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

TBH, being the "evil" guy always just felt like a holdover from KoToR, and I never liked it. I mean, knifing some pub owner? Killing random civilians? It didn't even fit the tone of the Grey Wardens. I don't mind if we can't be evil, painful choices are fine with me. 

It'd have been interesting to see what would've happened in an alternative timeline with BG3 coming out and having the same success a couple years before, given how EA reacts to the market and very successful games. 

I have little doubts that SW: Fallen Order's success alongside Anthem's failure drove EA towards shifting DA4 into being fully SP.

My understanding is 7 million mark is from 2019, but yes it’s easy to overlook just how successful Inquisition has been. As for what EA wants, it’s ultimately a mystery. Although if I had a choice between one last Dragon Age that was a masterpiece and sold poorly, and an okay Dragon Age game that sold like gangbusters, I would personally prefer the former.

So I was noticed this, the heads looked bigger than usual. And as I work myself in game industry, in a fairly big studio, I asked my art director why they look so off. He had a look and said that they looked like something straight from scan, like real life body proportions. Because what games usually do is the heroic body proportions, where the body is 8 heads long. Like what Shepard was in ME trilogy.
In our previous games, thats what was done actually do the characters where their heads were shrunk to make theam appear from heroic. It's an interesting thing really!

And honestly for games it works I don't want realism in my games! I want to perfect with a strong slim figure with an amazing ass and boobs! The female figures in this game have really flat chests

I haven't heard this but if he really said that about LoF that is very disappointing. I was already skeptical about the fact that they didn't use their already established pirate faction that also explores ruins and tombs, The Raiders of the Walking Sea also called the Felcismia Armada wasnt used as our faction for Pirates that made me fearful that Lords of Fortune would be their "new" faction instead of building on the establish lore. What's crazy is we even see the Raiders logo in different caves and tombs in Inquisition so them being skipped over made no sense to me. And the fact Rook surname if you Pick LoF isn't even a reflection of Rivani it sounds like something from the Free Marches or Ferldan having a more Scottish theme.

What was personally disappointing was how the backstories kinda how paint Rook the same way and Rook does nearly the same thing. I get they may not want our Rook to be recruited by Varric by doing something evil aligned but making Rook painted as more heroic is no excuse to do it the most laziest by making 6 stories very similar. I felt like the origins in Origin were all unique enough and they all take place in the dame country. Even Inquisition I felt did a better take on why each Race was at the conclave.

At first when I saw the factions Rook was apart of I was actually excited that on paper a good amount of these factions are presented as morally grey in the world and have even been antagonistic to us in the past in the Crows. It seemed like they were going to really allow Rook to be apart of something with more edge then the more Chantry focused Inquisition. But I hope they didn't soften the factions for us. I'm not saying I want to play as a evil pirate but I definitely don't want every faction to feel the same outside personal motivations because they want our Rook to be heroic so therefore all6 factions must be their most heroic selves

I don't like the focus on Solas's character in Inquisition and even moreso in DA4 and more generally the sequel apparently doubling/trippling down on exploring the "elfy" part of the lore, which to me is my least favorite part.
I wish Inquisition gave us more Qunari/Tal Vashoth and Dwarf lore, and I fear that those two races once again are gonna take a backseat to elfy elves and all of that gunk

The focus in terms of lore is definitely going to be about elven lore (it's personally one of parts I'm more interested about the game), but I think they're going to explore a part of dwarven and qunari lore.

Given Harding's awakened abilities, there's a good chance that they're related to the Titans so her path in the game (which isn't going to be connected to any of the factions in the game) could very well explore that side of the DA lore; and Taash's draconic abilities are another hint of a connection between qunari and dragons, so they could explore that in her path.


Given your dislike of elven lore, though, you might not like it much if the theory of Ghilai'nain being connected with the creation of the qunari is proven true.

Neve's voice acting was one I was the most skeptical about since the initial Gameplay Reveal trailer. It sounds like her voice-actor may have been somewhat new to VA'ing a role this big. Don't know if BioWare wanted her to go with a more monotone method of acting, or if this is a "what you see is what you get" situation.

Having seen a good number of preview videos, I think what I'm most skeptical about is:

- How good are the sidequests?
- How much depth will there be to the consequences we choose to make. (I know there was one particular choice hinted at in the previews, but I don't want to spoil here).
- How well will the combat hold up over the course of the game?
- Will enemy variety improve be more diverse then what we've seen (there's only been four factions hinted at, but how many non-faction enemies/bosses will we see)?
- Animation quality (this is where I'm most concerned, as preview footage still shows an air of lip-sync error and lack of emotive facial expressions).
- Has Solas been sidelined on how we choose to resolve the conflict with him and his desire to bring back the Ancient Elves?

I think what I do expect to be the most universally chided aspect of the game (even if it's not with all review outlets) is the art direction. It's without a doubt going to be the MOST subjective aspect of this game, and one that I anticipate will probably cost the game anywhere between 0.5 - 1 pts (on a scale of 10).

Apart from that, I'm keeping myself in the Skeptical mindset for the time being. Do I think it will be horrible? Probably not. Will it overly impress? While early previews tend to be mostly optimist, I really can't say. In that realm, I'd probably say, "No" and stick to it likely doing, 'Okay'.

There are at least 7 different enemy factions.  Each of the six different Rook 'origins' gets a bonus to damage against one of them (except Mourn Watch which gets two).  So there is that at least.

I would be less concerned if not for Liam, whose voice actor really does sound like he just wandered into the sound booth and started speaking lines randomly. I would never have expected that level of amateur voice work to make it into a BioWare game, now I'm legit worried we might see a 2.0 version of it. There are ways to help ease newer voice actors into a role, not sure they've managed that for Jessica Clark.

Here I was thinking Bellara would be the Liara/Tali virgin girl character.

Narratively, everything about the factions and Rook seems like it’ll be whitewashed and candy coated. I hope to be thoroughly proven wrong, but it’s simply pattern recognition. They glued that hero hat to your head in Inquisition and it seems like it’ll stay that way. I just hope they don’t bastardize the Wardens. “Respectful pirates” seems like an oxymoron. How do you respectfully rob people? Maybe Epler was joking.