Dragon Age 5 [post-credit scene spoilers]

And also Taashe's tablet talks about Devouring Storm across the sea and some adversary.

I'm not playing the next one. Do you feel like you have to?

Not really. There's more stuff coming out than ever, and Bioware's made it pretty clear they're no longer interested in making the kinds of games or telling the kinds of stories I want. The next big budget RPG I'm looking forward to is Exodus. If that's a fib, I've still got the indie scene, where they're always doing all kinds of interesting stuff. It stings a bit that I'll never get the sequel to Origins I wanted, but I made my peace with that many years ago.

I don't think either has been explicitly confirmed yet, but I assume so since it is made by one of the creative directors behind DA:O and the lead writer of ME1, and they've very much positioned the game as a spiritual successor to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. I don't want to derail this thread, so I recommend you check out the official website and/or the thread here in BSN for more info.

Didn't they release marketing people hated and then proceed to lie about it for 2-3 months until it was released? why would you trust anything that came out of their mouths at this point?

Yes to both! I'm really looking forward to it, the time-dilation thing is a great way to distinguish it from any other space game.

Indeed.

I finished Veilguard today and been looking up theories/thoughts and yeah, I don't think it takes Loghain's agency, or Bartrand/Meredith/Orsino/Corypheus' agency.

As you said devil on the shoulder.

Enablers.

People who convince you to drop inhibitions.

Most likely in the case of someone so strident and headstrong as Loghain - They're providers of confirmation bias. The agency and drive and motive are all there, these Executors presumably sought out Loghain etc as prime candidates to push. 

Hope renamed the faction name, "Executor" is such a weird name. Like "Administrator", or "HR".

I forget at this moment where I read it, but Gaider has said that the whole story of Dragon Age is known to the team from start to finish as per his outline and apparently Veilguard is more or less on track. I take it to mean, at least to an extent, that the team isn't just making stuff up as they go but that they have an overarching storyline that begun with Origins and ends with the final game in the DA series.

Edit. It might be this article.

I can believe that. I also believe that the execution of each game varies from each other but that they are all connected to each other. While I played Veilguard I didn't get the sense that all lore was being retconned but that we were learning more of the lore that we previously thought we knew. I think I now see the lore and other aspects of the story as being told by an humanly inaccurate narrator.  

However! I think it's unfortunate that the secret ending made so many feel like a rug was pulled from underneath their feet. I had already read about the "über-lore" before I saw that ending on Youtube and I feel like I understood where that reveal was coming from; it's dictated by the original storyarc. I suspect what failed with this reveal was that the game was so focused on two elven gods who were not even a particularly difficult adversaries and left this quite a significant reveal as a hidden bit of lore and never really built on this unknown threat. Since, right now they seem to be one. In Inquisition, I thought they were rather an impartial observer so for me even that was a suprise - unless the Executors/Those Across the Sea are somehow misrepresented as a threat?

I haven't yet figured out what the endgame of their "guidance, balancing and whispering" is going to be. Yes, the secret ending seems to imply they nudged the events of all four games in some way ie. Loghain betraying the Wardens and letting Cailan die, Bartrand pinching the lyrium idol and the discord between Meredith and Orsino, the breach being opened by Corypheus and Flemeth something something (I'm not sure which part of her story even comes to play here) and now in Veilguard we've sorted out the elven gods and Solas. 

In order for these events to make sense as a singular red thread, I'm really scrathing my head. I feel like the Minrathous evidence board is pointing towards this as well. The only conclusion I have at the moment is that The Executors/Those Across the Sea instigated the events of each game and the end result in each game was that the protagonist saved the day and resolved whatever conflict was happening each time. It doesn't seem like there is a secret, underlying plot connecting these events - at least, not at this time. 

DA2 was more like a side-quel that they came up with when EA gave them 18 months to make a Dragon Age sequel and they realized they couldn’t fit what would become DAI in that time frame.

I’m actually pretty sure the intention was for DA2 was for it to be a game long origin story for Hawke, who would become the Inquisitor. Hence all that in hindsight silly marketing that Hawke would be the most important person in Thedas.

And defeating Solas was supposed to be the second half or third of DAI, but dealing with Corypheus took up so much of the plot it got pushed off until another game. Maybe fighting the Evanuris was originally part 3 of the plan after (Fifth Blight)/(Corypheus-Solas)/(Evanuris) and then “Those Across the Sea”, if the Evanuris were part of that plan at all.

Rook did everything right.. and they're sending him after elves. Elves! We both know they're not the real threat. Those beyond the sea are still out there!

And it's up to us to stop them.

(Yes I'm replaying the trilogy 😝)