riftsmagic

[riftsmagic]

still percolating on my annoyance on how not only is there not a single elf in the shadow dragons leadership, not only is there not a single former slave, but three of the four prominent members we meet are able to own slaves . which historically is not really how abolition worked

[riftsmagic]

My entire playthrough

[riftsmagic]

here's my full piece for @daflowerzine ! 🌼

[riftsmagic]

Still crazy to think that way back in origins they dropped the fact that "yeah all golems were once dwarves and there is a way for them to regain sentience and autonomy" and then never elaborated on that again.

[riftsmagic]

I saw a post today that got me thinking. They basically started by pointing out how the Veilguard companions are super entitled brats because even though the world is ending, they prioritize solving their apparently much more important personal issues.

What really hit me is, the writers were trying to use the Mass Effect 2 template with a Mass Effect 3 level threat, without seeming to realize how completely incompatible those two things are.

I’m gonna talk a lot about Mass Effect to critique a Dragon Age game, but that’s what they get for trying to Mass Effect Dragon Age. Oh well.

First off, let me get the Unpopular Opinion out of the way now: Mass Effect 2 was the worst game of the trilogy. There’s not to say it was a bad game. It was an excellent game. Unfortunately, it was not a good second installment of a trilogy. It did none of the middle act work of setting up the pieces for the final act (this is why we get the deus ex machina of the super secret Reaper killing weapon plans plopped on what HAD just been “a small data cache” on Mars - ME2 should have been about it chasing down leads for said weapon) and instead was basically a reboot that set us back to exactly where we should not have been, only now with this super cool secret society that has been secretly engineering galactic politics from behind the scenes and using their Big Evil Tendrils of Power on people and shaping events (gee, why does THAT sound so familiar, Veilguard?) and they were putting us on a mission that realistically had nothing to do with the bigger Reaper threat or set us up to fight them. The main story was about the Collectors and Cerberus, but you’ll notice how No one ever talks about that - other than to express irritation when TIM spies up to force you to go on main story missions instead oof letting you do the missions you actually care about - the companion recruitment and loyalty missions. Having the actual story be those missing works because the main story is actually inconsequential IRT the world. You are a small crew chasing after what most of the galaxy believed to be a myth by sailing into an area no one has ever come back from, And said crew is a leader everyone thinks is dead, two members of a terrorist organization, a tank-bred teenager, a vigilante everyone thinks is dead, a mercenary, a dying assassin, twenty year old kid, a thief, an old mad scientist who retired off to the slums, and a really self-righteous mercenary. In order words: no one the galaxy will seemingly miss on a suicide mission of seemingly no importance. That means instead of focusing on the unimportant story (again, remember, it does NONE of the work of the middle story of a trilogy, which is part of why ME3 had the problems it did!), they could focus on the characters. And it completely made sense to stop everything - because there truly was not a huge rush until the Collector attack triggers to get to the suicide mission - in order to do these single mission asks of people that a terrorist organization is sending on a suicide mission. They are asking Shepard to give them some closure on their lives because they know they very well might die and not be able to do it after the mission. And it makes sense to do it, because you are literally asking them to die. It’s a last request. You do it because there’s no time crunch, because there’s no no threat hanging over you, and even after the Collector Attack is triggered, the only thing under threat is your ship’s crew. It’s a personal threat, not a galactic one.

Which brings is to 3, which is finally getting back to the story started in 1, the Reapers, which are now HERE and a way to beat them has to be plucked out of nowhere because 2 didn’t bother (and yes yes, I know about set up from 1 with the giant rift on iirc Klendagon? I don’t remember how to spell the name - but we should have been looking for that in 2 instead of doing a side quest for Cerberus, but I digress). Anyway, there is now a galaxy ending threat and it is literally destroying worlds. They are taking offer more and more of space, and despite our best edits at are absolutely losing, and we’ve got a very short time to unite the galaxy and get that Hail Mary weapon built, plus stop Cerberus fucking up our efforts, or else all space faring life will be killed off. Every mission (air from DLC) is focused on one of those three goals, because the threat is so large there’s no room for anything else. Even when it seems like the game is setting up you helping a former companion on a side mission -Miranda and her missing sister - Miranda tells you point blank that you’ve got bigger issues than her personal problem, and you only end up doing it because you’re going after Cerberus and discovered she was there.

