Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Thread

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

We were all too harsh on Dragon Age 2.

DAII had one solid excuse: it was forced to be released early by the publisher, and Bioware didn't really implement anything close to its intended scope of the project. Probably, you'd be visiting several other cities and a whole bunch of various environments outside of Kirkwall. The entire Qurani arc would have made sense only if they occupied a whole city for themselves, not a district of Kirkwall.

They didn’t have any excuse. Dragon Age 2 was made stupid, it’s that simple. They knew how much time they had to make the game, which wasn’t exactly some crazy short amount of time given the time it was made, and they did stupid shit like spend time trying to implement a more action oriented combat system instead of using the same combat system they’d already created for Origins. Like that’s just fucking stupid, imagine you’re making a sequel to a successful game, people seemed to like the combat system, (at least the PC version of it) you’re on a tight deadline, and you think this is the to revamp the combat system instead of just using what you already did and focusing elsewhere.

The move to a more action-oriented combat system worked for ME2, it's heads and tails above ME1.

It's more that they didn't implement it well in DA2. Multiple waves of enemies teleporting into the middle of the battlefield into random spots that mess up your party positioning still haunt my dreams. They either needed to stay closer to the Origins combat system, or move farther away from it. What we got was the worst of both worlds.

What's really inexcusable is the abortion of a combat system in Cisquisition. It's not often you play a game that makes you feel sad for how utterly pathetic it is at doing whatever it's trying to do. They had tons of prior experience, tons of development time, tons of everything to get it right - and made it even worse than DA2. Everything is pathetic in DA3, the mechanics and the animations. It's ugly on the outside and the inside.

Of vileshart nothing needs to be said.

Mass Effect 1 and 2 are both third person shooters, and the team had a little over two whole years of development in which they could work out changes in their cover based third person shooter system.

Look, if the idea is that BioWare didn’t have the time to make Dragon Age 2, then they needed to spend what time they had wisely. If the deadline is so tight, I’d say making a whole new combat system built around the shitty combat system they implemented in the console version of Origins was a mismanagement of time. You already have the combat system from the PC version of Origins, they should’ve just reused that system and spent their time elsewhere. Maybe make some changes, but largely just reuse the previous game’s combat system. Like maybe if you’re on the time table BioWare was for Dragon Age 2, then Dragon Age 2 isn’t the time to radically rethink how combat works. Especially if you don’t really need to rethink it in the first place if you just go with the combat system from the PC version of Origins. The whole reason they seemingly even went the action route is some believe based on nothing that real-time tactical combat of Origins wouldn’t fly on consoles...which makes no sense at all given their own Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic game on Xbox, and Final Fantasy 12 on the PS2 which had sold better than anything BioWare had ever made up to that point. And BioWare was definitely aware of what Final Fantasy 12 had done since the Gambit System is in Origins.

I didn’t play Inquisition, but what I saw of the combat system looked fucking horrible, horrible and extremely boring. Like you could tell the combat would be bad from what they showed, and how they tried not to show it in trailers. But I remember seeing someone post a Let’s Play of it here years ago and it looked fucking terrible, even worse than I originally seemed it could be.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

when i was a kid a two years distance brought an unthinkable amount of progress and improvements. on average, 6 months and you were already obsolete, either because of new hardware or somebody found a trick to make the old one work better. now we have devs who hope that people would forget 20 fucking years in order to deliver less.
humanity peaked in the '90s and we didn't know it.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

View attachment 58322

View attachment 58321

"Yeah, we didn't bother implementing it, but the people who replace us in 10 years might."

View attachment 58324

It just keeps on getting better. They really must think the entire fanbase are complete idiots. They had the Keep system, which to most of the fanbase was probably acting as a implicit safety net of "regardless how shit this new entry looks, at least this nice website created for the purpose of maintaining variable worldstates will mean my choices are reflected in the game and I might get some reactivity to that". Then in the eleventh hour, operation clown squad reveals that they've decided to completely ignore a premade, bespoke & functional system for their latest magnum opus, spending resources on player choices (but resources were spent on making entire arcs for non-binary drivel).

