Dragon Age: The Veilguard - A woke disaster? Yep!

[Oliver Onions]

I'd bet on Fairgame$ managing to outdo Concord on the failure scale though, for some reason sony have chosen that and Marathon as their live service hills to die on

I think Fairgame$ is going to be quietly cancelled. It'll be 2 years in May since it was first announced and we've seen nothing except that one extremely cringe trailer. I think they only pushed it to 2026 in the hopes people would forget it ever existed.

I believe Marathon will be allowed to come out only so it can flop and justify Sony shutting down Bungie.

 

[Ishtar]

Looks like I misremembered which Blight they went extinct. Still, the setup pre-DAV for gryphons surviving extinction is beyond autistic.

Spoiler: synopsis

Isseya manages to purge the taint from a clutch of eggs obtained from Amadis Vael's griffon. Amadis was Garahel's lover and the eggs of her griffon, Smoke, were sired by Garahel's griffon, Crookytail. Convinced the Wardens of the Exalted Age are not fit stewards of the griffons and hoping those of the future will be, Isseya uses magic to hide the eggs in suspended animation in a remote location that would later become home to a statue of Andraste, the "Red Bride." Isseya then takes her griffon, Revas, on one last flight before secreting her journal away at Weisshaupt rather than live in a world without the noble creatures.

Driven by her research to find this treasure in the present day, Valya then travels with a small group of companions to the site and is able to reanimate the eggs. They hatch, one chick in particular looking identical to Garahel's Crookytail. The hatchlings appear to be free of the taint, bringing Valya hope that they will rise again.

Rescuing a single clutch of eggs can't save an entire species without a ridiculously contrived setup. The closest real life example would probably be the Leonberger dog breed, but that was only possible due to crossbreeding being possible. Also have to mention, every prominent Warden character involved with the rescuing of gryphons is somehow an elf. Really shows the obsession with knife ears runs deep in this franchise.

The elves are central to DA. It is what it is. I do think there is some thematic resonance, what with the themes of renewal and hope in the face of near extinction, but yes the gryphons can’t survive as just 12 (related) individuals. At the very least you’d need some sort of careful breeding program.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

In nuThedas, everything can survive and fluorish (unless you are in the South) as long as you have the power of non-binary friendship.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Nico Lennon was fantastic as Carver. Hes in a ton of games. The Last Story, Nioh 2, Witcher 3, etc.


Regarding Anders, was it always planned he would go insane and be a genocidal maniac? I could never figure out where they meant to take his plot between Awakening and 2

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

It was initially planned to be Velanna instead of Anders being the one to fuse with Justice. Not sure why they switched to Anders.

I'm glad it's Anders, though. I don't want to spend any more time with that scold-hag Velanna than necessary.

 

[Ishtar]

Velanna is more tied to elven grievance than mage grievance. Anders fits a lot more with the story DA2 was trying to tell.

I'm glad it's Anders, though. I don't want to spend any more time with that scold-hag Velanna than necessary.

Come on now, Velanna has a great rack. She's just really bitter and bitchy.

In nuThedas, everything can survive and fluorish (unless you are in the South) as long as you have the power of non-binary friendship.

I think...its a choice you can either set the gryphons lose or use them for the wardens in DAV? Regardless, they are still likely doomed because of inbreeding.

I know you're joking-but DAV leaves most of Thedas a burned wreck-the South has been turboblighted, the Wardens are effectively destroyed, Tevinter, Rivain and Antiva have been ravaged, the Qunari have lost their military, and uh...Nevarra is pretty okay I think? Dorian and the Inquisitor are going to having to find edible dust to keep their people fed.

 

[Brap God]

The elves are central to DA. It is what it is.

Miss me with that sorry excuse chief. They're far from central to the Grey Wardens, at the very least. Yet this novel has all the key characters on the good side of history be elves, and the default state for DA is an elven martyr. It's an obsession with the minority insert.

At the very least you’d need some sort of careful breeding program.

Not really. You need at minimum 50 to avoid rampant inbreeding, ideally 500 to have a realistic chance of repopulation.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

I can't remember if Anders sudden turn was referenced in Awakening.

 

[Ishtar]

Miss me with that sorry excuse chief. They're far from central to the Grey Wardens, at the very least. Yet this novel has all the key characters on the good side of history be elves, and the default state for DA is an elven martyr. It's an obsession with the minority insert.

