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

This time last week I was still feeling restless and itchy about the game, so with a free weekend ahead of me I grabbed a month of EA Play thinking the price might be worth it for the purportedly decent end section. I'm about 25 hours in so far, recruited all the companions and have done a decent amount of side content. What I hadn't really anticipated, likely due to all the drama around release and my own passion for the series, was just how boring it would be. I'm at the stage now where I have to force myself to keep playing. Obviously a lot has already been said about the quality of companions and just how tepid it all is, but it really doesn't hit home until you're actually playing and find your mind drifting off to household chores, despite the subject matter being something you've spent ten years thinking about. The scenic but linear runs of your character following a companion while they tell about (not show) themselves feels so curated and game-y that I found myself longing for the freedom of the Hinterlands. What doesn't feel curated is the combat encounters though. Taking the worst spongey and messy aspects of Inquisition and tying them to a solo dodge roller with two companion abilities every 40 seconds is utterly mind numbing. Combat has the basic adrenaline rush any dodge roller gives, but stretched out over stodgy enemy health pools means burn out ensues quickly. It also feels like the camera can't keep up half the time. Dumping full party combat for this is just sad. It feels lonely because your two companions are essentially playing a different game and any camaraderie is gone as a result. The cheerleading they do offer becomes grating and occasionally they're just in the way. Also if I see one more artefact/ wisp/ blight-pipe door puzzle I'm going to scream. Maybe mage and rogue play a lot better, but I just can't ever see myself going back through this game to find out. In past games I could've tested all classes by simply switching to a companion. No such luck here. At this point I'm not even sure I can face continuing one playthrough.

Andromeda is a useful comparison. That game always felt like fanfiction to me, earnest but lacking the gravitas of previous entries. Combat there was solid and built on its predecessors, albeit with messy open world encounters. It also had the massive advantage of being a spin-off. So far Veilguard feels more like AI writing, uncannily soulless and weak on the details. Some of the magic mechanical jargon especially, often around Bellara, is hideous. Jumping genres to ARPG puts the game against competition that is so high up in the stratosphere comparatively that the only way it was gonna keep up was with its party system, but that is almost entirely gone. Dragon Age's strengths always lay in its companions and party, and to see that lost mechanically in combat and qualitatively in story content really is tragic. The greatest loss for me though is the world of Thedas as a whole. People moaned about the War Table, but it made the world feel vibrant and brought the extended lore to the surface. With Veilguard I don't feel immersed in a living world, or have have much sense of all that history. Coming down from Inquisition's world shaping politics and army commanding magnitude to a little treehouse gang who are somehow facing an even bigger threat was never going to work. The disneyfication of it all just amplifies this glaring contradiction even more.

I had months of pessimism, and a week of confirmation, for my expectations to adjust, yet it's still surprising how genuinely low quality the game actually feels in the playing. Credit where it's due though - custom difficulty, hair physics, performance, out of combat animation and graphics (as opposed to art style) are all strong points.