Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Thread

[Raghar]

More info

Didnt chart in the top 20 downloads in PSN Japan

Japan sales for release were 3,560 physical copies

Didnt chart in the top 15 of the Circana player engagement chart for the week ending november 2,2024. It debuted in the top 30 across each of the platforms.

PS: the Circana numbers come from a dude called Mat Piscatella, an ultra woke journo, and when I tried looking for his twitter account I discovered he ragequit twitter and deleted his account because of Musk lmao. He is active on that bluesky site that is a huge leftist echochamber

Well they didn't abide to advice: "Bribe reviewers, bribe reviewers, bribe reviewers." And use existing laws to make returns illegal.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

It kind of was incline over the dumbed down trash that KOTOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect were.

KotOR is an awful example. The pic you posted is of a player's build, not the total pool of powers available and moreover, Jedi aren't strictly mages. They have a specific pool of powers that are restricted by the lore itself and there's very little you can do to flesh it out without resorting to high levels of handwavium to explain away the new powers' absence in the rest of the franchise. Obsidian was in the same boat for the sequel and what new powers they did add were basically just new functions of powers that already existed, split off to be their own thing. Force Choke > Force Crush and so on.

Dragon Age had no such restrictions, being a generic fantasy setting that Bioware created the rules for. Compared to 2nd or 3rd edition, it's woefully lacking and there's no reason for that to be the case.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Pure speculation on my part: c-suite wanted the old regions written out with a view towards continuing to reinvent Dragon Age as a YA or romantasy setting going forward. Chasing the ever cryptozoological modern audience, tasteless and profitable, "unburdened by what has been" so to speak.

 

[Sweeper]

I mean wasn't the series cooked already with Inquisition?

No, it was cooked with the sequel to Origins.

 

[Caim]

I mean wasn't the series cooked already with Inquisition?

No, it was cooked with the sequel to Origins.

Series was cooked with Origins.

 

[Larianshill]

Pure speculation on my part: c-suite wanted the old regions written out with a view towards continuing to reinvent Dragon Age as a YA or romantasy setting going forward. Chasing the ever cryptozoological modern audience, tasteless and profitable, "unburdened by what has been" so to speak.

I don't know, I don't buy it. Isn't Tevinter also technically an old region? I think it's the decision of the writers, who were too high on their own farts. When you have no respect for the original work, it makes you do crazy things.
For example, in Warcraft 3, a big thing is made out of the foundation of Theramore - the Alliance of the old world fell, over the course of the Frozen Throne every part of it was either dismantled or corrupted - now, on its own, it's not the example of this, because the creatives behind it are the same. But in World of Warcraft, where we get fresh new geniuses behind the wheel, we find out that no - the Alliance of the old world is just fine, Stormwind magically came back from the brink, and its populace (which was either genocided, or turned into refugees by the orcish invasion) is thriving, it's the new bastion of humanity. No, it's Theramore that's fucked - in one of the expansion, it gets nuked, just so the writers can say "This time, the war is for REAL, this is an unforgivable atrocity, this bad guy has harmed humanity in a way no WoW villain has before".

Or even better example - the big mastermind behind everything in Warcraft 3 was Lich King Ner'zhul, a villain from the previous entry, every event in the game went according to his plan. And the game ends with his complete victory. Come WoW, they write him out of the story in a book, and he doesn't even appear in the Wrath of the Lich King. That's bad, but nowhere near as bad as what's to come - years later, with the new creatives at the helm, we find out that Ner'zhul was always just a powerless puppet, and the real mastermind was their newly invented character - the Jailer.
This is actually EXACTLY what Veilguard does, as they introduce superpowered jews who have actually been controlling the series' most complex and beloved antagonist, Loghain. As well as everything and everyone else.

 

[Sweeper]

I mean wasn't the series cooked already with Inquisition?

No, it was cooked with the sequel to Origins.

Series was cooked with Origins.

Origins was okay.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Warrax]

Pure speculation on my part: c-suite wanted the old regions written out with a view towards continuing to reinvent Dragon Age as a YA or romantasy setting going forward. Chasing the ever cryptozoological modern audience, tasteless and profitable, "unburdened by what has been" so to speak.

I don't know, I don't buy it. Isn't Tevinter also technically an old region? I think it's the decision of the writers, who were too high on their own farts. When you have no respect for the original work, it makes you do crazy things.

