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

User scores for this type of game that was hated on before it was even released are useless for sure

Forget about BG3, most of the Bioware catalogue has much better voice acting.

And it's not bad across the board, it's just very uneven.

But I'm pretty sure it's a bad direction because there is even one returning character that in previous game was a charisma bomb that now I feel is terribly voiced.

I've gone through the entire range of emotions in the lead up to Veilguard.   I wasn't as put off as perhaps I should have been by that first trailer, which had me mildly excited.  I think it was just a case that after 10 years I was grateful we were at last going to get something.   Then the first real trailer when we saw Morrigan really got me choked up because I actually thought that meant something good was going to happen.   Unfortunately, after that it was all downhill because the more they showed, the more my misgivings started to grow.  Then came the revelation about the number of choices we could carry over from previous games and the alarm bells immediately went off, whilst simultaneously my enthusiasm went down.   I had rather suspected they might try to distance themselves from previous lore and had been convincing myself that I wouldn't worry unduly if they mangled it even more than they had done in DAI and associated literature both in the lead up to that and subsequently but I had hoped for at least some continuity with my previous world states.    No, it was clear that it was going to be something of a complete reboot of the setting with some of the old story concepts still included.   

That was when I first started to hang out on this thread.   I said I would judge it as I would any new game rather than being loyal simply because it carried the name Dragon Age because this was no longer the Thedas I had immersed myself in for three previous games.   Having held my wake for the setting I knew and loved, I then found I could start laughing at some of the ridiculous scenes that were shown off.    If I wanted to brighten my day, I just watched another video from Veilguard or came here and read someone else's thread where they were highlighting the latest cringe worthy dialogue.  

Since the actual release of the game, I am back to feeling sad at all the missed opportunities for making something true to the original.   I think of all the ideas we knocked around on the boards as to what our background(s) might be and how Rook (still think that is a stupid name) was introduced to story.     I still think it would have made for a better narrative if they had had origin stories to introduce us both to the factions we were meant to be part of and how we came to be mixed up with Varric in the first place.   Instead our previous history was reduced down to a brief account in the character creator and few lines of dialogue.    I'll put the next bit under a spoiler just in case


  

Where the hell is the banter? All I'm seeing is one companion or another annoyingly telling you to do this, solve the "puzzle" this way, boring exposition dump. What. The. Fuck.

There is some banter and it's not super high quality, but it's not bad. Once you start doing side quests you'll see it. But when talking to NPCs if you don't have an obligatory NPC with you, they are as quiet as a mouse

As for confrontational stuff I did see some.
Act 1 minor spoilers

Need to get past the first few missions. Now that I am exploring the crossroads Harding and Neve yap a lot.

BG3 can and should be compared to DAV in all aspects except maybe combat.

I don't think the writing in BG3 is that great btw even inquisition which imo is the weakest DA before Veilguard is better written, but bg3's writings is for sure better than DAV

Either make a dragon age game or make a new game, this mutation sucks

There are subjective parts to it, and some parts of what you prioritise in a video game. I don't think the problem with BG3 is lack of talent or incompetence, the writers are very good, but there are many things in the design preventing it from being as good as a solid Bioware game.

Yeah it has to be bad directing. The person who play Lace Harding and Liara is the same I think. And her performance here was so dry compared to ME. 

By continuing with Varric as the narrator they've given them the perfect out if it's a total disaster. Well, shit. Not one of my best stories. The real game is coming in 2028.