rocky41_7: (bg3)
I've fallen into the trap of being so busy playing Baldur's Gate 3 that I haven't had the time to say anything about Baldur's Gate 3 (a problem I've experienced before - which is why I've never yet reviewed My Life as a Teenage Exocolonist). There's also the fact that anyone on the farthest verge of the gaming sphere is aware of this game and has probably already read a least one review of it. Still, I'll throw my thoughts out, for whatever they're worth.
 
2025 has been a strange gaming year for me. Far and away my most anticipated game was Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game I've waited almost a decade for with baited breath. Baldur's Gate 3 was barely even on my radar—I played a few meager hours of one of Larian's earlier RPGs, Divinity Original Sin 2, which cemented my hatred of turn-based combat and dislike of isometric games. (Which is not a knock on DOS2—it was a very well-done game! Just not for me.) I was not willing to shell out BG3's price for the significant chance that its gameplay would be too frustrating for me to get into the story. Fortunately, my sister handled that issue by gifting it to me for Christmas—a free experiment.
 
In January, as usual, I plunged into my holiday cache of new games, starting with DATV—for more on my disappointment with that, see this review. When I'd quickly burned out on DATV, I turned to BG3, the unknown factor. Admittedly, this game is not optimized for console. Even after its eighth patch, it frequently crashes, particularly in battles with a high number of participants. Its menus and maps are difficult to read at a distance, such as from couch to TV. Its controls can be obtuse as the game tries to cram the huge number of functions onto a controller's limited button scheme. 
 
However, in spite of these flaws, I've been reflecting the last few weeks on how BG3 has nevertheless been so much more fun than DATV, the game I was predisposed to like. What was it, I wondered, that made BG3 more fun? (And sorry--there will be more DA comparisons below.)
 
First, the thing that's most important to me in my RPGs - the vast roleplaying potential. Some games are "roleplaying" games in that you build up a character's skills and customize their fighting style. Others are "roleplaying" games in that you craft a character's personality and control their decisions in ways that (hopefully!) shape the narrative. Some are both - BG3 is both. The battle tactics of gaming has never interested me much, so I will leave that discussion to many reviewers more equipped to have it than I. What I can say is that BG3 gives you incredible potential to create your character--their backstory, their personality, their choices. 
 
I've played three games of BG3, start to finish, and my three player characters (hereinafter referred to as "Tav," the default name for the PC) could not have been more different. And not just in my head, in the way I imagined them when I created and played them, but in the ways they were able to move through the world of BG3 and the choices they made. 
 
BG3 eschews the clean and convenient dialogue wheel in favor of a long list of unvoiced dialogue options reminiscent of Dragon Age Origins (or DOS2, which uses the same style). This gave Larian the freedom to give the player far more response options than are available to a fully-voiced protagonist. Tav can be kind, curious, guarded, funny, caustic, and/or downright cruel. The long, branching conversations available with even minor NPCs gives the player ample opportunity to discover and display what kind of person Tav is to them. 
 
Growing out of this same attitude are the many choices Tav can make throughout the game. I complained in my DATV review that it felt like the PC never made any real choices—they were all surface-level decisions that never once put the player in a real bind or had any notable consequences for the world. BG3 excels perhaps more than anywhere else in allowing the player to shape the world. The decision tree shaping the final two choices of the game itself spans at least half a dozen different outcomes (some with more significant differences than others—in my first playthrough, Tav became a mind flayer by the end!)
 
This freedom is perhaps most on display in the way your companion quests can play out. In some cases, I was reminded of Dragon Age II, where you at times had the choice to indulge your companion's worst instincts, the ones they really wanted to exercise, or to push them forcefully in a healthier direction. For instance, Shadowheart dreams of becoming a Dark Justiciar, a militant devotee of the goddess of darkness, Shar, almost universally reviled by the rest of Faerun for her petty cruelty. As this path demands more and more sacrifice from Shadowheart, you can either encourage her and bolster her resolve to follow her goddess' will—or you can ask her if Shar is really worth it, and push her to buck these divine demands. The outcomes for Shadowheart put her in a very different place, with even more, smaller differences in just how you pursue either route. Given, this is still a game trying to appeal to its audience, so few of your companions will openly regret the path you nudged them towards, although the hints may be there if things haven't turned out like they imagined.
 
