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

That is the heart of it.  Beyond the jarring tonal shift, the janky combat mechanics, the ugly graphics, the controversial character creator, this is the reason this game will likely fail: it takes away the player's agency.

You can't be anything other than what they have decided you should be - in a ROLE PLAYING GAME!  Agency for the player is the core of the RPG experience; without it, you don't have an RPG.  What you have instead is a learning tool for toddlers.

But don't take my words for it, remember what Sovereign told Sheppard when they first met:

"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology.  By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire..."

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You want to know what made BG3 such a success, despite it being crammed full with woke garbage?  Choice! 



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But the woke cultists cannot help themselves, they must preach to the ignorant masses by any means necessary.  Or, in other words, they must tell their story, rather than allow you to experience your own, since they know the "Truth" and you don't.  And they will educate you, whether you want it or not, for your own good of course...

That is, until they can no longer do so because the company they infiltrated and used for their "holy" mission went under for lack of customers...  Why hullo Ubisoft!

Plus, if you wanted a premade character with a set background, you could play one of the Origin characters. Or, if you wanted your own "blank slate" character, you could play a Tav!

Honest question: When was the last time (if ever) that during the marketing cycle of a soon to be released game, you got to know the game director better than the game itself?

Cause that's what I feel about this game diretor. I dont even know the name of the directors of most of my favorite games ever. And Corinne is soooooo in everyones faces, I literally cannot seperate the director from the game at this point. I know more about her own motivations and hopes and dreams and whatever than I do about the characters in the game. Thats just so freaking unprofessional and self centered, I cannot for the life of me take anyone defending her "work" on this game seriously. This person, is just a copy of every "modern audience" director / showrunner of the past decade. Talentless hacks (might be she is very good at simulator games, dunno dont play those, but no talent or experience in RPGs) who somehow get to positions of direct control over franchises they know nothing about, and proceed to destroy it completely, starting by lambasting the pillars of lore from the get go. And then they insert themselves into the stories and make it all about them and their preferences. (mind you this applies to the whole management team behind Dragon Age not just the director, yes even Epler who apparently just caved in and became a Yes Man, or should i say YAS QUEEN SLAY).

And then things flop, and its the fans fault, cause they all bigots. Not because they are disrespectful to the lore and fans and cant do a good story if their life depended on it. No no no no. It failed cause audiences are mostly far right and racists and all the phobes you can think about.

So tired of this, I dont even care anymore if they end up delivering a decent story in the game. Everything else smells so rotten, I'm just gonna skip this game completely. And damn this hurts, cause Dragon Age has been my favorite franchise since Origins came out, and now here we are, completely giving up on it....

Silver lining, I still got BG3 on my library waiting to be played. Been keeping that one on hold till i needed a pick me up. I guess October 31st is the day Ill finally start playing BG3! YAY

Edit: Just a little rant, sorry about the bitterness. I wouldnt be saying any of this if I didnt truly care for this franchise. It just sucks

Yes, that does promising! If there are branching quest lines, and what not, that will make the game interesting enough.

I do think the auto dialogue side of things is going to be a major downside, and I fully expect to bitch and moan about it come release.

Which doesn't really make sense, if you assume this narrative was crafted in good faith. From a dev's perspective, why wouldn't I plug blood magic in as an easy 'evil' roleplaying option? I can keep all the heroic goody goody stuff, and with little effort easily satisfy both audiences. You can even add consequences, but you'd still have the choice. As others have said, we're going to Tevinter. They lead with Tevinter. This would be the place to have it. Not only wouldn't they have lost anything by including it, they would have saved face and bolstered their reputation. No ingenuity, no macguffins. It was right there. And they missed the layup. 

Spent an hour catching up on this thread, been happily playing Outlaws and not thinking about DAV in weeks, oh boy, I missed a lot of drama...

I watched the Bellara introduction and, omg, it is exactly like Andromeda after all. I mean, it's what I expected but I'm still sort of shocked and disgusted how childlike cutesie that elf woman is. I had a sliver of hope because MEA was made by a different team, an inexperienced one at that. But nope this is what all of current BioWare is like it seems. Making games for children. Making games about their personal fantasies and agendas, promoting themselves and their uniqueness more than the actual game.

