#like I got a quest from Harding to go to the lords of fortune. I get there and talk to her and we have one conversation

[riftsmagic]

I want to enjoy this game so bad bc I paid money for it and I’ve invested 70 hours of my life into it already. but I’ve gotten to a point where it’s SO hard not to get critical every time anything happens. im losing it

[casino-lights]

so we have confirmation that veilguard was made in a year and a half. that's understandably such a time crunch and must have put unimaginable stress on the dev team, especially with the mass effect team coming in partway through. I do have empathy for the writers. no one deserves to lose their job at a time like this, especially not after such a roller coaster of a development cycle and after working on this series for so many years.

however.

obsidian made kotor 2, a game praised for its writing and many fans' favorite of the pair, in 14 months. they then proceeded to make fallout: new vegas, again praised for its writing and hailed as a shining example of video game storytelling, in 18 months. a lot of content was ultimately cut from both of these games, but in kotor's case, it was lovingly added back in by fans over the years despite not being especially easy to mod because the fans were so passionate about what they already had that they wanted to enhance it. these games are both known to be kinda janky as well. but the games at their core have satisfying stories, characters, and an incredible overall narrative that feels satisfying and fits with their respective universes, maintains respect for the established lore and characters, and is tonally consistent with the atmosphere and themes of previous games. hell, dragon age 2 was also made in about the same time frame based on what I could find, and as much as the assets were reused there and it could be occasionally glitchy, it remains one of the best bioware narratives with some of their most memorable characters, and it accomplished that while both keeping to the lore and vibe of the dragon age series AND expanding it into new territory.

I am aware that there are differences like engines, era, expectations, pushes from management, etc, but I'm mostly focusing on the writing and the narrative team's priorities. I wouldn't care if they reused assets to save time and money. I wouldn't care if a couple side quests had to go, or some character arcs were a little less polished, or some side characters were cut entirely. honestly I would have preferred it if some of the characters WERE cut entirely. if you're just going to spit on all of her character development, don't bring morrigan back. cut some of that banter in the lighthouse and let me talk to my companions properly. cut that goddamn arena and put those resources toward fleshing out the lords of fortune. even if the rest of the team wanted that entire faction cut so they could focus on other things, cut the fucking faction.

I will never apologize for rightfully criticizing the choices the writers made while making this game. the game talks to you - both you as the player AND you as the character - like you're stupid. repeating things over and over again just to make sure you Really Get It, dumbing down so many aspects of its own lore, reducing any kind of conflict to therapy speak or an HR meeting, etc. rook has no characterization to speak of and their dialogue and tone is wildly inconsistent depending on which npc you're speaking to at the time. why is rook clever enough to do playful, flirty hunter/prey banter with davrin but also too awkward to properly flirt with harding? the one canonically nonbinary neurodivergent companion frequently expresses themselves by growling and roaring and their individuality and competency are repeatedly undermined by their own writer's narrative decisions and banter. the game disregards its own lore and at times straight up contradicts itself. it's pretty, but lacks substance, and fails to live up to the standards a lot of us had for a dragon age game.

I won't pretend I know everything that went on behind the scenes but I think a year and a half is more than enough time to write a better narrative than what we got, even with some pushback from another dev team. I've seen countless thinkpieces by fans who have come up with solutions for plot holes and fixes for the overall narrative, and these are people who came up with this stuff in a matter of a few days or weeks, or sometimes just a few hours. you can't blame me for thinking veteran bioware writers - who SHOULD know their own lore by now - could have come up with something better than this in that amount of time, regardless of the limitations. choices were made and things were prioritized that shouldn't have been. I do not forgive the writers, EA, or bioware execs for this, and I will continue to criticize the responsible parties for the product we were sold, which includes criticizing the writers for shoddy work.

tl;dr: I don't believe the writing team made the best of the time they had and I fault them for that. but maybe that's on me for hoping that a game with its narrative led by weekes and epler would have actually been good in the first place.

[ell-vellan]

A bunch of my random, non-story initial opinions of Veilguard, with the knowledge that I do and will love this game no matter what, because I need somewhere to put them all:

I kind of hate the color customization system?? I cannot figure out the brightness and saturation levels to make the colors I want. Am I just dumb?? What am I doing wrong here that all the blonde options look green

I do love the stylized look of the game, it's different from DAI but it has a unique flavor and the colors are very lush (for once in a DA game lol)

So far, rogue has been more fun for me than mage. Haven't tried warrior yet.

i wish we could have customized Inky's arm/prosthetic even a little

It's so cool that we get body tattoos and scars and we can customized which ones go where. Would have loved to be able to mix and match but I know we can't have everything (sigh).

It's pretty apparent as someone who has background with the games, but it would've been cool to have the tattoos labelled "Dalish," "Dwarven," "Lord of Fortune," "Crows," etc for story reasons (even though I'm sure it only matters to the small percent of us who are into the fanfic side of things lol)

Elven ears are huge again and we can't change that. lol it's whatever i guess

The thing about customizing heads based on 3 different heads is...hmm. It's difficult to get the hang of, but I'm glad that you can customize it so much? Still, it's been hard for me to figure out how to make that look good.

they let us check our character in different lighting and with different armor!! great idea

terrible idea: only 3 previous worldbuilding choices. I got spoiled to this so I was prepared. but what the heck was the point of the Keep? why did we waste our time with all of that if none of it was carrying over? Way to flush the previous 15 years of story down the drain. Who's the leader of Orlais and Ferelden? Who's Divine? Who got left in the Fade? Guess it doesn't matter at all! I'm okay that we don't know where our Hero of Ferelden is, it's been long enough in game that their part is done, but Hawke? boo.

At first I was so excited about the "random" name generator! But it's literally just like 15 pre-made names not sorted by race naming conventions that you cycle through. Could've been cooler. oh well I know most of their demographic just wants to kill things I guess

The elves look like dwarves to me for some reason? like they're stockier now, not lithe like DAI. Just takes some getting used to.

While I kind of miss the open world a tiny bit, just for the sake of feeling like we're truly exploring and less "point A to point B," it's also nice not to feel like i'm wasting hours of my time just walking through open nothingness and getting a million meaningless fetch quests

The voices are all so good

Rook's moves are cool, they're fun to play

Speaking of, why do we walk so slowly?! I'm sprinting 100 percent of the time.

Miss the search function for items, even the highlight/glimmer is faint enough with the lighting of the maps I missed a bunch of stuff the first ten minutes

I wish we had a teensy bit more unique dialogues/reactions based on our background/race, so far it's been quite a small amount

I'm undecided on the whole...armor system thing

the maps are gorgeous

I love how many settings we can customize, it's great. I don't care about combat and I can make that part so much less annoying and save myself a bunch of time spamming attacks to get back to the story, which is what I care about, lol

Solas is so hot like this. wow

[utilitycaster]

I HAVE VEILGUARDED. everything below the cut for spoiler reasons. I will also say to the anon I shut down earlier (again, me not you!) that I do intend to do a second run because I had a marvelous time, I would really love to do the Dock Town quests and explore Neve's other options (and romance her, frankly) and check out some of the other companion options (honestly I'd be open to almost all of them except for Lichdom. sorry I refuse to leave Manfred dead and I'm correct.) and maybe this time I'll actually solve the stupid wisp puzzles and get all the chests and uhhhhh maybe even play on Easy mode instead of Easier Than Easy mode (because lbr my equipment does not matter a ton because. story mode.)

because I am a good girl and did all the quests everyone lived. I also accidentally got the best ending, because Rook in this run is a romantic and optimistic person. This is funny to me because I am god's greatest hater and so I am ROLEPLAYING a character who is like yeah inquisitor go be with your boyfriend who looks like a stupid egg. I did have the Diet Essence Of Mythal but I've been informed the secret even better ending only hits if you know other past characters, which I don't, so whomst cares!

Takes on characters from previous games in brief. Obviously Harding is great. Solas gets his happy ending and that is FINE I guess. Generic Default Inquisitor Lavellan is like. again Rook is like "do what makes you happy but I am like DUMP HIM. which means that while Morrigan is very "I say things in a portentous voice that are extremely obvious" to me, her deep and abiding hater tendencies towards Solas do it for me. Obviously Varric is great as well. Dorian and Mae? Great (unsure if Mae is in previous games but anyway, love her). Not sure who else is a returning character but I think that covers the bulk of it.

This is very out of order but: because no one died other than of course Davrin in the Isle of the Gods, the pay respect for the dead scene is unintentionally really fucking funny to me, a person who has had to go into morgues for professional reasons. Literally like I walk into a morgue where I know zero people. I walk out. I pass Teia and Viago flirting aggressively as an archdemon ravages Minrathous. I continue.

The final conversations are really good; blighted Neve is of course horrifying but she gets better and her nailpolish, crucially, is not chipped. This is HILARIOUS to me. The final romance line with Bellara is lovely. The ending conversations are all really good but Taash's and Emmrich's were my favorite outside of Bellara's. My girlfriend and I are going to hang out with griffons and she's going to write so much fanfiction about us and it will be unhinged.

Hilarious and sexy of me to wear the appearance of the shadow dragons armor I got literally in like. Shadows of Minrathous or something. the entire fucking time. You can see it in the screenshots and I assure you it's only for the vibes (deep V neck and sick chest tats), I am actually in +8 Warden Champion full plate armor and wearing some wild-ass helm (I did not at any point hide the appearance of my shield. even when I was using the gaudiest gold one that looks like a shell from the lords of fortune. I eventually got a very sick-ass Mourn Watch shield). But it does feel really funny to like, pick Treviso, send Neve to the shadow realm, and wear this armor the full time. I literally didn't see Tarquin for like 2.5 acts.

Elger'nan's first form is weak to necrotic damage. I took Taash and Lucanis. I am fully statted out as a reaper. I have an AOE that does over a thousand necrotic damage. genuinely it was a comedy, I triggered the cut scene where Neve goes to the throne and wrests control so Solas can kill the archdemon almost immediately. Second battle was harder but also level 50 story mode so it was FINE.

I do think a Trick Solas ending would be fun; fighting him seems like it would just kind of suck but like. It's funny I actually really did feel grateful after Blood of Arlathan and then after he stuck me in the mind prison I was like FUCK THIS GUY FOR REAL even after he helped us through in the endgame and killed the archdemon.

