Roaming Rook

visualization of my previous post with addition from @whiskynorocks

Every scene is about setting the companions up as cool or competent or sympathetic. Often, this is done at Rook’s expense. The companions get all the witty one-liners; Rook’s attempts at humor not only frequently fall flat, but are frequently called out for falling flat (even when they’re completely automatic and the player has no say in them).

The companions have all the knowledge and skills; Rook just brought them all together and gives them all pep talks so they can focus. I’m trying to edit out all of the comments where Rook is like “Um… what????” from my videos, and let me tell you, it takes WORK. There are A LOT of them. I can count on one hand the number of times when the Inquisitor or Hawke comes across as dumb, but it seems to be a built-in, unavoidable part of Rook’s character. I have not selected a single “purple” option in all of Act 1, and Rook is still coming across as the kid who tries to be the class clown to cover for the fact that he’s always confused. Rook’s role in most scenes is to say “Uhhh… what?” so that the companions look smart.

Rook is always the one offering sympathy and never the one getting it. No one actually comes to comfort you after Varric’s death. No one asks you how you’re feeling about having to lead the team now that Varric is gone. No one tries to reassure you or give you advice for dealing with the trickster god haunting your dreams. We’re told that Neve could keep Solas out of your head, but she never actually offers to do this for you. No one comforts a Shadow Dragon Rook when Minrathous is destroyed or a Grey Warden Rook when Weisshaupt is destroyed. Rook’s problems don’t matter. Only the problems of main characters matter.

Playing a Mourn Watcher Rook? Emmrich is world renowned and is offered lichdom.

Warden? Davrin has a griffon, leads you to Isseya, leads you through Weisshaupt. He seems to embody the perfect Warden.

Veil Jumper? Bellara is referred to by Strife as the best among them and has a prodigious knowledge of elven artifacts. She rebuilds the eluvian and the archive.

Shadow Dragon? Neve is a renowned detective and is featured often in the papers. She is incredibly badass during her loyalty mission and at the endgame, especially if you blight her and watch her take control back and fight for her city. Neve is written like a protagonist (I wish I could play her as an origin - Neve is who I want to roleplay).

Qunari? Taash is a rare firebreather with deep knowledge of qunari history. Not to mention, they are a favorite of Isabela's, if you're playing Lord of Fortune.

Dwarf? Harding gets magic, not you. She has also been with Varric longer, so why isn't Harding in charge?

Crow? Lucanis is a literal prince of murder, gets to be First Talon. You aren't even a Talon from your own house, because that would be Viago (though I love Viago and would never change him from the role of Rook's "big brother" and trainer in a million years).

You are told that Rook is there because they are tenacious and can make good plans and that's about it. Many of the times though, the plan on what to do next comes from the team. They get intel from their contacts, or know someone to ask etc. Neve gets you in contact with the crows, Harding gets you in contact with Antoine/Evka/Davrin, Morrigan/the Inquisitor & Taash/Isabela, Bellara finds your Fade expert. Bellara and Neve keep up the glamours during the venatori infiltration, my mage didn't even help. There are tons of examples like that which make me think that you could have removed Rook from the story, have Harding reach out to her contacts as usual, and still build the Veilguard and save the world.

in DAV its just. Why is rook even here? Because they're Varric's prodigy? The Inquisitor was that also in a way, plus Varric has tons of friends all over. And the Inquisitor has a network of year long contacts across the borders of Thedas, as well as probably the strongest motivation to hunt Solas down.

The other Protagonists all had pretty valid reasons why they ended up as the one in charge:

The warden was forced to lead because they were one of 2 wardens left in Ferelden and the other one refused flat out, and only a warden can kill an Archdemon so they have no option but to do it if they dont want darkspawn to kill everyone.

Hawke becomes leader only AFTER they actually accomplish something exceptional that puts them in the spotlight. Before they find the treasure they're treated like a dreg, just another impoverished Fereldan refugee. After they get cash they're in by far the most influential position of any of the team - the others are all pariahs in some way or other, an escaped slave elf, a dalish elf apostate, a human apostate, a pirate, a dwarven gangster, and the guard captain who is not free to act as she wishes - so they become the de facto face of the party in situations that deal with authority.

And the inquisitor is literally physically fused to the only Thing in The Entire World that can be used to prevent the veil from just breaking, meaning that they HAVE to be involved. And after Haven, whether they wanted to or not, they have become a political symbol in the face of systems too busy arguing amongst themselves to actually deal with the immediate threat.

