I don't agree that EA and the devs "didn't understand what Dragon Age was/is". I think they know exactly what it is. I think they want it to be something else.
@@btiermutineer I suppose I can't give any concrete reasons. But it just wouldn't make sense that the art director didn't realize, or even be TOLD, that DA is a dark, realistic game. It's a hard thing to miss. Probably easier to ignore.
"One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see." - Sandal Feddic
Yes this made me think that they really did originally plan for the veil to come completely down, and based on the very original promo for da4 I do think they also originally planned to have the veil coming down be the “opening” of da4 (similar to the conclave explosion being the opening to inquisition)
@@sarawawa8984 I assumed the same, because the Veil always had this "obstacle" feel to me. Protection, but also a hindrance. Which would have been a way more epic world-changer than the 'shadow government' nonsense
DA2, and i said that the whole problem with this franchise is DA2 it started when they Mass Effectified Dragon Age and made Dragon Effect, they further f-ed up when they continued doing it and made Inquisition reveal all secrets and leave no mystery behind a huge no no when it comes to story telling then Inquisition set the story for Veilguard further continued Mass Effecting the game and further removing all questions even the small ones in the effort to keep the players interest which only further eroded the foundation and ensuring the fall of the franchise...well fall of Dragon Effect franchise because it's not Dragon Age. Veilguard was made to fail with direction DA2 took there was no other way and Bioware simply chose to end things with excuse they give every time they face criticism it's the "attack of the phobes" even if criticism has nothing to do with DEI.
What really stuck with me in DAO was how unabashedly dark the game was. Depending on your origin, your family could be killed, you could be stabbed in the back by your sibling, your cousin could be raped, and those are just a few scenarios for the prologues. One scene that always stuck with me from DAO is when you stumble upon Hespith in the Deep Roads, and she's reciting her poem that essentially describes Laryn being tortured, raped, and slowly being turned into a monster. The entire scene is so eerie and terrifying; it pretty much sums up why the Mother in Awakening is bat-shit crazy. Or the fact that Bhelen is the obvious darker choice, but when you get to the epilogue, he is the better choice since his decisions for Orzammar benefit it in the long run. In each game afterward, this darkness is toned down. After reading The Horror of Hormak, I had some hope. The story was great, and I hoped we would return to that grittiness from the first game or get closer to it than the other two games, especially after BG3's success. But no, that's not going to happen, and that's why I'm so disappointed with DAV.
The interesting thing is that in the Tevinter Nights short story book, the writing was really good. That's why I keep thinking that it can't truly be the writers' fault, and either they were forced to rewrite everything to make it like this, or else their original writing was fed into an AI to turn it into the slop it is now.
It's interesting to think about all media from a stand point of "safety" Certain topics are danced around across the board: S.A., incest, animal cruelty... Not to say they aren't present in books, movies, etc. but they have been toned down in most places. I think it comes from a place of political correctness (for lack of a better word) because it can trigger some people. Sexual abuse for example is a topic that was thrown around for shock value back in the day, but is less present because we now know how frequent it occurs. But I must ask the question: why do we need these topics for a game to be "dark"?
There's a massive problem nowadays of artists self-censoring themselves. I think quite a massive part is the copious amounts of extremely subjective opinions treated as objective facts. Take the concept and theme of sexual assault for example. In the mainstream, exploring that topic is taboo and if you add it into your project, people say it's for "shock value". That's what they call things all the time, "nothing but shock value". And then people stop exploring the theme of SA in any other way except one particular "allowed" way that curtsies around the topic, using analogies and allegories and symbolism. But the word "shock value" still insinuates the shock has VALUE. Shock value is not bad, it adds to your story and world. It gives it a punch. I guess people are too worried that normalizing talking about and exploring SA somehow triviliazes it, but it has only lead to it becoming harder and harder for people to find catharsis or deal with perhaps their own trauma with it due to there only being one "allowed" way to express it. Only one "allowed" outlet. And that's coddling you like a little baby deer. Yes, you should be careful with people you don't know, but if you like dark stuff, you don't like ukulele music and pastel colours and like swearing... Then where the fuck are you supposed to find catharsis and exploration on these heavy topics? Nowhere! Because it's all been self-censored to cater to the mainstream.
@@AZtarheelwhat constitutes “dark”can be a matter of cultural bias or taste. No one topic or cluster of topics is canonically “dark”. What is taboo and sensitive in one place or time can simply be a fact of life or even an age old institution a short distance away. Why topics like SA come up repeatedly is probably a direct result of the taboo on sex in Protestant culture generally. People are so anxious to not hurt or trigger or even be perceived as doing inappropriate things, that an anxiety builds up in the culture and with it a pressure that needs to be released or expressed, preferably with a healthy outlet. With drinking alcohol, many cultures introduce it in small and balanced quantities as a child develops, always in a safe and responsible setting with people who care about the child. Those children far less often develop unhealthy or imbalanced relationships with alcohol than their peers in cultures that institutionalize repressing consumption until adulthood. Encountering difficult ideas, topics, philosophies etc can be painful or dangerous. But strong and mature adults learn how to handle that by doing so regularly in controlled settings with the support of friends and family. With how broken and alienated so many people and families are today, the number of kids raising themselves who find they are only able to express certain curiosities or build up their ideological and emotional immune systems by challenging themselves with difficult fiction is frighteningly high and climbing. Hope this is helpful.
@AZtarheel how do you have dark without acts of evil or taboos? What story beats or angles would you use in a medieval fantasy to show the darkness of the setting?
I would have loved to have the option to help Solas to tear down the veil. The veil was never supposed to be there in the first place. The things that need to be fixed are the blight and the collateral damage. The old writer also had an Idea for Fenris helping Solas to free Hawke from the fade...
Imagine: a game with different origins in the grimdark magical dystopia Tevinter actually is. Slave, Magister, Peasant (perhaps Templar, since they don't use lyrium in Tevinter I believe) or Qunari (ACTUAL QUNARI). Why in the world did they remove SLAVES FROM TEVINTER ?! It would also be fun if Solas manages to make the Blight problem worse (make the Blight's origin unknown, stop making everything "elves did it!") and then realizes at the end, before he dies, that he has created a world of horror, same as he did in the future on the Redcliff mission. That mf deserves it for being PRIDEFUL and incredibly evil.
Agree. I really wanted to see/fight slavery. I even chose shadow dragon. I'm still having an incredible time in the game. But if it had been darker, with real wickedness and blood magic and grit and slaves...just wow.
The retcon of every problem being because of elves was dumb, like no it was magisters breaking into the golden city not solas' cage such a bland retcon only done cause they can't write
Yes, nations like Tevinter and Antiva failed to deliver completely. Unfortunately, because those were nations that I am sure many fans wanted to visit since they were described in Origins. And very sure Tevinter even more after meeting Fenris in DA2.
BG3 shows us what a new installment could have been. It is a beautiful tribute to Some of Origins. Still has a current higher player count on steam than Veilguard does.
It is ironic how Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 was BioWare's games. I feel very frustrated when someone compares BG3 and Veilguard and doesn't mention that fact 😆. It have to suck for their morale to be compared that way.
The problem was, they got rid of the people who genuinely loved and cared for this game. They were replaced by people who wanted to make it all about them and their agenda, who clearly didn’t pass writing class in university. Such a sad way to end a decade’s wait, I’ve loved this game since origins was released.
It's also strange how they massacred representation in Veilguard when there was Krem in Inquision. We barely have a couple of diologs with him, but he is just a well written character everyone likes. His backstory was great and he would be a decent romance option (if it was an option lol). Not to mention Dorian whose sexuality tied to world building with blood magic. And Sera who is just is, no questions needed.
because the culture war has poisoned peoples brains, if the internet didn't exist people would probably have enjoyed veilguard more but because people know too much they actively are against the ideas being pushed in modern games, these ideas have always been pushed through games but they were always surface level so you could ignore them.
I loved Krem in Inquisition - as a trans man I had never seen a transguy character in a game before. And Krem was so well written! Not to mention Dorian and Sera, of course - they were also great characters that were gay and also had so much more going on in their personal conflicts.
@RemOmni I disagree on that. It's more about self identification being a part of a character vs a whole character. DA Tevinter Nights, has two stories, where sexuality is directly tied to the main plot and they are great. Sexuality being a whole character is enough for some casual modern day story, but not for a fantasy, where you are bored half way through because nothing fantastical actually happens.
@@RemOmni well you are right and wrong at the same time. Yes there would have been less hate towards DAV before release. But short before till after release people would have been annoyed by the review scandal, pissed by ignoring the past games, and again annoyed and pissed about lecturing of behaviour. In my observation the cultur war did not start because of grifters, but because companies in media started to change beloved IPs for the worse. Like cheap gender and race swapping, claiming to representate authenticatal lbtq charcters, while turning them into stereotypes. Doing the exact opposite of what they proclaim to do. Making females more into men, making men more into females, on the level of how they behave. All in the name of Diversity and Inclusion. Most people like myself are not bothered by diversity and inclusion. I actually always liked it and embraced it. It is when corporation start serialzing on DEI, while only seeing it as a oppertunity for queerbaiting to capitalize on it. Sure there are also intolerant people. But people who are intolerant and bothered by these changes are a little minority to the people who are bothered by it while being tolerant. So thanks to social media corporations can no longer do these practices unnoticed. Which is a good thing, for us as consumers, because this means they will start one day returning to writing compelling charcters. Compare the writing quality of Dorian and krem which are excellent to a shallow hollow taash, which is condescending and unlikeable. I like many others are for true inclusion and diversity. That is why I do not like DEI. Because it fools people like, I once was, into thinking on a naive level that these corpos are noble. No they are only trying to make money with it. The irony is grifters do the same so they are not better in any way. But at least we stay updated on the current situation. Old bioware did not need consulatancy companies for dei and see what masterpieces they accomplished. This false DEI, became for me evidently by the horrible writing of these activists from movies and series, like ghostbusters 2016, the disney live action adaptations, the star wars sequel trilogy (compare uncompelling rey to compelling ahsoka, padme, leia etc.) the witcher netflix tv universe (not counting the books and games which are masterpieces), the acolyte, and now DATV. Compare these shows to other shows and games which are truly inclusive and diverse vs false proclaimed dei. and you will recognize certain patterns, which all share the same horrible writing patterns in contrast to true inclusion and diversity which came before this programs and consultancy companies and you will start noticing the paterns, the difference. To sum up: people are not pissed about diversity and inclusion but pissed about destroying beloved IPs instead of doing their own thing. Then nobody would bother. The culture war is not a result of a conspiracy, but a reaction, a response, a backlash how corpos deal nowadays with IPs. with shallow queerbaiting which allows them to hide behind these false practices, instead of delivering good products. It is basically a corpo media scam to do less work for a worse product, while earning the same money as before, while becoming untouchable and uncriticizable, by hiding behind the calim of being progressive. Old Bioware (ME 1-3,DA O, DA 2 ; DAI, Jade Empire) was true progression. The new bioware is regression, because it is unauthentic progressive. People like me who are tolerant and open minded are annoyed that these corpos scam people. How many reviews did you see for DAV talk about the writing quality of the game, almost none, despite being the most crucial aspect of every story driven game. You say the writing of diversity used to be surface level. No people like Zevran, Dorian, Sera, Leliana etc. are three dimensional characters which happen to be diverse. Their diverse qualities is only one part of their person. Nowadys it is surface level where only these criterias are the whole person. Would you say you are nothing more than your gender and sexual orientation and ethnicity. Ofc you are not and that is what has changed. It s the exact opposite of how you describe it. The writing was once deep and now it became superficial and that is the core issue, which lies at the heart of the culture war. I myself do not participate in it, I merely analyze it. Since these grifters take these few grain of truths which i described and turn it into a hyperbolic overblown ridiculous false narrative, which is far removed from the truth. I have zero interest to participate in their nonsense. I merely wanted to share my observation.
@@souljumperrises334 in my experience I was happily just playing games and accepting the tropes in them and enjoying gameplay - then culture war starts and I'm flooded with videos being negative about literally everything, i bet if you removed the monetisation from TH-cam these videos would cease to exist or at least be minimal since the only reason for them to do it then would be actual passion.
Thank you for your thoughts! In one old interview, David Gaider said he was mainly inspired by the Song of Ice and Fire when he wrote DAO. I'm a big fan of worldbuilding and complex moralities in these both fantasy worlds, and it's sad that DAV doesn't feel like a worthy sequel to the Inquisition. Some gamers just don't understand that LBGTQ+ people of all identities and sexualities CAN dislike bad writing and butchered lore too, and, sometimes, disliking this game has nothing to do with bigotry of some radicals. I will never forgive EA's dumb management for butchering project Joplin and reducing BioWare to a husk who can only handle one project at time instead of investing into hiring more talents.
Yeah, I genuinely feel so disappointed in how this game ended up, because Dragon Age was such a beloved series with amazing lore, characters, and story, and this is just a husk of that IP, with the name only used to get more people to talk about it and buy it. Disliking the game, for me, has absolutely nothing to do with bigots or radicals. The writing is bad, the lore retcons are incredibly lazy and turn the entire thing into the most generic "(Religious) Good vs Evil". The trans + queer representation feels like it's only there to check some boxes and is executed to a primary school level that I'd expect to hear from a teacher trying to explain such concepts to children. I wanted to LOVE this game. I'd been waiting for it for so long, and I was excited to see how they'd develop everything, especially after so many years. Still can't believe I live in the reality where THIS is what we got.
@@btiermutineer I was provoked by a local "ally" guy who wrote that everyone displeased with the game was a bigot (ugh, like LBGTQ+ people don't have standards). I replayed the previous DA games almost a dozen of times each because they were engaging enough to do so. Yesterday, TH-cam suggested me a video about the secret ending in DAV and another one with the Inquisitor. I wish I never watched them because DAV literally peed on everything I loved:( Oh well, I have just made female Cadash to romance Josephine again for my mental health care.
@dariakeeper yeah, I saw those endings, too.... I wish I had just ignored everything to do with this game. I wanted so hard to find something good about it, something redeemable. I swear people imagine that us queer people don't have standards - and while in the past that may have been slightly true, since there was almost zero queer representation in media, in recent years we've genuinely had lots of diverse representation (of good quality). So no, I don't feel the need to accept the shitty scraps that a company like EA thinks is fine to include in their games just to tick some boxes.
Funny how it's gone from a franchise I love to one that i would celebrate failing. They decided to burn too many bridges with their "well we want more players so we have to dumb it down more"
The biggest problem with Dragon age is that it reestablishes a completely new Identity with each entry. No other franchise does this unless something went horribly wrong. They established a grimdark setting in Origins with a silent protagonist that was widely appreciated and accepted. They start to change this in DA2 with a new combat system and voiced protagonist, This changed the tone and how the game was played. They move to Inquisition, and the again make the combat more action focused and have a much more high fantasy aesthetic compared to the other entries, it was also more open, but also empty. Now we're stuck with Veil Guard which is having a DA2 where its no an action game that is more confined in how quest work. They seem to have completely eradicated the grim and dark setting established in the first 2 games once and for all. It's hard to want to invest your time into a franchise when you know everything you like about an entry will be thrown out in the installment.
But Veilguard is still less of a action game than inquisition (wouldnt call either tactics based personally). You cant combo beyond the opener>debuff (on paper and for good chunk of initial playthrough accessible from other class)>detonator, input based moves dont actually have a mechanical difference to your gameloop, you have (functionally) only 2 abilities to choose for a build as 2 are functionally always locked (even FF16 which openly labeled itself as not having any tactics in it/being closer to a combo spectacle fighter has more options even after you account for Veilguards proc options and full items) and the peak of proactive enemies is still the dragon fights (the one thing that rings true between both Inquisition and Failguard). If Dragon Age as a franchise were treated as telling the story of a Knight in whose shoes one steps in, Origins would be a battle ready replica with armory, 2 would be a cosplay suit, Inquisition is a strudy plushie whose 2 weapons velcro attachments are loose and Veilguard is a gummy out of a funko mold.
