Remember When Dragon Age Was Good? - Part 3
DAI: Brainrot's first soft touches.
In Parts 1 and 2, I looked at the roots of the Dragon Age series, and made the following points:
The writers always emphasised that this was a story about social conflicts, in which race, class and culture matter. This was signalled by the ‘origin’ mechanic in DAO, which gave different races unique playable backstories.
This mechanic was a great narrative device, as it led the player to identify strongly with their character, and informed interactions between the player and those who had wronged them.
The writers also used human(oid) antivillains, such as Loghain (DAO), Meredith and the Arishok (DA2) very well. These human antagonists are really more important to the narrative than the supernatural threats, and are useful foils for the player, who must also make difficult and morally murky choices.
I discussed the strengths of Dragon Age 2’s chaotic and divisive companions, who give voice to the social conflicts at the heart of the story, and praised the freedom that the game gives the player in interacting with these characters.
I also noted that DA2 excels as a story about social conflict, because (as often happens in real life) the hero is ultimately powerless in the face of a war generations in the making, and suffers the effects of this inevitable war throughout the game.
In Part 3, I will be discussing Dragon Age: Inquisition, acknowledging its strengths1 but also making the case that Inquisition forecasted many of the flaws of its sequel.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
At the top, it’s necessary to note that Dragon Age: Inquisition was the bestselling game in the series, and 2014’s Game of the Year. As such, Inquisition’s success undoubtedly made it the model for Veilguard, and therefore, if we want to understand what exactly went wrong with Veilguard, we need to examine Inquisition critically, find the commonalities, and also note the differences. What good elements were dropped? What bad elements were carried over (and amplified)? And above all, why?
Among fans, Inquisition is generally more popular than DA2, and although the game has its weak points, presentation is not among them. Inquisition is aging gracefully, apart from the substandard hair2 and strangely moist (but otherwise respectable) character models3. Matt Rhodes’ art direction is still fantastic, especially the breathtaking in-game art (see below), and composer Trevor Morris was a very worthy successor to Inon Zur. His atmospheric, cello-heavy music has amazing emotive range, from the heroic to the melancholic, but is always very coherent in style, giving the game and the world of Thedas a unique and easily recognisable character. Inquisition’s outstanding soundtrack occasionally features in Veilguard to tug on cords of nostalgia, and in the process it only shows up its successor’s expensive but forgettable movie music for what it is.
Another notable strength of Inquisition is its world design – whereas Dragon Age 2 kept us confined to the oppressive city of Kirkwall and its dismal countryside, Inquisition offers us lush forests, windswept coastlines, scorching deserts, and haunted marshes, all of which are stunningly beautiful. Best of all, the world feels big – Inquisition takes place in only two countries, yet each is full of such diverse and memorable landscapes, all with their own unique histories and aesthetics. We have the impression that these truly are huge nations, which are geographically, culturally, and politically diverse, and part of a much larger world. Of course, the actual exploring of this world is nothing to write home about, thanks to the game’s odd MMO-ish combat, repetitive activities and general bloat, but the environments themselves are not without value.
Adjusted visuals, adjusted genre
Inquisition’s vibrant colour palate adds to the game’s beauty, but also signals a tonal shift from dark fantasy to wish fulfilment. This turned out to be something of a mixed blessing: for all the game’s aesthetic appeal, the corresponding shift in tone was linked to a much ‘safer’ feeling narrative, where the player seldom feels threatened or disturbed4. This isn’t too bad in Inquisition, but we can see the beginnings of a trend towards a softer, safer Dragon Age, i.e. a Dragon Age that is embarrassed by its dark fantasy roots and squeamish about dealing with sensitive topics.
As for the wish fulfilment, we see this in the role given to the player, who quickly rises to become leader of a powerful organisation. Whereas the protagonists of Origins and DA2 are essentially nobodies, who have to fight tooth and nail to achieve their goals, Inquisition puts the player in the shoes of ‘The Inquisitor’, aka ‘The Herald of Andraste’. The Inquisitor was a delegate5 who acquired a magical mark on their hand6 during a crisis we witness in the game’s opening. This Mark has unique magical properties, and the frightened masses take it to be a sign from Andraste7. The Inquisition, a powerful organisation that was already gaining momentum by the end of DA2, is not keen to dispel this belief, and instead uses the people’s beliefs about the Inquisitor as propaganda, using the protagonist as a figurehead for their organisation. As such, faith is a prominent theme in Inquisition: the hero’s supporters are variously believers, sceptics and agnostics, and the Inquisitor is in the uneasy position of being the figurehead of a religion that they may or may not actually support.
