owlbeer | Dragon Age: The Veilguard thoughts and feelings

What is this an actual non Yuletide letter entry?

I have finished my Veilguard playthrough and honestly my thoughts cannot really be contained in Twitter thread or Discord post. I need to type longform ... so here we are.

Lots of spoilers below.

I played an elf, Veil Jumper mage. I loved their look actually. The art style and hair choices were fun for that.

Quen in the armour look I had them in for the last mission:

I spent more time in the character creator trying to create my Inquisitor's look tbh. The hair changes meant I couldn't quite get it right so I just had to go on vibes and the fact that it had been 8ish years.

General gameplay:

Combat was so fun!! Easily the best of any Dragon Age game and honestly I think any BioWare game. I loved that you could swap between staff and orb and scepter for a mage. Shooting darkspawn with fire was so good. It reminded me of bowling husks in Mass Effect - which is a joy. I think combat being fun will help a lot in replay. It did help a lot when I paid more attention to damage vulnerabilities and resistances though lol.

A lot of good quality of life improvements actually. Inventory limit? No! Random gear that doesn't suit anyone? No! Rarity increases when you pick up the same thing? Yes! I would have sort of liked a bit more flexibility for my companions.

I did enjoy the big skills tree too. Gave you lots of options. I went Evoker but I also dipped close to Spellblade too.

Sorry Rook, you can't swim though.

Characters and callbacks:

I have sort of mixed feelings about this, but I liked all the characters. Which is GOOD and fun but does also derive from the fact that there was very little tension between the party - Davrin and Lucanis's thing was quickly ended and idk. In the previous games there were always companions I was indifferent on (no names in case they're your fave) to a little annoyed at but no all of them in Veilguard delightful in their own ways and I was happy to help them.

I made Emmmerich a lich. No regrets.

I did sort of make Neve Batman but ... welp. Sorry Rana.

I also enjoyed there was an increased amount of party banter and the variations in there. Nerd Squad. Solo Dad Club.

Dorian!! Of course I would have taken more Dorian but I enjoyed what was there and yk he got to stand next to his Inquisitor BFF at the end there and make some vague reference to Cullen. I did also enjoy you could learn a lot more about Minrathous politics (I chose Minrathous over Treviso) and Mae was great.

Cullen's letter was cute I guess. Thanks for asking me what romance I did, BioWare. I am annoyed at how little some of those choices seemed to matter and just seemed to inform small dialogue things.

I was pleased to see Isabella even if her design and vibes were kinda weird idk. My Hawke romanced her but in my head given the very chaos energy of it all I'm not sure they're still together maybe just friends with benefits when they meet up.

I am so happy nothing happened to Antoine and Evka. Best NPCs but honestly all the faction leaders I liked in their different ways. Myrna and Vorgoth were iconic.

The romance:

I romanced Davrin. He was a cool character and I adored Assan. The romance was fun, kinda hot but nothing groundbreaking. Davrin was pretty down bad from the start. Many hunting metaphors. And god, I am glad I made a certain choice at the end. I wanted a happy ending for them! Go off with your cat/bird son.

I was a bit sad the romance scenes were so regimented. I wanted a bit more casual conversation with them and some team banter. You got some with Davrin in the final missions but no other characters really mentioned it.

My second choice for this Rook would have been Neve but I let her thing with Lucanis grow. It was fine??? But honestly I thought she had more chemistry with Bellara. That would have been cute. Taash and Harding were kinda cute, but uh sorry Taash.

The settings:

In general I really liked them - even if Dock Town got quite same-y after a while. I thought they all had some fun vibes. The Necropolis was cool, Arlathan Forest was cool - except some of the multiple level stuff could get a little annoying. I liked that they weren't as open world as DAI. I went back and replayed DAI recently and a lot of the story stuff holds up but the open world stuff is mostly a pain in the ass on replay.

I like that the idea of The Crossroads was expanded upon but I did fast travel over it a fair amount.

The story

In general I liked it?

There did think there were writing issues I won't lie. Playing as an elf, there were certain assumptions made and I would have liked it if they'd let you chose whether you were Dalish or a city elf because the writing was quite confused about it. I was a bit confused about the role the Veil Jumpers play but I think it was clear enough-ish in the end.

Choosing between Minrathous and Treviso was just ... fine. Obviously it impacted the plot but in other ways it didn't matter - you just had to choose and deal with it. I chose Minrathous in the end but got the Crows all on side in the end.

The way they used the Solas memories was really interesting and the way you got to talk to the party after them.

I was annoyed some of your DAI choices didn't really a matter a lot except in dialogue and things like it wasn't clear who was Divine when you talked to Harding. I get that is hard to implement and maybe something that got deprioritsed in the process but ... sigh.

Weisshaupt was the best mission imo. I loved charging along blowing up darkspawn and the whole thing with the First Warden (yes I punched him and I loved the character approval that came in after I did it - sorry Emmerich and Bellara).

The whole The South is Truly Fucked. Sorry Denerim. Sorry Kirkwall. This is why the Inquisitor can't handle this was was a little bit idk flippant - it did feel a bit weird.

They did absolutely get me with the Varric reveal. I did yell "OH SHIT HE'S BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME HASN'T HE?"
Varric :(( Sad. Well played on that.

lol the Mass Effect Suicide mission of the end, with shades of Virmire and ME3 factions. I did level all my factions to 3 and did all the character missions but I am curious to know what happens if you don't. I assume that dead body room gets full of people you know.

I surprised myself and did chose the get Mythal to convince Solas ending - because I wanted to see how it played out. I'm not sure it totally vibed with my angry fuck Solas Rook attitude but idk maybe she was just done and I'll chose something different for my next run.

The random:

Manfred rock paper scissors!

I did like you could do some minor Lighthouse decoration.

Elgar'nan's voice actor was very good.

I thought the Codex entries unlocking as you go was pretty cool. I read more of them than I tended to in DAI.

The Formless One hate mail after his boss battle lol.

Next:

Next plan is to give rogue a go with vague plans to romance Lucanis but honestly I'll see how I go. I've gone Lords of Fortune since I didn't want to go Crows of I was going to romance Lucanis and I wanted to chose Treviso this time, so it was hard to make a Shadow Dragon who wouldn't chose Minrathous work in my head.

So here is my Lords of Fortune rogue Sol. I am planning on doing this playthrough much slower since tbh the game is still obviously really new in my head.