Mastodawn

I'll see Dragon Age opinions sometimes and it's like, I dunno, call it a guilty pleasure. An issue I have with the fantasy genre is that a lot of nerds are deeply insecure and terrified of sincerity, and in the process they just end up subjugating elves at every turn.

So, I can appreciate Veilguard because this is the first game where you can help the elves actually fucking do something. I think this is the first game in the series where the elves actually get to aspire to something, not just to reclaim the past, but to build a real future for themselves.

A part of it may be because I'm a Majora's Mask enjoyer and Veilguard does something similar. It's probably the bleakest game in the series, but I feel it employs that bleak tone to create something beautiful.

There's this theme of new beginnings that encompasses pretty much every character story, having to find new reasons to live and keep going forward.

Finding a new purpose in life, moving beyond grief and loss, accepting you're going to live no matter how much you were prepared to die. A refusal to properly deal with grief can stagnate a culture, just as much as it can stagnate a person.

Now, something that I think would *fuck* would be that the proverbial moon comes crashing down if you don't prepare enough, hell, if you don't 100% the game, you lose. That would be amazing. What if that's the canon ending?

This stands in contrast to something like Baldur's Gate 3 which is just *bad*. It's awful. It stands among Jade Empire and Temple of Elemental Evil as some of the worst RPGs of all time.

@EatingHawaiianP1zza With Veilguard I feel kind of mixed; I don't mind the shift to a more heroic-fantasy kind of genre, but there are moments that just clash too much with the previous characterisation of the setting.

Ultimately though, in Bioware fashion it stands on the strength of the character writing (Emmerich ❤️ ) and I was glad for having played it and seen it through the end (well, they planted some sneaky sequel hints, but... I have my doubts if that's happening)

Plus, for a project that got pivoted to a live-service game and back, I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did (hey, the game-loop itself was better than Inquisition).

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Darius 🔞

Mar 9

@EatingHawaiianP1zza Got me curious though, what are your BG3 thoughts? I've started playing it a while back, but just ran out of steam in the middle of act 3.
Partially I think because I saw some "how it ends" spoilers and kind of just went "aight, I don't care much about all that", partially I think I got tired of endless choices/reactivity.

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Ja'aran Mar 9

@snowdarius A part of it is personal bias. The first is that I grew up on the first two games and they've meant a lot to me over the years.

An example of this was when they wanted you to kill off Viconia, the sole source of all of Shadowheart's pain and suffering for her entire life. And this sucks, they did her so dirty.

So, it doesn't really succeed as a sequel or a proper successor in my opinion.

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The second is, well, let me put it this way. Karlach's original ending was better.

Karlach's story ended tragically with her only options to either die or return to whatever it was, the latter of which she thinks is a fate worse than death.

This leads to a heartrending conversation where she breaks down over the fact that she's going to die. And she has to come to grips with the fact that she isn't getting better.

Unfortunately, people are blitheringly fucking stupid, and complained because they couldn't handle a sad ending.

The fact that there was no way to save Karlach and you just had to live with it, was a really potent gut punch in a story that otherwise had everything wrap up super cleanly.

In short, the players basically ruined it and watered it down from every corner. And what's left is just nothing, nothing left for you to think about.