By the time a theoretical DA5 releases, DA1 will be what, 20+, 25 years old if Mass Effect & DA5 take 5 years apiece and they expect people to think they'll do anything differently to what they just did with Veilguard? "Oh, those games are too old now, nobody played them so we ignored them" will be the status quo and same excuse rolled out for anyone supporting this comedy troupe moving forward. You've already (apparently, I haven't played it to verify) fucked up the lore and squandered the choices from past games, even if a theoretical new entry went whole-hog on worldstates via the keep, the continuity damage is still done. There's still a big steaming turd, stinkier than DA2 even, sitting right in the middle of the series. They had 10 years and couldn't even bother to implement some basic-ass reactivity via the Codex or a couple of lines here and there and instead elected to have prominent characters show up with no clue what their own past history was. Can't fix that now.

That's to say nothing of the fact that nobody at BioWare can write worth a damn anymore, you've let loose a bunch of trannies in the toy box and nobody is impressed or suprised by the results.

I don’t see their being a Dragon Age 5. If there is another Dragon Age game, probably made by a studio that isn’t called BioWare, they probably just reboot the whole thing instead of pretending the games are even connected to begin with.

In fact they probably should’ve done that a long time ago. Just treat Dragon Age like Final Fantasy. Ever game is a new setting, and the thing that ties the setting together are some enemies, the Dragon Age races, some ideas about certain types of magic, some basic concepts, and maybe every game has the Deep Roads or something. They’d probably save themselves some headaches if they weren’t pretending this game is meant to take place in the same world as Origins, especially since they seemingly have no interest in the Dragon Age setting as it was in the first game or even the second game. This game would still be shit, but there’d be a little less to go after them about.

The Mass Effect game they’re planning should probably reboot too. Just take the things people like, and do a new Star Wars James Bond game without the baggage of trying to set it after Mass Effect 3. Hell, after Andromeda I doubt anyone would even give a shit if a new Mass Effect game took place in a different setting; I mean after 3 they likely wouldn’t care, but after Andromeda they really wouldn’t care.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

when i was a kid a two years distance brought an unthinkable amount of progress and improvements. on average, 6 months and you were already obsolete, either because of new hardware or somebody found a trick to make the old one work better. now we have devs who hope that people would forget 20 fucking years in order to deliver less.
humanity peaked in the '90s and we didn't know it.

The funny thing about these new longer development cycles is everything also cycles out of the pop culture zeitgeist faster now. It used to be that something that was hugely popular would stay hugely popular for decades. Some movie was a giant hit in the ‘70s... it’s still big in the ‘90s. If you were a kid in the ‘90s watching TV, theres a good chance a number of thing you grew up watching were also things your parents grew up watching as well. Now it’s just: Next thing, next thing, next thing. These video games that take a decade for a new one to come out, they can’t weather that amount of time out of the limelight. Like you actually need to be releasing new games at the rate they used to more now than they did back then; or you need to have some massive online component that’s keeping people around and being updated constantly.

Video games series and studios largely build their reputations and grow their sales on iterating what they did before, and they used to do that like every every year, or every other year. Sometimes you’ll have someone that just kind of comes out of nowhere with a massive hit, but that’s rare. But you sit things out for as long as Dragon Age did, which was never particularly huge to begin with, and nobody is going to care when the next thing come out. I kind of wonder how the next Elder Scrolls will do when that comes out. It’s been 13 years since Skyrim, and Bethesda’s reputation hasn’t been improving since then. And while I’m sure there’s a lot of Skyrim fans eagerly awaiting the next Elder Scrolls games, I wonder around what age range do you hit where Elder Scrolls just doesn’t mean anything to a person really. Like I’d guess most people that play video games that are teenager, or just 20 right now probably don’t give a fucking shit about Elder Scrolls; and the next Elder Scrolls still seems like it could be a few years off.

 

[Morality Games]

Played through the DAO City Elf origin story. Kind of boring. The writing isn't very good in places, the human noble villain is is overly dramatic and doesn't feel like a real character as a result. The controls and camera viewpoint are awkward. The combat has depth obviously but it's not very engaging at the start because you have such limited access to stuff.

Still, what struck me more than anything is the complete control you have over what your character says. I can be a right bastard towards all the humans, even the human prince guy. Or I can be nice. I can even be horrible to members of my family, or the other elves in the city quarter. It's a far cry from Veilguard's neutered toxic positivity.

Anyway I don't think this origin is as good as the Dwarf Noble or the Human Noble ones.

The Dwarf Noble is the best origin, the Magi and Dwarf commoner are good. I liked the lore about the dwarves, Orzammar and ruthless dwarven politics. Nobles treating commoners and the Casteless dwarves as dirt and them living in squalor were pretty novel for RPGs. The double gut punch of Bhelen's betrayal with the battle of Ostagar and losing Duncan who saved your life is memorable if you start as Aeducan.