The decline of the antivillains
As you can probably tell just from that paragraph, Inquisition has a much more elaborate setup than its predecessors, and as such the story is bogged down (and slowed down) by exposition through its opening chapters. It is also, fundamentally, a very different type of story – whereas Origins and DA2 were high fantasy in name only, offering human antagonists with tangible and grounded motives and personalities, this is less true of Inquisition. Although it has a handful of morally ambiguous human antagonists8, who wouldn’t look totally out of place alongside someone like Loghain, these are sadly overshadowed by the main villain – Corypheus.
This character definitely had an interesting premise: he’s a blighted priest from ancient times, and is said to have been among the first of the Darkspawn9. According to scripture, he bears this curse as a punishment from the Maker (God) for invading the Golden City (Heaven), in an episode reminiscent of the Tower of Babel story. Appropriately, there is a very Old Testament grandeur to Corypheus’ dialogue and his implied history – ‘Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the Gods, and it is empty’, he pronounces during his dramatic introduction, which is built up to with much suspense. With his monstrous appearance, distinctive silhouette, and sepulchral tones, he makes an impression, and for about five minutes he kind of rules.
Sadly, this is the first and last time he feels like a threat to the Inquisitor, as his plans are foiled at every turn for the remaining 40+ hours of the game. For all the backstory implied by his introduction, he never gets much in the way of meaningful characterisation, and the open-world nature, slow pace, preponderance of filler, and upbeat tone systematically strip away any sense of threat or urgency. After Corypheus’ one and only victory over the Inquisition, we immediately get a much bigger and stronger castle, making the player feel very safe and comfortable, and free to treat the rest of the game as a cosy friend simulator/dating sim.
Fundamentally, the writers really should have known better than to make the main villain a generic dark lord, because that is simply not the kind of series that Dragon Age is, and they clearly had little interest in writing such a character in the first place. I’m somewhat reminded of House of the Dragon’s difficulties in handling a world with domesticated dragons – the original author shines most when he is writing about people, and the prequel’s nominal focus on dragons is at best an expensive side-show.
Likewise, Dragon Age is not a story about dragons: there are dragons in it, to be sure, but that’s not what players talk about. Word of mouth is entirely about the writing, the characters, and the roleplaying opportunities, which rarely have anything to do with dragons or dark lords10.
The mistake that was Corypheus would be more forgivable if it was a one-off, but alas, it wasn’t. In Veilguard, they proceeded to do the exact same thing with Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, both one-dimensional Corypheus-like villains who would be unsophisticated for a Resident Evil game, never mind a Dragon Age game, and never feel like a threat to the protagonist. Even Corypheus felt more menacing, because he doesn’t resemble Team Rocket in the way that his successors do.
Inquisition also became a bit too concerned with two groups of ancient gods: the Titans (who created the dwarves), and the elven gods (who were led by Team Rocket). This preoccupation with ancient gods and earth-shattering revelations about the nature of the universe becomes very obnoxious in Veilguard, in which it eclipses the social and character-oriented conflicts that drove Dragon Age at its best. I simply do not care about the elven gods, still less the Titans.
There is another prominent antivillain in Inquisition, Solas, but he really needs a separate post. Here, I will say that Solas is a very popular character in some quarters11, but I absolutely loathe him, and as such I don’t consider him to be a great antivillain, because I can’t find enough positive qualities in him to justify the ‘anti’ part.
And it’s not as if I love to hate him, he just annoys me: he’s snotty, pompous, mean-spirited, full of hypocrisy, harbouring an obvious god complex which he constantly denies12, and a massive racist to boot. He’s also kind of a weak trickster-figure, because the only reason he gets away with it all is because the game simply doesn’t give you the option to either a) exclude him from your party in Inquisition (which there are many good reasons to do), or b) inquire further as to his flimsy false backstory.
In short, I just do not think that he’s anywhere near as intelligent or deep as his writer13 seems to. He is simply a nasty little man, and the extent to which he is romanticised by the writers and fanbase always makes me think of Ursula le Guin’s famous quote:
This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil, and the terrible boredom of pain.