You know damn well it would be a remake and theyed ruin the characters and nerf the tone. Pluse theyed probably add a bunch of gay characters and non binary ones
@elivenya-theautisticbookwy9638 oh I know but they were well written the new ones would be wearing glitter constantly talking about being gay. These new writers now days keep showing that they don't know how to write good lgbtq characters
I think the veil being destroyed at the start of the game would also explain why any players from the South are absent in the game as well, since they are all focused at dealing with demons/spirits/mages
Exactly, a lot of other things would slot in really nicely. Obviously most characters from previous games could be explained away due to having to deal with the consequences of the Veil disappearing, and that includes the Inquisitor and honestly even Morrigan and basically any mage from previous games that doesn't have a reason to be in the north.
Another theory was that Sera herself was an elven God, judging by many things she says in-game when she freaks out, and that it fit perfectly with lore with an elven goddess that used a bow as well. So many things that pointed to the game focused on solving mysteries left in inquisition and having Solas presence prominently...10 years of waiting and they gave us this. Im sorry but its damn obvious they completely revamped the game they originally planned.
Yeah, there were so many clues and unsolved mysteries from Inquisition that would have made for so many interesting payoffs in DA4. It's terrible that they went with this lazy reboot when they could've at least had it make it more sense with the Veil coming down.
I'm almost beginning to think that after all those years of development and re-conceptualizations, they just decided to release a sub-par product and try to salvage the inevitable low sales with people buying their previous games out of nostalgia and dissatisfaction.
@@TheLewisDawg I swear, it certainly feels that way. After everything I saw (and experienced) of Veilguard, I have never had a stronger urge to play all the previous games, especially Inquisition towards which I think I was far too harsh in my opinion until now. Compared to Veilguard, Inquisition is a masterpiece.
There is the part that failed games are losses, and losses are potential tax write offs. There is, however, also another theory some people argue for: the money to be gotten from courting investors is better than the money from mediocre, if successful sales. There's some criticism to be had of both of those viewpoints, though.
I think the best way they could have the new protagonist would be just simply say the inquisitor cannot fight due to missing an arm. It could provide a interesting story line about someone whos no longer top of the world and how much there willing to do to either reclaim their position. The lore reveals in veilguard are the most predictable and laziest possible. Contradicting the lore from previous games. I honestly believe the writers did not play origins or even 2. So i do agree this does feel like a game made by committee. The issue is that nothing can be made for everyone. Niches exist for a reason.
I agree with your idea that the story should start with Solas succeeding in tearing down the veil in the beginning. It is a chance to completely upend the Thedas setting, changing landscapes and end certain organizations and create some others, allowing you to have a soft reboot without setting up the lame ass Executors as the new villains. The decision to implement an action combat and make that the core of the gameplay is really misguided. Game development is a zero-sum game; if you allocate that much internal resource into new combat motion capture, mechanics, balance. other areas of the game will suffer. Another prime example of this happening is FF16 which had subpar writing, character, quests and pacing because a brand new DMC style action combat is tacked on a series not known for it.
If they wanted to reboot the setting and atmosphere, tearing down the Veil was genuinely the easiest thing to do. I can't understand why they didn't do it. The Executors are the dumbest villain I've ever heard of (heard them being compared to the Jailer situation from WoW), and the only reason I would include such a lazy villain called the "Executors" in a game would be to make fun of the Executives in game companies who cause these kinds of decisions to be made.
When you weaponize your product for anti-human social engineering, expect poor sales and for your company to be boycotted when your customers realise theres a war on for their mind.
When I finished Trespasser I thought that in the next game new protagonist will work for Inky... My idea was that Inky went missing during their mission to stop Solas. It's weird that the mentor figure is Varrick... It's his third team...
Lol, the funniest part of this is that I tried to customize my Rook's face during the livestream and immediately gave up after a few minutes because his face was extremely quickly turning into a Monster Factory-type character, so I ended up going with a preset that I just added a beard to.
More than any Dragon Age game this game should have Inquisitor play a significant role because Solas and Inquisitor are more tied story wise than Rook who feels more than a Third person who does not have any connection to this story. At least if Inquisitor played a companion role or an Advisory throughout the game it makes some sense.
I always knew the Inquisitor wasn't going to have a major role in DA4 no matter what. Too many variables, all of their scenes would have to be recorded a minimum of 4 times, just for each different voice.
They were screwing this thing up since DA2. I was just hanging on hoping they would go back to what DA: O did. Good grief, that was extreme wishful thinking.
People who thought the first teaser trailer was fucking appropriate for DA are the problem. From the GET GO it looked NOTHING LIKE DA. What it did look like was a cheap crash bag disneyfied moba opening
Playing this game feels like work...another thing I hate about it is how the combat is designed; I usually play on Nightmare or the hardest difficulty but the only thing hard about it is endless bullet sponginess and it is tiresome...but you cannot lower the difficulty from Nightmare, you are locked in....moronic move imo.
Really don't understand why you can't change the difficulty if you start on Nightmare, since you can if you start with any other difficulty. The combat became so boring so quickly for me. I genuinely don't understand the people I heard say the combat is fun and good. Like there are ARPGs that are decades old that are better than this (Diablo 2, or I even like the combat in Diablo 3 for example), so I can't imagine how this action combat is good in any way unless those players have never played a game with action combat in their lives.
@@btiermutineer It is funnish for the first few hours then at level 20 the enemies have so much health you waste hours kiling them...I still need to finish the game, hoping their might be something good.
@@spellandshield To me the combat is mostly ok, played on nightmare with a rogue, some of the gears are way too strong, you can pretty much spam your abilities and its all crits. So they did some dumb shit like lock the highest damage at 9999 to artificially increase the difficulty, which is very lame.
The inquisitor most definitely could have been the protagonist. The difference between who couldn't and couldn't be the protagonist is different from the other dragon age games because the other three were all different games. Veilguard was supposed to be a direct sequel to Inquisition. Meaning it's suppose to continue the story from where it left off unlike the others
I think that the biggest mistake was assuming that, because DA2 was a sequel happening almost in parallel with DAO, ALL sequels had to be done in sequence or "it wouldn't be Dragon Age". Having sequels made in subsequent ages may have solved some problems, like why wouldn't Solas not just wait for all his friends to die out and then tear down the Veil? He is immortal. I think focusing on elves so much was also a massive mistake.
Yes, I personally would have even loved "Dragon Age" games set BEFORE the Dragon Age. And I think making basically everything tie back to the ancient elves made so much of the lore lose its appeal. All the different religions in Thedas were interesting because they were shrouded in mystery and people didn't really have the "correct" answers. The Dalish worshipped the Creators they interpreted from scraps of old lore, with no idea of who their gods truly had been. But honestly, it was better back when we didn't know everything about everything. I feel like suddenly the world of Dragon Age no longer feels magical if the Evanuris were behind 50% of things, and the Executors were behind the other 50%. Where's the humanity? Where's the moral ambiguity, as well as just ambiguity in general due to knowledge being lost to time? I could go on and on...
@@btiermutineer Yeah, when you play DAO, you really feel the mystery of the Maker. You doubt he is real and everything but then, you encounter the temple of sacred ashes and go "wait, what?". Same with the Dalish elves. You think their stories are bs but then you encounter a bunch of ruins filled to the brim with demons and what appear to be ancient elves. The highlight of that mission for me was the amulet with the ancient elf stuck inside, the one that can teach you the Arcane Warrior class. I wish they haven't brushed off the importance of such artifact so quickly. The dude trapped in there said that the elves had been running and fighting off an enemy much more ancient than humanity, something terrible. Are we to simply assume it was "ancient elves"? Why wouldn't he remember that? And that's the thing: every mission destroyed your assumptions on what was true about the universe. If the Temple of Sacred Ashes existed, who was to say the story about the Maker cursing humanity for abusing blood magic isn't real, or how humanity was created? We saw ourselves what demons and blood magic can do, raise the dead and enslave entire towns. Who is to say the Maker was not angry at humanity akin the Tower of Babel or the Flood? And then we meet the Architect, and it turns out the story of them trying to reach the Black city IS real. If Urthanera/deep sleep is real, then how are we to say the Dalish elves are not speaking the truth about them being immortal and humanity having something to do with them now being mortal? Like, the player can assume all those stories and cultures arose from superstition and that the stories are either lies or greatly exaggerated, but then you find out they were TOTALLY REAL and it leaves you thinking. But no, now all that magic is gone. The Veil? Elves. The Blight? Elves. The Archdemon? Elves. Lyrium? Blood from Titans but actually Elves too. Tevinter? Elves. The Dwarves? Elves (helped in their creation). The "true" deities of a WORLD WERE MAGIC EXISTS AND IDEAS ARE VERY MUCH ALIVE?! Elves, but not really, and the Maker doesn't exist because we say so, bad Chantry bad, let's humiliate the Grey Wardens and make the Darkspawn goofy because they are totally goofy, right guys? I feel like Bioware has wasted my time for 15 years with a story that goes nowhere. I agree that the games should have taken place either before or after, show us different cultures and religions, times and wars. Imagine exploring beyond the world known by the people of Ferelden, beyond Thedas. That would have been awesome.
Just finished DAV...The writing and dialogue in this game was overall bad and lacked creativity. To the point I dont even want to replay it like I did with all the other DA games. I like your idea of starting it with the veil being torn down. That could have led to such an interesting story. A story of rebuilding a broken world. Such a shame😢
I think despite so many changes in each game, up until DATV, each game upheld its "dragon age identity" because of the world building. Thedas was always portrayed as a very harsh place, but with resilient people never giving up. That harshness was vastly dulled in the new game. You'd barely know slavery existed in Tevinter if npcs didn't remind you in some dialogue. I think that's why key npcs like Fenris and Zevran don't make appearances. You can't have them exist in a game where the cruelty of the Imperium or the Crows are ignored. I was very excited to finally have a game take place in Tevinter and it was probably one of the most disappointing things BioWare has presented. The first big decision turned out to be the same exact mission, just in different locations. A huge let down is all I can say.
I must remind you. Solas knew that unlocking the orb would kill you. He was expecting Corifucus to die. He did not know Corificus had mastered effective immortality
Tearing down the Veil seems pretty "lose state" to me though. Even just the "tears" from Solas' ritual were bleeding out demons galore. And that aspect is one of the many cringe factors in the early game Veilguard where it's like... if Minrathous is already this overrun by demons in just the section we see, people getting whisked away by demon dogs left and right (everyone except Varric and Rook who are right in front of them), it should already be lost... and isn't, everything just going back to normal after the ritual disruption. What world would be left to save after the Veil is wide open and demons just run amok in the world everywhere? The best that could be done at that point would be a time reversal plot which... meh... But, yeah, Gaider would've done differently since he clearly respected and thrived on the world he'd created, developed, and stewarded over three games. Even if it had taken Gaider 10yrs to write a sequel, it might not've started 10yrs later. I don't see the Inq as essential either since they'd lost their arm and would at the very least need time to learn ways to compensate, if ever. Good oppty for a new protagonist. And I agree that Solas would've been way more crafty about his retreat than just leaving his eluvian path open for Rookies to exploit (which was supposed to require his dagger to travel, but whatever). Not to mention that in Trespasser he had the power to medusa whole groups of people without even looking at them- something Veilguard conveniently underplays. That's why making Dreadwolf about Dreadwolf made more sense, the adventure and journey of another team, likely advised by the Inq, hunting down Solas through various means and locations and finding some way to overcome his godlike powers to PREVENT the Veil coming down. It's the game we never got and never will get... and you're right: it was never going to be. But its defeat really was the absence of Gaider- he and his team and other core devs... some of whom were the ones insisting on turning DA into a live service cash grab. Or rather the absence of appreciation for Gaider's standard of writing. Bioware/EA sacrificed Gaider and good writing to get Anthem. Then reluctantly returned to making a single-player RPG of Gaider's easy-win lore, but it looks like they just recognized how low their writing talent pool had become- while licking their wounds after Anthem w no self-reflection of having made an error- and cynically proceeded along the path of hostility to their own players that plopped out a Veilturd. Unfortunately the failure of Veilguard was the same failing as DA2 and DAI: the poor marriage of Bioware to EA and the development self-effacing that the couple have always led to. If there had been a great idea of how to make a DA4, they would've have listened anyway by then...
I wish more fanbase even those at r/dragonage would understand this and stop dismissing critique with "i like it , so whose your fav romance ladies" Story of Dragon age Origins is a tragic downfall. Inquisition was the one getting back up and they killed the studio with crunch for Anthem. I think this was the final nail in the coffin of old bioware regenerating with new people. Just can't describe the frustration when you appreciate the nuances in Origins writing and see them progressively been thrown out. by bad management. Then comming back in pain for DAI. And now being sacked again.
I have a question: so spirits are fade's energy, that is manifested into forns by thoughts and emotions of physical people. Elves came from spirits. So who's thoughts formed those spirits who turned into elves? Dwarves? But dwarves appeared after the murder of Titans, who were killed by the elves. Also, i swear i heard Solas say that they used stones to become like humans, but no way I'm ever touching that game myself. But then humans predate elves? But they came to Thedas from Par Vollen?
I'm not entirely sure on all the details since I couldn't finish the game myself, but what I think is happening is that they tried to explain away all the mysteries in the lore... For some reason. And of course the problem with that is that there were lots of conflicting pieces of information based on the different perspectives people in Thedas had. Making everything fit into "the elves did it" cheapens the world, makes it feel less complex. Not to mention it raises all these questions due to outright contradicting previously established lore. The idea of spirits taking on a physical form isn't bad per se, but there has to be a little more explanation to it than that. Like for example you need to explain that in the time before the Veil, magic and spirits likely worked differently than they do now. So spirits could just take on physical form - they had likely simply never wanted to before that. But your question is a good one: whose dreams did they see that made them want to experience having a physical body? And why did they form into the shape of elves with pointy ears if they were looking at the dreams of dwarves or humans? Were they just like "cool body, but it needs to be skinnier and have pointy ears"? Lol. Sorry that I don't have real answers but even if Veilguard explained its lore breaking ideas better I still wouldn't consider it canon.
You had your first red flag, even when the game was called "Dreadwolf" (the original name). When in rhe trailer Varric narrates, that this would be a new game in which your Inquisitor would have nowhere to be seen... So yeah when you are dealing with the final chapter and the one Character who has the biggest connection to Solas, is nowhere to be seen... That is concerning, and when you see them rename the project and the next trailer is essentially just medieval "Guardians of the Galaxy" thats when you know thisñngs turn up for the worse. I also agree the "Tresspasser" DLC, was the ultimate cliffhanger. As it sate the bases for the Inquisitor to hunto down Solas and face him once and for all... Instead, nothing, we get a new character and just a bunch of annoying kids to essentially stop Ancient gods from destroying the world...
I think you're right and honestly I had the same idea after Tresspasser ended it seemed like such a logical end point have the inquisitor fail maybe have them die but Solas 100% should've torn down his creation like how do we know all those orbs we activated weren't wearing down the veil or some focus for his ritual to tear ot dowm
@@btiermutineer It would've been the most satisfying way to go and a really good bittersweet ending for any who romanced Solas even if the inquisitor didn't die if they wrote it good enough and aligned it with your choices it could've been great but they couldn't write Hawke properly oh well DA was a pretty food trilogy all things considered
First before talking about what the game writers understand about the game, we should maybe analyse the abysmal level of the writing. It's not bad choices made by people who don't have the same understanding than you or me but the fact that they totally suck at their job. How a professional game writer can produce that level of cringe, meaningless garbage. There is a few dialogue for example with Solas that are good but then you have those cheesy dialogues with your companions just like all this was a group of cosplayers having fun and joking like idiots in the middle of a dying world. I loved the Trespasser DLc and the end with Solas and i was asking myself if he was right after all and the only solution was to help him to get rid of those evanuris even if the cost to the actual world would be high. Solas is smart and when he said he had a plan i guess we should at least listen to him before creating a situation much worse.