The elves(and dwarves somewhat) are more integral to the setting-both in its own mythology and the fact humans are...treated as something of an interloper. Even if DA does have a human dominated world. I wouldn't accept the Tumblr framing of elves as indigenes or racial minorities off the bat. I mean yes there are parallels-the same way the Qunari resemble Islam, but its not a 1:1 allegory.

I can't remember if Anders sudden turn was referenced in Awakening.

Yes and no? In the epilogues not really-in a pre DA2 short story, Anders flees to Kirkwall after being harassed by the templars, and merges with Justice sometime during this process. Awakening does lay the groundwork-Anders is an apostate, has an ambivalent relationship with the chantry, and is primarily concerned with freedom. He's just selfish and indifferent to anything outside his own interests. The merging with justice did not give him a motivation he lacked, it caused him to actually pursue that motivation-mage freedom. Justice in Awakening has no long term goal or agenda-he cannot he represents a concept(or rather...he is a concept), but in union with Anders-justice and mage freedom become equivalent demands for the being they become.

DA2 Anders is the union of Anders' aspirations with an idealized construct made alive and real. We only see glimpses of DAA Anders in DA2-he is merged with a spirit and that has made him obsessed with mage freedom as the object of Justice.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Anders was a poorly developed character in Dragon Age: Awakening anyway - to be fair, all the companions in that expansion are poorly developed due to the short campaign. I don't know why they used Anders for Dragon Age 2 when a new character with "runaway" background (Manders? Xanders) would do just as well, without all the extra drama of retcon and suddenly-bi now that comes with reusing Anders.

The griffon eggs in Last Flight were a bittersweet legacy of the protagonist Isseya, the forgotten sister of Garahel the Grey Warden hero of the Fourth Blight, who sacrificed her life and sanity to blood magic in order to defeat the Blight. Damn, for a tie-in, that novel is awesome. It really drives home the horrors of blood magic, the heavy price the users pay, and the extent of the Grey Wardens in doing anything to defeat the Blight - and the horrifying price they pay for drinking the Darkspawn blood in order to do so.

The much-ballyhooed portrayal of the Grey Wardens in Dragon Age: Inquisition is actually quite true to the fatalistic pragmatism of the Grey Wardens. Not that I am defending it - while I think I understand the intention behind it, the execution or the script just ended up making the Grey Wardens look like gullible retards. It's clear at that point that the writers, even Gaider, had lost track of what the Grey Wardens were supposed to be.

Then came this game, but ah who cares. All the key people involved in making that game have psychiatric issues anyway, so no point dwelling on that game.

 

[Mola Ram]

Anders was a poorly developed character in Dragon Age: Awakening anyway - to be fair, all the companions in that expansion are poorly developed due to the short campaign. I don't know why they used Anders for Dragon Age 2 when a new character with "runaway" background (Manders? Xanders) would do just as well, without all the extra drama of retcon and suddenly-bi now that comes with reusing Anders.

Optimistically, because they wanted connective tissue between each installment via a single returning party member. Oghren -> Anders -> Varric gives you a thread that runs from Origins to Inquisition. Veilguard sort of boofed it -- Varric should have been retired from the party and Harding wasn't a party member in DAI (I had always thought the likeliest returning member would be Dorian) -- but Veilguard fucking something up is only to be expected.

The much-ballyhooed portrayal of the Grey Wardens in Dragon Age: Inquisition is actually quite true to the fatalistic pragmatism of the Grey Wardens. Not that I am defending it - while I think I understand the intention behind it, the execution or the script just ended up making the Grey Wardens look like gullible retards. It's clear at that point that the writers, even Gaider, had lost track of what the Grey Wardens were supposed to be.

Yeah, my issues with the Wardens in DAI isn't that they use blood magic or even that they create abominations -- Duncan killing Jory in cold blood during your Joining demonstrated exactly how ruthless the Wardens can be -- but that they were fooled by the most obvious mustache twirling villain this side of Snidely Whiplash. Erimond is one of the goofiest characters in the entire series; no shades of gray; no "well, he has a point": just pure, unadulterated, undisguised sadism and cackling evil. Warden Commander Clarel comes across as one of the stupidest characters we've ever met, and the Wardens who listened to her come across as downright retarded.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Miss me with that sorry excuse chief. They're far from central to the Grey Wardens, at the very least. Yet this novel has all the key characters on the good side of history be elves, and the default state for DA is an elven martyr. It's an obsession with the minority insert.

