The Sanitized Lore of Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Tevinter is the heart of slavery in Thedas. This lore has been established in every game, novel, comic, and other extended material in the Dragon Age franchise to date that so much as mentions the nation. But in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, when we are finally able to actually visit this location for the first time… this rampant slavery we’ve heard so much about is nowhere to be found. It’s talked about here and there; Neve mentions The Viper has a history of freeing slaves, as does Rook themselves if they choose the Shadow Dragon faction as their origin, for example. But walking down the streets of Minrathous, you’d never know. Because Dragon Age: The Veilguard, for all its enjoyment otherwise, has one glaring issue: It’s too clean.

i find it so interesting how people act like "critically examining a piece of media" is the opposite of "enjoying that piece of media." rip to you but i actually find it really enjoyable and compelling to dissect and think through the art i engage with

There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

I

specifically

was robbed

(concept art as shared by nick thornbarrow)

Many people are rightfully upset about the baths scene but imagine if you could have fucked nasty in a Treviso gondola

Notable of course how in romance scenes Gale only ever seems confident at all when the Weave is involved, and becomes noticeably more insecure and self deprecating whenever something romantic is happening in, sorry I was about to call it "meatspace". The mortal plane or whatever.

Gale when he's in ye olde holodeck: I'm da sexy wizard baby *takes his belt off and whips the bed*

Gale when he has to be like a normal human man who has like organs and human feelings and is literally alive:

this hill... it's silent... and its residents... are evil...

why would you like media that is good if you can like media that is bad instead and pace around your room like an insane person thinking about What If It Was Good

Sometimes I read unicorn erotica and most of it is quite poor, but to this day this is one of the funniest lines I've ever read in any smut ever. I can quote it by heart. It lives rent-free in my brain. I repeat it like a mantra.

"I'm a unicorn, I'm gay, and I sensed a virgin." This is literature. This is poetry. A seminal work of art. The English language was forever changed by this line.

Taash is a bad influence on The Baby (Manfred) and Emmrich will not let that stand

OP turned off reblogs

la petite mort

It’s insane to me that Dragon Age 2 is sandwiched in between two WAY HUGER and WAY MORE SUCCESSFUL games about more traditional fantasy protagonists facing off against world ending threats and winning and it’s this…weird, raw, personal tragedy about how no matter what you do, you can’t always stop crisis and disaster from occurring. Like The Hero or Ferelden, no matter who they were, wants to stop a Blight. The Inquisitor wants to repair the sky. And Hawke, like, wants to make some money, hang around their friends, and keep their family and their adoptive city safe. And they can’t even fucking do that, so unlike the heroes before and after them. You spend seven years in Kirkwall until the game says, “yeah, no matter what, the prejudices and traumas and hurts of this world are Too Much for one person to stop them. The world changes, wars roll over the land, you cannot stop history, Hawke. You tried. You failed.” And then you just sit there, sixteen years old, listening to “I’m Not Calling You A Liar” and you’re like….well, I guess I really wasn’t a hero. Damn. I love it.

none of these edits are as good as the original. we are losing our culture