The returning characters, aka the reanimated corpses of your loved ones
Inquisition also forecasts another one of Veilguard’s major issues – a clumsiness in handling returning characters. This awkwardness stems from the fact that every Dragon Age game has a different protagonist14, so NPCs who the player knows well, who might have been your friends, your enemies, or your lovers in previous games, are strangers to your current character.
Your interactions with these NPCs in previous games ostensibly shaped them as people – you could have encouraged them to take one path over another, you could have become enemies rather than friends, you might even have abandoned or killed them. However, when they come back as returning characters, they are always confined by the writer’s vision, rather than shaped by the player’s choices, which are pretty much invalidated as a result.
This was an issue with Leliana, a returning character from Origins who could have died by the Warden’s hand, except that she didn’t, because she is a fairly major character in Inquisition15. Leliana’s personality is also completely unrecognisable in Inquisition compared with Origins – she goes from a pleasant, bubbly religious maniac with a troubled past to a sulky spymaster who is far too emotionally turbulent to be good at her job, and is also strangely invested in mage liberation for some reason that I never really understood16. Her Inquisition incarnation only has one really great moment, and that’s in an optional mission involving time travel. In short, it would have been better not to bring the character back than to bring her back as this strange and unfamiliar figure, whose presence invalidates many player choices.
Varric, who debuted in DA2, and also features in Inquisition and Veilguard, is subject to similar issues – even if he and Hawke (DA2’s hero) were bitter rivals, they will always act as if they were best friends in Inquisition. Varric constantly seems out of place in Inquisition, and even more so in Veilguard – his connection to each successive protagonist is all the more tenuous, and he never seems invested enough in what’s going on to justify his presence. Basically, he’s fanservice for DA2 players, and comes across less as a dynamic character and more as a maudlin relic who is eternally pining for his old friends in Kirkwall17. His personal storyline in Inquisition is also among the weakest of all the companion quests, involving an ex who was supposedly incredibly important to him, but had only been briefly alluded to in the many years Hawke knew him.
Even Hawke is briefly in Inquisition as an NPC, which opens a whole other can of worms – it’s simply not pleasant seeing a character you previously played as, except now that character is yours no longer, and has dialogue that may be totally at odds with your headcanon and your choices in previous games. Inquisition’s handling of Hawke was not horrendous, but still produced a bit of an ‘uncanny valley’ effect, because it’s Bioware’s Hawke masquerading as your Hawke.
For me, this foreshadowed something far worse – seeing my very own Inquisitor featured as an NPC in Veilguard, or rather some insipid abomination wearing my Inquisitor’s face. She was so thoroughly mishandled that I am still genuinely furious about it – I started to write something explaining my reaction here, but it quickly grew far too long, so it will have to wait. Suffice to say, I’m not happy about the Inquisitor’s treatment, and readers should picture me typing furiously and making many spelling mistakes as I write about it18.
Veilguard also features a number of other returning characters, many of whom are pretty much unrecognisable and might as well be animated corpses used as nostalgia bait, notably Isabela (whose catastrophic mishandling became Internet famous), and to a lesser extent Morrigan, a fan favourite from Origins and Inquisition who is introduced with very little fanfare early on and proceeds to spend most of the game doing nothing, having been reduced to yet another accessory to Solas’ characterisation19. I was reminded very much of Disney’s Star Wars sequels, and the indignities that were piled upon every returning character of note.
Inquisition never went as far as this, yet its cavalier tendency to bring back characters in ways that invalidate player choices, and even going so far as to turn former player characters into NPCs, always bothered me, and having seen a far more extreme version of this in Veilguard, it’s certainly worth mentioning here. For all its merits, Inquisition was proof of concept for worse things to come.
Politics and companions
Still, Veilguard has also made Inquisition look a lot better in retrospect than it felt at the time. The Mage-Templar conflict which is kicked off at the climax of DA2 isn’t quite as central as some players would have liked, but the issue is still discussed robustly by many characters throughout the game, and we see a diversity of opinions and perspectives. Regardless of your choices as Inquisitor, you are left with the distinct feeling that we haven’t heard the last of this, and we are going to be seeing the consequences of whatever solution we tried to impose in years to come20.