You can blame it on how many vocal online fans that play only elven princesses. The mods to make elves look more like white human Disney princesses outnumber many other cosmetic mods out there.

 

[Ishtar]

Okay, so to defend the wardens’ plot in DAI.

Every warden in Ferelden and Orlais, starts feeling the calling at once. Every single one. (Including Loghain or Alistair). The HoF only doesn’t because they’re off beyond the map somewhere.

The wardens are terrified-they are all going to turn into ghouls-with two more old gods still to rise. It’s an impossible situation, what do we do? How do we stop the blight from consuming the world if we all die early?

Clarel and the wardens at Adamant are motivated as much by extreme urgency, as they are by fear. It requires a grey warden to permanently slay an Archdemon. There is no loophole they know around this. Within a few months to years-every warden will be dead or utterly corrupted. This means that they have to find a solution now. Lest they all die and then the world is helpless when the sixth blight starts.

This is the stick that Corypheus and Erimond use to manipulate the wardens into doing the blood magic-the idea being that they’ll bind a big demon army, via mass sacrifice, and then go through the deep roads and kill both sleeping old gods.

As a motivation-it makes sense, the wardens have always put ruthless pragmatism over idealistic virtue. And the situation they find themselves in, requires some sort of desperate action. A last ditch attempt to end the blights forever, because it seems the blight is going to be taking them all early.

Erimond is a mustache twirling cartoon villain yes, DAI doesn’t even pretend to insinuate otherwise-but he doesn’t have to be anything else, he simply takes advantage of the fear and desperation Clarel and the wardens are already submerged by, and offers a lifeline.

 

[Mola Ram]

Okay, so to defend the wardens’ plot in DAI.

Every warden in Ferelden and Orlais, starts feeling the calling at once. Every single one. (Including Loghain or Alistair). The HoF only doesn’t because they’re off beyond the map somewhere.

The wardens are terrified-they are all going to turn into ghouls-with two more old gods still to rise. It’s an impossible situation, what do we do? How do we stop the blight from consuming the world if we all die early?

Clarel and the wardens at Adamant are motivated as much by extreme urgency, as they are by fear. It requires a grey warden to permanently slay an Archdemon. There is no loophole they know around this. Within a few months to years-every warden will be dead or utterly corrupted. This means that they have to find a solution now. Lest they all die and then the world is helpless when the sixth blight starts.

This is the stick that Corypheus and Erimond use to manipulate the wardens into doing the blood magic-the idea being that they’ll bind a big demon army, via mass sacrifice, and then go through the deep roads and kill both sleeping old gods.

As a motivation-it makes sense, the wardens have always put ruthless pragmatism over idealistic virtue. And the situation they find themselves in, requires some sort of desperate action. A last ditch attempt to end the blights forever, because it seems the blight is going to be taking them all early.

Erimond is a mustache twirling cartoon villain yes, DAI doesn’t even pretend to insinuate otherwise-but he doesn’t have to be anything else, he simply takes advantage of the fear and desperation Clarel and the wardens are already submerged by, and offers a lifeline.

And it didn't occur to anyone in the Warden hierarchy of Orlais that, "Gee, this screamingly obvious Tevinter blood mage might not be telling us the whole truth"? Why is it only the returning Warden character thought to question the narrative at all? Where were the Wardens who weren't hearing the Calling in nearby lands?

There is no defending this storyline. Erimond is simply too obvious a villain and too bad an actor. Some portion of the Wardens falling for his scheme out of panic, maybe, even including Clarel. But all of them? It's ridiculous. It's one of the major drags on Inquisition, which already suffers from a dearth of good storyline quests. The trip into Fade and the battle of Adamant themselves are fine, but everything that leads up to them is the very definition of an Idiot Plot.

 

[Ishtar]

You seem to be forgetting it wasn’t just Erimond’s word though? The wardens could hear the whispers in the back of their heads and the scratching looming sense of dread and doom(the song). If it was just Erimond then yes you’d be right.

But…the calling is something every warden both recognizes and rightfully fears. The idea that Corypheus was sending them a false signal through the blight never registered because they didn’t know any better.

Think about it from clarel’s perspective.

