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we were robbed.....

actually i really wanted davrin to be a be a warrior mage. like even after companion's classes reveal. it's too interesting of a concept to just throw away

he could've been like an emerald knights you know?? and as a dalish it would've make sense for him to know the techniques

bioware wouldn't even have to change that much, let him use sword and shield and say that his magic isn't that powerful and is more like a crutch than an actual weapon

come oooon!

as a certified Mage Guy: this is a really good earlier concept mage Davrin

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Your criticisms remind me of Dorian's while story from Inquisition and how he went from seeing slavery as just a facet of life to seeing it for how appalling it is. I am totally game for him to come home and start a movement after getting to a position of power. But, on that same note, not everyone would be against it back home. So why is it not shown at all? It is simply because 'slavery bad'? It would've been far more interesting for characters like Neve to have some insight and commentary on the whole tevinter slave aspect of society while seeing PROGRESS in freeing people all thanks to Dorian and his progressive faction. Instead of showing realistic societal strife they just went for a watered down version of how Tevinter/Minrathous was always described and in the process made something that doesn't look like it was built from slave labor and tyrannical mages and instead looks like it came out of Harry fucking Potter. Small anon rant, sorry.

yeah, i'd say it's one plus that i see in neve - the ability to explore life of a regular mage, who's not in magisterium, nor has some riches to be a typical "tevinter" in the eyes of south (and the rest of the world, honestly). but it also brings another problem - what's her story would be about? if she already pops out with perfect worldview (like she did in dav) she's going to be just boring for the player. which is why all the previous (and potential, like calpernia) companions were on one side of the conflict - abused slaves, who learn to life after escape and high born nobles who need to get down a peg. the only reason neve was a middle class citizen is just to writers didn't have to go into deeper exploration of tevinter society, abuse, slavery and even potential anti-elven racism that neve, in theory, should have.

and the progress of eliminating slavery sounds like a really good idea, that gives a lot of questions to explore like, how far can you push before people turn on you? how do you make a revolution with less blood? should you even try to make a revolution without blood? but to make it good not only the writers would have to put it on a foreground of the story, but ALSO give players a single reason why tevinter shouldn't be torn down entirely by solas and his agents. bw intentionally whitewashes the entire world because..... either ea was holding writing team in a iron grip, or they got lazy and lost all the talent and i doubt that it's the former....

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sorry i have personal hatred of the fact that dav took a dumb on literally any visual time consistency in architecture, clothes and thedas in general

DAO clearly painted Fereldan as a 13 century England. (it became a problem in DAI, where orlais looked a bit more modern, 17th century "Baroque"-ish in comparison)

but looking back at dav and we have:

investigators (any "investigations" back then went pretty much as we saw them with Hawke - a bunch of people stomping around looking for clues, listening to gossips and usually failing. that work was given to guards mostly, of course some locals could go and try to figure out everything themselves, but hiring a private investigator?? lmao)

elevators in Minrathous (i would've been fine with this one, if it was Archimedes' type of elevator, but that would include human (probably slave) labor, and we can't have that ☝)

Newspapers because do you have any idea how much time it took to make and publish anything in medieval times? I'm not even asking who these newspapers are for, cuz the majority of people in Tevinter (slaves, servants, workers) wouldn't be able to read. What the hell are you even writing about? You don't have good enough communication to make news??

cyan/magenta/purple/UNNATURALLY colored fabric, which back then could be acquired only by rich people, because the paint itself costed a lot (murex sea snail were used for purple fabric, for example, Cochineals for magenta)

general clothes style mismatch - just put harding, who's relatively fantasy looking next to steampunk-emmrich or noire-neve and observe the style clash.

and last but not the least:

a fucking piano, an instrument that was created in around 1700 (roughly the same time as steam engine and thermometer), is just starting there in a lighthouse and solas for some reason knows how to play it??

this is so jarringly inconsistent and just straight up stupid and i'm certain there's more stuff like this that my brain just blocked as a traumatic memory

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Commissions open

i'm finally done with my exams so here we go updates prices!!