Now, at long last, it’s time to talk about Veilguard. Veilguard tried to tell small, personal stories, like ME2 did, while the main story was a literal world and life as we know it ending threat, like ME3 had. And those two things are incompatible. You can’t stop to go fight an old personal enemy and plan camping trips while there is a literal world ending threat that is encroaching on everything and you are LOSING - by virtue of the stakes, it needs to be everything you are, in some way, focusing on, as is what happened with ME3. By trying to do a personal story quest in this scenario, creates a giant disconnect where your companions come off as entitled at best and extraordinarily privileged and tone deaf at worst, and like they are completely amateurish. You can’t stop everything to handle personal concerns when you are losing a fight for the survival of literally everyone. Act 2 of Veilguard grinds to a halt because instead of looking for ways to stop the gods, you’re off hither and yon running multi-step errands for your companions. They’re taking you on picnics and telling you to relax and have some tea. Meanwhile, the south is on fire and hundred of thousands of people are dying and the baddies are working on their own deus ex machina as you go chasing after a random mage.

[riftsmagic]

The adventures of Inquisitor Maddox : Part 9

<<First <Previous | Masterpost | AO3 vers | Next>

Recruitment and hanging out with companions! This was a bit longer so I changed the format a bit, i hope is easy to read :) i also didn't got the breeches pun until. like. this year. (in my defense english is not my first language)

blowing kisses to everyone who is reading this and liking it and leaving me nice tags/replies, you dont know the joy it brings me <3

[riftsmagic]

the warden wasnt in dragon age inquisition bc theyre so aggressively competent that the game wdve been like. two hours long

[riftsmagic]

im gonna be honest i completely forgot you kill a bunch of templars during anders's recruitment quest so when elthina and cullen said this i was like wait who killed these templars???

[riftsmagic]

justice

[riftsmagic]

? varric we're at the fucking beach

[riftsmagic]

Okay so I understand why the responses to this poll are like that but also I want the angst of it all. I want Merrill who was so obsessed with the mirror after losing Tamlin and Mahariel that she went to the very extremes to 'fix it' and discover what it was, meanwhile Mahariel can't possibly understand why she'd further endanger the clan that way. I want Mahariel finding out that Marethari is dead because Merrill couldn't leave well enough alone and I want them to go crazy over it. I want them to scream and cry and claw and want blood because of it. Mahariel more than any other warden seems to never get the chance to go home and YET Merrill squandered that home? Left that home? To chase...what? The very thing that got Mahariel cast out of the clan? I want them to be furious. I want them to fight bloody. I want the angst goddamn it. I want crying and hurting and childhood friends who don't understand the decisions their adult selves have made I need it please I want it

[riftsmagic]

ok but can you elaborate on what you mean by the game's villainization of vivienne being weirdly spiteful? i love vivienne but i've always struggled to articulate what i find about her portrayal to be so frustrating. it's like they set her up to fail?

vivienne has a personal quest where they lay a trap that is more for the player with meta knowledge than it is for the player character. your mage companion asks for ingredients for a mysterious potion. you’re supposed to remember anders and morrigan and be suspicious, and to follow hints that the game artifically forces, with vivienne’s notes being deliberately written to be misconstrued and the quest title’s reference to the evil queen in snow white, to maybe believe that this is a potion of youth and beauty. which would be Shallow and Wrong, btw. all this is done for the game’s right, if you choose to deceive vivienne, to gleefully say ha! she did have a reason! you didn’t expect THAT, did you? this is on you, the player, for assuming what we artifically set up for you to assume. or if you choose to support her, to say wow... the Ice Queen did just have feelings after all... isn’t this groundbreaking of us...

a companion’s personal quest is basically the one chance we have in dai (beyond walking around for 400 hours collecting every banter) to get to know them on a deeper level. dai affords vivienne like two or three cutscenes and spends them on... that. bizarrely self-congratulory for the shocking twist of vivienne being a person with feelings.

here’s a trespasser epilogue slide that really gets at me! these are about cassandra.

