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

I'm trying to replay the game but companions are so boring I just keep on making new Rook hoping it will motivate me. Doesn't work.
Last night I listened to DAI banters on Youtube and just wondered what happened.
Even character I thought were weak like Iron Bull are like masterpiece compared to what's in DATV.

I'd be so disappointed if they did this to ME

I just don't understand it. IGN gave it a 9/10. Eurogamer gave it a perfect score. All the games journalists gave it an 84 collectively on metacritic, even though it deserves a much higher score. How can this be? It's the best rpg to come out in the last 30 years, easily. I don't want complicated and messy companions like in the other Dragon Age games and Baldur's Gate. Conflict is bad and it's scary. A co-worker disagreed with me at work and I went into an apoplectic shock and almost called the authorities. I can't take it. We need Dragon Age games free of darkness, conflict, and bad stuff happening. What we need is to sit around, drink coffee, and talk about our feelings. You just wait. Dragon Age 6 is going to be about The Maker and their panties. The start of a prequel trilogy. It'll star their lovable crew of rambunctious Andrastians and his/her pronouns and how they toppled the Tevinter empire with their feelings. Drakon will be revealed to have modern day pronouns, and that they did nothing wrong and were completely innocent. Can't wait. 

It'll also depend on what EA does with Bioware after the failure of DA4.

I didn't finally start playing until this past weekend, and I'm actually enjoying it so far, but I have to admit a couple things are bugging me and I'm wondering if anyone else has similar thoughts.

First, I have to say that all three previous Dragon Age games did a better job of setting things up. We get a little time with the Warden and Hawke before they're thrust into the main storyline, and while we meet the Inquisitor in the midst of a crisis, we also meet the other characters the same time as (s)he does. My impression has been that the Inquisitor was not playing a particularly important role in the summit and just happened to survive from being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. Here, Rook (who apparently decides to go by that name just because Varric came up with it as a nickname?!) has apparently already known Varric for a while and is up to speed on Solas and his plans.

But - and here the lack of imported choices is an issue - how come the effort to stop Solas has been outsourced to Varric, Harding, and a couple of northerners? Why aren't Orlais, Ferelden, and the Chantry - all of whose rulers presumably know about Fen'Harel after the events of Trespasser - doing anything about this (other than asking Varric to handle it, I guess)? What is Rook's motivation for getting involved? I realize that game protagonists are probably going to be more proactive and risk-taking than the average person, but I could still imagine Rook's initial reaction being, "Why are you asking me? Shouldn't the College of Enchanters or the various sitting governments do something about this?" Because it would seem like Solas probably would have, in fact, torn open the Veil if a squad of four people hadn't managed to distract him and collapse the building at the ritual site. Are all the other mages and soldiers in Thedas on lunch break while this is happening?

And while I've only gotten through the first few hours, so far the story feels a bit disconnected from the larger context in Thedas. Apparently our headquarters is literally in the Fade, as opposed to a real-world physical location, and aside from the first part in Minrathous, the rest of the action has been in Arlathan Forest and a single isolated village. This feels like it could be happening in pretty much any generic fantasy setting, with the religious and political structures that we know from past games largely absent. Maybe that will change soon - the scene where what I'm assuming is a Titan speaking through Harding was the first moment that really grabbed my attention beyond just going through the motions of fighting demons and activating artifacts.

(It also seems strange that the setup asks you whether the Inquisition was disbanded but doesn't ask who the Divine is, especially if, as I gather from the voice cast list, Cassandra is eventually going to show up.)

Some concept from Matt Rhodes who was one of the main concept artist, some story bits they explored. www.artstation.com/artwork/EzYlmn

The video is interesting, and I mostly agree. But the comment section is horrendous. 

'' But what about WOKE AND DEI? BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WOKE? THE DEI? WHY WON'T YOU TALK ABOUT THE WOKENESS AND THE INCLUSIVITY AND REPRESENTATION? ''

That's really saddening to see. While there are issues with how they approach these topics in Veilguard, there's a much deeper issue that boils down to writing, presentation and tone, and Taash being a badly written annoying navel-gazing non-binary loser is merely one side effect of that. And once again, people would rather go '' lalalalala I can't hear you lalalalala '' than admit that Inquisition was an absolute success, one of BioWare's biggest, despite all the '' woke '' and whatever criticism they can cough up it's way (I'm not saying Inquisition is perfect, far from it, but it was a good freaking game). The same thing they do with BG3, instead of admitting that '' woke '' isn't really this one sole blame in the video game industry that all failures can be attributed to, they would rather pretend like BG3 was never a woke game to begin with.

I am tired. Very, very tired.

Anyone heard any solid info on numbers of DATV sold?

Motivate you? How about doing a laugh at my Rook playthrough? Create a qunari rook. Make him as skinny as possible. As short as possible. Have the silliest looking hairstyle and beard. Give the hair a very bright color and the beard with a different bright color. Use a paint tattoo for the body with all bright colors. Choose the mourn watch faction. Play as a mage. Every time you have a conversation, you can have a good laugh. It will give you reason to play the game. Hmmmm....I might do this for my next playthrough

They give control of their organization to a WHAT?!? Sweet Andraste...

Someone said there was a 4th and 5th import choice that were cut but still exist in the files.

It's who drank from the Well and what the Inquisitor's class is.

I was so looking forward to the dark options of having a ruthless assassin background. More fool me