Lords of Fortune continue to be hilarious to me. There's a codex that's very BY OUR POWERS COMBINED right before the final assault on Minrathous that I described thusly:

Then in the final scene before the narration the Lords are pulling people out of the wreckage. Imagine you're in a world-ending fight during an eclipse with wild-ass mood lighting and you are trapped under rubble as a horrifying blight tentacle monster rages above and then it all stops and THEN someone in a gold bikini helps you up.

In all seriousness the fact that the Mourn Watch and Lords of Fortune don't come up in the final narration does have me like. yeah whoever wrote their faction quests should have worked harder. I know the mourn watch is largely unscathed because there's no point blighting the undead but like, idk, I feel there could have been more venatori work there that tied into Zara's whole deal, and the Antaam or Wardens ties to Rivain could have been more thoroughly explored. Taash and Emmrich's companion questlines are fantastic but even playing Mourn Watch and loving the build and the vibe, I was like hmmmm this is underserved.

Second hater moment: loved the song over the credits but it felt jarring as hell to have a modern sound here. stick to the hans zimmer. this reminds me, I should listen to the soundtrack because as my Midst Mutuals can attest I am literally the worst at noticing themes. I know Harding's and Emmrich's because I really like them and like, I vaguely recall Lucanis's because it's got accordion elements but otherwise I'm like uhhhhh if it's not the main theme or the Solas theme I'm confused.

I also realized that hilariously, if you like Neve or Lucanis but are ok with romancing someone else (and I very much am) it's actually kind of great to fuck over their city because then you feel justified in taking them out on every single mission to try to up your bond level.

Finished with Lucanis, Harding, and Bellara fully level 10 and everyone else level 9 (including Davrin, RIP); I do wonder how you can get everyone to 10. I might have assigned some quests badly but also like, 9 ain't bad.

anyway feel free to ask questions; this was great and I'm so happy I did it.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Playthrough Planning

Look, I am exceptionally weird about some things, and currently my "being weird about things" falls into the Veilguard space because it's about the only space I have for anything at the moment that isn't "work", because it's been like six weeks of overtime and the spoons are gone. Though tomorrow I do have to christen my new casserole dish with creamy lemon chicken and asparagus pasta.

Anyway, while picking your race is a nice thing, especially when there's any kind of reactivity to it, what I'm really loving is being able to choose faction. Mostly because ... well, Inquisition. They forgot that picking an origin in Dragon Age wasn't so much about picking just a race to play, but a big chunk of your character background. All three races in Origins had at least two choices of origin; elves got three. (Dwarves had Noble and Commoner, humans had Noble or Mage, elves had City, Dalish, or Mage.) But in Inquisition, your background was 100% locked to your race ... and then frankly barely (if ever) mentioned again. You picked human? You're a noble. You picked elf? You're Dalish. You pick qunari? Well ... grey area because if you did have a qunari that wasn't vashoth, it's highly unlikely that they'd see becoming the Herald of Andraste as "following a demand of the Qun", given how Bull's companion quest went down. Kind of the same with dwarf, but only because you probably don't need more than one Varric anyway, I guess? Anyway, point is that in Origins you could pick where you came from; Inquisition had it foisted on you as a part of your race.

Now, there are a few things about character creation that I wish Veilguard had done better (for instance, getting a little tired of starting in medias res; I would have loved to have a prologue like we had in Origins and actually being able to do the thing that Varric recruited Rook for in the first place), but being able to pick your faction separate from your race was one thing I think they did right. Now, some are apparently more reactive than others throughout the game, but on the whole, it was nice to be able to pick exactly what you wanted to do and didn't race-restrict any of them. I intend to make use of that.

The issue becomes ... you all know how I have my whole bunch of names and general personality types that generally come up when I play CRPGs like this. There's the Mollys, and the closely related Mychaes. There's the Jessies. There's the Astrids. There's the recently added Jalliras, Srinas, and Addies. Hell, there could conceivably be Alisaies. The problem is ... what faction do I put them in?

Well, Srina's easy. Srina's an assassin. Thus, Srina's a Crow. Mychae's probably a Shadow Dragon. Astrid - Shadow Dragon or maybe Veil Jumper. Alisaie ... honestly, possibly Lords of Fortune. I kind of want to put Jallira in the Mourn Watch but her immediate deal is "member of a traditionally neutral order fighting the forces of darkness" so she's probably likely to be a Grey Warden. Which is also where Addie would go, so both my redheads have a home there. And Jessie ... either Wardens or Lords of Fortune. Which means I am missing a Mourn Watch. I'm going to have to dig deep into the old grab-bag of WoD characters for that one. I guess I could go with my old vampire, Solita Giovanni, but that was my one particularly unpleasant character and she does not fit in well with the "saving the world" vibe. I guess Nina Gordon - my old Dreamspeaker, who was by and large a speaker to the dead.

I admit to at least part of this being that I want to make my various characters as well as I can in the character creator and then see them in action. And also exploring the various romances. Like, Jallira'd go for Davrin because Jallira's first two incarnations had her demonstrating a preference for military men and Davrin's as close as we're gonna get. Srina ... thinking about it, she'd probably go for Harding, because as much as she will never admit it, she likes her cheerful redheads. Alisaie ... Taash. Mychae - Bellara, because she enjoys the excitable adventrous ones. I kind of want to have Astrid go for Emmrich because I just one time when seeing a relationship with the male mage goes her way. That leaves Neve. Jessie might get along well with Neve. We'll see.

That said, I need to get through the Lucanis-romancing Veil Jumper Molly!Rook playthrough first. I'mma see if I have some spoons for at least some of it. That would be nice.

[ohlawsons]

rook questions from here, answered for nasrin! minimal spoilers, i tried to keep anything game-specific as vague as possible

1: Where in the Thedas is your Rook from? rivain! I'm still working out the exact timeline, but the thought for now is that they end up at the dairsmuid circle when they're 8 or 9, and barely escape at 13 when it's annulled. they travel with a small group of fellow mages for a couple of years before deciding to shelter with the inquisition. they hear isabela is working for the inquisitor, go to ask her for help getting south, and nasrin decides the lords of fortune are better than the inquisition and sticks around

2: What is your character's alignment? probably straddling the line between neutral good and chaotic good. at their core, they really want to be able to help people and leave the world a better place, but also rules are for nerds

3: Race and subclass? human mage!

4: If your Rook was a companion, where would they be found? it feels like cheating to say in rivain with the lords of fortune, but i'm not sure where else they'd be tbh

5: What emotion did they usually pick? charming/"purple"

6: What companion are you platonically close with? everyone but neve tbh. (nothing against neve, they just didn't rly "click") bellara and emmrich are the closest though! nasrin loves bellara's energy, and no spoilers but her personal quest hits them pretty hard. for emmrich, it starts off with them just learning magic from him, but he ends up being someone who they really trust and connect with. also varric is the closest thing they've ever had to a father figure 🙃

7: Romantically close with? lucanis! it starts as very shallow (they are the Horniest ace and he just seems fun to them) and also like. not "i can fix him" but "i desperately need whatever it is he's got going on" and it ends up So Soft

8: Who are they suspicious of? no one, unfortunately. they even get over their distrust of solas very quickly.

9: Does your Rook get along with their chosen Faction? they do! i especially love the couple of lines (from taash i think, maybe from isabela?) about the lords don't fuck over the little people, and i think that's something really important to nasrin.

10: Are they proficient in playing any instruments? not at all. i've struggled to figure out hobbies for them, but i don't think they have an artistic bone in their body. they're always moving or fidgeting, so i think they'd lean more towards physical pastimes like hiking or swimming

11: Weapon of choice? a staff! as much as i would love to let them primarily use the knife/orb combo (which is so good and so fun, thank you bioware) i unfortunately have an idea for a spellblade mage that i'm excited about so nasrin gets a staff

12: What is their orientation? bi/ace

13: What are their thoughts on killing? Is it a necessary evil or do they enjoy it? somewhere in between? especially once they join up with the lords, it's just sorta part of the job? they certainly don't enjoy it, but they don't really go out of their way to avoid it, either. there is, however, a moral difference to them in "killing as part of a job" and "being paid specifically to kill someone"

14: What hobbies does your Rook have? (see #10)

15: What NPCs do they like? Which one's do they dislike? they get along well with isabela, irelin and strife, and most of the crows. i wouldn't necessarily say they dislike the shadow dragons, but they def get a bit awkward around them given everything that happened in minrathous

16: Do they have a favorite creature in the Thedas? idk about before but after meeting assan, it's griffons

17: Do they enjoy life as an adventurer? they do! it's a bit more stressful without being fully involved with the lords, but they love the freedom

18: What would your Rook be doing if they weren't recruited by Varric? they'd probably still be with the lords. i don't see them getting involved with the plot otherwise, tbh

19: How do you think they'll meet their end? idk but it'll probably be loud and showy

20: Would they side with Solas or fight him? well. no spoilers but. i'll just say they trust him until they don't

21: What is your Rook's favorite ability? there's not one specifically, but they enjoy a lot of the necromancy/death caller magic they learn from emmrich

22: What languages is your character fluent in? common and rivaini, i guess? i think they also know bits and pieces of antivan and tevene

23: What do they do after the absolute crisis? assuming this is meant to be after the main plot... i haven't decided. i definitely want to wait and see if there's any dlc/epilogue stuff in the works before i make any hard decisions. i do know that immediately after the battle, they go back to the lighthouse and just sleep for like. 18 hours straight.

