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.
Yes, I was referring to Hudson basically writing the ending himself without input from others and rejecting criticism. I thought they might have learned a lesson from that and not given the reins over to someone who basically does the same thing. Taash could have EASILY been the most popular character in the game if a few different choices had been made or if the writer had listened and focused on some additional things. Tell an NB story if you want to, but not at the expense of the other interesting things about the character, like growing up as a female qunari.
I find it impossible to believe that after the folks at BioWare utterly rejected the first Samantha Traynor script as being too much of an "after school special coming out story" everyone played through this one and said, "yep, ship it!" they truly must have lost ALL the old guard there.