The thing is that a lot of the game writers who were on the Veilguard team had been writing for Inquisition (Patrick Weekes, Sylvia Feketekuty, Brianne Battye), and some of them had been on the DA team since Origins (Mary Kirby, Lukas Kristjanson, Sheryl Chee), not to mention that Lukas Kristjanson had been at Bioware for even longer working on the classics before Dragon Age. And of course Karin Weekes having been an editor since 2006. I personally can't understand how those same writers who wrote some of my absolute favorite quests and characters could write the absolutely embarrassing dialogue in Veilguard. It just doesn't line up.
Mabye they didn’t write much of it. It’s very possible they were trying to change the direction and writing lots of stuff that got cut (a lot were fired after all this could be because they weren’t falling in line and were trying to steer the ship on line)
@@btiermutineer I believe they wrote many lines connected to each other and sounded solid in the context of each other. Then Corinne Busche came in with all of that director power to "Fix" the narrative in a certain way.
If you read the IGN article "How Bioware finally got DA to Finish Line" it paints a picture where Gary Mckay, very much the company man, is the one insisting on more blood. I think that a lot of the game's failures can be placed squarely on the creative leads having terrible instincts about DA. I can absolutely see the action combat being an EA mandate, but the cutesy tone reeks of art and animation school pretensions.
seriously I thought the game was already a disappointment when it wasn't your inquistor closing up this story. The story ended on a cliffhanger with Solas turning out to be behind everything. Then in this game suddenly its years later and some other random guy and random people are now on this quest? basically only varric, morigan and harding are around. And I can barely even remember Harding from inquisition.. wasn't she just a scout or something who went and discovered new lands for you? This dumb tradition of having a new protagonist for every game isn't something that I can get behind. I like the fact that mass effect had shepherd each game. I loved seeing the companions from mass effect show up in the later games and new companions from the second game show up in the third game as well. It gave your choices at the end of the 2nd game a lot of weight.
I was personally fine with having a different protagonist in different DA games, as long as the story of that game made sense for that character. I do think it makes the games in a series more accessible to new players who can play whichever game they want first, and then if they are pulled into the world they can play the other games, too. However, the whole situation with Solas and the elven gods is very much still the Inquisitor's story and it doesn't make any sense to suddenly have Rook, an absolute nobody with no personality to speak of, coming in and taking the place of someone who has an actual motivation to be the protagonist. It also makes NO sense that the Inquisitor wouldn't be there at the very beginning with Varric and Harding to stop Solas's ritual. It makes no sense that other characters such as Leliana aren't involved in searching for Solas. Also, where did Solas's "Agents of Fen'Harel" go? He was just completely alone, pathetically, doing a ritual with barely held-together statues and with demons pouring out of rifts around him everywhere... He's supposed to be such a cunning and powerful character (not to mention morally complex), but all of that is removed for the sake of making the story easier to digest and perfect for baby's first RPG.
@@simonphoenix3789 Yes she was just a scout and you have NO IDEA how pissed I am that they took my wardens wife away from him and his son again there are so many characters they could use buuuuuutt nooo they gotta take my hot goth witch wofe
I had people call me allsorts of things just for saying that Veilguard would be terrible the day they announced it Fact is that the last of the talent in Bioware left during the development of ME3 and were replaced with idealogue Tumblr fanfic writers who went on to destroy the character development, plot and especially ending of ME3 Then every Bioware release since has been a sharp downfall in quality every time, with DA2 and Inquisition essentially not even being RPGs any more and of coirse Anthem and Andromeda. Honestly I was confused why there was anyone who thought Bioware could make a good game post-2012 considering they had none of the staff, none of the talent or drive and all of the EA Games to deal with
you are the first to point out that the closure of the inquisition dlc really made these new writers in bad situation . let's just hope for the next mass effect they will opt out shepard and just start a new with a blank state, i mean they can do that
20:00 The problem is not "this game was crippled because of all requirements put on it by management". The problem is, the people at bioware are incompetent, pure and simple. It took them 9 years to make this game, yes, management will make requirements of it to make sure they recover the investment. It wasn't management's fault that bioware now sucks at writing. Good writers will still write good stories within limitations imposed on them. If nothing else the problem was that there wasn't enough management oversight on the project to tell the writers and the director of the project, "NO". "NO, you will not put a transgender character in a medieval fantasy game". "NO, you will not add scenes to preach at the player". "NO, you will not have all party members always work together and never have a meaningful conflict". "NO, you will not have these headquarters scenes in which the characters do nothing productive to progress the plot". Bioware became this mess because it doesn't have enough oversight. Just like Inside Out 2 from Disney, once the executives went over the project and told the creators to remove the lesbian romance off the movie, it hit more than 1 billion dollars in box office. We have to remember that the writers of something, not always knows best what will be appealing to the public. If nothing else, Disney and Bioware are very clearly examples that many times the creators are writing for themselves and never pay any mind to how will that will make the product sell for the general public. It's fine to write for yourself when it's a small project, like a book or a indie movie and nobody's job depends on its sales, but when you're writing for a project in a studios with hundreds of employees that's not the case anymore. What they general public will accept is more important than the wants of the writer.
I compare solas a lot to Emet- selch from ffxiv. They had similar motives. Wanting to tear down the current world to bring back the world they loved. The protagonist couldn’t argue with emet that his world might have been better but ultimately it comes at the cost of their own future. They could become great but emet wants to take that future, that chance, away from them. It comes down to the protagonists future or Emets past and the protagonist wants to live. They dropped the ball with solas 😢…
There's a thing I think of as the "EA Paradox", it works like this. Companies like EA are attracted to companies like BioWare because of their market share and reputation, but they aren't structured in a way that's conducive to making that sort of product. EA deals with sport and shooter games mainly because they calculate these will always deliver on their initial investment and sometimes they even get those wrong with the same lack of care that we see with their RPG properties. A game that sells fast, sells well and can be made quickly is what they're shooting for. They absolutely don't want things that get in the way of making money like controversy. Here's a short list of innate features of good RPGs and why they might make companies like EA nervous. Adult stories. Not "adult" as in R-rated necessarily, but adult as in nuanced, complex and heartfelt. Nuance to an exec means you aren't 100% committing to a given target market, black and white stories do that. Moral greyness has the risk that some will accuse your company of encouraging the darker decisions rather than just having them as an option on the table. Choice and world states. To an exec these choices just translate to more investment being made on acting, assets and cutscenes without a garunteed payoff with more possibilty of game-breaking bugs. These aren't people committed to stories and likely regard stuff like this as excessive overheads and waste. Replayability, the strongest attraction for many of these games, BG3, KOTOR, Witcher 3, DAO is that you get a lot of value from one product. People spend thousands of hours exploring these worlds and trying to find new ways to tweak, replay and mod them. Executives would prefer you hurry up and buy a new game from them rather than endlessly replay an old one. That's the EA Paradox, the three factors that make players love these games are the same things that make businesspeople, particularly ones with no emotional investment in games, very nervous. They want the target markets, but don't want to give those target markets what they want.
The regression to the mean effect of chasing so many mass markets ends up making all the products very samey-samey. AAA is usually a sign of a beige game.
It would have made more sense if Rook is part of this team, being lead by the Inquisitor and his closets advisors to stop Solas from opening the Veil... So when you support the Inquisitor get to Solas, you see him failing and a Sorrow filled Solas finishing him, and after that the Veil is opened and Rook is just blown away the ecplosion, so that years later he once again tries to retake the battle to Solas with a new team.
I think it's hard to make a game where the veil is torn down. Like, the ancient world is visually and conceptually unimaginable to anyone mortal, and perhaps impossible to recreate in a game today. So I don't think it's such a simple solution to implement. It would require a lot of time and money to artistically develop it, and the recreate it in engine. I don't think that would be an investment they would be able to make after all the reboots this game had. The problem with this game is really the depth of the writing. It's such a frustrating game because the settings, the locations, the factions, the concepts, they all have so much potential for satisfying exploration, but that potential is never met. They had everything to create a good narrative already, but they managed to fumble it all, and it's so heartbreaking for me, as a long time fan.
Seems like this scenario only works when you and Solas are besties in the end ... Inquisition had lots of different outcomes tho. :-/ //Edit: That end dont really makes sense to me ... lets imagine: You are developer with pasion and awesome tale in mind that you want to tell ... and then some executive comes to you and say, "erase all blood from that game, we want to reach for younger audience" ... How does that affect your goal? O_o The other situiation: You are developer with pasion and awesome tale in mind that you want to tell ... and then some executive comes to you and say, "erase all topic about (i wont say the word, bcs youtube dont like it said ... but they are two, one starts with S and the other with R ... and both were common themes around Elves)" ... I mean ... ok, this may affect some interactions, or side-quests ... but as long as we are talking about main story, that is about Solas and Veil ... i once again fail to see connection.
Obviously, we don't know what happened behind the scenes with the Dragon Age team at Bioware for them to end up producing this disaster of a game. But I once again have to mention that I can't believe the veteran writers who wrote some of my favorite characters and quests in the series (Mary Kirby, Lukas Kristjanson, Sheryl Chee, and even writers that joined later on like Sylvia Feketekuty and Patrick Weekes)... Can't believe that these same people would be able to write this badly, UNLESS someone was telling them to do it and they couldn't say no.
I think the main issue with your proposal is that while yes, in lore, in universe the inquisitor was the one that made the promise to either hunt solas down or redeem him in reality the player made that promise. Bioware, a studio full of relatively green devs coming off of a long streak of poorly received games. Giving the player the option to set themselves on a quest to see how solas ends up and then starting the next game with the completion of that quest, hardcored, without any player input whatsoever was likely not something they were willing to gamble on. Imagine if in mass effect everything after your charge toward the beam was a cutscene. Shepard always makes the same choices, goes the same way, says the same things with no player involvement at all. That would let a lot of people down and be very controversial. What we got might not have been much better but at least it is still in the players hands. Bioware seems to have a problem of making promises that would be best kept with a cutscene but can now only be kept with gameplay and then struggling to make that gameplay interesting or meaningful.
I shared your thoughts that the Veil coming down was inevitable, and I honestly thought it had something to do with the Blight; I hate that the answer to all the questions the series has set up turns out to be "its all the ancient elves' fault", and then my elf Rook spends several conversations emotionally, desperately apoligizing for what her ancestors opressors did.
Great video! I actually really like your idea of how to develop Dragon Age 4 plot from the Tresspasser DLC. The desctuction of the veil... That sonds really intriguing. And now I'm even more disappointed and sad that The Veilguard plot is so generic, boring and surface-level, that it's so vanilla and scared of insulting anyone or touching on anything even slightly controversial or grey...
As someone who is playing through the persona games for the first time, I'd say those games are way more about the friends you make along the way than dragon age ever was. It's not a problem to write a story that way, but that's not what dragon age is. Dragon age is about real people facing impossible odds and the conflict that arises from that.
Exactly. There are plenty of stories that are about friends and friendship is magic kind of stuff (especially JRPGs). No idea why they decided to suddenly turn Dragon Age into that, when it was just like you said about facing impossible odds, and having to make difficult choices as part of the conflict arising from that.
@btiermutineer I love when people say shit like "Alistair in origins was a comedic character so there was no change in tone" Alistair using comedy to cope with the death of his mentor, awful childhood, and damn near certain death in the face of the blight is not the same thing as the quippy happy-go-lucky bullshit we got out of the veilgaurd.
I think the reason they didn't go with your proposal for the plot, or anything else, is simply because these writers are neither talented nor creative. The game is just boring and basic and safe in every possible way. Starting with insisting on calling it THE veilguard. Why? Because it is maximum boring. But when looking at the game, it is clear they took the least creative option in many cases. Consider combat. Both DA1 and DA2 had amazing CGI trailers that showed how mages fight in melee range with their staffs, and I think a big unspoken implication of DA2 is that this is how a Mage Apostate Hawke remains unknown for so long. They aren't slinging small little weak balls of magic, they are bashing people with their bladed pole-arm and occasionally throwing out subtle crowd control, support, and misdirection magic. And you see this reflected in gameplay for DA2 and also to a certain extent with Origins as well. Mages are not complete pushovers, they know how to use that staff -- at least the good ones. So why is that when we get to THE veilguard with its real time action combat, that isn't how staff combat works? Instead we have a weak little ranged projectile and a...stronger ranged beam attack? What? Also, the orb and dagger are kind of cool I guess but where the hell have those been? Feels like they should have just given the staff melee options and ranged options.
I agree that they went with the dumbest and most boring/generic version that they could have, ignoring or outright contradicting what came before. I can't personally believe that the writers are 100% at fault, though, because while some of the good ones left such as David Gaider, there were still plenty of writers who had written amazing stuff for Origins, DA2, and Inquisition, who were part of the writing team of Veilguard. As much as I'd want writers to be in charge of the story, I imagine that they were likely forced by other people in charge of the "vision" of the project to do something completely different. And honestly, if I had been told to go with this kind of story and dumb style, I would have also written it in the shittiest way possible just to get it done so I could get my paycheck.
21:22 this reminds me so much of that setting in Hogwarts Legacy in which you could turn off spiders because some people have arachnophobia 🥲 i hate spiders, too, but c'mon! This is becoming ridiculous.
I think DA4 was going to be a divisive game no matter what direction they went. Dragon Age means different things to everyone I mean if you ask a hundred people what it means you’ll get a hundred and one different answers. Every game has always divided the fandom and a new game would do that even more. You have a lot of schisms within the community such as people who just want Origins 2.0 and people who want something much more akin to Inquisition. The more “reasonable” (I suppose you could say) part of the community who just want a new game always get drowned out by both sides. I think the big problem is that BioWare could’ve tried to please at least one side of the fanbase but instead wound up becoming something so far removed from both in want of a new audience. I understand that devs always need to try and get more people to play their games but I feel like BioWare simply put too much thought into how to bring in more players rather than trying to keep old ones. I don’t know maybe I’m just too cynical and simply don’t understand enough of what was actually going on internally as I stopped paying attention shortly after hearing about all the turnover rates and everybody leaving. I pretty much gave up after Andromeda because if this was the direction BioWare was going I simply wasn’t meant to be a part of it anymore. Maybe the problem isn’t even with BioWare and instead with me. I’ve noticed my tastes have shifted as I’ve gotten older. I’ve always enjoyed the story elements of RPGs (and games of all genres) over gameplay and graphics and now it seems I’ve went further down the path of that and gotten more at home in a game like Stray Gods or The Wolf Among Us or Life is Strange where the story is not only the main focus but also pretty much the only focus. Sure I still love the Dragon Age games (especially Origins and 2) and Mass Effect and more recently Greedfall but I simply can’t seem to find as many of them that I love as much as I used to.
My thoughts: A) I don't recall Solas ever being sympathetic to people living, but I do recall him stabbing "Mythal" to obtain her power. He really isn't a great person, and I don't think that trying to make him be more considerate of people currently living would work as a narrative. His whole goal was to undo the Veil by any means necessary. I definitely think he works best when written as that sociopath. His relationship with the Inquisitor is interesting because it's different, but that doesn't necessary mean that it would be universal. B) I really want to push back on the notion of the devs not having thought about it. It's incredibly arrogant to both assume that no one thought of it, and to think that it's objectively the correct decision. Even in the video you state that Dragon Age is a franchise of tough choices, and to have a core narrative that invalidates those choices with no player input would just make those other games hollow. As it is, people were already up in arms about how Fereldan fell. This would be that on a Thedas scale. Though you are correct that DA:I left the team with almost nothing to work with, there doesn't seem like there was an actual plan on how to follow up DA:I. C) DA has honestly never been great, and has always struggled with it's identity. Origins was good, but severe pacing issues (Fade/Deeproads/RandomExpositionWarden/Balance), DA2 was a rushed mess, DA:GetOutoftheHinterlands had extreme breadth that was only matched by it's shallowness. Nothing is really cohesive. Though it doesn't help that EA keeps interfering with the devs in the latter, and move people around without proper thought or plan (seems to be a running theme). Not to say the devs are faultless though, god knows there was enough WTF moments in interviews. D) The Anthem Era was EA mismanagement at it's...finest? Andromeda was effectively shot in the head to try and get other projects off life support. People were moved around so often that getting people up to scratch took an obscene amount of time. Things had to be scaled back, world building tools were used instead of handcrafted maps, the animation team was non-existent for over a year. The only other title that I know of that had worse management is L.A.Noire (along with it's hundreds of staff turnovers). This is an additional issue because the dev team is MASSIVE, and team size is not something that scales well. The more people you have, the more diluted the vision becomes, the more communication is needed, and the more conflicts arise. Especially when you have to redo a massive portion of the title while meeting deadlines for investor calls. It's why I don't hate Veilguard, they tried to make the most of a terrible hand, and in some places you can see what they were trying to do. It has (a few) moments of brilliance, and I am so curious about what the original intention was back when it was Dreadwolf.
