Okay, I'm going to show my age here, but I've been playing BioWare games since Mass Effect 1. I am an absolute Dragon Age and Mass Effect superfan. And every release since Andromeda has felt like another step toward a breakup we both saw coming, but kept putting off because we were desperately hoping things would get better.
While none of the games were perfect, they were fun. They were lore-filled, dark epics with interesting characters, compelling stories, and incredible worldbuilding. I've played the Mass Effect trilogy and every Dragon Age game leading up to Veilguard over and over again. As I'm sure many of us have.
And to be fair, there are parts of Andromeda I genuinely love.
But the moment I saw Veilguard's trailer, I knew it was going to be the nail in the coffin. The whole thing was a sanitized, lackluster abomination of the game it should have been. They took everything I loved about the original games and took a huge shit on it.
And the most infuriating part? They already had everything they needed to make an incredible game.
But NOOOOO.
You love the Hero of Ferelden? Dead.
You like Hawke? Oh well. They were abandoned.
You love your Inquisitor? I hope you enjoy boring gossip sessions in a bar to discuss their wayward friend/lover.
We had THREE amazing protagonists who, depending on your choices, were already established to be in places Rook eventually visits. Three characters who could have been recruited to help stop the greatest threat Thedas has ever known.
Imagine going back to Ferelden to find the Warden; who ended the Fifth Blight in under a year. We could have seen the devastation Elgar'nan brought to our OG location. We could have followed clues about the Hero's disappearance, eventually discovering they'd gone to Kal-Sharok.
And there, we discover that the Hero has found a way to stop the Calling. Maybe not cure the Blight entirely, but prevent it from controlling the Wardens. You recruit them, and they point you toward Hawke (or whoever you rescued from the Fade), who SHOULD FUCKING BE AT WEISSHAUPT!
Obviously, these storylines would need alternatives depending on previous choices. That's the entire fucking point of a franchise built around player decisions.
And the Inquisitor? Even if the Inquisition was disbanded, they should still have enough political and social clout to rally Ferelden and Orlais to defend their lands. They should have been gathering armies, negotiating alliances, and preparing to join Rook for the final push.
Have the Divine call for an Exalted March, rallying the Andrastian faithful to save the world. Put the Templars to use weakening Tevinter mages and countering hostile magic. If Cassandra isn't Divine, have her lead the troops.
And imagine the Crossroads actually becoming strategically important. We could have used them to move armies across vast distances in a fraction of the time, but only after securing the routes and making sure they were safe.
Suddenly, controlling the Crossroads isn't just about getting from one pretty location to another. It's about winning a fucking war. Merrill could have been instrumental in navigating and repairing damaged Eluvians. We have an established character who has spent YEARS obsessively studying these things. Why wouldn't we use her?
And speaking of wasted characters...
FENRIS. WHERE THE FUCK IS FENRIS?
This man should have been leading the Shadow Dragons. Or, at the very least, heavily involved in their operations. His entire story is rooted in his hatred of slavery, his trauma at the hands of Tevinter magisters, and his complicated relationship with magic. He SHOULD be in Tevinter. Even the books have him in Tevinter!
My boy should have been chomping at the bit to tear through the Venatori and anyone supporting Elgar'nan. He is a heart-punching monster who could have brought some serious carnage to this fight.
And I would have LOVED to see him working with the Lucanis we were introduced to in Tevinter Nights.
Then there's Dorian. We should have had actual political intrigue involving Dorian, helping him keep his sympathetic bottom firmly planted in his seat of power while maneuvering to make him Archon. Imagine the negotiations, the backstabbing, the compromises, and the difficult decisions involved in putting a friendly ruler on Tevinter's throne.
Maybe we have to cooperate with corrupt magisters because we desperately need their armies. Maybe helping Dorian secure power means temporarily tolerating things we find abhorrent.
THAT IS DRAGON AGE.
Iron Bull, depending on your choices, could have been an excellent contact for dealing with the Qunari situation in Antiva.
Zevran could have helped us navigate the Antivan Crows. Even if he's no longer an active member, he knows more about that organization than Rook or Varric ever could.
And speaking of Varric, FUCK YOU, BIOWARE.
I'm all for killing off beloved characters. I really am. But it needs to make sense and actually mean something.
And Isabela?
I'm absolutely down for her becoming a pirate queen. Give me Isabela leading a loose coalition of pirates, smugglers, and other questionable bastards. Let us use her ship to reach dangerous locations that only someone as gloriously insane as Isabela would dare approach.
But what I'm NOT okay with is some strange sex-pest cult of scantily clad people hanging around and seemingly forgetting that the fucking sea exists.
