b a t t y

best dialogue option in this WHOLE GAME

[caption: Unfortunate rimes we live in. Some cheese to cheer you up?]

this random merchant told me to eat some cheese about it and i thought. you know what? he's right and got up and had myself some goat cheese gouda

im so sorry to be a mythal lover like my icon and url suggest but i genuinely think her relationship with solas in this game was one of its best writing moments and specifically their confrontation is the highlight of this game for me and i have to talk about it.

it is so fucked up and tragic and raw. it shows us a side of him we have never seen before. she is so brutal but also somehow kind. she is probably the most complex and nuanced character in the entire dragon age universe. what she did to him was inexcusable and she takes full accountability for it but she also does not apologize. its SO INTERESTING!!! ITS SO INTERESTING!!!!

WHEN HAVE WE EVER SEEN HIM LOOK LIKE THIS>??? HIS FACE??? HIS BODY LANGUAGE????? HE LOOKS TERRIFIED AND WRETCHED. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM LOOK LIKE THIS EVER.

HE WHISPERS HER NAME, AVERTS HIS GAZE. HE CANT EVEN LOOK HER IN THE EYE. HIS NAME IS PRIDE??? HE IS THE DREAD WOLF AND HE IS THE MANIFESTATION OF PRIDE AND LOOK AT HOW HE LITERALLY CRUMBLES IN HER PRESENCE???? HOLY SHIT. THIS IS SO UNLIKE HIM

i love that she does not apologize. it would have been out of character. she isnt sorry and she never was, but she at least takes accountability for what she did to him and the effect it had. she does not offer meaningless platitudes of sorrow. why would she??? she just plainly states the truth.

I RELEASE YOU FROM MY SERVICE. I RELEASE YOU FROM MY SERVICE. HE STILL CANT LOOK HER IN THE EYE. HE IS SOOOO SUBMISSIVE HERE WHAT THE FUCK. honestly i need to make a comparison between their body language here and his body language with lavellan in trespasser but that'll have to be for another time. but i am so obsessed with this line being what she says of all the things she could have said. again no apologies. just catharsis. and she talks to him like a loyal dog, someone under her command, a subordinate, not a lover. did she always see him that way? where did those lines blur? this would have been a good moment for an "ar sala mala revas" but this line is so brilliant on its own i cant complain.

AND THEN YOU HAVE THIS NEXT. THE WAY THEY ARE THE INVERSE. mythal stands over him and looks down upon him, while lavellan literally GETS ON HER KNEES TO SEE HIS FACE. TO LOOK HIM IN THE EYE. BRO THIS IS SO SICKENING. once again it mimics the way they kneel in trespasser, the way they kneel when he removes her vallaslin. and even though he's not kneeling he is bent over in agony and she is quite literally meeting him where he is at ohhhh myg od

and then when it is finally his time to address her directly he looks her right in the eye, his face is calm and not wretched like before when he looked upon mythal, im literally so sick over this look like how long has it been since they stood face to face like this, 8 years????? i havent even gotten into the way his face is bloodied and bruised like this is so vulnerable im literally dying i dont even remember what my point was with writing this i just needed to scream about it. i think mythal's presence here gives so much context to solavellan's dynamic. seeing how he is with mythal versus with lavellan back to back, how mythal speaks down to him while lavellan literally looks up to him. also something something about how lavellan offers him forgiveness while mythal offers him freedom. maybe i can make these thoughts more coherent in like a week from now but right now im running on 3 hours of sleep and pure dopamine. this scene is so fucking crazy i love it.

LOVE your tags @grandwitchbird , you are right. 👌

The pictures from the art book show such a wonderful, grand vision for the game… but I think EA canceling the game twice and the tumultuous development process hindered a lot of its potential.

I hope one day we’ll see a Dragon Age game live up to all it can be

Having been following development, and from little bits and pieces I've picked up through the game developmer grapevine, I'm fairly certain that EA was looking to kill the entire series.

One of the tidbits I picked up is that they took the very very unusual course of counting ALL development costs towards Veilguard, even those from Dreadwolf and the other canceled version of 4, which is highly irregular in the game industry. Once you cancel a game, the assets left over might be recycled into something new (see: Project Titan and Overwatch) but you generally won't count all of the previous costs of development against the new title. You take your tax rebate from losses and start over with a fresh slate and new investment capital.