24: Does your character believe in the afterlife? yes? it's sort of an established thing in thedas, but i think between rivaini beliefs surrounding spirits and everything they learn from emmrich, they have some re-evaluating of their own beliefs to do (eventually)

25: What specialization best represents your Rook? death caller! i was originally going to go evoker with them, but the combination of it being tied to the shadow dragons (awkward) and the actual skills available, i went with death caller which led to the headcanon about them learning from emmrich (tbh i really miss having to earn the specializations like in dao and dai)

26: What animal best represents your Rook? theyre like those spiders that make their webs exactly at face-height in the spring. thank you for your service but what the fuck

27: What was their life like before the events of Veilguard? just comfortable enough. they aren't big on the sea, so a lot of the jobs they took with the lords of fortune were relatively close to home, so they kept busy but not too busy

28: Is your character the de facto leader of the party? Or do they consider someone else to be the leader? they are, they're baffled by it, and they would love to not be the leader but everyone else keeps looking to them for some reason

29: If you could choose a different faction for your Rook, which one would they have joined and why? i actually almost picked shadow dragon for them, but i was worried they'd end up too similar to neve (i went in almost completely blind wrt the companions). luckily they're plenty different, and i think the shadow dragons would probably still be the only other decent fit for them. the mourn watch could be a fun au though

30: What's your favorite thing about your Rook? there is a very specific point in the plot where they go from "idk man i just work here" to extremely driven wrt saving thedas. it's always fun to be able to pinpoint when their motivations change completely

[october-faye]

I have thoughts on Dragon Age: the Veilguard

I held off on playing it until Christmas day for sentimental reasons. I played DAI on Christmas day in 2014, and I liked the idea of waiting ten years to the day.

First, my Rook.

This is Ivy. She's a rogue and part of the Lords of Fortune.

I'm not sure who, if anyone, she's going to romance. There's some chemistry between her and Davrin, but I still haven't recruited Emmerich or Taash yet.

I'm enjoying this game far more than I expected to, which is a relief. So I'll begin with the things I like so far. 😌

The combat's quite fun once you get used to it. It's a little messy and frantic at first, but slicing through multiple enemies and executing finishers while barely taking damage is quite a rush. Plus the rogue has an ability that lets you steal health from enemies, which is a literal lifesaver.

The environments are beautiful.

The various locations are fun to explore, and they have great verticality. No one avoids a quest marker like I do. I'm always heading in the opposite direction to hunt for loot and side quests, which are plentiful.

The side content has more variety than Inquisition. I've not been hit with a glut of fetch quests and collect-a-thons.

The hair options in the character creator don't suck!🪮

I wasn't sure about the companions at first, but they've been growing on me over time, especially once I got started on their personal quests.

I'm enjoying watching the Lighthouse become more habitable and cosy as the main story progresses.

I like they've bought gifts back, though the companions' reactions to receiving them are a bit meh.

The armour and weapons are attractive. Gone are the ugly mage hats and basic armour you have to suffer through during the first act of any dragon age before you can find something decent to wear.

Cats. Cats. Cats. And my companions standing patiently while my Rook pets every 👏 single 👏 cat 👏 (and dog) in Treviso and Minrathous.

Okay, things I don't like. 😐

The dialogue early in the game was atrocious. Quips are great in moderation, but when it's everyone's default way of speaking, it's hard to sit through. It was a weak start to what eventually becomes a pretty solid game.

The early companions have a PhD in pointing out the obvious. One character will say something and someone else will say the exact same thing, only worded differently. The writing too often reminds me of those Lego video games for kids that take an adult franchise and water it down so it's easy for ten-year-olds to digest.

I like Rook more than I liked Rider in ME Andromeda, but I'm having a hard time imagining how I'm going to make my next Rook feel distinct to this one. All the dialogue options are strangely milquetoast no matter the tone you choose. I don't feel like I'm crafting an actual personality for the character.

Speaking of tone, those tonal indicators for dialogue are bullshit. On one occasion, I'm pretty sure the dialogue options for the sarcastic and positive responses were the wrong way around???

Sometimes there are no tonal indicators at all. I tried to reassure Lucanis that I'd 'keep an eye on him' in a friendly way (i.e., to make sure he's not suffering too much due to his demonic possession). Instead, Rook became hostile and phrased it as if she was going to keep an eye on him because she didn't trust him. I know indicating tone and context in dialogue trees is difficult, but I think this game has the worst case of responses not matching their description that I've ever seen.

Rook's actual dialogue is often blander than the description. WTF? 😐

Rook also has this annoying habit of propping both fists on their hips in a Superman pose when they're about to say something obnoxious clever. I'm tempted to start a drinking game.

Combat feels somewhat samey no matter the kinds of enemies you're fighting.

The soundtrack is mid. I've been playing for 17.5 hours so far and none of the tracks stick out to me.

The game doesn't establish why Rook is the protagonist. Every previous DA game has done a good job of explaining 'why you?' Besides some expository dialogue with Varric after Rook has already been accepted as leader by everyone else, the game doesn't explain why Rook is in charge. Rook has an occasional psychic link to Solas, but that's not enough to justify why they call any shots over someone like Harding, for example, who was in the Inquisition, was one of Leliana's former agents, and has been hunting Solas for years. This YouTube video does a good job dissecting why this is an issue.

I would've loved a DA: Origins-style opening where you get a prologue that introduces your character and their faction, shows you meeting Varric, and explains why he hired you specifically.

It would also have been nice to get to know Minrathous before demons start raining from the sky. The culture, the architecture, the social hierarchies... it's all so different compared to Ferelden and Orlais. We needed a more purposeful introduction.

I understand some of this may be down to the game's troubled development, but that doesn't explain every issue.

Despite this long list, I woke up on Boxing Day excited to keep playing. So I'm counting this as a win for now.

[vaultedvagabond]

Dragon Age Veilguard Review

I just finished Veilguard so I am gonna put my thoughts below a readmore, but my general review is the game felt amazing and was a ton of fun while missing a lot of marks I wish it hit. Full spoiler review below.

OK so first off this game /felt/ amazing. I was a rogue and lining up headshots in slow motion for critical hit kills felt so good constantly. Finding a bit of calm in combat to drop enemies in a single hit felt exactly like a rogue should feel. The entire combat system is amazing and I would kill to see Origins and 2 remade in this style.

I think a lot of the conflict and politics that make dragon age dragon age are completely gone. It makes the world feel a lot shallower and I missed it. It isn't just the struggle mages face, this game is the one that feels most removed from ideas of class. I think however poorly handled the questions and struggles that city elves, the dalish, mages, the poor everyone faces are a huge part of Thedas. Companions refer offhand to elven oppression but we never really see it.

On a similar note everyone gets along so well. I hardened Lucanis who has a Demon of Spite inside him and he was super understanding towards me. Him and Davrin have beef for a little bit but it is resolved very quickly. Companions arguing is such a huge part of DA and I really felt its absence. I think it relates to the stuff above. No one has opinions or is affected by the big societal problems Thedas has so they just instantly get along well. Like shouldn't the Lords of Fortune and Veil Jumpers have disagreements? Both raid ancient ruins and one stores and guards the dangerous artifacts while the other sells them. They even start out going "yeah we don't sell any cultural artifacts at all". I think the game would be better if we got to see these differences and if some companions had flaws.

I also think that despite the game being about the 6 factions they felt so bland to me. The Crows have the way they abuse kids to turn them into assassins erased, and they also don't really assassinate anyone. They act as a group of neighborhood watch. Similarly, the Shadow Dragons care mostly about the venatori and don't really focus on normal non cultish Tevinter brutality. I think both factions end up being defined as resisting the enemy factions and lose the interesting stuff about them. I wish that Lucanis's personal quest line involved assassination missions, maybe even make us decide between letting Lucanis assassinate someone important to the story or lose the crows as an ally. Not being able to have big text trees with faction NPCs also robbed them of a lot of depth.

My last major criticism is that a huge chunk of the game has no choices whatsoever. Choosing which city to defend felt great and was so cool and I was so ready to see what other things would happen like that. But then until the final mission there were no choices, and in the final mission my maxed faction support and all companion quests done meant there was really no risk. I much prefer the mass efect 2 style of choice where you choose between multiple people who could do it but some are destined to die vs "well if I choose a mage for the mage task they live but if I chose a warrior they die". I wish we got to shape the world more, and make more hard choices. I think that the parallel to Solas and the Regret Prison would hit a lot harder if we constantly were making hard choices and pissing people off at us.

OK now back to the positive. I can complain all I want about how few punches the game decided to take but the things they fully commit to feel great. When the game is on a roll and the writing is good its so good. I loved the companions, every one of them is so interesting and fleshed out. I loved Taash's quest specifically (I do wish the game had binary trans rep though). I really appreciated the different options for each crew member and while I think the big tangible choices are lacking the emotional ones we were offered were so interesting.

Lastly I really appreciated the fact that every side quest felt real. They all tied into the main story and that was really neat. The time spent doing side quests really felt important and I think the games strongest writing is in them.

In conclusion the game has a lot of holes in it, which is only made more frustrating by how good the game is when it is good. I can tell that the flaws were caused by studio intervention, and that the devs wanted to fix these issues too. But ultimately Dragon Age is a series /about/ games that have glaring flaws while also being so captivatingly good you cant forget them. I wont be forgetting this game, I am excited to replay it.