I'm playing the game and the main story is actually outstanding. The way it ties together the lore we learned over the last 3 games. It's incredible. Also harrowing. The First 10ish hours are slower, while you find companions and meet factions. Then suddenly it blows up into something incredible. There are a couple of contrived ham-fisted parts shoved into the dialogue. There's a mirror where the player can chose to be trans (to be offered more trans dialogue later) or not (no further trans dialogue offered). It's optional. Asmongold was joking when he said he "has to be trans". He clicked the trans option, and ignored the "go back" option. Any other trans stuff is tied into Taash personal quest, which you can completely ignore. So anybody allergic to that sort of inclusion, bioware made it 100% skippable! Anyway, I was at a 7-8 /10 for this game. Mostly because Rook cannot be a jerk. Now I'm really between 9-10, because the main questline is pretty epic after the grey warden chapter. If you enjoy DA lore, this story will reward you.
I have no idea how you can say this about the writing and the story. I am trying to be respectful here, but genuinely from both a storytelling as well as a prose and dialogue quality point of view, this game is just bad.
Hi I'm new here :) I just wanted to say: THANK YOU SO MUCH! I watched all your dragon age veilguard videos and I really agree with you and needed to hear it - it really feels like grief and honestly a lot of anger - bc dragon age was always so special to me too - veilguard is an insult on so many levels ...
Wait, am I missing something? *Are* there any large game companies, for which a game they produce is *not* a product to squeeze as much money out of as they can in as many markets as they can reach? And if there are, why does anyone expect EA of all companies to also not just treat their properties as a money generator at all costs? Everyone is talking as if they're surprised or shocked or something.
I personally AM surprised because up until Veilguard, Bioware managed to hold onto good storytelling in the Dragon Age series even if they *were* forced to make DA2 in a super short amount of time, even if they were forced to make Inquisition "open world" and add mounts and such to it. I thought the devs at Bioware cared enough to genuinely try to make a good RPG even if EA pushed them to make something generic and with "wide appeal". I guess the people who cared, however, left.
@@btiermutineer The last game was published 10 years ago. The corporations had 10 years to evolve (read, erode) the game development practices towards maximizing marketability at the expense of everything else.
I have to disagree with just the story part. I actually enjoyed the plot of the game. I love the fact that Solus was both the true villain and a red herring. However everything else was a bad choice. Dialogue, Abandoning Lore, Bad Characters writing. Also astonishingly enough, the lack of dialogue. One of the best parts of bioware games was the "home base". Skyhold, the camp, Normandy 1 and 2. We go chill get to know our crew with more depth and details. In the light house you MIGHT have 1 convo after a major mission, and thats it. Like what????
Here's the problem with the "They changed the formula" argument: They can't make the same game forever. Many people believe that they would enjoy playing the same game just with different content, but they don't. Dragon Age Origins: Awakenings proved that. They tried to replicate the success of the original Dragon Age Origins, and it didn't work. The game is extremely similar to the first game but it was very boring in comparison. They couldn't have an origin because it wasn't the first game. They couldn't have a hero's journey because it was a continuation of the first game. They were actually very limited because they had to transfer characters into the new game and continue the story somehow. I'm not going to defend Failguard because I think it's a bad game. I will defend the idea that sequels are nearly impossible to make from a storytelling standpoint though. The best way to do them is to make them in episodic format where they tell self-contained stories in the same world. The absolute worst thing they can do is to insert modern politics into the game/story like Failguard did. It's also very bad to make an RPG where you don't make any meaningful choices.
The mass effect trilogy is the perfect example of how you’re wrong though. That trilogy is damn near perfect except the ending although I always liked the control ending
There are many examples of beloved sequels though? While in some cases making the same game with new story would’ve been fine in most cases people genuinely look forward to change but want a roughly similar product. Yes, you can take dragon age and turn it into a city builder, the technology probably exists or can be created, no one can stop you legally if you are Bioware. But just because it’s different doesn’t make it a good sequel or even a good game. Changing things randomly for the sake of change, or changing things because you aren’t good enough to meet the quality of the past entries, is not good development.
I think the formula needs to evolve, but not be changed drastically. Or, if you are going to change it drastically, it needs to be billed as a new game in that IP, and not as a sequel. Also, it isn't a bad idea to make an RPG where you don't make meaningful choices. That's pretty much every classic JRPG and a lot of those are great. They are games that might let you choose a romance option, but are mostly carried by a focus on a strong (and long) story, world building, and personalities. At best, you might get to choose a love interest.
People who played the Awakening expansion mostly enjoyed it. The reason why Awakening wasn't so successful is because it was an EXPANSION instead of a full new game. Even DA2, with its extremely rushed development and various issues, sold quite well and was overall a success (not to mention that I genuinely think it was an overall good game with a great story). Bioware was able to make good, solid sequels to Dragon Age that ended up being overall well received, AND honored choices players made in previous games. I will never defend this game because what it is is a travesty and a cash grab, but there were EASY ways to make it work even if they wanted a soft reboot.
@@khiyabarrett1459 Is it? ME2 was the best in the series. Why? Because it was episodic. ME3 disappointed everyone because it tried to continue the story.
If the exects wanted to sell to as many people as possible then then wouldnt have picked this writer. Unfortunately, the DEI consultancy pillar alters what is considered popular in market to what itself considers popular.
It's really strange, because everyone knows that trans and/or queer people like me are in the minority. That's why for so many years there was barely any representation of us in media. We continue to be in the minority, so it's just nonsensical to believe that this kind of thing would sell more.
Dragon Age having a different MC each game is a choice, not a law. Especially because it seems to me Hawke was a very poor attempt at having a fixed MC ala Shepard after Origins (yes, devs claimed otherwise, they claimed a lot of bs back during DA2 development). Hawke failed, so it was Inquisitor's turn. So just have the Inquisitor back. Imagine mass effect 1 - 3 with a different each game, or Witcher games... but no, let's change MC despite narrative set up not working for the plotline progression. It's pretty simple in the end. Origins is the only one with a clear vision behind it. Then they began trend chasing and making decissions they had no skill to pull because they were aiming for an audience that would never care about dragon Age to begin with.
As long as people keep buying digital skins, gotcha crap, loot boxes, seasons passes, etc etc, this will only keep getting worst and worst. It's the simplest economic calculation possible, if u can spend 1 and make 10, it's almost impossible to convince people to spend 5 to maybe make 10, this game is really uff, and i think the marketing is really to blame for trying to sell as one thing when is actualy another, maybe the devs had to fight tooth and nails for every little bit they manage here, or maybe not idk...and i'm truly afraid that the fail of this game will be used in the future to justify more and more games like Diablo Immortal. This isn't a good game, don't get me wrong, but i see that a lot of the conversations is going around the LGBT(whatever) inside, and by far that is not the biggest problem it has, i think they had to pull a 180 degrees with this one, and the budget simple disapeared. I can't play 40h of slop to get a 5h of good ending, that is just me, i managed 10h in this game than i couldn't deal anymore with how boring, condensending and brainless it is, so i quitted.
I also couldn't play longer than 10 hours of this game. Played 7 on stream and then tried a few more on my own, but it's just a bad game (even if you ignore that it's supposed to be Dragon Age). It's just boring, and not fun.
Veilguard has so mant problems beyond connecting Trespasser DLC to the next DA game. If Trespasser wrote them into a corner it was a big corner. Your idea, amongst a bunch of others, could have accountanted for the Inquisitor's absence. The bad writing starts right off the bat. Veilguard starts right in the thick of battle. That is not the way to start a story introducing a new protagonist. Think of how DAO starts. You lay the groundwork for the protagonist's not al and then show the conflict (physical and mental) arise. EA and/or BioWare hollowed out yheir writing staff, Veilguard is the result. The writing is so bad in Veilguard just as a game, let alone a DA game. It screws up the lore, the characterization of companions is horrendous, and even Rook is the definition of bland.
Failed as a continuation of the Dragon Age series, and failed in comparison to its competition on how well it sold. Personally I don't care about how much it sold or not, I am just judging the game as having failed to deliver what was set up in the previous games, especially in a narrative sense as that is what I am most knowledgeable about as someone with a master's in Creative Writing. This game will fade away and be forgotten by most, remembered with disappointment and resentment by some (who were fans of the series and wanted a real continuation rather than this weird hodge podge), and very few people will actually remember it and replay it. It doesn't even come close to Dragon Age 2 which at its release was criticized by many for its faults that it had due to an extremely short dev cycle. You may feel differently about the game if you like, I am not saying that people aren't allowed to like the equivalent of trashy fast food. But it is a failure, especially as a roleplaying narrative experience.
@@btiermutineer Cope. Dragon Age has never been that big anyways and anyone who thinks it fails as a roleplaying narrative experience didn't play the previous games. I can tell by how everyone who hates on the game does so for vague nonspecific reasons and those who do love it can point to very specific things. Having a degree means very little about what you're actually good at btw. It's a nice certificate but like it often doesn't mean anything. Most of the best science channels on youtube are run by people who don't have a degree in scientific fields for example. Also by the metrics of "relative to competition", SM2 is a failure. It flopped hard compared to the only game like it this year. Is SM2 a failure in your mind? It's a game that will never break its niche and that will probably have an extremely small playerbase in just a few months.
I’m actually enjoying this game more than I did Baldurs gate, at least this game has combat and your companions do something, story is pretty good and the graphics and places are great, each to their own I guess
@ lol but they don’t do anything on their own, you have to do everything for them, how freaking boring, and the story is just as boring as the combat, but you can have sex with everyone including a bear so we know why people love it so much
I still think its from Sweet Babies influence, strong arming them to have x characters, forcing the writers to work around them, instead of the other way around. So sad. maybe mods will fix it lol
Nobody will work on it that much. The game has so many issues and game design problems. Do you think people will try to fix this thing from scratch? Why would they even try in the beginning? If fans are going to correct everything in the game then why are we giving money to Bioware?
*_I_* know the reason why it was done the way it was done. First, they only started development in 2020. The original was scrapped in 2017... Then the first live service was scrapped in 2019... or it might have been 2018. It's so hard to keep track of when they started over. Second, the entire upper echelon of development is entirely ⚪. So demanding the status quo (keeping the Veil up) is a hallmark of ⚪ness. Not to mention all the "yikes" from multiple characters in Veilguard that blatantly came from a ⚪ perspective. Like the token black guy not only being not human, but also that he has slave tattoos... In addition to his entire narrative not being about or really involving him much... Or how Harding gets super pissed at the fact that Solas killed her enslavers... Being mad that... She's not... A mindless slave..... Yikes. And that's just two things off the top of my head. There's a LOT more in the game. For a game that claims to be so welcoming and "progressive"... DAtV is very, very, very, very offensively ⚪.
@@btiermutineer Mass Effect Andromeda had a very similar issue. (Literally the first thing a squadmate says is "I can't wait to get down there and start stealing land from the natives"...) And MEA had a single token non⚪ person on the devs... The idea of maintaining the status quo being tied to ⚪ness and ⚪ identity stems from the way western societies are systemically set up to favor ⚪ness, thus that unjust system is preserved as a means of preserving ⚪ supremacy.
As a more generic Dragon Age fan I was expecting something different, although after the last several years it doesn't surprise me with what we got, but not this different. I don't like the graphics. I personally don't really like the combat. Not that I can't get used to it though. I definitely don't like the character creation. And I will never be ashamed to say that because I love what my characters look like. The dialogue seems to be really simple and geared towards somebody who really doesn't know how to think. A lot of the dialogue that I've seen is about the game explaining to you things that you should already know simply by general dialogue between people in the game or even things that you do or encounter. Oh and the identity religion thrown in our face once again. I am all about freedom of conscience. When people start stepping on that. That's something I cannot tolerate. And I don't hate anybody. That's not going to change because people say otherwise. Peace.
Failed as a continuation of the Dragon Age series, and failed in comparison to its competition on how well it sold. Personally I don't care about how much it sold or not, I am just judging the game as having failed to deliver what was set up in the previous games, especially in a narrative sense as that is what I am most knowledgeable about as someone with a master's in Creative Writing. This game will fade away and be forgotten by most, remembered with disappointment and resentment by some (who were fans of the series and wanted a real continuation rather than this weird hodge podge), and very few people will actually remember it and replay it. It doesn't even come close to Dragon Age 2 which at its release was criticized by many for its faults that it had due to an extremely short dev cycle. You may feel differently about the game if you like, I am not saying that people aren't allowed to like the equivalent of trashy fast food. But it is a failure, especially as a roleplaying narrative experience.
@btiermutineer "yeah well it def didn't sell as well as it's competition" "well I mean it doesn't matter if it sold well" Hey what was your opinion on inquisition?
I agree with you. Also I enjoyed listening to this. I have a migraine rn so it was nice to close my eyes and listen to you share your thoughts. I'm so upset at the way they butchered Dragon Age to make a profit, to turn it into a franchise, yet this game is so bad that they'll probably never end up making another one anyway. If they were going to end the series, they could have at least given it the ending it deserved but I guess that's asking for too much 🫤
I don't agree that EA and the devs "didn't understand what Dragon Age was/is". I think they know exactly what it is. I think they want it to be something else.
Hmm, I guess you're right. It's possible they simply want Dragon Age to be something else than what it historically has been.
@@btiermutineer I suppose I can't give any concrete reasons. But it just wouldn't make sense that the art director didn't realize, or even be TOLD, that DA is a dark, realistic game. It's a hard thing to miss. Probably easier to ignore.
But why not simply create another IP?
@@Artemisarrowzz cause DA has a built-in fan base that will spend.
@@Artemisarrowzz that's a good question. I assume they thought they could squeeze more money out of an existing IP
Dragon Age didn’t just die, it was murdered
"One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see."
- Sandal Feddic
EXACTLY!
“Enchantment!” Also, his epic prophesies.
Yes this made me think that they really did originally plan for the veil to come completely down, and based on the very original promo for da4 I do think they also originally planned to have the veil coming down be the “opening” of da4 (similar to the conclave explosion being the opening to inquisition)
@@sarawawa8984 I assumed the same, because the Veil always had this "obstacle" feel to me. Protection, but also a hindrance. Which would have been a way more epic world-changer than the 'shadow government' nonsense
DA2, and i said that the whole problem with this franchise is DA2 it started when they Mass Effectified Dragon Age and made Dragon Effect, they further f-ed up when they continued doing it and made Inquisition reveal all secrets and leave no mystery behind a huge no no when it comes to story telling then Inquisition set the story for Veilguard further continued Mass Effecting the game and further removing all questions even the small ones in the effort to keep the players interest which only further eroded the foundation and ensuring the fall of the franchise...well fall of Dragon Effect franchise because it's not Dragon Age. Veilguard was made to fail with direction DA2 took there was no other way and Bioware simply chose to end things with excuse they give every time they face criticism it's the "attack of the phobes" even if criticism has nothing to do with DEI.
What really stuck with me in DAO was how unabashedly dark the game was. Depending on your origin, your family could be killed, you could be stabbed in the back by your sibling, your cousin could be raped, and those are just a few scenarios for the prologues. One scene that always stuck with me from DAO is when you stumble upon Hespith in the Deep Roads, and she's reciting her poem that essentially describes Laryn being tortured, raped, and slowly being turned into a monster. The entire scene is so eerie and terrifying; it pretty much sums up why the Mother in Awakening is bat-shit crazy. Or the fact that Bhelen is the obvious darker choice, but when you get to the epilogue, he is the better choice since his decisions for Orzammar benefit it in the long run.
