A Crisis of Faith: Shadowheart & Bellara
Bellara (Dragon Age: The Veilguard) & Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate 3)
Spoiler warning for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard! If you’re still playing through Bellara and Shadowheart’s arcs, come back later.
In this edition of video game fantasy elves confronting their issues, it’s time to give the ladies a turn. The theme this time: a crisis of faith when a character must confront whether their beliefs are truly founded in the right place. What happens when the gods they worship turn out to be far from righteous?
For Bellara (Dragon Age: The Veilguard) and Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate 3), this crisis of faith unfolds in different ways and with varying degrees of success, in my opinion. In both stories, we see each of the characters uncover truths about the god(s) they worship and find hidden family connections linked to the deities. Full disclosure: Shadowheart has a bit of an advantage here. I came into Baldur’s Gate 3 with very little background in D&D lore or its pantheon, so I learned about her faith and goddess in real time as her story unfolded. By contrast, I’ve spent years with the Dragon Age series, so I had higher expectations for how the elven gods and Bellara’s relationship to them would be portrayed.
Shadowheart’s arc is one of gradual revelation. As you earn her trust through the game’s approval system, she begins to open up. At first, she seems confident that she’s serving the right goddess. But the cracks begin to show when you discover that her memory has been erased and that she experiences actual pain when her choices stray from her deity’s will. Her faith is not only tested but weaponized against her. It doesn’t help that when she finally admits to following Lady Shar, she immediately expects your judgment. Baldur’s Gate 3 deserves credit for letting this story breathe. The pacing feels organic, and your choices genuinely shape the way Shadowheart’s beliefs evolve or unravel.
Lady Shar
Bellara’s journey, in contrast, feels far more restrained. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the main conflict centers on the return of the ancient elven gods — the Evanuris — who seek to restore the world to their “perfect” vision of dominance. Elves like Bellara are thus forced to face the reality that the gods they once revered as benevolent rulers were, in truth, deeply flawed and tyrannical.
But while that setup sounds ripe for exploration, the execution falls flat. Shadowheart’s spiritual struggle is personal and transformative a side story that naturally weaves into the main plot. As Shadowheart explores what it means to follow Shar, she must come to terms with whether the teachings align with her own moral code. Bellara’s struggle, however, is tightly bound to the game’s central conflict, yet rarely explored with the same emotional nuance. She’s one of the few elves who openly acknowledges that the chaos in the world stems directly from the gods she worshipped. Yet, confusingly, the narrative can’t seem to decide whether the Evanuris are gods or just extraordinarily powerful mages, which is a muddled distinction that weakens her internal conflict.
Ghilan’nain and Elgar’nan of the Evanuris
It doesn’t help Bellara’s case that Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC set up the next chapter brilliantly. The reveal of the Dread Wolf — Dragon Age’s version of Loki — promised a morally complex exploration of faith, rebellion, and identity. Replaying Origins, Dragon Age II, and Inquisition reminded me how the series has always treated elven faith with thought-provoking scenarios. Through small encounters with Dalish clans and scattered lore, players pieced together a portrait of devotion, loss, and cultural survival. That made The Veilguard’s handling of the elven gods all the more disappointing.
Instead of the nuanced mythology we expected, the Evanuris are portrayed as purely evil, monstrous beings twisting the world and its people into abominations. And Bellara, unfortunately, suffers for it. One moment she’s the lighthearted, whimsical companion cracking jokes; the next, she’s brooding about the moral collapse of her people’s history. Her tone shifts abruptly, and her crisis of faith never feels like a consistent through-line. It’s only midway through the game, long after she’s witnessed countless horrors, that she begins to genuinely question her beliefs.
Many Dragon Age fans (myself included) were eager to see the return of the elven gods explored with moral complexity, especially after Trespasser suggested that some elves might choose to follow their gods while others resisted. That idea hinted at a divided people, torn between reverence and rebellion. But in The Veilguard, that nuance is gone. The narrative reduces the conflict to a simple binary: the Evanuris are evil, and only villains would ever side with them. Everyone else simply rejects them outright.
Shadowheart’s story, by contrast, never feels that simple. Her struggle is internal, emotional, and deeply relatable where she must reconcile her own identity in terms of what is the truth versus what she’s been taught to believe. It’s the kind of faith crisis that feels earned. Bellara’s, unfortunately, feels like a missed opportunity as a story that had all the right ingredients, but never took the risk to explore what it truly means to lose faith in your gods.
Perhaps I’m being unfairly critical of Bellara and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but it is truly because I had such high hopes for the game. Part of what I loved about previous Dragon Age games and Baldur’s Gate 3 was the ability to see both sides. So many of their central conflicts and side quests thrive in shades of grey, where you can understand how people reach opposing beliefs Even as I learned more about Shar and felt uneasy about some of the related practices of her followers, I could understand why some people would be compelled to serve her.
The Veilguard, however, denies that kind of moral complexity by making the Evanuris irredeemably evil from the start. Solas, as the Dread Wolf, may offer a glimpse of nuance, but his perspective still feels surface-level compared to the layered debates we’ve seen in past games. Once again, the tone of The Veilguard feels inconsistent, particularly in Bellara’s reactions, which was a common issue across the cast. As a result, we were robbed of the richer, more introspective exploration of culture, belief, and doubt that made Shadowheart’s story so powerful.
All in-game images, footage, and characters are the property of their respective developers and publishers. Screenshots and clips from Baldur’s Gate 3 © Larian Studios and Dragon Age: The Veilguard © BioWare/Electronic Arts, used under fair use for commentary and critique.