[clowndensation]

okay my friend is in a meeting so i can't go play dav now that I'm home. time to review the game 👍

this is literally a long ramble compilation of my thoughts. also i can't effectively separate the good from the bad, so it's a mishmash. sorry.

okay. so first of all, very very fun combat. the most fun i've had playing a bioware game so far, and it's not close. everything was pretty consistently difficult up until around level 35, and then fun but fairly easy through level 40. levels 40-50 that i started buying skills that impeded my build just so i could struggle a bit more. boss fights take a dive once we got into late game, but by that point i was invested enough in the story that i just wanted to get through them anyways to keep going forward, so not a noticeable drawback for me. shield toss 9,999 damage ricocheted to 10 enemies my beloved.

really liked the majority of the companions! neve is, i think, the standout character among all of them, with davrin, emmrich, and harding also coming in extremely solid.

bellara i like a lot as a character, and she has a ton of great character interactions and dialogue, but her personal quest was... not great? there were reveals that felt like they SHOULD be a really huge deal for her, but the follow-up conversations didn't capitalize on the emotional stakes in any meaningful way. might make a separate post about this because it really bothered me.

lucanis didn't work for me at all. felt like he had a lot less content than everyone else, but it could have just felt that way because all of his quests were centered around a tedious and obvious plotline, and absolutely refused to engage with the spite stuff until the very end. it truly felt like the spite/lucanis resolution was the only idea they had, and the rest of his family stuff was just buffer to tide you over until then. also the implementation of the crows bothered me, which did not help his case at all.

taash is transgender and likes dragons. if you're not sure what being transgender means, don't worry. they will explain it to you.

the overall story i liked? question mark? a lot of it was confirming longstanding fan theories, re: the titans, the dwarves, and elves and spirits. putting the treviso/minrathous thing at the beginning of the game worked well to establish stakes. half of the factions didn't land for me (veil jumpers, crows, lords of fortune), but the ones that did i liked. as a solas fan, i liked getting to explore more stuff with him, as well his resolution in the game, but i get the feeling it wouldn't work as well for people who don't care about him? i'm doing a hard anti-solas run next, so i'll scope out how that plays.

factions i didn't like: crows literally don't work at all. the game's absolute refusal to engage with the fact that one of our factions contains killers for higher is actually laughable. the resolution of the treviso quests being an orphan who plans to build his own house to take in orphans and train them to be assassins as some sort of uplifting idea is. again. laughable. you can not create a family who loves their job of murdering people for money and just not engage with what that means, and pretend everyone would react to them warmly, or even neutrally. there's literally a codex between neve and lucanis where lucanis confirms he was responsible for murdering the children and grandchildren of a noble family, which is played off tonally as funny. hello.

veil jumpers ARE interesting, and i like what they have going on, but the game's refusal to admit that elves might be torn over whether to support their gods or not kneecaps them pretty hard. strife and irelin also felt severely underdeveloped as faction contacts, which sucks, because i want to know more about them. (they aren't the only underdeveloped faction contacts, the lords and the mourn watch are also lacking. strife and irelin just bother me the most because it really felt like they should have had a relevance equivalent to antoine and revka, and they didn't at all).

the lords are treasure hunters. and also isabela is there. there is quite literally nothing more to them. whatever.

and finally, they did a huge disservice to all the villains outside of the gods. the game's unwillingness to add any sympathetic faces to the opposing force rendered everything to kindergarten level "good guys vs bad guys" black and white morality that really hurts the game:

the antaam are a faceless, nameless horde for us to kill. you could not get more "foreign savages" with it if you tried. they quite literally never should have made this a thing in inquisition and onward. qunari who follow the qun are interesting enough on their own, putting in questlines where you actually have to talk with a qunari that isn't taash or their mom would have done wonders with this.

similarly, the venatori are just evil guys to kill. we don't get to see any interesting venatori plots in the way we got to see, say, meredith, cullen, and the rest of the templars actively ruining the lives of the people around them in da2. i want to kill the venatori because they're venatori, but there simply wasn't any personal investment there.

anyways. tldr:

a middling game with characters i want to chew on. actually feels like it has reallly solid bones under there, but there was obviously something nightmarish happening behind the scenes in development that kept it from taking it's good moments and making them great, and which made it's lacking moments dissatisfying at best and offensive at worst. still about fifteen times better written than inquisition was, however, and i'm gonna be replaying it for the next year straight probably. classic bioware maneuver!

[leemarkies]

my dragon age the veilguard thoughts after finishing the game (obviously spoilers below so read at your own peril)

companions

harding: she was an amazing companion, and imo the best companion to be introduced to rook first. she's a great tie back to inq for old fans and her va is amazing. i'm really happy they explored more dwarven lore with her personal quests. my only complaint is that i wish she was given her own "inquisitor faction" like the rest of the companions have. it wouldn't be a stretch to think that the inquisition wouldn't have SOME pull or influence in the north, considering how big it once was. they could have made a small inquisition faction camp in the crossroads since the inquisitor is still using morrigan's eluvian. idk it seems like a missed opportunity

neve: unfortunately since this is my first playthru i made some Mistakes (didn't finish her personal quests before recruiting davrin and then chose to help antiva) so she was veryyyy cold to my rook. i don't feel like i got to explore her character as much as i wanted to but ig that will happen during my next playthru lol. i think her story and role is super super interesting, we don't get to meet a lot of middle class vints ESPECIALLY middle class MAGE vints. i wish we could have delved more into tevinter society but maybe i just missed out on it. i also thought some of her lines were a little .. off. idk if it was the writing or the va but it was noticeable at times

bellara: ok i went into the game thinking i was not going to like her very much and boy was i wrong! LOVE HER. she might be a tad bit cringey (really only at the beginning) but i love having an elven follower who is proudly an elf (cough cough sera) i see a lot of myself in her (worried you're not enough, looking out for younger brother, etc.) and i loved how she was besties with emmrich. she wrongfully gets the "bubbly pixar" trope from dudebros which couldn't be further from the truth.

lucanis: definitely a favorite of mine and others for a reason! his va is amazing. seeing a possession of a non-mage was really really interesting. i wish we could have seen spite playing on lucanis's own emotions. like for instance anders already was upset about mage discrimination and the circles, justice just pushed the emotions FURTHER and out of control. is lucanis, on his own, spiteful? is what we see of spite partially based on lucanis's own thoughts? also the demon didn't seem like a "spite" demon, but more of a vengeance? or rage? demon. like i never saw lucanis spiteful? or spite being spiteful? just angry. also why are we retconning the crows. according to my trusted beloved zevran they are The Worst.

davrin: sooooo relieved on how bioware handled it's first (which is insane) black male main cast character. i loved seeing his relationship with the wardens and with asaan. he's multi-dimensional and honestly a pleasure to talk to. he's a good guy. confident. slightly sefl-righteous but that's ok!

emmrich: full disclosure i am feral for this man. i love how genuine he is. he is genuinely kind, genuinely compassionate, genuinely forgiving, genuinely friendly. there is no ulterior motive to his niceties and manners, he's just Good. he always says pls and thank you. he's the first person to ask if someone's ok when they're hurt. i love how they made him a bit posh and uppity as far as personal comfort but he doesn't treat the others with disdain for being different. he loves learning about the other factions and other cultures. my rook was a lord of fortune, decidedly NOT an academic, but he expressed interest in her work, even though their lives were so very different from each other. i also think the whole take of "necromancer who is afraid of dying" was neat.

taash: quickly became one of my most favorites of the group. loved their arc, loved seeing a character that has two identities: quinari and rivaini. loved seeing how they embraced both sides in their own way. also loved seeing a companion with their parent and how that relationship is. i think a lot of people can relate to taash and their mom's relationship, it felt very authentic. i think people who find them annoying need to see them as they are: a teenager or young adult. they are 19-22 MAX so yeah they gonna be a bit moody and that's ok

overall: wished we could yap with our companions more like dai/dao, i think that would have assuaged my complaints of wanting to know MORE. also loved how they very clearly have relationships/friendships with each other outside of rook's influence. i think the biggest thing missing is pushback and flaws. i wished these characters had bigger flaws that rook could either help them get over, ignore, or push them further in the wrong direction. it felt like regardless of the choices you make with each companion, everything ends up good in the end. i also felt like we had too many pointless cutscenes and also simultaneously not enough if that makes any sense. also, wtf was the gift thing, completely pointless.

cameos

the keep: i understand that bioware wrote themselves into a corner and that not every little decision you made in the past three games is 1) relevant or 2) worth bringing back but i really was disappointed with the limited past decisions. it made me feel like my past choices that were HUGE (who rules orlais?? who's divine?? hello????) didn't matter in the end, which sucks bc this is a role playing game? if my choices end up not mattering what's the point? who's to say that my choices in this game will matter? and i really hated how bioware devs were like "we limited the choices bc we didn't want the game to be riddled with cameos and one-liners" but actually bc they did this they MADE their cameos so bare and not worthwhile. dav morrigan may or may not have a son. varric mentions hawke in passing ONCE. huge implications to fan favorite and long lasting cast characters have been completely erased, it was like i was talking to a 3d print clone of varric and morrigan. yes they looked like them but what made them THEM was kinda gone. also don't even get me started on how all the choices literally revolved around solas and solas only. the devs also promised that they weren't going to retcon anyone's choices, but they did! harding mentions cole and blackwall and dorian acts like him and the inquisitor are friends, when people could have worldstates where none of these people were recruited into the inquisition!

morrigan: actually a cool use of her cameo, but it was jarring seeing her so readily accept her mother's role

varric: i will never forgive bioware for what they did

dorian: love him. wish we got more of him. noticing a theme here in my review.

inquisitor: unless your inquisitor romanced solas, it's kinda pointless having them here. the convos between rook and the inquisitor were like 2 min max. she shows up at the end to try to convince solas to stop being stupid, but really wasn't the catalyst to making him stop, mythal was.

combat:

i played on the easiest difficulty and turned off dying. <3 so i don't have much to say lol

environment:

i really prefer the more streamlined environments in da games so this was! awesome! loved how it wasn't open world HOWEVER you are rewarded for exploring more than what is strictly required for a quest. da thrives on small, detailed environments so the places we visited were amazing! really loved tevinter and antiva specifically. i wish the camera on our character was a little different bc i felt like i (the player) was staring down at the ground instead of looking up at the scenery. also, finding exactly where a quest objectives was pointing us to was sometimes difficult.

music:

meh. not horrible but not memorable at all. inq's music was sooooooooooooooo good. like elder scrolls level good and that's hard to compete with bc tes soundtracks are second to none. i just felt a lack of orchestral sound. at times the bg music was almost modern electric. i can't tell u a single time i was moved or touched by the music in this game, which is a shame bc it's hans zimmer. meanwhile i can put on wicked eyes and wicked hearts or in hushed whispers and immediately get goosebumps and imagine my inquisitor going thru those quests

plot:

i think the writing was a little disjointed in the first half of act 1, but after it got much much better. i do find it weird that bioware was obviously trying to make it friendly for new players, but i would never ever recommend starting dragon age with this as your first game (coming from someone who played inquisition first, then da2, then dao lol). there are some HUGE lore implications (which i will get into later) that will not make sense at all to new players, and honestly, might confuse them more. in contrast, inquisition didn't have that many huge lore changing issues so i didn't feel like i was missing out on the surprise by playing it first.