In each game afterward, this darkness is toned down. After reading The Horror of Hormak, I had some hope. The story was great, and I hoped we would return to that grittiness from the first game or get closer to it than the other two games, especially after BG3's success. But no, that's not going to happen, and that's why I'm so disappointed with DAV.
The interesting thing is that in the Tevinter Nights short story book, the writing was really good. That's why I keep thinking that it can't truly be the writers' fault, and either they were forced to rewrite everything to make it like this, or else their original writing was fed into an AI to turn it into the slop it is now.
It's interesting to think about all media from a stand point of "safety" Certain topics are danced around across the board: S.A., incest, animal cruelty... Not to say they aren't present in books, movies, etc. but they have been toned down in most places. I think it comes from a place of political correctness (for lack of a better word) because it can trigger some people. Sexual abuse for example is a topic that was thrown around for shock value back in the day, but is less present because we now know how frequent it occurs. But I must ask the question: why do we need these topics for a game to be "dark"?
There's a massive problem nowadays of artists self-censoring themselves. I think quite a massive part is the copious amounts of extremely subjective opinions treated as objective facts. Take the concept and theme of sexual assault for example. In the mainstream, exploring that topic is taboo and if you add it into your project, people say it's for "shock value". That's what they call things all the time, "nothing but shock value". And then people stop exploring the theme of SA in any other way except one particular "allowed" way that curtsies around the topic, using analogies and allegories and symbolism. But the word "shock value" still insinuates the shock has VALUE. Shock value is not bad, it adds to your story and world. It gives it a punch.
I guess people are too worried that normalizing talking about and exploring SA somehow triviliazes it, but it has only lead to it becoming harder and harder for people to find catharsis or deal with perhaps their own trauma with it due to there only being one "allowed" way to express it. Only one "allowed" outlet. And that's coddling you like a little baby deer. Yes, you should be careful with people you don't know, but if you like dark stuff, you don't like ukulele music and pastel colours and like swearing... Then where the fuck are you supposed to find catharsis and exploration on these heavy topics? Nowhere! Because it's all been self-censored to cater to the mainstream.
@@AZtarheelwhat constitutes “dark”can be a matter of cultural bias or taste. No one topic or cluster of topics is canonically “dark”. What is taboo and sensitive in one place or time can simply be a fact of life or even an age old institution a short distance away.
Why topics like SA come up repeatedly is probably a direct result of the taboo on sex in Protestant culture generally. People are so anxious to not hurt or trigger or even be perceived as doing inappropriate things, that an anxiety builds up in the culture and with it a pressure that needs to be released or expressed, preferably with a healthy outlet.
With drinking alcohol, many cultures introduce it in small and balanced quantities as a child develops, always in a safe and responsible setting with people who care about the child. Those children far less often develop unhealthy or imbalanced relationships with alcohol than their peers in cultures that institutionalize repressing consumption until adulthood.
Encountering difficult ideas, topics, philosophies etc can be painful or dangerous. But strong and mature adults learn how to handle that by doing so regularly in controlled settings with the support of friends and family.
With how broken and alienated so many people and families are today, the number of kids raising themselves who find they are only able to express certain curiosities or build up their ideological and emotional immune systems by challenging themselves with difficult fiction is frighteningly high and climbing. Hope this is helpful.
@AZtarheel how do you have dark without acts of evil or taboos? What story beats or angles would you use in a medieval fantasy to show the darkness of the setting?
I would have loved to have the option to help Solas to tear down the veil. The veil was never supposed to be there in the first place. The things that need to be fixed are the blight and the collateral damage. The old writer also had an Idea for Fenris helping Solas to free Hawke from the fade...
Imagine: a game with different origins in the grimdark magical dystopia Tevinter actually is. Slave, Magister, Peasant (perhaps Templar, since they don't use lyrium in Tevinter I believe) or Qunari (ACTUAL QUNARI).
Why in the world did they remove SLAVES FROM TEVINTER ?!
It would also be fun if Solas manages to make the Blight problem worse (make the Blight's origin unknown, stop making everything "elves did it!") and then realizes at the end, before he dies, that he has created a world of horror, same as he did in the future on the Redcliff mission. That mf deserves it for being PRIDEFUL and incredibly evil.
Cause slavery is a no-no in the current year
Agree. I really wanted to see/fight slavery. I even chose shadow dragon.
I'm still having an incredible time in the game. But if it had been darker, with real wickedness and blood magic and grit and slaves...just wow.
@@ilgiallo0 Antivans are supposed to represent Latin European countries.
The retcon of every problem being because of elves was dumb, like no it was magisters breaking into the golden city not solas' cage such a bland retcon only done cause they can't write
Yes, nations like Tevinter and Antiva failed to deliver completely.
Unfortunately, because those were nations that I am sure many fans wanted to visit since they were described in Origins.
And very sure Tevinter even more after meeting Fenris in DA2.
BG3 shows us what a new installment could have been. It is a beautiful tribute to Some of Origins. Still has a current higher player count on steam than Veilguard does.
heck, several times today baldurs gate 3 hate twice as many players as DA:TV....
It is ironic how Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 was BioWare's games. I feel very frustrated when someone compares BG3 and Veilguard and doesn't mention that fact 😆. It have to suck for their morale to be compared that way.
Yet again, a game for everyone is a game for no one.
But oh well, that's fine, the Bioware I'm familiar with died a long time ago, Dragon Age with it.
The problem was, they got rid of the people who genuinely loved and cared for this game. They were replaced by people who wanted to make it all about them and their agenda, who clearly didn’t pass writing class in university. Such a sad way to end a decade’s wait, I’ve loved this game since origins was released.
It's also strange how they massacred representation in Veilguard when there was Krem in Inquision. We barely have a couple of diologs with him, but he is just a well written character everyone likes. His backstory was great and he would be a decent romance option (if it was an option lol).
Not to mention Dorian whose sexuality tied to world building with blood magic. And Sera who is just is, no questions needed.
because the culture war has poisoned peoples brains, if the internet didn't exist people would probably have enjoyed veilguard more but because people know too much they actively are against the ideas being pushed in modern games, these ideas have always been pushed through games but they were always surface level so you could ignore them.
I loved Krem in Inquisition - as a trans man I had never seen a transguy character in a game before. And Krem was so well written! Not to mention Dorian and Sera, of course - they were also great characters that were gay and also had so much more going on in their personal conflicts.
@RemOmni I disagree on that. It's more about self identification being a part of a character vs a whole character. DA Tevinter Nights, has two stories, where sexuality is directly tied to the main plot and they are great. Sexuality being a whole character is enough for some casual modern day story, but not for a fantasy, where you are bored half way through because nothing fantastical actually happens.
@@RemOmni well you are right and wrong at the same time. Yes there would have been less hate towards DAV before release. But short before till after release people would have been annoyed by the review scandal, pissed by ignoring the past games, and again annoyed and pissed about lecturing of behaviour.
In my observation the cultur war did not start because of grifters, but because companies in media started to change beloved IPs for the worse. Like cheap gender and race swapping, claiming to representate authenticatal lbtq charcters, while turning them into stereotypes. Doing the exact opposite of what they proclaim to do. Making females more into men, making men more into females, on the level of how they behave. All in the name of Diversity and Inclusion. Most people like myself are not bothered by diversity and inclusion. I actually always liked it and embraced it.
It is when corporation start serialzing on DEI, while only seeing it as a oppertunity for queerbaiting to capitalize on it. Sure there are also intolerant people. But people who are intolerant and bothered by these changes are a little minority to the people who are bothered by it while being tolerant.
So thanks to social media corporations can no longer do these practices unnoticed. Which is a good thing, for us as consumers, because this means they will start one day returning to writing compelling charcters. Compare the writing quality of Dorian and krem which are excellent to a shallow hollow taash, which is condescending and unlikeable.
I like many others are for true inclusion and diversity. That is why I do not like DEI. Because it fools people like, I once was, into thinking on a naive level that these corpos are noble. No they are only trying to make money with it. The irony is grifters do the same so they are not better in any way. But at least we stay updated on the current situation.
Old bioware did not need consulatancy companies for dei and see what masterpieces they accomplished. This false DEI, became for me evidently by the horrible writing of these activists from movies and series, like ghostbusters 2016, the disney live action adaptations, the star wars sequel trilogy (compare uncompelling rey to compelling ahsoka, padme, leia etc.) the witcher netflix tv universe (not counting the books and games which are masterpieces), the acolyte, and now DATV.
Compare these shows to other shows and games which are truly inclusive and diverse vs false proclaimed dei. and you will recognize certain patterns, which all share the same horrible writing patterns in contrast to true inclusion and diversity which came before this programs and consultancy companies and you will start noticing the paterns, the difference.
To sum up: people are not pissed about diversity and inclusion but pissed about destroying beloved IPs instead of doing their own thing. Then nobody would bother. The culture war is not a result of a conspiracy, but a reaction, a response, a backlash how corpos deal nowadays with IPs. with shallow queerbaiting which allows them to hide behind these false practices, instead of delivering good products. It is basically a corpo media scam to do less work for a worse product, while earning the same money as before, while becoming untouchable and uncriticizable, by hiding behind the calim of being progressive. Old Bioware (ME 1-3,DA O, DA 2 ; DAI, Jade Empire) was true progression. The new bioware is regression, because it is unauthentic progressive. People like me who are tolerant and open minded are annoyed that these corpos scam people. How many reviews did you see for DAV talk about the writing quality of the game, almost none, despite being the most crucial aspect of every story driven game.
You say the writing of diversity used to be surface level. No people like Zevran, Dorian, Sera, Leliana etc. are three dimensional characters which happen to be diverse. Their diverse qualities is only one part of their person. Nowadys it is surface level where only these criterias are the whole person. Would you say you are nothing more than your gender and sexual orientation and ethnicity. Ofc you are not and that is what has changed. It s the exact opposite of how you describe it. The writing was once deep and now it became superficial and that is the core issue, which lies at the heart of the culture war. I myself do not participate in it, I merely analyze it. Since these grifters take these few grain of truths which i described and turn it into a hyperbolic overblown ridiculous false narrative, which is far removed from the truth. I have zero interest to participate in their nonsense. I merely wanted to share my observation.
@@souljumperrises334 in my experience I was happily just playing games and accepting the tropes in them and enjoying gameplay - then culture war starts and I'm flooded with videos being negative about literally everything, i bet if you removed the monetisation from TH-cam these videos would cease to exist or at least be minimal since the only reason for them to do it then would be actual passion.
Seeing this game makes me want to play origins again.
Do it, do it, do it!
I am doing exactly that. Bioware is dead. But it left us with an absolute gem (DAO) that I can play a hundred times over without getting bored,
He gave him the orb because he expected that unlocking it would kill him. He didnt know that coriphepus had the ability to cheat death.
Fair enough, forgot that detail. Still not a great idea, though, since it could've caused all sorts of other undesirable side effects, lol
But he would have been aware of the elves being able to cheat death with their archdemoms so it still doesn’t make sense
Thank you for your thoughts! In one old interview, David Gaider said he was mainly inspired by the Song of Ice and Fire when he wrote DAO. I'm a big fan of worldbuilding and complex moralities in these both fantasy worlds, and it's sad that DAV doesn't feel like a worthy sequel to the Inquisition. Some gamers just don't understand that LBGTQ+ people of all identities and sexualities CAN dislike bad writing and butchered lore too, and, sometimes, disliking this game has nothing to do with bigotry of some radicals. I will never forgive EA's dumb management for butchering project Joplin and reducing BioWare to a husk who can only handle one project at time instead of investing into hiring more talents.
Yeah, I genuinely feel so disappointed in how this game ended up, because Dragon Age was such a beloved series with amazing lore, characters, and story, and this is just a husk of that IP, with the name only used to get more people to talk about it and buy it. Disliking the game, for me, has absolutely nothing to do with bigots or radicals. The writing is bad, the lore retcons are incredibly lazy and turn the entire thing into the most generic "(Religious) Good vs Evil". The trans + queer representation feels like it's only there to check some boxes and is executed to a primary school level that I'd expect to hear from a teacher trying to explain such concepts to children. I wanted to LOVE this game. I'd been waiting for it for so long, and I was excited to see how they'd develop everything, especially after so many years. Still can't believe I live in the reality where THIS is what we got.
@@btiermutineer I was provoked by a local "ally" guy who wrote that everyone displeased with the game was a bigot (ugh, like LBGTQ+ people don't have standards). I replayed the previous DA games almost a dozen of times each because they were engaging enough to do so. Yesterday, TH-cam suggested me a video about the secret ending in DAV and another one with the Inquisitor. I wish I never watched them because DAV literally peed on everything I loved:( Oh well, I have just made female Cadash to romance Josephine again for my mental health care.
@dariakeeper yeah, I saw those endings, too.... I wish I had just ignored everything to do with this game. I wanted so hard to find something good about it, something redeemable. I swear people imagine that us queer people don't have standards - and while in the past that may have been slightly true, since there was almost zero queer representation in media, in recent years we've genuinely had lots of diverse representation (of good quality). So no, I don't feel the need to accept the shitty scraps that a company like EA thinks is fine to include in their games just to tick some boxes.
Funny how it's gone from a franchise I love to one that i would celebrate failing. They decided to burn too many bridges with their "well we want more players so we have to dumb it down more"
The biggest problem with Dragon age is that it reestablishes a completely new Identity with each entry. No other franchise does this unless something went horribly wrong. They established a grimdark setting in Origins with a silent protagonist that was widely appreciated and accepted. They start to change this in DA2 with a new combat system and voiced protagonist, This changed the tone and how the game was played. They move to Inquisition, and the again make the combat more action focused and have a much more high fantasy aesthetic compared to the other entries, it was also more open, but also empty. Now we're stuck with Veil Guard which is having a DA2 where its no an action game that is more confined in how quest work. They seem to have completely eradicated the grim and dark setting established in the first 2 games once and for all. It's hard to want to invest your time into a franchise when you know everything you like about an entry will be thrown out in the installment.
But Veilguard is still less of a action game than inquisition (wouldnt call either tactics based personally). You cant combo beyond the opener>debuff (on paper and for good chunk of initial playthrough accessible from other class)>detonator, input based moves dont actually have a mechanical difference to your gameloop, you have (functionally) only 2 abilities to choose for a build as 2 are functionally always locked (even FF16 which openly labeled itself as not having any tactics in it/being closer to a combo spectacle fighter has more options even after you account for Veilguards proc options and full items) and the peak of proactive enemies is still the dragon fights (the one thing that rings true between both Inquisition and Failguard).
If Dragon Age as a franchise were treated as telling the story of a Knight in whose shoes one steps in, Origins would be a battle ready replica with armory, 2 would be a cosplay suit, Inquisition is a strudy plushie whose 2 weapons velcro attachments are loose and Veilguard is a gummy out of a funko mold.
I’ll happily pay 100 bucks for a new dragon origins updated to next gen graphics with combat tweaks.. take my money on that!
You know damn well it would be a remake and theyed ruin the characters and nerf the tone. Pluse theyed probably add a bunch of gay characters and non binary ones
@@averagelok1959 Those gay and nonbinary characters were already in it, tourist.
@@averagelok1959 well origins has gay characters...
@elivenya-theautisticbookwy9638 oh I know but they were well written the new ones would be wearing glitter constantly talking about being gay. These new writers now days keep showing that they don't know how to write good lgbtq characters
@@averagelok1959 theres a bunch of gay and non binary characters in bg3
I believe most of the people that worked on Veilguard have never played a Dragon Age game before
I think the veil being destroyed at the start of the game would also explain why any players from the South are absent in the game as well, since they are all focused at dealing with demons/spirits/mages
Exactly, a lot of other things would slot in really nicely. Obviously most characters from previous games could be explained away due to having to deal with the consequences of the Veil disappearing, and that includes the Inquisitor and honestly even Morrigan and basically any mage from previous games that doesn't have a reason to be in the north.
