Especially Spectacular

to begin with, the real world is very stressful and scary, for almost everyone who's not a billionaire at the moment.

for someone who's not very historically/politically aware and not reading about the reasons behind events or possible outcomes afterwards, or doing anything in their own community, this feels powerless and incomprehensible. why IS anyone voting for trump? he's literally orange and evil? ice agents are basically orcs, what kind of person could ever do horrible things like that? how could people deny vaccines or end up in conspiracy theories?? the republicans did WHAT? it's literally illegal!!! how did they do something when it's illegal?? why are people racist - that's literally wrong and bad, and bad people do that?? how many bad people ARE there in the world? etc.

therefore, any piece of fiction that deals with similar topics (authoritarian governments, bigotry, class differences, oppression, war, etc) is inherently reminiscent of the real world. but since the real world is incomprehensible and scary, the fiction becomes so as well.

i, personally, might find it cool and refreshing to play as a (pre-white guilt retcons) elf in dragon age, and get my character to succeed while fending off fantasy racism - in a way that's semi-realistic, but detached enough from reality that it's not viscerally upsetting to me as a person. but to someone who finds the very Concept of racism incomprehensible and scary, that's not the case! same goes for anything - fighting an oppressive government, playing as a scrappy underdog character who doesn't have a silver spoon in their mouth, having other types of bigotry in fiction, etc.

so to them, even the idea of experiencing a fictionalized version of these problems is unsettling - bc they have no idea how these problems are solved, or what factors create them. so the idea of struggling against them for a purpose, and feeling vindicated and enjoying that in a fictional context, is incomprehensible. from their perspective, even depicting these topics as antagonistic forces becomes endorsement. oh my god, you WANT to see elves getting called slurs? are you a racist?? you WANT to see authoritarian governments and a rigid class system? are you some kind of conservative who hates poor people? etc.

and, meanwhile the real world gets more and more upsetting. so the outlet they have is creating escapism within the fictional setting, by fixing it. without anything scary or violent or gross happening, bc there's too much scary and violent and gross stuff already in the real world. the setting just Gets Better and Becomes Nicer, somehow. and now the fictional setting no longer upsets them, and everything seems fine!

people are nice! they vote for good candidates! democracy works! they're getting over the racism - and only REALLY bad people are racist, so you know exactly who they are, and there aren't that many of them. phew! what a relief! tyranny rarely has willing followers. only Bad People go to prison, forever.

in dao, you are in the middle of the fereldan blight, and everywhere you go, you see people who've been displaced or affected by it. you have the option to interact with them in different ways; some are bandits out of desperation, some are asking you for money, some will give you quests that you can accept or decline to help them. either way, it's inescapable. you have to see these people and interact with them, and know that this is the effect that the blight and the civil war are having on the people.

in da2, it's similar - despite the 5th blight being remarkably short, localized, and well managed, you STILL have to reckon with the enormous social impact it has. fereldan refugees flood into kirkwall and get treated terribly, hawke themselves loses a sibling in lothering, etc.

in dai, again, you cannot miss the impact that the rifts and fighting are having on the population. as much as we joke about the hinterlands being an endless well of quests, i think it's actually really interesting that you can spend so much time just doing stuff like getting food and blankets for refugees, and speaking to npcs like mother giselle, who will constantly tell you about what effect the chaos is having on the average person trying to live their life in thedas.

the effect of this, imo, is multiple things. firstly, it makes the setting feel "real" outside of the scope of your party. you might be 4 heavily armed lethal freaks roaming the countryside, but for the most part, people in the setting are just... average, and a whole societal fabric exists outside of you and your world-saving quest. secondly, it creates a sense of empathy and responsibility towards the world that your character inhabits.

you see the effect that these huge events are having, on people that are completely helpless to stop them, or even your own pc. and then, you're given the ability to actually affect the events, in the way a random farmer or chantry sister or blacksmith or whatever can't. and then you're asked "what do you do with this power, and what responsibility do you feel towards the broader society that your character exists in?". and the answer can be "my character is going to be really niceys and feed and clothe every struggling refugee they see!" or it can be "my character seizes power for their own ends and never lets go!" or something in between, which is neat! dragon age has never been a "cozy" style escapism where the world is already in a calm and peaceful state, but escapism as a power fantasy of "what if i HAD the ability to help people and make the world a better place" has always been a strong thread running through it, if you want to play that way. you have the option to play your character as power hungry or callous, or as a real softie - for instance, in dai, despite the destruction of haven being a fixed event, they can have different feelings about it. they can be blase and unaffected, or they can feel guilty and upset and wish they'd done something more to prevent it.

in veilguard, let's look at the fucking lighthouse lmao.

the lighthouse was originally built as solas' safehouse/hub for his rebellion. it held hundreds of freed slaves and rebel agents at the very least, and is linked to the eluvian network running across thedas - thus, it must have been used to move people away from danger, send aid to places that need it, offer shelter to the displaced, etc. neat!

in veilguard, you see the Most catastrophic world situation so far, affecting most of southern thedas. there are two concurrent blights, the venatori, and the antaam, all running around at once, and the offscreen letters paint a terrible picture of entire countries being blighted and decimated in numbers, with only small numbers of survivors collecting in individual cities.

you.... never actually see a single refugee fleeing north, let alone have any quests to interact with them. watsonianly, this implies a truly horrific death toll, to the point where people can't even escape - but more likely, the writers just didn't think about it <3 yay <3 they're sooo antifascist <3

you also never have the option to use your eluvian network or the lighthouse to help people with any of this - your companions WILL take a nice little camping trip to ferelden, as it's being overrun by darkspawn and major cities are being destroyed! but they won't take any humanitarian aid, or help people escape through the eluvians, or anything like that. they're having fun! they need that camping trip for stress relief. saving the world needs self care too <3 rip to the dying fereldan population, but it's not about them <3

the two blights and offscreen mass deaths never like, inconvenience you. it doesn't affect starbucks your ability to find coffee or nice food ingredients. it doesn't create a mass influx of refugees. it doesn't ever create a situation where your character might feel guilt. it's sad what's happening, but it's not YOUR fault (even though it sort of is, bc rook allowed this to happen by interfering with solas and then locking him into a jail). and since it's not your fault, you don't have any responsibility to try and do anything about it. and that's optimistic! bc what REALLY matters most in times of unrest and chaos and horrible violence, is that you, personally, can go to the market and buy bread and take naps.

and that's what escapism is, as written by weekes and epler. terrible things are happening to other people, but luckily, they aren't you, and you don't know them personally! so you're still fine. and that's what matters.