No.
Fuck that.
Give me Tortuga. Give me a filthy, dangerous pirate haven where ships come to resupply, repair, recruit, and recover before fucking off again. Give me smugglers, drunken sailors, black-market traders, and cutthroats who might slit your throat or save your life depending on how much coin you're carrying.
THAT would have been an interesting faction.
And honestly, all our previous companions could have contributed to the defense of Thedas. Even if they only appeared in letters, reports, or conversations. They didn't all need starring roles. They just needed to MATTER.
And don't even get me started on Mythal. THIS WAS HER FUCKING MOMENT. This was her opportunity to finally stick it to the people who betrayed her, murdered her, and left her clinging to mortal hosts for centuries while plotting her revenge. We've spent multiple games establishing that Mythal plays the ultimate long game.
And now, when everything she's been waiting for is finally happening, we're supposed to convince some human-looking ghost to participate?
WHY?
Why does this ancient, calculating goddess suddenly need a motivational speech to seize the opportunity she's been waiting centuries for?
Personally, I think Morrigan should have inherited Flemeth's mantle. Let her remain Morrigan, with her own personality, agency, and ambitions, but carrying Flemeth's powers and Mythal's spark. Imagine that character development. The woman who spent so much of her life terrified of becoming her mother ultimately chooses to inherit her legacy on her own terms.
And Solas?
We could have given him an extraordinary moment where he has to choose between the world that WAS and the world that IS. Perhaps he even has to turn against Mythal to protect the world he's spent so long trying to destroy. That would have been a genuinely powerful conclusion to his story.
Now let's talk about what they did to Thedas itself. Because apparently, established lore and worldbuilding were just suggestions.
Nevarra: Why does it feel like the Disney Haunted Mansion? This is a nation with a deeply complex relationship with death, necromancy, religion, and political power. There should have been an unsettling beauty to it. Something elegant, ancient, and just a little horrifying.
Antiva: We got a shitty version of Assassin's Creed, complete with a sanitized version of the Antivan Crows.
Excuse me? Where are the children being abducted, purchased, and brutally trained to become assassins? Where is the ruthless organization we were introduced to in Origins?
ZEVRAN SAYS BULLSHIT.
The Crows could have been fascinating precisely because they are morally reprehensible people who might nevertheless be essential to saving Antiva. Make us work with monsters to defeat worse monsters.
Tevinter: We've been hearing about this place since the first fucking game. The height of a mage-dominated civilization. Ancient architecture, magical wonders, political corruption, slavery, powerful noble houses, and magisters who treat magic as their birthright.
And what do we get to explore?
The slums.
I'm not saying Dock Town shouldn't exist. I'm saying that after spending YEARS building up Tevinter, perhaps we could have actually explored the fucking Imperium. Let us see its grandeur AND its rot.
The Qunari: The Antaam are running mildly amok in Antiva while Tevinter, their historical enemy, is RIGHT FUCKING THERE.
Yes, there is an explanation involving their break from the Qun. But where is the political weight of that fracture? Where is the broader conflict? Where is Arishok Sten, and why aren't we seeing meaningful attempts to bring these renegades back under the heel of the Qun? There was so much potential here.
Arlathan Forest: This should have been one of the most terrifyingly beautiful places in the entire franchise. An ancient forest absolutely TEEMING with strange magic, forgotten ruins, deadly creatures, and dangers lurking behind every tree.
I wanted everything the Romans feared about the great primordial forests of Europe, combined with ancient elven magic.
A place where the trees themselves might be watching you. (Shout out to my Oak boy and the Sylvan trees.) Where the laws of nature are unreliable. Where something ancient and terrible could be waiting just beyond the light.
Instead? Sunshine, rainbows, and fucking pixie dust compared to the Brecillian Forest. And the most frustrating part is that these places should have felt culturally, politically, and historically distinct.
Instead, so much of what made Thedas fascinating felt watered down.
And then there's Rook.
Rook is about as meaningful as a potato. Seriously. If your story can be told without the main character, WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THEM?
Rook should have been the person holding this entire desperate coalition together. Negotiating alliances, making impossible decisions, and convincing people who absolutely hate each other to cooperate because the alternative is the end of the fucking world. Instead, Rook feels like a third wheel in everyone else's friendships and relationships.
Everyone's petty personal bullshit somehow takes precedence over the literal apocalypse. And don't get me wrong. I LOVE companion stories. BioWare built its reputation on interesting characters with personal struggles, conflicting loyalties, and complicated relationships.
