my thoughts on Veilguard
i've been waking up super early, lately, for no particular reason other than my body wants to. so while i'm sitting here waiting for my husband to rise, i figured i'd take the time to casually opine about the new Dragon Age game, since i've finished my first playthrough and the melodrama with which people have been talking about this game is making me feel insane
needless to say there's gonna be spoilers in this post, if anyone reading this cares.
so, i've been a Dragon Age fan since 2012, and my feeling about the franchise has pretty much always been "you gotta try this, dude, it sucks!" because, like...these are not fantastic games by a long shot lmaooo. i love these games but they've always been kinda bad. and that's why i love them— they are cringy and goofy and awkward and that's why they're fun. it's like fantasy-flavored junk food to me. so imagine my surprise when Veilguard comes out and everyone is freaking out about how Dragon Age is ruined or this game is somehow particularly bad compared to previous installments, and suddenly we're all acting like the previous games were all super deep pieces of perfectly-crafted Art. huh? have we all been playing the same games???
that's not to say there is nothing of substance or value in previous DA games, because when they hit they hit. but...one of the most popular mods for Origins removes the entire fade portion of the game, plus it's ugly as shit and the combat is exhausting. DA2 also has painful combat, and then there's the reused maps. Inquisition has several problems, the writing being the worst of them in my opinion...what i'm saying is Veilguard does the exact same thing all previous DA games have done, which is "great in some areas but bad in others". it's average. Dragon Age as a franchise is average. and that is okay because i am still having fun! sometimes things are neither the best or worst piece of media to ever exist and we can still have a good time with it.
anyway. i'll start with some things i dislike about Veilguard:
- the biggest issue for me is the way slavery gets completely glossed over, when we're in Tevinter, the slavery and racism capital of Thedas, for a huge portion of the game lmfao. since elgar'nan and ghilan'nain are spending their time recruiting groups of people desperate for power to their little personal army, i feel like it would have been really easy for them to cause a slave revolt by just saying "we're your gods and we're totally here to free you and reclaim the world For All Elves, we prommy", and that would have been a much more interesting and morally/ethically challenging enemy than the Venatori, who i've always found to be super boring, one-dimensional villains. i know the slave population in Tevinter isn't entirely elves, but it's majority elves, and tbh even the non-elf slaves would be easily tempted by a promise of power and freedom. so not only is it a big missed storytelling opportunity, but it's also just...weird? odd? that this thing that's always been a huge part of Dragon Age lore goes almost entirely ignored.
- i completely agree with the criticism that the companions need to shut the fuck up during combat. the "MOVE!! ON YOUR RIGHT!!! ON YOUR LEFT!!!! WE'RE TAKIN' FIRE!!! GET OUTTA THERE!!!" is so constant during combat that the voice lines can't keep up with the gameplay, so the companions are giving me directions that aren't even relevant to what's happening onscreen
- more challenging puzzles, please! and i say that as someone who loathes a game where you must solve a difficult puzzle to progress the story (looking scornfully at Origins as i say this) but the puzzles in Veilguard are, first of all, few and far between, and also are laughably easy. i would like a nice middle ground of puzzles that make me think hard without totally pulling my hair out.
- the romances are veryyy meh. what scenes i did get with the two romances i witnessed—Taash and Davrin—were good, but i was like "that's it?" you can't even kiss them whenever you want :tears: and then what was even the point of giving me a nudity option in the character creator...there's nothing steamy at all, from what i saw. BG3 let me see penis, Bioware. where's all the penis!!!
- hit-or-miss voice acting. some characters had great performances, others were kinda awkward. Davrin stands out as one of the best performances in the game, Solas and Morrigan ate/left no crumbs/etc, but Neve has some weird, shaky delivery, and sometimes Bellara sounds very Voice Actory, for lack of a better word. Many side characters had that classic awkward Dragon Age NPC delivery.
- i liked most of the side villains a lot, but there wasn't enough of them? especially the Butcher. for how much he was spoken about and built up as a big bad, he barely got any screentime and his boss fight was a huge letdown that took me like five minutes. Aelia had a cool boss fight, and the buildup to it with the people being puppeted by blood magic was cool, but she also had barely any screen time for how much Neve spoke about her. The Dragon King felt like a missed opportunity to show us several scenes with him being a jackass so that i was itching to beat him up, but he just shows up for one scene and kills Taash's mom and you don't even fight him directly. idk i just wanted more of all of them!!
and here's things i like about this game:
- i absolutely love the new visual style. the environments are beautiful and the more stylized approach to the characters is very appealing to me, and i think it will age well. DA2 took a stylized approach, and i think the characters in that game aged much better than Inquisition's characters did. i will always prefer style over realism, especially in a fantasy game.
