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My sympathies for your situation. I'm not surprised at all. I've always been a proponent of post-launch game support. DLC and continued support is a great training ground for juniors and mid-levels to level up their skills on lower-stakes content and features and post-launch content has a notably less brutal delivery schedule. I thought it was a big gamble when Veilguard marketing announced that there wouldn't be any post-launch content. Clearly the choice did not pay off.

For those who missed it, [click here for my analysis on the Bioware layoffs/restructuring]

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In light of BioWare scattering some of its most foundational veteran talent to the winds, Dragon Age: The Veilguard sure reads like something made by people who saw the writing on the wall. The RPG leaves off on a small cliffhanger that could launch players into a fifth game, but I’m skeptical that we’ll ever get it. The quickness with which publisher Electronic Arts gutted BioWare and masked it with talk of being more “agile” and “focused” shortly after it was revealed The Veilguard underperformed in the eyes of the power that be makes me wonder if BioWare was also unsure it would get to return to Thedas a fifth time. Looking back, I’m pretty convinced the team was working as if Rook’s adventure through the northern regions of this beloved fantasy world might be the last time anyone, BioWare or fan, stepped foot in it. But that may have only made me appreciate the game even more.

Yeah, I might be doomsaying, but there’s a lot of reasons to do so right now. The loss of talented people like lead writer Trick Weekes, who has been a staple in modern BioWare since the beginning of Mass Effect, or Mary Kirby who wrote characters like Varric, the biggest throughline through the Dragon Age series, doesn’t inspire confidence that EA understands the lifeblood of the studio it acquired in 2007. The Veilguard has been a divisive game for entirely legitimate reasons and the most bad-faith ones you can imagine on the internet in 2025, but my hope is that history will be kinder to it as time goes on. 

A Kotaku reader reached out to me after the news broke to ask if they should still play The Veilguard after everything that happened. My answer was that now we are probably in a better position to appreciate it for what it was: a (potentially) final word.

The Veilguard is just as much a send-off for a long-running story as it does a stepping stone for what (might) come. Its secret ending implies a new threat is lurking somewhere off in the distance but by and large, The Veilguard is about the end of an era. BioWare created an entire questline essentially writing Thedas’ history in stone, removing any ambiguity that gave life to over a decade of theory-crafting. As a long-time player, I’m glad The Veilguard solidifies the connective tissue between what sometimes felt like world of isolated cultures that lacked throughlines that made the world feel whole. But sitting your cast of weirdos down for a series of group therapy sessions unpacking the ramifications of some of the biggest lore dumps the studio has ever put to a Bluray disc isn’t the kind of narrative choice you make if you’re confident there’s still a future for the franchise. 

Unanswered questions are the foundation of sequels, and The Veilguard has an almost anxious need to stamp those out. Perhaps BioWare learned a hard lesson by leaving Dragon Age: Inquisition on a cliffhanger and didn’t want to repeat the same restriction. But The Veilguard doesn’t just wrap up its own story, it concludes several major threads dating back to Origins and feels calculated and deliberate. If BioWare’s goal with The Veilguard was to bring almost everything to a definitive end, the thematic note it leaves this world on acts as a closing graf summing up a thesis the series hopes to convey.

Pushing away the bigotry that has followed The Veilguard like a starving rat digging through trash, one of the most common criticisms I heard directed against the game was that it lacked a certain thorny disposition that was prevalent in the first three games. Everyone in the titular party generally seems to like each other, there aren’t real ethical and philosophical conflicts between the group, and the spats that do arise are more akin to the arguments you probably get into with your best friends. It’s a new dynamic for the series. The Veilguard doesn’t feel like coworkers as The Inquisition did or the disparate group who barely tolerated each other we followed in Dragon Age II. They are a friend group who, despite coming from different backgrounds, factions, and places, are pretty much on the same page about what the world should be. They’re united by a common goal, sure, but at the core of each of their lived experiences is a desire for the world to be better.