Erimond is offering a solution to an existential problem, that is causing me sleepless night after sleepless night, I don’t necessarily trust him-but if we’re all gone in a decade, what then? What happens when there are no more wardens and the next old god rises? Take a chance on this Tevinter magister, or…don’t and then everyone dies anyway?

The wardens were manipulated, in part because they don’t fully understand the blight they are spiritually and biologically tied too.

Clarel didn’t act as if she actually read the script or had OOU knowledge. She made a hard desperate call in the midst of an unprecedented and seemingly hopeless situation(like a grey warden). So the plot does make sense.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Bad execution is bad execution, no matter the thought and intent that went into it. It is the responsibility of the writers to sell us the story, and they failed.

As mentioned, they could have made Erimond a more nuanced character, one that could believably charm and deceive an entire order that supposedly had lived with the Calling for centuries. The Wardens had been around the block before, with people like Avernus, Corypheus, and potentially the Architect. They shouldn't be so easily in line with Erimond.

Instead, by making Erimond a MUA-HA-HA type with all the subtlety of Nicholas Boulton playing sarcastic Male Hawke in the Mark of the Assassin DLC, the writers dropped the ball and killed the player's ability to believe in the plot.

 

[Balr0g]

Also, why would a new calling come in so quickly? How long is Inquisition set after Origins? Only a couple of years right? From what I understand so far is that it takes the Darkspawn time to find an old God (Dragon) and wake him up. And the 5th Blight was basically a mistake as the Architect actually tried to manipulate or break free from the old God and accidentaly woke him up. Just to put it into perspective the 4th Blight is decades or even centuries past before the 5th Blight (the short lived one) happens. Considering that the Wardens usually send out parties into the Deeps to keep tabs on the Darkspawn should have given them enough reasons to question the calling. Of course we don't know how fast news travel in these parts. so there is that

 

[Ishtar]

The calling is something wardens usually hear individually-at the end of their lives. Corypheus’ false calling was basically broadcast to all wardens simultaneously.

The blight-seems to be this magical yet also physical force that life essences or souls(as well as telepathic communication) can be transmitted through. Every warden and every Darkspawn are connected via the blight. Corypheus is also blighted.

There was no actual blight-Corypheus was doing the equivalent of a scam call to trick an old person into giving all their money by claiming they were about to be arrested for tax evasion. It was a bluff based on imminent fear. Which is why it’s such a big deal the wardens got duped. Erimond basically bamboozled them into blowing away their political capital and hundreds of their own lives.

The 4th blight was about 400 years before Origins, and Origins is a decade removed from Inquisition. Inquisition takes place in 9:41-9:42 Dragon. Origins takes place in 9:30-9:31 Dragon.

The calling basically just signals that the taint is progressing and can’t be held at bay any longer. The wardens hear voices, the humming song of the old gods. Eventually they either become ghouls-or they go down to the deep roads and kill as many Darkspawn as possible in blazes of glory.

The fact that Corypheus’ false calling affected every warden at the same time, was what put clarel in such a desperate mental state.

To answer an above point-Corypheus had been imprisoned but most wardens didn’t know anything about him, only the most senior ones knowing a talking Darkspawn had been imprisoned.

Also…information doesn’t seem to reliably travel-what Weisshaupt knows and what the warden on the ground in Orlais or Ferelden knows are two entirely different things. The fact the architect started the fifth blight isn’t necessarily something every warden is going to know. Nor are wardens in Orlais going to immediately presume that there is some connection between the calling all of them are experiencing and Corypheus(who everyone who knew thought was dead anyway).

The wardens can make mistakes, operate on out of date or faulty information and can be tricked or bamboozled if the right buttons are pushed.

Yes they are heroes, but they aren’t perfect or somehow above mortal institutional failures. That is what DAI is saying about them.

 

[Mola Ram]

Yes they are heroes, but they aren’t perfect or somehow above mortal institutional failures. That is what DAI is saying about them.

That is what DAI is trying to say about them. What it is actually saying is the Wardens are the kinds of people who lose all their money to a Nigerian prince's email.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

That is what DAI is trying to say about them. What it is actually saying is the Wardens are the kinds of people who lose all their money to a Nigerian prince's email.

Well, except of the Warden Ally (either Alistair, Loghain or Strout and HoF if alive).
Yeah, now i can remember about how fucked up that argument is in Inquisition.