Dragon Age The Veilguard Criticism Thread (formerly Skepticism Thread) [Spoilers]

I assumed one of the designers had their kid write the character. Because her "jokes" were the kind of crap a 5 year old would find funny. Which you can argue was the point but ut didn't make for a interesting character.

One of my biggest concerns narratively is how DA4 will impact the elves across Thedas.

Honestly, I do not want to have to slaughter hundreds/thousands of elves in this game. And then if/after you win, how will the various nations react in the aftermath?

This has been my worry ever since I heard the rather ominous song "Mercy for the Elves" (otherwise known as the "Slightest Unite") in Trespasser even before Solas revealed his grand plan. It was bad enough in DA2 when the Arishok was supported by waves of elves from the alienage that I was forced to kill. Plus of course the various elf clans you can wipe out if you are not careful across all three games. I've always felt the writers had something against elves even before Solas gave them an excuse to kill yet more elves. So I hope they don't decide that the majority of elves have flocked to his side and he is going to use them as an elven shield against our PC and their party.

Was he responsible for that? After all David Gaider was lead writer then. I loved all the elven lore we got in DAI but it still left a lot of unanswered questions.

The problem also with the elf plot is that you only learn about the significance of the vallaslin if you romance Solas. Corypheus trolls Lavellan with it but it is easy to miss and why would they pay attention to him? Then the Inquisitor might see stuff going through Trespasser but it is only going to be passed on to modern Dalish if the Inquisitor is an elf. Also, as you say, they now have a different, opposite meaning, to the one they had in ancient times. "We are the last of the elvhen and never again will we submit", might seem ironic in hindsight of history but it is the sentiment of the Dalish now. They were the elves who wouldn't submit to tyranny, so you'd think he'd admire their attitude if nothing else, but of course they are going to be sitting ducks to be manipulated by him, unless they pay attention to their own lore and remember he is the Trickster God.

Also, there did seem a move away from making an even handed view of history to one of the Dalish were always in the wrong. Look at the resolution of the whole Red Crossing incident and then even more what they revealed in Jaws of Hakkon. Ameridan was a friend of Drakon, the Dalish were wrong not to help with the Blight because they didn't like Drakon. (I still maintain that they tried but arrived too late and what about the Warden treaties that they honour in DAO, plus that story of the clan up in the Anderfels during the 2nd Blight?) No one puts the Dalish side of things or tries to defend them, everyone accepts it was all their fault. Sera even compares it to her Pride Cookies, which trivialised the whole thing. It wasn't pride that stopped the Dalish helping, if it did stop them helping, they thought Drakon was worse than Tevinter and if you read the history of his rise to power, they were right. Ameridan admits that Drakon wanted to "simplify things" with regard to religion and yet was okay with Ameridan worshipping both the Maker and the elven gods. Strangely enough no one mentioned that in subsequent Blights the Orlesians only helped if they thought there was something in it for them and even with the second blight, Drakon was using it to spread his religion and annex nations into his empire.

What also annoyed me in Trespasser was that when we caught up with Solas we are not allowed to ask or receive answers that might be really helpful. Just have Solas expound his contribution to the downfall of the elves and why he now wants to reverse it. It was just a big set up for the next game. If the Trespasser plot had solely concentrated on the Qunari threat, we could have tied off the Inquisitor story as they claim was their intention, just have one of their companions chop off their hand to save their life, make the decision over the future of the Inquisition and that would have been it. All the controversy over whether we should have had a new PC could have been avoided. We would also not have the situation where we aren't even clear which elves he is trying to save: ancient, modern city elves, all of them?

I'd also like for the elves who oppose him not just to be those who appear to have rejected their own society already. How about a Dalish clan that considers it morally wrong to wipe out all the other races or alternatively it is a crime against nature to alter the fabric of reality a second time? As for the city elves, my sympathies are with them if he has recruited them en mass simply because everyone else treats them so badly, they feel they have nothing to lose. That was already the case with their recruitment by the Qun. Please don't let Solas manipulate them en mass as well.

It is not clear to me if modern elves would live or die with Solas's plan. If they would live, I would expect large numbers of city elves to willingly join him, no manipulation needed. They have been treated so badly by humans that many might not care if the cost of Solas's plan is humans dying. They have much to gain with Solas's plan, and as you said, little to lose.

I hold Weekes in high regard for Solas, I just lumped that together with the elven plot overall. I don't actually know who wrote that scene, sorry!

I know. I kind of like it that way even though because it makes the scene so heart breaking, but yeah, it's a HUGE deal that a lot of players probably missed... Then again, it's easy to reveal it again in DA4.

Definitely! I agree that the Dalish shouldn't get the idiot ball and all fall for Solas who doesn't even like them because they were too stupid to remember their own history properly. The Dalish have been jerks and idiots for way too long. Time they do something cool for a change, not just find corrupted eluvians and get their own people killed because, again, they don't really know what they're doing, lol. My memory of the storyline you mention is very foggy, so I'll just take your word for it that the Dalish always look bad. They do!

I'd like to believe that Bioware knows what they're doing but we all know they make it up as they go. So who knows how the Solas angle will connect to the qunari threat and what the inquisitor will or will not have to say about all of it (in a cameo of working form the shadows). I expect a lot of things to get brushed under the rug tbh.

I even have a hard time calling her incompetent...any DA companion naturally has a level of competency...just naive and desperate as hell.

gervaise21
Remember, like Rian Johnson Luke Skywalker said "everything you know is wrong". It's a very easy way for every writer to piss on anything that inconveniences the story they are trying to tell. It's something that DA and ME have done many times over.