In DA:O city Elf orgin story is better for female Elf.
The worst and boring one is Dalish Elf.

Both Elven origins aren't good.

Caste system in Orzammar never really made sense though. How is it even feasible for dwarves to have a large underclass who serve no purpose except drain their resources? They cannot fight in the army as cannon fodder, they can't do any jobs which leads them towards crime. Why even keep them in the city then, what's their point?

Well, that's sort of the point. If you value economic effiiciency, no caste system "makes sense" because you are arbitarily preventing large groups of or even the vast majority of people from pursuing their ambitions and cultivating their talents. When ambitious and talented people aren't allowed to organize industry and build business, the economic growth of your society suffers.

However, most historic cultures valued stability and tradition over economic efficiency and dwarves in fantasy settings often value stability and tradition to a fault. Given the choice between continuing to exist and staying the same or changing and prospering, Orzammar is the kind of society that would choose to continue to exist and stay the same. The way they do things is "good enough" because Orzammar still exists and to some degre that reflects the attitude of historic societies.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

They really must think the entire fanbase are complete idiots.

 

[Digital Goat]

When I played DA:O back in 2009 the game seemed quite average to me, boring in parts, with a simple lore but interesting companions. The mechanics were unimpressive. Even back then, I was already sick of the fucking dragons that bearded, autistic gamedevs love so much; I just tolerated that part of the lore, no big deal.
Dragon Age II turned out to be more mmoish and dynamic in a bad way, visually not bad in some places, esp the city at night, but otherwise quickly forgotten.
I played Inquisition for a maximum of an hour and uninstalled it as soon as realized the heavy feminist propaganda I had encountered. But okay, I didn't expect anything from this crap, so there were no disappointments.
Haha, and as for Veilguard – well, who's surprised by the result? The game is literally being made by trannies, the entire inherently lame draconic shit-tier lore has long been exhausted in the previous parts, and there was never much hype. Obviously and expectedly, they made what they do best: not a GAME, but one big fucking tweet on important social issues.
Who cares? Who cares.
AAA game releases novadays are, first of all, a shitshow so Special People & other vegetables of color may hype and convulse in terminal state of happiness and joy while you, fellow codexers, scream&cry..and laugh, of course.
There is no hope, but again – fuck it

 

[Thalstarion]

I'm just tired of the myth that writing a consistent and coherent story is such a rare skill. It really isn't.

Before the current batch of nutters infested many role-playing communities it wasn't at all difficult to find competent writers. Many were entirely self taught and didn't necessarily speak English as their first language but their passion for fantasy settings - either specific canon ones or their own creations - drove them forward.

Over time, however, many game development teams started looking at anyone who paid attention to the story with contempt. As a threat to the slop they intended to push out in lieu of a more memorable experience.

Hit up any fan site for a specific setting and there's still usually a handful of passionate, stubborn individuals who know the ins and outs of even the most obscure scraps of lore for their favourite franchise. Yet rather than approach those individuals for advice or even to hire them...more often than not they're ignored in favour of the dregs of society who look at something like Dragon Age: Origins and treat it purely as a dating sim altered through the tumblr lens.

 

[Poseidon00]

Letting you use the character creator for free is good bait I will admit. I'm a sucker for these things, in a normal world they might have got me with that one.

 

[Cael]

I'm just tired of the myth that writing a consistent and coherent story is such a rare skill. It really isn't.

Before the current batch of nutters infested many role-playing communities it wasn't at all difficult to find competent writers. Many were entirely self taught and didn't necessarily speak English as their first language but their passion for fantasy settings - either specific canon ones or their own creations - drove them forward.

Over time, however, many game development teams started looking at anyone who paid attention to the story with contempt. As a threat to the slop they intended to push out in lieu of a more memorable experience.

Hit up any fan site for a specific setting and there's still usually a handful of passionate, stubborn individuals who know the ins and outs of even the most obscure scraps of lore for their favourite franchise. Yet rather than approach those individuals for advice or even to hire them...more often than not they're ignored in favour of the dregs of society who look at something like Dragon Age: Origins and treat it purely as a dating sim altered through the tumblr lens.

It is for absolute retards. These are people who can't even THINK coherently, let alone express themselves so. These mouthbreathers can't even recognise the alphabet if you slam the Encyclopedia Britannica into their faces. It is not only hard for them to be consistent and coherent, it is outright impossible.

