consider: what if veilguard's The Butcher was a rebellious saarebas
I keep thinking about this idea so I'm gonna put it down on internet paper.
The Butcher has the potential to be a pretty cool villain, but as I played Veilguard I kept thinking that everything about him would hit harder with some more groundwork. Why is he working with Elgar'nan, other than the general "for power" justification? Why does he love Treviso so much that he's willing to die for it in such a terrible way? We have hints of answers, but I just wanted more to all of it.
I'm guessing the reason we didn't get more answers was just a lack of game resources. But! We could make something so cool out of these ingredients.
Personally, I don't find the Antaam and their goal of power and general brutality to be particularly compelling. So consider this instead: A faction of saarebas who rebelled from the Qun (or the Antaam, if you're abiding by this game's mages-under-the-Qun retcon), and seized freedom for themselves.
Now THAT'S a motivation to go mad with newfound power! They've been collared and repressed their whole lives.
And the Butcher could be positioned at the head of this faction, a rebel and visionary who convinced his fellow saarebas to reject their Ketojan-like conditioning and break free. He would have to be a pretty forceful and magnetic personality to succeed in such a task! And would likely have needed the help of all the extra power he could get.
On which note... Now imagine if they've turned to blood magic!
Seriously, what happens when you do blood magic with dragon blood? I have no idea but I bet it would have some cool mechanical boss fight implications to find out!!
(At least, the lore seems to hint that qunari have some dragon blood. Right? Right. And the saarebas we've encountered are already terribly powerful even while incredibly controlled, and presumably forbidden from anything even resembling blood magic. What great and terrible possibilities there could be!)
....I wrote out all my ideas for redoing the quest in this spirit, but it got long. If you're also interested in narrative design, and like to think about editing game narratives within mechanical constraints, I'll whack the rest of my ideas below the cut!
Rewriting the quest
The basic ideas of the Butcher falling in love with a new life abroad, and having some Arishok-style interactions with Rook where they might gain some grudging respect for each other despite the circumstances, are not bad. But let's get some clearer motivations in there!
(Frankly, I would love to divorce side villains like the Butcher from the Evanuris entirely. The "all villains are on the same team" thing is not my favourite, and the Antaam and the Venatori working together is particularly bothersome, given the historical context. However! I must acknowledge that "one big villain team" is probably a non-negotiable element that was placed on the writers for mechanical reasons. So I'll obey the budget and work within that framework. The true narrative design experience...)
So: If the Butcher is a leader of a faction of rogue saarebas, he could well have accepted an offer of power from the Evanuris that enabled him to break free, liberate his fellows, and lead them on to their new life. That's a compelling reason to join up with them.
In this version of events, the Butcher will have spent some time merrily conquering and sowing terror, drunk on Evanuris power and the newfound freedom to let loose.
But by the time Rook meets him, he has come to regret his new leash. Elgar'nan's power has its own terrible strings, after all. And isn't that exactly what he was trying to get away from in the first place? He's beginning to grow resentful that his life has never left him any avenues of choice.
We can keep the general frame of the quest, but we should give Rook at least one direct exchange with the Butcher before their battle to define a dynamic between them. Show that the Butcher is a bit of a bastard, but an interesting and clever one who’s been through a great deal, and who used the means at his disposal to transform his life and take back from a world that never gave him much. He's done terrible things, yes, but he's also had a difficult journey, and in some ways we can understand why he took the escape that was offered him. Even one single dialogue exchange replacing one of the many other conversations at the Crow base or in the marketplace (to keep resources the same) could accomplish a lot here.
Then, at the end of the quest, have the Butcher come to Rook in good faith. He's tired of obeying orders, he says, and ready to risk taking a stand against the Evanuris in an attempt to shake off their leash and finally experience a life of his own making. This choice is his.
...Only for the Evanuris to reach down and blight the Butcher in retribution for his attempted betrayal, because when he accepted their power to break his saarebas chains he also bound himself to them in some magical fashion. (Or something along those lines!)
So we go ahead and do the boss fight the game wants us to do here with the blighted Butcher. But as the Butcher dies, Elgar'nan's power at last abandons him, and he is able to hang on long enough to give us the information about them that we need before he expires. One final choice of his own! Now we must mourn this guy who is both slightly terrible and slightly admirable, who could have grown into something much better than he was, if only life had ever given him the chance! How sad! I think that would be pretty cool.
