Dragon Age 4 - now The Veilguard

[Ruin Explorer]

I think I remember this. If you screw up the quest to go up the mountain with Merrill, I think the tribe turns hostile on you and you need to fight your way through them. I think it was connected with Merrill's "forbidden Eluvian" quest. (It's been a while).

Yeah I looked it up based on this - and it's not remotely true for @Levistus's_Leviathan to say you can "massacre another tribe of elves", and especially not to present it as wilful evil in the BG3 style - I assume they're misremembering (albeit it pretty severely).

It's not an evil or bad option to be clear - it's just that Merrill's actions have lead to a bad situation, and most of the dialogue choices lead to a fight with a bunch of elves who assume you murdered their leader, when said leader intentionally created a situation where you'd be forced to kill her. Hell one of the options which leads to a fight raises approval with Aveline, even, the most law-abiding and least bloodthirsty of the companions!

Link - big DA2 spoilers note.

A New Path

A New Path is an Act 3 companion quest for Merrill in Dragon Age II. You will receive it when you visit Merrill's Home (or enter and leave your home) after you have completed the On the Loose quest. Speak with Merrill at her home at the Kirkwall Alienage in Lowtown. Merrill is disappointed that...

dragonage.fandom.com

I am happy you like it. Feel free to state your opinion but I am not going to decide I am wrong because you disagree with me.

I'm not asking you to change your opinion.

I'm asking if you even picked up all the companions - did you? And I'm pointing out that your claims re: puzzles are counter-factual, something you seem not to want to accept.

 

[pukunui]

FWIW it is currently on sale (35% off) on Steam. I think I'll wait till there's a bigger discount, though. (I also don't have space on my computer for another game, so I'll have to figure out which games to uninstall first ...)

 

[plecostomus]

When can you "massacre an elven tribe" btw? I don't remember that at all and I've played through DA2 quite a few times.

It's in Origins, during the werewolf quest.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Not much more - that's almost everything major, and most of it's stupid and selfish rather than an kind of meaningful choice. In many cases it's outright a worse choice, gameplay-wise, than the other choice. So this idea that this is "meaningful choice" is pretty funny. It's not. It's just having a few perverse and destructive options for no particularly good reason.

My post and the one I was quoting said nothing about how meaningful the choices were. And the choices being selfish or stupid doesn't make them less meaningful or present. It's pretty stupid and self-destructive in BG3 to drive a stake through Astarion's heart, or to decapitate Karlach, or to throw rocks at Bear-Halsin, but that doesn't make the choices less meaningful or important to the feel of the game. In my opinion, having access to self-destructive choices is key to making it feel like your decisions matter in an RPG. Some evil decisions can help you, others come back to bite you in the long run.

Do you ignore the elven-trafficking to make some money, or do you kill the slavers and set the elves free for a much smaller reward? Do you sell a child's soul to get access to blood magic, or do you kill it to help the Arl? Do you temporarily kill a hag, or give her Mayrina for a +1 to any ability score? Do you easily clear the last level because you still have all your companions, or did you kill/drive off too many of them and have a much harder time fighting the Archfiend?

And you can see the step away from the demented options in DAO which I mentioned. Using blood magic isn't even necessarily evil, it's just ill-advised/risky. Blood mage is a subclass in the game, for goodness sake, and it's not a secret evil one! Being a Blood mage doesn't have any bad consequences for the ending/Hawke even. So I'm mystified as to how you think that's an "evil" option.

Yes, every Dragon Age game after Origins has less evil options than DAO did. But DAO and DA2 have much more extremely evil options than DAI and DAV. In the first two games you can kill most of your companions. In DAI you can kill, what, 2 of them (Blackwall and Iron Bull)? It is entirely possible to be such a terrible person in DAO and DA2 that you struggle with the final fights because you killed/drove off too many of your companions.

When can you "massacre an elven tribe" btw? I don't remember that at all and I've played through DA2 quite a few times.

Yeah I looked it up based on this - and it's not remotely true for @Levistus's_Leviathan to say you can "massacre another tribe of elves", and especially not to present it as wilful evil in the BG3 style - I assume they're misremembering (albeit it pretty severely).

It's not an evil or bad option to be clear - it's just that Merrill's actions have lead to a bad situation, and most of the dialogue choices lead to a fight with a bunch of elves who assume you murdered their leader, when said leader intentionally created a situation where you'd be forced to kill her. Hell one of the options which leads to a fight raises approval with Aveline, even, the most law-abiding and least bloodthirsty of the companions!

You still kill a whole tribe of elves. I admit that I stumbled into that choice the first time I played DA2, but it still felt comparably evil to the option from DAO. To me, the important part was that I felt like I'd done something evil, even if it had happened by accident.

