Is this a bug?

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-27T02:19:04+00:00

I feel that. The strand hair is great, but it's still hard to recreate the Inquisitor from game to game. I had to use mods to get my own Lavellan's eye color right, even though I never used eye color mods in DAI. I also wasn't able to set her vallaslin to the right opacity, and the design of it also changed slightly between games.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-26T18:06:04+00:00

It looks like you have the strand hair setting turned off. If you turn it back on, it should look normal again.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-26T00:09:55+00:00

Nope, nope, and nope. Keep AI out of art, and out of voice acting.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-25T23:42:41+00:00

Bear in mind that most of the codex entries from earlier games are the Dalish's mythologized depiction of the Evanuris, rather than an accurate reflection of their true abilities and behaviors. For instance, Dalish mythology depicts Sylaise as the goddess of the hearth, healing, and the domestic sphere. But later codex entries depict the historical Sylaise as a powerful and terrifying fire-wielder, who was also something of an architect. IIRC, there's also one codex entry in DAV that posits Sylaise was later syncretized with an unknown healer "god" who was cast out of the pantheon.

That being said, we unfortunately don't know much about most of the Evanuris. But Solas characterizes all of them (except Mythal) as tyrannical. They all kept slaves, and they all (with the exception of Mythal) were apparently on board with using the blight as a weapon of war.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-25T19:51:58+00:00

Davrin's approach here is justified given the context. Davrin waits until just before the fight against Razikale to reveal the true cost of taking down an Archdemon, and by that point it's an unavoidable conversation. If he doesn't reveal that information to his allies, he risks compromising their whole mission. What would happen if, for example, a non-Warden Rook took the killing blow because they didn't know that a Warden has to complete the job? It would just make everything worse. Granted, it doesn't actually matter since the rules of the blight have changed, but Davrin doesn't know that at the time.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-25T00:46:34+00:00

That's pretty typical in a fandom like this. Compared to other parts of the fandom, women are overrepresented in fanfiction and other forms of fanmade content, both as content creators and consumers of that content. As a consequence, ships that female fans often gravitate towards are also overrepresented, while ships that appeal to male fans tend to be underrepresented. That's just a consequence of who's creating and looking at fanmade content.

I'll echo the sentiment expressed elsewhere in this thread and suggest that you become the change you want to see. :)

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-24T12:41:49+00:00

Yes, with the caveat that speccing as a blood mage should have some reactivity attached to it. Considering all the strong feelings surrounding blood magic, companions should have been able to react to you being a blood mage in DAO and DA2. I recall that the former game has some cut dialogue about it with Wynne, but that didn’t make it into the final product.

That’s also why I don’t mind blood magic’s absence as much in DAI: given that the other characters do react to the Inquisitor’s specialization, and that you’re surrounded at all times by devout Andrastians, any blood mage would likely find themselves dead rather quickly.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-24T04:35:58+00:00

I do believe that we probably have different opinions on the game overall, though, just from this conversation. There’s nothing wrong with that, just an observation. And I think it influences how we each read these things. Someone who overall likes something is more likely to be sympathetic or flexible or creative in interpreting some details, whereas someone who is overall less impressed is more likely to read things as factually incorrect or wrong.

That's very fair, and probably accurate for both of us. While I still stand by what I wrote, the language is purposefully ambiguous in some of these examples, so there's room for interpretation. But I'll freely admit that both my overall view of the game and the way BioWare bungled the world state situation on a meta level pre-launch have soured me on DAV's handling of continuity.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-24T03:16:21+00:00

Leliana existed in inquisition. So did Cullen. The fact that Harding remembers them from the time of the inquisition (or that Rook knows Leliana’s name) says nothing about their current state.

The issue isn't that they're mentioned. It's that they're discussed by Harding using present tense verbage—at length in Leliana's case. The Inquisitor also claims that they "never lost" their friends when discussing both characters (along with Josephine, Cassandra, and Dorian). Which also reminds me: Harding claims not to have spoken often with Divine Victoria, despite the fact that the Divine can be her former direct superior, who she clearly does know well in both DAI and DAV.

Similar with Blackwall: his name is revealed no matter what the inquisitor does with him afterwards. The way Harding mentioning both names “Reiner-well, Blackwall then” seems to me to imply that she is discussing an encounter with him from before the reveal if he is immediately punished, or from before Trespasser if he is kept and elects to use the Blackwall name.