I can also say at this point, having played through the character origin "The Dark Urge," that this was a fantastic addition to the game. While I enjoy making my own little guy as much as anyone, "Durge" is a great option to shake things up and it really made me see various facets of the game in a new way, given this unique context. Durge is not going to be to everyone's taste—it demands even more violence than you usually get from BG3—but I was fascinated watching this story play out (with plenty of room left for my own decisions, including ultimately rejecting my ordained destiny). 
 
The last thing I'll mention is how the freedom of storytelling and choice in BG3 mean that you aren't forced onto a particular moral path. Your companions alone present you with a dizzying variety of moral codes, from Wyll who has devoted his life to defending the common people, to Minthara raised on the brutal drow code of conduct which prizes personal gain above all. 
 
You can play Tav as dark or as light or as in-between as you want. You can lie to avoid fights, you can lie to start fights, you can make jokes about the harm you've caused, you can devote Tav to overthrowing oppressive powers, you can go out of your way to help people, you can remain laser-focused on your goal of curing yourself with no time to spare for other people's problems. 
 
Your companions will react to these things—for instance, cheesing aside, Wyll and Minthara are mutually-exclusive companions, because the route you must take to recruit Minthara is so objectionable to Wyll that he'll simply leave the party. In general, they do not seek to spare the player's feelings—your companions can be angry, disappointed, betrayed, and more with Tav, as much as they can feel supported and loved. And it makes sense--it makes sense that Lae'zel is angry when she feels you're wasting time from finding the githyanki creche, where she believes there is a surefire cure to your problem. It makes sense that Shadowheart lashes out defensively if you question her devotion to Shar (even when she herself may be questioning it!) It makes sense that Gale is disgusted by the person he's become alongside Tav if you choose to raid the Emerald Grove rather than protect its residents. The characters as Larian has established them would have these reactions, and it wouldn't be reasonable if they continued to cheerlead Tav in the face of blatant violations of their moral codes and worldviews. 
 
All of these things combine to make for a beautifully rich, layered game world which is just a joy to explore, one which I'm eager to return to yet again. Turn-based combat and isometric views are still not my favorite way to experience a game—but on the whole the story has been such a fun experience that I'm willing to brave a more complicated, more time-consuming fighting method. I may even seek out another copy of DOS2 to give that one another try, now that I have more understanding of the knack of Larian games. I may even go after the first two Baldur's Gate games!
 
BG3 is in no way a "hidden gem," but it was a surprise for me how much I've enjoyed it. A sleeper hit in my personal experience, perhaps. Anyway, I can't say more—I have another Tav to design.

Crossposted to [community profile] gaming 

rocky41_7: (bg3)
Hesitant to post this on tumblr because I don't want to kick off Discourse but "friendship ended with Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate 3 is my new best friend" is so the mood. BG3 has just been so much more FUN that Veilguard, and I say that as someone who was deeply invested in DA for years. Maybe part of that is just that I don't know enough about BG to know if this latest game has fucked its lore and screwed over returning characters (I know at least one person very unhappy with Viconia Devir's cameo) but I do think it's more than that. BG3 lets you roleplay in a way that Veilguard never does. All of the things you control about Rook in Veilguard--species, appearance, class, background--are essentially superficial. There are some unique dialogue options, but at the end of the day, you're playing Bioware's character Rook, who really cannot deviate from their canon attitude and personality. My first Tav, a tiefling monk who was kind-hearted but ultimately non-interventionist about a lot of things, could not be more different from my other two--a githyanki fighter who preferred to talk her way out of fights, and a dragonborn barbarian Durge who doesn't seek cruelty but nevertheless has left a trail of blood behind her. And all of these are things expressed in game separate and apart from any headcanons I have about them.

