Kunstpause

Another one:

𝐈𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞.

I was worried about the trial. Hopefully it's one of those episodes that you can watch a couple of times and see there's a few different layers to it. There's a performance layer, there's a memory layer, and then there's bits where whoever's remembering it, you're like, well, why was he wobbling? Why couldn't he stand up straight? He is injured, but is the injury physical or is it psychological? I think it's more interesting, and Rolin probably thinks it's more interesting too, that all of the major injury is psychological because when they're so powerful, does it really take you 20 years to recover from a slit throat? So, it is more psychological damage, but [I was] always wanting to make sure there is a level that he is weak.

This got long, so parts went behind a cut, still no plot spoilers there.

Let’s get the first two points out at the start:

I‘m still not done with Veilguard (I reckon about 3/4 in) and no, at the moment, I wouldn‘t recommend it - or only under specific conditions.

What I enjoy so far: The gameplay is a lot of fun. It‘s quick, versatile and enjoyable, battles are fun. The visuals are stunning, much more so than I thought from the trailer - it‘s really beautiful to look at.

The problems start with the writing. DAV is a game about preventing the apocalypse and learning the inner workings of a rebellion and it is completely devoid of any conflict. You cannot disagree with anyone, there is not a single question of morality, not even a slightly-hinted-at problematic situation (like being a religious leader in DAI).

DAV is not an RPG. At best, it‘s an action adventure with a shallow and set player character that is very thinly disguised as an RPG and you can see that best with the characters, more importantly YOUR character. Yes, you can choose the looks and background of the player character, but it has zero impact on the story and doesn‘t change anything apart from mild flavour commentary. Worse even, you‘re the lesser one from your faction - bc you get a companion from each faction too, and they‘re definitely more important and better than Rook.* So what‘s your role?

Rook is the therapist of the group. You can never start a conversation with a companion on your own; only when they want to talk can you talk (not like in DAI where you could initiate scenes and ask questions). Your answers can either be „friendly nice“, „nice with a joke“, „stern nice“ or sometimes „flirty nice“ (whereas flirty is barely distinguishable from nice nice). There is ZERO conflict in this game. Your job is to be Supportive(tm), even if your companions say bullshit. There are zero options to disagree, and sometimes the options on the dialogue wheel say more than Rook does. You‘re a coach and therapist, no leader or even friend of your companions. The companions talk (with very rare exceptions) only to each other, not to or about Rook. This can also be seen in the romances, if you can call them that - but truly, they can mostly be ignored, there‘s so little content. I have committed to an exclusive relationship - without so much as a kiss. The dialogue was not even flirty, it felt like there was a heart put on a normal conversation choice. There is no change in how the chosen companion talks to you or how the others talk about you.

* Honestly, Rook is largely irrelevant. You could play as Varric or a mute ogre and it wouldn’t change a thing.

This is one of the few times when I’m actually going to weigh in with my expertise, I did my PhD dissertation on North Korean propaganda. North Korea is, contrary to popular belief, a right wing authoritarian ethnostate, and there are a lot of reasons why that is that I’m not going to get into in this video. 

But as someone who thought a lot about propaganda, I have some things that I want to share. The main thing is exactly this point, that it’s a bad idea to pay attention to every little thing that you see. A lot of people think of propaganda as something that’s trying to teach you something that you end up believing, so it’s like “profits are great now, profits are great now, profits are great now!” and then all of a sudden the audience is like “oh yeah, profits are great now,” but that’s actually not the case most of the time. 

One of the articles that really broke my brain about this is, again, this is a very academic article in 20th century music, called “Stalin and the Art of Boredom” by Marina Frolova-Walker who specializes in soviet propaganda of sort of the mid 20th century. And she argues that the point of a lot of propaganda is not actually to convince you of anything, but to bore you into submission by basically filling up your brain to the point where nothing else can take up that space. So like, if you see a statue of Stalin in the courtyard, it doesn’t actually inspire any feelings about Stalin, but what it does do is fill up that “statue” position with something of Stalin so you cannot image something else being there.