This rose-colored view of leftism doesn’t work for everyone. At its worst, The Veilguard can be saccharine to the point of giving you a cavity, which is far from what people have come to expect from a series in which Fenris and Anders didn’t care if the other lived or died. It also bleeds into a perceived softening of the universe. Factions like the Antivan Crows have essentially become the Bat Family with no mention of the whole child slavery thing that was our first introduction to them back in Origins. The Lords of Fortune, a new pirate faction, goes to great lengths to make sure you know that they’re not like the other pirates who steal from other cultures, among other things. I joked to a friend once that The Veilguard is a game terrified of getting canceled, and as such a lot of the grit and grime has been washed off for something shiny and polished. 

That is the more critical lens to view the way The Veilguard’s sanitation of Thedas. To an extent, I agree. We learned so much about how the enigmatic country of the Tevinter Imperium was a place built upon slavery and blood sacrifice, only for us to conveniently hang out in the common poverty-stricken areas that are affected by the corrupt politics we only hear about in sidequests and codex entries. But decisions like setting The Veilguard’s Tevinter stories in the slums of Dogtown gives the game and its writers a place to make a more definitive statement, rather than existing in the often frustrating centrism Dragon Age loved to tout for three games.

I have a lot of pain points I can shout out in the Dragon Age series, but I don’t think one has stuck in my craw the way the end of Anders rivalry relationship goes down in Dragon Age II. This is a tortured radical mage who is willing to give his life to fight for the freedom of those who have been born into a corrupt system led by the policing Templars. And yet, if you’ve followed his rivalry path, Anders will turn against the mages he, not five minutes ago, did some light terrorism trying to free. In Inquisition, this conflict of ideals and traditions comes to a head, but you’re able to essentially wipe it all under the rug as you absorb one faction or the other into your forces. So often Dragon Age treats its conflicts and worldviews as toys for the player to slam against one another, shaping the world as they see fit, and bending even the most fiercely devoted radical to your whims. And yes, there are some notable exceptions to this rule, but when it came to world-shifting moments of change, Dragon Age always seemed scared to assert that the player might be wrong. Mages and Templars, oppressed and oppressors, were the same in the eyes of the game, each worthy of the same level of scrutiny.

Before The Veilguard, I often felt Dragon Age didn’t actually believe in anything. Its characters did, but as a text, Dragon Age often felt so preoccupied with empowering the player’s decisions that it felt like Thedas would never actually get better, no matter how much you fought for it. While it may lack the same prickly dynamics and the grey morality that became synonymous with the series, The Veilguard’s doesn’t just believe that the world is full of greys and let you pick which shade you’re more comfortable with. It’s the most wholeheartedly the Dragon Age universe has declared that the world of Thedas can be better than it was before.

Essentially retconning the Antivan Crows to a family of superheroes is taking a hammer to the problem, whereas characters like Neve Gallus, a mage private eye with a duty-bound love for her city and its people, are the scalpel with which BioWare shifts its vision of how the world of Thedas can change. Taash explores their identity through the lens of Dragon Age’s longstanding Qunari culture, known for its rigidness in the face of an ever-changing world, and comes out the other end a new person, defined entirely by their own views and defying others. Harding finds out the truth behind how the dwarves were severed from magic and still remembers that she believes in the good in people. The heroes of The Veilguard have seen the corruption win out, and yet never stop believing that something greater is possible. It's not even an option in The Veilguard's eyes. The downtrodden will be protected, the oppressed will live proudly, and those who have been wronged will find new life.

That belief is what makes The Veilguard a frustrating RPG, to some. It’s so unyielding in its belief that Thedas and everyone who inhabits it can be better that it doesn’t really entertain you complicating the narrative. Rook can come from plenty of different backgrounds, make decisions that will affect thousands of people, but they can never really be an evil bastard. If they did, it would fundamentally undermine one of the game’s most pivotal moments. In the eleventh hour, Dragon Age mainstay Varric Tethras is revealed to have died in the opening hour, and essentially leaves all his hopes and dreams on the shoulders of Rook. After our hero is banished to the Fade and forced to confront their regrets in a mission gone south, Varric’s spirit sends Rook on their way to save the day one last time. He does so with a hearty chuckle, saying he doesn’t need to wish you good luck because “you already have everything you need.” He is, of course, referring to the friends you have calling to you from beyond the Fade. 

