rocky41_7

This dialogue makes me so crazy and I mean that in a deeply pejorative way. This exchange between Solas and Varric at the start of Veilguard (which you can't actually really hear in-game) goes right to the heart of my biggest problems with the game, which is that it refuses to honestly engage with Solas and his motivations.

Varric, the terminal centrist, seems to suggest that Solas was in the wrong to rebel against the Evanuris for being tyrannical slavers. Which, given Varric's general attitude towards injustice in Kirkwall, isn't totally out of character. Except that Veilguard posits him as the moral heart of the game, so...not sure where we go with that. Is Varric suggesting they'd be better off if the Evanuris had been allowed to continue ruling until the present day?

Then, Solas refuses to give an actual reasons for why he's doing what he's doing. At least in Trespasser, he hinted at why he needed to bring down the Veil. Here, where the writers are given a chance to actually, clearly lay out Solas' motivations, they just...don't. Veilguard won't honestly interrogate either side of the debate, which results in incredibly circular dialogue throughout the game to the effect of:

Solas: I must do this. It's my mistake to fix.

Varric: You're going to drown the world in demons!

Repeat ad nauseum.

No reasons from Solas on why he needs to bring down the Veil--nothing like his Trespasser comments or even his Inquisition dialogue hinting at what the world was before the Veil. Nothing about how spirits suffer being confined exclusively to the Fade. Nothing about how the elves have suffered and been degraded since the Veil went up. Nothing at all about the uthenerai, who may have just been entirely reconned. Just "I made a mistake. I have to fix it." And then later we mix in his grief for Mythal and that's meant to explain it all.

Varric can't argue with Solas because Solas gives Varric nothing to argue against, and therefore nothing for the player to agree or disagree with. We can't have an opinion on what Solas is doing because we're never given concrete reasons why he wants to do this, except that apparently Mythal wanted this (which she never gives any indication of in any of the material we have about her)? (Demonstrably Flemythal disagrees, so this sentiment is at best out of date and at worst completely baseless.) And I've already talked about how making Solas' desire to remove the Veil stem from his personal grief for an individual rather than his desire to do justice for his people weakens his character.

Varric says that if Solas believed in what he was doing he'd give a straight answer, but that would require the game to give us a straight answer, so that can't happen. Veilguard suffers from being a game with a significant moral quandary at the center which determinedly refuses to ever interrogate that quandary.