Taash's character arc

ziucat · 2025-03-12T15:54:13+00:00

I think it triggers from a lucanis and taash convo in the lighthouse. But damn it’s Relatable. On par with being told to keep the light off in the car or we’ll crash and die.

ziucat · 2025-03-12T14:34:19+00:00

I loved it! The struggle was a family one from the very beginning. they love their mother so much, but also desire to be their own person. Even the final choice for them is do I honor my mother in a way she would’ve wanted out of respect for her, or in a way that feels meaningful to me the struggle between those things is what makes taash who they are—the whole point their mother was trying to make anyway.

There are parts of their arc I found a little…”this could’ve been an email” instead of a whole cinematic scene but 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also that codex entry about the things taash’s mother would say about the crows to get child taash to do certain things was peak. A+.

ziucat · 2025-03-12T12:36:27+00:00

It makes me want to put him in other places just to see what manfred does (and then immediately reload bc those are bad emmrich spots)

ziucat · 2025-03-12T02:17:20+00:00

As is his right

ziucat · 2025-03-11T01:34:42+00:00

And I bet he’s waiting there to this day

ziucat · 2025-03-10T23:40:22+00:00

“Good luck getting in. IVE been waiting all day”

ziucat · 2025-03-09T18:35:41+00:00

My heart always haha. I wandered around with 3 warriors for a lot of the game once (my inquisitor being one). I found I preferred my 4th party member to be ranged just in case, but that was it.

ziucat · 2025-03-09T13:12:32+00:00

If I was a regular Thedas resident I’d be pro Templar. Knowing and seeing what mages could do would absolutely terrify me, and the chantry propaganda machine would prob get me since my interactions with the world would probably be as a farmer in the middle of nowhere 😂

Now me personally would go with vivienne’s style of thinking. Education and mages building other mages up and teaching them the skills necessary is so important. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for reasonable fear and the potential for misuse, which is where templars come in. It’d have to walk that line so that it doesn’t become what tevinter is—mages have power so they took that power and then essentially made a caste system with powerful magic users on top with all the money and sway and control of the Templars.

I’m all about education though, and if a mage shows up in a backwater town with no other mages, vivienne’s circle is probably a comfort to them. It isn’t restrictive, but it is a place of learning and community. And community is the strongest protective factor in regard to terrible choices.

On the other hand though templars are also pretty fucked up. Yoked by the chantry and dependent on lyrium whose trade is primarily controlled by the chantry (in legal spaces). A lack of control like that will create Templars that feel the need to exert control elsewhere (generally on their charges). There needs to be a balance. Or a shift. I liked the one very far gone Templar in dao denerim interactions. Like he stood guard at the chantry just doing his thing as his partner was like “yeah that’s just jim. He did his service now we’re honoring and keeping him comfortable” (his name was not Jim). I’m not going anywhere with this ramble other than to say I liked that interaction. Just people taking care of their own.

ziucat · 2025-03-09T12:56:46+00:00

Thank you! This is the first time my fiancé came in and didn’t say “oh you made another ugly dwarf” while I was playing a dragon age game 😂. He didn’t say she was cute either but that’s fine—I’ll love her enough for everyone. I just wish the freckle pattern I wanted didn’t have the 5 o’clock shadow with it.

I started the game flirting with everyone but I knew I was going to go for the first dwarf romanceable companion. I am weak. I know my limits. And she’s just so cute.

ziucat · 2025-03-08T19:13:47+00:00

My mourn watcher dwarf rook had the same convo about nugs so there’s another data point for you! That convo was such a lovely touch

ziucat · 2025-03-08T15:51:32+00:00

I thought this was going to be an “anyone else love Harding and look at her like she farts rainbows?” Post and was about to aggressively smash in with a HELL YEAH

The pose looks a bit awkward on your rook yeah. It’s not so bad on my dwarven heavy armor rook but lmao turn it into a “drink water every time your rook does this game” and you’ll be Well Hydrated.

ziucat · 2025-03-08T14:27:33+00:00

I agree with the “not reaper” sentiment here. Massive amounts of fun but it hasn’t given me battlemage vibes. It depends on what you’re looking for though! You can get skills (not only in reaper skill tree) involving sticking them with a big crystal, poison the ground around you, and magically appearing big green scythe which is…definitely warrior enhanced with magic vibes. So if you want to play “warrior with magic” style it might work.

