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

Well, well.

My primary skepticism is about my main problems from DAI returning - those being wonky combat with messed up hitboxes and overly magicky abilities for non-mage characters and the barebones, soulless side quests set in big, pretty but empty feeling maps.

Next would be that DA4 is going to be built on the code base of Anthem. The ridiculous state of that game during the first months after launch aside, this gives me memories of forced co-op game modes and the game openly telling me that playing in private/solo mode is a bad or even wrong choice. Ugh.

Finally, I'm just not very interested in the direction the Dragon Age franchise seems to be taking. Solas, ancient elves... *yawn*. I don't really care. I'll take a well told personal story with a much smaller scale over another epic tale of the chosen one and his/her quirky gang of misfits snarking their way to victory over some ancient evil any time. Especially if said evil is a bunch of elven geezers from days long gone.

Well, the only game in the franchise that was more of a personal story was perhaps the most criticized of the three, even if the reason behind said criticism wasn’t really about the type of story told.
But, although definitely smaller in scale and without an ancient evil of sort to stop, I wouldn’t say DA2 wasn’t an epic tale on its own, and their intention, especially from a marketing standpoint, was definitely to tell an epic story, as Hawke was supposedly going to be the most important figure in Thedas (I *guess* because in their original plan Hawke was going to be the protagonist of different games, and became the Inquisitor). Even in game, The Champion of Kirkwall is a legendary figure, ten year later, when Cassandra is interrogating Varric.

I have a different stance on Solas and the Evanuris because I do want to explore the ancient past, the deeper lore of the franchise and the truth behind many plots, like the Blight, the red lyrium, and I think those kind of plots are going to be explored with Solas. But I can see why it’d be boring for some.

Do you mean in terms of adding hairs of the structure of the face?
We was both a concept art and a rendering of his face with different facial expressions, and to me he looks like his DAI self.

I'm concerned about the game getting significantly delayed.

I know, a rather unpopular stance as you want for game to be as polished as possible. But it's been 6 years since DAI, along with 3 years from MEA that did not have any post-release DLC content. The most concrete info we have for the next DA game release is around Spring 2022, which is a long ass time and even then it's just an earlier estimate at the investors brief. Meaning realistically, actual release date will be even later.

So at best 8 years of wait, 7 with Trespasser, for the next DA game??? That's nuts, that's an entire console generation change too!

I hope after the nightmare developments of MEA and Anthem( although it was also the case since ME1 and DAO, it only exploded in their faces now), BioWare got their priorities and have the core system in place.

I don't really believe the rhetoric that a period of delay means a better game than we would have gotten otherwise. I mean, it's impossible to make any sort of comparison because we will never get to play the earlier iterations of said game, but many a time a game has come out of extended development hell, only to turn out to be absolute shit anyway.

Especially in the case of significant delays of several months to a year or more, I think it actually indicates a failure to plan properly.

Also, according to sources like AskAGameDev, in practice, delays for "polish" usually mean stuff is getting *cut*, not added or improved. And delay also doesn't reduce crunch in practice, so much as make crunch longer...

Well, for one, while the RPG elements mentioned in Cyberpunk’s preview, I am personally worried about the game, because the last delays, to me, seem to indicate some development problems, as well as crunch, which, if I recall, CDPR was already accused for before.

Overall though, I don’t think CDPR got that much flak or criticism for the various delays.

Yeah if they delay it till 2024 I'll star worrying.

Honestly man, a lot of these AAA story driven games are gonna take a lot of time before each subsequent release. We're already seeing this with games like RDR2, TLOU2, The next Elder Scrolls still seems a fair ways away, and GTA has yet to be announced at all (with the last one releasing in 2013). Generational sequels are starting to become the norm for these types of games.

What makes you fearful?

Are you referring to going Anders to Solas, or other members of the party?

Got it. I don’t have personally problems with those characters (although I wish the F/R system in DA2 would’ve been a bit different, and it’d have separate better your views on him and J/V from the mage-Templar situation), but in any case, I don’t expect them to going further down the road then what they did with Solas, and another Anders situation is unlikely to me.

It's not just Anders and Solas.