Dragon Age The Veilguard Criticism Thread (formerly Skepticism Thread) [Spoilers]

If one searches the tube for "veilguard review", Skull Up comes on top with 1.1 million views, followed by a month-old Asmongold's rant and Fextralife yesterday's ramblings. There is nothing "official" or completely positive at the top. Really, there is no huge interest, and critical feedback gets its fare share. Also, there is a very interesting review on PCGamer about "marvelization" of DA, which I think tried to understand what is going on with the franchise:

www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/with-the-veilguard-dragon-age-has-forgotten-its-dark-fantasy-roots-and-become-biowares-avengers/

The marvelisation of Dragon Age started with Inquisition and that's why I assume die hard Inquisition fans are gonna like Veilguard

I legit don't get it.. why do people have such a hate boner for this game? I mean I have my reasons for concern but I get the sense all these YouTubers are just really riding the hate train, but I really don't understand what fuels it

When people

- have been playing a game franchise for 15 years

- are treated to something that doesn't fit the tone of past entries

- AND disrespects player agency (a prominent feature of those past entries)

- AND disrespects (via ignoring or altering) existing lore

- AND disrespects (via ignoring or altering) existing characters

then there will be a LOT of disappointment. Some people are "riding the hate train," but Skillup and MrMattyPlays are not. MrMattyPlays in particular sometimes goes out of his way to make excuses for games that are mid at best (one of my criticisms of him, and why I'm not subscribed to him though I still watch his stuff sometimes). A lot of people feel the same way about both of them: not fans, but Skillup and Matty usually have opinions worth hearing. That both their reviews were negative is extremely telling, because both of them have enough gaming knowledge to say more than "I just didn't like it." Matty's is more of a talking-head video imo, but Skillup's review is incredibly well-rounded.

So there are a lot of misgivings right now from a lot of people (many of them long-time franchise fans), and in their disappointment some emotions are running high. 

Review views doesn't equal interest. The game is selling like hotcakes anyway, it seems. Most preordered game on Steam now, I think.
I'm honestly surprised given the extremely bad PR at the beginning with the teaser. All the anti woke rage bait doesn't seem to have done any damage. Nor the Pixar art style. Probably because the people who buy BioWare games are super LGBTQ friendly and like BioWare for it. So that rage machine is falling on deaf ears.

The very positive review scores are probably helping a lot with people on the fence. People don't actually have to watch lengthy YT videos, they just have to look at the review scores and read a bunch of summaries to be convinced this game isn't a complete failure. And that's good enough for s purchase.

Going to be interesting if DAV is another game where the professional reviews don't match user scores at all or if us here are the outliers.

Will people have the patience to stick with the boring beginning that seems to range from 30-75% of the game, no less! I still can't wrap my head around that... Getting such high praise despite that. Really feels fishy as hell, not gonna lie.
Either this is the biggest bought review campaign ever or the last act REALLY blows it out of the water somehow. Or maybe people are extremely forgiving of a beloved franchise and don't want BioWare to get shut down so everybody has collectively decided to praise the hell out of it to ensure this game sells well enough to make EA happy.

I just read this German review that gave the game a 92% even though they admitted the game is boring for the first 20h!!!!

www.gamepro.de/artikel/dragon-age-the-veilguard-review,3421823,wertung.html

What the actual fuck is up with these reviews?!?

A game that takes this long to get going should be punished for it with a lower score than 92! While the consensus seems that the game does eventually get good, amazing good even, shouldn't the utter lack of compelling storytelling for at least a third of the game be a major negative???

Shouldn't the crippled almost non existent roleplaying of Rook be a big concern for an RPG?!
How do you arrive at this high a rating with all these cons? I don't understand. Give it a 80 if the last third makes up for the rest of the game. I've had lots of fun with flawed games. But 92?!

The review had a bunch of big BioWare fans share their opinion and they all glossed over these flaws and said it gets real good while also admitting the things that are really concerning to me personally. So even the super positive reviews are noting the same things as SkillUp, they just don't seem to care?

The comments are almost all super positive too. People seem relieved that the game is apparently good after all and everybody can't wait to play. This game is going to be a smashing hit!

So I guess we're the crazy haters and everyone else is totally unbothered by the kindergarten tone. WTF.

So thanks for being here, guys. I'd be losing my sanity if nobody else shared my opinion. This is the biggest disconnect I've ever felt about a game's reception, and I don't even want DAO2. DAO was ugly as sin, so I don't need that aesthetic back. I LIKED DAI a lot. I have rolled with the series having no visual identity whatsoever.
I really wanted DAV to be good. But how the dialogue shown in these reviews doesn't bother most people is beyond me. People who have played all previous games and loved them. I don't get it.

I will experience this game in some form so I can have an informed opinion. I did this with Starfield, another game people kept saying will get good eventually. But it didn't, it just got worse. And I played this boring clusterfuck for 207h like a masochist idiot! I kept waiting for it to get good. I kept hoping it would eventually click. Nope. They were all full of shit as far as I'm concerned. I know, opinions and all. Still.

So forgive my wariness of "it gets good eventually". Maybe it really does here. Maybe DAV actually has some good writing at some point. It's a possibility. I mean, technically DAI had a shit plot for 2/3 of the game too. It was saved by the elven gods business at the end. But the companions were awesome start to finish. Coryfish was a cringe cartoon villain but everything else was good enough that it didn't ruin the game for me.

Oh well, thanks for reading.
I'm so glad this thread exists because there is nothing like this anywhere else. The subreddit deletes all negative stuff, can't have a discussion there. Nor anywhere else outside of this thread even on BSN. So this is my small haven of sanity as far as I'm concerned.

Might be a hot take, but the only studio I think is on a level close to Bioware at its peak is CD project.

Review views doesn't equal interest. The game is selling like hotcakes anyway, it seems. Most preordered game on Steam now, I think.
I'm honestly surprised given the extremely bad PR at the beginning with the teaser. All the anti woke rage bait doesn't seem to have done any damage. Nor the Pixar art style. Probably because the people who buy BioWare games are super LGBTQ friendly and like BioWare for it. So that rage machine is falling on deaf ears.

The very positive review scores are probably helping a lot with people on the fence. People don't actually have to watch lengthy YT videos, they just have to look at the review scores and read a bunch of summaries to be convinced this game isn't a complete failure. And that's good enough for s purchase.

Going to be interesting if DAV is another game where the professional reviews don't match user scores at all or if us here are the outliers.

Will people have the patience to stick with the boring beginning that seems to range from 30-75% of the game, no less! I still can't wrap my head around that... Getting such high praise despite that. Really feels fishy as hell, not gonna lie.
Either this is the biggest bought review campaign ever or the last act REALLY blows it out of the water somehow. Or maybe people are extremely forgiving of a beloved franchise and don't want BioWare to get shut down so everybody has collectively decided to praise the hell out of it to ensure this game sells well enough to make EA happy.

Am i the only one thinking the ending is going to be 'Dragon Age Suicide mission' and the illusive man is now a bald egg