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

I tend to put this type of long form video on in the background.

His videos are very granular, going over most of the quests and characters.

He complains a lot at first about how railroaded Rook feels, noting that all of the available backstories can be summarized as “Rook rebels against an authority figure to do the right thing, and is a heroic goody good.”

Beyond that, I’m not past the first hour and so far it’s been a lot of granular criticism of quests and conversations.

Didn't watch it fully but skipping through it seems like, spoiler, he's actually quite generous and falls in the middle with semi-decent game but bad Dragon Age, alongside particular dislike of the "Marvel" writing. It's an opinion I see a lot.

Some of these dialogue memes that a lot of creators have run with, and other nitpicky attempts to rip apart certain lines and choices from the game, don't really address the broader issues I have. Like this game was just not fun and I wanted to stop playing after 15-20 hours. Of course I forced myself through another 40 hours because of my silly investment in seeing the lore and narrative play out within the context of the game, and not just youtube clips of someone else's run. 

"I was bored and found the execution of lore and story payoffs really disappointing" probably wouldn't make for a 3 hour youtube review though. Still, it's good to see these long form reviews that are more considered for being recent and several months after the initial release.

Watched the review and he definitely gave ample credit where it was due and talked a lot about the things he enjoyed and thought were well-done. Unfortunately, MULTIPLE people in the comments section (at least five) evidently didn't even watch a single minute of the video, jumping immediately to calling him a grifter, a "pathetic moron", etc. for having the audacity to not like the game.

This whole "Varric choosing Rook" backstory looks like an almost deliberate inversion of "Duncan choosing the Warden" backstory in DAO. Or maybe not an inversion, but "version for an elementary school-age cartoon". Varric was even made to look more like Duncan, dark beard and all.

I think that a lot of goodwill for Inquisition stems from the fact that BioWare went out of their way to create the Dragon Age Keep and show the players "yes, we care about the little things you did in your playthroughs".

Inquisition is far from perfect, but I preferred it in every single way to VG. About the only advantages in VG are banter picking right back up after getting interrupted mid fight and the salon fresh hair. Inquisition actually felt like a party based game, I had the tension of keeping my companions alive and I could control them if I ever felt fatigue with playing my own class. There were times playing VG where I'd just watch in disbelief at my "companions" "fighting" - dealing no damage, taking no damage, and wonder why the fuck they even bothered with this charade. Just stick their powers on the dagger like the out of combat abilities and call it what it is, a solo game.

VG also had some pretence to subverting the chosen one trope, but as has been pointed out more eloquently than I ever could, that was a complete joke and the world is all too happy to help Rook. Anyone who doesn't is portrayed as a moron with nothing to support their argument, like the Warden Commander. Even Chancellor Roderick had more going on than that. Inquisition already explored the chosen one thing with a mid to late game revelation that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (or right depending on how much you embrace being Herald). It comes at a satisfying point pacing wise and you get the choice to react to it with either religious serendipity or cynical dejection. I suppose you could say that getting played by Solas with the Varric revelation hit similarly, but there's no stake in what it means for your character in the wider game or in relation to companions. Not that embracing or rejecting the title of Herald had profound effects in Inquisition but, just like the argument around import choices, it adds to a lot of little things that amount to a much bigger experience.

Salt Factory's video I just strongly disagree with on the most subjective of level in that he seems to say a lot that he was having fun and I wasn't. But he seems weirdly enamoured with things like being able to respec freely at any point. I agree broadly, every RPG should have respec and it shouldn't be impossibly limited, but it being freely on tap is not some revelation in game design. At some point it's immersion breaking if you're doing it for every fight, not to mention time consuming. Also he doesn't really address the elephant in the room (although I only skimmed through), one that watching scenes again in his video brought right back home and that always bowls me over after I haven't looked at VG for a while, the art style. The Shrek look is so mortifying and you can't unsee it. Neve's early mission and the villain's "Nice try, the Venatori will rise" just looks so laughable. I can't take the game seriously, and it's a shame because graphically it's great. Fewer people seem as bothered as me by the combat, so while I can't speak for the 10 million or so people who didn't come back after Inquisition, that's got to be a big factor in the failure. It's just so monumentally absurd, and it's doubled down on when the Mass Effect team inject themselves to do a baddass cut scene, like the double dragon battle or Lucanis going demon mode on his captors, and these bobble headed character end up looking like precocious kids in an overly ambitious school play.

More than anything though Inquisiton wins for me just on ambience/ atmosphere/ vibe/ tone/ whatever you want to call it. Say what you want about unengaging side quests, but the brooding sense of arcane mystery bubbling under the surface, the thing that ties the Dragon Age games together (alongside four player party with controllable companions who can actually deal and take damage) just wasn't there in VG. Smug "Marvel" dialogue, Salt put it well - everyone is Varric now, is pretty far down my list of complaints.

Approval-based leveling up is probably the silliest level-up mechanic I've ever seen in RPGs.

Imagine if that meant that you could never use her in combat because she's permanently locked at level 1

That was a really interesting read, and I agree with what the original poster said—many people seem to struggle with the idea that it's possible to engage with a piece of media without endorsing its message or its characters. Personally, I often read works by people whose values differ significantly from my own—not because I share their views, but because I want to understand why those ideas exist and how they gain support. This kind of engagement is crucial for developing both analytical and empathetic skills.

That said, I've noticed a growing reluctance these days to interact with anything that doesn’t align perfectly with one’s tastes or values. Instead, there's often a tendency to immediately condemn it using what I call "power words"—highly charged, negatively coded terms that tend to shut down discussion rather than open it. And that's a shame, because human experiences are incredibly vast and varied, and truly meaningful exploration often requires us to wade into the difficult, the uncomfortable, and the morally gray.

Of course, I believe there are better and worse ways to approach this kind of material, but it's absolutely possible to do so thoughtfully. In fact, some of our greatest literature delves into the darkest aspects of human nature. Think of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables or Shakespeare’s Macbeth — none of these works glorify their “toxic” characters, but they do invite us to explore them, challenge them, and reflect on what they reveal about ourselves and our societies.

Kornei Chukovsky, whom I once mentioned in this thread, remembered in his book a Soviet activist group of 1930s called "pedologists", who, in all seriousness, sought to eradicate all the classical fairytales from kids' reading material because "they promoted lies, violence and unrealistic expectations for such phenomena as talking animals or flying carpets", including "ascribing positive attributes to dangerous animals, vermin and insect pests". Not mentioning that "Tom Thumb" allegedly condoned cannibalism, and "Cinderella" had a litany of sexual deviations (the evil stepmother was "clearly a sadist", and Prince Charming "had a foot fetish" because why else would he fall in love with a shoe).
So the practice of labeling old media "toxic" and "problematic" is nothing new.

The funny thing is though anti heroes, or essentially villainous characters, are arguably more popular than ever. Just look at Joe Goldberg from 'You', or Batman being more popular than Superman.

People love fucked up characters. Gaming tends to play it quite safe though.