Varric, the narrator of Dragon Age, uses his final word to declare a belief that things will be okay. This isn’t because Rook is the chosen one destined to save the world, but because they have found people who are unified by one thing: a need to fight for a better world. But that’s what makes it compelling as a possibly final Dragon Age game. Reaching the end of a universe’s arc and being wholly uninterested in leaving it desecrated by hubris or prejudice is a bold claim on BioWare’s part. It takes some authorship away from the player, but in return, it leaves the world of Thedas in a better place than we found it.

The Veilguard is an idealistic game, but it’s one that BioWare has earned the right to make. Dragon Age’s legacy has been one of constantly shifting identity, at least two counts of development hell, and a desire to gives players a sandbox to roleplay in. Perhaps, as Dragon Age likely comes to a close, it’s better to leave Dragon Age with a game as optimistic as the people who made it. I can’t think of a more appropriate finale than one that represents the world its creators hope to see, even as the world we live in now gives us every reason to fall to despair.

The way EA systematically drained and destroyed this studio and the franchise too over the years is nothing short of criminal! it all started with that cursed Anthem, than pushing Bioware to make the kind of games it doesn't want to, scraping amazing projects, putting them through decade of development hell, chasing away half of original veteran devs and professionals, and laying off the other half over last few years.. EA's CEO talking bout how AI is at the core of their business six months ago.... It all makes me sick to my stomach! At this point I will never give another cent to EA for anything. DA franchise might be over but lives on in our hearts and through our art and fics and love for this characters and the world. that's what we have left and they can't take away from us. I hope EA crashes and burns in every way possible.

Thank you Trick Weekes for everything.. their writing credits speak for themselves....

Mass Effect (Writer) Dragon Age:Origins (Additional Design) Mass Effect 2 (Writer) Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker (Writer) Mass Effect 3 (Senior Writer) Mass Effect 3: From Ashes (Writer) Mass Effect 3: Leviathan (Writer) Mass Effect 3: Citadel (Writer)

Wrote characters like Garrus, Kasumi, Tali, Mordin, Legion, Jack, Joker…

Dragon Age Inquisition (Writer) - wrote "Wicked Eyes Wicked Hearts" and "Here Lies the Abys", wrote Solas, Cole, Iron Bull and the Chargers, also worked on minor npc's and codex entries and lore

Dragon Age Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon DLC (Lead Writer) Dragon Age Inquisition - Trespasser DLC (Lead Writer) Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Lead Writer)

Dragon Age: Masked Empire - single-handedly wrote full novel and created Felassan as original character Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights - "Three Trees to Midnight" and "The Dread Wolf Take You"

This is a fandom critical post. Proceed at your own risk.

Let me start this piece off by saying that this post is not meant to target a specific demographic of the fandom. If you feel targeted, that’s on you. 

In this essay, I want to talk about the infantilization, woobification, or just good plain headcanoning the bad out of Solas. Mostly it comes down to a few of the most regurgitated lines of thinking: he is a spirit of wisdom despite everything he does or has done and he is just confused and perverted from his natural state, Solas is his true self while Fen’Harel or The Dread Wolf are just select masks he wears. The sentiment is so strong that at points it comes down to disregarding or ‘uncanoning’ the entire storyline of The Veilguard because in the minds of individuals that follow this school of thought it does injustice to the character of Solas they have created in their minds. In their minds, it is bad writing to show Solas being a prideful, treacherous liar. 

Because the man, who led rebellion for centuries using dubious means, using creatures he claims to respect as if they are expandable, killing his closest confidant because he dared to oppose him outright somehow is a paragon of virtue that is just bent out of shape by his misguided loyalty. All the atrocities he has committed through thousands of years he had a physical form comes down to him being manipulated and emotionally abused by his former closest friend Mythal and later by grief and anger of losing her. Slapping the label of emotional distress and trauma on a perpetrator of … well, quite literally, war crimes, does make them more palatable, but it does not mean it should be seen as a normal practice. The acts Solas commits during the war with Titans, his rebellion against the Evanuris, and later on in current day Thedas are being construed as desperate actions of a broken man, wisdom twisted from his purpose and left to fend for himself, despite his self-induced isolation. So let me ask you this: how many acts of desperation does it take to realize that they are becoming choices? 