 

[Gargaune]

when i was a kid a two years distance brought an unthinkable amount of progress and improvements. on average, 6 months and you were already obsolete, either because of new hardware or somebody found a trick to make the old one work better. now we have devs who hope that people would forget 20 fucking years in order to deliver less.
humanity peaked in the '90s and we didn't know it.

That wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though, keeping up with hardware requirements in the late 90s and early 2000s was a real drag on the wallet. The one good thing about the console cycle was slamming the breaks a bit on the hardware arms race.

Though even today it's still happening to some extent, albeit for much stupider reasons. For example, Bethesda are now saying my i7-9700K isn't good enough to run their new Indiana Jones game (not that I was interested mind you). Now, granted, a five year-old CPU is no spring chicken, but at least back in the day, that extra required grunt would've gone for both visual and gameplay upgrades, you'd have gotten a signifcant new standard in your gaming experience, whereas now I guarantee you that the only they're doing is rendering more raytraced hairs in Indy's stubble and putting even less effort into optimising their shitty code.

 

[Sweeper]

humanity peaked in the '90s and we didn't know it.

You never know you were living in good times until the bad times come.
You're in the 4th century Rome timeline now, have fun.

 

[cvv]

Out of curiosity, I checked the concurrents and it's 5k rn, with a daily peak around 10k.

A month from the launch.

A mainline Dragon Age game. With 200+ million budget. With massive EA marketing machine behind it.

Kingdom Come Deliverance - a weird, niche Kickstarter clunkfest made by a few dozen greasy Slavs in tracksuits for about 15 million - had a higher all-time peak than DAV and a month from the launch it still attracted around 40k people daily.

Perspective is a bitch ain't it?

 

[Sweeper]

a weird

Fuck you mean weird? Don't make me put you on the list.

 

[kapisi]

 

[Dishonoredbr]

more often than not they're ignored in favour of the dregs of society who look at something like Dragon Age: Origins and treat it purely as a dating sim altered through the tumblr lens.

Which is really funny considering that their own fans seems to dislike romances in Veilguard.. What else they fans gonna talk if even their romances are bad lol

Spoiler

 

[A-Minish]

Holy Mother of all horrors. The music, the slang, the way of speaking, the oozing of emotion, the fetishes. An almost perfect time capsule of Tumblr weirdos infecting the franchise.

A taste of the abyss

...

 

[cpmartins]

Letting you use the character creator for free is good bait I will admit. I'm a sucker for these things, in a normal world they might have got me with that one.

You can just pirate it if you absolutely need to see what it leads to.

 

[Elttharion]

“We’re very happy with the critical reception to the game,” she claimed. “It’s not common to have these challenging development cycles and have a team turn around and receive the critical reception that it did. In fact, in a lot of ways, that is the harder path to take. So yeah, we’re quite proud of the critical reception.”

“Unfortunately on the sales side, that’s not something we can really discuss, but of course as we know with Inquisition, that was a long burn to get to those total sales numbers.”

 

[Semiurge]

Do not look at the comments. Fuck in 'ell.

 

[Semiurge]

Holy Mother of all horrors. The music, the slang, the way of speaking, the oozing of emotion, the fetishes. An almost perfect time capsule of Tumblr weirdos infecting the franchise.

A taste of the abyss

...

Het is ew

 

[bat_boro]

“We’re very happy with the critical reception to the game,” she claimed. “It’s not common to have these challenging development cycles and have a team turn around and receive the critical reception that it did. In fact, in a lot of ways, that is the harder path to take. So yeah, we’re quite proud of the critical reception.”

“Unfortunately on the sales side, that’s not something we can really discuss, but of course as we know with Inquisition, that was a long burn to get to those total sales numbers.”

“She”

 

[Tyranicon]

Imagine making the most diverse arrpeegee ever only to drive your fanbase into sexing an old white man.

The level of fail in this game is immeasurable.

 

[processdaemon]

Imagine making the most diverse arrpeegee ever only to drive your fanbase into sexing an old white man.

The level of fail in this game is immeasurable.

The old dude was the least popular romance according to the statistics Bioware released, 4 of the top 5 are female so it looks like most of the players are still men (or maybe gay women). I was surprised too given how much people seemed to talk up Emmrich online, but I guess gerontophilic women are just an unusually vocal minority.

Romance stats

 

[Padzi]

The game currently has fewer than 10,000 players.
I saw they released a free-to-download character creator, but I don't think it will help boost sales.