Inquisition could also be faulted for the lack of opposition that a non-human Inquisitor receives – it seems that elves and Qunari in particular should have a much harder time being accepted as representatives of a human-centric religion. However, doing this justice would have meant providing hours of extra content for these specific races, at the expense of others21. Within the limitations that it has, the game still does a (mostly22) decent job of providing race-specific dialogue options and reactions from NPCs, which includes showing human society to be bigoted against other races. This seems like the bare minimum for a Dragon Age game, but Veilguard shows that even the bare minimum should never be taken for granted.
Inquisition also has a generally very good cast of companions – they are varied in terms of race, backgrounds, personality types and perspectives on the world, which makes their commentary and reactions throughout the game a useful storytelling device. There is also a lot of humour in the banter between party members, which is a) endearing, and b) very much in the spirit of the previous games, which are very funny as well as thoughtful. Many companions are also romanceable, which offers deeper insight into certain characters. As in DA2, companion conflicts are also present in the game, and though they don’t generally get quite as vicious and personal as some of DA2’s rivalries, they nonetheless offer valuable glimpses into the psychology and personal history of each character.
As such, the player actually learns a lot about the Inquisitor’s companions, and what we learn is both meaningful and memorable. It has been years since I last played Inquisition, yet I could tell you all about Sera’s complicated relationship with race. I could also tell you about Vivienne’s views on magic, or Dorian’s, uh, questionable takes on slavery23. And of course, I could always talk your ear off about Solas and the ten thousand things I hate about him.
The reactivity of Inquisition’s companions
Companions in Inquisition are also highly responsive to the player thanks to the game’s approval system, meaning that they will treat you differently depending on your decisions throughout the game and the options you choose in dialogue. This is fairly standard for an RPG, but Inquisition’s approval system is particularly well-tuned. You can quite easily end up having a vastly different experience with any given character on different playthroughs, simply by making different choices in the game’s story, or picking more combative dialogue options24. In other words, companions actually feel like real people, with ideas and opinions of their own, who will not necessarily like or support your Inquisitor.
Inquisition is perhaps better than its predecessors in this respect – in those games, you have to really mean to make an enemy of someone, whereas in Inquisition it can happen quite by accident. This often leads to tense confrontations, during which certain characters may be seen as showing their true nature. I will always point to Solas’ racist outburst at an Inquisitor he disagrees with as evidence of the type of person he really is, and I really don’t care how much the writers want me to view him as a misunderstood genius. On the other hand, you will be rewarded with moments of warmth and fellowship with companions who bond with your Inquisitor, which can be absolutely delightful, and because there’s a possibility of being enemies, that friendship actually means something.
The joy of being able to dismiss companions
One more point about Inquisition’s companions, which I consider absolutely crucial – they aren’t mandatory. Well, a few are, and will resentfully stick it out even if they hate you out of a sense of obligation25, but many of them are completely optional, and you can either choose not to recruit them in the first place, or send them away after a disagreement. Of course, this may mean missing out on content, but the fact that the player has a choice makes all the difference in the world to their experience: after all, RPGs are supposed to be all about player choice, and having the ability to tailor your experience to your liking.
I mention this here because Veilguard emphatically does not give you this option – you are saddled with every single companion, no matter how boring or obnoxious they may be (and they are). This speaks to the game’s didactic and controlling tendency - the game’s authors absolutely insist that you experience Veilguard exactly as they intended, and to this end they strip you of agency, to the point that they won’t even offer you dialogue options that might conceivably offend anyone. Compared to this, Inquisition’s approach, while by no means innovative or unusual in the genre, looks very enlightened, bold and respectful of the player.
Closing thoughts
To conclude, Inquisition is absolutely a better RPG in its own right than its successor could ever be, warts and all. It also thoroughly satisfies the conditions of being a Dragon Age game, i.e. it emphasises social conflicts and player choice, with supernatural elements serving the human drama at the heart of the story.
Still, Inquisition’s more upbeat tone, weak ‘dark lord’-esque villain, colourful palette and lack of tension all point at the series moving in a distinctly Veilguard-y direction. Since the release of the latter, many of these weaknesses have come into sharp focus, and may be examined in a new light.
From a fairly nostalgic point of view - it was my first Dragon Age game and one of my first big fantasy RPGs.
