I feel like this is important for analysis but WxS's plays/in-story scripts have been getting gradually darker.
Like this isn't me reaching or anything they've factually have gotten darker and in some ways more ""realistic"" (keep in mind i'm not counting the play at the end of Happy End cos that's just a rewritten version of an old play).
I think the best way to really see this change is to kind of go through each arc and kinda view how the plays are. Now I'm doing this by memory so if I get a play wrong that's why.
1st arc.
So from Rui's first to Emu's first, we have the zombie play, the christmas play and the play to help revive Pheonix Wonderland's popularity.
Those are all pretty child friendly plays, that can be seen as lighthearted even if they do have their own emotional moments.
2nd arc.
This is where things start transitionning into a more serious tone in terms of the plays.
At first we have the play in Nene and Tsukasa's second event which both are kind of the same vibe as the 1st arc plays.
HOWEVER it's when we reached Rui's 3rd even that things take a turn in my opinion.
The story focusing on the tragic story of two androids having lived different lives, one being turn into a weapon for war.
Rui's 3rd event kind is overall a massive turn in WxS's story in general and it was kind of the point where extremely painful events started being handed like candy.
There is the Peter Pan play in Admist a Dream that kinda contradict this switch in tone but I don't really count it since it's story is not really the focus of the event and more so serves to push certain themes with Emu.
Then we have the famous Pheonix event...which like I think I don't need to explain.
3rd arc.
Now things get weird since, the Android and Pheonix play while both being a lot more dramatic and "darker" still had aspects of fantasy in them.
However the two "plays" (the second one is not a play but a film script but shhhhhhhh) are purely set in a realistic setting and obviously feel a lot more mature as a result.
This is also without pointing that both of the stories are extremely similar with a depressed male lead who is said or hinted to have suicidal thoughts until something brings them out of it.
So yeah, here's some food for analysis for what this means for WxS's story as whole
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They're free (finale stuff and a quick bonus doodle)
Simon will continue to live life as best as he can. He will learn, and forget, and learn again and keep forgetting. And move (lol) on. He will go on and write the very book that saved his life. He will experience the magic of Ooo in his own terms. He is finally free to live.
No more need for the self-made martyr's blue halo over his head. Simon is safe from the crown, and most importantly, from himself.
Betty's wish was fulfilled.
In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it blue way, we see the exact moment Golbetty is no more. Their connection is no longer needed. Golb is free to return to its true form. Who knows, perhaps add even more multiversal Liches to that chaos tetris collection.
As for Betty? She's also free.
After all the love, all the obsession, all the magic, madness, and sadness, the good and the bad that comes with such experiences, there were no regrets. Life's not perfect, but it's worth it.
It was time to let go.
Now look at that beautiful blue butterfly's design, will you? It looks... happy.
See exactly where it landed. Of all places for a butterfly to land in a flower field before flying away.
Like one last kiss goodbye.
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finished da:o at last. thinking about my assortment of half-developed warden ocs who never quite gelled the way hawke did and i feel like it's partly that i never hit on a sequence of endgame choices that really felt like a payoff. da:o is a such a great build-your-own-blorbo kit, you get such juicy character concepts out of the origin choice & reactivity but i'd always get an oc to mid-late game and feel like they were a bit dressed up with nowhere to go bc the ending just doesn't... really cap their arc in a way that feels satisfying
there's some good crunchy episodic drama contained within the treaty quests but in terms of the overall structure, the warden hits their lowest point at the beginning and you spend the game powering up until you win, pretty straightforwardly depending on your choices. like yeah the dark ritual is edgy sexist bullshit but you need it, you need something there.
like the first 2/3 are a great arc. hero leaves home in exile, goes around finding friends & adventure, returns home changed by said adventures, confronts their past, wrenching emotional ordeal etc, moves on as their new actualized self to take on the big bad. which is great except everything pretty much comes up warden from there on out. you need some kind of climax crunch to test that actualized self, another pain point at the end
which they tried to do, it just falls a bit flat for me. i've heard the 'grey warden must die' twist criticized as feeling sprung out of nowhere but i don't mind that so much. between the whole 'in death, sacrifice' thing, duncan & jory, sophia dryden, etc, i think it's pretty well set up that this is an organization with dark secrets that their two bumbling junior recruits know way too little about. i do think it's a bit stock. 'will you die to save the world?' just isn't that interesting, there's a plain right answer both ethics & genre are pointing you to, which more importantly is not really tied to your character at all.
like say what you will about da2 but the ending pays the hell off bc it forces hawke to show who they are. a person could justify making either decision, so who your hawke is matters. every bit of character development is leading up to how they'll jump in that moment
and then after dropping the warden sacrifice on you, dao immediately offers you an escape hatch, which, unless your warden is really fussed about blood magic or whatever, of course you're gonna take. structurally i think this decision is leeched of a lot of potential by the fact that both options are coming as new information.
new guy we just met: wait! there's a problem!
morrigan: don't worry i fixed it!
okay! on we go then! thanks morrigan
(could've been cool if alistair knew a warden had to die from the start, so you're struggling to go on with this journey, knowing how it ends, really get some time to stew on that before morrigan drops her bomb. the full relief of a stay of execution, plus 'you're only telling me this now?!' gives the warden a somewhat more sympathetic reason to feel betrayed than like, self-centered dickishness)
but more than that, the options the game gives you to object don't acknowledge what's really so awful about it. like you get 1) dark magic scary. part of a pattern in how i think this franchise tends to (mis)apply blood magic etc as a narrative device, but, like, good option to have for roleplay. 2) is oldgodbaby a bad idea? valid question but doesn't really go anywhere (and is more or less locked into being an anticlimax, can't be world-shaking as a choice-dependent outcome)
but like that post that was going around. what it means for morrigan is so wrenching. is it what she wants for herself or is she still acting out her mother's will? can the warden know, or believe they know? if they ask her to go through with it, are they complicit in flemeth's abuse? or are they overriding morrigan's agency if they refuse out of concern for her? how does your warden's origin & personality frame how they see this - what they're entitled to, what they owe, what they believe about duty & autonomy & respect, they're relationship with morrigan, & with magic, & their own impending death.
these people who are so young & so traumatized flailing around hurting each other in their good intentions. the dark ritual as this awful act of desperation & mixed motivations & regret that tears this hard-won friend group apart (especially if alistair is involved). saving the world as a good clean victory over evil in the grand scope, at the cost of this cataclysmic sacrifice on the personal level - so intimate, so devastating, so small. THAT'S drama.
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