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i've never played dragon age and don't know anything about it but what i do know is that that solas guy looks exactly like if astarion and wulbren bongle had a baby
I love passively digesting the fandom of a game I've never played through tumblr because I'll see certain things over and over and start to feel fond of them without context. like "awww it's knight boy and sir guy kissing again, they must be so in love," and then after 800 increasingly adorable snuggle fanarts in which I get more and more invested in the hypothetical tender love story of knight boy and sir guy that I couldn't actually tell you anything about, suddenly someone posts art of knight boy kissing shield maiden and I'm like WAIT KNIGHT BOY HAS CHOICES?? WAIT DOES SIR GUY KNOW ABOUT THIS?????
you know. it always struck me as funny that in her romance scene, cassandra flips positions to drag the inquisitor down on top of her while they're mid-kiss (rather than just falling on top of him, which is less awkward and makes more sense). but it occurs to me only now she does that because she wears a breast plate with her clothes and that would probably be really uncomfortable to crush someone with. she thinks of everything
These Glib Tongues Need Credit - A Dragon Age Dialogue Sorting Game!
(With dialogue from Origins, II, and Inquisition!)
My pal @boltlightning had this galaxy brain idea! I decided to build it out for fun.
Inspired by the 45 by 45 connections puzzle by Thomas Colthurst, and using its code as a base, I have made a fun(? hopefully!) game for people whose brains are full of Dragon Age quotes.
Here's how you play:
Click a quote that you recognize, then click on another quote spoken by the same person to stack them together.
Keep on clicking quotes and adding them to the correct stacks. (You can also add two stacks together.) When you have collected all of someone's quotes into one stack, it will show that your collection is complete by transforming into their name.
Don't worry - you don't have to finish the game in one go! Even if you close the window, your progress should save - as long as you come back with the same browser/device, you can continue where you left off.
The game will be complete once you have collected 27 stacks of 12 quotes each by 27 different Dragon Age characters. (All from DAO, DA2, and DAI! Sorry, I just haven't played DAV enough to have a brain full of quotes about it.)
I have been reading the tags on this post and my main takeaway (beyond cackling with delight and rubbing my hands) is: everyone has That One Character whose words they could recognize anywhere, and it seems to be a different character for everyone. How beautiful is that!
Thank you for playing my wretched games, please continue and tell me how you did if you like ❤️
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i do genuinely appreciate the fact that meredith as a visibly much older woman character that has 0 motivations to anything related to "lost" youth or younger women or god forbid some sort of love entanglement with a man and instead her character motivation and arc proves that fascism can also be a women-dominated field! 👍
These Glib Tongues Need Credit - A Dragon Age Dialogue Sorting Game!
(With dialogue from Origins, II, and Inquisition!)
My pal @boltlightning had this galaxy brain idea! I decided to build it out for fun.
Inspired by the 45 by 45 connections puzzle by Thomas Colthurst, and using its code as a base, I have made a fun(? hopefully!) game for people whose brains are full of Dragon Age quotes.
Here's how you play:
Click a quote that you recognize, then click on another quote spoken by the same person to stack them together.
Keep on clicking quotes and adding them to the correct stacks. (You can also add two stacks together.) When you have collected all of someone's quotes into one stack, it will show that your collection is complete by transforming into their name.
Don't worry - you don't have to finish the game in one go! Even if you close the window, your progress should save - as long as you come back with the same browser/device, you can continue where you left off.
The game will be complete once you have collected 27 stacks of 12 quotes each by 27 different Dragon Age characters. (All from DAO, DA2, and DAI! Sorry, I just haven't played DAV enough to have a brain full of quotes about it.)
Finally, Cassandra sees his form slip. Aurum shifts one foot too wide and she leaps. Like a snake, he twists his arm to catch her strike, and their blades lock. They both tremble with the effort of keeping the swords aloft, neither budging an inch.
Cassandra catches her breath, only to realize how close their faces are. She can see the bright gleam of challenge in his golden eyes, the familiar grin plastered on his face. For a long moment, they say nothing; the energy in the grove is electric, rife with power, satisfaction, progress. Oh, it is so good to see her beloved smile again, to see him take pleasure in his work.
happy dragon age day!! here's a commission by @chevalierlogan from 2022; thank you so so much again 💖💖💖
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