Your Expectations for Veilguard & How You Will Measure the Final Product Against Them

I expect the story to be amazing because the stones of that have had plenty of polishing time. I presumed writers worked nearly the whole time with breaks here and there.

I expect the battle mechanics to be garbage. I didn't like Inquisition, Andromeda, or Anthem. Ass Creed Odyssey was meh. Never played Game of War and don't know how they could even make a team of 3 anything like the Witcher. If that's the direction they're going for this sequel then fighting will be the annoying thing it's always been.

I am annoyed at the prospect of a reduced team size (4 to 3) because I'm here for the story and I rarely switch out the team that makes sense for that protagonist flavor I'm playing.

The only big expectation I have is romances, I want them equally distributed (quantity and quality) and of course a human gay male KISA. Apart from that, I'm gonna enjoy the game like a little kid and let myself having a blast, I cant wait to return to Thedas. This doesnt mean I'm not going to be critical about it but I only need a CC, gay romances and a single player story driven game to make me happy, that this game is the fourth installment of one my favorite franchises is just the icing on the cake.

oh I forgot, give me water spells (no ice, WATER)

I haven't exactly been waiting with bated breath. Between how long it's been since the last entry in the series, liking each game less than the last, and all the staff changes throughout development, I have no expectations and will be treating this as I would any other AAA RPG release; I am at least a little curious due to leftover DA:O nostalgia, but that's it. I enjoy different types of combat and never expected this game to be much like DA:O anyway, so that's alright. If it's looking really good and my PC can run it, I'll get it on release. If it looks like I might enjoy it, I may get it at a discount later. Otherwise, I'll pass.

I don't remember any game that came out well from development hell. Also, as it is classified as an AAA game, this will contain all the usual bullshit that current-day AAA games have:
- Appealing to the lowest common denominator
- Inserting unnecessary political statements into your game
- Predatory monetization schemes
- Coming out in a bad technical state (common for Bioware games ever since foundation)

And I want to be wrong. It's the only AAA game that I'm actually following. I don't have much time to game now, so I want the time I have to be a good time. That's why BG3 is basically the only game that I've played since its release.

Well after dropping down a slight rabbit hole of research I did discover I was mistaken. At least sort of. My initial reference I was making, and the reasons for it, Darrah was specifically referring to Dragon Age 2 as being an ARPG and not Origins. I thought he was talking about both games. Source:  



(Comments start right aroiund the 50 minute mark with the resulting fight). 

However, on thise note two things. 1. The logic for DA 2 being an ARPG is fairly consistent, again expert commentary is something to draw upon for reference but not rely upon and I still think it matches. And 2. Which Origins itself may not be an ARPG it is still pretty close in many of its gameplay tropes. 

Especially since ARPGs have nothing to do with fluidity. I have played games which are considered ARPGs/ Action games which are less fluid, slower, more clunky, then Origin's combat...and given the vagueness of 'fluidity' in the first place not sure how appropriate of a bell weather it is. But what distinguishes ARPGs/ Action games from other games is how 'live action' (hence the name) they are or how real time they are. Its why all four Mass Effect games are ARPGs even though you could pause and play in them, ACOD, DA 2, DAI, HZD, the Final Fantasy 7 remakes, etc. The through thread through all of these games is that the main way of engaging with the gameplay is in real time, rather then turn based like in Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, or the quasi system from Origins which wasn't that turn based but kind of was considering how everything in that game seemed very ordered. 

For Dreadwolf this does seem to continue the trend. As I mentioned the Overton Window is a bit at play, incrimental changes and evolution of the franchise from the beginning makes Dreadwolf very much different from Origins...theoretically...but not so different from 2 or Inquisition. But keep in mind that such evolutions does not mean that A. that the other games aren't ARPGs and thus Dreadwolf isn't breaking the tradition, or B. that it isn't in keeping with Dragon Age's gameplay loop whatever it is. Again all we have is a few seconds of leaked footage to really go on here and all of this hardly looks any more fluid or real time then Inquisition did. 