Yes, he was manipulated through their shared emotional bonds by Mythal. Yes, he was coerced to leave his spirit form in favor of a physical body. Then Mythal used his wisdom as a weapon, warping him against his own beliefs, making him participate in the war in ways he did not wish to. Yes, he was pushed by Evanuris’ cruelty to rebel and then lost what he perceived as his only friend to their arrogant ways and later had to live through her death by their hands. He was broken to the point he could not see a way out and doomed the entire way of Elven existence just to win the fight against the cruel and the unjust. Yes, he is a man who lost his people and his version of the world due to his own actions. He is a traumatized, sad, lonely man, who has predetermined himself to the path from which he cannot see a way back. And yet, many of the steps he took along the way cannot be downplayed as acts of a spirit of Wisdom that was bent out of shape by grief and desperation. Destroying the Titans and leaving their children orphaned is seen as an act of devotion and unconditional love towards his manipulator, Mythal. But as the world’s best detective, Jake Peralta has once said: “Cool motive. Still a murder.”

And now we arrive at the most beloved sentiment. Solas is his true self. Fen’Harel is just a mask. Oh, boy.

Everyone says that they hate one-dimensional characters until they are served a multifaceted one on the platter. Then they get to declawing and defanging them, ripping their personality apart into this and that, robbing them of parts of them that make them whole, and when that is not enough, they take on dulling off any edges they might find too abrasive. Assassination of the character is just the beginning; the remains have to be sanitized and scrubbed off any wrongdoing whatsoever, so supporting them doesn’t seem like a moral failing on fandom’s part. 

Cutting Solas and Fen’Harel apart as if they are some conjoined twins, where Fen’Harel is the evil one, is stripping Solas of things that are inherent parts of his character for the sake of feeling more comfortable with his actions. Solas is kind, caring, and wise. Fen’Harel is prideful, scheming, and treacherous. These two sides of him are now separated by their representation in the Inquisition and Veilguard. In Inquisition, he is Solas - a thoughtful mage obsessed with dreams, a soft-spoken man keen on sharing his knowledge. Except for the part where he doesn’t see current Thedosians as real people. Where everyone is tranquil in his eyes and thus, lesser. People, who he is willing to sacrifice to achieve his goals. The thoughtful things he said by the end of the road to the Inquisitor he supposedly cared for:

“I will do what I must, but there is no benefit in allowing harm to come to innocents before it's necessary.”

“I will save the Elven people, even if it means this world must die.”

“As this world burned in the raw chaos, I would have restored the world of my time... the world of the elves.”

And then he mutilated them. Yes, he did it to save their life. But the Inquisitor had no choice in the matter. What if my Inquisitor would have rather died than lost their arm? Doesn’t matter, because our thoughtful, kind apostate knows better. A kind apostate who sacrificed his world to avenge Mythal, but then by the time of the Inquisition killed her all over again. For power, of all things. And then he stripped the dignity of the one who carried what remained of Mythal through ages by depicting her as an elf, proving once again that he does not see current Thedosians, humans, as real. 

The most egregious crime of Solas’ portrayal in Veilguard seems to be painting him as a liar. Because in the Inquisition he didn’t lie. He just avoided telling the truth. He shaded it in a comfortable tale that no one would question. He spun the narrative. Solas made himself appear as an apostate mage who has gained all his knowledge from the Fade. He crumbled just enough truth without revealing his hand. Or simply said he was lying by omission. Luckily to him, no one would ever ask a random mage if, by chance, they are the infamous Fen’Harel, so he doesn’t need to lie outright. 

And what did he do in Veilguard while not being his true self and wearing that mask of Fen’Harel, that degree of separation from his true, kind self and the trickster god? He spun the narrative. He said just enough truth to be believed. He was deceitful. Solas can be caught saying one outright lie—“I abhor blood magic.” Oh, wait. He can be caught lying exactly one time in Inquisition too—if you confront him about missing court intrigue. So much for a completely different man in Veilguard. 

Fen’Harel as a mask is such a beloved statement that it disregards thousands of years of his life. “I was Solas first. Fen'harel came later, an insult I took as a badge of pride.” A badge of pride Felassan used to flock followers to his side. Badge of pride he wore all through his rebellion. The one he tried to reclaim once meeting Dalish of the current day Thedas. One he used to amass following during the events of Trespasser. How many millennia can a person willingly wear a mask and not have it be a part of who they are?