Another theory was that Sera herself was an elven God, judging by many things she says in-game when she freaks out, and that it fit perfectly with lore with an elven goddess that used a bow as well. So many things that pointed to the game focused on solving mysteries left in inquisition and having Solas presence prominently...10 years of waiting and they gave us this. Im sorry but its damn obvious they completely revamped the game they originally planned.
Yeah, there were so many clues and unsolved mysteries from Inquisition that would have made for so many interesting payoffs in DA4. It's terrible that they went with this lazy reboot when they could've at least had it make it more sense with the Veil coming down.
It wasn’t “destined to fail”, BioWare made intentional decisions that led to the shit show it’s turned into
Well, what I mean to say is that due to those early decisions the game became pretty much certain to fail
@@btiermutineer That's called a failure of game design. People are so used to playing Ubisoft games that they automatically can't see the flaws.
I'm almost beginning to think that after all those years of development and re-conceptualizations, they just decided to release a sub-par product and try to salvage the inevitable low sales with people buying their previous games out of nostalgia and dissatisfaction.
@@TheLewisDawg I swear, it certainly feels that way. After everything I saw (and experienced) of Veilguard, I have never had a stronger urge to play all the previous games, especially Inquisition towards which I think I was far too harsh in my opinion until now. Compared to Veilguard, Inquisition is a masterpiece.
There is the part that failed games are losses, and losses are potential tax write offs. There is, however, also another theory some people argue for: the money to be gotten from courting investors is better than the money from mediocre, if successful sales. There's some criticism to be had of both of those viewpoints, though.
I think the best way they could have the new protagonist would be just simply say the inquisitor cannot fight due to missing an arm.
It could provide a interesting story line about someone whos no longer top of the world and how much there willing to do to either reclaim their position.
The lore reveals in veilguard are the most predictable and laziest possible. Contradicting the lore from previous games.
I honestly believe the writers did not play origins or even 2.
So i do agree this does feel like a game made by committee.
The issue is that nothing can be made for everyone. Niches exist for a reason.
I agree with your idea that the story should start with Solas succeeding in tearing down the veil in the beginning. It is a chance to completely upend the Thedas setting, changing landscapes and end certain organizations and create some others, allowing you to have a soft reboot without setting up the lame ass Executors as the new villains.
The decision to implement an action combat and make that the core of the gameplay is really misguided. Game development is a zero-sum game; if you allocate that much internal resource into new combat motion capture, mechanics, balance. other areas of the game will suffer. Another prime example of this happening is FF16 which had subpar writing, character, quests and pacing because a brand new DMC style action combat is tacked on a series not known for it.
If they wanted to reboot the setting and atmosphere, tearing down the Veil was genuinely the easiest thing to do. I can't understand why they didn't do it. The Executors are the dumbest villain I've ever heard of (heard them being compared to the Jailer situation from WoW), and the only reason I would include such a lazy villain called the "Executors" in a game would be to make fun of the Executives in game companies who cause these kinds of decisions to be made.
When you weaponize your product for anti-human social engineering, expect poor sales and for your company to be boycotted when your customers realise theres a war on for their mind.
When I finished Trespasser I thought that in the next game new protagonist will work for Inky... My idea was that Inky went missing during their mission to stop Solas.
It's weird that the mentor figure is Varrick... It's his third team...
Finally, a Rook that doesn't look like a push-over.
Lol, the funniest part of this is that I tried to customize my Rook's face during the livestream and immediately gave up after a few minutes because his face was extremely quickly turning into a Monster Factory-type character, so I ended up going with a preset that I just added a beard to.
More than any Dragon Age game this game should have Inquisitor play a significant role because Solas and Inquisitor are more tied story wise than Rook who feels more than a Third person who does not have any connection to this story. At least if Inquisitor played a companion role or an Advisory throughout the game it makes some sense.
I always knew the Inquisitor wasn't going to have a major role in DA4 no matter what.
Too many variables, all of their scenes would have to be recorded a minimum of 4 times, just for each different voice.
They were screwing this thing up since DA2. I was just hanging on hoping they would go back to what DA: O did. Good grief, that was extreme wishful thinking.
People who thought the first teaser trailer was fucking appropriate for DA are the problem.
From the GET GO it looked NOTHING LIKE DA. What it did look like was a cheap crash bag disneyfied moba opening
2:10 Even back then, I remember thinking that making a new character rather than continuing with the Inquisitor wasn't something I would like.
Yep, I already knew it was going to feel bad that I couldn't solve the Solas/Veil problem with my Inquisitor.
Playing this game feels like work...another thing I hate about it is how the combat is designed; I usually play on Nightmare or the hardest difficulty but the only thing hard about it is endless bullet sponginess and it is tiresome...but you cannot lower the difficulty from Nightmare, you are locked in....moronic move imo.
Really don't understand why you can't change the difficulty if you start on Nightmare, since you can if you start with any other difficulty. The combat became so boring so quickly for me. I genuinely don't understand the people I heard say the combat is fun and good. Like there are ARPGs that are decades old that are better than this (Diablo 2, or I even like the combat in Diablo 3 for example), so I can't imagine how this action combat is good in any way unless those players have never played a game with action combat in their lives.
@@btiermutineer It is funnish for the first few hours then at level 20 the enemies have so much health you waste hours kiling them...I still need to finish the game, hoping their might be something good.
@@spellandshield To me the combat is mostly ok, played on nightmare with a rogue, some of the gears are way too strong, you can pretty much spam your abilities and its all crits. So they did some dumb shit like lock the highest damage at 9999 to artificially increase the difficulty, which is very lame.
The inquisitor most definitely could have been the protagonist. The difference between who couldn't and couldn't be the protagonist is different from the other dragon age games because the other three were all different games. Veilguard was supposed to be a direct sequel to Inquisition. Meaning it's suppose to continue the story from where it left off unlike the others
I think that the biggest mistake was assuming that, because DA2 was a sequel happening almost in parallel with DAO, ALL sequels had to be done in sequence or "it wouldn't be Dragon Age". Having sequels made in subsequent ages may have solved some problems, like why wouldn't Solas not just wait for all his friends to die out and then tear down the Veil? He is immortal.
I think focusing on elves so much was also a massive mistake.
Yes, I personally would have even loved "Dragon Age" games set BEFORE the Dragon Age. And I think making basically everything tie back to the ancient elves made so much of the lore lose its appeal. All the different religions in Thedas were interesting because they were shrouded in mystery and people didn't really have the "correct" answers. The Dalish worshipped the Creators they interpreted from scraps of old lore, with no idea of who their gods truly had been. But honestly, it was better back when we didn't know everything about everything. I feel like suddenly the world of Dragon Age no longer feels magical if the Evanuris were behind 50% of things, and the Executors were behind the other 50%. Where's the humanity? Where's the moral ambiguity, as well as just ambiguity in general due to knowledge being lost to time? I could go on and on...
@@btiermutineer Yeah, when you play DAO, you really feel the mystery of the Maker. You doubt he is real and everything but then, you encounter the temple of sacred ashes and go "wait, what?".
Same with the Dalish elves. You think their stories are bs but then you encounter a bunch of ruins filled to the brim with demons and what appear to be ancient elves. The highlight of that mission for me was the amulet with the ancient elf stuck inside, the one that can teach you the Arcane Warrior class. I wish they haven't brushed off the importance of such artifact so quickly. The dude trapped in there said that the elves had been running and fighting off an enemy much more ancient than humanity, something terrible. Are we to simply assume it was "ancient elves"? Why wouldn't he remember that?
And that's the thing: every mission destroyed your assumptions on what was true about the universe. If the Temple of Sacred Ashes existed, who was to say the story about the Maker cursing humanity for abusing blood magic isn't real, or how humanity was created? We saw ourselves what demons and blood magic can do, raise the dead and enslave entire towns. Who is to say the Maker was not angry at humanity akin the Tower of Babel or the Flood? And then we meet the Architect, and it turns out the story of them trying to reach the Black city IS real.
If Urthanera/deep sleep is real, then how are we to say the Dalish elves are not speaking the truth about them being immortal and humanity having something to do with them now being mortal?
Like, the player can assume all those stories and cultures arose from superstition and that the stories are either lies or greatly exaggerated, but then you find out they were TOTALLY REAL and it leaves you thinking.
But no, now all that magic is gone. The Veil? Elves. The Blight? Elves. The Archdemon? Elves. Lyrium? Blood from Titans but actually Elves too. Tevinter? Elves. The Dwarves? Elves (helped in their creation). The "true" deities of a WORLD WERE MAGIC EXISTS AND IDEAS ARE VERY MUCH ALIVE?! Elves, but not really, and the Maker doesn't exist because we say so, bad Chantry bad, let's humiliate the Grey Wardens and make the Darkspawn goofy because they are totally goofy, right guys?
I feel like Bioware has wasted my time for 15 years with a story that goes nowhere.
I agree that the games should have taken place either before or after, show us different cultures and religions, times and wars. Imagine exploring beyond the world known by the people of Ferelden, beyond Thedas. That would have been awesome.
Just finished DAV...The writing and dialogue in this game was overall bad and lacked creativity. To the point I dont even want to replay it like I did with all the other DA games. I like your idea of starting it with the veil being torn down. That could have led to such an interesting story. A story of rebuilding a broken world. Such a shame😢
I think despite so many changes in each game, up until DATV, each game upheld its "dragon age identity" because of the world building. Thedas was always portrayed as a very harsh place, but with resilient people never giving up. That harshness was vastly dulled in the new game. You'd barely know slavery existed in Tevinter if npcs didn't remind you in some dialogue. I think that's why key npcs like Fenris and Zevran don't make appearances. You can't have them exist in a game where the cruelty of the Imperium or the Crows are ignored. I was very excited to finally have a game take place in Tevinter and it was probably one of the most disappointing things BioWare has presented. The first big decision turned out to be the same exact mission, just in different locations. A huge let down is all I can say.
I must remind you. Solas knew that unlocking the orb would kill you. He was expecting Corifucus to die. He did not know Corificus had mastered effective immortality
Tearing down the Veil seems pretty "lose state" to me though. Even just the "tears" from Solas' ritual were bleeding out demons galore. And that aspect is one of the many cringe factors in the early game Veilguard where it's like... if Minrathous is already this overrun by demons in just the section we see, people getting whisked away by demon dogs left and right (everyone except Varric and Rook who are right in front of them), it should already be lost... and isn't, everything just going back to normal after the ritual disruption. What world would be left to save after the Veil is wide open and demons just run amok in the world everywhere? The best that could be done at that point would be a time reversal plot which... meh...
But, yeah, Gaider would've done differently since he clearly respected and thrived on the world he'd created, developed, and stewarded over three games. Even if it had taken Gaider 10yrs to write a sequel, it might not've started 10yrs later. I don't see the Inq as essential either since they'd lost their arm and would at the very least need time to learn ways to compensate, if ever. Good oppty for a new protagonist. And I agree that Solas would've been way more crafty about his retreat than just leaving his eluvian path open for Rookies to exploit (which was supposed to require his dagger to travel, but whatever). Not to mention that in Trespasser he had the power to medusa whole groups of people without even looking at them- something Veilguard conveniently underplays. That's why making Dreadwolf about Dreadwolf made more sense, the adventure and journey of another team, likely advised by the Inq, hunting down Solas through various means and locations and finding some way to overcome his godlike powers to PREVENT the Veil coming down. It's the game we never got and never will get... and you're right: it was never going to be.
But its defeat really was the absence of Gaider- he and his team and other core devs... some of whom were the ones insisting on turning DA into a live service cash grab. Or rather the absence of appreciation for Gaider's standard of writing. Bioware/EA sacrificed Gaider and good writing to get Anthem. Then reluctantly returned to making a single-player RPG of Gaider's easy-win lore, but it looks like they just recognized how low their writing talent pool had become- while licking their wounds after Anthem w no self-reflection of having made an error- and cynically proceeded along the path of hostility to their own players that plopped out a Veilturd. Unfortunately the failure of Veilguard was the same failing as DA2 and DAI: the poor marriage of Bioware to EA and the development self-effacing that the couple have always led to. If there had been a great idea of how to make a DA4, they would've have listened anyway by then...
I wish more fanbase even those at r/dragonage would understand this and stop dismissing critique with "i like it , so whose your fav romance ladies"
Story of Dragon age Origins is a tragic downfall. Inquisition was the one getting back up and they killed the studio with crunch for Anthem. I think this was the final nail in the coffin of old bioware regenerating with new people. Just can't describe the frustration when you appreciate the nuances in Origins writing and see them progressively been thrown out. by bad management. Then comming back in pain for DAI. And now being sacked again.
I have a question: so spirits are fade's energy, that is manifested into forns by thoughts and emotions of physical people. Elves came from spirits. So who's thoughts formed those spirits who turned into elves? Dwarves? But dwarves appeared after the murder of Titans, who were killed by the elves. Also, i swear i heard Solas say that they used stones to become like humans, but no way I'm ever touching that game myself. But then humans predate elves? But they came to Thedas from Par Vollen?
I'm not entirely sure on all the details since I couldn't finish the game myself, but what I think is happening is that they tried to explain away all the mysteries in the lore... For some reason. And of course the problem with that is that there were lots of conflicting pieces of information based on the different perspectives people in Thedas had. Making everything fit into "the elves did it" cheapens the world, makes it feel less complex. Not to mention it raises all these questions due to outright contradicting previously established lore. The idea of spirits taking on a physical form isn't bad per se, but there has to be a little more explanation to it than that. Like for example you need to explain that in the time before the Veil, magic and spirits likely worked differently than they do now. So spirits could just take on physical form - they had likely simply never wanted to before that. But your question is a good one: whose dreams did they see that made them want to experience having a physical body? And why did they form into the shape of elves with pointy ears if they were looking at the dreams of dwarves or humans? Were they just like "cool body, but it needs to be skinnier and have pointy ears"? Lol. Sorry that I don't have real answers but even if Veilguard explained its lore breaking ideas better I still wouldn't consider it canon.
You had your first red flag, even when the game was called "Dreadwolf" (the original name). When in rhe trailer Varric narrates, that this would be a new game in which your Inquisitor would have nowhere to be seen... So yeah when you are dealing with the final chapter and the one Character who has the biggest connection to Solas, is nowhere to be seen... That is concerning, and when you see them rename the project and the next trailer is essentially just medieval "Guardians of the Galaxy" thats when you know thisñngs turn up for the worse.
I also agree the "Tresspasser" DLC, was the ultimate cliffhanger. As it sate the bases for the Inquisitor to hunto down Solas and face him once and for all... Instead, nothing, we get a new character and just a bunch of annoying kids to essentially stop Ancient gods from destroying the world...
I think you're right and honestly I had the same idea after Tresspasser ended it seemed like such a logical end point have the inquisitor fail maybe have them die but
Solas 100% should've torn down his creation like how do we know all those orbs we activated weren't wearing down the veil or some focus for his ritual to tear ot dowm
Yeah, I have to be honest: I thought that was what they were setting up with Trespasser, and I was genuinely excited about that idea.
@@btiermutineer It would've been the most satisfying way to go and a really good bittersweet ending for any who romanced Solas even if the inquisitor didn't die if they wrote it good enough and aligned it with your choices it could've been great but they couldn't write Hawke properly oh well DA was a pretty food trilogy all things considered
First before talking about what the game writers understand about the game, we should maybe analyse the abysmal level of the writing. It's not bad choices made by people who don't have the same understanding than you or me but the fact that they totally suck at their job. How a professional game writer can produce that level of cringe, meaningless garbage.
There is a few dialogue for example with Solas that are good but then you have those cheesy dialogues with your companions just like all this was a group of cosplayers having fun and joking like idiots in the middle of a dying world.
I loved the Trespasser DLc and the end with Solas and i was asking myself if he was right after all and the only solution was to help him to get rid of those evanuris even if the cost to the actual world would be high. Solas is smart and when he said he had a plan i guess we should at least listen to him before creating a situation much worse.
