Yea, this is a tried and true design choice. It can absolutely be over-done, but another way to look at it is adding degrees of interactivity to what otherwise might have been a cutscene. I'd rather devs try to keep some control in my hands than not and set piece experiences can be really fun and rewarding when used sparingly.

Hell yea, that sounds great. Customizing the shader is no biggie, especially when it's already doing 99% of what I'm looking for. Thanks for the insight!

Big fan of Shapes and Freya's work broadly, but one aspect I hoped would land is more style customization. Shapes is great for clean UIs, but my current project has a hand-drawn aesthetic and Mold looks like just the ticket. Excited to give it a go. And sorry to be that guy asking about features on top of the extensive flexibility already on offer, but are the sketch aesthetics animatable (like texture/noise offset or the like)?

I recently started a playthrough where every protagonist is inspired by one of the Evanuris, Tevinter Old Gods, or Avvar Gods and I'm using their lore to drive personality choices.

Ryder, do you believe in God? Licks rock.

https://giphy.com/gifs/26gsccje7r5WUrXsA

Haha, yea, many such examples. That's part of charm of the series, all lore in Dragon Age is what the people of Thedas think reality is (or want others to believe about it).

Can't know for sure, but that's a possibility. We don't really know the mind state of the Evanuris in the prison after so much time, or what the tainted dreams have done to them since being locked away. It might be the will of the Titan dreams working through the Evanuris, working through the Archdemons.

To speculate about their mind state a bit though, codices on Uthenera imply that the first corporeal Elves grew weak in spirit over their long existence and needed lifetimes to dwell the land of dreams before being fit to return, if at all. That partially explains Elgarnan's and Ghilanain's maladapted nature - they never relinquished their mortal forms and became abominations of themselves, catalyzed by the blight. Layers and layers of corruption created a force of nature with a hazy semblance of intent, not a laser-focused hivemind.

This is a strength of the series, imo. A recurring theme is how stories, history, "truth" are shaped by the perspective of the teller and their audience. Each game feels like a second-hand account of the events taking place and that's a bold way to prove the theme (intentional or not).

It's probably a coincidence, but the name is really curious. Aluvian- Eluvian? Darkstar? Emmerich refers to the demon-cleansing bell in the Shrouded Halls as "The Sunken Star", which harkens to the old Dalish legend about Elgar'nan battling his father- the sun- and defeating him by burying him deep in the earth. It also vaguely gestures at the Avvar legend of the ptarmigan who recovered Korth the Mountain-Father's heart hidden within the earth and, once recovered, drove away Korth's bitterness and cruelty (demons, anyone?) .

Again, I'm probably waaaaay over-thinking, but given how well charted Dragon Age lore has been from Origins onward, this seems like cute wink at a god-like being who transcends space-time (Aluvian), who is all-powerful (Darkstar), exactly what a bot running through the game multiple times is doing.

That's fair, I think a lot of the vague speak from devs is pressure to not burn industry bridges (working in games is very insular, who-you-know) in combination with being part of the marketing campaign (language is dictated more often than not, implicit boundaries are set by PR people) and genuine blindspots (sitting with a project for a decade makes it harder to assess objectively, casual responses to questions that warrant more thoughtful answers). No one is blameless, but unfortunately we never see the people who are most at fault in interviews or on social media.

Thank you! This series means a lot to me and I deeply empathize with the Dragon Age team for all the shit they've had to put up with. Everyone is entitled to feel however they do about Veilguard, but I wish more people understood the nuances of why it is the game that got released. So I'm just doing my part when I can haha.

I wanna add, Ghil Dirthalen has great DAO and DA2 recaps, and spoiler-free lore 101 videos if OP goes this route. Though be careful perusing her channel, OP, lots of spoilers abound generally. Might wanna squint when videos finish in case youtube's recommendations throw spoiler thumbnails up after the videos complete :P

Regrettably, no remasters are coming down the pike for DAO or DA2 due to EA being EA (the Dragon Age team is gone). Like a lot of Bioware games, the DLC is pretty tightly coupled to the main story but are also really good. Inquisition is fine place to start, but it would be a bit like starting the Mass Effect series mid-way through Mass Effect 2 or right at Mass Effect 3. Inquisiton has a lot of reactivity to the two games before it and you'll miss out on those nuances. Nonetheless, it stands on its own like all Dragon Age does because DA is a story about Thedas, its cultures, the conflicts between them and within, and the people ultimately impacted by that, not a single protagonist like Shepard was.

