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

Agreed. but that just digs us into a hole where someone has to come up with a specific example of what the IP under discussion did wrong and exactly why it was wrong. People usually aren't willing to do the work.

Concerning ME1, I'm not quite sure that works, except in a psychological sense. The Reaper fleet suddenly appearing at the end of ME1 would have resulted in a fairly quick wipeout of the Citadel races. Maybe a few months rather than a year or so to victory per the official timeline. Of course, an early Reaper arrival means the Crucible is never constructed, so they win eventually anyway, however long we figure it takes. But, yeah, accepting that the point of ME1 (and Arrival) was just to hold off the Reapers long enough for the Crucible plans to be discovered on Mars isn't all that satisfying.

It's not a problem I had either, but I can understand having it. Even though it is a bit ridiculous, since ME1 makes it quite clear that the Reapers are still coming, unless Shepard's final speech is supposed to be simply wrong.

How would ME2 have gone over if it turned out that the Collectors actually had nothing at all to do with the Reapers, who really are trapped in dark space?

How is she an idiot, exactly? She's got insights that the other characters don't have. I get that you're just trying to justify your feelings, but you've got to do the work if you want to make the case.


"Annoying," of course, is completely subjective. I didn't find her so, but even if I did, so what? It's a worthless metric.

I do my best.

I'll work up a response to Cantina later, but I'm kinda drunk now and I don't want to be gratuitously mean.

This is the part of it I really don't get, i.e. why get upset about minor revisions or ret-cons to the lore that are clearly motivated by/relate directly to gameplay mechanics that they're attempting to improve from game to game... I never could understand how people could get so worked up over e.g. Mass Effect changing the precise details about how ammo works (seriously? ammo?) or Dragon Age changing the specifics about how certain kinds of magic work, in order to improve combat or whatever. Would people really prefer that they don't attempt to improve or vary any aspects of the game from one title to the next, so that they can stay completely 100% faithful to the lore set out in the original game years and years ago, down to every last detail? This seems completely ass-backwards to me. I guess different strokes for different folks and all, but still... just... weird. 

In regards of mage abilities, I think that improving and changing is fine, and also something that should happen. For example, I like how they differentiate between three elemental magic, ice, lightning, and fire, and not just make some of the spells of those elements copies of each other, with a different 'flavour'.

Howewer, one thing that I'd like them to do for the next game is to give a bit more space for those spells and schools of magic that took a backseat or were basically scrapped.

The problem is that when you make a character, you are committing something to that character, a whole lot of time and resources. And that character has to achieve something. Vivienne and Sera made a lot of people not interested in interacting with them. For me, it was the entire cast, minus Blackwall. And a similar case was with the Andromeda cast. The supporting cast needs to connect and if you are to dislike them, you need to dislike them for the right reasons, they need to draw a reaction out of you. If the only reaction is disinterest, what has the writer succeeded? We still talk about the MET characters. Who do we talk about from DA? Morrigan? I cann't get anyone to discuss DA with me, if it doesn't involve a "your mother will die in her sleep if you don't reply to this" post, or a gun. DA is dead and the writing, or the continuous soft reboots, from title to title, have killed it. You need to honour established lore.

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I don't disagree with the principle here, but we definitely differ on the evaluation of the relative merits of the characters. I think this is precisely the difference between e.g. DAI's characters (for the most part) and ME:A's characters (again, for the most part): most of MEA's characters are pretty bland and uninteresting imo, not even sufficient to warrant active dislike. I just don't really care either way. Whereas most of the characters in Inquisition, like 'em or hate 'em, are robust and well-written/acted enough to illicit a stronger reaction, whether positive or negative- I dislike Vivienne, because she's convincingly bitchy. I like Sera and Bull because they're fun without being cartoonish, they both have some realistic depth to their characters, and again are impeccably voice-acted imo. And so on.

And I've already stated my opinion on strict adherence to every aspect of the lore at the cost of tweaking gameplay so we'll have to agree to disagree there- I'll just point out that there's an inherent tension in RPG's, between lore and gameplay, because the story is more important than in other genres, but games are still fundamentally about, you know, gameplay. So you don't really care if they mess with the lore to justify gameplay changes in a FPS: you're not there for the story, whereas with RPGs you often are. So RPGs have to strike a balance: its still a game, so they're necessarily going to tweak and try to improve gameplay, and that often requires adjustments to the lore (generally pretty minor points, like ammo in Mass Effect or magic in DA). I guess what the proper balance looks like in any given case will be in the eye of the beholder here. 

No shit, Sherlock; that's sort of what an opinion is, and your own contrary view no less so.


Actually it isn't, because the quality and nature of the characters was precisely the topic of the present conversation.


As is your own view on the importance of sticking to the lore. Not sure how you've not realized that this "that's just your opinion" shtick cuts both ways, and is irrelevant/redundant to begin with since the fact that we are expressing and discussing our own views and opinions on these topics is an obvious premise that goes without saying here. Could have saved yourself the trouble of writing this non-response response if that was all you had to say.

Also, "the franchise is dead"- okie (I expect that's going to come as unfortunate news to all the people currently working on and/or looking forward to the next entry in the franchise)