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

Copyright? It releases tomorrow. That's insane.

Hell Dorian's quest isn't even about his father not accepting him as gay, but about him wanting Dorian to "close his eyes and think of the Imperium" And Dorian being unwilling to do that. Part of it was because he was gay, yes, but as big a reason was because he saw how his parents hated their arranged marriage, and how miserable they became.  And he didn't want to inflict that on himself, the woman they had picked for him (whom he had never met) and to any child they might have had. His quest could have unfolded exactly the same way if he was straight. 

Being gay was part of Dorian's character, but it didn't DEFINE him. 
I think it's clear now that the current crop of writers care nothing about the lore. And are just writing whatever sounds cool at the moment.

The destruction and disregard of established lore as it concerns the so called Qunari of Veilguard:

A question for players who play with French audio. Are there a total of 4 voices (2 male and 2 female) for Rook to choose from or just 2?

I've believed for years now that several people on this forum put way more thought and effort into DA's lore than BioWare themselves, and here we are.

I have been a big Bioware fan since KOTOR. The Mass Effect Trilogy is literally my favourite game series of all time. I also love Baldurs Gate 2, Dragon Age Origins and KOTOR. DA2 and Inquisition still had lots of good writing too despite some flaws.

Andromeda was the first game where I thought the writing was very immature and weak, like made to appeal to the tumblr crowd. Just awful but since it wasn't made by the main team I thought it was a one time thing.

But holy shit this has to be the worst written Bioware game by far if the whole game has such cringe dialogue (and according to skillup it has). The worst offender is easily Tash, I watched some of the 26 minutes video and it was atrocious. So heavy handed and preachy.

I can't believe this is the same writer who delivered on arcs like Rannoch and Trespasser and characters like Mordin and Solas. The "romantic" scene with Harding is not better,fanfiction writers could do better. The tone is so immature, just like in Andromeda. Getting rid of any player agency is horrible too, you can only be a cliche good guy kissing everyone's ass. How is this an RPG, there is no roleplaying.

Honestly I may be overdramatic but I am just shocked and have been following this forum for some time and had to register to say this. I thought people who whined about the old Bioware being dead back when ME3 or DA2 came out were being silly but I think Bioware is really dead now. For me at least. Maybe the younger generation prefers this

That's actually exactly why the whole "it's fine to be gay, kids" school special vibe annoyed me. The family drama wasn't about being gay at all really. His father didn't disapprove of him because he was gay but because he refused to have children for their sacred bloodline. He could have been straight and his father would have thrown a fit too if he refused to marry and have kids. His father even said he doesn't care who he beds on the side. His whole stance is just your typical nobility stuff. Everyone married people and produced offspring with people they probably didn't even like in real life for ages.
The gay drama felt incredibly tacked on for me. Gaider is a good writer and obviously as a gay man this was an important topic for him. But this was already the precursor for Taash imo. I remember back in 2014 getting worried that BioWare would go full on identity politics next. And then Asari pronouns happened. And now we're HERE.

I was interested in Tevinter bloodline politics. I wanted to know more about that. Instead Gaider made it about being homophobic with his dad wanting to change him. He found a way to shoehorn this into a world where being gay is normal and not stigmatized and was never brought up by anyone before. I loved Dorian as a character. The drama about his unwillingness to produce an heir which is of course extra unappealing to him as a gay man was super interesting at first. This should have been about Tevinter society. But it ended up being a gay pride manifest and it felt really hamfisted to me. I cringe the same way about all the poorly written girl power crap everywhere now.

I saw the identity politics on steroids coming since 2014. DAI was a great game regardless. Dorian had an actual personality, even a controversial one with his stance on slavery. A character with flaws and biases as it should be. He's one of my favorite companions. It was all fine. How his personal quest was handled wasn't THAT bad compared to what we have now.

Bioware storytelling has gotten worse and worse the more characters have become spokespersons for the writers. And apparently it doesn't matter how good a writer they wer before, see Weekes and compare Mordin to Taash. It's really frustrating.
I want complex characters back with fascinating stories and motivations.

Thinking this whole situation over some more. If it sells poorly, Bioware might be gone. If it sells well, and people discover it's not the game the last two trailers made it out to be, I wonder what happens then. Uproar most likely. Then BioWare points the finger at the various 'phobes and 'ists and leaps upon their soapbox to whine incessantly forever. And they go on to further violate Dragon Age and any other IP they can reanimate.

A post I saw recently had an interesting theory on if it sells poorly. It goes that EA removed denuvo so that they can then point the finger at pirates and justify amplifying and plastering it on every subsequent title that they release in the future. They can cut their losses with BioWare, take the horse behind the barn, and move on to another developer. It makes sense now that BioWare was magically 'meeting sales expectations' months ago when they weren't even in the top 50 on global top sellers, as someone here so helpfully pointed out. It's easy to meet expectations if you have none. Maybe EA doesn't really care if it sells well or not. They've got Madden money after all. 

So either way EA can move forward with ever more aggressive 'anti-piracy' measures that hampers your experience("get used to not owning your games"), get ready for more always online fuckery, or BioWare succeeds in tricking enough people to buy their product and they laugh all the way to the bank.

Not completely sold on it, but it is interesting to ponder. 

Yeah, but he also wrote Bastila, HK-47, and Jolee Bindo.