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

My suspicion is the Solas bits are leftover from the original Dreadwolf game bolted onto Veilguard.

If I remember correctly, DA2 was jokingly teased as "this time it's 2 archdemons and a big ass Blight". It's almost as if they made an actual videogame out of that

Most likely, it is also probably why Veilguard's villains are so pathetically cartoony and one-dimensional, because they might have been added very late.

And the game just ruined an actually good mission for me by having someone unironically "evil laugh" right at the end. For fuck's sake, why Bioware?

I'm playing American male low pitch Rook and his voice acting is the only one I'm enjoying so far. Very happy with this choice for my Rook, fits perfectly.

Rook is also the only one so far who doesn't sound completely mentally challenged and emotionally stunted. Running around with Bellara right now and I want to push her off a cliff.

I don't even like how Harding sounds here and I loved Ali Hillis as Liara to death. It's OK she doesn't sound like her at all, that's what acting is about, but she too got hit hard with the idiot stick with that dialogue and the line delivery.

I haven't played terribly long but the most positive angle I can spin is that as an action game for children, not teenagers, children age 10-12, this is a decent game. Like 7/10. It looks cute, it plays smoothly. The dialogue is suited for a young audience. Children don't pay too much attention to dialogue. There is nonstop hand holding but that is fine FOR CHILDREN. It's serviceable writing. It's well presented at least. The companions are cute too. No offensive language yet. So if I was a parent of a 12 year old, I would approve of this game as mindless fun.

As a Dragon Age game it's an utter insult. The game feels like a huge middle finger to long time fans. I thought MEA was an insult to the franchise but this is so so much worse, beyond words really what they did to Dragon Age. They made a baby's first RPG with a Dragon Age skin, or maybe not even that because that skin is barely recognizable. It doesn't even feel like a BioWare game to me anymore. MEA still did most of the time, just a badly written version of it but it still has that distinct BioWare RPG DNA. DAV feels like any other generic fantasy action game. If they didn't use Dragon Age terms and character names I wouldn't have recognized it as a BioWare game. Nothing is left of the magic so far.

It's beyond depressing.
I'm bored. There is no room to breathe for anything yet. I'm just rushing from one point to the next. There is no immersion. It's so gamey you can see and feel the live service legacy everywhere. The ridiculous big chests that open with a sparkle. Everything sparkles. Pouches of gold lying around everywhere for some reason. Why am I even collecting wood??? Disney Dragon Age!

I cannot talk to single NPC in the city. In BG3 almost every NPC has an immersive line. Here it's just set pieces that have no life to them. It feels very claustrophobic. I can't even talk to the companions beyond a short exchange once in a while! Not even looping greetings like before. Nothing. The game is the least interactive RPG I've ever played.
Calling this game an RPG is borderline misleading...

DAV is like a modern streaming service TV show. 15 years ago most good shows had 10-12 episodes per season. Now they have like 6-8, leaving the writers no room to tell a proper story. It's all a shallow disjointed mess most of the time as a result.

I don't expect DAV to get better. This game was not made for adults. Hell, not even teenagers who have proper comprehension skills and some expectations for storytelling. Very very young target audience. Truly a bizarre game.

I'll pick it up on discount to actually playthrough the game with my own character. But If someone does pay 60 bucks for it, I think they'd get their money's worth. As for replayablility, that's a hard one. Because no matter what you choose in dialogue rook is who rook is. There's no molding him into who you want him to be, like you could with Shep. Every dialogue option is essentially the same nice guy. So i guess I would replay just to tryout the different classes, not for anything related with story. It's basically how I felt about Cyberpunk2077, but to a lesser degree. I disliked the story of that game. But I have over 800 hours just because I enjoyed the combat.

Here's a list of the flaws I found by playing the game, no the assumptions I had walking into it. Note: I haven't gotten past the first cutscene yet (I want to finish my latest Inquisition run first), but I have fiddled around with the CC.

Character Creator
o Inquisitor VERY hard to recreate
o “Sex appeal” sliders underwhelming
o Inquisitor appearance not saved for later import(BIG time waster)
o Colors hard to navigate
o Lack of previous Worldstate that cascades into the rest of the game
o Voice not as customizable as I’d hoped
o Hairstyle screen specifically doesn’t zoom out far enough to let you see the difference between the longer hairstyles

Outside of Solas, I'm not enjoying the dialogue at all. I read somewhere in this thread that it felt like fanfic, and I think that's the best way to put it. I was enjoying the combat, and was tempted to skip story sequences just to get back to the combat. Harding doesn't feel like a character, just an exposition radio. Most of the companion chatter is just telling you what to do as you traverse. "Oh, there's a turret. We can probably shoot the wall with it". 

However, playing on Nightmare the enemies are incredibly bullet spongey and now I'm bored. Bored with the combat, 0 interest in the story, I'm just going through the motions. Tomorrow I may check out the difficulty custom settings. If I can drop the health of the enemies while retaining everything else, I'm good with that.

edit// I realized I was doing the combat wrong.... There is charged attack and heavy attack. I'm now enjoying the combat again.

With only having 3 active abilities, level progression feels horrible. It's basically just trying to be patient until you unlock your class specialization. With me being 6 hours in, only about 14 hours to go...

Too be honest, if the game didn't carry the Dragon Age name, I wouldn't touch it.

Thank you for your input, and I mean that. You saved me at least 30 bucks and 40 hours of my life with your impressions. I firmly decided I am going to sit this one out.

That's an insult to fanfic.

This just annoys me more than it should. It's just an RPG staple :S