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Mythal threatening her son Falon'din, with her sandal. 2523BCE

based on the actual greek vase painting (under the cut)

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seeing the downfall of your favorite franchise is like watching your funny uncle who used to give you life advices and allow to sip his beer slowly developing an alzheimer

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the worst praise for the veilguard i've ever heard is probably "well, at least it confirmed my theory about A/B/C/D/E/F/G!"

which fundamentally misses the entire thing with DA or any story tbh

it gave you answers, yes, but were those answers good? were they consistent to information that we've already learned? were they well-rounded? were they properly conveyed?? were there any depth, any layers? did the writers actually build up to it? or the set up was so vague and easy to reinterpretate they basically just nodded to whatever fan theory they found first?

guys you're being scammed

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it just occurred to me that all the relationships between companions in the veilguard are just... kind of the same?

they really have only 3 dynamics: friends right ahead, lovers and "we disagreed until HR rook entered the room". and that's it. it's very repetitive when you look at the banters, and gets irritating quickly.

remember how back in the day wynne became a alistair's nother figure which highlights how he never really had one? how justice asked others about the world yet was quick to judge nathaniel/sigrun/vellana? how vivienne got genuinely worried for cole but can't admit it because he's a spirit, a thing she's been taught to fear all her life?how blackwall and sera kind of created another girldad & lesbian daughter duo? or never-ending bitching between fenris and anders of aveline and isabela that haven't really changed that much because these people have been formed by their personal experiences and can't change overnight? the... whatever the hell sten and morrigan were doing?

this choice of forcing everyone into becoming friends has prevented the story from exploring deeper themes. toxic and unhealthy relationships, parenthood, rivalry (friendly or antagonistic), the fact that some people will never like or agree with you and that's ok

it's like I'm watching teletubbies ffs

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maybe i set my hopes too high, but when i imagined grand necropolis i thought of giant tombs, of golden sarcophagus, maybe just embalmed corpses laying on a golden stand in the middle of a room waiting for the next step of mummifications. huge underground mausoleums for members of specific families.

circle mages having inside rivalries, fighting for a mere chance to become an apprentice to some famous mortalitasi or get patronage of a noble family (because it's the only way out of the circle)

of mortalitasy combining entrophy/necromancy magic with herbalist knowledge to preserve the corpses better.

not the "spooky-scary-skeletons" doing the minimum wage jobs here and there

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Sorry for being a corporate rat in your inbox but, I can't understand how bioware lets their devs be so messy on social media. Hasn't anyone trained them on social media etiquette? It makes the whole company look so unproffessional. And devs like Weeks who are looking for new jobs, their behavior in social media is off-putting to say it nicely. Recruitment managers don't like that kind of behavior.

Oh no problem, I'm only glad 🌺

Absolutely agree! But unfortunately it seems to be a problem of an entire game industry, rather than just BW.

In fact Laura Fryer has a great video about it! The entire message of which is - if you are going to say something on social media "you should be as positive as possible", because you basically present the company you're working for, and any word can cost it thousands if not millions (potentially leading to company personnel being cut starting with the junior staff). so it's curious why has no one from bioware or EA stepped in to stop epler from acting like he been brain damaged for months now? maybe EA already realized that veilguard is a complete commercial failure so there's no point in even trying to whitewash the situation and it's better to just let its own creators to desecrate it completely and move on idk. (also in that video Laura mentions that companies DO have certain policies but "they seem not to have them anymore" lol )

As for Weeks.... I can only assume that Weeks stayed in BW for way too long to remember that bioware is not some facebook friends group, but a company that CAN, in fact, let you go, and you WILL have to make yourself presentable in front of strangers debating to hire you.

one thing clear - there's something wrong going on with creator-to-community communication and that these two should either relearn this stuff or not appear on social media at all.

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i never had her.... but i miss her 💔

no headwear + sketch under the cut

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john epler did what others were too scared to do and they criticize him for it. without him we wouldn't have dragon age.

l... like what? going out on twitter bluesky and picking fights with random strangers? not only it's unprofessional, it's unoriginal too lmao

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based shit alreadyjaded.bsky.social.

it's funny how epler calls these comments "unhinged garbage", yet all the post was doing is criticizing his (un)professional behavior and asked questions about the narrative and the story HE created.