i also think this series in general has a power creep issue. and it's one that also makes no sense. last game you were fighting one self-proclaimed god and had an entire army, spies, stronghold, politicians, scouts, etc. at your disposal. this game you're fighting TWO gods and it's just u and ur besties <3 what's next? THREE gods? and honestly i get it it's tough for bioware to not try to outdo themselves in the next installment otherwise people would get bored. idk just a thought

i was kinda shocked that some MAJOR lore implications happened in side quests lol. like we disproved the entire andrastian faith in one cutscene of a side mission. and boom. everyone moves on. CRAZY. i liked seeing bellara and davrin talk about how all of this new information could make elves lives worse bc people will blame them for everything that's happening, but i wish there was more. let me see someone freak out over the golden city not being real. in inq we saw a LOT of character's struggle with their faith bc of corypheus's claims. now we have two confirmed elven "gods" wreaking havoc and everyone is like "lol this sucks. anyways" also there is a distinct lack of andrastian faith shown in this game. obviously comparing it to inq is maybe not the best example but even in da2 and dao there were tons of quests and npcs centered around the andrastian faith and i felt like that was missing here

not that i condone fantasy racism (or racism in general lol) but there wasn't enough of it. not one npc said anything about rook being an elf. apparently other players who played as a qunari rook said the same thing. meanwhile lavellan was being discriminated against left and right in inq. inq had some elves in higher statuses but they alwayyyyys remarked how they were outliers. for example, coulette from jaws of hakkon was an ASSISTANT to the professor and still said it was very rare for an elf to have her job and that she has to prove herself. but in dav there are elves everywhere in lots of different leadership roles. and the north is supposed to be WORSE for elves bc of tevinter slavery so??? and the qunari have invaded antiva and no one gives a qunari rook shit for it? it was just very jarring, felt like i was playing bg3

it was also weird seeing how every faction was just super happy to help! and got along with everyone! no! show me how the wardens are critical of the crows being assassins! show me the lord of foturnes being creeped out by the mourn watchers!

i also think the replayability isn't as strong as dai or dao. there's only like 2 really big decisions, one is at the very end. everything else doesn't really change the outcome of the game, unless you purposefully chose to not do the side/companion quests to get the "bad ending"

also, no zevran. which pissed me off.

tdlr: dragon age excels in making compelling, in-depth characters. i feel like the highs were high in this game, and the lows were low. i blame the crazy development process that went on behind the scenes for some of the issues. overall: 6/10. i had fun, i enjoyed it, but tbh it's probably my least fav game. will obviously still do dozens of playthrus.

[code-sumeragi]

As for my thoughts on DA Veilguard

First off it's a solid 7 out of 10 game. And everyone needs to apologize to Inquisition because Inquisition is a good game with flaws and Veilguard is an okay game with this weird bloat to it that's hard to describe but once you play it, you'll understand.

It suffers from too many cooks and too much time in the kitchen. You can also tell it was made by Mass Effect people and not by Dragon Age people and I feel that it makes it a weaker game because of it. Because when I play Dragon Age, I want Dragon Age not Mass Effect.

With that out of the way, all the people bitching about the inclusion and 'dei' shit can stuff it. It was fine. Dragon Age has always been like that and it didn't take away anything. Though there were some dialogue bits that we weird and cringe inducing in that regard; they tended to be the minority so it was whatever. You don't notice it if you aren't looking for it and they only place it sticks out is Taash. And just don't do their quests. Simple.

I feel like some of the lore was fucked up. The crows for one thing. Felt too happy and less one murder cult thing that was implied in Origins.

And it also kinda felt like they just took fan theories and added that into the story. But I genuinely have no idea how far in advance they had plotted any of this out because the threads are there but it feels too much like a coincidence. That or someone from the team was actual sharing what they were planning on doing as meta, which, jerk.

Varric. I actually figured that he was dead from the beginning. From the marketing pretty much. It was suspicious how no one talked to him and he was just in the infirmary the whole time, so I just done knew. Didn't figure for the blood magic though. I know some people are pretty mad about Varric, but I didn't hate it.

Morrigan. I don't like what they did with her. I thought the well of sorrows was multiple elves and not just mythal. Not to mention that she rejected mythal in Inquisition. It makes it weird for her to suddenly have her memories. And be okay with everything. I also hate her top. Keep thinking she has four boobs.

Isabela. Not who I expected to come back. She seems in character for what I remember. Of course, some people's Isabela betrayed them, so I can see how they might not be happy with her.

Kept hoping that we'd seen another warden we once knew. Nathaniel, Sigrun, Oghrun, Blackwall. That was a bummer and a missed opportunity.

Velanna and Merill could have shown up with the Veil jumpers. Shale could have gone to Kal Sharok or shown up near the titan. Zevran could have been with the Crows. Fenris could have been fighting Venatori in Minrathous. Iron Bull could have been with the Lords of Fortune. Sera could have been with the Shadow Dragons.

And I don't mean that they would have to be their physically. Ambiant dialogue or a note would have been cool too. The others got a mention or even appeared. I know they want limited contact so they don't contradict each other, but a single line won't damage that.

Feels like they play favorites a little.

Marketing for the game sucked. Seriously. Following the marketing it seemed like Ghilanan and Elgarnan weren't going to be the only big bads, but they were???? Like, I felt like there was an implication there was going to be a switch like a 1/3 of the way through the game and it never happened and I was like, what is going on and it was just those two the whole time. Which, quite frankly, is on me, I should know better than to listen to marketing. Marketing fucking lies and doesn't market products correctly. Hell, they were showing actual fucking spoilers for pivotal moments through halfway through the game!! What the fuck is wrong with marketing departments???

I usually don't follow marketing, but I guess I was just so excited that I didn't listen to my better judgement and ignore it so I could have a better and clean start.

I don't like how one character /had/ to die for the best ending. And it was a character I wanted to romance on my next playthrough. It wasn't satisfying. It was shocking and somewhat disappointing. That character was one of the only characters I got attached to in the group. The companions are okay for the most part, but I just don't vibe with them as much.

It feels like the work you do for the personal quests don't matter if the character dies anyway.

In some ways I get it. But in other ways, fuck the writers.

For as much dialogue there is in this game, it sure is annoying to get it. I don't know why it annoys me. It just does? I feel like they were trying too hard to mimic the Normandy with the Lighthouse, but the Lighthouse just doesn't have the same vibe as the Normandy. And maybe it's the size of the place too.

The linear-ness of the game is both a positive and a negative. I appreciate Knowing where I need to go, but at the same time, having very little to explore sucks. I enjoy being rewarded for going off the path and finding an optional boss or puzzle that isn't literally right there. I also like the ability to see an enemy levels above you in an area, try to fight it, say fuck no, then leave. There were only a few bosses like that, but no common enemies and I think that was to the games detriment.

Oh and the lack of side quests tied directly to the story and factions was disappointing. Felt like there was very little levity to the game. There were moments with the companions, but in the overall game, it always felt uncomfortably tense. And if the devs/writers were going for that, they certainly got it, but it started to get exhausting at the end.

Combat. At first I really disliked the combat. It was way faster than Inquisition and the spaces you fought in were way too fucking small. I got used to it over time, but I miss being able to access more abilities in the ring menu. Having three skills is just so limiting and while I found a good build, the combat really stresses that you use the detonation system or you're going to have a bad time. Which, isn't great if you're forced to use a system. A good combat system is one you should be able to use without any of the extra's built into it. I should be able to use magic or attacks to kill the majority of enemies without issue and detonation and status' should be a bonus and not an absolutely must for every encounter.

The ending. And by ending I mean that shitty slide show. I know all Bioware games do fucking slide shows but . . . what if they didn't for just one game. I'm begging you Bioware. Have like a clean up scene. A party like in Origins. Any fucking thing.

The epilogue. I like how they left it open. I was wondering about a few things. But also, I'm worried that they may do the same thing they did with Andromeda and cancel the fucking DLC when I REALLY WANT THE FUCKING DLC. I want to know what the hell the gathering storm across the fucking sea is. WHAT THE HELL DID THE ORIGINAL QUNARI RUN FROM. WHY DOES NO ONE GO ACROSS THE SEA. WHO WAS THE VOICE I CONTINOUSLY RAN INTO. WHY DID THEY SHAPE EVENTS THIS WAY??? WHAT IS HAPPENING.

There's probably other things I had criticisms about. I've just got a lot of thoughts in my head right now about this game that I'm still taking the time to process through it all.

Listen. This is still a decent game for all of my bitching. Not worth the $90 for the deluxe edition. But a decent game nonetheless. Probably get it on sale. It had some misses and it had some hits but you'll probably have a good time with it if you don't go in with too high of expectations.

Ugh. I need to catch up on stuff and decompress some more.

Edit: Also, just remembered. I don't like that you're forced into a quest that makes a huge choice after gaining a companion. That's really fucked up. There should be a marker on that quest so you know to do everything before then. I didn't and thought I could just pick up a new friend and missed out on some quests because of it because I wanted to get started with friends. The way you get companions dished out to you in this game is very much like mass effect 2 and it is very annoying.

[ignylinn]

Right, so I was going to write smth about Veilguard after I finished it. But I'm 23 hours in, my eyes are blurry and I need to pause, but I'm still mentally there, so.

Spoilers ahead.

As my friend said, this game should have been titled Guilt-Tripping in the Fade. Unlike other games, I have no clear answer as to why our guys are the ones to lead the fight here. It was clear in Origins. DA2 showed the whole path for Hawke and how he got himself into that situation in the third act. It was pretty obvious in DAI.

Here? It looks like

a) Varric is very caught up in his life narrative, and

b) Literally everyone feels responsible or guilty, and the main drive here is correcting their mistakes (regardless of their responsibility)

c) Well, there is also Solas inhabiting Rook's mind, but that's a nice bonus.

Sometimes it feels weird, like when you have to choose between saving one of the two cities. Like... I'm literally just one person, nothing special. Minrathous is stuffed with really powerful mages, why would I make any difference.

Anyway, this slight weirdness is my only complaint so far.

Now to good things in no particular order.

I'm playing a mage, I really love that they gave mages a second set of weapons. I'm having a blast with melee mage.

Factions are cool! I was choosing between Mourn Watch and Shadow Dragons (chose the second), but all of them are cool. I did not quite get the feeling of Lords of Fortune yet, though. I think I might do a Crow on my second playthrough.

