The Veilchums After School Special

I am one of the many fans of the Dragon Age franchise that has patiently waited for the next game in the long running, lore sprawling among many different mediums, franchise. The phrase “Return to form” gets thrown around a lot for an IP that hasn’t had a new entry for an entire decade. But we’re here now! ‘The Veilguard’ is out and it manages to affect the community in ways such as elation, indifference, or the 7 stages of grief. It’s game-play is both familiar and fundamentally different. Plus the story, while gives you the conclusion of a 10 year cliffhanger, feels like it is written for an entirely different audience.

If you were to play the games from the very beginning again, you would be able to pinpoint all of the ways in which the tone has been inconsistent, up to a game that has probably lost itself along the way.

Now a days, you can’t really talk about long running franchises without considering the real world internal politics of the development studio that made them. If you’re a Bioware fan such as I am and have been around since the days of Neverwinter Nights, you come to see creative changes, people coming and going, acquisitions disrupting the culture gutting them open and thinning them out to the point where people are actively saying out loud, “Bioware needs this to be a success or who knows what will happen.”

I may not know exactly what goes on behind the scenes, but it’s very obvious to see whatever has happened, be reflected in the games that gets released. It’s just not the same team that it used to be.(It’s also not a thing unique to Bioware, but we’re not here to talk about that.)

I’m not going to say DATV is outright terrible. regardless of what you’re going to read in this blog, it really isn’t. There’s enough stupid bullshit currently going on in the culture that you can’t have a decent conversation about a game, without some white boy crying about pronouns and shoving Stellar Blade titties in your face. Hilariously the pronouns thing is actually part of the conversation here, but we’ll get to that.

There’s a lot to like about this game. It explores an entirely different part of the world that we haven’t been to, It takes on themes, hits story beats with passion and gusto. It’s might even the best looking Dragon Age game artistically. Your companions are just as quirky and fun as far as DA companions go, and now we’re going to segue into my only really big glaring problem with the game.

I think the companions are poorly written.

Let me be clear, not in the “lovable scamps and chucklefucks” kind of way that the franchise has been known for, but in the “one-dimensional, lets play it safe” kind of way that feels disingenuous to the human condition.

There’s a noticeable line in the sand for the story they want to tell and how they want the companions to behave that makes me frustrated. All these guys are from different cultures and perspectives, but even in their lowest moments they just want to express kindness without the understanding. I’m not saying people are not capable of being nice to each other, but good characterization is so much more complicated than hearing someone shout “good job, Rook!” for the 20th time in an hour of combat, while you’re almost dead and they’re just a series of abilities hanging out with you.

There’s no real conflict between anyone. This is a franchise known for everyone being catty with each other, but Veilguard raises it’s voice once and then apologizes about it for the rest of the game! Proceeding to walk on eggshells about regrets and loss.

You might disagree. I have seen one comparison by a person saying, “Inquisition is more like they’re your coworkers, and in Veilguard they’re more like your family.” I mean, congratulations on growing up in a perfect household, but the more you get to know people the more you see a persons flaws. Conflicts will just come to light! Anyone in a family knows that it’s filled the the brim with baggage and is still family despite all of it’s flaws. I would argue that your veilsquad are more like coworkers that just have to work on this one project together and are ready to move on when the moment is over.

There’s multiple instances where you have to make a decision that alters the trajectory of the story. Like, lets say that you have to decide which town you’re going to save from a dragon while the rest of your team helps the other location (that also has a dragon). This is a decision that you technically cannot win cause it will directly effect one of your companions. SO you go on to save one place and your reward is them getting huffy that you didn’t save the other place instead. Because of THAT, they become ‘hardened’ and for the sake of gameplay, they’re just not going to heal anymore.

That’s may be the most drastic thing. They might be a little passive aggressive at times, but their overall attitude doesn’t change, and they’re still nice despite their entire world being shattered. OR like hey, let’s say two people might disagree on something, and it’s getting a little heated but instead of a conflict escalating, they both walk away and two scenes later are sorry about a ‘non-issue’ over drinks.

“Why won’t anyone have a problem with me?”

With all that being said, a companion I was looking forward to was Taash. A Qunari Dragon-nerd with a brutish attitude that is very heavily home schooled. They are a walking conflict of a story the devs wanted to tell, that is constantly at odds with the established lore and identity politics of the Qunari people. I was looking forward to their story, because there’s an amazing Allegory for the non-binary identity that can be expressed through how Qunari already see themselves.

It can be frustrating to see a character want to put something into words where gender doesn’t mean the same for them as it does for everyone else, but every opportunity is met with their team infantilizing them, or tripping over themselves to make sure that they get it right, but would never call them out for misgendering or using slurs against others. I sat through a relationship play out despite my frustrations and I came out of it a bit alienated.

It’s not there are people who will play this game and not resonate with Taash’s story. But there’s a feeling of betrayal for long time fans of the franchise that see something with so much potential feel like the writer’s don’t trust the audience to understand the nuance of identity unless it’s told through the lens of a suburban pre-teen. At least I feel that disconnect. Every time somebody opens their mouth, I feel that disconnect.

If you forget that this game is largely about Solas and his regrets, or how the Dread Wolf is plotting sneaky bullshit behind the scenes as you hop around the veil for 60 hours… You see a game where nobody wants to step on anyone’s toes. Every once in a while you can, if you choose to, say the dialogue option “Solas? fuck that guy.” to remind yourself what the game is really about, but at it’s heart the game is less about regret and more about Guilt. The guilt that comes with never wanting to acknowledge conflicts between others or differences in cultures. The Guilt of never expressing any other deeper meaning beyond saying sorry. The guilt of leaving it at “everything is fine and everyone is happy, and you will just play it safe and not hurt anyone.”

Guilt could have been just as strong a theme for this game as long as they were willing to admit they were doing it, but at least it has dragons.