The thing is that a lot of the game writers who were on the Veilguard team had been writing for Inquisition (Patrick Weekes, Sylvia Feketekuty, Brianne Battye), and some of them had been on the DA team since Origins (Mary Kirby, Lukas Kristjanson, Sheryl Chee), not to mention that Lukas Kristjanson had been at Bioware for even longer working on the classics before Dragon Age. And of course Karin Weekes having been an editor since 2006. I personally can't understand how those same writers who wrote some of my absolute favorite quests and characters could write the absolutely embarrassing dialogue in Veilguard. It just doesn't line up.
Mabye they didn’t write much of it. It’s very possible they were trying to change the direction and writing lots of stuff that got cut (a lot were fired after all this could be because they weren’t falling in line and were trying to steer the ship on line)
@@btiermutineer I believe they wrote many lines connected to each other and sounded solid in the context of each other. Then Corinne Busche came in with all of that director power to "Fix" the narrative in a certain way.
If you read the IGN article "How Bioware finally got DA to Finish Line" it paints a picture where Gary Mckay, very much the company man, is the one insisting on more blood. I think that a lot of the game's failures can be placed squarely on the creative leads having terrible instincts about DA. I can absolutely see the action combat being an EA mandate, but the cutesy tone reeks of art and animation school pretensions.
seriously I thought the game was already a disappointment when it wasn't your inquistor closing up this story. The story ended on a cliffhanger with Solas turning out to be behind everything. Then in this game suddenly its years later and some other random guy and random people are now on this quest? basically only varric, morigan and harding are around. And I can barely even remember Harding from inquisition.. wasn't she just a scout or something who went and discovered new lands for you? This dumb tradition of having a new protagonist for every game isn't something that I can get behind. I like the fact that mass effect had shepherd each game. I loved seeing the companions from mass effect show up in the later games and new companions from the second game show up in the third game as well. It gave your choices at the end of the 2nd game a lot of weight.
I was personally fine with having a different protagonist in different DA games, as long as the story of that game made sense for that character. I do think it makes the games in a series more accessible to new players who can play whichever game they want first, and then if they are pulled into the world they can play the other games, too. However, the whole situation with Solas and the elven gods is very much still the Inquisitor's story and it doesn't make any sense to suddenly have Rook, an absolute nobody with no personality to speak of, coming in and taking the place of someone who has an actual motivation to be the protagonist. It also makes NO sense that the Inquisitor wouldn't be there at the very beginning with Varric and Harding to stop Solas's ritual. It makes no sense that other characters such as Leliana aren't involved in searching for Solas. Also, where did Solas's "Agents of Fen'Harel" go? He was just completely alone, pathetically, doing a ritual with barely held-together statues and with demons pouring out of rifts around him everywhere... He's supposed to be such a cunning and powerful character (not to mention morally complex), but all of that is removed for the sake of making the story easier to digest and perfect for baby's first RPG.
@@simonphoenix3789 Yes she was just a scout and you have NO IDEA how pissed I am that they took my wardens wife away from him and his son again there are so many characters they could use buuuuuutt nooo they gotta take my hot goth witch wofe
They actually wanted to make Hawke the protagonist of inquisition, but due to fan backlash to DA2, they decided to create a new inquisitor character.
I had people call me allsorts of things just for saying that Veilguard would be terrible the day they announced it
Fact is that the last of the talent in Bioware left during the development of ME3 and were replaced with idealogue Tumblr fanfic writers who went on to destroy the character development, plot and especially ending of ME3
Then every Bioware release since has been a sharp downfall in quality every time, with DA2 and Inquisition essentially not even being RPGs any more and of coirse Anthem and Andromeda.
Honestly I was confused why there was anyone who thought Bioware could make a good game post-2012 considering they had none of the staff, none of the talent or drive and all of the EA Games to deal with
I love David Gaider's work, especially Dorian Pavus, and hope he's doing well. 17:00 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤
you are the first to point out that the closure of the inquisition dlc really made these new writers in bad situation .
let's just hope for the next mass effect they will opt out shepard and just start a new with a blank state, i mean they can do that
20:00
The problem is not "this game was crippled because of all requirements put on it by management". The problem is, the people at bioware are incompetent, pure and simple.
It took them 9 years to make this game, yes, management will make requirements of it to make sure they recover the investment. It wasn't management's fault that bioware now sucks at writing. Good writers will still write good stories within limitations imposed on them. If nothing else the problem was that there wasn't enough management oversight on the project to tell the writers and the director of the project, "NO".
"NO, you will not put a transgender character in a medieval fantasy game".
"NO, you will not add scenes to preach at the player".
"NO, you will not have all party members always work together and never have a meaningful conflict".
"NO, you will not have these headquarters scenes in which the characters do nothing productive to progress the plot".
Bioware became this mess because it doesn't have enough oversight. Just like Inside Out 2 from Disney, once the executives went over the project and told the creators to remove the lesbian romance off the movie, it hit more than 1 billion dollars in box office.
We have to remember that the writers of something, not always knows best what will be appealing to the public. If nothing else, Disney and Bioware are very clearly examples that many times the creators are writing for themselves and never pay any mind to how will that will make the product sell for the general public.
It's fine to write for yourself when it's a small project, like a book or a indie movie and nobody's job depends on its sales, but when you're writing for a project in a studios with hundreds of employees that's not the case anymore. What they general public will accept is more important than the wants of the writer.
I compare solas a lot to Emet- selch from ffxiv.
They had similar motives. Wanting to tear down the current world to bring back the world they loved.
The protagonist couldn’t argue with emet that his world might have been better but ultimately it comes at the cost of their own future. They could become great but emet wants to take that future, that chance, away from them.
It comes down to the protagonists future or Emets past and the protagonist wants to live.
They dropped the ball with solas 😢…
Well put. I fear that is true. You can't make a compelling product that everyone will like.
There's a thing I think of as the "EA Paradox", it works like this. Companies like EA are attracted to companies like BioWare because of their market share and reputation, but they aren't structured in a way that's conducive to making that sort of product. EA deals with sport and shooter games mainly because they calculate these will always deliver on their initial investment and sometimes they even get those wrong with the same lack of care that we see with their RPG properties. A game that sells fast, sells well and can be made quickly is what they're shooting for. They absolutely don't want things that get in the way of making money like controversy. Here's a short list of innate features of good RPGs and why they might make companies like EA nervous.
Adult stories. Not "adult" as in R-rated necessarily, but adult as in nuanced, complex and heartfelt. Nuance to an exec means you aren't 100% committing to a given target market, black and white stories do that. Moral greyness has the risk that some will accuse your company of encouraging the darker decisions rather than just having them as an option on the table.
Choice and world states. To an exec these choices just translate to more investment being made on acting, assets and cutscenes without a garunteed payoff with more possibilty of game-breaking bugs. These aren't people committed to stories and likely regard stuff like this as excessive overheads and waste.
Replayability, the strongest attraction for many of these games, BG3, KOTOR, Witcher 3, DAO is that you get a lot of value from one product. People spend thousands of hours exploring these worlds and trying to find new ways to tweak, replay and mod them. Executives would prefer you hurry up and buy a new game from them rather than endlessly replay an old one.
That's the EA Paradox, the three factors that make players love these games are the same things that make businesspeople, particularly ones with no emotional investment in games, very nervous. They want the target markets, but don't want to give those target markets what they want.
blackrock own about 10% of EA. theres your explanantion for why it went to shit
The regression to the mean effect of chasing so many mass markets ends up making all the products very samey-samey. AAA is usually a sign of a beige game.
Do you think people would believe Rook and Varric’s relationship more if there was an introduction level where Rook and Varric met?
It would have made more sense if Rook is part of this team, being lead by the Inquisitor and his closets advisors to stop Solas from opening the Veil... So when you support the Inquisitor get to Solas, you see him failing and a Sorrow filled Solas finishing him, and after that the Veil is opened and Rook is just blown away the ecplosion, so that years later he once again tries to retake the battle to Solas with a new team.
I think it's hard to make a game where the veil is torn down. Like, the ancient world is visually and conceptually unimaginable to anyone mortal, and perhaps impossible to recreate in a game today. So I don't think it's such a simple solution to implement. It would require a lot of time and money to artistically develop it, and the recreate it in engine. I don't think that would be an investment they would be able to make after all the reboots this game had.
The problem with this game is really the depth of the writing. It's such a frustrating game because the settings, the locations, the factions, the concepts, they all have so much potential for satisfying exploration, but that potential is never met. They had everything to create a good narrative already, but they managed to fumble it all, and it's so heartbreaking for me, as a long time fan.
Seems like this scenario only works when you and Solas are besties in the end ...
Inquisition had lots of different outcomes tho. :-/
//Edit:
That end dont really makes sense to me ... lets imagine:
You are developer with pasion and awesome tale in mind that you want to tell ... and then some executive comes to you and say, "erase all blood from that game, we want to reach for younger audience" ...
How does that affect your goal? O_o
The other situiation:
You are developer with pasion and awesome tale in mind that you want to tell ... and then some executive comes to you and say, "erase all topic about (i wont say the word, bcs youtube dont like it said ... but they are two, one starts with S and the other with R ... and both were common themes around Elves)" ...
I mean ... ok, this may affect some interactions, or side-quests ... but as long as we are talking about main story, that is about Solas and Veil ... i once again fail to see connection.
Obviously, we don't know what happened behind the scenes with the Dragon Age team at Bioware for them to end up producing this disaster of a game. But I once again have to mention that I can't believe the veteran writers who wrote some of my favorite characters and quests in the series (Mary Kirby, Lukas Kristjanson, Sheryl Chee, and even writers that joined later on like Sylvia Feketekuty and Patrick Weekes)... Can't believe that these same people would be able to write this badly, UNLESS someone was telling them to do it and they couldn't say no.
I think the main issue with your proposal is that while yes, in lore, in universe the inquisitor was the one that made the promise to either hunt solas down or redeem him in reality the player made that promise. Bioware, a studio full of relatively green devs coming off of a long streak of poorly received games. Giving the player the option to set themselves on a quest to see how solas ends up and then starting the next game with the completion of that quest, hardcored, without any player input whatsoever was likely not something they were willing to gamble on.
Imagine if in mass effect everything after your charge toward the beam was a cutscene. Shepard always makes the same choices, goes the same way, says the same things with no player involvement at all. That would let a lot of people down and be very controversial. What we got might not have been much better but at least it is still in the players hands. Bioware seems to have a problem of making promises that would be best kept with a cutscene but can now only be kept with gameplay and then struggling to make that gameplay interesting or meaningful.
I shared your thoughts that the Veil coming down was inevitable, and I honestly thought it had something to do with the Blight; I hate that the answer to all the questions the series has set up turns out to be "its all the ancient elves' fault", and then my elf Rook spends several conversations emotionally, desperately apoligizing for what her ancestors opressors did.
Great video! I actually really like your idea of how to develop Dragon Age 4 plot from the Tresspasser DLC. The desctuction of the veil... That sonds really intriguing. And now I'm even more disappointed and sad that The Veilguard plot is so generic, boring and surface-level, that it's so vanilla and scared of insulting anyone or touching on anything even slightly controversial or grey...
As someone who is playing through the persona games for the first time, I'd say those games are way more about the friends you make along the way than dragon age ever was. It's not a problem to write a story that way, but that's not what dragon age is. Dragon age is about real people facing impossible odds and the conflict that arises from that.
Exactly. There are plenty of stories that are about friends and friendship is magic kind of stuff (especially JRPGs). No idea why they decided to suddenly turn Dragon Age into that, when it was just like you said about facing impossible odds, and having to make difficult choices as part of the conflict arising from that.
@btiermutineer I love when people say shit like "Alistair in origins was a comedic character so there was no change in tone"
Alistair using comedy to cope with the death of his mentor, awful childhood, and damn near certain death in the face of the blight is not the same thing as the quippy happy-go-lucky bullshit we got out of the veilgaurd.
I think the reason they didn't go with your proposal for the plot, or anything else, is simply because these writers are neither talented nor creative. The game is just boring and basic and safe in every possible way. Starting with insisting on calling it THE veilguard. Why? Because it is maximum boring.
But when looking at the game, it is clear they took the least creative option in many cases. Consider combat. Both DA1 and DA2 had amazing CGI trailers that showed how mages fight in melee range with their staffs, and I think a big unspoken implication of DA2 is that this is how a Mage Apostate Hawke remains unknown for so long. They aren't slinging small little weak balls of magic, they are bashing people with their bladed pole-arm and occasionally throwing out subtle crowd control, support, and misdirection magic. And you see this reflected in gameplay for DA2 and also to a certain extent with Origins as well. Mages are not complete pushovers, they know how to use that staff -- at least the good ones. So why is that when we get to THE veilguard with its real time action combat, that isn't how staff combat works? Instead we have a weak little ranged projectile and a...stronger ranged beam attack? What? Also, the orb and dagger are kind of cool I guess but where the hell have those been? Feels like they should have just given the staff melee options and ranged options.
I agree that they went with the dumbest and most boring/generic version that they could have, ignoring or outright contradicting what came before. I can't personally believe that the writers are 100% at fault, though, because while some of the good ones left such as David Gaider, there were still plenty of writers who had written amazing stuff for Origins, DA2, and Inquisition, who were part of the writing team of Veilguard. As much as I'd want writers to be in charge of the story, I imagine that they were likely forced by other people in charge of the "vision" of the project to do something completely different. And honestly, if I had been told to go with this kind of story and dumb style, I would have also written it in the shittiest way possible just to get it done so I could get my paycheck.
21:22 this reminds me so much of that setting in Hogwarts Legacy in which you could turn off spiders because some people have arachnophobia 🥲 i hate spiders, too, but c'mon! This is becoming ridiculous.
I think DA4 was going to be a divisive game no matter what direction they went. Dragon Age means different things to everyone I mean if you ask a hundred people what it means you’ll get a hundred and one different answers. Every game has always divided the fandom and a new game would do that even more. You have a lot of schisms within the community such as people who just want Origins 2.0 and people who want something much more akin to Inquisition. The more “reasonable” (I suppose you could say) part of the community who just want a new game always get drowned out by both sides.
I think the big problem is that BioWare could’ve tried to please at least one side of the fanbase but instead wound up becoming something so far removed from both in want of a new audience. I understand that devs always need to try and get more people to play their games but I feel like BioWare simply put too much thought into how to bring in more players rather than trying to keep old ones.
I don’t know maybe I’m just too cynical and simply don’t understand enough of what was actually going on internally as I stopped paying attention shortly after hearing about all the turnover rates and everybody leaving. I pretty much gave up after Andromeda because if this was the direction BioWare was going I simply wasn’t meant to be a part of it anymore.
Maybe the problem isn’t even with BioWare and instead with me. I’ve noticed my tastes have shifted as I’ve gotten older. I’ve always enjoyed the story elements of RPGs (and games of all genres) over gameplay and graphics and now it seems I’ve went further down the path of that and gotten more at home in a game like Stray Gods or The Wolf Among Us or Life is Strange where the story is not only the main focus but also pretty much the only focus. Sure I still love the Dragon Age games (especially Origins and 2) and Mass Effect and more recently Greedfall but I simply can’t seem to find as many of them that I love as much as I used to.
Their reach exceeds their grasp.
My thoughts:
A) I don't recall Solas ever being sympathetic to people living, but I do recall him stabbing "Mythal" to obtain her power. He really isn't a great person, and I don't think that trying to make him be more considerate of people currently living would work as a narrative. His whole goal was to undo the Veil by any means necessary. I definitely think he works best when written as that sociopath. His relationship with the Inquisitor is interesting because it's different, but that doesn't necessary mean that it would be universal.
B) I really want to push back on the notion of the devs not having thought about it. It's incredibly arrogant to both assume that no one thought of it, and to think that it's objectively the correct decision. Even in the video you state that Dragon Age is a franchise of tough choices, and to have a core narrative that invalidates those choices with no player input would just make those other games hollow. As it is, people were already up in arms about how Fereldan fell. This would be that on a Thedas scale. Though you are correct that DA:I left the team with almost nothing to work with, there doesn't seem like there was an actual plan on how to follow up DA:I.