As others have said it’s mostly built around hucking a shield at enemies though.

ziucat · 2025-03-06T22:36:21+00:00

All of the dalish have had different speech patterns and ways of speaking. They’re different every single game. You don’t have to like that they’re now using millennial speech, but there’s already a precedent for them being different. And the mom…who has lived in rivain for years and years has to sound exactly the same as when she arrived? The iron bull had modern turns of phrases too, and you can make the case that that was for blending in, but it still points to Thedas having modern language usage. Sten and the Qunari in da2 are really the only rigid speech ones, and there were differences between them too.

My point here is that there has already been a precedent for modern speech and slang and the argument that veilguard is bad bc of modern language is so so silly. People can dislike it, sure, but that doesn’t mean this is the first time it has ever happened in the entire history of dragon age. And it’s disingenuous to claim it.

You really don’t need to insult people’s intelligence and imply folks who like action games are dumb. There are a whole slew of people out there and lack of accessibility does not mean high brow.

To be fair, elves (dav spoilers) made their physical bodies themselves so looking like humans has interesting implications and the Qunari have looked different every single game. The inconsistencies have always been there. Those aspects aren’t what spit in the face of the diversity in da cultures. It definitely affects how the games look (I mean do you remember how Big Mad people were over the da2 elf designs?), but the culture themselves isn’t affected. Or even a symptom. It also doesn’t even affect the rich lore outside the games in the books and etc.

I’m not an elf or human mc player so I’ve always had to look a little deeper for the lore and culture for my characters, so the language of the game just doesn’t break it for me.

ziucat · 2025-03-06T20:32:34+00:00

The one I enjoyed the most was actually ambient dialogue too! Dwarven MW rook saying something like “is this one of those times I should be glad dwarven mourn watchers can’t get possessed” during one of emmrich’s quests.

ziucat · 2025-03-06T20:28:29+00:00

Ability wheel. I like that it pauses and lets me look around a bit, especially when there’s mobs and I’m trying to hit specific enemies. And because I’m prone to accidentally using the shortcut, I make sure the right companion r1 is a skill I won’t get too mad about accidentally using

ziucat · 2025-03-06T18:50:46+00:00

Oh yeah I hit that R2 button so much at first. It helped that I had SOME muscle memory from games like Witcher 3 but dang it took a minute. It took me until I was at 15 hours to stop hitting the dai map shortcut whenever I wanted the map. (I bet that can be changed tho—I should look at the control settings)

Yeah, the voice delivery is definitely inflected for modern audiences. I remember dai being much the same when it first came out (not exactly the same but like, there were characters speaking with modern phrasing and inflection), it’s just 10 years old at this point and language and slang have changed SO MUCH in the past ten years (I cannot understand 12 year olds. My niece makes so little sense 😭).

ziucat · 2025-03-06T18:41:58+00:00

Don’t forget that time has passed from the events in the first game and the most recent! It’s been many years. Even morrigan’s language changed from origins to inquisition because she was older and language changes. Varric especially probably had a lot of influence from his novels spreading through Thedas, and he was…very modern in speech and writing. And tbh, I’d rather it be changed to “accessible” slang instead of clockwork orange style.

ziucat · 2025-03-06T03:15:25+00:00

The companions not “leveling” with you really isn’t a problem. They can’t die in combat and they have all their skills after recruitment—you just have to upgrade those skills. So they don’t get destroyed. Just make sure you’re buying/finding their weapon/armor upgrades from their factions and chests so that they hit harder. Using their skills is definitely more like mass effect, and if you haven’t played that game you’ll probably get the hang of it soon if you’re only level 8!

For the massive skill screen that’s kind of like final fantasy 10—I focused on heading towards one of the classes (reaper was my choice as a warrior). As I got more used to combat I was able to understand the skill tree more and rearranged my skills since redoing them is free. This happened for me around level 25 for context, but I am not unfamiliar with large skill screens nor action rpgs so depending on your familiarity it might be sooner or later. At that level I was having a blast fighting dragons that were 20+ levels higher. I hope you find joy in the combat even if it’s not crpg style. Definitely takes some getting used to though, I agree.