Not anywhere near the number nor sheer blood-thirsty-ness of those BG3 offers though. And I don't think DA2 does actually have much that matches even fairly basic evil stuff in BG3. Mostly it's sass.

DAO lets you kill a dog, BG3 lets you kill a dog. DAO lets you kill children, BG3 lets you kill children. DAO lets you murder/cause the deaths of almost all of your companions, BG3 lets you murder all of your companions. DAO lets you ignore slavery for personal gain, BG3 lets you do the same. DAO lets you massacre a marginalized community, BG3 lets you massacre a marginalized community. DAO lets you side with the scumbag noble that caused the plot of the game, BG3 lets you side with the scumbag noble that caused the plot of the game. I could go on.

I stand by my statement that most of the evil choices in DAO are on par with most of the evil choices in BG3. BG3 obviously goes above and beyond by letting you dominate the Netherbrain and conquer the world in the name of Bhaal, starting omnicide, and in DAO you have to save the world, but the majority of evil choices in both games are broadly comparable up until Act 3. When I first played BG3 I thought on multiple occasions "this reminds me of Dragon Age Origins" in part because of the similarities of evil choices.

Now, I'm not arguing that most of these decisions were well written. Some of them felt over the top and like they were put in for no reason other than shock value. But having access to a broad range of endings for every companion based on your choices made the game feel more important and the game feel deeper. Plus, it the games super replayable. In one playthrough, you might marry Alistair and become his queen/mistress. In another you might get him executed by Anora. Maybe you ran away with Morrigan to raise your child together, or maybe you always hated that evil witch and hunted her down to the Eluvian just to stab her in the gut. That diversity of endings based on your choices and relationships with the characters is part of why I fell in love with Dragon Age.

Now, I haven't played Dragon Age: the Veilguard yet, but both reviews I watched said that you couldn't be a bad person or even mean to your companions. If that's true, I don't think I'll like the game. In my first Dragon Age Inquisition playthrough I romanced Cassandra and became the Herald that she wanted me to be. In my second playthrough, I was such a scumbag that she went on a drunken rant about how much she despised me. Stuff like that is a major factor in why I loved Bioware RPGs.

I'm glad you like Dragon Age: the Veilguard! I love when people like games, especially long-awaited ones like Dragon Age: the Veilguard. I hope I like it when I eventually play it. But based on what I've heard, I doubt I will for many reasons (combat, writing, art style, choices from previous games not mattering, etc). If @Belen is anything like me, this was probably a factor in why they didn't like the game.

 

[Mallus]

Thanks for reminding me I inadvertently murdered an entire elven village while trying to date Merrill in DA2. I managed to suppress that memory. The things you do for love. Like doing things you later regret forever.

Which leads us to Veilguard. I just finished a 70 hour play-through where it pretty much consumed my free time. There's a level of.... let's call it coherence in the writing that I wasn't expecting. The reveals about the deep history of the setting are also the themes of the story; world building and storytelling as one. To be fair, there's no shortage of clunky scenes and dialogue spread across the game but that's true of the best BioWare games.

Plus it has the polish of a triple-A Sony action adventure like God of War or Horizon: Zero Dawn (are they RPGs? They fulfill the promise and premise of the genre - allowing you navigate a character through an exciting fictional world).

And Solas, BioWare's best antagonist or antihero. I swore going in I would get my revenge for the end of DA:I. But in the moment I just couldn't do it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think the thing is, the things mentioned in DAO are not presented as “evil options”, they are presented as screw-ups, and the game punishes you for them. Thus, they are forgotten because they were never valid choices, since you cannot benefit from making them. Time to go back to a savegame. Thus it made sense for the writers to not bother including them in later games. Leading to some strange results. I just tried playing a dwarf in DAI, and it’s frankly ridiculous. It gives you a backstory as a career criminal, and doesn’t let you act like one (not to mention that by locking you out of wizard, proving that all other classes suck). If I can't run away, can I at least charge protection for clearing out demons?

What BG3 does is allow you to benefit from acting selfishly. Another CRPG that allows this is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, where you can be anything but, and defeat a demon invasion by being something much much worse.

None of which is review of Veilguard, which I haven't played. My attempt to replay Inquisition convinced me I'm not interested in more of that. Nice story, shame about the game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Now, I'm not arguing that most of these decisions were well written.

That's the key issue though.

Some of them felt over the top and like they were put in for no reason other than shock value.

Almost all of them in DAO.

But having access to a broad range of endings for every companion based on your choices made the game feel more important and the game feel deeper.

You say that, and I'm sure, to you, these wild blood-soaked decisions or really obviously silly "DONT DO THIS" signposted decisions do make the game "feel more important" and "deeper" even when you don't take them, but the cold reality is, for me, they do the exact opposite. They seem so stupid and unreasonable that they are actively anti-immersive and pull me out of the game to be shocked how bad, cheap, and tawdry the writing is. It's why I find DAO very hard to replay. That's absolutely an issue in BG3 - people act like the writing is flawless, but it trips over its own dick a bunch of times, and it was much, much worse in Early Access before the writers got screamed at so much they dialled back the constant downers and ridiculous forced lose/lose situations.

