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

Let's hope they keep that in mind . Looking forward to N7 day

This is rather obvious. Train them technically, so they have the skill to do the thing, but your training a Yes Man who will never push back or fight for the IP or the fans.

I'm not sure if you know this, but Cora was a part of an Asari Commando unit. She was a huntress.

I played through the Lucanis recruitment mission and it was so fucking boring again gameplay-wise. The location looked cool, Treviso too is beautiful. The lighting with ray tracing is amazing, gonna give 'em that.
But the dumb puzzles you have to do are just annoying.

And the tone of this mission is pretty dark. Like, I wouldn't exactly agree with SkillUp that nothing fucked up happens the first 7h because everything about what's going on is fucked up on paper. So really, it's the art style that's almost the biggest problem to me at this point. Yes the writing sucks but the cartoon looking characters just take me out of any serious halfway decent moment. It's THAT distracting for me. If they took this mission and put it into DAO it would probably be fine. They'd have to edit the writing a bit but it would not be out of place thematically.

Also the level design was again more disjointed stone bridges and stairs. I have yet to see a set piece that looks like it could exist in the real world. It feels more like a platformer level design where everything is sort of floating than anything you get in an RPG. Mass Effect had the advantage of being an actual corridor shooter, lots of sets were indoors, factory buildings and the like. But those factors felt like they actually exist in the world.
And this weird level design adds to the lack of narrative cohesion. We also fast travel everywhere. So the game kind of suffers from the same problem as Starfield. There is no journey and no exploration. There's just teleporting to places where stuff happens.
In DAO we travelled together, made camp, chatted. We were moving someplace. It felt organic. I am aware the plotting of DAV kind of requires you to have fast travel, how'd you quickly visit other countries otherwise. It makes sense why they did it this way but it just kills all immersion for me.

Stuff just happens. Suddenly I met up with Harding without any clue why we're doing this now. This is all still the live service action game model where you are sent out to missions from your hub. And there's barely anything in between. Sometimes companions have something new to say. That's nice. But really, nothing feels real.

And while this is a minor gripe since BioWare never did this before but people in the cities still stand around like statues doing nothing. Outlaws got so much hate but the city design was amazing, so many people walking around, shopkeepers actually polishing their wares. Some NPCs have several different idle animations. I had so much fun just watching. Super immersive.
DAV is stuck in 2010 where NPCs just stared at you. Obviously that's a minor gripe, it wouldn't really make the game much better. But it's one of these things that show how barebones everything is.

Lucanis and his family look like complete caricatures. Puss in Boots once more whom I don't really want to talk to. I just want to laugh.
I read his backstory im Tevinter Nights, and I enjoyed almost all the stories. It's much easier to enjoy something that you have to imagine yourself. In so in your head these characters probably look like normal human beings.

The character art style of this game just ruins everything, ruins the serious apocalyptic tone.
Even if we got great writing, the cartoon faces would ruin it. At least for me. The art style is a crime.

I just laughed so hard. That meme still memes. Dat ass tho.

That is an easy answer. Larian started with a game formula decades ago. They stuck to it, refined it, perfected it, and most importantly didn't burn out their employees with terrible working conditions so they stuck around and retained their institutional knowledge from the past.

Bioware has never stuck to anything ever. After Neverwinter they reinvented the wheel for KOTOR and Jade Empire, after that they reinvented the wheel for ME and DAO, DA2 reinvented the wheel again, and Inquisition reinvented it YET AGAIN. Now here's Veilguard, a franchise reinvented for the 4th game in a row. After migrating game engines from an old clunky thing past its prime, to an Engine built for FPS games. Every single game Bioware has ever made, feels like they just loathed and hated what they did the last time and so are determined to go as far from it as possible. 

Lastly, obviously Bioware hasn't been interested in employee retention in a very long time. There's no one left who cares. 

She sounds interesting. Although that blonde science officer could be an option for a female PC. I'll probably get this game. It won't me ME2 or ME1 (nor even ME3) but that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. I've always been more forgiving with ME than DA anyway.

Can you remind me what was so dark about that mission? With spoiler tags of course.




This is a great point no one talks about. This game doesn't feel like a coherent story, but like a weird set of quests that are glued together poorly.

I meant the "Dat ass" part.

It's decided. I'm playing MEA, at long last.

I think this is a very unkind interpretation, and while I don't know anything about game development, solely based on examining the products I disagree. Bioware had a very recognisable formula. Even when studios like Obsidian tried to copy it I never felt like they succeeded.

When did Bioware stray from it's formula? I'd say it was a slow process, but I'm also not sure sticking to the same exact formula without innovation is a good thing long term.

Real actress vs in game...Just sayin...FYKYK. Sure, there's other presets you can pick from, but the CC in that game is pretty bad imo

And yea, they are fairly explicit for Bioware...but the characters in question are so annoying or ridiculous you don't even want to.

won't go off any further as this isn't the ME forum.