leliana, who she disagrees with on every point, she can work with in mutual respect. but vivienne, who has much closer politics to hers? vivienne, who approves of the inquisitor agreeing to support cassandra as divine? well, she’s disgusting. not to mention, there are worldstates where cassandra is divine where the blame for violence against the mages is still placed on vivienne: “Fortunately, Grand Enchanter Vivienne grudgingly agreed not to destroy [the rebel mages’] terrified leaders, as a personal favor to Divine Victoria.” oh thank god we have the merciful fucking seeker cassandra pentaghast to protect us from the woman who talks constantly about how mages being able to learn in safety is her goal

sorry i’ll try not to get bitchy. those are just a couple glaring instances that really get to me. vivienne is such a compelling character setup and has really interesting dialogue about her perspective but the game goes out of its way to deliberately present her in a poor light, not just in-world through fellow characters’ perspectives but also through quest titles & epilogue slides, the “objective” authorial text of the game itself. why is vivienne treated like this when we pretend cassandra is more progressive just because she uses the word change sometimes? would wynne, another circle mage companion with extremely similar politics, be treated like this?

if we focus on it as a mage politics question, i think dai almost scapegoats vivienne in its attempts to rebalance the mage conflict towards the templars. in dai, the templars suffer through noble sacrifices in sympathetic manly silence, misguided and led astray, tormented by the hardships magic has dealt them. but just to show we know the circles are bad, just because we know you have frustration to vent, here’s the true believer to pin all the blame on: the loyalist mage, who knows exactly what she’s chosen to support. (gasp, aren’t we so clever for subverting your expectations. the mage believes in the circles! the elf doesn’t like elves! we’ve ended stereotyping! if you think about it, this is on you, the player, for assuming.)

but the internal dragon age politics thing is almost a sidenote when compared to the obvious. it would be ridiculous to leave unspoken that this is about race and it’s the black woman who is so cruelly and dismissively written while the story bends over backwards to let you sympathise with white characters. especially when we’re talking about how it’s meant to be a surprise that she has feelings; you should look up other resources on this than a white tumblr user if you’re not familiar but the “strong black woman” who doesn’t get to have the softness, vulnerability, and sensitivity that other women are afforded, and who gives support but doesn’t need to be treated with care by others, is a harmful stereotype that kind of has to be brought up when you’re talking about why vivienne is written the way she is

[riftsmagic]

happy pride month

[riftsmagic]

Blood magic in da makes me kinda mad because it's such a cool concept, but Bioware doesn't do shit with it. It's THE way to be more or less self-sufficient as a mage (no need for lyrium!) but you're quite literally using yourself up for power, body and spirit. Like imo there should absolutely be long-term consequences for gratuitous use of blood magic, you're siphoning that magic from your own life force, like some fucked up self-sustaining, self-digesting circle. Forget about demons, that can not be healthy just by itself. And like, that's metal as fuck!! But then all they do in the actual games is sometimes point at it like. oh that's the evil demon-y magic btw, with no further exploration. Don't piss me OFF

[riftsmagic]

"They were beings he respected. Imagine what he did to his friends."

[riftsmagic]

Merrill's storyline greatly suffers from how badly the Dalish are handled outside of it and it makes me, a normal amount of mad.

[riftsmagic]

Oh mighty Harker Vigilskeep, wise master of Dwarf Lore.

Do you have a take on what happened to the dwarven soldiers that survived post battle of Denerim? Like would Orzammar make an exception regarding the “see the sky lose your caste” deal?

I’ve been operating under the assumption that at least under Harrowmont there would not be an exception as part of my Rook’s background (whole family left for the surface to avoid being separated) but I keep going back and forth on whether that actually makes sense.

Love your blog and its takes on things and I’m curious if this is something you’ve ever given thought to.

i personally strongly strongly operate under the assumption that there is a religious exception for those who go to fight the blight. to my knowledge, absolutely nobody talking about the dwarven army being sent up mentions that they wouldn’t be able to come back with their caste, and i think that would be a crucial sticking point for a dwindling population who a) would not throw away caste easily and b) rely on their warriors for survival. knowing dwarves i don’t think they would be able to shut up (and fair enough!) about the sacrifice they’re making for you

none of this is canon confirmed but i think the devs literally didn’t think about it 😭 so it’s up to you but i find the whole army being made casteless very hard to believe