw the dreadpuppy

look at these two being happy <3

It’s weird to grow up in a family where you know you’re loved but you don’t feel loved. And then later in adulthood you understand how almost impossible it seems to cross that distance and let yourself experience closeness, how otherworldly love feels now and how love feels unbearable at times. You flinch when someone tries to wholeheartedly love you. And over and over you see so clearly how you cannot be loved unless it's from afar and love is mixed with that familiar sensation of distance and coldness.

Goddess of Self-Righteousness and God of Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Not sure if this was already discussed but If it was a romanced Lavellan instead of Varric trying to stop him, would Solas be able to harm or kill her like he did Varric?

hehehehehehehehehehehheehhehhehehehhehehehehhehehehehehehehhehehehehehehehehehehhohoohohohohohohohohohohohohohoohohohohoho........ yes.

i love that you asked me this. yes i think he would kill her. i think he would fundamentally be a different character if he did not. the entire point of solas and his struggle is that he will do anything and kill anyone to atone. he believes that righting the world is more important and will never ever put his personal desires over the good of the People

the pain of one man is insignificant weighed against the endless depths of existence. that includes his grief over felassan, over varric, over mythal herself, and it would be true with lavellan. if she were somehow different, the plot would not exist and he would have just actually abandoned his duty in crestwood and stayed with her... "AS HE WANTED." but what he wants is irrelevant. he is only free from his duty when when mythal releases him from his guilt and shares his responsibility for his sins. the burden then becomes just light enough that he can remove it from his shoulders and set it aside. (he should have brought down the veil though). HOWEVER i will say that i think killing her would probably turn him into a literal pride demon. it would be a point of no-return. i do not think he would be able to live with himself for long either. actually the ultimate shakesperean tragedy solavellan ending would be him killing her for trying to stop him from tearing down the veil, tearing it down (while sobbing), and then immediately killing himself once his duty is fulfilled. damn can you imagine if they did that. anyway in conclusion i leave you with quotes as is becoming customary for me

i just noticed that lavellan's eyes well up with tears the moment solas starts sobbing

Scanned in all the pages with Solas from The Art of Dragon Age: The Veilguard :D love the concept arts so much

I feel the need to point out the utter fucked-upedness of the fact that Mythal based her Vallaslin—the same one she branded Solas with at one time—in the shape of his Spirit form.

Just…indulge me and think about that for a moment. It wasn’t enough for Mythal to break him, she had to carve a literal reminder of that brokenness onto his face. Then onto the face of every other slave she owned.

And it was him. His shape. The self he was forced to leave behind in a moment so traumatic it left him fundamentally scarred. And she felt the need to make those scars literal in a way that made it impossible to ever behold his own reflection without the physical reminder of what she took from him.

Utterly, utterly fucked.

Yeah, I find that...most definitely fucked.

"The best of both physical and Fade" feels like an extra level of anguish here, a constant reminder that he gained nothiing but pain and gave up his home, his happiness, and his life.

DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION EXTRACTS - SOLAS HEAD TURNAROUND

Var lath Vir Suledin....!! And so it did, vhenan -- I just imagine that at some point laughter returns to the two of them as the weight of their lives becomes easier to shoulder together.

Senior Character Artist Lauren Kelly: "I created the face for Solas in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Responsible for the highres sculpt, bakes, textures, and wrinkle/tension maps. Blendshapes created by the talented Jill Harrington and EA Create team." [source]

forever thinking about the role of ellipses when talk about each other. two normally eloquent people who suddenly cant finish a single sentence when the other is on their mind. not only do they share a cadence and rhythm to their speech but they share in the dissolution of it. the overwhelming-ness of their feelings for each other is conveyed through literal punctuation; always trailing off, an inability to focus

its giving "if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more"

Dev quotes on Solas from the PAX panel

(Rewatch panel here)

Solas was a challenge for us [re: design, translation] because it was very important to us to make sure that he was interpreted as a very kind person.. that everybody in the world mattered to him, how they were treated, to try and get that across…

Solas is sympathetic and hunky

Solas is never looking where the other characters are looking [in concept art]. He’s looking at you [the Inquisitor]. He is intrigued by you.

the wisdom to find a better way and the perseverance to see it through

I'm so normal about them

Friendly reminder that:

Qunari are empowering Saarebas with lyrium so that they can become stronger, open temporary Rifts, slow time down, and use mysterious spells, all through unknown means.

Tevinter is terribly weakened, corrupted, and will not last in the war against the Qunari.

Fen’Harel, now incredibly powerful, is planning to eliminate the corrupted parts of the Qun (good thing), but also to tear down the Veil (not that good, depending on the consequences). He will probably help the Tevinter slaves in rebelling against their masters too.

Titans are awakening. They are enormous beings living deep underground, whose blood has been consumed for millennia by mages and Templars alike, shaping the world as it is today. They also seem able to influence events above ground and they are very angry with the world or at least with the elves. They will probably re-establish their contact/link with the dwarves.

Something is happening in Weisshaupt, the Wardens have gone silent, and a new Blight is most likely coming.

The Evanuris are still locked away, but it’s obvious they will get free soon. They are a bunch of homicidal assholes who will not think twice about conquering Thedas again. They might be also tainted by the Blight, if the theories “Evanuris locked away with the Blight in the Black City” are true.

If Kieran was born, Flemeth/Mythal took the Old God’s soul from him, planning to do something with it. We still don’t know what it is, but it’s unlikely she will stay “dead”. She still has to have her revenge, her “reckoning which will shake the very heavens”.

Either Morrigan or the Inquisitor drank from the Well of Sorrows and the consequences of that act are still unclear, but whatever they are, they are going to suck or at least be mildly disturbing.

Mysterious Dalish elves live in the Tirashan. They are violent, cruel, and worship the Forgotten Ones.

Strange people from the Volca Sea are returning after a long absence, claiming a terrible calamity struck their lands.

We still don’t know what lies beyond the Amaranthine Ocean, but whatever it is, it makes people go insane and suicidal.

Basically Thedas right now:

Something I didn't realise the first time I watched it – and that made me feel much better about the whole thing – is that it's actually Solas who kisses Lavellan, not the other way around!

I slowed this down so you can better see that she stops before kissing him and it's him that closes the distance.

And it's hard to see because of the classic Bioware bad camera framing and all the black archdemon gunk on his mouth, but he is actively moving his lips as he kisses her and leans in.

I'm feeling insane about them and I need to get the flycam mod immediately.

im so glad this post came back around because ive been thinking of these tweets from trick from at least pre-2021 and how disappointing it is that the veil doesn’t come down in the game but wasn’t able to find them and wow

like holy shit. so what happened between THIS and the veilguard ending that shipped?????

Far more people saved Solas than pet Assan, by the way. LMFAO everyone playing knew who the REAL magical mythical puppy was

"How does it feel?" I say to John Epler, sadly staring at more cursed quotes he dropped quicker than the DA Keep. "Are you blissfully unaware? Or deep inside, is some part of you banging on the wall, screaming?"

"Lol cool line, did you just make that up?" He says, pulling out his phone to tweet that actually Loghain was a trapeeze artist in his free time and the only true lore being carried into the next came is that everyone remembers the Viscount of Kirkwall as being a total hottie.

pookie 🥺

she would love solas even as a spirit worm :,)

the 'vallaslin are sacred to all elves ✋️😔 not just the Dalish' tattoo dialogue is so weird but if I write an essay explaining why I fear I'll combust and die