That's it!

and the questions are very spot on, actually. because the DA universe is build on coding and real-life parallels. so regardless if epler is just ignorant or actually believes in... all what we see in the VG. it's still his mistake and he should still learn to take accountability as a big boy he is

i chose to spend a decade of my life getting the game out there because it mattered to me that we finished telling the story we started in DAI.

do you??? is this why you abandoned literally EVERY set-up created in previous games? solas's agents, well of sorrows, mage-templar war resolution, divine victoria, fate of inquisition (because veilguard just changes 3 lines of dialogue for it)? and many more??

the idea that i 'hate Solas' and chose to sabotage him is brain rot to a level i cannot imagine.

ah but you can't really disprove of this, can't you? because all the behind the scene info just proves the opposite. you two are the Lead Writer and a Creative Director, who else are fans supposed to held accountable for all the bullshit in the story?

also a 40-something y.o. unironically says brain rot lol

i will be dealing with the burnout i developed for years.

pfft cry me a river you get more money and fame than you deserve

Congrats, dipsticks. (a way to treat your followers btw) You came in with enough spun-up-in-fandom-until-toxic takes to alienate the guy who sacrificed his mental and physical health fighting to have past Dragon Age respected as much as it was and give people who cared about Solas's arc a respectful ending. Great work, no notes.

and the "respectful ending" is basically gaslighting a former slave into believing he needs his master's """forgiveness""" to heal and lock himself into a eternal solitary confinement (unless of course you decide to punch him into solitary confinement first)

also grow some spines, you two. criticizing your behavior and your work (that you're paid for from our purses mind you) is not a personal attack

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a depth of a single side quest (vs shallowness of an entire game)

you know replaying origins really puts a lot of things into perspective, and this one revelation i want to discuss here.

it's a minor side quest in lothering most of the players don't even remember. a young woman (Allison) asks you to make her some traps, explaining, that she heard old Berlin is setting traps around his land to protect himself from the darkspawn (and doesn't even want to leave) and so she wants to do the same for herself.

traps. against the horde of darkspawn.

i have to be honest i did not realized the depth of it all on my first, second, third, tenth playthrough even. only after full-scale russian invasion i actually was able to draw a real life parallel and how realistically it depicted several aspects of human psychology in times of war and stress:

authority of the elder (against common sense). tale as old as time, and a principle that at the beginning of humanity saved a lot of lives by transferring experience to younger generation. it can, however, backfire - there's an entire army of darkspawn approaching. a dozen of half assed traps won't save you from being killed (at best!) yet the girl keeps following example of the old Berlin, because of "how can an elderly person ever be wrong" mentality.

influence of settledness on one's life. A lot of people find it difficult to leave their homes, even when in a life or death situations. it happens due to emotional associations. person's home/memories/associations to those = their entire life / feeling of safety, and usually inherent to older people, though are not limited by them (authority of elder). and believe me when i say this there are plenty of people who were like this in 2014 and 2022 and still are to this day.

the simplified view on the world and issue-solving (the less educated person is, the more simplified their worldview is, and by extension, the less they know how to survive). "the darkspawn will just get in traps, they'll die/get stuck, and everything will be ok". for HoF, who recently just felt all the might and all the danger of the darkspawn Allison might seem... naïve. but Allison is not a soldier, not warden, nor a noblewoman who can read about tactics and ancient creatures from somewhere, so her grasp of the situation is (not unexpectedly) very limited.

question of ethics. you can make her traps, get your money and go, but would that be a kind decision? will your encouragement of her false belief indirectly kill her? will your refusal force her leave lothering for safety or will you just make her last days full of fear? will she stay regardless? game doesn't answer, but it makes you ask these questions

and now after ALL of that. ALLLLLL the hidden layers i just described, i wanna ask you. can you find anything even remotely close to this level of complexity in a veilguard? even in a main plot?

it is INSANE how much of human psychology, emotion and real life ethics and problems can be touched in ONE passing through mission. and even MORE insane how another story just doesn't bother to even try to recreate that!

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#his new clothes sucks man#they don't deliver “antagonist” #they don't deliver “revolutionary” or “scholar” #they say nothing about him as a character when a good design should #it look like a booktok boyfriend's coat but make it fantasy

not even 5 minutes after i find THIS in the artbook

i'm going to strangle myself 😭

i will be honest............

i feel robbed................................twice

[OP]

[0alix0]

i will be honest............

i feel robbed................................twice

[OP]

[0alix0]

BRO I FR DID NOT NOTICE MASTECTOMY SCARS ON A DRAGON KING LMAOOO

so wait does the whole "dragons don't have kings, they have queens" thing can be count as misgndering? 🤔