If you read some of the things Epler and Busche have said, it's clear they felt weighed down by established lore and player's choices. Their approach was to avoid complication rather than embrace it. Here's an Epler quote from this IGN interview:

For Dragon Age: The Veilguard, among many reasons why we moved to Northern Thedas is it becomes a little bit more of a clean slate for us. There's not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what's happening in Northern Thedas. And we don't have to speak directly to things like who is the Divine? Because again, that's happening in the South.

They see complicated narrative as a liability and resent the CRPG player base that demands it. Since Origins they've been trying to ditch that fanbase by appealing to the brainless button=awesome crowd. Nuking the DA lore is just another step in that direction.

 

[Tyranicon]

Slop eaters are and have always been the target audience for corporate media.

Just look at the Veilguard reviews.

"Yeah I puke every 5 seconds but at least the environments look cool. It's not as bad as the haters say. Recommended."

This is the future they want.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Pure speculation on my part: c-suite wanted the old regions written out with a view towards continuing to reinvent Dragon Age as a YA or romantasy setting going forward. Chasing the ever cryptozoological modern audience, tasteless and profitable, "unburdened by what has been" so to speak.

I don't know, I don't buy it. Isn't Tevinter also technically an old region? I think it's the decision of the writers, who were too high on their own farts. When you have no respect for the original work, it makes you do crazy things.

If you read some of the things Epler and Busche have said, it's clear they felt weighed down by established lore and player's choices. Their approach was to avoid complication rather than embrace it. Here's an Epler quote from this IGN interview:

For Dragon Age: The Veilguard, among many reasons why we moved to Northern Thedas is it becomes a little bit more of a clean slate for us. There's not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what's happening in Northern Thedas. And we don't have to speak directly to things like who is the Divine? Because again, that's happening in the South.

They see complicated narrative as a liability and resent the CRPG player base that demands it. Since Origins they've been trying to ditch that fanbase by appealing to the brainless button=awesome crowd. Nuking the DA lore is just another step in that direction.

Fair enough, as I've noted before, I have no experience with the setting myself to draw on. From the outside looking in, Veilguard seems like a distinct tonal shift towards the preferences of a different specific audience rather than those of the typical lowest common denominator.

 

[Gargaune]

Yeah, I'm sure it did "almost exactly as Dragon's Dogma 2" with almost exactly one quarter 40% of its concurrent players peak on Steam. Everything's fine and definitely, absolutely, indubitably not terrible.

P.S. Sorry, I was still stuck on my Starfield numbers, thanks to my

taggers.

 

[Cohesion]

Codex anons! Good strong friend anons! Sales is irrelevance anons because globalist shekel demon will reward American California brain disease nonsense anons with infinity Blackrock funding anons! It is true anons! It is!

Timeless: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...te-daemonhunters-released.142894/post-7917542

 

[Sweeper]

God I miss AWS.

 

[rubinstein]

are you aware the key words here are "in the UK"?
so we learnt that brits are retarded, wow, truly surprising

 

[Late Bloomer]

If sales were good, EA would let everyone know.

 

[Larianshill]

Codex anons! Good strong friend anons! Sales is irrelevance anons because globalist shekel demon will reward American California brain disease nonsense anons with infinity Blackrock funding anons! It is true anons! It is!

Timeless: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...te-daemonhunters-released.142894/post-7917542

I hate this faggot so much, I'm glad that this gimmick account is dead

 

[Warrax]

If you wanna know what EA's expectations were read these statements by the CEO:

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/dr...ews-and-limited-competition-in-the-aaa-space/

"When we think about what we have with Veilguard right now, we have a storied studio in BioWare, we have a storied IP with Dragon Age, we have a team that took extra time to make sure the world was rich and the characters were interesting and the story was compelling," Wilson said.

"I think we're going into a market that has limited competition for this category of game, given some of the moves that have happened across the broader industry," he added, seemingly referencing the shift toward live-service that's happening across many AAA studios, EA included. "And so while I think it's too early to predict the outcome, the critical reviews have been incredibly strong. The team feels really energized by what they have delivered. And my sense is that, yes, it has breakout capabilities."