And then we end up here, where somehow the portrayal of Solas in certain parts of fandom becomes an eerily similar story to that of Portrait of Dorian Grey. We have this beautiful, virtuous man, who’s telling you the most fascinating stories of the Fade, lulling you with his kind voice and beautiful eyes. One who was manipulated, traumatized, desperate, and pushed to act against his good nature. One who would tear down the Veil to restore what was lost and make the world right again. An idealist, working towards his goal. Damned be the sacrifices it requires. Because being hurt in some minds absolves people of guilt. Some agree with his goals and damn his ugly side to the attic. The one who manipulated, one who deceived and killed. One who has the blood of countless lives on his hands. One has to exist for the other to reach that goal. One who is just as much part of his true self as the other. 

Solas is Fen’Harel. Fen’Harel is Solas. One could not exist without the other. And to love someone truly, we must accept the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because to be loved is to be seen fully. Loving a villain is not a moral failing. And yes, he is a villain. Doing something horrible for the sake of something good is still, at the core, doing something horrible. 

While doing that, he appeals to three different emotions. He talks them through the damage and encourages them to use their emotions as a tool.

Fear

Rage/Frustration

Grief

Concept art by Matt Rhodes

"To disinherit the storylines of past games goes directly against the notion of building cathedrals."

What is inherent with Veilguard that keeps bothering me is the fact that the world's choices truly didn't matter--and it doesn't simply bother me from a player perspective, it's not simply a grievance borne of frustration to what I (as a longtime fan) have lost. It's about the very culture of the arts under capitalism's new media habituation cycle [x][x].

OP, yes, YOU GET IT, you get my post, I AM PISSED THE DEVS WERE SIDELINED BY "Late-stage capitalism and profit-margin-obsessed game producers (EA is a game producer/publisher) forcing developers to churn out meager content, to make a known brand into something it's not, to chase a fad or a popular trend…"

I literally say BIOWARE WAS FORCED TO BECOME SOMETHING IT ISN'T. I am on the side of the Devs! I literally follow Darrah (from mass effect days) and Gaider (who's recently published Stray Gods--which I recommend) and Kirby and Rhodes and Weekes--developers, art directors, writers! This is how I know their vision wasn't the final product we got.

I don't get it. We literally have a supercorporation who has participated in mass lay-offs and consolidations of studios and IPs, who has a long history of killing creative talent of studios and devs because they want things a certain way, who literally laid off 20% of BioWare's workforce in 2023 (right around when they were supposed to have released this game if the insiders are correct), who have expressed that they are doubling down on "established blockbuster IPs" as part of their corporate restructures. I remember Sheryl's response to it: "They've cut off our legs and we still have to run a marathon." I remember Gaider commenting about how one of the reasons he left was because he felt like the c-suite was actively devaluing the writers and their contributions to the game.

I am absolutely haunted by this BlueSky interaction between John Epler, Ann Lemay, and Trick Weekes, regarding critique of this game and how they fundamentally agree with it.

John Epler is the Creative Director. Who is telling him that things have to be a certain way? Really. Truly. Let's follow that thought train down its logical track to the corporate structure of hierarchy. Corinne Busche and Gary McKay, the Project Director and the Studio Manager, respectively? The executives in EA?

And yes! DA4 has also been the victim of some absolutely horrific choices made by trend chasing, that was not the choice of the devs! We can literally point at Casey Hudson and his return to BioWare in Spring 2017 as the Studio Manager as a major reason for why the cancelled singleplayer DA4 was rebooted in 2018 as a multiplayer GAAS game. If you dig into Hudson's own history, he has always been bullish on MP -- Mass Effect was originally envisioned as something pretty damn close to what Destiny ended up being, and it's not a coincidence that the ME3MP was developed as integral to the story outcome of the trilogy - and thank FUCK Legendary Edition reworked the trilogy so you didn't need the MP. Anthem was also Hudson's pitch, and it's really easy to see how this feeds into being one of the reasons DA4 ended up being built on Anthem's game engine. It's... really not a coincidence that when Hudson left BioWare again in Dec 2020, within two months the studio announced they were going back to a singleplayer model for the game.

