Spoilers: Ending of game and similarities.

[Stuntwax]

Something that was heavily sticking out to me around the end was how much is seeming like a ripoff from mass effect 2 suicide mission and baldurs gate.

Baldurs hate you had the emperor speaking to you in dreams, (exactly like solas) and they both were just using you. The final area is tentacle infested like the brain. The boss lady in lucanis quests, Zera I think in a pool of blood?? Feels just like Bhaal and the slayer stuff in act 3. I can’t tell if there was intermingling in development and they fed ideas off each other, but with how long this was in development I can’t guess what and when they changed the story pieces.

The mass effect suicide missions are literally an exact ripoff though. You’re companions will die if you don’t do the loyalty missions and/or send the wrong person for the job. It reeks of laziness to develop other ways for companions to die or create stakes for a team that feels like suicide squad: Fantasy Edition.

ENDING SPOILERS:

Finally about the ending, seeing all endings on YouTube and seeing how the Reddit base is taking it, this is possibly the worst retcon of our past choices I could think of. A sinister group whispering in ears and that’s why everything went wrong in all previous games? The whole south is being demolished by the blight, while both arch demons and gods were in the north, not like the inquisition is there if you allowed them to stay together. There’s no choice to get to see solas plans come to fruition which would’ve been cool to see. The titans for the dwarves are… Idek the story with Harding she has a piece of the titan, or all dwarves do and she’s a harborage after touching the dagger? What did the elven gods do to the titans and how did it impact them? If the arch demons are tied to the evanuris, where is solas’, mythals? Did the arch demons previously slain kill the elven gods that were trapped in the veil?

They had 10 years to develop these stories, and they didn’t. It shows the skilled writing dragon age had is long gone and these new writers should’ve just stayed writing wattpad fanfics.

[Kirara]

That 'lady in the blood' character is obviously inspired by real world counterpart - Elizabeth Bathory and how she supposedly bathed in the blood of virgins to stay young and beautiful. It was obvious exagerration and slander due to politics and her situation back then, but this reputation has stuck and have been recretaed in countless media.
I don't know about Mythal, but Solas never had his own dragon because he did not want to bind any being to himself, cause that would mean enslaving said being.
Speaking/killing in dreams was already present in DA2 with Fenriel.
Regrets of the Dread Wolf quest explains what elven gods did to Titans.
And I higly doubt that Bioware copied anyhting from BG3. They had too little time to do that. They obviously did borrow from ME2 though, but it's Bioware's game so I don't see any problem.

[whoza_whatzit]

I don't see how this is retcon personally. They make it pretty clear in past games that "sinister whispers" are happening. Look at DA2 with Meredith and Orsino, same with Corypheus and what he says about the magisters who sought out the Golden City. The south being demolished by the blight makes decent sense, as the southern Wardens were pretty well devastated by the events of Inquisition, and one of the ending title cards in that game said that most wardens were recalled to Weisshaupt. The Inquisition being disbanded or staying a peace keeping force is mentioned, and if they did stay together - they serve the chantry now as a MUCH smaller force - also mentioned in the ending cards. If you played The Descent DLC in Inquisition, it actually set a lot of the Titan/Elves information into play that we see the fruition of in Veilguard. It's actually explained pretty well if you follow the memories side-quest given to you in the Lighthouse what happened between the ancient elves and the titans, and there's a whole Harding side-quest about it in game. The game itself explains why Solas doesn't have a dragon, as Kirara said.

The game actually fills in a LOT of plot holes that existed in the franchise, and answers questions people have been asking for 10 years. In regards to how Bioware borrowed from it's own IP ME2 for parts of the final battle? Yeah, probably a little. But it also feels right, to me at least. You're leading a team of people brought together, most of whom are "just a guy" - and the game *specifically* tells you that if you can't pull their heads out of their own issues to focus on the mission that people will die. Solas says this, Emmerich says it at the "round table" that happens at the end of Act 3.

Don't get me wrong, the game's not perfect, and you can definitely feel where the game took a pivot from the Dreadwolf title to the Veilguard title.