Still shocking that The Witcher 3 came out less than a year later. That game had industry-leading hair. Inquisition’s hair, on the other hand, looks like immobile plastic, and also lacks variety, except for about a dozen variations of pattern baldness for both sexes (???).
Although these are quite deficient in terms of facial expressions. Inquisition’s voice acting does a lot of heavy lifting to make up for this.
Contrast this with Origins, which sometimes veers into pure horror territory, and is never afraid to confront the player with upsetting content.
From one of four races - human, elf, dwarf or Qunari.
The similarity to stigmata is definitely intended; Inquisition’s heavy-handed (ha) religious symbolism is actually one of its better features.
A Christ-like prophetess and the most prominent figure in the setting’s equivalent to Christianity.
Alexius, Clarel, Calpernia and Samson. Don’t let the number of names fool you, none of these are the equal of Loghain or get nearly as much screen time. Calpernia and Samson can’t even appear in the same playthrough, meaning you need to play the game at least twice to see two half-decent villains.
See Part 1 for more on Darkspawn.
I would also note that the enormous success of The Witcher 3, released less than a year after DAI, indicates that there is a huge appetite for fantasy RPGs for adult audiences which are not about dragons or dark lords, but about people and politics. That appetite hasn’t gone anywhere in the years since - if anything, it’s increased.
Specifically, he’s popular with people who use the phrase ‘enemies to lovers’ a bit too much, and who are into fictional men who might murder them in real life. But normie gamers seem to like him too.
The best bit of Veilguard is finally getting him to out himself as the narcissist that he is, in one optional version of the ending that 90% of players missed, because the writers largely buy into Solas’ view of himself, and thus coach the players to choose a different ending that coddles and excuses him.
Who was, unfortunately, the lead writer of Veilguard.
Bioware at some point decided this was not an incidental fact but a hard rule that must be stuck to, even at the cost of the narrative. More on this in future.
This eventually got a post-hoc explanation in a DLC’s ending slide: still doesn’t make sense.
She’s not a mage, nor does she have any historical connection to the mage plotline. Back in Origins, she may have seen an entire Circle corrupted by blood magic, in which case she could just as reasonably have become anti-mage. I guess she was always free-spirited and somewhat tolerant, but in Origins it was also clear that she had many unexamined prejudices, notably her eye-wateringly inappropriate comments about elves, which speak to a Rhaenyra-tier lack of awareness.
His one saving grace in Inquisition is his dynamic with Cassandra, which offers many funny and sweet moments which elevate both characters. His involvement in Cole’s personal quest is also quite good, mainly because it pits his humanistic worldview against that of Solas.
I did complain previously about how the Inquisitor’s loss of limb at the hands of Solas is trivialised and downplayed by Veilguard. This is only a part of my overall argument, but I still think it’s a worthwhile point and illustrative of my overall complaint (i.e. that Veilguard has no respect for the Inquisitor, devalues him/her and the player’s choices, while continually fawning over Solas as a misunderstood hero).
Quelle surprise!
Of course, this did not happen in Veilguard…
And elves already get A LOT of extra content. I say this as a salty human-player and Veilguard veteran who is currently sick of the sight of elves.
There is one horrendous bit where a Dalish elf protagonist will ask ‘What is Mythal?’, which is roughly equivalent to a medieval French peasant asking ‘What is the Virgin Mary?’ This is auto-dialogue and can’t be avoided.
More on this in future. The long and the short of it is that I dislike Dorian for having these views, but I respected the writers for having the guts to make their gay representation character problematic in a realistic way, i.e. he had views normative for the culture he was brought up in, and was in many ways a hypocrite. This being sanitised and retconned in Veilguard is yet another reason I lost respect for Bioware.
Some characters are more easily offended than others (notably Solas and Vivienne).
Sadly, Solas is among those who cannot be gotten rid of.
This is a fantastic article and while I do slightly disagree with your characterization of Solas (I personally enjoyed him as companion and villain) I think you make a very good point that the narrative insulates him from reasonable interrogation. It does not surprise me that all the flaws we see in solas as a character are amplified in veilgaurd given that his writer went on to become the lead writer for veilgaurd.
I very much want to play the Dragon Age games (I own them, haven't started yet) and your articles make me want to jump in. After Balder's Gate 3, of course. Explaining just how Veilguard went wrong is really disappointing after seeing what it could have been.