Chappell Roan’s SNL Look Has Dragon Age Fans Excited
We love Chappell Roan here at Kotaku. The “Good Luck, Babe” singer puts out queer bangers, dresses up in chainmail at award shows, and has cultivated a fanbase of gay nerds who record her shows on Nintendo handhelds. So when she shows up on Saturday Night Live this weekend on November 2, I will be tuned in and seated. But before the show airs, Roan has already appeared in some promotional material for the show, and her outfit has activated Dragon Age fans, as if they aren’t already having a stimulating week after the launch of The Veilguard on Halloween.
Roan is scheduled to be the musical guest for this week’s Saturday Night Live, with stand-up comedian and former SNL writer John Mulaney set to host the show. Both appeared in some promotional videos for the episode, and yeah, Mulaney is there, but Roan’s elaborate outfit is the star of the show. The green and gold outfit features a huge crescent headpiece with gold waist pieces stretching out to the side that seemingly double as armrests. The whole fit is something straight out of a fantasy RPG, and folks in fandoms like Final Fantasy are jumping on the jokes. However, Dragon Age is fresh in everyone’s minds and I, too, had to laugh at how Roan’s outfit is evocative of Ghilan’nain, one of the elven gods the player faces in The Veilguard.
Ghilan’nain is a blighted elf, and without getting too into the weeds, that means her body has been twisted into a monstrous eldritch horror. This lady has multiple sets of arms and tentacles, and her face is hidden under a mask connected to a crescent headpiece. In close-up shots you can see her face is just as horrifying beneath the mask, and why she was so willing to become this monstrosity is part of the story you’ll uncover in The Veilguard. With the headpiece and tendril-like appendages, Roan’s outfit calls to mind the elven god of guides and navigation, so Dragon Age fans are all making the same joke.
Ghilan’nain is nothing like Chappell Roan, though. Is the elven god a queer icon? I mean, not yet, but she could be. But all I’ve ever seen her do is try to kill the queer friend group that is The Veilguard. That’s not very “ally” of her.
Should You Save Minrathous Or Treviso
Many of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s choices are personal and focus on your team’s relationships and life paths. However, one of the big, world-changing ones comes early on, shortly after you recruit Davrin, the Grey Warden companion. Right now, you might be staring at a choice between helping either the Tevinter city of Minrathous or Treviso, the home base of the Antivan Crows, from coordinated dragon attacks. If you’re unsure of what decision to make and want to know what the results of each option are, we’re here to lay them out for you.
This choice has an impact on your party and your faction allies, as both the Tevinter mage Neve and the Antivan assassin Lucanis are from the affected cities. You’re essentially making a choice on which city and faction will be in a better position to help you when the time comes, and putting Neve or Lucanis on a specific path in their stories and even combat roles. Here’s the rundown of the consequences.
- The person you don’t help will temporarily leave the party
- When they return, they will be considered “hardened,” which locks out parts of their skill tree and makes it harder to progress their relationship without higher approval throughout the game
- You will lose some choice in Neve and Lucanis’ personal storylines, and they will be forced to go down one direction because of the circumstances
- The city you don’t save will be blighted, altering quest lines and dialogue, and cutting off access to the local faction’s shop
- The Shadow Dragons or Antivan Crows will have a baseline loss in allied strength points, meaning it will be impossible to max them out
Overall, it’s still a binary choice that evens itself out, but it will have pretty direct ramifications on your relationship with Neve and Lucanis above all else. It’s still possible to reach the end of their storylines (including having them become a Hero of the Veilguard, which is the equivalent to reaching maximum Loyalty in the Mass Effect series) and make up for the loss in allied power, but it will take more sidequests to make it happen, and you won’t have the shop to sell valuables to in order to juice those numbers.
What I’m unsure of as of this writing is whether or not it locks you out of Neve and Lucanis’ respective romances. I saved Minrathous in my playthrough and my relationship with Lucanis was slow to progress for a bit, so I didn’t see any further options to flirt and eventually locked in my romance with Davrin. We’ll update this guide as that becomes clear.
If you’re reading this guide, you’re probably a decent way into The Veilguard, but if you’d like a few extra tips to help you as you take down the elven gods, we’ve got those, too.