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

Here is one example of why this game feels sometime like it was written by some activists. 

It is purposely specified that this group is mostly elven but absolutely welcome everyone willing to help. Mages from Tevinter, Qunari, former crows, humans, dwarfs if there are, no matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you come from, your background, if you are just willing to help. That's all their require apparently. It's beautiful, this message of tolerance, the power of friendship that can overcome anything, beyond the fact that the Dalishs are everywhere mistreated and source of distrust, threatened if not enslaved as elves, their former country destroyed by humans centuries ago, their people scattered everywhere. It's apparently over, Dalishs and humans love each other.

Now let's get real, let's think about it one minute.

Why would the Dalishs researching for anomalies in Arlathan be willing to share their knowledge, would be willing to share elven artifacts they find and study, part of their history, part of their heritage, source of power with other races, with strangers you don't know anything about, especially humans ? Artifacts likely containing dangerous secrets, sensitive information that could allow them to regain greatness, that you could only be careful to reveal. The same artifacts that could be very dangerous to fall into the hands of Tevinter or other interested people for example. 

This threat of the veil coming from nowhere isn't enough to explain. this massive recruitment. Seeing so many humans among them is quite pitiful. Why do they suddenly feel the need to rely on outsiders from everywhere in Thedas, while in previous games they always only relied on themself, always taking care of their own matter themself, no matter the cost. What changed ? 

Because before there were real writers, a real world building ?

Why anyone that doesn't belong to the elven people would be just willing to help by the way ? More than that, how humans, Qunari, and dwarfs could help them in any relevant way ? Do they have any knowledge of ancient elven history, Arlathan history, ancient elven language ? What interest could these random outsiders have in common with Dalishs in reseaching for anomalies in Arlathan ? Why would they care about Arlathan above all ? Beyond stealing artifacts, plundering their elven knowledge, spying on their secrets and passing them on to the antagonist and powerful mages of Tevinter, or the spies of the Ben-Asrath as well. What good would it brings to the dalishs who created the veil jumpers to have strangers in their group ?

Don't you have the slightest sense of self-preservation for your people ?

Nope, no need. Once again the power of friendship and tolerance solve all problems, it won't happen, ask no questions, stop thinking, just consume and shut up. The Dalishs have all the reasons to have outsiders among the veiljumpers. Because we don't want bigots in our game, we don't want any group that can feel having a strong identity without any diversity, except the bad guys.

There is a codex very early in Treviso that explains the Antaam broke away from the Qun and almost killed Arishok, who is still loyal to the Qun. It's also mentioned the Arishok fought the Fifth Blight in Ferelden, making him Sten from DAO no matter his actual possible fate in the game.

Haven't seen Sten referenced since but I doubt he will appear in the game because politics don't seem to matter.

Have you seen the pop up yet where it says you have reassured Taash that multi-culturism is a good thing? LMAO at that one, particularly if Rook is a Dalish.

Mark Darrah, former executive producer for Bioware posts interesting videos on his channel about game development. He recently made one about leading from fear:



He doesn't mention any names but it sounds like Bioware is still mismanaged and managers only want yes-men around. I think we'll keep getting treasures like Andromeda and the Veilguard in the future, unless EA tells them to make live service game again. I could see it happening, they wanted Inquisition to be an MMO and it almost happened for Veilguard too, and Darrah often mentions the money making potential executives are focused on.

I was told that they didn't want to invalidate past choices.

That’s pretty despicable

That's....as a commenter has put it...a prime example of the tyranny of the author. They don't let us make choices based on our reasoning, no, they must prescribe an interpretation - which had me almost screaming "No that's not what I was saying. I just found it interesting".

It seems like we now went into nitpicking territory, but what can I say this game deserves it

Its been over a week since release and EA hasn't said anything about it passing 1+ million sales. I think its looking more and more likely that this game flopped on consoles (on steam it was already doing badly, the player count per day has dropped to 40k)