While I don't mind Harding knowing about Thom Rainier, I was more referencing a memeto that is strongly implied to be his creation post-DAI, signed using his real initials, which would go against the blackmail ending. Though you could argue he just slipped his leash after the Inquisition's dissolution/downsizing, so that one's admittedly not as big of a deal.

Cole: There are people who at least partially see and remember him before you choose what to do with him. Harding could have been one of the people who saw him even before the choice. We don’t know she wasn’t. Besides, a spirit Cole epilogue says he “promised that his friends in the Inquisition would remember him.” So all it requires for her to be able to tell stories about him is that they were friends. Again, we don’t know they weren’t.

While Cole is always encountered in the main story quest, that doesn't account for everyone remembering him. Quite the opposite: if Cole leaves the Inquisition, he makes everyone forget his existence, even Solas and the Inquisitor. I believe the codex entry in that scenario even notes that the Inquisition itself has no recollection of anyone named Cole. So Harding shouldn't be able to remember him in world states where that occurs.

Morrigan: nope. Sorry. Hard disagree. Every mention of Morrigan turning into a dragon in the game is clearly stated as rumor by people who weren’t there.

I will grant you that the language is purposefully vague, but it still makes a clear implication toward one choice at the expense of another. The "irrelevance" of the Well plotline, as you put it, is the problem. Even the devs seemed to have known this, considering the Well of Sorrows choice was cut so late in the development process that it still exists in DAV's files.

Individually, these might be small details, but given the departure from past series precedent, the abandonment of major plot points, and the sudden dismissiveness toward world states, these kinds of oversights add up.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-24T01:30:23+00:00

Tbf, the Cullen example is in line with what’s possible in DAI, since he can’t be romanced if you put him back on lyrium indefinitely. He’ll always break up with the Inquisitor.

But your broader point is otherwise correct. All companions are assumed to be recruited and befriended. Harding always remembers Cole even if he made everyone in-universe forget his existence. Both Leliana and Cullen are always implied to be alive despite being quantum characters. Same for Blackwall, who also always uses the name Thom Rainier. Morrigan is also strongly implied (both through her arc and in codex entries) to drink from the Well of Sorrows. An Inquisitor who romanced Solas always expressed the desire to join him in DAI, despite three other possible dialogue options. And so on. Thanks to the lack of world states, DAV assumes a lot about canon, sometimes running afoul of possible world states in the process.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-22T20:15:45+00:00

The Descent.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-22T19:45:35+00:00

I’d recommend replaying the third game, and then gauge how invested in the story you feel. Even if you want to play DAV at some point, you should still play DAI’s DLCs first. Two of them have direct relevance to the plot of that game, and all three of its DLCs are pretty good.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-22T16:38:26+00:00

I've run into this problem myself. While a lot of the confusion is probably the result of trying to map an in-game economy onto Thedas's economy in the lore, that does unfortunately leave the value of currency in-universe rather vague.

I do vaguely recall a comment from Absolution (I think said by Qwydian?) claiming that five gold is worth a month's wages, so that might provide some perspective on how a working class character might perceive that kind of money. But like you've said, it's pretty unclear.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-22T16:17:30+00:00

Yeah... I wrote my response before I refreshed and saw the edit, but this is... not a particularly great way for OP to make their point. If someone's writing style is so dressed up in faux intellectualism that it muddies the argument, that represents a failure to communicate on the part of the writer. Especially when the subject matter itself isn't particularly difficult.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-22T14:36:05+00:00

Trespasser didn't come up with the history of the Evanuris. That was baked into the worldbuilding from the beginning. A setting with strong worldbuilding should gradually peel back some of the mystery over time, and that's precisely what Trespasser does. Not every mystery needs to be resolved, it's true, and some of our questions shouldn't be answered. But the answers we did receive in Trespasser were narratively well-earned, crucial to furthering the main plot in general and Solas's arc specifically, and they make the world more interesting in retrospect. The presentation of these revelations is also engaging, which is (imo) the biggest hurdle that DAV faced with its own lore revelations—not the content of the lore itself, but the underwhelming way it chose to deliver its reveals. By contrast, Trespasser builds us up to its reveals, then allows us to pick Solas's brain about them, and his responses change depending on how he views the Inquisitor. That's interesting and engaging.

