I know now what I was born to do

Thank you @davrinsleftpectoral for bringing my attention to this <3

If you remove Viper's mask via mods, you can see him grin after he sticks the landing during the first meeting with Rook (his face retains a neutral expression for the rest of the conversation).

So I Went back to look at the project: Joplin section of the VG art book and honestly. I don't really mind that that wasn't what we got (and people would've absolutely complained about it anyways). I’m even kinda glad veilguard was as good as it was despite the corporate abuse

Pretty much everything that is within the project Joplin storyboards and concept art was

1. Actually translated 'somewhat'/made it into VG. The maneuvering different cities, hopping between buildings, shimmying around, etc are all present (and very apparent in treviso and dock town in particular). The main story/ conflict with the gods + the new lore establishments is also very clearly in VG (which I will get into more in a second). Similar thing to be said about the Solas Dream sequences too

2. Didn't exactly fit with the main story conflicts/the setting in general, and I can see why it was scrapped, or I just prefer VGs additions instead. The submarine idea in particular, while very cool, is..... not exactly fitting for what we've seen and come to expect in dragon age either frankly. I'm glad we have the lighthouse and crossroads (as I've been interested in the crossroads since the masked empire, ty trick weekes)

3. There just wasnt enough information to see where the idea could've gone in the first place. "Revas", someone who was going to be Solas' sidekick, did not really have enough information given about her for me to really mourn her loss. A lot of the actual spy related storyboards also felt shaky in terms of how they would connect to the main plot (and also had an air about them that would imply major timeskips in the game itself, which after DA2 OH IM NOT HUNGRY!!! IM GOOD).

4. Have a whole lot of worldstate breaking/worldstate complications funnily enough. Whoever you left in the fade 'possibly' being encountered and aiding you against solas, would require 5 different voice actors ALONE depending on worldstate. 2 possible companions in concept can die in inquisition. Same thing can be said for that of stens/arishoks return.

5. Or I just don’t see how some things would’ve translated into a video game format. Such as your character being killed in their sleep by solas if they didn’t figure out a way to block him out of their dreams. Sure it builds the stakes and adds tension, but if you think about for more than 3 seconds I feel like it’s easy to see that that becomes messy when thinking about save files and lost progress (bc you just got a game over essentially and what do you do when you get a game over? You reload and try again). Same thing again with some of the spy elements as well, where judging by the storyboards, these feel more like cinematic sequences than the player actually playing through them (like the caravan chase for example). So unless you all want quick time events in dragon age, we wouldn’t even be playing some of those sequences (and I know this is shocking to some of you, but I personally enjoy actually playing these games)

And overall as I said before, DA fans would've still complained about every single one of these and called it lore breaking, world state breaking, painting the elves in a “bad light” (I personally don’t wanna kill elves just bc they follow some golf ball), etc etc all bc they disliked VG sooooo much that surely the original concepts would've been done better!!

I can't say for sure why certain things in project Joplin were dropped nor who made the call to drop them. No one can say for sure except for the creators and leads. Though EA is 100% still the villain of VGs development don't get me twisted, I can go on about that till I'm blue in the face. I'm still very satisfied with veilguard for what it delivered, explored, and what it opened up to explore in a future game (if that were to happen.....I hope so….. sigh).

Honestly, I'd actually say that certain things in project Joplin would be PERFECT to explore in a new dragon age game where they wouldn’t have a lot of things holding them back from implementing those concepts. the submarine concept can be more effectively explained when you have a lot of new magi-tech from ancient elvhenan combined with modern Thedas' magi-tech + the whole devouring storm/“those across the sea” as a basic foundation for why the plot would ask the characters to travel in a submarine. Reva working for the executors perhaps (bc executors do take real people into their…. Whatever it is they’re doing. They kidnap a shit ton of inquisition soldiers in a war table outcome) and would honestly be far more interesting than her playing a “bad cop” sidekick to solas. Imshael coming back regardless if you killed them in inquisition due to their possible (?) connection to the forgotten ones and helping you against the executors OR being a proper villain this time around, would be rlly cool (and. If they’re romancable. That would be cool too. Cmon BioWare I wanna fuck spirit JUST ONCE). These are all examples off the top of my head but I hope you get what I’m saying.