And while I was disappointed with the story/writing during the first big chunk of the game... the second half and especially the last 1/4th of the game (including the ending) surprised and genuinely impressed me. It gave me ME2 suicide mission vibes, the climax was truly amazing old school Bioware. The game only got better and better the further you got into it. Unfortunately, most people never even gave it a proper chance because of all the negative online commentary (and anti-woke outrage from the usual suspects)
It's the opposite for me and I recently finished it. It starts like a Disney movie. Then the gameplay and some character's growth fool you into believing this can be good. Then Taash breaks everything. And if you manage to push past that wreckage of a teenage writing and reach the end you find yourself thinking of what might have been and lost potential.
The rebellious teen character is written like a rebellious teen, what did you expect? Taash wasn't my favorite but it's just your typical coming-of-age story and it ends strong. One companion falling flat is not a big deal when there's plenty of other companions that are better. All of the parts involving Solas, and all the bigger moments in the last half of the game, especially the "twist" and the climax, made up for a lot of the flaws
If Taash is a teenager then we have bigger problems with them being romanceable. If Taash is not a teenager they shouldn't act like one.
Their age is never mentioned but for the better result (still a bad result) we must pretend they're an adult that acts like a child being thrown into the fight of all fights and still acting like a kid. It stills breaks the immersion of being in slavery land fighting the apocalypse with a mental children, but at least you (or Harding, who also acts incredibly naive) are not a pedo.
Teenagers can be adults, I was thinking late teens but apparently after looking it up the actual age is 20-22. Either way, my point is that they act young and immature because they ARE young and immature. A physically skilled dragon hunter, but with low emotional intelligence and still figuring out their identity... stuck between two worlds, both gender-wise and culture-wise. The gender stuff even makes sense for a Qunari considering the unusually intense gender roles they've got. My only critique is that parts of the dialogue can feel too "modern" for a fantasy game, but that's one of my overall criticisms of the whole game which feels like God of War with how the characters speak in an unusually modern way sometimes. A lot of other aspects of this game feel very inspired by God of War reboot, too, from the combat to the level design, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about that game
There's a qunari woman that even mentions a word in qunari culture to describe Taash. You know, to avoid what you mention of being "modern"...
Taash just acts up when that's mentioned and storms off like a child having a tantrum. And the qunari woman that was talking to them doesn't misgender them. Even within a scene that's trying to portray the difficulties between the qun culture and being non binary, the world acomodeted the qun representative to Taash.
That scene might have been treated in so many different forms. For example, the qunari explaining how there a word for nonbinary people in the qun and the game adapting to that fantasy while mirroring real world and not breaking the world building around the qun. Taash finding more ties to her qunari culture. They did this with Krem in Inquisition.
Or having the qunari woman misgender Taash and create conflict that also mirrors the real world's struggles while maintaining the vision of strict gender roles of the qun. Creating conflict that could actually explain Taash's attitude. They did this with Dorian in inquisition.
Both different ways of portraying it, both the in-world culture and mirroring the real world without messing them around. But instead the scene has all the highlights on Taash being moody and storming off for you to chase them and be their therapist (the same thing every other comanion has you doing).
Not even giving you a good reason to be that, since the qunari representative was pretty much a nice woman and told Taash that there's no real struggle to be mad about... And also backtracking from when her mother couldn't understand them... If there's nonbinary people in the qun according to that one woman why was their mom confused?
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u/lukedl 8h ago
That's the real problem. Nobody ever bought a Bio game for the gameplay, it's was the story, always.