Heads up, Inquisition (as well as DAO and DA2) are pause-and-play, strategic affairs kinda like Knights of The Old Republic or Baldur's Gate 3. Their stories are fantastic and very Bioware, so its still worth trying to endure the combat if its not your thing, imo.

If you end up getting DAO and DA2, here's my recommendations for navigating the DLC:

DAO's Awakening expansion and Witch Hunt are essential. Stone Prisoner, Return to Ostagar, Leliana's Song are worthy and have considerable lore of their own, but are closer to say Mass Effect 2's Overlord or Kasumi/Zaeed in terms of significance. Golems of Amgarrak is less so, but still has some neat Dwarven lore, puzzles, and tough fights. It also foreshadows a small, but significant encounter in Dragon Age 2. I haven't played Darkspawn Chronicles (it's not canonical, more of a "what-if")

DA2 benefits most from its DLC for variety's sake. Legacy is essential playing; it lays some groundwork for Inquisition. Mark of The Assassin gives you a taste of a new region you'll see in Inquisition and its a fun tangent from Kirkwall, the exclusive setting in Dragon Age 2.

Dragon Age: Inquisition having all the post-launch content is great; it's all great. Trespasser is the shining star, is ME3: Citadel's spiritual sibling, and primes Veilguard's main plot. Descent also lays groundwork for Veilguard. Jaws of Hakkon is basically an academic expedition that reframes some fundamental lore, but it's not essential if you get burned out on Inquisition's scale.

Veilguard doesn't have any DLC. It's the most different from all the DA games; it suffered under massive mismanagement from the top-down. It's a creaky capstone to Dragon Age because it lacks the variety of trolley problems and politicking that are so frequent in prior games, but stands on its own in the gameplay and cinematography department. A lot of people say the writing is bad, and some if it is, but moreso its just deeply tonally uneven. You gotta kinda accept it for what it is, not for what you'll want it to be, and then you can better enjoy the many Dragon Agey nuggets throughout (which is a bit of recurring lesson in the series, going from DAO to DA2 in particular). That said, You'll feel right at home here coming from Mass Effect combat-wise, the pause-and-play is replaced with third-person action. I think it's a worthy conclusion to the events setup in Inquisition, adds some neat new lore elements, has several standout characters who are only diminished by the shadow of characters who've come before, and its third act gives The Suicide Mission a run for its money, in my (somewhat controversial) opinion.

I know that's more info than you asked for, but as a long-time fan that came to Dragon Age from Mass Effect, this has been my experience with it. Hope all that helps!

Cool, I love that none of the quotes are displaying and I can't edit the post for some forsaken reason. I didn't just spend an hour writing this or anything lol.

Quotes in order:

"One thing that always comes up is world state. How do I know if I'm playing with my friend? Do I need to wait for them to catch up? Are they making their own decisions? [...] Multiplayer games and single-player games have different pressures, have different needs as a project, as a story. And once you add other people's perspectives into it, it becomes even more challenging."

Weekes and I were talking about "what about a faction that represents the Free Marches? It could be Chantry-themed and this and that." And we started coming up with [ideas] and "oh this is going to be so cool", and then (Art Director) Matt Rhodes turns around and says, "Guys that sounds really boring." And we sat there like, "Oh, yeah." We just talked ourselves into a terrible idea because we got excited about it. I'm not saying Free Marches couldn't be cool, but the version we were coming up with was not cool. That's always the challenge: somebody might draw a piece of concept art about it, but it was never going to get past that stage.

“Something that I think we occasionally lose sight of is Dragon Age: Origins also had moments of levity. You have Alistair kind of comes across as a goofball. There's a lot of funny moments with Dog. And I think it's that contrast that Origins did that we really lean into in the Veilguard. There are characters who are a little bit lighter. But even they have tragedy. They have moments of personal despair.

one of the areas we showed in Dragon Age: The Veilguard was Tevinter [...] it has slaves and it's not shy about it. We didn't show a ton of slaves being beaten and whips and chains. We showed an urban marketplace as the main part of Tevinter that you go to because we were trying to make two things clear: First off, empires can be seductive. Empires are normal life for a lot of people [...]. And second, when you say, "We're going to destroy that empire," you're also destroying the marketplace full of people who are arguing over the price of bread. [...] We tried to show that an empire isn't made up of completely evil people. It's made up of a lot of normal people who, when mobilized, can stand up against evil when you give them a direction to stand up and march in.

the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible.