Your companions REACT to things! My first Tav had a pretty supportive friendship with Gale; my second barely knew his  name; Durge was actually close to him before the Grove slaughter, after which he really wanted nothing to do with her. My first Tav and Wyll almost got together; in the current playthrough, he left the party entirely. Your companions in BG3 have views and beliefs of their own that seriously impact how they view Tav's actions and behavior and that makes the game so much more interesting!

There are things to explore! I let Shadowheart kill Aylin my first run, so meeting her in the second run was a surprise and a delight--and impacted several more quests than just Shadowheart's! I played Veilguard twice, and it really is one and done. If you've played it once, you've seen what it has to offer. Your choices are superficial, your companions are with you no matter what, and for Rook, all endings but one (the one where they themselves go into the Fade) pretty much have the same impact. Despite the amazing graphics and killer character creator and smooth combat, the game is ultimately boring, because it's a roleplaying game that doesn't let you roleplay.

Motivation

Apr. 23rd, 2025 09:53 pm
rocky41_7: (dragon age)
! Dragon Age Veilguard Spoilers Below !

One of the frustrating things about Veilguard is how it avoids the weight of Solas' responsibility to his people. By tying his grief and regret primarily to Mythal, it makes his choices about the Veil personal, when it had always been so much more than that, which he expressed himself in the Trespasser DLC (and hints at throughout Inquisition when he talks about what the world has lost, although then he couches it merely as things he's "seen in the Fade").

Solas loved the ancient elves, loved them so much he started a rebellion against would-be gods because he felt so strongly the people deserved freedom and choice. He devoted himself to freeing them from the tyranny and slavery of the Evanuris, but in the end, his leadership and choices cost them almost everything.

Veilguard gives a quick mention of this in Varric's narration at the start, but otherwise throughout the game shockingly little attention is given to Solas' grief for what he sees as the harm he caused his own people, the very ones he was trying to save, compared to the time given to his personal grief for Mythal.

In the rewritten confrontation between Solas and Flemythal after Inquisition, she derides his guilty conscience, but Rook and co, trying to understand him and convince him to change his mind about the Veil, never really acknowledge the weight of the guilt he carries over what became of the elves and the spirits after he constructed the Veil. There isn't even lip service paid to the debt he feels he owes his people or the spirits now trapped almost entirely in the Fade; instead, his desire to remove the Veil often feels framed as the desperate lashing out of a man lost in grief, heedless of the damage he's doing.

But to really examine this might force the game to address what it hinted at about the uthenerai at the end of Trespasser: that there may be ancient elves--perhaps many of them--still alive, waiting for the Veil to come down so they can be woken. It might also be forced to address how spirits have suffered since the Veil went up, and what that means for Solas who was one of them and seems still to identify more with spirits than elves. And that might make the choices in the game actually difficult, because Rook would be asking Solas not just to preserve their world, but to condemn the remnants of his own people and accept the segregation of spirits to the Fade to do it.

Solas' remark about "the world she wanted" in the Veilguard climax make no sense. We have not been given any evidence that Mythal cares about the state of the world, or spirits, or the Veil, except that she thinks Elgar'nan sometimes goes too far, and at present Flemythal has come to feel the mortals deserve to live (certainly, nothing about Mythal in the flashbacks we get suggests she would have any real opinion on the Veil). Solas, on the other hand, is eaten alive with guilt over the harm he inadvertently did to the elves, to the spirits (his original people), to the environment. Those feelings have nothing to do with Mythal: they are a product of his own pain at seeing the damage his Veil caused. But they cannot be truly dealt with in the game, which depends on Mythal's ability to wave her hand and brush away Solas' guilt and desire to repair the damage he did, which means his feelings must be heavily tied to her, not to the spirits or the elves or the world itself

It makes his motivations much weaker, and weakens his character overall.


rocky41_7: (Default)
I know in-game these decisions ultimately had no impact but you better bet my inquisitor who disbanded both the Grey Wardens and the Inquisition wonders every goddamned day if her decisions doomed the south
rocky41_7: (dragon age)
Fandom: Dragon Age

Pairing: None

Summary: The Dread Wolf's rebellion learns of the newest use of Elgar'nan's Helm of the Solar.