- the dialogue is not nearly as cringeworthy as people made it out to be, and i found all of the companions very likable. i heard so much pissing and moaning about this that i was bracing myself going in, but it's...fine, a lot of the humor made me laugh, and i love that Rook actually has a personality— they feel a lot like Hawke, who is my favorite player character of the franchise. the Inquisitor had the personality of a smooth rock, and Rook is a huge improvement. they actually feel like just some scrappy guy that had greatness thrust upon them. it has some corny moments but overall the dialogue really does not feel too drastically different from previous DA games, idk.
- while it is true that the companions don't bring the same level of conflict and drama as in previous games, i'm fine with that. i actually really like that this game is more about Good Vibes, because we live in hell and i'm glad to play with my little virtual friends and save the world in Escapism Land. also, i distinctly remember people always whining about the companion drama being annoying in Inquisition and DA2 so we gotta pick a struggle, guys. also, this is the first DA game where i really struggled with some of the decisions in companion quests! like, Bellara and Emmrich in particular, i was not expecting those decisions to have me racking my brain about which was the better choice, and even after making the decision i was doubting myself. i felt like i was right there alongside the characters, struggling with a situation that had no "correct" answer.
- speaking of choices, the big decisions you have to make in the final act of the game are stressful in the best way. the choices you make in DA games usually don't have that huge of an impact that you can immediately feel, and rarely do they feel like a difficult choice, or a choice where i'm like "oh fuck i don't know how this is going to work out for me". this game nailed that part.
- the final act as a whole, really. everything about it was cool. the action was great, and i really felt like i was charging into my last stand. it felt like Dragon Age finally being able to show us a big bombastic third act at a scale and quality it hasn't been able to do before because of technological or budget restraints. the twist with varric was something i legit did not see coming. as boring as the Inquisitor is to me, i did love that they came back and had a hand in saving the day. everything just came back around and wrapped up in a satisfying way.
- the combat, but everyone seems to agree that that's a high point. dragon fights and the darkspawn hordes are my favorite combat scenarios; they're fun even if i suck at video games and am getting my ass beat i also love not having to deal with companion health— the way companions work in combat seems to be a somewhat controversial point but personally i'm a huge fan of not having to deal with making sure my party members aren't dying all the time.
there's more i could go into, but you get the idea. there's some great things and some not so great things. it's a Dragon Age game.i had a lot of fun with it. and it actually came out! that's the best part. i fully did not expect this game to ever actually release, lol.
one more thing i need to talk about, though: Taash is an excellently written trans character and i will die on this hill. their emotional immaturity, the anger issues, their awkwardness— if these things seem like "bad writing" to you, you have not spent nearly enough time around trans people in real life, and you also seem to have completely missed the part about their mother being overbearing and infantilizing them. and i'm talking about people who aren't just being reactionary transphobes, here; i've seen so much bitching from self-proclaimed allies about the dinner scene with their mother, when Taash sits down and awkwardly says, "so, i'm nonbinary," and when i finally saw the scene for myself i was like "this is the realest coming out scene i've seen in recent memory" lmao.
coming out is painfully uncomfortable like that, and SO many trans people are "immature" just like Taash because we spent our childhoods repressed and struggling with who we are, and coming out is often the first time we wake up and begin to allow ourselves to be fully realized human beings. that's often a messy, ugly process, and i think a lot of players just weren't ready to see the unsexy, uncool parts of the trans experience tbh. we're not fun when we're being real people with real problems. cis allies want trans characters like Krem, who give you sanded-down, inoffensive answers to your invasive questions, and who the game lets you be a transphobe to with zero consequences. and i'm never one to be like, "the way you engage with fiction is a direct reflection of who you are as a person," but i gotta say i'm extremely wary of people who hate Taash on the basis of their maturity or the way they talk about their identity, because if that's how you react to a fake trans person, i can't imagine you'd extend much grace or kindness to a trans person feeling and struggling with the same emotions in real life. and that's that on that!
but i do think the Dragon King was a shitty villain though lol
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