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

Idk about Star field being minimal effort, they at least had the good idea most devs don’t and made something new for a change. I wish more devs did that instead of milking their brands to be safe. I’m not gonna say it was a great game, but it wasn’t really a bad one either. It just didn’t do anything new at all which is what holds it back for me, if you’re gonna do a new ip, you need gameplay to be new with it and not just the visuals (space setting in this one). It’s just fallout in space as they say🤷‍♀️ could’ve saved years just reusing fallout assets and making a fallout in space over a new ip but they didn’t. I can see the effort they tried with it, it’s just not gonna be an rpg with replay value.

The fact that in DAV, if you get into water that is anything more than ankle-deep you get teleported out of it seems like minimal effort to me. As if they didn't want to animate not only swimming, but water physics in general.

I restarted because playing a mage was suffering and boredom.
Went rogue, and I'm really enjoying the combat. It's night and day.

Some big choice in act 1 feels cheaply made, I was a bit shocked because all the rest was polished but this felt like it was put together quickly.

I'm back at picking Taash and Emmrich and that's where I lost steam with my first PC, Emrrich and his disney vibe with Manfred, was just too much.
I liked Assaan and Davrin but there's also Scooby Doo level of cringe at some point.
Hopefully I can push further this time.

You personal dislike shows tbh. Larian already had done round based crpgs and managed to refine what worked for a while.

I didn't know anything about Larian before entering early access for BG3. But they are approachable, excited about their work and they welcome critiscm to make the game better. This is something, that is lost to BioWare for a while now - probably not their fault, but EAs.
I don't want BioWare to make bad games,I grew up with their games, but I don't think, there are s much left from the BioWare, we know and love.
My hope is, that all the talented writers and devs that left or got fired, will find a way to come together and making good games on their terms again.

We Vampire Bloodlines are going through the same disappointment right now, because after the studio fired all original writers, the game looks like shit.

So DAV couldn't even have some nudity in the romances. DAI was bolder

So, Veilguard seems like what Dragon Age 2 could have been if they didn't have a 18 month dev cycle, but obviously with better characters, writing, art style, envirorment, etc.

A shame really.

That's certainly an interesting take, but on principle I really disagree, even if in practice in Bioware's case I agree it backfired. You yourself mentioned COD and I can think of many many more examples of games with formula. Some innovative and improve it, some stagnante, some regress. You might not agree about the direction, but even you seem to agree that at least until ME the formula was very well defined.

As for Larian, they settled on their formula for sure, I just don't think it's a very good formula.



That's totally fair, and a legit reason to really appreciate them. I'll say even. More, I think combat and exploration are the most important elements in a Larian game and outweigh all other aspects of their design. I think story cohesion is much more important, and that's why I don't like their games, but that doesn't mean they are bad, just not for me


Fair enough I'm just saying Bioware had a time they did that too, that's all. And Larian has a formula working for them. But it took them a while. Hopefully they'll keep it up.


You don't need to take my dislike personally, I don't dislike Larian as people, I think they are awesome and honest and have good relationship with fans based on my experience with the BG3 Early access.

But I don't like how they design games, nor how they approach to criticism. Both can be true.

It's absolutely hilarious to me that certain parts of the fandom were unironically trying to gaslight that this game is no more cartoony or stylized than previous entries. I still can't tell if it was copium induced blindness or straight up malice. Probably a bit of both.  

About the Qunari.

I see people I used to talk with about Dragon Age squeal at everything in this game (specially romance-related stuff), and I question if they ever cared about the story, the lore or anything. I feel like I'm crazy for caring about such things for 14 years.

Player numbers seem to be hovering around 70k, on Steam. I doubt it will ever break 100k.
Which usually indicates about 10 times the number of sold copies on all platforms, few exceptions aside. Preorders were not really good either. I expect sales will be around 2-3 million sold, in about two years. At best I think Bioware can hope to break even.
Who knows, maybe something positive comes out of this. I doubt EA will permanently shut down Bioware( they've still got strong brand recognition), but they'll probably lay off good number of employees, and focus on one IP at a time.
Less "gendermancers" around ( what kind of adult describes him/herself like that..I don't understand this bizarre obsession with gender and pronouns), and more competent writers who put world and characters above "I need to see MYSELF in a game" .

There was a scene where Taash says "The Qun is not a prison, you can leave when you want."

The Qun has re-education camps and magically lobotomizes you.