Length: 3.5k

Excerpt:

Solas had liked the sound of “we don’t leave people behind.” It felt noble and it improved morale and it meant not giving more wins to the Evanuris than were wholly unavoidable. Yet the uglier and more protracted this rebellion became, the costlier “no man left behind” was as a policy. Eventually, over the sound of Felassan grinding his teeth, Solas officially cut it off. Rebelling against would-be gods was hazardous—anyone who joining them had to be aware. He would not risk more lives—and more fighters—on suicidal rescue missions.

            There were, however, exceptions.


rocky41_7: (dragon age)
On a personal level,  it was a dick move and it's not invalid of Rook to be unhappy about it, but in the practical scheme of things, its very easy to see why Solas deceived them about Varric's death. Cruel to Rook, of course, but with Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain loose in the world, ready to blight Thedas to regain their power, and Solas trapped in the Fade where he can't effectively combat them, and this one random mortal who barely grasps the situation being the only one standing against them...I see why his calculus landed on the side of deeply hurting this one person in order to better prevent the destruction of the world and its subjugation to god-like tyrants he barely defeated last go around.

(Can you tell I'm crossposting this week?)
rocky41_7: (dragon age)
Fandom: Dragon Age (post-Veilguard!)

Pairing: Solavellan

Summary: Solas and Lavellan find their way back into Thedas, briefly. Naturally, Lavellan wants to visit the clan.

Look all I can say is this is one of the most self-indulgent things I've ever posted, but if you wanted some meaningless post-canon Solavellan family fluff with a side of minor angst, here it is.

Length: 6.1k

rocky41_7: (dragon age)

! Dragon Age Veilguard Spoilers Below !

When Solas tilted his head to deepen the kiss, Lavellan delicately withdrew, as she had done repeatedly since they had entered the Fade. She had made no complaints, nor reprimands, nor in any other way indicated he was behaving inappropriately, yet in the past he had known her to have more tolerance for such things. Unable to suppress his concerns any further, Solas probed carefully.

            “You are distracted,” he observed, keeping his tone light. Lavellan was looking off into what constituted the horizon of their world. “What has ahold of your thoughts?”

            Lavellan hummed. “Nothing,” she said, matching his lightness, looking up at the sky as if there were something there of surpassing interest which he should also find compelling. Solas had grown accustomed to the tells of Lavellan’s lying, even if she had managed it more adeptly in this instance.

            Using a tack which was generally reliable for getting information from her, while keeping his voice gentle, he said: “I wish you would tell me what troubles you.”

            There was a lengthy pause, while Lavellan tugged at the sparse Fade grass around them, debating whether to make another effort at lying. Finally, she spoke.

            “Do you remember when I drank from the vir’abelasan?” Solas snorted in disapproval.

            “Yes, I would not forget.”

            “Well, that piece of Mythal…she is with me still. She does not make herself known often, but she is there. And she is…most …vocal when you and I are close.” They were close more often than not these days. There was no one else for company but the spirits.

            Solas cocked his head to the side, intrigued.

            “Perhaps it—the fragment—is responding to something,” he said. “A memory of Mythal’s, or some association she once had?”

            Lavellan hummed again, in the way she did before she drastically understated something. “No, I don’t think that’s it,” she said, still picking at the grass and not looking at him. Solas studied her profile a moment.

            “What do you think?” he asked, since she was the one with a bit of Mythal in her head.

            “Ah…” Again, he watched her consider lying. Again, she eventually fell out on the side of cautious honesty. “I believe she is…uncomfortable developing such an…incarnate knowledge of you.” 

