Why Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Hair Looks So Darn Good

@mogan: For me, with the "woke" thing, it's not the topic at hand, it's how they handle and write it. Instead of working it into the lore or just making it a part of the character, it's clumsily shoved into what sounds like modern-day Marvel dialogue, spoken in many cases by characters who look and sound like they belong in a Pixar film. There was a great trans character in Inquisition who didn't feel the need to "educate" me. Inquisition preferred to show, not tell. Veilguard feels like they were told "don't show, don't tell, yell!"

The dialogue and writing just make me wonder who this is for. It's obviously going to piss off right-leaning people, of course. That's fine. But I'm a bi, left-leaning woman who loves fantasy--I'm ostensibly their target audience here--and I am so baffled and put off by the game's handling of topics related to gender, I don't even know where to begin. It's not the inclusion of the topic itself, it's the execution.

There have been a lot of cutscenes I've come across that legitimately feel like some sort of parody made by the right to poke fun at the left. Isabella halting all discussion to drop and "pull a bharv" while telling me that it's better than an earnest, "Oh shit, I'm so sorry," because people "don't really mean" those apologies (uh, speak for yourself?) and it's "performative" and makes it "all about the person apologizing" is so baffling. I get what she's going for, but how is a genuine verbal apology more performative than dropping to the floor to do push-ups and give a monologue while everyone stares on awkwardly? Later, Taash asserts that "everyone hates being a woman." Really? In Thedas? Why? There are tons of different cultures in Thedas, all with different views on gender, but throughout the DA series, I've never gotten the sense that it just objectively sucks to be female. It might suck to be an elf, or a dwarf, or whatever, but I've never gotten the sense that Thedas is inherently sexist. Another moment of "hey, speak for yourself," and there are so many more.

It's just bad writing. Like recovering all six of Solas's memories and getting a post-cutscene cutscene for each cutscene (to explain what happened in the cutscene just in case I was scrolling TikTok or am too dumb to get it) is wild, it's not even deep DA lore, it's very straightforward. They barely discuss the implications of what you just saw. Instead, they regurgitate it in a dumbed-down manner. Saying phrases like "gender stuff," "we got this," "this Blight is weird!" repeatedly is so bizarre and out of place, especially when talking with characters who are still as well-spoken as everyone used to be, like Solas and Morrigan. I miss the elegant, eloquent writing and dialogue the rest of the series blessed us with. Even the codex entries are poorly done, I used to hoover them up in Inquisition because they were so compelling, these read like they were written by and for middle-schoolers. Everything is just so oversimplified and overly "streamlined"--from visuals to combat to writing--that I've found myself deeply struggling to enjoy a game that, according to the developers, was made for people like me.

The lack of blood (except in the first cutscene because they needed me to bleed at Solas' ritual site for lore reasons) is also bizarre, like is blood magic so illegal now that it's also illegal to have blood in your veins? Removing spiders from the game because some people are afraid of them? For real? Trigger warning would be fine. A "no spiders" setting would be fine, if they truly care that much. But just removing them in case somebody somewhere maybe has a phobia? Huh? I just fought two Blighted dragons while fleshy, gross tentacles shot out of the ground and flopped around, but blood and spiders are a bridge too far?

Veilguard was so afraid to take any risks or offend anyone that it's turned an incredible franchise into a tedious snoozefest, which makes me so sad. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, if anyone needs me, I'll be over here fighting ginormous spiders and bleeding everywhere with my gay lizard girlfriend, Lae'zel.