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

I didn't participate in any of those discussions, however... I kinda get it.

These are my biggest reasons:
-- DA2 beat the drum of mage v templar too hard. Varric aptly described my POV when he said he was sick of both sides.
-- The only choices offered players were binary. If your preferred solution involves anything other than circles as they are or no circles at all, you're out of luck.
-- You had to know the eventual "solution" would be BioWare-defined, probably not very satisfying, and still have a fair amount of potential for conflict and corruption.

Something that impactful to the world state can't be determined by the player if there's any hope of continuing with imports. So the only thing players can do is go along for the ride - and that particular ride was beaten to death in DA2.

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TBH, if the Reapers had said "we're wiping out organic life because you're all bigoted dickheads" instead of some nonsense about "preserving" it, I probably woulda let em.

Am I the only one who thought the mage/templar schism on Dragon Age 2 to be the best world-building and character-building engine in the series?

I think the mage-templar conflict is stupid, because the circle system that started it is stupid, from a world building perspective.

Identified mages are forced into circles because they could potentially be a terrible danger. So far, so unjust since the vast majority of them aren't psychopaths. There they are subjected to a test called the Harrowing, where failure generally results in death and success in continued captivity. Those captive mages (who might well get more and more pissed off as their captivity continues) are being taught spells that let them explode, freeze or crush to death anyone who might oppose them and doesn't happen to be some templar veteran. And then, when those pissed off mages revolt and and explode, freeze or crush to death anyone around them, people act surprised and point fingers.

Imagine the present day equivalent of this nonsense. Young people thought to be aggressive and dangerous are forced into a kind of prison-boarding school. There they are subjected to a test that could kill them. If they survive, they remain captives but they are being trained in martial arts, commando tactics and demolition. And get a free suite of gifts including assault rifles, grenade launchers and a few canisters of nerve gas. And when they revolt and people die in all kinds of horrible ways, people act surprised and point fingers.

Even in Warhammer frigging 40k, which a lot of this seems to be, uhm, "inspired by", (identified psykers are being picked up by the black ships and carried off into captivity, subjected to a test called the Sanctioning where failure results in death by sacrifice to the God Emperor of Mankind so that He might maintain the Astronomican, and success results in... wait for it... freedom to go), the system is less dumb.

To me, the circle system looks like an intentionally created drama generator that's too badly thought out to actually exist.

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Most testing is routine stuff. If that can be automated a good chunk of time can be saved.

Saying this as a QA Senior Gametester, there is a place for both hands on and automation.

I'm extremely skeptical of the notion that one person being in BioWare's employ or not will make any difference.