            As usual, Lavellan phrased herself so obtusely that Solas had to consider her words a moment before grasping what she was putting so tidily.

            And when he realized, he could not stop himself from laughing.

            “Has the fragment spoken to you?” he asked.

            “No,” Lavellan said. “But the sentiment is present.”

            “And what is the sentiment?”

            “I imagine it is similar to how I might feel about suddenly sharing a mind with my sister-in-law,” said Lavellan, and Solas let out another burst of laughter, briefly consumed with the thought of Mythal’s expression at having to be party to Lavellan’s experience of his romantic advances, then sobered as he realized the problems this presented. “I am working on soothing her,” said Lavellan. “But she is still…fussy.” She exhaled loudly. “I must admit you were correct when you warned me that there would be consequences to drinking from the vir’abelasan of which I had not yet conceived.”

            “And I will confess I had not foreseen this particular consequence myself,” Solas replied.

            “Well,” Lavellan sighed with some chagrin, at last turning her attention back to him directly. “At least we have quite some time to sort it out.”

AO3 | Pillowfort | tumblr


rocky41_7: (dragon age)

! Dragon Age Veilguard Spoilers Below !

I'm sure other people have already said this and will continue to say so in more eloquent ways going forward, but the inquisitor really is a far better foil to Solas than Rook, whether friended, romanced, rivaled, or none of the above. The inquisitor is someone pushed into a difficult position, who chose to take on a leadership role they maybe weren't ready for because they felt they needed to for the greater good, and was then hit with decision after world-altering decision. Side with the mages or the templars in an ongoing war. Choose whether to let them join you as allies or forced conscripts. Decide what happens to the Grey Wardens, an organization centuries old and possibly critical to Thedas' defense but also possibly incurably corrupt. Pass judgement on Blackwall, on Florianne, on Erimond, on Warden Ruth. Are you going to claim the mantle of the Herald of Andraste or not? Too bad, the people around you have already decided that's what you are, what they need you to be. Prioritize: Saving a group of people close to one of your friends (possibly your lover), or saving an alliance with a world power who may help you save the world. Sit in your castle and manage these hundreds or thousands of troops who are now ardently devoted to your cause, willing and even eager to kill and die in your name. Inquisitor would you--? Inquisitor, what do you think about--? Inquisitor, we need--! 

And people will be angry with you about these decisions! They all have opinions about how the world should be and if you act in opposition to those they will not hesitate to express their displeasure. You cannot make a decision on the Grey Wardens that both Blackwall and Solas will approve of. 

The inquisitor little by little is forced into leadership beyond what they likely ever intended, and the consequences of their actions will ring across southern Thedas for years, possibly generations, and they will have to live with choices they made in the throes of a desperate war for survival, and so will everyone else.

By contrast, Rook primarily deals only with their small circle of friends and rarely makes any significant decisions outside of saving Minrathous or Treviso (which was not much of a choice--obviously they can't be in two places at once, so one city is going down no matter what) and there are no real consequences to any of their choices, besides the first one--disrupting Solas' ritual and unleashing Elgar'nan and Ghilain'nain, something no one ever blames them for. They complete their entire quest to stop Solas without ever commanding or being responsible for more than seven people and are never pressed into having to make a truly difficult or unwinnable choice. Rook doesn't know what it's like to even be in the inquisitor's position, let alone Solas'.


rocky41_7: (dragon age)
So, ten years since Inquisition released, eight years since I got into Dragon Age myself. I used to think the amount of time they were taking between that release and the next game was because they were taking their time, and I was happy to wait as long as necessary to give them the time to do it right. Nearing the end of my second playthrough of Veilguard, I don't think that anymore. I think what we got was as slapdash as if they had been rushing the release to come out right after Inquisition. It's disappointing, but it's what we have.

There are some spoilers below, particularly in terms of themes, but I've tried to minimize and warn for any specific spoiler content.

 
Read more... )

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