Locations are also fantastic. Also, I like that they you need visit all of them often, cause new quests are added now and then. Treviso is my favorite though. Minrathous is a bit underwhelming, but we shall see.

Companions. I love voice acting here. Almost cried several times, especially with Harding. I do not yet have any favorites. I mean, they are all extremely likable in their unique ways

I think I especially like Davrin's story. Like, there is little sad backstory, he is just a struggling single dad, and I feel like the three of us have a nice queer platonic family by now. Or I am the uncle.

Taash really feels extremely young compared to everyone else, they are just trying to find their way in life and does not yet understand complexities of it (in my playthrough Taash is still thinking on their gender identity, but the wiki uses "they", so). Meanwhile, everyone else is significantly older and already seen all the shit.

Also, initially I thought I would not like Bellara, cause she is annoying in the way that does not vibe with me at all - but no, she also grew on me. I suspect she is in relationship with Neve. I mean, Neve flirts with anything female looking, but they def have something special.

I am romancing Lucanis, cause just... have you seen him? Have you talked to him?

Harding really makes me cry half the time, and I suspect her story will be tragic.

I will see how the others' stories will go, and I'm tired.

Finally, Solas. I played Solavellan once in DAI, just to see how it goes, but he never grew on me. Here, however. Rook's talk with Solas in the Fade? That's just... wow. The tension is palpable, and their relationship is so so so intense. I would definitely read some fanfiction about this.

Oh, oh, and I also like how they solved problem with Orlais and Ferelden - well, there is Inquisition, they are dealing with the issue in the South.

Also, you can pet all the pets. Unfortunately, I could not pet one cat because it was chilling between two other cats, and I could not catch the necessary position to pet this parrticular cat.

This is a very grave bug and needs to be patched ASAP.

Unfortunatel, I play through a cloud service, so for the love of me I have zero idea where the photos from photomode were saved :( just a regular screenshot.

[jerichoes]

okay here goes nothing cause i'm going insane over here:

genuinely can't tell if the writing is good or bad because it keeps oscillating between juicy as hell and mind-numbingly bad. i kept going "i like this -> no i don't -> no i do -> no i don't".

they kind of bombed hard with relationships on this. like, all of them. for a game that was advertised as being all about the companions and your relationship to them - they have relationships with anyone but rook. it sucks absolute ass that we can't talk to them unless they ask for something and somehow, even though the veilguard is a small team that should feel personal, rook feels more like "a boss that's detached from everyone" than inquisitor ever did. i don't know how they managed this, but here we are.

brother DON'T get me started on romances. first off, they were gutted to hell compared to every other dragon age game AND every mass effect game. again, if you're going to talk about how personal the connections with companions will be, do. the damn. connections. with rook. including the romantic ones. don't. half ass. them.

special mention for the aspect of romances that's been driving me up the wall this entire week. lucanis romance... was not thought out well. or maybe they got lost on the fantasy of pairing up npcs. i can't even say it was for the yearners because he brushes rook off constantly. which, you could say "well he's an awkward guy". but he will at the same time casually flirt with neve, he will write about neve in his notes and he will be very worried for neve above all after the city choice. even if rook is a shadowdragon who also lost their home to venatori. not to mention players getting locked out of his romance if they choose to help minrathous - a grave wound he will not get over, unless it's for neve. even for a shadowdragon rook. like..? and the flirting will happen even if the player is actively trying to romance him? idk it's all just kind of bizarre cause he's written in two different ways.

i like the choice variance within the game itself (save for that romance hickup)! i wish we could have more old choices, even if they were just mentioned in the codex (like the south resisting the blight better if you kept the wardens or something). but honeslty i though the three choices we got were okay.

the south is just gone, huh?

this is a petty one, but lords of fortune were an afterthought, to the point where there is no lighthouse theme for them and their area fully opens up waaaay close to endgame. i get it, most people probably played warden, crow or veil jumper but why have the faction at all then? dwarves get a theme and lords don't?

this ties to the previous one and also to not being able to talk with companions outside quest markers - when i got taash and went on a mission with them and bellara, the first few banters were all about bellara asking about lords of fortune. this is hours into the game and hours after getting bellara. and she asks taash and not rook. okay.

kind of have no notes on the elven or dwarven lore. ok maybe some notes on the titans (mountain that looks like a guy? subtle) but eh. i mostly enojoyed all of that.

i get that rook is more pre-determined that other protags. but i genuinely couldn't tell if emotions for responses did anything. i expected them to work like da2, and maybe they did, but it felt like emotion variation wasn't there. idk. maybe i'll notice a difference on replay?

i understand the intent of the davrin/harding choice. but it still feels really bad.

solas trying to outscheme rook twenty times in a row becomes very funny when you constantly pick the "i don't trust him" options. like i see you, villain.

the executors are just evil, huh?

crows got stripped of their more unseemly elements, tevinter got stripped of its more unseemly elements. times move on, sure, but based on the codex, they haven't changed much in tevinter at least in the last ten years. it's all a bit toothless now.

some of the writing felt too modern and also too cyclical. we're doing cycles, i get it, but can we stop saying "one step at a time" and "i'm so sorry" every five minutes please.

i've seen so many people say taash was annoying and i couldn't see any of that in the game. at least when people called sera annoying, i could understand why.

dorian is an archon now, huh?

i'm tired and i need to sleep on this for a week.

it's 3 am and i have to get up early af tomorrow but i just GOTTA write about this game RIGHT NOW

[nijohirjesyho]

Proposed Live a Live crossover for FFXIV

It’s probably not gonna happen but hey, they crossed over with Octopath Traveler’s Gatcha game so that’s cool. SE if you see this you can buy the idea off me for 20 bucks, I want this so badly. Also, spoilers for Live a Live, I don’t care if the game’s 30 next year, the remake’s almost exactly a year old. But since Oersted’s on the cover and in the trailers, his existence is no longer being treated as a spoiler.

[Typical Random Roulette let’s be honest]

I’m torn between the requirement being The Black Wolf's Ultimatum/the end of ARR or being set post ShB. But the basic concept stays the same, just depends on if we roast G’raha for his habit of cross the rift gatcha rolls.

The WoL gets a quest of something weird happening in the shroud, typical event quest nonsense. They go to investigate and lo, 5 weirdos.

Their hostile at first until the Yugioh Protagonist Reject goes “Wait, they just thought of themselves as the Warrior of Light, they might know something, don’t stab them.”

A ninja decloaks behind you. 

So they introduce themselves, as Akira, Oboromaru, Masaru, Lei (I’m picking her because she’s popular of the Shifu’s three students and to have a girl in here), The Sundown Kid (The Kid’s fine), and the little robot is Cube.

Yes he’s round. Don’t worry about that.

They pause, count, and realize one of them is missing, so first task is go find Pogo.

Fortunately, it is not hard to find the caveman that’s dancing around excitedly, having found a boar. Which your party now has to deal with.

The WoL fights it, I think, so the others can go “cool, you do know how to fight” and also “this is Pogo. We think that’s his name. He responds to at least.”

Akira, who’s psychic btw: “Listen, the dude thinks in shapes, that’s what I’ve got. He doesn’t do words.”

Now that they’ve got him, they explain that something like this has happened to them before, and they’re pretty sure they just need to find a “Lord of Dark” and defeat him, and they can all go home.

Possibly a debate here about an unnamed ‘him’ that they’re unsure if they need to look before resuming that they’re happy to have the WoL along for help.

At this point you would be able to bring up Zodiark, (possibly special dialogue if after EW) and they all agree that while that sounds bad that doesn’t sound like who they’re looking for.

“Lord of Dark? Name probably starts with an O and gonna be a reoccuring pain?”

The WoL: Odin maybe?

They decide that the Odi in Odin and the title “the Dark Divinity” is a pretty solid lead, and ask you to help them find him and beat him up so they can all go home.

Like the FFXV crossover, you’d get to hang out with them a bit and chat, but it would probably be twice, either the group broken in half so you have a smaller group to chat with, or you pick two characters to talk to.

(If you pick Cube you two just vibe in silence, before Cube offers you a warm drink)

If chosen, they all (Pogo and Cube excluded) talk a bit about where their from and evil they’ve faced before, and give the WoL some advice and encouragement.

That over with, they queue in unsynced since they don’t have a healer, they’re like four DPS, two tanks, and whatever Cube is. (Baby and the one with an AoE heal).

So the eight of you fight Odin, and yeah, he’s not his normal self, something’s definitely warped him to be more like the seven of them remember, but you’re bringing him down, until it hits the DPS check that Odin always has.

This is a scripted loss, in that the other 7 get knocked on their asses, while the WoL is still up, but so is Odin.

When a new voice calls out “gods damn you!” and jumps in. The final hero, and the only one who looks like he fits the current setting, Oersted.

(I have mentally written dialogue for this btw, I’m just skipping a lot of it so as to avoid making this post longer. I’d say avoid subjecting you to my brain rot but you’re getting it already.)

WoL and Oersted go for it, and Oersted is definitely wrecking shop. His dmg output is insane. [Not because he’s my blorbo and poor little meowmeow but because that’s a reflection of the game, his stats are NUTS compared to the others]

Odin gets defeated, duty complete, huzzah.

The heroes get up, check each other over, chat a bit, before Akira probably goes “alright, I know this one [WoL] doesn’t talk much, but we all know you can.”

Oersted: “What a terrible thing, so filled with malice, and with hate. How far it must have reached to find this seed, to water it thus.”

I am bad at iambic pentameter but he definitely speaks in it, adjust accordingly.

Anyway, they all seem a bit wary of Oersted but he thanks you for the chance to fight beside a companion again, and to be cautious of letting hate fester in you, and to be sure to nourish love and hope instead. 

They all take their leave, quest ended, you’ve spent time with them, defeated the bad guy yay! (Replay the quest to hang out with different NPCs the true LaL experience)

Quest rewards: Cube Minion, Megalomania Orchestrion (YES I SPELLED THAT RIGHT IT’S MANIA NOT VANIA THIS TIME), and limited time glamours in the Gold Saucer such as Sundown’s Poncho and Hat (not visible on Hrothgar and Viera)

Please look forward to it (never happenng)

[adlbeay]

I wanted to talk about the themes in the Walk in the Dust event. The story of Arknights has always had a high level of thematic consistency, but it’s especially prominent in this event. I feel like a lot of the discussion of the story in certain places comes down to “lore” and surface-level plot details, so I wanted to get this out there somewhere.