You still kill a whole tribe of elves. I admit that I stumbled into that choice the first time I played DA2, but it still felt comparably evil to the option from DAO. To me, the important part was that I felt like I'd done something evil, even if it had happened by accident.

Not by choice, and it's obviously not "evil". Regrettable? Sure - but that's part of what makes DA2 good - there are decisions which are regrettable, but not psycho evil stuff or just dunce cap stuff. But those elves chose death because they chose stupidity, not listening, and bigotry. Plus the only reason they even fight to the last is "it's a videogame and we didn't program in running away". So presenting it as an "evil choice" and using it to hold up the extremely weak argument that DA2 is full of blood-soaked lunacy like BG3 offers is just not helpful and undermines your own point. DA2 is a game I'm extremely familiar with, and your description was so inaccurate I couldn't even square it with what happens in the game until someone guessed what you meant.

But DAO and DA2 have much more extremely evil options than DAI and DAV.

No.

DAO does. DA2 does not. DAO has an awful lot of really trashy shock value/edgelord material in it, like the rape poem, which is just staggeringly sophomoric, that people try and pretend is big and serious and mature, but is really mostly just pulp and a lot of it is pretty misogynistic or bordering on that despite 3/7 of the writing team being female.

BG3's stuff is at least distinctly less misogynist than DAO tends towards, and often is more genuine of a choice - most of the evil choices in DAO are just objectively dumb, whereas in BG3 there are some like that, but there are also a lot which are pretty selfish in a more functional way. In EA, especially early EA, a lot more choices were just lose/lose or just dumb, which was a bit more like DAO.

I think the thing is, the things mentioned in DAO are not presented as “evil options”, they are presented as screw-ups, and the game punishes you for them. Thus, they are forgotten because they were never valid choices, since you cannot benefit from making them.

Yeah and this is a key issue that people ignore. BG3's options, whilst even more blood-soaked, mostly aren't as universally presented as failures. Some are - the Mayrina one mentioned is a pure failure - you have nothing to gain from helping the hag that you can't get from bullying her - and messing with her gives you a lot more rewards over the game. But a lot of others are actually a different path, which one origin in the game actively supports. DA2's different options give it more real story-based replayability (imho) than DAO in part because of this - it doesn't have just a bunch of fail states - it has some actual choices/consequences which then play out in the story in ways that aren't just "I screwed up" but more "damn this world/damn Kirkwall!". This is reflected in DA2 taking a different approach to companions to DAO - DA2 doesn't have them leave, in general, when you piss them off, but they gain Rivalry with you rather than Friendship so you have a very different but valid relationship. In DAO you just spam them with gifts (including a ton from paid DLC!) and they'll deal with anything - your only way to get rid of them is to pointlessly, insanely murder them for no good reason, or intentionally withhold gifts to let them leave.

I'd also point out that BG3 has a different attitude to being able to kill characters/NPCs in general, in that it always has that as a possibility at all times, whereas in DAO it's confected, manufactured, and only possible when the game wants it to be possible.

ALL THAT SAID!!!

I think this is missing the point.

I think the issue is not really that DAV doesn't have blood-soaked insanity for edgelords.

There is instead a real but smaller issue where you can't be as mean or as righteous as it feels like you should be at times, because Rook is a fairly narrowly-bounded character. I am pretty sure that at least some of this is because they don't want to let you being incredibly crappy to the companions, because if they did, it the bigots would be absolutely getting off on being horrible to or murdering Taash. Like, they didn't want to make it "bully/murder non-binary teen with the game's permission" simulator.

 

[pukunui]

None of which is review of Veilguard, which I haven't played. My attempt to replay Inquisition convinced me I'm not interested in more of that. Nice story, shame about the game.

I am in the same boat. I tried replaying DAI as a qunari because I’d read that there were some interesting dialogue options, but the thought of having to do all that grinding for crafting materials and such again was not appealing at all so I gave up.

I LOVE what the game added to the overall DA story and lore, though, and I am keen to find out how DAV continues it.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I am in the same boat. I tried replaying DAI as a qunari because I’d read that there were some interesting dialogue options

There aren't really, and it feels super-bad when every dialog is structured like 'huh, what is a qunari I have no idea'. And they have no armor options, because they were a very late addition.

The reason to play qunari is for the fun of the camera cutting your head out of shots and just focusing on your inquisitorial chest.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In contrast, my wife has nothing but good things to say about playing a dwarf Gray Warden in her first playthrough, after having spent several games frustrated by the lack of dwarf lore.