But what does Rook do? Why are they here? Why is everyone listening to them? We get told via codex entries and some quips at the start of all the cool things Rook supposedly did, but not only is this rarely if ever even mentioned, this has no atcual reactivity in the game either. its just flavor to justify why Rook isnt at home at the game start.

to see leliana and morrigan having a cat fight in a middle of deep roads, poking at each other's insecurities

then forcing warden to chose one of them or they'll just leave his cheating ass

to see fenris threatening to kill anders if he ever hurts hawke because he still have feelings for them and feels immense regret for leaving them that night

to see these two bickering and throwing accusations at one another. "You were an idiot to leave Hawke." "And you were fast enough to replace me." C'mon????????

to hear merrill apologizing for bringing up isabela and hawke's past relationships, and isabela supporting merrill being with hawke, even if she still has feelings for them after a mere "fling"

to hear blackwall comforting sera after inquisitor broke up with her

to hear SERA comforting blackwall after inquisitor broke up with HIM

to hear bull and sera actually joking a bit after relationship with one did not worked out but with the other one did

............................... and can you imagine how awesome it would've been if, after breaking up with lucanis, for example, spite would've refused to cooperate, maybe even turned on Rook, or the companion they romanced?

if neve would comfort bellara after a break up and refused to be in a relationship with rook after, because "you just broke her friend's heart what answer did you expect asshole?"

if davrin and lucanis had a bitchfight of their own? if both of them were poking fingers at each other because one of them is a demon-possessed assassin and the other one is a gray warden, who above all, has to prioritize stopping the blight so "what future could rook possibly have with you!??"

the sheer awkwardness between emmrich and taash when rook tries to flirt with both of them?

He has no personality other than that he likes coffee. The only way to romance him is to blight Minrathous and give it to the Venatori.

He got hired to kill a God, and he misses TWICE. And the second time it costs us a companion.

He wasn't picked as a sacrifice option, because he is so replaceable. Nobody would notice if he wasn't there.

We could've had Fenris instead and he would've been a great fit.

Lucanis is bound to a demon, and they build it up as a big deal (because it has been a huge deal with other characters) but then it doesn't go anywhere. He tells you he's going to separate from or stay with Spite and that's that.

?????????

He's a bad fit for Neve. He's a terrible assassin. And if I were even remotely attracted to men Davrin is right there. He's got the jaw line. He's got the hair. He's got the griffon.

The Dalish have been established over all three games as a people who have spent the last thousands of years desperately scrounging for whatever scraps of their culture they can find, a struggle that has cost them dearly as typified by Merrill's plight trying to restore a single Eluvian which had previously Blighted two of her clan mates (an Eluvian that she can't open or use, and doesn't actually know what it's for by the end of her quest line). Multiple Dalish in Inquisition are killed trying to regain their history ("The Knight's Tomb") or trying to prove themselves by regaining even a talisman related to their culture ("Someone to Lose"). They are an insular and guarded people because outsider interactions frequently invoke a heavy toll in Dalish lives, up to and including entire clans. And yet, we are supposed to believe in a single throwaway piece of dialogue that in the 10 years between Inquisition and Veilguard, the Dalish have (offscreen) gained enough access to Eluvians as a piece of technology that they can afford to just "gift" one to the Grey Wardens without explanation.

There are constant revelations of this kind where pre-established parts of the lore are just thrown out the window. Things that had great emotional weight or impact in previous installments of the series are used for cheap thrills or plot-hole fills without explanation, justification, or even gravitas from the game. You have a moment in one of Emmrich's quests where you stumble through a portal directly into the Fade that Hezenkoss opened in Blackthorne manor, and you're tasked with closing it again. All of this is done entirely without the Anchor or even an implied blood sacrificial ritual, and it is never commented as anything particularly groundbreaking (when going into the Fade physically through tearing a hole in it was a Big Fucking Deal in Inquisition). You encounter a Compassion spirit in a side quest investigating the deaths of citizens in Tevinter who were murdered by a demon of Despair, and it is strong enough to not only retain itself through sensing the (unanswered!) suffering that these people experienced, but it also resolves to protect others to keep them from the same fate (when Cole was so traumatized by a single person's death that he completely reshaped his entire being around them). So on and so forth. Don't even get me started on Bellara's comment that the ancient elves "made most of their buildings in the Fade".

I'm not asking for someone to hold my hand and spoonfeed me information. I frankly don't care if an obscure codex entry, a reddit AMA question, bluesky tweet, or headcanon exists somewhere to patch in or bandaid over all of the jarring details like this, because it doesn't change the fact that the game itself should be doing this. The game itself should be taking the time to explain this in a way that is not missable, the game itself should be taking these things seriously, it should recognize when it is doing contradictory things and rush to justify itself accordingly, because these are things the emotional beats of previous stories hinged on. Like, when the game has Taash say a line like "The Qun isn't a prison, you can leave if you want", it's the responsibility of the writers to show that this is Taash being misinformed, not because I'm too stupid to headcanon that this is the case, but because this line is a symptom of how the entire game's writing seems to have forgotten about the Ben-Hassrath as a thing that exists in this setting.

Previous Dragon Age games are no stranger to "We quietly removed Solas' network of agents and spies offscreen"-style writing, but it usually didn't feel like a constant deluge periodically uprooting my emotional investment and immersion. There's only so much I can take in good faith before I realize that this game was just not written with any care towards ensuring that the worldbuilding made sense and felt right to the player, leading to awkward backpedaling in reddit threads like "no the Crows haven't changed as an organization, these are just the unique Good Crows and we forgot to mention it".