Thesis: I'm disappointed by the writing in the new Dragon Age game, but I'm more disappointed in the trajectory of entertainment writing writ large, and even moreso than that I'm disappointed in myself for losing the thread for how to find fiction that resonates with me and helps me grow. Okay, blog post done, we can all go home.
Just kidding.
I'll restart with this: the writing is awful and they made Dorian ugly. I hated Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017). Andromeda was boring and cringey; Veilguard is worse. They suffer from a lot of the same core creative problems. Everyone who matters is an expert in their field. Everyone who matters is a kind and thoughtful friend. Everyone who matters makes the occasional mistake and then immediately and gracefully walks it back.
Something I have found pitiful about most portayals of transgender people in AAA games is that they're all heroic. All the Good Guys are kind to them. All their worst experiences are in the past. The story can't grapple with transphobia in clear and present ways. While character creation tools across genres race to develop new cock-size sliders, I've watched narratives hammer down the nails on increasingly smaller boxes of transgender experience.
But a lot of this has been done before, with other marginalized groups. If it's compassionately transgressive to include representation of a black man, a mexican, a black woman, a gay man, anyone who can say "I've been bullied for who I am... and that's been hard! But I overcame it, and it made me stronger", then it's out there. You can find that flavor of narrative for most any axis of marginalization that also has some buying power. What's strange to me about Veilguard and Andromeda is that they've taken that boring, fake, plastic storytelling beat it's become the automatic, default state for all narrative direction.
In Veilguard, you meet a hard-boiled mage detective who fights for the beaten and downtrodden in the Tevinter Imperium. Her work pays all her bills, she always has a lead, she's on a first-name basis with every poor person around town. Which is weird because the core conflict in the detective genre usually revolves around the hopelessness and unsustainability of fighting for truth and justice. She lives in the slaver capital of the world. She's a mage - why is everyone nice and cooperative with her? Why isn't she in debt, why isn't she in-and-out of jail? She's missing her leg - why doesn't struggle to manage chronic pain? Why isn't she looking over her shoulder?
Then, you meet an assassin who has spent a lifetime murdering mages, on contract for an organization known to groom child soldiers, and has spent the last year in an underground prison being experimented on by mages. Now he has a demon possessing him, something that the world of Dragon Age considers particularly traumatic and dangerous. Then his grandmother dies. He's eager to join your team to save the world. He loves coffee, he loves to chat, he picks up groceries for the team. His demon is essentially a troublesome gremlin. Why isn't he afraid or erratic or emotionally unbalanced? Why is he so open and friendly? Why isn't he dangerous?
Put these two characters side by side. One, a mage; the other, a mage killer - one, a dogged detective fighting for justice; the other, an assassin for an organization selling murder to the highest bidder. What happens? They banter about mutual professional respect. They get along. They flirt.
So what is this? How did this happen? I didn't know, so I did a bunch of research and here's what I learned.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024) is the latest entry in a series of games that has been 1.) episodic, 2.) mid-fantasy (difficult, true-to-life themes are explored with elf and orc barbie dolls), and 3.) (until now) focused on one particular geography and politic of the Dragon Age world. It's a AAA game authored by the BioWare studio. BioWare, founded in 1994 in Canada between Alberta and Calgary, became famous for their talented writer pool and combat-collectathon systems designers. Depending on who you ask, the details of who exactly founded BioWare are unclear, but all parties (Brent & Trent Oster, Greg & Marcel Zuschek, Augustine Yip, Ray Muzyka) seem to be doing well for themselves at various strata.
In 2003, in the 3rd grade, I was first exposed to BioWare through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) via my friend Isaac's older brother playing it on his PlayStation 2. Then in 2005, when Jade Empire, to regular praise by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb on XPlay. Then in 2006 I found Neverwinter Nights (2002) over the shoulder of my dear friend Owen. I would become obsessed with Mass Effect after talking about it with friends when it released in 2007, and enthralled by Dragon Age: Origins (2009) when the same group of friends gathered hollering around Ethan's computer to watch the Sacred Ashes cinematic trailer. That trailer colonized a small cluster of neurons and axons in my brainspace permanently with its gritty mix of post-Buffy-pre-MCU Whedon-esque banter, nestled into an action scene with fantastic fight choreography.
At the time, I had no concept of reading credits, nor did I understand who was making the games I played. To this day I still struggle with the same thing. The size of teams on big budget media is overhwelming in scale, and I'm envious of journalists and peers who can seem to keep track of even just a few of the key contributors to these works. Luckily, other people are doing that work for me, as the Dragon Age wiki has a timeline showing many of the writers throughout time on the series. Maybe I'll even use that timeline later on in this post.
I think it's fair to say that for a certain demographic of people who experienced BioWare's games across a timeline, that it's a sad story. BioWare was acquired by EA in 2008 to a mix of jubilation and lamentation, while they were in the middle of development on Dragon Age: Origins, a game released to massive praise after 5 development. The next big hit was Mass Effect 2 (2010), after a little over two years in development. And the first sign of trouble was Dragon Age 2 (2011) after 14 months of crunch development. Crunch, if you're not familiar, relates to the inhumane working conditions crunched into the last month or two of a game development cycle in order to get a product out the door on time.
Mass Effect 2 was about a faceless, secretive business attempting and failing to co-opt and corrupt a heroic team of underdogs while controlling public opinion from behind the scenes. In many ways, it's a game about BioWare's acquisition. Dragon Age 2 is less a game and more a gravestone, though people did love it. For some, the amount of documented content that was cut from the game stands as a monument to the working conditions under EA and what inept management thought they could get away with. For me, the idea that they took 3 to 5 years of work, and crammed that into 14 months makes reasonable the advocacy for murder of the people who allowed it to happen.
It was clear that the game was damaged goods, no matter what your take; whether you were a labor rights type or an entitled consumer type. This time period also marks the beginning of a steady exodus from the company.
Mass Effect 3 (2012) followed to fanfare of gamer frustration about slim content and an unsatisfying ending, significant enough frustration that the ending was re-written as an apology to the gamers. A lot of the cut content was released separately as DLC, which at the time I bought unquestioningly, without really knowing much about the labor problems at BioWare. Notably, Mass Effect 3 game was originally announced to release winter 2011, two years after Mass Effect 2 had come out, and was only delayed when BioWare General Manager Aaron Flynn begged EA heads for a few more months to work on the game.
Insert Gamer Gate here.
So on and so on about Inquisition, and then Anthem, and Andromeda and WHATEVER. I get the picture, you get the picture, why is this always the picture and why do I keep falling for it? It's such a joke.
It's like, who gives a shit? The best games I played this year were, like, Malcatras' Maidens by Nadia Nova and Heatwave Deaddeaddeath, visual novels made in Ren'Py by freaks with no money and something to say. Games that were given to me on recommendation from friends by word of mouth. Not by mindless brand loyalty masquerading as nostalgia.