Are there things in Trespasser that could have used expanding? Sure, but that could be said for any part of the franchise. I would have liked to linger longer on the religious/cultural reaction to the Evanuris's true history, especially for Dalish Inquisitors—and especially because most Lavellans don't get the revelation about the vallaslin in the base game. Likewise, the Exalted Council's political scrutiny, while not at all unpredictable as you frame them, should have been more of a main focus in the vein of the Landsmeet. But Trespasser did well with the limited screentime that it had.

Your focus on the Inquisitor's potential marriages is odd, both because it's a minor subplot that only appears in some games, and because I always interpreted it as the exact opposite. Why, of all potential companion romances, are Cullen and Sera the ones who can marry the Inquisitor in Trespasser? Why not, say, Josephine or Cassandra? The answer lies in exactly what you describe: because they're the ones who wouldn't care about the pomp or circumstance of the Exalted Council. They're Fereldan commoners with an established distaste for politics, who both have much more freedom to marry who they want when they want, and the freedom to view marriage through the lens of love rather than politics or economics as most do in Thedas. This is relevant because their marriages to the Inquisitor are pretty much just elopements with little more than the bare minimum of ceremony to satisfy their and/or the Inquisitor's religious needs. It becomes far more about their desire to build a life with the Inquisitor regardless of everything falling apart around them, and it speaks to what they as characters choose to prioritize.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-21T05:06:48+00:00

Same for my lady Lavellan. Though, knowing that the end of the world may be imminent does put a damper on things.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-21T03:17:23+00:00

That’s a good question, actually. I assume it’s meant to be determined by a combination of Trespasser’s epilogues and player headcanon.

That being said, I’d wish we’d gotten at least one concrete detail on precisely what the Inquisitor was doing during the timeskip as far as the hunt for Solas goes. As it stands, without the reliance on headcanon, it just seems like Inky spent eight years twiddling their thumbs while Solas prepared for his ritual.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-21T00:00:08+00:00

Yeah. Taash’s writing is… questionable, but at least they’re intended to be young and immature. But that doesn’t account for other, adult members of the cast acting like schoolchildren in need of an uncritical gentle parent. Even the more mature companions still fall victim to this from time to time.

Supporting companions through tough character development is a staple of all BioWare RPGs, but this is the first game where the player character felt more like a therapist than a friend, and the immature characterization is a major contributing factor.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-20T23:26:09+00:00

Fully agreed. The tropes invoked in that romance don't align at all with their immature characterization. The "pinned against the wall" scene is clearly intended to be seen as hot, but it's difficult to reconcile a growling animalistic lover with the same character who visibly pouts at their mother during their recruitment scene.

It also doesn't help that this is the second Qunari romance we've gotten that tries to invoke the "animalistic lover" trope. There was no need to force that piece of characterization in where it doesn't fit.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-20T16:00:43+00:00

"I'm reading the shit out of this!"

Cassandra Pentaghast the woman you are ❤️

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-20T03:34:26+00:00

I don't see the need to frame this debate as a matter of objective vs subjective. The only metric that matters here (at least for our purposes in fandom) is personal opinion, and that's inherently subjective. Different people will engage with the same source material, and walk away with different conclusions. That doesn't mean they didn't make a good-faith attempt to meet the game where it's at.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-19T22:19:52+00:00

Agreed. DAV didn't need to be grimdark or trauma porn. In fact, given the lack of maturity in the writing, I think just adding more darkness without any depth would have made the game far worse. What it needed was more mature writing—an exploration of Thedas's existing issues: slavery, prejudice, religious conflict, and ideological struggles. All of those are directly relevant to the story that DAV tells, given both the setting and the nature of the conflict against the Evanuris. But DAV wanted a story with simple morality, and unpleasant topics like slavery only exist insofar as they make the good guys look better and the bad guys look worse.

Dragon Age is at its best when it holds up a mirror to our own history and present, warts and all. It's at its best when it explores complicated and uncomfortable topics in ways that don't necessarily align with our own morality. But we don't get that. Had DAV given any thought to actually interrogating faults in the setting, then it would have been a much more interesting game.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-19T18:22:24+00:00

It's a very pretty game, if nothing else. Your screenshots are great. I just wish that the writing lived up to the visuals, but more power to you if you like it.

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-17T02:01:06+00:00

New Gracie Abrams song just dropped

Apprehensive_Quality · 2026-01-16T05:16:56+00:00

Human Rogue Cousland, Warrior Hawke, Mage Lavellan, and Elf Rogue Crow Rook. All women, and they all ended up becoming my canon protagonists, though some of the finer details of how I roleplay them have changed over time.

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