I don't know how to explain it but

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What is the one Dragon Age quote that has permanently wormed its way into your vocabulary?

Mine's "There was a [blank] on the [blank] and everything."

As I said yesterday, I have beaten the game. I've slept on it and chewed the fat of my thought processes and now am ready to talk about it under cut.

Huge endgame spoilers beyond this point.

So I beat it

And I am very Drained(tm) from the last few missions but I'm gonna put a few thoughts down. Nothing spoilery in this post per-se despite a few very non-specific thoughts about general plot beats. I'm digesting the ending, might post more later. This post is not about the ending in any way, shape or form.

So my main thought, which I've been stewing on since just after the end of Act 2 is how, at it's heart, TVG wasn't a Dragon Age game.

It was a Mass Effect game.

Specifically, Mass Effect 2.

See, DA has always been about character arcs that talk about specific societal views and character and society is usually tightly interwoven, with character arcs specifically to do with a character's society or upbringing (for example, Dorian is from Tevinter. He tells you about Tevinter, you do good shit for him and talk nice about Tevinter, he likes you. Trash Tevinter and he doesn't like you. Another great example of this is Anders - his arc is the plight of mages. Yes, he has other elements as well, but his plot is so intrinsically tied to a societal point that you can't really talk about Anders without also talking about the plight of mages or possession.)

Mass Effect characters... don't really do that after ME1. Even in ME1, Liara was an archaeologist who happened to be an asari, not an asari who struggled with the ideas and concepts of being an asari. She also struggled with family bonds and confronting her mother. Her society informed her character but wasn't intrinsic to it in the way DA characters have their identity shaped by the social climate. Garrus is a turian, but he's also a cop and a vigilante, and the fact he's a Turian who struggles with his identity is only one beat of his story. Zevran's entire story is about struggling with being a Crow, Leliana spends three games eschewing the wonders of the Chantry.

Dragon Age games are issues driven, ME games are character driven.

Except DA4 was character driven

And that's why people are getting cranky. And yes, the characters do have issues - Taash is struggling with their cultural identity and parental acceptance and the place where they fit in the world, but they also really like dragons and help other people out by fighting dragons, and have cool powers that, while linked to their race, are not something that their entire race shares. Being qunari is one beat of who they are, not their entire arc. Their story would work just as well if they were a Kal-Sharok dwarf struggling with their identity in Orlais. It's not the fact that Taash is a qunari in Rivain that charges their story, it's the fact that they feel significant cultural disconnect.

Bellara's story is about a sister whose brother seemed to have died and who made a pact with an evil monster, and Bell has to come to terms with that. The fact that Bell is an elf is secondary to the story of family.

Lucanis' story isn't really about being a Crow. It's about suffering a socio-emotional disconnect and coming back to family fundamentally different and changed; and how sometimes that can cause family to reject you. Lucanis being a Crow informed how the story played out, but it wasn't like Zev's "I'm a Crow so I'm going to kill you, oh shit I fucked up, Oh shit if I'm not a Crow then who the fuck am I and also the Crows did terrible things to me." The very premise of Zev's story relies on the fact that he is an assassin in a very specific order for it to play out the way it does. You can't have a story about someone who is going to be assassinated because they fucked up an assassination if they're not an assassin in a creepy assassin order to begin with. You can have a story about a prisoner who was fundamentally changed by his experiences in prison and is trying to reconnect to family and understand himself post release without them also being an assassin.

All of the character stories are intrinsically personal and deal with what the character is facing, rather than holding up a lens to how broken society is. It's intimate, tight-knit and personal in a way that Dragon Age games usually are not but Mass Effect games definitely are.

So yeah, I found that once I stopped applying DA logic and started applying ME logic, I enjoyed the game a lot more.

But I can see why people don't like it - it doesn't hit the tone a lot of people were expecting from a DA game. And yeah, there's a lot of shit it could have improved upon and a lot of moments where people could definitely get upset by the way things were handled.

But overall, I actually really enjoyed it.

Now excuse me while I go over into a corner and sob for no reason.

Annoyed, spoilery rant under cut which is evidence I should stay out of the tags but here we are.

So I just realised something about Nala.

Imagine you're Solas and you're performing a ritual to seal the Gods in an even deeper, darker prison than the ones they're breaking free of. And your friend rocks up and tries to talk you out of it. He fails, because you're Solas and a popmous ass (affectionate) but off in the distance your statues start toppling.

And shit, the ritual fucks up because of course it does and you're suddenly stuck in the prison that you were shaping for the other Gods.

And you form a blood connection with someone, anyone to try and start getting out.

And this elven chick rocks up, says she's the one who disrupted your ritual and that she's fucking proud of what she did, and she starts antagonising the crap out of you.

And she's got Elgar'nan writ across her forehead in bloody slave marks.

And part of you knows it's probably born of a misrepresentation of the God - she's a natural leader and a bit of a prick (affectionate) so it fits with Father of the Gods - but also part of you wonders what if?

Cos yeah, me giving Nala Elgar'nan because I thought it would match her personality and me realising how much Nala having Elgar'nan would fuck with Solas were two completely different events.

Not helped at all by the fact that they do not get along at all.

I've already said this but I'm so proud of how pretty she turned out. More pics under cut because spoilers. And because seriously, this girl does not have a bad angle.

Nothing to see here just the helpless Qunmancer having a crisis.

Taash, don't do this to me.

Taash, please.

Taash, I want to romance Lucanis.

Taash, I'm begging you.

She's just so gosh darn pretty

So I... uhh... drew a thing.

I mean, her right eye is too high, and her chin’s like... way too big, but it’s the first time I’ve done any sort of realism in a few years and I’m kinda proud of it??? I guess???

Kalasin Lavellan, referenced heavily from an image of Anne Bonny from Black Sails