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

Why would you make such a comparison? The two things are entirely different. Compare a Bic Mac against a badly-made Big Mac for sure - but not against a chateaubriand.

If you order Veilguard you shouldn't expect to get Dragon Age Origins 2. That game and the circumstances that created it were entirely different. Origins was a love letter to old school RPGs created for the PC, Veilguard is a modern, stripped-down action RPG-lite created primarily for consoles. Anyone who bought it expecting Origins 2 - Electric Boogaloo didn't do their homework. Veilguard's closest analogues are games like Starfield, and Black Myth Wukong. Origins' closest analogues are games like Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic.

Categories and separation matters when it comes to creating evaluations, which is why people who review country and western songs don't compare them directly to Deep Purple or Joy Division.



I disagree. I think the context is absolutely crucial. Same analogy again, are you going to judge a scone made in a kids' baking contest directly against the creation of a master chef patisserie working at the Savoy?

Veilguard is not even a "Big Mac that's worse than chateaubriand". Veilguard is ultraprocessed food, a pack of chateaubriand-flavoured chips, if you will, that's sold to us for a price of chateaubriand.

So it comes down to price? You think Veilguard, a triple A game should have sold for ten bucks/euros/pounds because some fans don't like it as much as Origins?

Even if that were so, that would be a terrible business decision.



That is pure hyperbole.

Problem is... I bought a game labeled "DragonAge" expecting a "DragonAge" game.
And you know what this game is? Well... not a DragonAge game.

So when I evaluate Veilguard I very much do so thinking about what it isn't, because what it isn't is what I was expecting to buy and what it is is what they sold me instead.

I personally didn't compare it to Origins. Veilguard is poor as a literary work completely on its own, and the fact that the previous games were written better just exacerbates the issue. It is somewhat fun as an action RPG, but little more.

I'll accept that. In truth I wasn't even really thinking of the entire population of this thread, as I've only skim-read a few posts on this thread - many of them come across as very, very angry, almost with a sense of betrayal.

But I'm constantly seeing comparisons with Origin on other platforms besides these forums and the strangeness of these comparisons struck me.

In my case after MEA and Anthem and the reboot development hell reality I had ZERO expectations of Veilguard. In fact I expected the game to be bad because with such a development history anything else would be a miracle really. And I was STILL shocked and disgusted by the writing that we ended up getting. Despite such looooow expectations from current BioWare. Really, I expected a train wreck and I got one, so expectations met actually?? The degree of awful is something I honestly didn't expect. And I'm still not over what the actual fuck the Lighthouse stuff was supposed to be. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected such a departure from previous games.

DAO isn't even my favorite DA game, it's DA2 ironically. You CAN deliver good writing under extreme time constraints if your writers are talented and you have an actual great foundation for your narrative.

So no, I don't agree that I'm being unfair to Veilguard. I actually really dislike this apologist narrative when we have DA2. The writers just didn't deliver good dialogue. That's my opinion, others migh disagree. But that's what it boils down to. BioWare used to be celebrated for the narrative and complex interesting characters. And there's precious little here. Writing isn't necessarily bad because the product is rushed. See DA2. What DA2 did suffer from was recycled maps, something I couldn't care less about. ME3 had an awful rushed prologue and let's say divisive ending but it was still a great game to me. BioWare games have always had rocky and rushed development cycles. And that seems to be the norm more than the exception in the videogame industry.

For me there simply is no excuse for such vapid childlike writing in this franchise. Imo the word betrayal isn't that far off. I don't feel betrayed because I knew the game would suck in the narrative department. MEA prepared me for that. But I understand the sentiment and don't think it's that preposterous.

I didn't order a McDonald's burger. I expected one tbh. But it's still an insult to be served one when before all Dragon Age dishes were delicious. That comparison does not work for me at all.

I will give DAV that the game plays smooth as hell, the game bugged out only once. The game is polished. Visually stunning in places. But shouldn't that be the bare minimum foundation of a great AAA game? A polished turd is still a turd.

I had fun with the combat actually. So there's that too. But everything that made me a BioWare fan in 2007 is gone now. As has been said above, they served us a cheap fast food chain burger advertised as fine cuisine.
This is NOT a surprise to me. The writing was on the wall, same as with Andromeda. But it's still false advertising to me. Or rather it was correct advertisement when they dropped the first trailer that everyone hated. And THEN they back paddled and pretended it's not reprsentative of the game. So they did try to sell us the game as something that it's not. They also kept the 3 choices debacle a secret for a long time, that must have been deliberately misleading too.

And I'm not talking about ordering DAO level grimdark. I'm talking about delivering a decent direct sequel to DAI, a game I very much enjoyed. I enjoyed all previous DA games. DAV is narrative drivel for the most part. I did not order that.

As a DA fan approaching this game through the eyes of a DA fan it might be hard for me to tell one way or the other, but respectfully, I disagree. I think this is a bad game, period. I'm sure some people can find some fun to be had with this game, but imo it's just a bad game, and even if you're just looking for mindless fun unrelated to DA there are so many better alternatives

I wouldn't quite go that far. Veilguard still has a lot of flaws, but I do agree it wouldn't be getting nearly as much flak if it was a completely standalone game unaffiliated with Thedas