Well, I did it. I beat Dragon Age: Inquisition’s final bit of DLC, thereby completing the franchise, before the official release time of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. As I’m writing this, there are still four hours left before I can start downloading the game, so the victory isn’t as clean or as neat as I’d like. No victory is clean or neat or entirely complete when you’ve stayed up until at least 2am every night prior and then just didn’t sleep during the final night. It’s not quite pyrrhic, but definitely not a victory I feel super great about getting. I mean, that doesn’t invalidate my win or anything, but this so-called win is just a silly little goal I set for myself after talking about it with my Dragon Age “Book” Club (which might even include actual Dragon Age books someday, who knows?). I feel proud of having done the thing, but I wish I also hadn’t filled my upcoming day (the day I’m writing this, October 31st, a week before you’re reading it on November 7th) with as much stuff as I did. I’ve got a blood test (which I’ve been fasting for, meaning I did all this on no sleep and no caffeine in the last 20-ish hours), breakfast out with myself after that (for caffeine and food following the fast), my Veilguard download to start, early voting to do, and then physical therapy in the early afternoon. I was originally planning to go to a Halloween party tonight, but I don’t think that’s going to work out [turns out it worked out. I went and had a nice time being around people for a couple hours. And, you know, doing literally anything that wasn’t a Dragon Age game]. Even if I still wanted to go despite being tired, I don’t think it’s terribly safe for me to drive across the city twelve hours from now [I rallied and had no problems], in the dark. Just feels like I might be tempting fate at that point, even if I can have as much caffeine as I’d like once I’ve gotten the blood test [I had a normal amount].
Anyway, I had a good time with the game and that’s what really matters. Well, I had a mostly good time. Inquisition was still way too long, especially considering how much of that was wandering around for resources that I so often never needed (which is half a me-problem and half a game problem), trying to find whichever one of my companions had something to say to me, and trying to figure out which war table missions to send which advisors on. I have no idea how much time I might have saved if it I didn’t need to keep returning to the war table or constantly bop around overly large maps while tracking down every single possible collectible (there weren’t that many, to be honest, but it really just felt like too much stuff when taken as a whole, you know?). I mean, I could have avoided doing all that largely unnecessary stuff since I’m not even getting bragging rights out of the exercise, but I personally feel that if I’m going to beat a game, I might as well beat it as much as it will let me. Which, you know, means I’m in a bed largely of my own making here. I could have stopped all the aimless running around and meandering through maps in search of some small specific thing I want to get, but I chose to keep it up. I am the real problem. I am the reason this took about one hundred thirty hours to get through. I probably could have done it in a lot less time if I’d focused. I mean, I didn’t even need to hit the level cap! I just did that for fun. I even did it halfway through the final DLC and got zero benefit from it since all the enemies just leveled up to match me. I could have done that crap at any level in the twenties… Anyway, this is all pointless rambling about might-have-beens. I made the choices I did and played through the entire game.
The thing that surprised me the most in my final hours of playing the game was that Solas’ bullshit actually hit me pretty hard. I’d done as much of the side questing and world exploration before turning my attention to the plot as I could manage, which means I went through the second half of the game’s plot in pretty quick succession, allowing me to stay pretty well submerged in the roleplaying I was doing. After all, I personally detest Solas (in the “love to hate that whiny little egg-headed man” kind of way), so the only way to actually get through the game as a female Elf who was romancing him was to lose myself in the character whenever he came on screen. Plus, I love to do that kind of roleplaying anyway, so I quite enjoyed my time as Echo Lavellan, even if she did have bad taste in men–so much so that even as he broke her heart, she refused to entirely let go of Solas. Even years later, as I started the Trespasser DLC, she was still pining away for him. How could she not, after he opened her eyes to so much about the past (a thing that, as a Dalish Elf, she was culturally primed to want to reclaim) and removed the facial tattoos she was once so proud to bear? I mean, she absolutely wanted him to reconsider his bullshit and to maybe talk things out for a bit rather than recklessly charge ahead when everyone around him was saying that maybe he should spend some time thinking rather than reacting, but she still loved him. Even roleplaying, it was a bit difficult to make a lot of those decisions, torn as I was between my personal distaste for characters who loudly proclaim that they wish there was literally anything else they could do while continuing to do whatever horrendous thing they’re doing and my desire to stay true to the roleplayed experience of my inquisitor who had never seen the condescending, mean, and patronizing person I had in my previous playthroughs. She hadn’t seen that version of the man since he’s an entirely different person if you’re romancing him. Which, as someone who has now played through the game twice, is fucking wild to see. He’s so damn different.