This is the quarterly investors call, not some bullshit PR piece, so it's likely what he actually thinks. It's obviously not the "breakout" they hoped for, but if they were aiming for that they were probably ready to accept the risk of it failing also.

Imagine what the game would be like if they didn't take "extra time" to improve the characters and story. Saying there's "limited competition for this category of game" means he didn't think they'd be competing with BG3 for players, which they absolutely are.

You look at this guy's background and he's another clueless non-gamer. Hired originally at EA because he was a jock and they were making sports games so needed someone who'd actually played sports.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

...it felt like dumbed down trash and decline of Bioware.

But enough about Baldur's Gate.

 

[Harthwain]

This is the quarterly investors call, not some bullshit PR piece, so it's likely what he actually thinks. It's obviously not the "breakout" they hoped for, but if they were aiming for that they were probably ready to accept the risk of it failing also.

[...]

You look at this guy's background and he's another clueless non-gamer. Hired originally at EA because he was a jock and they were making sports games so needed someone who'd actually played sports.

I think this highlights the problem of being out of touch. They don't know how things work and at the same time don't have the right people to tell them what's actually going on. "Critical reviews" aren't worth much when they don't reflect the opinion of the general audience. Who pays the shills, gets fooled by the shills.

 

[Skinwalker]

Has this flopped harder than Androgyny?

 

[Yosharian]

are you aware the key words here are "in the UK"?
so we learnt that brits are retarded, wow, truly surprising

I'm assuming this shows that the game is doing well in the UK

If that's the case I can tell you that the reason that that is happening is because everyone is so fucking depressed in this country that they probably bought the game out of desperation that it might bring them a tiny bit of happiness

Expect the suicide rate to skyrocket shortly

 

[Yosharian]

...it felt like dumbed down trash and decline of Bioware.

But enough about Baldur's Gate.

How dare you!

 

[-M-]

This is the quarterly investors call, not some bullshit PR piece

Investor calls are very much bullshit PR pieces.

When was the last time you heard a CEO say "my bad" on one of these?

 

[Xorazm]

Pure speculation on my part: c-suite wanted the old regions written out with a view towards continuing to reinvent Dragon Age as a YA or romantasy setting going forward. Chasing the ever cryptozoological modern audience, tasteless and profitable, "unburdened by what has been" so to speak.

I don't know, I don't buy it. Isn't Tevinter also technically an old region? I think it's the decision of the writers, who were too high on their own farts. When you have no respect for the original work, it makes you do crazy things.

If you read some of the things Epler and Busche have said, it's clear they felt weighed down by established lore and player's choices. Their approach was to avoid complication rather than embrace it. Here's an Epler quote from this IGN interview:

For Dragon Age: The Veilguard, among many reasons why we moved to Northern Thedas is it becomes a little bit more of a clean slate for us. There's not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what's happening in Northern Thedas. And we don't have to speak directly to things like who is the Divine? Because again, that's happening in the South.

They see complicated narrative as a liability and resent the CRPG player base that demands it. Since Origins they've been trying to ditch that fanbase by appealing to the brainless button=awesome crowd. Nuking the DA lore is just another step in that direction.

Fair enough, as I've noted before, I have no experience with the setting myself to draw on. From the outside looking in, Veilguard seems like a distinct tonal shift towards the preferences of a different specific audience rather than those of the typical lowest common denominator.

I think you're both right, actually. The new group of writers wanted to nuke the lore in order to make room for their self-inserts and whatever else their brilliant minds could conjure up, unburdened by what came before. And what they wanted to do with that clean slate was to write YA style romantacy. One of the few remaining mysteries in my mind is whether this was due to a push from EA to go after the younger audience (them dumping 120 million into the utterly horrid Immortals of Aveum which - yes I stand by this - had worse YA/Marvel writing than even Veilguard, remains very perplexing) or a deliberate choice by the writers.

Personally I'm leaning towards it coming primarily from the writers. There was one point in the trans critique that jumped out at me, about how similar all the writing feels to something called BookToc, right down to specific tropes and the terror of offending anyone. I've never heard of this community, but we all know how easy it is to get sucked into and consumed by groupthink, so I can most definitely see a group of writers up the asshole of this community shitting out this drivel and thinking "yeah .... BookToc is gonna love this."

Which they probably did. Problem is that it still fucking sucks. And when reality slaps back, it does it with an open hand.