This is not Dragon Age anymore to me. I haven't watched any other footage. That was enough to convince me 100% that this game's writing will be nonstop cringe like MEA, possibly even worse. At least MEA had Vetra and Drack, the only competent adults babysitting a bunch of scared socially awkward children who wanted to go home.

Tevinter Nights briefly tricked me into thinking the writing could be decent because I really enjoyed most of the stories. But of course that was foolish of me. It was also written years ago. My favorite story was written by somebody who ironically doesn't work at BioWare anymore and I believe never even worked on Dragon Age, lol.

That being said, morbid curiosity "forces" me to experience this train wreck at some point. I'm willing to pay, let's say, 15€ in a year down the road to satisfy my curiosity. Sharing live impressions with you guys is not worth 60€ to me, as much as it pains me to miss out on the circus. I'll read what you guys have to say. Maaaaybe I'll just watch a walkthrough so I can chime in. Sounds like the best option actually.

Honestly that doesn’t fill me with much hope for any kind of moral complexity. Being given an option to punish an evil character doesn’t feel terribly paragade to me.

I still have my official Baldur's Gate (the first one) strategy guide.

If I'm a "tourist", this is the longest damn vacation anyone's ever been on!

In Dragon Age 2 you can:
Sell Fenris into slavery 
Betray Isabela to the Qunari 
Support a terrorist
Mindbreak/Gaslight a terrorist into giving up and betraying his own people as an act of atonement
Support religious zealots in a bid to unite Kirkwall's populace against an occupying force
Support Meredith
Wipe out a dalish clan
Etc

And this from a game long accused of being more "restrictive" than DAO. And that variability in roleplaying made DA2 so damn good. 

Brute forcing players, *again* (cough DAI cough) into the role of an unapologetically good karma character is grating as shit, it's like the devs don't trust the player to roleplay as they see fit if left to their own devices





Blood Magic is evil, but frying an enemy's blood with lightning or searing their flesh with fire magic isn't? This is a game where the protagonist is a mass murderer. Every protagonist kills hundreds of hundreds of people. Is mass slaughter permissible so long as it's not blood magic? This is why dev's "this isn't what a hero would do" comment is so idiotic, the second you draw a line in the sand and say: X gameplay style isn't available to the protagonist because it's not heroic (rather than they just didn't have time or couldn't be bothered to program it in as a specialization) - you invite yourself to criticism by trying to very arbitrarily ascribe morality in a fantasy RPG. 

I'm sorry this really pisses me off. How is supporting an autocrat like Gaspard or a kinslayer like Bhelen or supporting the Murderpope (hardened Leliana) or keeping Blackwall in a lie (as punishment after breaking him out of jail) any less morally dubious than blood magic? That's all heroic according to the devs? This is insane. 

I don't think that back then they thought it was. There were some really morally questionable decisions in all three of the original games but at the same time the players could justify their actions if they wished. Neither the Warden, or Hawke or the Inquisitor were necessarily heroes in the conventional sense or even saw themselves as such, but the legend that grew up around them made them out to be after the event. So the Warden became the Hero of Ferelden because they stopped the Blight and no one really cared how they got there. Hawke defeated (or reached a compromise with) the Arishok, thus being lauded as the Champion of Kirkwall, and subsequently dealt with the carnage unleashed by Anders in whatever way they thought best. The Inquisitor may not have been allowed to use blood magic but they could still be a power hungry a-hole and yet lauded as the Herald of Andraste.

The problem is that the current writers have taken a moral standpoint over the actions taken in DAI. Weakes always maintained that if you sacrificed the Chargers you were heartless and evil The lack of choices to be carried over into Veilguard mean that they have adopted a standard narrative that only feeds off the legend even though all of those actions were little more than 20 years ago so there are still plenty of people alive who know the truth, some of whom are working with Rook. It will never be brought up, though. Because of that, what they have stated about blood magic, plus the backgrounds for Rook, it is clear they are no longer giving that amount of player agency. I say this as someone who does try and play a hero as much as possible within the constraints of the narrative but it takes away from my efforts to do so if that choice is no longer there.