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No motto version under the cut

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there are many dragon age lines that hit. but your abusive alcoholic mom dropping this on you as a casteless dwarf has got to be one of the rawest realest quotes in the franchise

"You can try, but you'll never get it off you. Dust Town... it sticks to the skin. You don't bleed red enough for them, and nothing's gonna change that."

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Idk if this is addressed in the games but i'm starting to get obsessed with how Orzammar works as a society without daylight. And by that I mean without environmental changes showing that time is passing. I have no idea if we have any precedent in human history but like the concept of my warden having a completely different understanding of time is so endearing to me. I think drows in dnd have a thing with light changing in the middle of the city but I don't remember anyone talking about that in dragon age

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made this after watching harding's compassion route on yt.... i wanted to see harding connect a dwarf rook to the titans !!

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I love baby Wardens and Inquisitors a lot (like 18-20 year olds not actual children). Like dude you should be taking your gap year right now why are you leading a major historically significant organization? You should still be living with your mom why are all of these old people making you save their asses?

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suddenly sitting up awake at 12am: i think thedas has a genre of memento mori types of paintings, where they put a skull in with some fancy still life stuff to indicate that the patron/artist is wealthy, but also Pious and thinking about Inevitable Death rather than material things (even though they're lovingly rendering all the silverware and expensive fruits and lace tablecloths or whatever)

BUT. since andraste is associated with fire, this is done by including like a lit candle or an urn of ashes or something in the composition, to show the piety and focus on the impermanence of life! i think this would be common in orlais especially. presumably tevinter is trying not to play up the "whoops we turned the saviour into a burnt kebab :)" angle in their religion, so they'd have... idk. a knife or something? to indicate the sword of mercy as the pious symbol of death rather than the fire itself?

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Thedas Creation 🥰 Black Codex by Matt Rhodes

I think this was always clear to those who payed real attention to lore and explored lore and all the hints more deeply, not just on surface level of game story. still so fascinating to see it all spelled out like this, this artwork is STUNNING!!!!! man what I would give for a game set in creation days of Thedas and Titan War and early Arlathan 😭 But only if it was done by all the original devs and writers ofc. so yeah... we can dream.

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i am continuing to spread the zevistair agenda

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x

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taking out the complexity

I have this hypothesis that at some point quite late in the writing process of Veilguard someone came in and pushed for the moral complexity to be taken out of the game. Because there are several plot lines which seem like they were potentially intended to be more complex than they ultimately were:

Isseya and the griffons. When I first played this I assumed that the punchline would be that she stole the griffons because she didn't trust the wardens with them after what happened - then deciding what to do about her would have raised interesting questions about war, sacrifice, the greater good etc. But instead there was this reveal that she was planning on blighting them, which makes no sense at all and feels shoe-horned in just to make it clear that she is Evil and Wrong.

Ivenci feels to me like they were originally intended to articulate the very reasonable point that it's not good for Antiva to be ruled by a group of unelected assassins - thus setting up an interesting chance to reflect on the nature of the Crows and the necessity of working with groups who do harmful things. But instead the Crows have to be the good guys so Ivenci is made into this weirdly cartoonish villain to make it clear that they are Evil and Wrong.

Relatedly, Lucanis' plot line feels like it was supposed to culminate with a reflection on his relationship with the Crows and the abuse he suffered, probably with the option to turn down being the First Talon and maybe even leave the Crows. But because the Crows have become the good guys this never happens and hence his whole arc feels quite inconclusive.

As this post points out, it feels like Emmrich's lich choice was intended to be darker and for the lich route to be genuinely a selfish option, but instead it's become this somewhat toothless 'dilemma' where both options are right and you never have to feel bad about your decision.

The initial ritual feels like it was a set-up for Rook to unintentionally do terrible harm while trying to stop the world from being destroyed, thus offering the opportunity to reflect on the dilemma that Solas faced in making the Veil and to understand the moral complexity of his situation. There is apparently even cut dialogue from the regret prison on this topic. But instead no one ever blames Rook and Rook is not allowed to blame themself at all, because they have to be The Hero in an uncomplicated way.

I don't know; it just seems to me that there are all these fossils of a more interesting game in there and they've been sort of clumsily written-over because some exec etc wanted the game to be less challenging or targeted at a younger audience or something.

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re: my last reblog: it always used to bother me that no matter how much time passes by the time you do the Return To Ostagar DLC, Cailan's body is perfectly preserved, looks like he could have died moments ago.

I always wrote it off as engine limitations and possibly development time constraints, because DAO doesn't tend to shy away from the nitty gritty details, but I just realized that it's 100% lore friendly, actually, according to this codex entry

"The Anderfels are a land of shocking extremes. It is the most desolate place in all the world, for two Blights have left great expanses of the steppes so completely devoid of life that corpses cannot even decay there—no insect or grub will ever reach them."

A Blight DID sweep through Ostagar, so it's entirely feasible that this is why Cailan's body is so unnaturally pristine when you find it.

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I have a disease that makes me think about avebela for two weeks straight every year

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characters who are undead. characters who die in the end and so they've been dead from the start. characters who are chased by death. characters that chase death. characters who died and came back to life. characters that die again and again and again. characters who consider their past self dead. characters who were born in someone else's corpse. characters that claw their way out of the grave. characters whose deaths leave such a gaping wound that even their absence is still a presence. characters who are emissaries of death. characters who are alive but consider themselves dead. characters whose deaths are ambiguous. characters whose existences are defined by death.

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origins au where the warden dies of their injuries in flemeth’s hut after ostagar. and flemeth sees that the existence of a buddy grey warden was extremely emotionally load-bearing for the one she did manage to save so she puts a spirit in the warden’s corpse and drags them out with the exact same you worry too much young man! look, they’re fine! spiel

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by ~streamingSun