why is nobody talking about Veilguard

[Pyrephox]

I will say I have returned to A Place after doing A Thing, and I take back the ‘not as dark’ comment. It can definitely bring the dark.

NEVERMIND. Spoiler does not actually spoiler. Bah.

[Jenn]

I’m not playing it, for a mix of reasons, but mostly because poor hand/eye coordination, pain, and focus/fatigue/energy issues.

But it looks cool af, and I would LOVE to see others playing it. So. If any of y’all are game streamers who like folks asking silly questions about shit while you’re off adventuring, I’d be down to tag along from time to time!

[Dreampipe]

I kinda just have trouble with the Dragon Age series in general. Played all of them except Veilguard on launch. Origins skyrocketed to my favorite game when it first came out, then Dragon Age 2 was a big shift away from all that. Inquisition was a huge game that made you do a lot of MMO-esque grinding to get to the good stuff.

Just feels like the games have been struggling to get a concrete identity on how they’re played for so long. I want it to be good, it’s a really cool world. I’m just hesitant.

[sao]

I am going to play it eventually, but I am not in the mood right now for a big rpg.

[Rinel]

@Tez said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

DAI burnt the shit out of me. I really did not like it. I’m waiting for wider reporting and feedback on Veilguard from people I trust. SO HURRY UP GUYS.

Much better combat than inquistion, much less mmo feel, equally or perhaps even more scattered focus in terms of setting and story, worst writing in the series by far. Really suffers from essentially no connection to prior games or locations.

Fundamental miss on so much of what made Origins and II so compelling (religion, politics, culture, how people are products of their environment). Pretty much all of your companions feel like folks from 2024 isekai’d into Thedas.

On that last note: some people are BIG MAD about the focus on trans issues, but they can shove it. The options for Rook being trans are actively good, and a subplot regarding a character discovering their own gender identity is fumbled pretty badly but is at least attempted.

Liz verdict as she nears the end: buy now if you’re the hugest DA fan ever or are desperate for even an ok game (I got it for the election), wait for a sale if you like DA and aren’t desperate for a game right now, possibly avoid if what matters most to you is a lore rich world full of interesting issues and solid characterization.

6.5 out of 10. Hurt most by the fact that comparisons to early games come so easily.

[Testament]

The problem with Veilguard is that it’s…serviceable. That isn’t to say it’s a bad game, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to call it a great game either. Everything is…fine. About the biggest standout in the game is the visuals and art direction, that’s probably my favorite thing about it.

The story is boilerplate, though oddly better than Inquisition’s story. Inquisition’s story annoyed me because it’s main villain was basically a cipher for the story, had no actual character themselves other than being ‘bad’. Also found it weird that their mainline game antagonist came from a DLC of the previous game. So whatever.

I have issues with the voice acting. At some points it’s fine, even good(at least with interactions with Solas and Varric because their VAs know what the fuck their doing), but I have a particular disconnect with some of your companions VA(Neve especially)where they delivers lines either unsure or stilted or something that I can’t quite put my finger on. It kind of gets better as your progress through the game where they feel like they’re getting comfortable with the character, but I’m also going to chalk this up to very lousy voice direction and script writing.

Which yeah, the script is just…bad. While the plot is fine, whoever wrote the script needs to get better at it. Now, I’m going to put two points of contention onto this. One, being the game was changes a couple times through it’s almost ten year development cycle, so I have no idea how many rewrites happened in that time. And after checking the writing credits on Veilguard’s IMDB, it becomes a lot more clear as to why the writing isn’t up to par. A number of people on the writing team had barely, if any, legitimate writing credits. When you factor in that I suspect some of this was happening during the writer’s strike, and knowing EA’S penchant for not wanting to pay, they probably just pulled people who had some kind of, if minimal, writing experience off another team. AFAIK, this also affected the voice direction. Is it the whole reason? Probably not, and I imagine there’s a lot more extraneous factors at play, but it’s the most glaring that I’ve found thus far.