As far as the dexterity comment is concerned...sure. But the problem here is the lagnuage is both internally inconsistent and inconsistent if we apply real world metrics to it. Dexterity has always been associted with 'nimbleness'. That's all well and good, have a high dex score, avoid damage, deflect it. But that is not what happens in D&D, and the games that use similar tool sets, that is not what happens. In D&D/ BG your Armor class effects your defense...which drives up your Armor Class. So the higher dex you have, the higher your armor class...but also the better armor you have the better your armor class. Which is an inherent contradiction and is linguistic nonsense. It would have been far better, I think from an RP standpoint as well as a practical standpoint, to have different metrics and scores. This would've made more sense and would've helped more for builds. 

That Darrah said it's an action RPG doesn't amount to a proper argument that it's an action RPG. He made no logical argument as to why it's an action RPG, nor even provided what an action RPG is, beyond that it's the concept that it supposedly changed over time (from what to what was not even explained). Thus, relying on it as an argument for the fact the fact that Dragon Age II is an ARPG claim itself is an appeal to authority fallacy (especially considering Darrah would not be a legitimate authority on genres of games, and arguably there is no such authority due to terms lacking in official and established terminology, so the term is fairly fuzzy). In essence, Darrah is not in a position to officially classify genres of games and is not someone who studied the topic thoroughly enough to have authoritative knowledge about the subject.


ARPGs absolutely do have to do with fluidity, since the distinguishing factor is that they're action-oriented as opposed to tactical- or strategy-oriented with less fluid combat. If combat is fluid, such as if you've control over every move of your character (i.e., it's reliant on your sequential input), for example in Skyrim, where every move of your character (including steps and attacks, i.e., the hack&slash mechanic) is the result of player input, which allows for more fluid and action-oriented combat, as opposed to, for example, Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, which have an auto attack button and point&click mechanic that move characters from point A to point B without further player input,. In addition, all 3 games had varying degrees of emphasis on controlling (albeit Inquisition the least, which is why it's a hybrid) the whole party, and the first two had paused gameplay in which you position characters, have access to the battlefield to apply tactics, use abilities, plan your next move, etc. If I recall correctly, you can only pause in mass effect to select abilities and indirectly send squad members to a pointed-out location; you can't position your own character or control directly other characters, and your access to the operating battlefield is severely restricted to where you are looking. Emphasis on tactics is little of a play without managing a team and even without or minimal tactics (play it as a third-person shooter like Call of Duty). Neither Da 2 nor Dao are fast-paced and action-oriented games. As I noted, the emphasis is on controlling squad members, team placement, tactical and strategic planning, and combat with automatic input, such as your character attacking automatically upon input from the player, and you have little fluidity over character, etc.


howtomakeanrpg.com/a/what-is-an-action-rpg.html


www.researchgate.net/publication/325466153_Definitions_of_Role-Playing_Games


"As they evolved, CRPGs developed distinct sub-genres such as “action RPGs,” like the Diablo series, that emphasized fast-paced real-time combat, and “tactical RPGs," often turn-based, that focused on optimal tactical combat decisions and strategic character progression decisions."


Notice that tactical RPGs are often turn-based, but not always. The emphasis is on tactics in combat and strategy in developing character, while in action RPGs, fast-paced real-time combat is emphasized.

Even Baldur Gate is not a "really" turn-based game, i.e., your character has a turn, you make an action, your turn ends (at which you have an indefinite amount of time to decide), then it's your opponent's turn, they make an action, their turn ends, and so on and so forth until combat ends. Baldur's Gate had essentially turns to be representative of 6 seconds of real time, and that constituted a turn, and the speed factor determines at which time your character hits within those six seconds. And within the proper build, you can attack multiple times during that 6-second period.

baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_Factor

This is pretty much similar to Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II, where the speed factor (or attack speed) determines how quickly your character attacks, limiting the amount of attacks your character can perform within a time period. In Dragon Age II, this aspect is more fluid, allowing PCs and NPCs to take fewer pauses between attacks, while in Dragon Age Origins, the pacing of attacks was closer to Baldurs Gate than in Dragon Age II. So both the first two Dragon Age games and Baldur's Gate relied on combat with a "real-time" and pause button; it's just that fluidity of combat differed in terms of pacing character attacks (with BG and DAO having slower-paced attacks from characters than DA II, albeit all three relied on character attack speed and overall build to determine speed of attack in real-time and automated attack with minimal input from the player required).


dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_mechanics_(Origins)#Attack_speed

dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_mechanics_(Dragon_Age_II)#Attack_speed


Said "evolution" didn't really exist until DAI, which was hybrid and allowed players to play strategically, tactically (optional strategic mode), or fairly fluidly in fast-paced combat without pausing the game, in which the PC doesn't attack on its own but each attack is the result of player input and follows (unless the player chooses otherwise in strategic mode) a close third-person perspective. Distinctions in action orientation and combat mechanics are small between DAO and DAII. What has changed in that regard is that, as I noted, PCs and NPCs attacks are faster-paced (but still automatic after player input), strategic/tactical, and overall fluidity of character remained about the same between those two games (thus action elements in Gamplay are quite small and tactical/strategic high to the point you will get demolished on even normal difficulty if you try to play the game in real-time).


False. It looks much more fluid than Inquistion because Inquistion didn't allow you to dodge enemy attacks (via rolling sideways) via direct player control (the closest thing to that kind of fluidity was the jumping mechanic introduced in Inquistion, which was even then not really good in combat). Prior to that, dodging mechanics were either only influenced indirectly through character stats (which meant a character automatically avoided attack if successful on "roll") or, in a few cases, in Inquisition, there were some active abilities that you could use that would help you move away from your opponent before you get hit (albeit you had little control over those and had a cool-down on them, thus not very much fluidity). Contrasting with the footage shown of combat in DA:D, fluidity in combat has massively increased to the point where you can actually fluidly avoid a quick enemy attack. In fact, we had arguments about this in the past. If I recall correctly and if you insist that this could be simply "active" ability like one of those in Inquisition, this doesn't work for the same reasons I outlined in the past. Rolling sideways is too unpredictable as an ability since it doesn't account for which side the player wants to roll, i.e., right or left (thus easily screwing over the player by rolling on the wrong side without player input); thus, rolling sideways is something you would control the player via the use of keys like the space button and arrow keys, for example. This is fluidity of combat in terms of dodging; at least that is the dark souls game, certainly not Inquisition.




In essence, even if you conceded an argument about the definition of ARPG and said all three games are ARPGs, in which case you could argue that even Baldur's Gate was ARPG, or alternatively, that it was not strictly turn-based but in real-time with a pause mechanic to engage in strategic or tactical decisions, with those being heavy or essential aspects of the game, As noted, this at best would be a mere semantic concession, and degree series has moved from Da:O and DA 2 to DA:D is massive, even from DA:I (what I refer to as hybrid due to two viable styles of play, one emphasizing high fluidity and fast pacing of combat and the other slow pacing and high tactical involvement and controlling battlefield, albeit unlike to two prior games in DAI, players could no longer control attributes beyond items, so the developing character aspect of RPG has been greatly diminished and seems to be left behind based on footage shown before). So reality is in gameplay mechanics, especially in combat. DA moved far away from the first two games, which were fairly similar in their approach to tactical and strategic elements, with minor increases in some aspects to make it a bit more fast-paced visually. 


I don't see a contradiction here. Armor Class in D&D is described as "Your Armor Class (AC) represents how hard it is for opponents to
land a solid, damaging blow on you. It’s the attack roll result that an opponent needs to achieve to hit you. The average, unarmored The peasant has an AC of 10. Your AC is equal to the following" (Player Handbook 3.5 edition). Given that it's logical both Dexterity And wearing armor would make opponent to hit you in way that inflict damage upon you more difficult, since if you high dex you can parry and dodge damage (to some extent at least), if you wear armor, armor protects you from being damaged (to some extent at least). In fact, in D&D, many armors restrict your Dexterity bonuses (how much depends on the type of armor) because they limit your flexibility, and thus, if you have high Dex, it may be better for you to either not wear some armors or actually wear them, as your Dex bonus provides better protection from being damaged than armor. So there is no contradiction; it's just that there are multiple factors that make sense that increase your defense or AC.

