did they intend to give solas and rook three times the chemistry they gave solas and lavellan in the base inqusition game or am i witnessing the funniest possible thing bioware could've done

manfred 💀💚

the heartbroken look of disbelief he has on his face once he realizes all his plans after years of work have been ruined.. yet again 😢💔

BONUS:

Dragon Age: The Veilguard | ▶ dev. Bioware

da2 isn't the best dragon age game *because* it's openly a tragedy, but being a tragedy forces a level of narrative coherence that the other games in the series don't have, and *that's* what makes it a better game.

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!

neither origins or inquisition play with that sort of narrative complexity. origins is a jaundiced hero's quest, certainly, but it's still basically a hero's quest; inquisition has a number of characters who question what you're doing and why, but the multitude of voices pulls the game in too many potential directions. DA2 was so constrained in its production that it pulled on decidedly ancient theatrical traditions, and it worked so, so well

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - very early days concept art/story ideas drawn by Matt Rhodes. under cut due to possible spoilers [source, two].

Art by Matt Rhodes.

I can think of no one better to wield this.

↳ Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024)

and

I also love how it changed everything. Especially in the end <3

OSHA eat your heart out

Anyways.

when i tell you i ran around the frostback basin for HOURS with cole, solas, and blackwall to get this dialogue to trigger (console hell)..... and i would do it again, too. it's about the foreshadowing, it's about cole knowing all their dirt but not spilling it, it's about solas not saying a god damn word even though he knows cole knows. it's about blackwall probably thinking about this for HOURS afterwords, turning over what cole meant, what cole knows... oof i hope veilguard can deliver banter that hits like this.

Dreamer at the Well of Sorrows/Oil and Water - a Solavellan tarot card

I've been wanting to finish this one for a while and capture the dynamic between Silea and Solas. They're broken up but like,,, not really.