learning that Rook up until a couple of years ago was essentially a one-note quip machine - constantly cracking wise with different flavors of the same jokes regardless of dialogue wheel choice - honestly just feels like a strange misunderstanding of why people like jokes from characters. it also explains why the current version we got lacks extra breadth if they had to spend a lot of time rewriting and re-recording VO.
using Varric as an example for a minute. yes, he's funny. yes, he's charming. but his wit serves a purpose beyond just entertainment. his jokes are armor, carefully crafted deflections that keep people at arm's length from his own pain. he can write insightful stories about his companions, call them fun nicknames, etc., but as we've seen over the years with him, there's a lot of sadness and guilt beneath it all. even with purple Hawke, many of their quips come from a place of "not this shit again" and even when they are out of pocket, someone is usually there to call them out on it.
i'm just like...people complained about this with andromeda, though in some respects it feels as if the team took the critiques about the meme-able performance issues/bugs as the focus - which, yeah, were a problem - but didn't think that any of the writing was the issue. to see this resurface again in veilguard, especially with rook up until the last minute when the community council said "hey rook fucking sucks rn" is concerning. i'm glad they took the critique to heart and made whatever changes they could with the aggressive content lock/budget they were allotted, but it's undeniable that a lot of the ~discourse~ from the game is that thedas just doesn't feel like thedas and that there are aspects that are just plain boring. a pretty big indictment on a series so heavily focused on the world and its characters. you can have jokes but it has to come from some place real and people will expect you to explore that.
