Here’s A Health To The Company (Youtube Link)

It’s time to bring this back

Bingo Sheets for everyone to print off My Free Space suggestion is “And the Warden still doesn’t make a fucking appearance”

Devastating to have more evidence that done IS better than perfect

Okay folks repeat after me: it’s okay to critic the things we love.

People criticizing critical role’s lack of diversity, especially in light of their campaign setting, have a valid point. You can acknowledge that and still enjoy campaign three.

there’s going to be a difference sometimes between the stories that you find masterfully crafted and the stories that mean a lot to you personally and those two things don’t have to overlap completely or even at all to make that story worthwhile

and that’s a good thing to remember as a reader/viewer/etc but also as a writer because even if whatever you ultimately write is full of mistakes, someone out there is gonna take it so to heart that it fundamentally changes them as a person. and that is. Huge.

Welcome to Campaign Three! 

treebeard and the hobbits

you can get a print here

Kirkwall

That was part of commish for one DA fan. I was inspired by image of this mighty city from DA:2, towering on a great mountain, at the foot of which splaches Waking sea...

legends and lattes ☕

Bingo Sheets for everyone to print off My Free Space suggestion is “And the Warden still doesn’t make a fucking appearance”

Veilguard in many ways is reductive while being the most directly moralizing of the Dragon Age games, which makes it impossible to play a character with politics, ideas, or morals different from those the game espouses.

The game continuously tries to convince the player that these options do exist, hints at the fact that you will need to make sacrifices in order to win the war against the Evanuris, and ultimately, to stop Solas. But it fails to actually deliver on any of those promises by providing only three major choices, and a handful of minor choices. Not to mention that most of the dialogue options won't allow you to be authoritarian with a sole focus on defeating the Evanuris.

In my mind our three major decisions are:

The City you choose to send other people to defend, resulting in it being Blighted and captured by the villains already vying for power.

The person you choose to lead the other group when attempting to kill Ghilan'nain.

Whether to provide Solas closure & redemption, trick him, or fight him.

My issue with the first decision is that it does not go far enough. In a game that is ostensibly about hard choices, the fact both cities come out of it still standing, even if one survives in very bad shape and under totalitarian rule, doesn't make sense to me. The city you help should barely survive thanks to your presence, and the one you leave others to defend should be blighted and uninhabitable.

Additionally, you should be able to give a reason to your companions, in game, as to why you chose one city and not the other. For example, my Grey Warden Rook chose to help Treviso because they knew Minrathous' history with Blights and thought they might be able to handle it without them. But there are other Rooks who will save Minrathous because they hate The Crows. There are Rooks who will flip a coin and follow its lead. There are Rooks who think Minrathous does not deserve to be saved.

But this game does not, textually, allow Rook that kind of anger. It does allow Rook to say anything at all about the choice, other than that they had to make it, and that they are sorry. The game tells us we must feel bad for not being able to save everyone. But why?

Part of my issue with the second choice lies with Lucanis, and the fact the game does not allow you to dismiss any of your companions. He fails to strike when it counts most, and Rook and the whole team seem understanding if frustrated by it, but are willing to give him a second chance. But why? Because it is the morally right thing to do? Because he needs a shot at redemption?

Those are not good enough reasons for my Rook. But the game does not allow Rook to dismiss him after a catastrophic failure. It insists he remain, despite it being more than reasonable to kick out the guy who had one shot and missed.

Which relates to my real gripe with this choice: you should be able to choose any of your companions to lead the group, resulting in any of their deaths. And they should be the one to strike the final blow, not Lucanis, unless he is the person that is chosen. This, to me, is far more narratively satisfying, and puts the choice back into Rook and the player's hand.

The final decision is the one I feel is the most well done, but I still have issues with it.

The Inquisitor, romanced or not, and Morrigan, should be there in all endings. Morrigan should always help you defeat Solas, and the Inquisitor, based upon decisions they made in the prior game and not solely relying on whether or not they romanced him, should either fight with or against you. If they meet that criteria in the ending where you trick Solas, they should be the final boss. Additionally, the Inquisitor should get to choose whether or not to go with Solas if they have high enough friendship or romance in the redeemed ending.

My frustrations with Veilguard overall are the way it tells you it is doing something, without ever showing you, the severe limitations it imposes on actually roleplaying, and the way it glosses over previously established cultural issues and flaws within its narrative. It reduces the Venatori and Antaam to shells of their former nuanced selves. References to slavery within Tevinter culture are almost entirely removed. The Crows have morphed into an illusion to an Italian Mafia rather than a brutal group of spies who take part in child slavery and kill those who do not live up to their expectations. I cannot be a dalish elf, or a city elf, in a way that at all reflects the culturally distinct upbringings those two groups have. I cannot make Rook into anything more than they already are. I cannot make a Rook that falls outside of what the game deems as acceptable.

This game sanitizes the aspects of Dragon Age that were most interesting to me personally, trying to tie up all lore questions in a nice little bow, in aim to appeal to the widest audience possible. But it fails to do that, because in doing so, it lost the identity that makes it appealing.

I have said this before, and I will say it again: All art is inherently political because art is both a reflection of and the means by which culture is facilitated. And the illusion of choice in this game, the illusion that you can make hard decisions or play a character that's antagonistic or authoritarian, feels very inline with what capitalism presents to those who live under it. The choices we are presented with are a facade. The representation we are given is surface level and largely unsatisfying. We must act, even in our fantasies, in a way that corporations deem acceptable. We must maintain the status quo.