I feel like a broken record, too, because I keep going back to this Bloomberg article that interviewed John Epler, wherein Epler says:

Busche joined the studio around four-and-a-half years ago. In a roundabout way, her arrival, along with studio general manager, Gary McKay – the latest in a conveyor belt of recent leadership changes at BioWare – lines up with The Veilguard finding its route to the finish line. “Before Corinne joined the project, it felt like we were building three parallel games that didn’t always touch in ways that worked,” Epler says. He’s been on The Veilguard since the very start, in 2015, and recalls chatting with Busche during their first Zoom call. He hung up and thought, “Oh, thank God. Finally, an ally in making this game what it needs to be.”

Busche didn't become the game director until Feb 2022, a year after the game was rebooted for a second time, and I can't help but niggle at the comment "three parallel games." Because this is so true. You have the extremely tight, local vision of DA4 Joplin, which many of these devs had worked on from 2015 to the cancellation of the project in October 2017; you have the GAAS multiplayer DA4 Morrison 1.0 reboot version that went from 2018-2021; and then you had the second reboot of DA4 Morrison 2.0, which went from 2021 to 2024. Realistically, this game was made in roughly 3.5 years, it was meant to be released in 2.5 years with a playable build, and shortly before they missed that internal deadline-that-they-insist-wasn't-really-a-deadline, they had the August 2023 layoffs which cut the studio by 1/5. (And let me tell you, when I realized that Lucanis -- whose romance I haven't yet tried but who I frequently see cited as rather severely lacking in actual content -- had lost TWO writers in the last four years (Courtney Woods in 2020 and Marky Kirby in 2023) a lot of things started to make sense.) You know how they got to this point? They were building on multiplayer systems for ~three years, off the Anthem system! I've said this before but the writing of DATV feels like they had to take a story and wrap it around a combat system, instead of taking a narrative and then developing a combat system around that narrative. And in the context of all this was the fact that these late changes occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic, in a time where corporations literally told us how little they cared about their employees lmao.

Catie / Ghil'Dirthalen, who was on the Community Council and privy to a small piece of the behind-the-scenes, posted about some of her experiences on Reddit. There's a lot of nuggets in there, but I specifically want to extract this one:

"So, we were brought on in early 21, meeting perhaps 3-4 times a year. I'm forgetting the exact timeline, but the first year or two was a mess to be honest. The leadership at the time would throw images and ideas at us with little to no context and I (perhaps the others, I don't want to speak for them!) was left begging and grasping at straws at what we were doing. I remember one meeting we were asked about our opinion on the dagger with absolutely no context to what it was or why. Just if we liked it or not. I remember typing up a long, frustrated rant about what all this was for. Maybe we did say something meaningful in those early sessions, but I don't remember it. My notes that I have from that time are me trying to gather lore clues from concept art that was used in presentations, in an effort to give something meaningful. And then I have no idea what happened, but Corinne took over, and things suddenly started to make sense. Our very first meeting after she took over we were FINALLY told who the companions were and a brief overview on each of them and their romances. Before that, we just had a wall of concept art with no context, that while I could piece most of who was who from TN, it was kinda useless. From there, we were actually given context and info and even play time with the game and this is when I started to feel like we were finally doing anything, and could see our input making changes."

There are places the writing doesn't hit. There's spots where mechanics or production aren't 100% but the game as it is now is still a legitimately fun game with compelling characters, slick combat, and an interesting narrative.

It's always going to have the specter of ME3 looming over it. The release will always ruin it for some. I totally understand the arguments that the colonial themes needed to be re-examined but the biggest flaw for me will always be that it didn't get it's sequel.

Some character arcs were underwhelming because they could have been finished in the sequel. Things were left unanswered because there was going to be a sequel. Even the sticky dark heart of the colonial issues could have been further explored in a sequel. Annoying amounts of sequel bait? Coulda been fixed with a sequel.

Dragon Age 2 release week: this game fucking sucks, they ruined the lore and the companions are cringe

Dragon Age 2, 5 years after release: this game is fantastic albeit rushed, the companions are my favorite

Inquisition release week: this game fucking sucks, they ruined the lore with these new implications

Inquisition, 5 years after release: this game is fantastic, I love the lore implications

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!