He does have to make a logical argument; otherwise, genres mean nothing, as any developer can classify their game as any genre they want without needing to meet criteria necessary for them to be of that genre. In essence, if I make a dating sim game by that logic, I can call it first-person shooter because it's my game, and if I say it's first-person shooter, it's first-person shooter, and anyone who laughs at the idea and objects to it is simply insanely arrogant. Naturally, such an approach to categorization of genres would be useless, as any developer could classify any game as any genere (sub-genere) without establishing some common criteria required for it to be of that genere (or sub-genere), and thus, without point reference, any game could be classified as of any genere by the party making that game. Thus, in such a scenario, I can't derive any information from the genere of the game, as in one scenario, "first-person shooter," it could be a dating game without any shooting mechanics, in another puzzle game with no shooting mechanics. 

Sources I've provided presented real-time as necessary but not sufficient quality for ARPG (thus, being real-time doesn't amount to ARPG); conversely, tactical RPGs turn-based gameplay was frequent criteria but not universal. Meaning real-time gameplay would not amount to the game being an ARPG because of its emphasis on action, fluidity, and fast pacing. Dragon Age II was definitively not more fast-paced in actual combat than Dragon Age Inquisition, even despite lacking strictly speaking tactical camera mode. First, unlike in Inquisition Dragon Age, the camera was not close to PC (unless the player decided) and could be zoomed out (albeit not as much as in DAO if I recall), thus allowing you to view the scout environment from a faraway third-person perspective (as seen in the video I will link to below) and use that distant view to scout the environment fairly effectively (although you couldn't move the camera away from the third-person perspective behind the character). However, as I noted, DAI was hybrid, which, despite having a tactical camera, could be played simply fluidly without its usage and pausing (like Diablo 2), lacked automated attack relying on strictly hack and slash input from the player, offered greater mobility in combat (such as jumping mechanics, albeit somewhat clunky), and relied on a lot of sequential input from the player during combat and movement. So in essence, as I've said, you're offered two different valid styles of playing in the game Hack & Slash and quick-paced or slower and tactical via the tactical camera and pausing game in Inquistion. In Dragon Age II and Dragon Age Origins, this was not really a feasible option (unless you played with cheats, glitches, mods, etc.), as without deploying the pause button to use tactics and slow down the pacing of combat consistently, you would get destroyed. Similarly to Baldur's Gate (in which technically, if you wanted, you could not pause the game at all, but you essentially get demolished (at least without cheating in one way or another), and it's not really a feasible way of playing the game if you wish to progress to the end of it).  

No, they are useless if we apply your standard of determination of genre, i.e., if the developer says so, it's so, and that's all that's required to accept it as the truth. Genres are not useless if substituted with consistent criteria (such as, for example, the links I've provided that provide such criteria, albeit with some fuzziness), as it allows to establish key features of the product that criteria for genre consist of by merely understanding the label, the product being properly labeled, and you reading the label of the product. Thus, as I noted, the idea that Dragon Age II is an ARPG because Darrah said so is an absurd notion, and your principle for determining the genre of a game renders genre classification useless instead of informative to players. In consequence, "Darrah said it's ARPG" is woefully inadequate, and one needs to make a logical argument that it's ARPG, something Darrah didn't do. 



