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

If the rumour is correct - we are probably will be given to do kill him or at least screw him up in some way. That is what I intend to do, there will be no reality in my playthrough where Solas survives if that is possible.

He wanted to restored Elven Bourgeoisie Kingdom not for the good of the common elf - he is by definition: a chud.

For my definition of chuckles is dumba** for telling Inq what he planned to do. Had he not done that, he might get away with doing his crap. It was like he was daring you to stop him. I will give him another definition, failure. If I don't get the option to kill him, I want an option to make him tranquil, then have him wear a jester outfit.  Or how about putting him through the joining?

Yep, looks like it is exactly as you say. You cannot kill/dismiss them, and they are useless for gameplay purposes physically, so their uses are limited to banter, interactions, and quests. This means there are no good or bad companions gameplay-wise, especially if you can respec on the fly to accommodate their abilities, Unfortunately, it seems the player has to engage with all of them, and I presume this engagement will be roughly equal for each companion, whether you like them or not. Controllable companions add to immersion, at least for me, but I realize this might be subjective. Also, it makes the gameplay and combat less boring, especially if the game is long. Otherwise, with only dear you, it will become a chore fairly quickly, maybe after 10 or 20 hours.

If companions are forced upon the player, it will require respeccing, regearing, reapplying runes, etc. Considering the fair size of the inventory shown in previews, this will get tedious even faster on higher difficulties. One can always go to story mode then, I presume.

Honestly, I hope this does turn out to be true. Either a toggle or tied to a difficulty. Having companions actually take damage changes a lot of the combat perspective. I've had a few issues with companions not doing smart things in DAI but it was never to the point of me wishing they were invincible. I always thought people who say this are exaggerating. Yes, I had to always respec Iron Bull to have all the guard building abilities possible and gave Cole guard on hit masterworks but the issue with Bull was that his constitution sucked and you could change it only by unlocking abilities and I usually built Cole to be very aggressive so he was always front and center in the enemies' face and many enemies had point blank aoe spells or melee attacks, so some form of mitigating their lack in stats or negatives of the way I built them was necessary. However, it was never to the point of me going "eff it, I'll do it myself because you're all idiots". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Much better.  The Blighted Dragon Trailer showed how you could turn all that crap off so that was good to see.  Hopefully the same can be done for all the world exploration markers...glowing chests and pots, obnoxious quest markers, because that stuff really messes up my immersion.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the decision to reduce companions and limit us to the PC only was made years ago when they were being forced to make a live action game.  This chasing after some other fanbase at the expense of the existing one has kept Bioware from really growing.  Personally, that bothers me less than the choice to recruit certain companions or not.  I suspect there are 2 or 3 that I'll be trying to kick out / get to quit / get killed (probably wishful thinking).
Yeah, MEA companions were utterly useless outside combos.  I felt like I was soloing most of the time.  DAV appears to be much of the same outside of combo-ing.  I don't particularly like to have to rely on bringing up the pause window so my hope is I can hotkey companion powers.
The part about not being able to switch that I don't like is that in DAI when your PC went down you just kept on fighting...in some of those tougher dragon fights I'd be down to my last companion with a sliver of health and no way to heal...making it through by the hair of my chinny chin chin was satisfying.
It's all locked to Trespasser: Romance (Solas only matters really), vow to save / stop Solas, disband Inquisition or not.  The lack of Well in particular makes me concerned that story depth will be up to snuff.
For me it kind of depends...or maybe it's less about the flashiness and whether I think the color choice is appropriate for a given power...that and how the effects of a power are implemented - giant snowflakes associated with ice spells doesn't really work for me.
I too am concerned with player agency being stripped by the writers.  In my mind they've already demonstrated a willingness to do so by excluding the use of blood magic.  MEA was terrible.  There were two characters I wanted the ability to airlock...or at the very least kick off the ship

More new(ish) plot info. Figured I'd throw out what's been released out of morbid curiosity.

Prologue/Intro in Tevinter -> Find Solas and attempt to stop his ritual -> Plot Break (choice that results in either Neve or Harding being severely injured) -> They arrive in the Crossroads -> Journey to Arlathan and find the Veil Jumpers + Bellara -> Journey to D'Meta's Crossing where you can either save or ignore the mayor
<<Plot Break>>
Go to Treviso and Rescue Lucanis
<<Plot Break>>
Siege of Weisshaupt, Weisshaupt falls, *attempted* slaying of the Dragon that attacked Weisshaupt
<<Plot Break>>
Rook does Davrin's quest, and has the option of assisting the surviving Wardens via sidequests after Weisshaupt's fall.

This feels very Mass Effect 2 rather than Dragon Age 2, and I don't mean that as a compliment. 

Now I get it. Bellara sounds EXACTLY like Peebee. Yes it's the tone, but it's literally how they both sound. I thought I was losing my mind. That aside the gameplay is very GoWesque. And it's more than the combat. I know that's already been mentioned but it's distracting. If I wanted to play GoW, I'd play it. Nevertheless, you're right it is very Mass Effect 2ish and not in the best ways. The Reaper's Dragon's appearance looked cool. I wish there was an option to murder-knife the guy at the end. Oh well.

I hope not. Little ryder was the main reason why I didn't like MEA. He/she was an incompetent wimp. Becoming pathfinder because of faulty eguipment. What a lame way for that to happen.

I want rook to have a pair instead of being a "Thank you sir, may I have another" character

I know. It's the lead up to having the voice in the head holding the leash to the little one that bothered me.

Quasi-tourist here. Been playing Bioware games since the first Mass Effect and was very active on the old BSN before it was taken down as a consequence of the War of Miranda's Ass.

I REALLY want this game to be good. Truly. Pre-ordered it and everything. But the more information I get about it, the more I'm convinced that this is just not the game the folks that made it should have made. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the devs are very capable, and the game will clearly demonstrate their competence. But I think maybe they should have been given license to work on something wholly original.

It just seems like what they want and what most of their audience wants don't really jibe. Like if Miyamoto was tasked with making a Dark Souls game any way he saw fit. He'd definitely make something very well crafted. But likely, at once it wouldn't live up to the expectations of either his fans or fans of Dark Souls, even if it was good. The result being a diminished fondness for both him and Dark Souls.

Ironically, Miyamoto made just that kind of error with the second Zelda game, although he produced that game not directed it.

Anyways, that's my two cents. Still rooting for this game, even if I'm afraid it might wind up being a Dragon Age game in setting only.

It’s so hard to say what the Dragon Age audience wants. When I look at the DA subreddit, it feels like all that’s needed to satisfy people is a variety of hair options and a few nods to the Solas romance.

Yeah, I gave Bull a few of those to give him survivability since he obviously wasn't meant to have any as a Glass Cannon type. Added fade touched bonuses as well and he did great, especially once they gave us the ability to reuse unlocked schematics in future playthroughs. That did annoy me about Cole because I'd do the same and unless I played him directly, he'd still get a disproportionate amount of damage due to how aggressive his AI is. 

They've said there are six difficulties so I'm betting the invulnerability feature is one that isn't applicable to all of them and that it was just on for the demo purposes. We've seen the UIs adjusted in later videos compared to the first gameplay one.