Hi! I'm Madeleine, an illustrator and concept artist making board games and whatever else fancies me. I love to paint anything fantasy and historical, with a touch of fan art once in a while. :) I often change interests however. When I'm not drawing, I'm writing, sewing, reading or doing other creative things. You can download my queer, romance, slice-of life book Far From Miklagardr here! You can find me here; • madeleinefjall.com • twitter.com/madeleinefjall • ko-fi.com/madmos

Dragon Age Veilguard Thoughts

Spoilers incoming, so don’t read if you haven’t finished the game! Be warned.

I just really need somewhere to gather my thoughts about the game, as many others have already done. These are mostly rambles, so enjoy. I hope. 

Going into the game, I was reluctantly optimistic, and with that I both managed to be surprised by how much I liked the game, and how much some parts disappointed me. Overall, I think it was good! For me it was quite in line with Inquisition; I loved parts of it, disliked parts of it. Even though stuff was missing, I felt it was a good enough continuation of the game, even though I would’ve loved to hear more about what happened with all of Solas’ spies etc. 

To be fair, I think every Dragon Age has their negative and positive parts, and as someone who doesn’t care about combat, the characters and character interactions usually make up for the not-so-enjoyable combat. Dragon Age Origins is clunky, I hate the fade quest and always use the mod for it. Most of the characters, except for Alistair and Morrigan, don't do as much for the plot unfortunately. But I love it. The end of that game, as someone who romanced Alistair, was a gut punch for me. 

The things could be said for DA2 and DAI as well, but I never connected much to the companions in those, even if I still love them, but not enough that I’ve felt the need to for example draw fanart etc. I do love Dorian, and I thought the romance with Cullen and Solas was fun (the last one mostly because of the angst in Trespasser). Anders in DA2 was interesting because of what he did, and the angst of romancing him was enjoyable. But other than that? Everyone else is fine, but not characters I think back to a lot. Even so, they are still enjoyable! They made it worth the repetitiveness in DA2, and the utterly bloated mess that Inquisition is.

And now to Veilguard; those parts are probably what makes me most sad. I actually DO love all the companions in this one, I love the outings and how I got to know them all, but...for some reason they still felt, not there? The banter was nice, not as spicy as DAO or DA2, but I liked it. But in conversations, they were invisible. They didn't react. Not that they did that much in DAI either. However, the romance, oh, the romance. I had SUCH a hard time choosing who I would romance, because I wanted to romance them all. But after you were locked in? I felt like, is this it? Were we even together? There were crumbs, and not the whole cookie I’ve had from the previous games. For reference, I chose Davrin in the end, because I felt that he and my Grey Warden fit the best, and I don’t want to make Harding sad when Rook has to follow the Calling in the future. And…It was ‘aight?

That whole part reminded me more of how the romance was in ME2, quite nonexistent, but perhaps a bit more than that in DAV. And, don’t get me wrong, I do love ME, especially the 3rd one, but then I was already locked in with Garrus and I enjoyed all of their interactions as a couple. Veilguard reminded me a lot of ME2, it was a bit like DA in ME skin at the end, but those parts were quite fine for me. 

So the writing and the lack of…nuance? Is probably what I think is missing. Just some small touches of the companions with Rook, are they friends? Flirty? Something? It was more alike to Shepard with their crew, and perhaps that was the point, but as much as I liked it 30h in, I was quite sad there weren't more interactions with the companions, since I actually loved them. They felt a bit unutilized, some more than others. I don’t want more quests but shorter scenes, interruptions in conversations, a quick kiss of the one you romance, smaller things that make Rook feel more included. And since I flirted with everyone, why did no one comment on it after I locked in? And why did Lucanis flirt more with Neve than with my Rook? Makes me sad rip. Both Lucanis’ and Neve’s “I’m interested in a romance but aren’t locked in yet” were really good though. Made me blush. 

Other than those complaints, I did enjoy it. Perhaps I miss some of the more harsher parts of Thedas, the gritty, the awfulness. We did get it, but it was more in the background, not that it would change my opinion of the game. 

Towards the positive things! I LOVED the Weisshaupt quest. That was so enjoyable and I almost cried seeing the chalice from the fifth blight. The blighted village was also nice. I also enjoyed the ending, to which I cried, and I enjoyed the combat, which I changed 2h into the game to hard. I cried as well during Bellara’s first outing, her voice actor is so good. And Taash, when they screamed, gave me the chills. There were a lot of moments where I was like “Damn, I really like this”. I think it was great that the areas were more streamlined, with side quests that made sense and felt fitting. Perhaps I am getting old, but I would almost want an even shorter game still haha. It was short enough that I feel like I will play it again in the future to romance someone else, without that exhausting grind of DAI. I also really liked the art style, even if I was put off by it in the first trailer.

Since I played as a Grey Warden, I felt that my Rook had a lot of moments where she actually felt included and that her background was connected to everything. There were a lot of Grey Warden lines, a lot of other Grey Wardens talking to my Rook about Grey Warden things and other parts where my Rook could speak her mind of being from that group. I am intrigued to see how the other backgrounds are included in the game, or if I choose the “correct” one which had the most content. This was something I didn’t like with DAI, for example. My Inquisitor was just a husk of nothing.

I will throw in a last complaint; the music. The music in DAI was so good, and when they did use Trevor Morris’ tracks a few times in DAV I almost cried again, and I don’t think any of the music solely for DAV is memorable at all. It was background noise. 

Even with all this, I had fun! It felt like a Dragon Age game, and I feel a lot of the complaints are too loud. I never expected another DAO. And perhaps it could’ve been better, but with all the changes and rework they had to do, I’m just happy we got another DA game. The end ended me.

And I would die for Assan and Manfred. 

Hope you enjoyed my rambles about the game. This is not something I usually do but I haven’t had anyone to speak about my thoughts so, hey. :) I probably missed some things and thoughts but be prepared for some fanart soon!

(THE CHOICE BETWEEN HARDING AND DAVRIN THOUGH THAT WAS MEAN WTF I AM NOT OVER THAT)

Knitted a moth sweater ✨ bought the pattern for it here!