Key Takeaways
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard appears to have ignored a lot of the racial tensions established by older games in the series, upsetting fans.
- Despite the mistreatment of Elves in past games, The Veilguard has very little to acknowledge the prejudice if you play as one.
- Qunari players are also strangely ignored, despite having been at war with Minrathous for centuries.
Dragon Age has very deep and intricate lore thanks to years of world building, all set up by Dragon Age: Origins lead writer David Gaider’s secret master lore doc. The world of Thedas has been established for the best part of two decades now, as players have been through and experienced racial tensions, horrible conflicts, and various historical events that have shaped Dragon Age into the series we know it as today.
Unfortunately, a lot of fans feel like Dragon Age: The Veilguard has swept a lot of the previously established world building from other games under the rug a little, and while we knew the game would only take into account a few decisions made by past characters we’ve created, there are certain things not acknowledged in The Veilguard that just don’t make much sense. All the racial violence, for starters.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Fans Are Upset That Nobody Hates Elves
If you’ve played a Dragon Age game, you should be aware of how badly the Elves are treated by almost every other race. For example, living as a City Elf in Dragon Age: Origins has you abused by humans and sectioned off in your own Alienage, such is the disgust felt by many at Elves simply existing. The mistreatment of elves has been a big plot point in pretty much every game since, and is one of the reasons why Solas manages to rally so many to his cause, promising them a better future.
It seems racism was solved in the ten years between Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Veilguard, though, as Reddit user Timely-Ad-6142 recently questioned on the Dragon Age subreddit why absolutely nobody seems to hate Elves anymore. They explain that there’s little to almost no conflict or comments made against them in The Veilguard, despite playing as an Elf, even though they were expecting an errant “knife ears” to be thrown their way.
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Others have also pointed out how odd it is that there’s little Elf racism flying around, such as Reddit user NotJoclyn, who rightly points out that you’d expect there to be even more racism given that the world ending apocolypse that you’re having to deal with was caused by Elves, and that those events would “justify more hate” from more bigoted characters in the game.
Another user called Sunny_Hill_1 also points out that there’s an odd lack of acknowledgment of players who run around as Qunari. They explain that they’ve currently only had “two unique mentions of me being a Qunari”, despite the fact that Minrathous has been at war with the Qunari for centuries. It’s very odd, and fans are upset with the game’s refusal to “react to anything realistically or with any nuance”. Baldur’s Gate 3 has ruined us all.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the long-awaited fourth game in the fantasy RPG series from BioWare formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. A direct sequel to Inquisition, it focuses on red lyrium and Solas, the aforementioned Dread Wolf.