i have tried to see what others saw in veilguard. i've gone thru many of the positive posts and read lots of veilguard "defenses" (too many of which come with snide commentary and bad faith assumptions about those who critique the game, which i honestly find tragic. do y'all not critique the things you love? ive been bitching abt dragon age since i first played origins lmao. step up your game, vg fans! /joking)

anyway! i have been pondering 2 arguments in particular:

1) veilguard is politically important for having trans representation

2) veilguard's plot was likely changed in response to real-world politics

the second point is important, imo. art is not made in a vacuum. it is created by people living under systems that influence and shape their experiences. with any piece of media, we should consider the environment in which it was created, ask ourselves what it is trying to say, and consider what it might not have meant to say.

da:i and trespasser set up several plot threads that had the potential to change thedas on a massive scale. the elven uprising, the cure for tranquility, the possibility of the veil coming down. veilguard chose to ignore all but the last, and even that was only used to set up a much simpler story about the forces of Good versus Evil.

because it is quite a simple, straightforward story, isn't it? there's no options in-game to challenge or even question the power the crows hold over antiva. they're your allies, so for all intents and purposes they're Good Guys! there's no elves in the game who argue that maybe solas has the right idea - better to risk it all for the chance at something better than to accept the continued enslavement and oppression of their people. there's no dalish who are unwilling to accept that the entities they have worshipped as gods for hundreds of years are both 1) not actually gods and 2) super evil.

the lack of differing in-game perspectives is a problem with far-reaching consequences, imo. veilguard does not encourage the player to be curious about what it sets in front of rook. it does not ask you, as previous games did, what you think about the world - you are expected to accept what you're told by the narrative at face value. it does not ask you whether you agree with the ideas expressed by your companions - why would you want to argue with them, anyway? it does not offer you the choice to do things a different way - the game, in fact, goes out of its way to repeatedly tell you what you should be doing. altogether, the range of acceptable opinion veilguard allows the player to express within the framework of the game is remarkably narrow compared to other dragon age titles.

"stop!" i hear you cry. "get to the point!"

you're right, voice in the walls. the point is, da4 was primed to tell a story that dealt with complex political questions. when is revolutionary change justified? who gets to make that decision? who should get to make that decision? how do you go about building a better world? what sacrifices are acceptable in that pursuit? how do you respond if your efforts fail?

now dont get me wrong, i think bioware would have handled these questions clumsily at best, and id likely not love the answers they might propose. this is the studio that refuses to allow a single positive opinion on post-da2 anders to be expressed by in-game npcs, after all.

but! they didnt even try!! they walked away from all of that, hand-waved the systemic injustices set up over the course of 3 games, and instead told a story in which the diagetic message is that the role of a hero is to protect the status quo.

again, the story veilguard chose to tell deliberately places rook as an enforcer of the existing system. they don't even have the option to really question it! it's treated as an implicit truth about the world veilguard presents: things are best the way they are, and if you think otherwise you're dangerous and objectively wrong.

so how do i imagine real-world politics shaping this story?

we live in a world that is threatened by irreversible, catastrophic climate change. the richest country on the planet is bankrolling the genocide of a dehumanized population of mostly children. millions of people go hungry every day while a small number of (mostly white and western) ultra-wealthy assholes own 4+ homes and a private jet to fly them back and forth. far-right ideologies are gaining in power and popularity around the globe, many of them backed by the aforementioned richest country on the planet.

if im considering how world events might have changed the trajectory of veilguard's storyline, i see cowardice. bioware abandoned established plot threads that would have necessarily brought up questions of revolutionary, world-altering change. why did they make this choice? we can only assume. recall, though, how stridently bioware avoids any positive mention of anders, and consider that to ask players if revolutionary change is necessary in thedas implicitly raises the question: what about here?

as a nonbinary socialist, i couldnt give 2 fucks about the trans rep in this game. it feels like a dei training at the department of defense: here's your pronoun pin, now go kill some muslims qunari! hooray for representation!

(because listen, im sorry, bioware gets no points from me for trans rep when they double-down on the islamophobia at the same time)

in a time of heightened political crisis, bioware took a beloved ip known for its inclusion of socio-political themes and used it to tell a story that says the world is fine the way it is. have a little feel-good escapism and don't think about the bad shit.