However, not gonna lie, I actually enjoy the combat of the game, even if it’s some weird blend of God of War Ragnarok mixed with some diet Dark Souls. Which, considering how this game was in development during the time where these games were big, it’s kind of not hard to miss that they probably took inspiration from them. Which is whatever.

That said, Dragon Age has never, and I mean never figured out what it wants to be. Every time, every installment of the series, everything is changed up. Systems, combat, mechanics, etc. It’s different. It goes from one playstyle, to another, to another, to another. It strikes me as if the series is just chasing trends at this point and can’t figure out it’s own thing. It’s the core opposite to what Mass Effect did, which was just build upon and improve what they already had. Origins was fine, but some people thought it was too hard being a Baldur’s Gate love letter, so they dumbed it down to hack n’slash of an almost Devil May Cry lite. People thout that was too dumb and too easy, so it was changed to an MMO-lite…thing from Inquisition. Which was just too grindy, because goddamn was that game too grindy.

I think the devs just played it safe. There’s no conflict between your party members, everyone gets along, and it plays like it’s some kind of low-bar Netflix series you can binge in a weekend. Which if that’s what you’re looking for? Cool. Veilguard does what it needs to. And while I criticize the game, I’m still playing it. I’m still enjoying it. That’s generally my biggest though and takeaway. It’s played safe. They don’t take any kind of risk or chances with it. There was something that could’ve been really, really good. But if I’m being perfectly honest, the last Dragon Age game that had a compelling charactes and stories was probably the first two.

As for the transgender topical matter in it, I could not care. Twitter sure as fuck cares, but that’s Twitter for you. Is it written kind of…cringe? And I say cringe because it just wasn’t written well. So yeah, there are some points that does not handle that topic well, or even nuanced. To a certain point I think it does more of a disservice. But if someone is bothered by that, just go be asshole elsewhere.

I dunno, it’s a big mixed bag of shit. If you like the lore, it’s mostly consistent with the lore and adds stuff onto it. This isn’t exactly how I had hoped for the northern part of Thedas to be explored after it had been talked about for the past three games. It seems like such a drastic departure from how Trespasser ended, but again, it’s not bad. It’s just not what I had hoped for. It’s serviceable. It’s fine.

[Rinel]

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

If you like the lore, it’s mostly consistent with the lore and adds stuff onto it.

Honestly my biggest complaint about the game is the massive elimination of basically any mystery from the past several thousand years.

[Testament]

@Rinel Oh, I have questions about some of the plot points I’ve encountered. Ones that I will not reveal. There’s a plot device you get very very very early in the game and later Varric talks about what it is, which really made me side eye the narrative.

[Roz]

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

I have issues with the voice acting. At some points it’s fine, even good(at least with interactions with Solas and Varric because their VAs know what the fuck their doing), but I have a particular disconnect with some of your companions VA(Neve especially)where they delivers lines either unsure or stilted or something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Agree that Neve’s voice work in particular feels oddly stilted.

A number of people on the writing team had barely, if any, legitimate writing credits. When you factor in that I suspect some of this was happening during the writer’s strike, and knowing EA’S penchant for not wanting to pay, they probably just pulled people who had some kind of, if minimal, writing experience off another team.

I’m not sure why the writer’s strike would have an impact here. Video games weren’t one of the industries that the WGA was striking against, and the WGA doesn’t include video game writers AFAIK.

[Wuff]

I felt like I got a huge Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe from the whole thing. The claim that they couldn’t import anything from the Dragon Age Keep and decided to just keep everything past vague if not ignored feels kind of lazy when they still have that data. They easily could have just mined it and used the choices that were made most commonly for most things. Plot by consensus.

[Testament]

@Wuff The companion conversations have no fail state, no situation where one of them gets so pissed at you leave is kind of, no very, annoying.