The two big ideas that are covered in Walk in the Dust are that of revenge and the homeland. Let's talk about revenge first. Long post and story spoilers under the cut.

In the beginning, we are introduced to Elliot, aka Passenger, who by the time we meet him, is an aimless husk of a man. He is utterly empty inside despite being the most powerful figure in the Reefsteep black  market, with vast wealth and political influence under his thumb. Having completed his decades-long quest to slay everyone who was involved in betraying his teacher, he has no more goals for his life. After killing  the Lord Ameer of Ibut, the last of his targets, he realizes that the revenge he had been pursuing was ultimately empty, that the weapons he built and the schemes he engineered to that end no longer moved him. Even the death of the Lord Ameer didn't matter one bit in the political landscape of Sargon.

As for the Sargon army... We live in different times now. The ruling  Padishahs simply care not about what is happening here in this barren  wasteland. My guess is that it matters not to them whether it's the  father or the son that's in charge. Actually, to tell the truth, it  hardly matters to me either.

Ultimately, no one cared if the Lord Ameer was murdered or simply  died in an accident, not even Elliot himself. Sargon continues to be exploited by the Columbian military and the ruling Lords. Professor Thorne remains dead. His research, once entrusted to Elliot to prevent  it from becoming a weapon of war, has nonetheless been used by Elliot  himself to bring even more death. Now, 22 years later, Passenger sees  finding Kal'tsit as his only path to salvation, so that she can once  again give him a purpose like she did when she rescued him the first time.

Folinic's mom, Lillia, also shares the same kind of story. Her husband was killed in Chernobog when the count decided to purge the researchers working on the sarcophagus device. Among the children of the families broken up by this incident are Lyudmila (later Crownslayer), Alex and Misha (later Skullshatterer), and Luisa (later Folinic). Lillia finds Kal'tsit after months of searching, intending to take revenge on  Grand Duke Vanya not just for her husband, but also for Luisa, who never got to know her father because of it. Kal'tsit tries to talk her out of  it, even during the final phases of the plan, but Lillia's mind is set.  She entrusts Kal'tsit with taking care of both Luisa and Lyudmila, as  she knows she won't be able to come back to live a normal life after  this. And... she succeeds. Although it is Kal'tsit who ultimately administered the poison, their plan works flawlessly and Duke Vanya is finally dead.

Except it still ended up being completely meaningless. The Grand Duke was in a glorified nursing home already near the end of his life, and if Kal'tsit didn't kill him then some other conspirator from the Ursus  political backstage would have done it anyway. He was already crippled and blind, and as we find out during the confrontation with the Emperor's Blade, even Kal'tsit only agreed to Lillia's plan because it  defused the conspiracies of other powerful figures who would have used  the Duke's death to spark another rebellion. The only thing that Lillia ended up accomplishing was making sure that Louisa would grow up without both a mother and a father, and Lyudmila would never get the answers she really wanted about her family's death. And, although she ended up not doing it, she was even also planning to go back to Chernobog to kill  Sergei, Alex and Misha's father, for his betrayal.

And this carries on through the future outside the event. Crownslayer ends up joining Reunion because she thinks it will give her the answers  she wants and avenge her father. Folinic almost lets her anger at Atro's death get her into a confrontation with Wolumonde. In the end, Crownslayer is stopped by Kal'tsit and Folinic is calmed down by  Suzuran, but we might be able to imagine what would have happened if  they managed to carry out their vengeance.

The theme of homeland is one that's intrinsically tied to Kal'tsit and has at least a bit of relation to the broader story outside of the event. It's harder to talk about since it's not clearly  split into individual stories like previously, but there's at least one character that exemplifies this theme the most: Old Isin.

Old Isin is appropriately to his name, old as rocks. He remembers being a servant to some lord of a long-lost city that very few even know once existed, and spends his time telling fortunes while trying to seek out people who, like him, also share that past. According to Kal'tsit, the city's people were scattered when it was destroyed, and now only Isin even remembers the origin of the name "Reefsteep". Even then, Isin only has vague memories, and believes it to be his unforgivable sin that  he has forgotten so much about the city.

Old Isin originally helps Kal'tsit and Elliot because he hopes that  she can help him remember about the lost city, and thus absolve his  "unforgivable sin". And Kal'tsit indeed does help him. Isin begins to recall the conquests of armies a thousand years ago, something even with  his age he should not have been a part of, much less remembered.  Kal'tsit dispels the illusions clouding his memory, and reveals that  what Isin remembers is only the stories that the padishah recounted to  him, that the glory of his old city was only a memory of another memory. In truth, the city in Old Isin's memory was merely a stepping stone for the padishah's ambition to conquer the uncharted deserts, and was abandoned just as easily when that campaign failed. His homeland's glory was just an illusion created in his mind by the padishah's charisma.

Which brings us to the Emperor's Blade. Wherever he stands is the dominion of the Empire of Ursus. Whatever he does carries out the Ursus Emperor's will. Or at least, that's how the Royal Guards imagine themselves, single-handedly carrying out their homeland's legacy. Kal'tsit lays it out clearly:

Kal'tsit: Tell me, what does the current Ursus Emperor think of the Pine Valley affair? Or do you mean to tell me the seeds of that uprising, the origins of the crisis were all the will of the Emperor? Feel free to keep deceiving yourself, but the truth is the young emperor is unaware of the events that transpired there. You believe he has no  need to know. You... all of you seek a bygone era. You are just caught up in the former emperor's grand vision!

As does Patriot in Chapter 8:

Patriot: I fought with your fathers. Your strength and tactical acumen are no less impressive than theirs. But you look at the Ursus of those times with rose-colored glasses. What you see is nothing more than your wild fantasies.

The Royal Guards are described in not too unclear words as soldiers  who probably believed too much of their own grandiose affect. They are unparalleled fighters, to be sure, but it isn't hard to infer that those words about executing Ursus's will and each Royal Guard being his own nation are words intended to strike fear into their enemies rather than  statements of any real truth. Indeed, if you know anything about the internal politics of Ursus, the idea of "Ursus's own will" can be seen as more of a nostalgia at a bygone era when Ursus was, or at least seemed, united in conquest under the previous Emperor. The perceived glory of their homeland is what motivates the Emperor's Blade, but like with Old Isin, the truth behind it is shaky at best.

We also have the contrast between the retired veteran at Pine Valley  and Grand Duke Vanya. While talking to Witte, the veteran cuts off one of his own fingers, claiming that the scars he has suffered in Ursus's wars, once considered symbols of his glory and honor, were ultimately meaningless, and he wants this self-inflicted wound to be his only legacy to Ursus. At the same time, the Grand Duke is postulating about how the seeds he had sown in the winter would give birth to beautiful flowers. Even though his actions and the crimes he committed never bore fruition, he is convinced even in death that Ursus's soil will bloom.

The issue of a real or imagined homeland, and its loss, is also  shared by the Sarkaz as a whole not only in this story but in the main story and many other events. It's even arguable that Rhodes Island's mission to help the Infected was originally inherited from Babel's goal of establishing a stable homeland for the Sarkaz. After all, as pointed  out in many places, the Infected and Sarkaz share much of the same discrimination.

Sarkaz Mercenary: Home...? How could us devils... us Infected possibly have one... Kal'tsit: The Sarkaz have tried to rebuild 'Kazdel', their home for centuries, though they have never succeeded. Everyone has a different idea as to what the term 'homeland' means, but as it stands right now,  Kazdel is perhaps as close as you can get to the term's original meaning.

And in Twilight of Wolumonde:

Armed Infected: We’re going home? To what home?

Mudrock: Kazdel. There may be no place for Sarkaz outside of Kazdel.  But in Kazdel, there is a place for you. Not because of tolerance. But because there is... nothing there. Kazdel... is where the homeless go. A land of rootless people.

So what does all this have to do with Kal'tsit?

In the ending cutscene, Passenger asks Kal'tsit whether this "Rhodes  Island" is yet another passing persona to be used to accomplish a goal and discarded when it's complete. Like the persona of the Trusted  Advisor, or the Servant, or the Laterano Cleric, will she abandon Rhodes  Island as well? Kal'tsit initially puts up a front saying he has no  right to ask, then bluffs about having thousands of answers, but is pushed by Passenger saying he'll even accept a lie. In one of the only times we get to see Kal'tsit faltering, she actually has no answer to this.

Unlike the other characters we see throughout the story, Kal'tsit has no homeland. No matter how fake or illusory it is, Old Isin and the Royal Guard have something to believe about a place where they can belong. The nobles in Victoria, as incompetent as they appear from the outside, are dedicated to defending the peace of their home despite having no ruler. Even the ostracized Sarkaz can ultimately go back to Kazdel, as unpleasant as that might be. But while Kal'tsit wanders the earth to keep the homelands of others from falling into chaos, she has no homeland of her own to go back to.

In one of the trailers for Chapter 9, we hear a recording from Theresa, addressed to Kal'tsit: "I hope this Rhodes Island can be a place to call home, a place you can always return to."

[ernmark]

One Possible Read of The Green Knight

I say one possible, because this is the story as I understood it as I was watching the film. When I mentioned it to my partner, he didn't take that away. I'm not saying my take on it is right or wrong (I think it's hard to say that about most reads for a movie like this), but I submit it for your consideration.

(Spoilers and a fairly thorough plot summary under the cut)

(Holy moly this got long)

A brief caveat:

Caveat the First: I'm basing this off a pre-existing understanding of medieval stories, which don't necessarily follow the same narrative structures as modern ones. The world they lived in was weird, so sometimes weird shit just happened for no reason, often very conveniently. (If anything, I think this movie did less of that than existed in typical medieval stories.) They also heavily relied on archetypes rather than distinct characters with backstories, as well as a pre-established understanding of the story you're listening to. Like the puppet show that shows up in the story, the kids in the audience had already heard the story enough times that they could follow it without any actual words. On that note, I've also read a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Caveat the Second: I immediately distrust anybody who talks about any story older than three centuries or so having an "original" version. There are some stories that have distinct authors, but often these stories were retold and rewritten to suit the tastes of their latest audience. So I refer to the version I read, not "the original". I take my reading of that story into my interpretation of what I saw. I'll note the details from the version I read where it's relevant.

