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

I've seen a couple of spoiler free reviews. The one from Ghil Dirthalen is what I choose to trust the most, as she seems to be in the same category of players as I am (lore nerd who wants to know how overall story will be handled).

At the same time, i'm really not feeling the approach with disclaimers during conversations. Hopefully there is an option to hide/minimize them, alongside puzzle tips from companions.
With first feature, it's simply peculiar (in a bad way) UX choice. Not only do you get a message above dialogue wheel as you hover on the response option, but you also get another notification elaborating on consequences right after. On top of this, it both breaks immersion and spoils the future plot.

As for the leaked Taash bit - simply diabolical. From the way initial choices worded in a very neutral way, to a wtf of a disclaimer afterwards. It pains me to see modern day terminology in a fantasy game/books. It's akin to having a good meal and tasting a bit a spice you hate, making you want to spit the whole thing. Editors must fix such things. Why on earth just not use setting friendly words? What the fuck "binary" does in Dragon Age?

I do hope it's more of an exception than a rule, as I know how good of a writer Weekes is and conversations with Solas so far were on the same quality as him in Trespasser.

Yeah it's rough.
I'm playing it, but I do believe I will cringe a lot and perhaps manage to get angry.
I'm still holding hope the lore didn't take too much of a beating, and we might see the Golden City and have a WOAW moment.
After having to coddle and soothe a bunch of children companions for hours, I need a reward.

I clicked on it. Is this the actual dialogue word for word?!? Dear lord... Now I know why Ali Hillis sounds so bored, I feel sorry for the poor woman. BioWare did her so dirty. Also, maybe I should have wished Claudia Black didn't get a call after all. Returning to Dragon Age after 10 years to THIS level of writing, ouch. But maybe they welcome the paycheck.

Watched the Skillup review and he shows this convo as an example of the writing, but It Isnt word word, but Its the jist of It. Daddy Rook!

I knew there would be cringe but I'm quite taken aback at this point.
Like don't they have a good editor ?
Can they weave certain theme with the actual rich setting they have?
Do i give a shit about companions bitching about packing for some picnic?

Old BSN dinosaur here (been lurking for a while )

Looks like a 7/10 game to me (6/10 if you're genuinely critical). A lot of the higher scores are from sites that tend to score well above the average for the games in question.
It will be interesting to see what the PC rating on Metacritic is going to do, as it is already a bit lower at 80. One of the reviews there, by the way (4players.de) is an 8 rather than the 9 (a typo?) on Metacritic.

Wonder what the old editorial board of 4players.de under Jörg Luibl would have thought of Veilguard...

Anyway, the sales are what counts for EA HQ, so interesting to see where they will go, particularly in the weeks after the post-release reviews appear.

At least this is one game less on the list for when my new PC arrives later this week

Morti does not deal with writing, art style, story quality, and most of RPG elements. He's evaluating predominantly combat, builds, general playability, and whether there is enough content for the buck. I also suspect, he is skipping all irrelevant dialogue. Based on the comments, I also presume he was very happy to be able to actually 100% the game within the limited time frame he had without major crashes or hiccups, which is an outstanding achievement on its own for modern action game releases. So, to sum up, the game works, there are no major performance issues, and the combat works mostly as intended. All the rest is largely not his cup of tea, and he usually does not go into that for other reviews as well simply because he does not care and hold no loyalties whatsoever. He did voice a concern about being annoyed by various shades of good heroic and the lack of any meaningful even slightly renegade choices of any interactions.

Him calling DAV the best in the series is comedy gold. Never heard of this YTer, so thanks for explaining how that insane claim came about. I guess when you don't actually care about good writing and choices in a bloody RPG of all things then the game is good, lol.

But naturally in the other thread SkillUp is the ridiculous one for saying the writing is toddler level and not much roleplaying sucks for an RPG, how dare he, and this GOTY claim is of course much less biased and more representative of the actual game. Fucking hell...

It is too early to tell more accurately, but yes, seems like its in-between 6 and 7 out of 10 more or less objectively with seriously bad writing and essential lack of a meaningful RPG aspect really lowering the score by a margin.

I used to like Skillup a few years ago. These days not so much. So it is ironic that his review was the one that put the last nail in the coffin for me. Kudos to him for not bucking to the pressure and actually give his honest opinion.

He said something that completely drained whatever vestige of hope i had left. I wont put this in spoiler cause its mostly a general rpg thing rather than any story related stuff.
He says there is no player agency whatsoever, to the point where dialog choices are nothing more than different colored M&Ms, they look different but all taste the same. And apparently its so egregious that whatever you choose doesnt even equate to what you expect Rook to say. So in a way, you are not controlling Rook, you are simply given the impression that you are controlling him, but ultimately the story and dialog will go how the writers want it to go and not how you want or choose. Whats the point of playing an RPG like this then? Veilguard (i wont even call it dragon age anymore, veilguard is the only title this game should have) is NOT an RPG, its an illusion of an RPG. Bye bye Bioware. Im done.