As negative as I can be about Inquisition, there were those fail states. Treat the mages badly enough, and I distinctly remember Dorian chewing your ass out. Which also gave you the option to put him on his ass with a punch, which makes him leave.

There’s no options like that. I think I could look past everything about Veilguard if it had just been willing to commit to some kind of interpersonal conflict instead of everyone literally gets along.

As a sidethought, it’s honestly making me go back and rethink my opinion on DA2 and how much scorn I had held for it for such a long time. Say whatever you want about continously reused and recycled maps/environments, the Ashatok was a great mid-game villain and made the Qunari actually terrifying as a potentially antagonistic faction. While I really like the art style of the game, I absolutely hate how the Qunari look now. I think that’s the one part of the game’s lore that was changed too much.

Then again, the Qunari suddenly have horns from DA2 and forward and Sten from Origins being a weird exception was also a massive departure.

[Roz]

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

Say whatever you want about continously reused and recycled maps/environments

da2 best da fite me

[Testament]

@Roz Meredith was a weak villain, Anders should’ve become the main antagonist since they changed the character so much from Awakenings. That’s my largest complaint beyond the issue about having recycled maps.

[Roz]

@Testament i can’t hear you above the sound of the best cast and the most daring narrative

[Testament]

@Roz I dunno about most daring narrative, but I’ve never disagreed with DA2 having had the best group of companions. Certainly better than Inquisition by leagues.

Probably better than Origins. Like, who the fuck ever used Wynn.

[Roz]

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

@Roz I dunno about most daring narrative, but I’ve never disagreed with DA2 having had the best group of companions. Certainly better than Inquisition by leagues.

Of the first three DA games (just because I haven’t finished the third), it’s the only one that has a narrative built on the arc of a tragedy. It’s not the traditional heroic arc that most games are built on. It’s a narrative where you cannot win at the end. It’s not just the most daring of the DA games, it’s the sort of narrative structure that most video games don’t dare to embrace.

Probably better than Origins. Like, who the fuck ever used Wynn.

Omfg Wynn is great

[Pavel]

@Roz said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

WGA doesn’t include video game writers AFAIK

It does, though not many video games are written by members, and the WGA Awards had a category for video games from 2008 - 2019. It gets complicated and political quick if you do a deep dive on it, so for the sake of your sanity I’d just not.

[Wuff]

Dropping spolier warnings here for some rants about the game.

Spoiler

You’d think with having to choose which city to save from a dragon attack would have more negative effect than grumbling and not healing you before otherwise business as usual.

Watching Ghilan’nain freak out at the end of Weisshaupt pretty much cemented the Saturday Morning sterilization vibes. I was seriously expecting a ‘CURSES!’. Or the like.

Harding being freaked out by Lucanis and Spite enough she looks ready to put an arrow through them at a moments notice like Williams could do to Wrex in Mass Effect. But nope, she never takes the shot. So you end up not having one party member actually doing in another for what might be the good of the team.

And if you choose Davrin to lead the second team at the end. Why did they have Assan follow him in when they could have had him pull up just short to stay with Rook on like a dying order? And choosing Harding instead apparently locks you out of getting the stinger in the crappy golden ending. It feels needless and excessively cruel there.

The moments for being tragic could really have been picked and been handled better.

[Rinel]

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

Probably better than Origins. Like, who the fuck ever used Wynn.

Wynn is my favorite companion from Origins, haha

DA2… well. It certainly looks good in retrospect, doesn’t it? I wasn’t a fan of a lot of its choices, but pretty much all of them (besides rushing it and endlessly reusing environments) were better than Veilguard. Like, yeah, I think the only really memorable enemy is the Arishok, but he’s absolutely incredible.

[Roz]

@Rinel said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

@Testament said in why is nobody talking about Veilguard:

Probably better than Origins. Like, who the fuck ever used Wynn.

Wynn is my favorite companion from Origins, haha

DA2… well. It certainly looks good in retrospect, doesn’t it?