[Minor spoilers]
I completely agree. I just finished the game after romancing Davrin and was really disappointed. I feel like established lore is either shallowly mentioned or avoided at all costs, like that slavery is very much legal in certain countries and that Tevinter has the black chantry with a male black divine, which in the past games have all been great conversation points. I romanced every character in dao and dai (sorry Merryl: da2) just to get the extra tidbits of lore from their backgrounds that helped shape my view of the world I was fighting for. But veilguard hasn't given me a reason to play again really because I won't learn anything new about the world or the characters.
Taash is easily the least bland character in terms of personality, and their companion quests are good but would have had me even more emotionally invested if we could discuss Rivain and Qunari life, values, differences, politics, or something. But Rook is asked to make decisions that impact Taash as a person without getting to investigate anything that might help inform the decision. I don't know what it's like if you romance Taash, but I was really looking forward to FINALLY getting to find out more from our first ever female Qunari companion and what strict labels and expectations under the qun are like for the women. That would have helped make Taash's companion quests that much more impactful and help players understand both Taash's mother and Taash. Like how female Qunari can't be soldiers, yet Taash is a dragon hunter and fighter, which would lead to their mum saying things like "you act like a man". It just would have enriched that particular storyline so much more and been such an interesting aspect to make me want to do a Taash romance run.
I also found it super frustrating that the companions don't react if you flirt with multiple people. I went in thinking I would romance Lucanis because he likes coffee, I like coffee; he wears purple, purple is my favourite; he's an abomination, I romanced Anders first in DA2... But after getting blank stares when flirting I thought maybe he didn't really like my Rook, even though we had that brief date, so I flirted with Dav and he immediately responded and I went on to romance him instead. But Lucanis never says anything about it. The next time my Rook spoke to him he was gushing over Neve and made her a pie, which made me laugh, like okay... were they seeing each other behind the scene all this time? So I completely agree that Rook feels forgettable to the companions even when romancing them. In the end, my biggest investment was seeing any Solas and Lavellan interaction... which was also lacklustre unfortunately.
Deciding for Taash felt so wrong to me. I felt so icky making any choice for them, and even more so because the choices were so asinine. On top of that, my Rook was human (and pale skinned, a whole other can of worms adding the context of reality into the mix), so the optics of telling Taash to either choose Rivaini OR Qunari culture just felt like the opposite of the direction the writers even wanted to take. Did it have to be one or the other? Did it have to be either?
Like if Taash organically chose for themself what they wanted based on things they learned within the game over time, like from conversations and choices Rook made on their own that were seemingly unrelated, that might be one thing. In BG3, there are so many moments where you can do nothing and let characters decide for themselves what to choose based on previous choices in the game. But for it to be so ironically binary that for Taash it's "Your mother meant well" - EMBRACE QUNARI CULTURE!! (ew gross), or "Forget your mom!" - EMBRACE RIVAINI CULTURE (um maybe your mom has issues that she needs to work out and it sucks that you're negatively impacted by that and it's time to explore how to make healthy boundaries to do what's best for yourself). And then later on you can do a weird switcharoo on that choice and it doesn't feel like it has any impact on Taash?
I know a lot of people are analyzing the complexities of the choices and arguing that it's more subtle than first implied -- BUT it doesn't change the fact that the raw mechanics of the conversation are so simplistic to begin with that I was sent into a near panic and outrage over how the hell to move forward in a way I felt okay with. Yes, when we learn something new about ourselves it can feel like we regress and turn back into children to catch that part up to our already developed aspects -- but Taash never felt like an adult.
I'm non-binary myself. I know that being nb is different for every single person, but when I thought I'd get a super hot dragon hunter who knew their **bleep**, and could break me in half if I wanted, I instead got a whiney teenager who exploded over every little thing their mom did and said, no matter if their mom maybe maybe maybe had her own reasons that were far more complex and nuanced than Taash would even consider. There was so much potential there for layered exploration -- the trauma children experience through no fault of their own because of the trauma their refugee parents experienced, the frustration and pain felt when you think a parent doesn't understand or accept you, how relationships change between adult children and parents. But the game bit off more than it could chew, spit out most of it, and the absence of substance is deeply felt.
Were Taash's tantrums and struggle realistic? Sure. Was it sexy? Absolutely not. It killed every desire I had to try to romance Taash, and actually repulsed me that Rook is almost a parental figure molding Taash into who Rook encourages them to be -- and I hear that Taash is the most overtly steamy romance out of all the companions? Major major ick. A friend, a mentor, okay I can appreciate the character arc Taash goes through. But not a lover.
I'm convinced there were 0 adults in the room writing Taash. It was all Weekes and very likely they didn't accept any criticism.
We saw that play out once before in ME3. I can't believe BioWare didn't learn their lesson.
Didn't David Gaider either do an interview or say on social media that he had to reign Weekes' writing in during the development of Inquisition? It sounds like the game needed Gaider.
The thing with ME3 didn't have anything to do with Weekes though, the ending was all Hack Walters and Casey Hudson, one of the other devs said they wrote the ending without any input from the other writers.
I completely agree!
I'm not nb, but I did struggle with being a girl between 11 and 16 where I only really dressed like a boy except church. So I completely understand that aspect of Taash's story. But I'm also a child of an immigrant mother and if at any point in my life someone told me I had to choose between embracing the country I live in or my mother's culture, I'd laugh in their face and tell them to kindly fark off. And I don't even have a super close relationship with my mum.
You're right. It's a very ironically binary choice to make for Taash and weird that Rook is the one making it in the first place. Like why would Taash even need to pick between them? It's not as if Isabella would throw Taash out if they didn't label themself as Rivani or Qun. There are so many points where I felt Taash was still mentally a child, 13 at most. Like how (ironically again!) Taash wouldn't call Emmerich by his name, even though he constantly asked them to respect his wishes to be called Emmerich... it was bratty and a huge turn off.