But those stories should complement the main narrative, not constantly drag us away from it for emotional crises that ultimately do little to advance the plot. Have those personal problems create conflicts within the larger mission.
I.e…Griffons x
Make us choose between helping a companion and securing a critical alliance. Make personal loyalties clash with political necessities. Make those relationships influence the outcome of the war.
And the Varric situation?
Rook is apparently having entire conversations with a man who isn't there, and nobody meaningfully addresses it? Nobody intervenes? Nobody has a serious conversation about what the hell is happening?
I understand the intended reveal, but the execution requires an astonishing amount of convenient silence from everyone around Rook. It feels less like a carefully constructed psychological mystery and more like the narrative bending over backward to protect its twist.
Veilguard should have been DARK.
And I don't mean dark for the sake of being edgy. I mean heavy. Desperate. Bleak. A world facing the greatest existential threat in its recorded history. D'Meta's Crossing should have established the tone for the entire fucking game.
That village was horrifying. It demonstrated what the Blight could do and what was at stake. And the rest of the game should have built on that horror.
Bring back the Grey Wardens willing to burn entire villages to stop the spread of the Blight. Give us another refugee crisis where there aren't enough resources to save everyone. Make Rook choose which settlements receive military protection and which are abandoned to their fate. Force us to negotiate with slavers, assassins, corrupt politicians, religious fanatics, and other people whose motives we despise because we NEED them to win.
Make us decide whether to sacrifice a strategically important fortress to save civilians, knowing that doing so could cost thousands more lives later. Make our choices hurt. Make us question whether we're actually doing the right thing.
Show us what leadership looks like when every decision has consequences and there are no perfect answers. THAT is the kind of moral complexity Dragon Age was built on.
And imagine how those decisions could have shaped the final battle. The armies we recruited. The factions we alienated. The people we saved. The people we sacrificed. Every choice contributes to the strength, or weakness, of the coalition standing against the Evanuris.
And the ending shouldn't have simply restored everything to normal. It should have been the violent, painful birth of the next age of Thedas. The world survives, but it's fundamentally changed. Kingdoms fall. Political structures collapse. Ancient truths are revealed. Religious institutions are shaken. New powers emerge.
The choices we made throughout the franchise help determine what survives of the old world and what kind of world rises from its ashes. THAT is how you honor twenty years of storytelling while opening the door for something new.
Instead, what did we get? Fortnite graphics. Meaningless decisions. Flat characters who behave like self-absorbed crybabies. Cartoonish villains. A protagonist who barely feels necessary to their own story. And dialogue that made me physically cringe.
The entire thing feels sanitized. As though someone decided that the darkness, moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and uncomfortable realities of Thedas were obstacles to overcome rather than the very things that made the setting interesting.
And before someone says it, NO, I don't think Dragon Age needs to be relentlessly miserable. The original games had humor. They had tenderness, ridiculous moments, friendships, romances, and genuine joy. But those moments felt meaningful because they existed alongside horror, tragedy, and difficult decisions.
EA and BioWare stripped the soul out of Thedas. They turned it into a pathetic fanfic of their own property. And I LIKE fanfiction. Some fanfiction is fucking fantastic. But you know exactly what I mean. The writing desperately lacked the guiding hand of someone like David Gaider, who understood the foundations of this world and how its pieces fit together.
That's not to say he alone could have fixed everything. But this game needed stronger narrative direction and someone willing to curb creative impulses that didn't serve the larger story.
Just because an idea is cool doesn't mean it belongs in the story you're telling. Continuity matters. Worldbuilding matters. Character development matters. And in a franchise built around player choice, OUR FUCKING CHOICES MATTER.
At the end of the day, nobody should be surprised that after three deeply divisive releases, this is where BioWare ended up.
Yes, EA bears responsibility for what happened to BioWare. But BioWare also bears responsibility for what happened to BioWare.
A questionable art style can be forgiven if the story is strong and the characters are compelling. Hell, I'd happily play something visually hideous if the writing gave me the same feeling Origins did. They had an extraordinary setup. They had twenty years of established lore, beloved characters, unresolved mysteries, political conflicts, and carefully constructed worldbuilding. And they bungled the execution. So much of this could have been salvaged with better writing.
I didn't need all my favorite characters to survive. I didn't need a happy ending. I didn't even need my choices to produce the outcomes I wanted. Kill all our protagonists. I don't care.
JUST HAVE IT FUCKING MEAN SOMETHING.
And one final thing. After all the revelations about Morrigan, Flemeth, Mythal, the Old God soul, and the ancient history of the Evanuris...
WHERE. THE. FUCK. IS. KIERAN?!