You may disagree, but your disagreement is not an argument, just as saying that I disagree with the fact that Earth is a spheroid instead of a flat wouldn't constitute an argument for that my statement is factually correct. As I've explained, DAI is a hybrid that offers two different ways of playing, and I've made an argument and demonstrated those in videos, in which DAI allows quite fluid and fast-paced uninterrupted (no pause button) combat and tactical and slow-paced via tactical mode. As I noted, this is not really a feasible option in DA II (and it's very unlikely to be a skill issue on my part considering at this point I could be considered an RPG veteran and even finished some RPGs infamous for their difficulty, like BG 1, and even made it far in Diablo II on hell difficulty to act V, although if I recall it, I've never finished it). And no, I've played Inquisition almost entirely without using the pause button, and I used tactical mode if I recall correctly only out of curiosity to see enemy stats (this is the only Dragon Age game I've done such a thing; in the rest, I was forced to rely much more on pause and thinking things through). You may argue that I applied some quick thinking tactic during fast-paced gamplay, but then so I can in call of duty. As I've noted (as presented in the link I quoted, making the distinction between tactical RPG and action RPG), it's not just about tactics, but the emphasis on them over action. DAI, as I noted, allowed you to place a heavy emphasis on action and have fluid gameplay without interruptions (pausing the game), with it being a feasible approach to finishing the game, but it also allowed you to place an emphasis on tactics and strategies in Gampley, with it being fairly slow-paced, hence why I refer to it as a hybrid. Dragon Age II still emphasized pausing the game, auto-attacks, less interactivity in the form of greater player input, and so on. Camera positioning is of great relevance, especially from a higher angle and one allowing 360 rotation, since such cameras reveal more than a close third perspective, such as in the example of the mass effect. It allows you greater visibility of the battlefield, greater interactivity with it, and thus greater capacity for tactical decisions, i.e., team positioning, attacking enemies, and so on. So it matters as far as it goes, as it still allows a good deal of tactical interactivity with an environment that is ongoing in a quite slow-paced manner due to the necessary reliance on the pause button. The idea that it has to be entirely top-down is nonsense since neither in DAO, DAI, nor Baldur's gate camera was entirely top-down at most under angle from a higher-positioned camera, and if those are sufficient, then Diablo II, which is ARPG due to its fluidity, fast pacing, and lack of reliance on the pause button in combat, also has such an angled camera from a higher vantage point. Either way, camera is a factor in relation to games emphasis on strategic elements, not defining the quality of tactical or ARPG. So Dragon Age II still allows for a solid overview of the battlefield even without the ability to move the camera freely over the battlefield, thus allowing for heavy tactical and slow-paced emphasis in any game with a camera as an option. That's why it's relevant since the lack of a "tactical camera" from DAO or DAI in Dragon Age II doesn't diminish in a significant way its emphasis on tactics and being slower-paced than Inquisition unless one decides on strict use of tactical mode (which is optional in DAI). So as I've already noted, camera positioning is irrelevant if it doesn't connect to other gameplay elements that together put emphasis on slow-paced tactical and strategic elements, like Baldur's Gate, DAO, and DAII, and unlike what's done in Diablo II, which has a high-angle camera but is fast-paced, fluid, and strictly emphasizes player input in control of character on the battlefield. 



The term tactical RPG was not introduced in my prior comment either. It was already mentioned in the definition I've provided in my link and discussed by me in relation to that definition, so the post you were responding to was certainly not an introduction of this term to this conversation, considering it "now throwing a new word into the mix". 

Amen to that. The 'A'part of ARPG, at least for BioWare, has more or less always been a tagalong whether we are talking ME or DA 2/ I, its the 'RP' start of RPG that is going to be where BioWare has always made its bread and butter combined with their companions. Games like Horizon or Assassins Creed or Elden Ring has always focussed more on its combat design, and while that sort of thing is important for BioWare, personal make or break is how they'll do the dialogue options and the other RP mechanics...which as far as I know the leaks really haven't touched on and haven't heard anything so all we have is our own worse fears on where they could go.

That one's probably a deal-breaker for me. I can do action games with guns, but not melee.

I've tried Witcher and it seems it's not for me, although I may try again sometime. Witcher 1 was playable despite all the jank because it had Pause, but 2&3 are not. Haven't tried the Jedi games. Greedfall I got through with mouse button mashing at lowest difficulty, but it really detracted from the experience, Skyrim likewise.