The Formless One Is The Best Boss Fight Ever Put In Dragon Age, Not Because Of The Fight Itself (it's

The text of Solas' romance card at the start of DATV ("Even the Dread Wolf could not foresee what it would mean to fall in love") does confirm for me that Solas had never been in love before Lavellan

in case you want confirmation on whether Solas starts sobbing after Lavellan says “There is no fate but the love we share” 🥹

Fear, like every emotion, is a powerful thing.

Eldest of the Sun. All-Father.

Pure.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - concept art - early rejected pitches for multiplayer characters by Matt Rhodes [source]

Art by Matt Rhodes.

I see a lot of posts on here talking about the Solas/Elgar'nan segment in Blood of Arlathan and how it's one of the best scenes in the game, and they'd be right, but I don't see enough people talking about how comically the whole thing is undercut by quite possibly the most poorly-conceived, terribly-implemented looney-tunes-ass sequence in gaming history that surrounds it.

Like you show up with your friends to this Venatori party, and you're like great, we're sneaking in! Time for disguises. How convenient that these Venatori guys all wear hoods, right? Should be a piece of cake if we're all, you know, wearing hoods that would helpfully hide our identities. But no. We all go waltzing in with our whole-ass faces exposed, you know, the group of guys that have been murdering Venatori left and right and who Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain have definitely all seen in person before. Oh, and don't worry about walking into this notoriously racist elf-sacrificing cult if you happen to be an elf! You're only here in disguise so that you can rescue a GROUP OF ELVES THEY'RE GOING TO SACRIFICE but it's ok because you're dressed as a mercenary and not a dalish so it's all good don't worry about it :) :)

Then you get into this fucking party and oh my fucking god it's like they decided to take all of the most comically over-the-top stereotypes of villainy and put them on display. Because why not! The Venatori are all sickos anyway so of course they'd be out here doing sicko things! There's some guys pulling a halla apart with blood magic! There's other guys using slaves as benches! They're all laughing and joking about how EVIL they are, hahaha, how cool is that? The fucking guy from D'Meta's Crossing is here if you don't let him die, because he's a fucked up evil sicko too! You're supposed to be shocked at this hideous display; recoil in horror, even!

And who do you bring with you to help get through this crowd of absolute lunatics? NEVE FUCKING GALLUS. You know, the person so well-known in Minrathous that a Dalish elf living in Arlathan KNEW HER BY REPUTATION. Yup, Neve Gallus with her INTENSELY RECOGNIZABLE PROSTHETIC just waltzes up to some guy and he just lets her in. Because being EVIL also makes you incapable of coherent thought, apparently.

And then. AND THEN. You walk across the bridge where Elgar'nan makes his thought-sounds at you, and YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING PARTY is already there, just hanging out nbd. Also not wearing hoods or any kind of disguises that couldn't instantly be seen through by a five-year-old with amnesia but ok, cool. Why did we bother walking through all those sickos then when we could've just taken the secret back entrance like the rest of them, idk.

But just when you think you've reached peak stupidity, it keeps going. You're now standing there, at the front of a crowd of about twelve people, approximately five feet away from Elgar'nan himself, inexplicably blending in, when the big guy puts the mind control whammy on everyone. Oh no, you think. We've been found out! Here's the part in the plan where things begin to go wrong! NO. Your mage friends SECRETLY PERFORM MAGICAL GESTURES to block the mind control, and then you LITERALLY FUCKING SIDLE OFF STAGE LEFT without ANYONE NOTICING. I should reiterate that at this point, you are still about FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ELGAR'NAN and his fucking ARCHDEMON.

And to conclude this absolute comedy of idiocy, as soon as you enter back into combat mode, you immediately ditch all of your disguises. And of course then, ONLY THEN, Elgar'nan notices you've been there. Cut to the end of the actual good sequence, this dramatic conversation performed by excellent voice actors and written miles better than most other things in this game, and you reach your final prize: about six guys trapped in a little cube. Cool, you tell yourself. This was definitely worth it. You take your fade-to-black teleporter back to the Lighthouse and they're never heard from again.

This was the quest that broke me. This was the moment that all hope for Veilguard finally snapped. I consider myself to be a very resilient person in the face of camp and goofy writing, but this was too much disbelief for my brain to suspend. The mental gymnastics necessary to make this whole sequence make any kind of sense were simply beyond me. Even Solas's dulcet tones could not salvage it for me after that.

Vhenan

elves fleeing the ruined city of arlathan and being welcomed with open arms into cad'halash thaig. the very spirits that stole the lyrium from their gods and used their newfound bodies to tranquilize them, and yet the dwarves said "come to us, we will shelter you". dwarves and elves alike being destroyed by kal-sharok so as to not jeopardize their alliance with the tevinter imperium. somewhere in cad'halash thaig a dwarf and an elf were holding one another when they died. ir sa tel'nal. isatunoll.