74 hours in, 72 playtime

Obligatory disclaimer, feel free to jump down if you’ve read it.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It’s fantastic. I’m also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I’m on media blackout while I play this, so I’m only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking ‘have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?’ My guess is nope.

Spoilers for Dragon Age Veilguard and all other Dragon Age Media. (I’m a lore fiend.)

Section 10.2 here.

(Note that these reviews aren’t edited. They’re just my off the cuff writing. I don’t have the time, energy or heart to edit them properly.)

So. I didn’t want to play tonight, didn’t really have the energy. But I legitimately fear if I don’t play for even one day, I’ll drop it and not come back. I have ADHD, its a strong possibility, and I still want to see what happens in the story for myself.

I hereby announce that I am, in fact, Eating Crow. Game Lucanis is way better written and developed than in his intro story.

And Lucanis did let Emmerich help, after all. Plot hole taken care of.

That’s it? That’s all we get about The Titans? After all the previous foreshadowing, we get a single companion quest to find out and resolve (completely unrealistically) the entire issue of The Titans? Are you seriously kidding me?

I need a stronger word than flabbergasted.

Discombobulated. I’m discombobulated at the sheer level of mishandling so many incredibly important aspects have been treated to in this game.

Yes, it’s nice to get confirmation about my guess to the history of Titans and Elvhenan… but are you seriously fucking kidding me?

Lucanis talks about coffee more than we get something as important as the Titans settled.

Anywaaaay.

Called it on the identity of the Gloom Howler. And the ‘reason’ for Isseya to be doing the exact opposite is ‘she’s been driven mad by 400 years of guilt for following orders’? Edit, it’s been pointed out she’s suffered the blight for 400 years, too. The blight, in the Lore, basically makes creatures start digging out dragon/arch demons. Because all they can hear is ‘the song’. There have been speaking hurlocks working for the benefit of the unblighted. There’s the Architect, who keeps showing up and is sane. If directly opposed to anything mortals would want. There’s no support in the Lore for blight making someone mentally ill. I truly just feel it’s bad writing.

That is so over the top ableist I’m not sure if I can describe it in small enough words why we shouldn’t say grief and guilt makes us fucking mentally ill in a dangerous fashion! There isn’t a mental illness that I’m aware of that includes a person completely reversing deeply held, sacred beliefs so they do the exact opposite of what they’ve previously sacrificed so much for.

Crazy and mad both mean mentally ill. That’s why calling Isseya mad or crazy is ableist. Isseya would protect those griffins, She’d very possibly steal them to protect them from the wardens. I could see where, out of fear, she’d decide that the Wardens weren’t worthy of the griffins after all.

What I cannot see is her sticking a knife into the skeletal remains of a 400 year old arch demon dragon and actually finding liquid blood. That’s some foolish jurassic park nonsense. Thinking maybe she got it from the blood marrow? That’s dried and almost dusty within a century. Or turned to a rocky like consistency. I don’t care how magical the creature those bones came from was, that’s just not happening. It’s ridiculous.

What I cannot see is her then using that to infect the griffins she fought so hard to save from that very fate.

Last Fall wasn’t my favourite of the books. But both the writer and the character Isseya deserve fucking better than what the end of her story will likely be. I can think of two ways that dumpster fire could be satisfactorily fixed, but I have zero trust in the Bioware writers anymore, so I highly doubt they’re going either direction.

And outright stating that too much emotion makes us dangerously mentally ill… I’ve always said Bioware had ableism problems. I’ve said they need to hire diversity editors.

I’m utterly appalled that they thought that whole storyline was even remotely okay on any level.

So. Do I have this right?

The Evanuris did lots of bad things. One of the worst was severing the Titans and the dwarves from their dreams.

The Evanuris bound themselves to high dragons, blighting them, and they did this for more power.

The blight is somehow The Titans’ or dwarves or both severed dreams? If that’s the case, the blight should now be receding or cured because the Titans have been ‘fixed’. In a completely unrealistic and ridiculous manner that does a disservice to the whole damned Titan Evanuris war, but hey. I’m used to bad, nonsensical writing. Especially in this game.

Solas made the veil to imprison the Evanuris? Bad side effects. Which, in the Lore, include the death of magic in THEDAS and the eventual death of the realm itself. But we’re apparently conveniently brushing that under the rug of bad writing to drive through a story that makes no sense.

He tied the veil, their prison, into their life essences.

So the theory they seem to be going with is that by killing the arch-demon dragon, the Evanuris will become mortal.

They were mortal before they bound dragons to themselves for more power. Mythal was mortal. She was murdered. (Oopsie, even bound to her dragon.) But the Evanuris, the first elves, didn’t age and were eternal. They could be killed, sure, but just regular living, even inside a prison, wouldn’t have killed them. So why exactly would all the other Evanuris be dead? Just killing their dragons wouldn’t have killed them. If they were somehow dead… Wouldn’t that have thinned the precious veil that they’ve spent three games, numerous books etc. stating was thin and as full of holes as my grandmothers crocheted doilies?

Somehow, the veil is completely all better now and holding back a world of blight that never existed in the fade except maybe in the black city? We’ve been to the fade several times in this game and seen no blight.

How exactly is the blight the corrupted dreams of dwarves or Titans? Does that make any sense to anyone else?

Does that mean that Genlocks (blighted dwarves) dream?

And the veil is what separates the world and magic/dreams/world of spirits?

If the so precious veil is tied to the life energy of the Evanuris… and the veil was created to contain them… what exactly is going to happen to said veil when those Evanuris die?

Either I’ve figured out the end of the story, or found plot holes the size of Texas if they try to say that veil is still in place once Gilly and Eggy are dead. (Why again are there only two Evanuris left? Have we gotten an answer to that? That makes any sense?)

They’ve made the answers to everything too pat and yet so convoluted they’re tripping over things they’ve said are fact in this very game.

I just… how? Why? What the actual fuck? How is the writing in this so reprehensibly bad?

I can write better stories in my sleep FFS. And have. One of my published novellas was a dream before I wrote it down. And at least everything makes sense in it.

Section 11 here.