The Story

We start with Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, waking up in a brothel with his sex worker lady friend. She sends him on his way back home to Camelot where his mother greets him and kindly asks him where he's been all night. Oh, off at Christmas Mass, naturally, is what he tells her. She counters that clearly he's been drinking all the communion wine, because she can smell it on his breath.

She tells him she's not feeling well, so he should go to the Christmas celebration without her and tell her all about it afterward.

[I don't recall hearing her name in the movie, but in the version I read, the Green Knight is sent by Morgana. Between his mother being described in dialogue as Arthur's sister and a known witch, I'm gonna run with that assumption and call her that.]

This is where my reading diverges: I take all of this as being almost entirely Morgana's story. And from her perspective, it's kind of hilarious. Because this isn't the story of Gawain's journey into Manhood, but of a very frustrated mother's attempts to save her beloved (if disappointing) son.

While Gawain is partying with the sickly King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, Morgana joins three of her fellow witches and they enact a spell, summoning the Green Knight and a very specifically worded challenge. The Green Knight presents a game: any one person in attendance may injure him and get his badass axe as a prize, but in a year exactly he'll have to go to the Green Knight's chapel and allow the Green Knight to return the exact same blow to him.

Arthur says he wants to do it, but acknowledges he's too sickly to do so. Gawain, already embarrassed once at this party, jumps up and volunteers to be his champion. And when he steps into the ring with the Green Knight, he cuts off his opponent's head. He'd think that was the end of it, but the Green Knight just picks up his severed head, reminds him of the deal to bring the axe back and let himself get beheaded in a year, and leaves.

[In the version I read, this was a ploy on Morgana's part just to freak out Guinevere. Seriously, that was the entirety of it. Just fucking with her rival/sister-in-law.]

In the movie, I got the vibe that Gawain was never meant to be in the line of fire. I suspect that either Arthur or one of his knights was meant to be the Green Knight's opponent, who would die after a year to get his affairs in order. Given that Gawain was Arthur's next-of-kin, that would have given him plenty of time to pass the crown to Morgana's beloved son. Unfortunately, Gawain stepping up messed up her whole plan.

During the intervening year, we see Morgana and the other witches working together to weave the Girdle of Invulnerability. As the name suggests, it's laden with magic to protect him from all harm and all blows from anyone. So long as he wears it, she explains, he'll make it home in one piece.

[In the version I read, the girdle is given to him by another woman later on at a weirdly convenient time. More on that later.]

Gawain barely makes it out when he asks directions from a young man looting the corpses on a recent battlefield. Being the idiot that he is, Gawain takes the young man's directions straight into a trap, where the young man and several other bandits are lying in wait. Despite his mother's assurances that he's invulnerable, he stands down immediately, allowing the bandits to take the Green Knight's axe, his Magic Girdle, all his money, all his supplies, etc.

During all this, three things happen: first, we see A Fox. Second, when the bandit takes the axe he goes all weird and runs off on the horse, forcing the other bandits to chase after him and leaving Gawain unobserved. Third, we get a weird vision of the future where Gawain remains where he is, tied up, until he rots away and he's left nothing but a skeleton.

My read is that The Fox is either Morgana or one of the other witches shapeshifted to keep an eye on him (alternatively, the fox is Reynard or a similar magical creature employed by them for the same purpose.) The Fox then enchants the bandit into running off with the Girdle and the Axe, leaving Gawain relatively safe. And when he fails to do anything with this spectacular opportunity, the Fox gives him the vision of what's gonna happen to him if he just waits around to be rescued.

Prompted to action, Gawain manages to free himself and continues his quest on foot. Eventually he comes across an abandoned manor. Inside, he meets a ghost who asks him to retrieve her severed head, which was thrown into the nearby spring. After some hemming and hawing, he does. When he returns to the surface with the woman's skull, the ghost is gone, but the Fox is watching him.

My take is that the ghost disappeared. They do that. The Fox, being sent to watch him, saw him actually step up and do a brave and selfless thing for once. This is what cements to the Fox that Gawain isn't a perennial fuckup, he's able to grow and mature if he's given the chance.

Gawain returns the skull to the rest of the ghost's skeleton, and he's rewarded by regaining his lost axe. (The axe placed there by the Fox, who took it from the enchanted bandit.)

So this is great, right? Gawain's fuck-upery has been cured and he's doing the responsible thing. Yay, right?

Except he's a fuckup who spends more time drinking and hanging out in brothels than doing Knightly stuff, so he doesn't know basics. Like how to start a fire or get food. Offscreen, Morgana must have been bashing her head into a wall, because her beloved son is going to get himself killed.

The Fox appears to him, and after his initial attempt to drive it off, Gawain lets it stay with him. From this point forward it stays by his side, not-so-subtly giving him directions and keeping him generally safe.

Later we meet some giants, because sometimes there are just giants. We don't question these things in Arthurian fantasy. Gawain asks them to give him a ride to his destination, but when one agrees to help him, he freaks out at the last second and refuses. The Fox speaks to the giant, quite possibly apologizing for its very rude human friend, and the giants go on their way without him.

Gawain is most of the way there by now, but it's late December in Wales, he's super cold and hasn't eaten anything but trippy mushrooms, he can't build a fire, he's been walking for days. He collapses, but the Fox urges him to go a little further and leads him to another manor house. Fortunately for him, this manor has living people in it, who clean him up, put him in a warm bed, and give him food.

We get a dreamy scene where he's being tended by his mother before he wakes up in the care of the manor. My read on it was that this manor and the people in it were sent directly by Morgana to save him. I don't think the manor was even there ten seconds before he collapsed the first time. Because Morgana loves her son, but he is REALLY bad at this.

Notably, it seems that the only people here are the Lord and Lady of the manor, as well as a blind old woman who seems to be the lady's maidservant and/or mother? Hard to tell.

Some flirting happens between Gawain and the Lord and Lady. The Lord of the manor explains that conveniently, Gawain's destination is only one day's walk away and he's several days early, so why not take some time to rest and gather his strength. The Lady shows off her library and her fancy daguerreotype-like mechanism, etc. The Lord suggests another game (mirroring the game presented by the Green Knight) : the Lord will go hunting the next day and give Gawain whatever he catches. Gawain will in return give the Lord whatever he gains throughout the day.

[In the version I read, this happens over the course of three days. Each day the Lord leaves, the Lady tries to seduce Gawain but he refuses, only accepting a kiss from her on the first two days; when the Lord returns with a hunted animal each day, Gawain gives him the kiss that the Lady gave him. On the third day, the Lady also gives Gawain a previously-unmentioned enchanted Girdle of Invincibility, which he neglects to pass along to the Lord, opting just to kiss him instead.]

In the movie, this is condensed into only one day. Gawain wakes up with the Lady creepily watching him sleep, wearing the Girdle of Invincibility that Morgana made for him. She invites him into bed and offers him the Girdle, reminding him that it can render him invincible. The scene gets a bit weird after that-- sex acts of some sort ensue, and the Lady walks away, leaving Gawain with post-coital shame and the Girdle.

Upset, Gawain grabs his stuff and makes to leave. Along the way he runs into the Lord in the middle of his hunt, and he declares that he's going to meet the Green Knight a day early. Citing their game, the Lord presents Gawain with The Fox (who is alive despite having been caught by a hunter, hmmm) and requests Gawain's "winnings" in return-- which he claims by stealing a kiss. I dunno about you, but it seemed to me that Gawain was Into It, at least before he remembers to be freaked out and runs off.

He's nearly at the place where he's to meet the Green Knight when the fox stops him. Now it starts talking, its voice shifting from masculine to feminine. It tells him that he's done a great job, and he can turn back right now and go home and nobody will know but the two of them. He doesn't have to go through with this. But Gawain, determined to fulfil his quest, drives the Fox off once again and goes the last bit alone.

Here he meets the Green Knight in the ruins of an old chapel, though because he's early the Green Knight is little more than a statue, awake but unmoving until the appointed Christmas Day. All the while Gawain just has to sit there and stew in the knowledge that he's gonna die. Finally the Green Knight stirs, asks Gawain if he's ready to die, and readies the axe that Gawain returned to him.

Throughout this, the light hits the Green Knight differently, making him look an awful lot like the Lord of the manor. After Gawain flinches away from the axe the first time, he speaks gently to him, almost tenderly.

[In the version I read, the Green Knight and the Lord of the manor are the same person, and the Lord/Knight is aware of Gawain's magic Girdle, because this was all an elaborate ruse. Because of Gawain's invincibility, the Green Knight only scratches his neck, permanently scarring him as punishment for lying about it and cheating in both their games, but doesn't hold it against him. Gawain then returns to Camelot and they keep the Girdle at the round table as a symbol that all of them have their failings.]

In the movie, Gawain flinches one more time. We then get a second very lengthy vision of an alternate future: Gawain flees the Green Knight and returns home, where he's welcomed back without external consequences. However, he's haunted by his own cowardice, giving up a difficult love in favor of living up to expectation, only to lose everything in the end anyway. His life following the cowardly route was longer, but it wasn't a better life.

He stops the Green Knight one last time, only to remove the Girdle and set it aside before declaring himself ready. The Green Knight is genuinely pleased by this, and he leans in and simply traces a finger over Gawain's throat, before happily saying. "Off with your head."

The movie ends there. Whether the Green Knight leaves him alive or kills him is up for interpretation. But even if the Green Knight wasn't on Morgana's payroll, I feel like he's way too fond of Gawain to do him real harm at this point.

And so Gawain has grown up-- he's brave, he's honorable, he's learned to keep his word and face the consequences of his actions. And Morgana, after some major struggles and a lot of called-in favors, has managed to keep her son from dying on his quest. Victory all around.

There's also an after-credits scene: just a little girl playing with Arthur/Gawain's crown. Notably, this little girl is neither of the children Gawain had in his vision of the cowardly future, so I interpreted it as a new future with a new child with potential all their own.

But that's just my take.