Doing it this way is something you only do if you want to kill an entire franchise by saddling it with a cost of production it could never POSSIBLY overcome.

Other hints:

All of this screams to me a development team that knew they were engaging in a swan song project and just wanted to get out as good a product as they could and keep their jobs at the end despite the fact they were going to be saddled with an unavoidable commercial failure because someone higher up with an axe to grind put math-magic curses on them.

One of the rumors is that development cost 300 million USD, and I just... I don't see how? Not unless they were counting the massive costs of dreadwolf's server dropped infrastructure against them too among other things.

There's several possible reasons.

My money is -actually- on a combination of 1 and 4 btw. It might not be bioware as a company on the chopping block, but as Dragon Age 2 proved, when Bioware is put into a spot where they HAVE to pick between dedicating resources between Mass Effect and Dragon Age, Dragon Age loses. That's why when EA declared the whole 'all studios must release 1 game every single year' fiasco that DA2 was rushed out the door, to buy more time for Mass Effect 2.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard | ▶ dev. Bioware

do you ever become obsessed with a character and you just go "of fucking course its that one" at yourself because you are so incredibly predictable

The wool has been removed from over my eyes; I see a new narrative symmetry...

Sometimes you really need another's opinion to help you appreciate something more. I'm kinda not so angry about Varric's role in Veilguard now.

His death, the last Solas takes with his own hand, is the linchpin that leads to the final events of the series…

Varric was always terrified of being the protagonist of his own life, he was so desperate to push anyone else out into the spotlight that he didn’t realize it was following him in the first place

Taash!

"Goodbye, Varric, and thank you."

A few facts about Mercar Rook's canonical family background, in case anybody missed these tidbits:

Rook says in a conversation with Tarquin that their father "commanded legions near Ventus." Rook was found on a battlefield as a baby, likely near Ventus, and adopted into a military family.

According to a letter from Maevaris to Dorian, there is a high-ranking Soporati named Charon Mercar, who serves in or near Ventus as a "Legatus" in the Tevinter military. (In ancient Rome, a legatus was a high-ranking military officer equivalent to a modern-day general.)

Given the previous information about Rook's father commanding legions near Ventus, it seems likely that Charon Mercar is Rook's father.

Charon Mercar has "privately expressed support for reform" and has influence with the current Imperator of the Tevinter military. (In ancient Rome, the title "imperator" was used to indicate the highest rank of military command.)

It makes sense to surmise that despite not being mages, Rook's family is as highly ranked in Tevinter society as a Soporati can be and has some influence in Tevinter's military and political affairs.

Obviously you don't have to take any of these facts as canon for your Mercar Rook, I just wanted to share them for anyone who might be interested.

I promise this thought is Dragon Age related just bear with me for a moment.

I used to work in trails and environmental restoration. So we would deal a lot with invasive species. One important concept in ecology is naturalization, where you have an invasive species that’s been around long enough that other species evolve to deal with it and live with it. It’s a major mechanic of evolution and happens even when humans aren’t causing it.

When I think of the Veil, that’s how I see it. Tearing it down would restore an ecosystem that no longer exists in its original form. There’s no telling what the effects would actually be with magic tearing into mortals like that. We also know that Solas’ original ritual went wrong and there’s no guarantee tearing it down wouldn’t cause new, even worse problems. Or create something worse than the Blight.

It’s not like dam removal, where a lot of animals die in the initial destruction but the population bounce back is incredible, because those fish species are supposed to be there. We need them back in the ecosystem because hundreds of years haven’t passed, there hasn’t been time for the system to figure it out without them. Not to mention we’re talking sentient beings who did nothing wrong who would die in the process of tearing itdown and not fish but you get the gist.

I stand by the Veil remaining intact and Solas being its guardian, because he broke the world multiple times trying to save it and frankly, it’s someone else’s turn. The mortals of Thedas deserve the chance to steward their world, especially that they’re finally free from the meddling of the Evanuris.