The Veilguard Completely Retcons How The Blight Works

For many people, this used to be our creation to Dragon Age. The sport’s first scene instantly instructed the participant, ‘You are a part of a mythical workforce of warriors and you might be all that is status between the arena and sure doom.’ I spotlight this since the sequence used to position the Gray Wardens on a pedestal, now not essentially as a result of they have been all the time proper or righteous, however quite as a result of handiest Gray Wardens may just defeat the Blight.

Sign up for Us, Brothers and Sisters

Avid gamers who’ve handiest performed Dragon Age: The Veilguard won’t know, however to change into a Gray Warden, a recruit must drink a vial of darkspawn blood. This creates a connection between the warden and the darkspawn, permitting them to observe the monster’s actions and crucially, enabling them to drown in darkspawn blood with out turning into tainted. As we discovered in Origins, a vital selection of warden recruits perish all the way through the Becoming a member of ritual, not able to maintain the poisonous darkspawn blood.

The blood is toxic to others, inflicting a snappy and painful dying to those that had been bothered. The sequence has all the time made transparent that individuals who come into touch with darkspawn blood have a prime probability of contracting the taint. In Dragon Age 2, Aveline’s husband Wesley dies after a few skirmishes with darkspawn. Later within the recreation, Hawke’s residing sibling can die from the taint if they are delivered to the Deep Roads with out Anders within the birthday party. Differently, they are able to be stored by way of turning into a Gray Warden.

A “Other” Blight

Now, my argument right here would possibly appear pedantic, however I believe Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s remedy of the blight and taint is borderline comical and once in a while even disrespectful. Sure, the blight is “other” in The Veilguard however no person grew to become round and instructed Rook that this ultra-infectious strand of the Blight not impacts folks, or anything else alongside the ones strains. I will concede instantly that sure, the taint is not all the time persistently depicted. The Warden’s non-Gray Warden partners in Origins battle rather a large number of darkspawn and do not contract the taint. It is necessarily a luck-based ailment, so you’ll be able to fudge the numbers for the sake of a gameplay compromise.

Sure, there are occasions later within the plot that depict the taint infecting folks. However there may be a huge quantity of lack of know-how from the characters and hand-waving by way of the narrative earlier than we get so far.

Then again, on the very least, there are references in Origins to the risk of the taint and of combating darkspawn, not like in The Veilguard the place this lore level turns out to had been totally discarded. I have noticed my Shadow Dragon Rook mendacity knee-deep in darkspawn blood, exploding fleshy bubbles of viscera in every single place himself and others. In Origins, I will be able to near to headcanon that the Warden and Alistar are the use of their connection to the darkspawn to give protection to their partners, however the taint is so egregiously approached in The Veilguard that I will be able to’t rationalise it now not killing everybody.

In a an identical vein, town that Rook does not select to give protection to in Act 1, both Treviso or Minrathous, turns into tainted by way of some of the blighted dragons. The converting of our surroundings is a pleasant contact, however the nonchalance of the citizens now inhabiting a toxic town is baffling. Put merely, you’ll be able to’t reside in a tainted town, publicity to the taint incessantly must wipe out town’s whole inhabitants. The citizens must take note of this, too, and must be fleeing town en masse to flee a brutal dying. You’ll’t reside in a spot the place there are darkspawn round each nook.

Wasted Alternative

It is a disgrace, particularly since the blight in Dragon Age: The Veilguard appears and feels visceral. One of the vital recreation’s opening missions in D’Meta’s Crossing is superbly done, placing you within the centre of a blight-infested village and hammering house that the blight is a residing, respiring scourge that would probably overtake all of Thedas. Then again, sending a bunch of non-Gray Wardens into the thick of it and having them emerge unscathed is simply one of the circumstances the place Rook, his workforce, and everybody in Thedas appear totally unconcerned with the specter of the taint.

This blight lack of know-how has the extra impact of minimising the function of Gray Wardens within the lore, regardless of how necessary they have got been in the past. If any workforce of mercenaries can battle off the Blight and darkspawn, then why have the Gray Wardens been so pivotal in defeating successive Blights right through Theodosian historical past? It is a stain at the sequence’ well-documented lore, which used to be kind of impeccably constant till the discharge of The Veilguard.

If the casting apart of the well-documented results of taint and blight have been the one downside with Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s lore then I may just most likely forgive it, however the recreation’s writing disregards or softens such a lot of the sequence’ lore that the retconning of the sequence’ authentic adversary is the entire extra galling. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not a nasty recreation, however BioWare’s half-baked makes an attempt to unravel each lore query erase one of the crucial magic of the sequence that made us all fall in love with it within the first position.