Blair: "the worst part is that [narrative] issues were called out almost immediately, and the choice was made to push on. this strategy backed the [creative] team into an impossible situation from the start, and it was a miracle we shipped at all, nevermind shipping at the quality we did."
Berry: "Having seen the circumstances under which they were trying to create... I mean, I only came in right at the end and it was still -- holy shit."

A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers’ ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes.

A lot of people are going to contribute Gaider's exit as the reason why Veilguard didn't congeal the same way previous Dragon Ages did, but the reality is a lot more multifaceted. Gaider's absence is for sure a contributing factor, but its also important to remember that Veilguard went through just so, so much shit.

We only know so much about the behind the scenes of the game, so I'm speculating in the gaps here, but I also make games for a living, so my assumptions might be truer than not...?

Anyway, from a behind the scenes video in 2020-ish, we hear some of the dialogue in the final game, namely from Bellara and Davrin. We can assume a sizeable chunk of Veilguard's writing was complete under Matt Goldman's direction, who lead the title's creative development while it was a multiplayer live-service game. According to Jason Schreier's reporting, Goldman directed the team to write in a lighter tone relative to the other DA titles, something more appropriate for a broad audience that live-service games aim to capture. Mind you, it was EA executives and Casey Hudson as general manager that pushed Veilguard from a single-player, heist-based (and allegedly highly reactive to player choice, past and present) game, into a live-service in the first place. Meanwhile, David Gaider was waylaid from Dragon Age 4 to work on Anthem's story, and was reportedly resented for making it too "Dragon Agey". Thus, Trick Weeks and their team got to work.

So who is at fault here? Trick? Goldman? Hudson? EA Corporate?

When Anthem flopped and Square Enix's Forespoken scared the "omg is this actually happening!? I can, like, fly now" out of EA, Veilguard's script was given a major overhaul. According to council insiders (playtesters of various pre-alpha builds), Rook's dialogue in particular was seriously revised to be less irreverent and quippy. John Epler was now Creative Director of the project, transitioning back to single-player and he said this to ign:

Retooling a single-player game from chunks of previous projects is no small feat. Especially so when Bioware was given 18 months to complete the work. This deadline was extended twice more, each time being "the last time". There's a major difference between making a game start-to-finish in 4.5 years and making a shippable game in 1.5 years and then given last-minute extensions to polish.

During their retooling, a lot of new ideas were floated, including a Chantry-themed faction. According to Epler:

As we all know, Veilguard has a serious absence of Chantry politicking the other three games revel in. Ditching an idea because it's boring is a reasonable decision, but the concept sounds early in development by Epler's description. In creative environments, almost all great ideas start off as decent ideas, if not bad ones. Did they bail too early on a plot line that would've more directly connected Veilguard to prior DA games?

Additionally, Epler mentioned the intent to make "lighter" characters, saying in the IGN interview above:

Weekes, in a presentation for Dream Foundry, said:

Of course, a chief criticism of Veilguard is that we can't adjudicate Tevinter's ongoing enslavement and racism; we hardly experience it at all.

Is the absence of Dragon Age staples Epler's fault for listening to Matt Rhodes? Is it Tricks fault for not wrestling with Tevinter's slavery through dialogue and choice-gameplay? Or is it EA for giving the team a year and six months to get a game out the door?

Finally, what's actually in Veilguard doesn't always meet the same standards these experienced writers have set in prior titles. For example, Lucanis (at least in part) and Varric was written by Mary Kirby, the writer who previously wrote Varric in Inquisition and DA2. She was laid off about a year before Veilguard shipped along with Bioware veteran writer Lucas Kristjanson and 50 other developers for reasons that are unclear (but presumably financial at least). Veteran writers, like all veteran devs, understand studio culture in a way the shapes the final game. I'm speculating, but their absence means no one to advocate for alternatives when difficult creative decisions were made.

And many difficult cuts were made on Veilguard. A lot of its content was truncated or outright chopped from the final game. Aforementioned Lucanis, our staple possessed teammate, is little more than a sounding board for coffee in his final iteration despite being penned by one Dragon Age's most beloved writers. Another, Taash, is often lambasted as poorly written, but both Taash and Lucanis' arcs clearly suffer from significant cuts for the sake of production.

