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

I've been playing for a while and here's a very short impression:

If you play this game as a story-driven action game, it is actually quite good. It looks beautiful, combat is at least workable, the story is also ok so far, nothing truly exciting but good enough to be enjoyable and the progression systems seem interesting so far. However, it fails as a party-based roleplaying game, since actual roleplaying is extremely limited, no personality but one type can be expressed, and companion writing, where it's not about the story, is often lifeless and even condescending to the player.

It is outright weird how character writing, which used to be Bioware's strength, is now an aspect that drags everything else down with it. I think in their effort to make everything about and for the characters safe, they made it lifeless.

CohhCarnage sums it up nicely in his 10 minute early impressions video:



It's possible that this will change since I haven't even met all of the companions, but I doubt it since almost everyone criticizes the character writing.

I'm playing Origins again, in parallel with Veilguard, and it's immediately obvious how much better it is at ambiance, introducing you to the (wider) world, immersing yourself into the story.
Veilguard right from the start, feels like a race. GO, GO, GO! Demons are falling from the Sky, We must stop Solas!
Origins opens up with personal story from the background of your character, and we see the world from very different perspectives, from the top ( human noble) to the gutter ( city elf or casteless dwarf). After prologue/emotional gut punch, we see Ostagar, you take time to breathe in, I love the ambiance as we talk to all the characters from different factions, learn more of the world, sense of trepidation before the battle. Then after Kakari wilds, that scene of initiation, huge battle, another emotional gut punch with defeat, then village ambiance in Lothering, desperation is everywhere after the defeat. Everything is more personal: you even get to know those Grey Warden initiates who didn't make it through the ritual.
Why couldn't they do the same, here? Rook from different backgrounds, starting from zero, until you join the Veilguard. It would be far less original, but I don't think people would mind it if they did a decent job with it. It would be an actual return to what made Origins great.

I know what you mean. It's kinda hard to say exactly what is wrong about flow of this game that makes the experience feel bad even if the dialogue itself is okay

Okay, this sounds worse than Andromeda.

In MEA, the companions were rather one-note, the story was paint-by-numbers, and Ryder never felt like my character.

I got bored playing it.

But at last there were no returning characters to butcher.

Oh it's going to be interesting in a couple of weeks. 

I noticed that but its probably because more casual fans have joined the sub, there are way more active users there than a few days ago. 

So they will probably go in fanboy mode after a few weeks, maybe even sooner

Lol Rook can never be ruthless, that backstory really doesn't fit. 

Saw a reference to a Mass Effect character taken word for word and repeated by a companion. “I clapped when I saw it!”

I think I know what are you referring to and I kinda liked it

This still doesn’t make much sense. The sections with Solas are universally praised. So what happened to the rest of the quality? They’re incapable of writing more than one great character? They hit their limit?

To be fair, I likely would too were it Davrin saying the line.