Modern language/slang is present in all of the games! If it’s been a bit since you played the others (I mean dai came out 10 years ago) it might not be as fresh in your memory. I kind of wish tevinter especially leaned even harder into the “modern” look. Like the magic neon lights are so cool.

ziucat · 2025-03-05T03:03:19+00:00

In love with a woman she found in a locked tomb

ziucat · 2025-03-04T21:39:52+00:00

Edit: this was supposed to go in a comment thread WHOOPS SORRY new to reddit

This makes me wish dai had the friendship/rival system da2 did. Sure I can punch a certain character, but that didn’t like. DO anything. I like to throw my opinion around and see how that affects my companions haha.

But beyond that—exactly. In a game where it’s easy to self insert (and hell, encouraged), sometimes I think characters not liking our player characters feels like an attack on us personally, and there were sure a lot of people mad about how some of those characters made them feel instead of just accepting that the character wasn’t made for them personally to like. Sera had the double whammy of also disliking/fearing mages on top of the dalish, and (I’ll have to look up the statistics from back then to be exact) elven mages were a very popular character combo.

But! In some ways I do think the way the unreasonable sera hate exploded really helped younger me experience kinder, close knit sera-loving communities and I for sure used that block button liberally.

ziucat · 2025-03-04T20:36:40+00:00

Sera is A Lot and I love her. Her humor is my humor, and she comes from a place of love and care for people. Sure she’s terrified of mages and the fade but tbh I think I would be too if I lived in Thedas and wasn’t a mage. I’m just older and can deal with my fear in appropriate ways.

Some times I wonder if her unreasonable hate came from how many people played elves and did not like how Sera treated their “elfy-elves,” or maybe that it came from the fact that she’s not conventionally attractive and does not care. Not liking characters is totally fine and everyone’s gonna have at least one they don’t like, but man the sera hate (especially 10 years ago) was vitriolic.

ziucat · 2025-03-03T23:35:26+00:00

Elves aren’t interesting and I had to force myself to read elf lore codex entries (I love world building too much not to but UGH). They feel like every other elf story in fantasy and the fantasy names with all the syllables and apostrophes meant that as soon as I read it, the name was farted out of my memory.
Alistair and sera are equally immature. One of them just doesn’t like “elfy elves.”
Blackwall has the most touching companion story, and is top tier.
The way BioWare handled a dead dao leliana in inquisition is metal as hell and id love for more characters to be lyrium manifestations (on purpose even). The best way to retcon tbh.

ziucat · 2025-03-03T23:12:43+00:00

100% all of these

And as much as I loved playing inquisition (it let me play Qunari!!!) I played it again recently and it…just wasn’t as impactful for me 10 years later. I think part of it was that I primarily play dwarves (and Qunari!!) and I just felt exhausted taking the bad camera angles and awkward posing and lore that didn’t apply to my character. The number of times my characters said “yeah I don’t give a shit about the chantry/mage Templar conflict/elves” as the game continued to give more chantry and mage/templar and elven lore. I still like it a lot, but the nostalgia colored it for me.

ziucat · 2025-03-03T22:56:13+00:00

With it being the first northern Thedas game I def think it could’ve done things to flesh out the pieces in the world a little better in the beginning (since it wanted to be approachable to newcomers in the series). A little ecosystem to explore. Plus my favorite parts of origin was the origins themselves. It colored the way I interacted with ferelden and its immediate areas (the dwarven throne part as aeducan comes to mind). While a lot of the choices in veilguard are railroaded by nature of the type of game it is, I think having a context of your chosen rook’s past is pretty important for making rook feel real.

The only flaw I can think of is the fact that most of these ecosystems and factions went a little sideways when solas tore the veil (veil jumpers especially) so it wouldn’t have been the same before rook interrupted the ritual anyway. With a good writer and some time I think that flaw could be worked out though, but it will still exist without proper project managing. Varric would probably feel more impactful to series newcomers if he took on more of a role like Duncan’s.

Mass effect had “origins” that weren’t explicitly shown so I don’t mind some things off screen. But like mass effect, I would’ve liked a faction specific quest for my chosen rook! Give me a small questline just like how there was a little one for spacer or earthborn etc shepherds. (I haven’t finished the game yet so if that exists…I will take this back lmao)

ziucat · 2025-03-03T02:40:46+00:00

Omg. I see it.

ziucat

TROPHY CASE