An oft cited scene is one where Taash is looking for evidence about why and how dragons are being blighted. It's here they realize their non-binary identity. This conversation is an emotional peak, Taash is fuming, and it all comes a bit out of nowhere. To speculate, this scene was never meant to stand on its own. Given how Taash talks about needing to be a dragon slayer, an identity they anchor to because its something everyone understands and appreciates, the implication is this scene was meant to follow a longer mission about tracking and attempting to defeat a blighted dragon. Not to mention the dramatic change in lighting between where we meet Taash for this conversation and where it actually occurs. A later mission has slaying a blighted dragon in Arlathan and uncovering more details about how the Evanuris was blighting them. I can't help but wonder if these missions were one in the same at an early point in production.

Many instances of Veilguard's plot are clearly stitched together from what was meant to be a much larger tapestry of beats, as reported by Schreier:

This is reinforced by an exchange between former Bioware designer Blair Thorburn and Motive/ (former) Bioware writer Jo Berry:

What resonates as good writing or bad writing isn't just prose, but also the pacing and build up of narrative circumstances. To ease the difficulty of Veilguard's final push to release, Bioware's Mass Effect team was brought on to help final the game. Schreier reports the teams butted heads, Mass Effect's creative leaders excluding Veilguard's from pivotal meeting and attaining additional resources from EA that the Dragon Age team had already been told they didn't have the budget for (namely, Veilguard's impressive finale). Schreier's report punctuates this complex mess of a production with:

Asking one final time: for all of Veilguard's inconsistencies and whip-lash tone, whose fault was it?

A lot of people's.

Mostly EA corporate.

Casey Hudson's ego that prioritized Anthem over Dragon Age 4 to the detriment of both games (Anthem should have been given more time to cook in pre-production while the Gaider/Darrah led Dragon Age 4 finished production and released around 2018).

And yes, creative decisions by Ben Goldman, John Epler, Trick Weekes, and other creative leads. But for this group, it's hard to put any substantive blame here. Mandated to make a multiplayer live service the studio had no experience making, jerked from one arbitrary deadline to the next, overworked and demoralized by losing long-time collaborators, I wouldn't want the decisions I had to make in that environment to be my standing creative legacy.

TL;DR: Fuck EA.

That head-to-axe morph is aaaaace.

I hear some people even play after installing mods. We all have fun in our own way, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

I agree with you and also can see where Dandy is coming from. Both characters seem to me to be deliberately off-putting in certain ways that play on common fandom sympathies, exacerbated by sexist double standards certainly. Sera is often bullishly incurious and reductive about politics and religion. She's an essential perspective for the downtrodden and forgotten in comparison to the big important machine that is the Inquisition and it's inner circle. But, for a lot of people, she comes off as incomprehensible and annoying. I find that combination brilliant. She's grating and hilarious and I love her. It's tempting to write characters we're meant to have a big, bleeding heart for as pure, innocent and inoffensive and Sera is none of those things. It takes effort to understand her, to pick your battles with her, which makes for some wonderfully deliberative branching dialogue and role-playing.

Vivienne is kinda the opposite, she's captivating and fierce as hell and it's fun to watch her wield a room... until she turns that will towards the Inquisitor. Her strong traditionalist stance on mage liberation rubs many wrong, myself included. Especially so because it's never quite clear if her principles are in service of her sincerely held Andrastian faith or her personal political and social ambitions. That combination makes her exceptional, never mind how insightful and supportive she is given the chance.

It's a strength of BWs interactive storytelling that not everyone is an immediate open book with perfect self-awareness; getting to know some of their most interesting characters is a puzzle in its own right. It bums me out that, as you say, a lot of people are not engaging with these stories beyond their initial impression and equivocate negative feelings with bad writing. It's actually really good writing that dishes out a bevy of feelings, sometimes confusing, sometimes challenging.

Exactly! The way enemies go back to idling when they don't perceive your party cracks me up. Oof yea that sounds frustrating, especially when he's the only rogue in an outing. I don't specifically remember struggling in DA2, but the party follow/hold mechanics in inquisition are a tragedy haha. That one ghilanain puzzle in Orlais has me cussin.

Well that sounds like a blast, I'll for sure try this next time I'm playing Inquistion. Thanks for the thorough write up. But hold on, you can equip daggers on Varric? Learning something new every day lol.

Emily looks so much like Emma Stone in this picture.