Honestly, besides my wildly different interactions with Solas, the game felt mostly the same to me. I think I will remember it more clearly, this time around, and I think I have a better appreciation for what the (scant) story was trying to accomplish as it asked you to consider who you might aid and then what it means to have mercy. I feel a lot less animosity towards the people that the villain brought under his sway this time around. I mean, I still think that it was a massive failing of the leadership of the various religious orders that fell under Corypheus’ sway, but so many of the people involved clearly didn’t know what was going on, what they were signing up for, or what was actually happening in the world outside their limited view. The same could be said of the mages and the Grey Wardens as well, both of whom I chose to help rather than dominate. It felt kind of sad, once all the battles were over and the villain slain, to think that most of the people in this conflict would have wound up victims of the villain’s manipulation without my intervention and those that did got to be ground into the dust rather than helped or rehabilitated. I mean, there were definitely some ideological issues with each of the orders (templars, mages, and grey wardens), but none of them deserved to be wiped out for the idiotic mistakes their leaders made and the failings of the empirical power that refused to rule in any kind of egalitarian manner (the church).
Other than that, most of my lingering impressions of the game involve my theories about the world based on the huge amount of lore dropped in two of the DLCs (The Descent and Trespasser, specifically). We get to see some Dwarven magic and learn from Solas, the actual Dread Wolf himself, that maybe some of the things we “know” about the world aren’t actually true. My running theories, which I suspect will be confirmed or broken by the next game [As of editing this, I still can’t conclusively say if my theories were right or not, so there’s no knowing spoilers here], is that the “Golden City” is actually some kind of Elven city that got trapped in the fade when Solas created the veil. Maybe that city that supposedly vanished entirely? Arlathan or whatever it’s called? Or maybe that’s some kind of spirit kingdom that the Elves built within the magic side of the world. Regardless, my bet is that it is some kind of Elven city or construction. Also that there are no “gods,” only incredibly powerful spirits (ala the gods of the Avvar from Jaws of Hakkon) that were shoved into bodies of some kind in the material world (or that got stuck there when the Veil was created by Solas, maybe?). I also predict that Solas is going to continue being his same “I’m sorry I have no choice but to destroy the world” jackass-self that he has always been. That’s not going to change…
Anyway, that’s enough rambling. I’ve got to go get my blood drawn, get some caffeine into my sleep-addled mind, and then push myself through what is going to be a fairly busy day. And, you know, so I can start playing Veilguard in just under four hours. By which I mean make at least two characters and spend far too many hours in the character creator. If I time myself well, though–and manage to rally from caffeine consumption–I should be able to get to actually playing the game at some point today [I did not]. I mean, it’s just another character creator. How long could it take me to make a couple characters and pick one to start with? I mean, sure, it’s been described as the most inclusive character creator that many people have ever seen, but I’m sure that won’t slow me down [it did]. Anyway, since this is going up a week after the game comes out, I’m sure I’ve had some of these theories confirmed and I’ve spent a bunch of time playing the game, so I’ll probably have some little updates throughout the post in brackets. Who knows what I might learn by the time I’m editing this post to go up? You know, the day after the 2024 presidential election… Which I’m sure hasn’t caused me to delay this post at all. Good luck and happy gaming to all you playing it!