C) DA has honestly never been great, and has always struggled with it's identity. Origins was good, but severe pacing issues (Fade/Deeproads/RandomExpositionWarden/Balance), DA2 was a rushed mess, DA:GetOutoftheHinterlands had extreme breadth that was only matched by it's shallowness. Nothing is really cohesive. Though it doesn't help that EA keeps interfering with the devs in the latter, and move people around without proper thought or plan (seems to be a running theme). Not to say the devs are faultless though, god knows there was enough WTF moments in interviews.
D) The Anthem Era was EA mismanagement at it's...finest? Andromeda was effectively shot in the head to try and get other projects off life support. People were moved around so often that getting people up to scratch took an obscene amount of time. Things had to be scaled back, world building tools were used instead of handcrafted maps, the animation team was non-existent for over a year. The only other title that I know of that had worse management is L.A.Noire (along with it's hundreds of staff turnovers). This is an additional issue because the dev team is MASSIVE, and team size is not something that scales well.
The more people you have, the more diluted the vision becomes, the more communication is needed, and the more conflicts arise. Especially when you have to redo a massive portion of the title while meeting deadlines for investor calls. It's why I don't hate Veilguard, they tried to make the most of a terrible hand, and in some places you can see what they were trying to do. It has (a few) moments of brilliance, and I am so curious about what the original intention was back when it was Dreadwolf.
I'm playing the game and the main story is actually outstanding. The way it ties together the lore we learned over the last 3 games. It's incredible. Also harrowing.
The First 10ish hours are slower, while you find companions and meet factions. Then suddenly it blows up into something incredible.
There are a couple of contrived ham-fisted parts shoved into the dialogue. There's a mirror where the player can chose to be trans (to be offered more trans dialogue later) or not (no further trans dialogue offered). It's optional. Asmongold was joking when he said he "has to be trans". He clicked the trans option, and ignored the "go back" option.
Any other trans stuff is tied into Taash personal quest, which you can completely ignore.
So anybody allergic to that sort of inclusion, bioware made it 100% skippable!
Anyway, I was at a 7-8 /10 for this game. Mostly because Rook cannot be a jerk. Now I'm really between 9-10, because the main questline is pretty epic after the grey warden chapter.
If you enjoy DA lore, this story will reward you.
I have no idea how you can say this about the writing and the story. I am trying to be respectful here, but genuinely from both a storytelling as well as a prose and dialogue quality point of view, this game is just bad.
Anyone at BioWare still passionate enough must not be having a good time seeing all the mistakes being done and not being able to do anything about it
Hi I'm new here :)
I just wanted to say: THANK YOU SO MUCH! I watched all your dragon age veilguard videos and I really agree with you and needed to hear it - it really feels like grief and honestly a lot of anger - bc dragon age was always so special to me too - veilguard is an insult on so many levels ...
I think this series lost me back in DAI when did the elves play a big role.
Wait, am I missing something? *Are* there any large game companies, for which a game they produce is *not* a product to squeeze as much money out of as they can in as many markets as they can reach?
And if there are, why does anyone expect EA of all companies to also not just treat their properties as a money generator at all costs?
Everyone is talking as if they're surprised or shocked or something.
I personally AM surprised because up until Veilguard, Bioware managed to hold onto good storytelling in the Dragon Age series even if they *were* forced to make DA2 in a super short amount of time, even if they were forced to make Inquisition "open world" and add mounts and such to it. I thought the devs at Bioware cared enough to genuinely try to make a good RPG even if EA pushed them to make something generic and with "wide appeal". I guess the people who cared, however, left.
@@btiermutineer The last game was published 10 years ago. The corporations had 10 years to evolve (read, erode) the game development practices towards maximizing marketability at the expense of everything else.
I have to disagree with just the story part.
I actually enjoyed the plot of the game. I love the fact that Solus was both the true villain and a red herring.
However everything else was a bad choice. Dialogue, Abandoning Lore, Bad Characters writing.
Also astonishingly enough, the lack of dialogue. One of the best parts of bioware games was the "home base". Skyhold, the camp, Normandy 1 and 2. We go chill get to know our crew with more depth and details. In the light house you MIGHT have 1 convo after a major mission, and thats it. Like what????
Here's the problem with the "They changed the formula" argument: They can't make the same game forever. Many people believe that they would enjoy playing the same game just with different content, but they don't. Dragon Age Origins: Awakenings proved that. They tried to replicate the success of the original Dragon Age Origins, and it didn't work. The game is extremely similar to the first game but it was very boring in comparison. They couldn't have an origin because it wasn't the first game. They couldn't have a hero's journey because it was a continuation of the first game. They were actually very limited because they had to transfer characters into the new game and continue the story somehow.
I'm not going to defend Failguard because I think it's a bad game. I will defend the idea that sequels are nearly impossible to make from a storytelling standpoint though. The best way to do them is to make them in episodic format where they tell self-contained stories in the same world. The absolute worst thing they can do is to insert modern politics into the game/story like Failguard did. It's also very bad to make an RPG where you don't make any meaningful choices.
The mass effect trilogy is the perfect example of how you’re wrong though. That trilogy is damn near perfect except the ending although I always liked the control ending
There are many examples of beloved sequels though? While in some cases making the same game with new story would’ve been fine in most cases people genuinely look forward to change but want a roughly similar product. Yes, you can take dragon age and turn it into a city builder, the technology probably exists or can be created, no one can stop you legally if you are Bioware. But just because it’s different doesn’t make it a good sequel or even a good game. Changing things randomly for the sake of change, or changing things because you aren’t good enough to meet the quality of the past entries, is not good development.
I think the formula needs to evolve, but not be changed drastically. Or, if you are going to change it drastically, it needs to be billed as a new game in that IP, and not as a sequel.
Also, it isn't a bad idea to make an RPG where you don't make meaningful choices. That's pretty much every classic JRPG and a lot of those are great. They are games that might let you choose a romance option, but are mostly carried by a focus on a strong (and long) story, world building, and personalities. At best, you might get to choose a love interest.
People who played the Awakening expansion mostly enjoyed it. The reason why Awakening wasn't so successful is because it was an EXPANSION instead of a full new game. Even DA2, with its extremely rushed development and various issues, sold quite well and was overall a success (not to mention that I genuinely think it was an overall good game with a great story). Bioware was able to make good, solid sequels to Dragon Age that ended up being overall well received, AND honored choices players made in previous games.
I will never defend this game because what it is is a travesty and a cash grab, but there were EASY ways to make it work even if they wanted a soft reboot.
@@khiyabarrett1459 Is it? ME2 was the best in the series. Why? Because it was episodic. ME3 disappointed everyone because it tried to continue the story.
If the exects wanted to sell to as many people as possible then then wouldnt have picked this writer. Unfortunately, the DEI consultancy pillar alters what is considered popular in market to what itself considers popular.
It's really strange, because everyone knows that trans and/or queer people like me are in the minority. That's why for so many years there was barely any representation of us in media. We continue to be in the minority, so it's just nonsensical to believe that this kind of thing would sell more.
Dragon Age having a different MC each game is a choice, not a law. Especially because it seems to me Hawke was a very poor attempt at having a fixed MC ala Shepard after Origins (yes, devs claimed otherwise, they claimed a lot of bs back during DA2 development). Hawke failed, so it was Inquisitor's turn.
So just have the Inquisitor back. Imagine mass effect 1 - 3 with a different each game, or Witcher games... but no, let's change MC despite narrative set up not working for the plotline progression.
It's pretty simple in the end. Origins is the only one with a clear vision behind it. Then they began trend chasing and making decissions they had no skill to pull because they were aiming for an audience that would never care about dragon Age to begin with.
I rlly like this kind of unscripted kind of video too btw! Great points too!
They merged it with the base concepts of immortals of aveum. Another failed game.
Well said.
interesting, thank you
I certainly never cared to touch this kind of game and never will. And i can't stand bioware games in general
Why did they make this M-rated game for Fortnite kids?
What are they trying to do...?
As long as people keep buying digital skins, gotcha crap, loot boxes, seasons passes, etc etc, this will only keep getting worst and worst. It's the simplest economic calculation possible, if u can spend 1 and make 10, it's almost impossible to convince people to spend 5 to maybe make 10, this game is really uff, and i think the marketing is really to blame for trying to sell as one thing when is actualy another, maybe the devs had to fight tooth and nails for every little bit they manage here, or maybe not idk...and i'm truly afraid that the fail of this game will be used in the future to justify more and more games like Diablo Immortal. This isn't a good game, don't get me wrong, but i see that a lot of the conversations is going around the LGBT(whatever) inside, and by far that is not the biggest problem it has, i think they had to pull a 180 degrees with this one, and the budget simple disapeared. I can't play 40h of slop to get a 5h of good ending, that is just me, i managed 10h in this game than i couldn't deal anymore with how boring, condensending and brainless it is, so i quitted.
I also couldn't play longer than 10 hours of this game. Played 7 on stream and then tried a few more on my own, but it's just a bad game (even if you ignore that it's supposed to be Dragon Age). It's just boring, and not fun.
Veilguard has so mant problems beyond connecting Trespasser DLC to the next DA game. If Trespasser wrote them into a corner it was a big corner. Your idea, amongst a bunch of others, could have accountanted for the Inquisitor's absence. The bad writing starts right off the bat. Veilguard starts right in the thick of battle. That is not the way to start a story introducing a new protagonist. Think of how DAO starts. You lay the groundwork for the protagonist's not al and then show the conflict (physical and mental) arise. EA and/or BioWare hollowed out yheir writing staff, Veilguard is the result. The writing is so bad in Veilguard just as a game, let alone a DA game. It screws up the lore, the characterization of companions is horrendous, and even Rook is the definition of bland.
I like your story - but even so - it might have not been enough to save it. The Cringe in Dialog was just too much.
Well, I would imagine that maybe if they had tried to make a better and less lazy story, the dialgoue would have also been better
I wonna play dragon age with all its dark fantasy has to offer - no rainbow age sims with purple farts
"fail" and it has 10k 24 hour peak. Lmao griiiiiiiffffttt
Failed as a continuation of the Dragon Age series, and failed in comparison to its competition on how well it sold. Personally I don't care about how much it sold or not, I am just judging the game as having failed to deliver what was set up in the previous games, especially in a narrative sense as that is what I am most knowledgeable about as someone with a master's in Creative Writing. This game will fade away and be forgotten by most, remembered with disappointment and resentment by some (who were fans of the series and wanted a real continuation rather than this weird hodge podge), and very few people will actually remember it and replay it. It doesn't even come close to Dragon Age 2 which at its release was criticized by many for its faults that it had due to an extremely short dev cycle. You may feel differently about the game if you like, I am not saying that people aren't allowed to like the equivalent of trashy fast food. But it is a failure, especially as a roleplaying narrative experience.
@@btiermutineer Cope. Dragon Age has never been that big anyways and anyone who thinks it fails as a roleplaying narrative experience didn't play the previous games. I can tell by how everyone who hates on the game does so for vague nonspecific reasons and those who do love it can point to very specific things.
Having a degree means very little about what you're actually good at btw. It's a nice certificate but like it often doesn't mean anything. Most of the best science channels on youtube are run by people who don't have a degree in scientific fields for example.
Also by the metrics of "relative to competition", SM2 is a failure. It flopped hard compared to the only game like it this year. Is SM2 a failure in your mind? It's a game that will never break its niche and that will probably have an extremely small playerbase in just a few months.
I’m actually enjoying this game more than I did Baldurs gate, at least this game has combat and your companions do something, story is pretty good and the graphics and places are great, each to their own I guess
BG3 has combat, and your companions actually are playable.
What are you even talking about?
@ lol but they don’t do anything on their own, you have to do everything for them, how freaking boring, and the story is just as boring as the combat, but you can have sex with everyone including a bear so we know why people love it so much
Dragon Age The Veilguard is one of the worst I ever seen in my entire life
I still think its from Sweet Babies influence, strong arming them to have x characters, forcing the writers to work around them, instead of the other way around. So sad. maybe mods will fix it lol
Nobody will work on it that much. The game has so many issues and game design problems. Do you think people will try to fix this thing from scratch? Why would they even try in the beginning? If fans are going to correct everything in the game then why are we giving money to Bioware?
Good story, Good in-game lore and revelations, Bad dialogue, and Bad role-play elements.
The Veilguard is a political self insert wearing a battered and torn Dragon Age skin-suit.
*_I_* know the reason why it was done the way it was done.
First, they only started development in 2020. The original was scrapped in 2017... Then the first live service was scrapped in 2019... or it might have been 2018. It's so hard to keep track of when they started over.
Second, the entire upper echelon of development is entirely ⚪.
So demanding the status quo (keeping the Veil up) is a hallmark of ⚪ness.
Not to mention all the "yikes" from multiple characters in Veilguard that blatantly came from a ⚪ perspective.
Like the token black guy not only being not human, but also that he has slave tattoos... In addition to his entire narrative not being about or really involving him much...
Or how Harding gets super pissed at the fact that Solas killed her enslavers... Being mad that... She's not... A mindless slave..... Yikes.
And that's just two things off the top of my head. There's a LOT more in the game.
For a game that claims to be so welcoming and "progressive"... DAtV is very, very, very, very offensively ⚪.
Oh... Wow, I didn't even realize these elements of an extremely white perspective that clearly pervade the entire game. Thank you for sharing this.
@@btiermutineer Mass Effect Andromeda had a very similar issue.
(Literally the first thing a squadmate says is "I can't wait to get down there and start stealing land from the natives"...)
And MEA had a single token non⚪ person on the devs...
The idea of maintaining the status quo being tied to ⚪ness and ⚪ identity stems from the way western societies are systemically set up to favor ⚪ness, thus that unjust system is preserved as a means of preserving ⚪ supremacy.
man I am so glad I came across your channel
Hello! Awesome video! I'm Guilherme, a thumbnail designer, I'd love to chat, do you have any social media where we can connect? Thanks! :)
Thanks for the comment. Nope, I'm perfectly fine making my own thumbnails and every single element of my video. Thanks.
As a more generic Dragon Age fan I was expecting something different, although after the last several years it doesn't surprise me with what we got, but not this different.
I don't like the graphics.
I personally don't really like the combat. Not that I can't get used to it though.
I definitely don't like the character creation. And I will never be ashamed to say that because I love what my characters look like.
The dialogue seems to be really simple and geared towards somebody who really doesn't know how to think. A lot of the dialogue that I've seen is about the game explaining to you things that you should already know simply by general dialogue between people in the game or even things that you do or encounter.
Oh and the identity religion thrown in our face once again. I am all about freedom of conscience. When people start stepping on that. That's something I cannot tolerate.
And I don't hate anybody. That's not going to change because people say otherwise. Peace.
Veilguard didn't fail tho
Failed as a continuation of the Dragon Age series, and failed in comparison to its competition on how well it sold. Personally I don't care about how much it sold or not, I am just judging the game as having failed to deliver what was set up in the previous games, especially in a narrative sense as that is what I am most knowledgeable about as someone with a master's in Creative Writing. This game will fade away and be forgotten by most, remembered with disappointment and resentment by some (who were fans of the series and wanted a real continuation rather than this weird hodge podge), and very few people will actually remember it and replay it. It doesn't even come close to Dragon Age 2 which at its release was criticized by many for its faults that it had due to an extremely short dev cycle. You may feel differently about the game if you like, I am not saying that people aren't allowed to like the equivalent of trashy fast food. But it is a failure, especially as a roleplaying narrative experience.
@btiermutineer "yeah well it def didn't sell as well as it's competition" "well I mean it doesn't matter if it sold well"
Hey what was your opinion on inquisition?
I agree with you.
Also I enjoyed listening to this. I have a migraine rn so it was nice to close my eyes and listen to you share your thoughts.
I'm so upset at the way they butchered Dragon Age to make a profit, to turn it into a franchise, yet this game is so bad that they'll probably never end up making another one anyway.
If they were going to end the series, they could have at least given it the ending it deserved but I guess that's asking for too much 🫤