Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard - coming October 31st

[Tyranicon]

Regardless is pretty hilarious to have BG3 come out, take over the whole conversation, leave people hungry for more, and then you have to show your 5 year old design based on 10 year old focus testing for an audience that no longer exists. No wonder these hacks were so eager to shit on turn based games.

I'll never forget when BG3 launched and all these devs came out to throw cold water on it.

 

[Storyfag]

-Larian approach to combat. There is some unique element in most combat encounters in BG3. Either enemies themselves, their postioning, timer, etc. Vailgaurd trailer lasts 20 minutes, yet they fight 3 identical groups of cultists and 3 identical groups of demons.

Lack of enemy variety and poor encounter design is a staple dating way back to DAO.

 

[Zlaja]

Lots of Mexicans and blacks now have the money to buy games

Still not enough. Also, I'm pretty sure most Mexicans don't wanna play as black characters in videogames, either.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Awakening sould be real Part 2, not just mere DLC. Compressing it into an add-on form stifled any potential for something more.

Already made this point but Awakening was where the series went off the rails. Throwing away the dark fantasy apocalypse plot so they could do 'workers of the world unite' instead.

Is that how you remember it? I thought that the biggest sin of this expansion, apart from being an expansion, was the plot along the lines of: "Go to the basement where Satan lives, kill him and save the world."

 

[Heroic Liberator]

No goblin equivalent to tiefling content after first chapter, siding with Ketheric just meaning that you skip some content before you are forced to fight him anyway at the end of chapter 2

You do get Minthara though, if heavy smokers are your thing.

Which would've been more of a fair tradeoff if she was fully developed as a companion, but alas... she is not. Same as with the other non-origin characters.

But this is my point: will you have even this much choice in Dragon Age? I doubt it. Look at those dialog wheels. It's Oblivion and Mass Effect all over again.

Sure, but those go for a different design philosophy. If we compare BG3 to DAO instead, I think that Origins provides a superior illusion of narrative freedom due to how the dialogue is written. DAO dialogue also occasionally provides conventional C&C, but its strength lies in how it frames the character's self-justification for their choices. You can paint a very different mental image of your Warden from one playthrough to another despite otherwise making similar choices. BG3 meanwhile gives you more concrete narrative choices to be evil only for it to result in less narrative content for your playthrough hence playing evil makes for a less defined PC and often an awkwardly evil one at that when critical path stuff simply does not allow for you to be evil while also not giving you the same sort of self-justification through dialogue that Origins offers.

Ultimately, Durge stuff aside, being evil in BG3 mostly equals to:
-> doing evil stuff which cuts you off content rather than providing alternative content compared to a good playthrough
-> doing evil stuff whose consequences the narrative has to nullify in order for you to continue on the narrative path which was designed with a good PC in mind
-> when an evil alternative is not provided, being forced to do good stuff while also not being provided adequate self-justifications through dialogue to properly frame your choices as an evil PC

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Sure, but those go for a different design philosophy. If we compare BG3 to DAO instead, I think that Origins provides a superior illusion of narrative freedom due to how the dialogue is written. DAO dialogue also occasionally provides conventional C&C, but its strength lies in how it frames the character's self-justification for their choices. You can paint a very different mental image of your Warden from one playthrough to another despite otherwise making similar choices. BG3 meanwhile gives you more concrete narrative choices to be evil only for it to result in less narrative content for your playthrough hence playing evil makes for a less defined PC and often an awkwardly evil one at that when critical path stuff simply does not allow for you to be evil while also not giving you the same sort of self-justification through dialogue that Origins offers.

Ultimately, Durge stuff aside, being evil in BG3 mostly equals to:
-> doing evil stuff which cuts you off content rather than providing alternative content compared to a good playthrough
-> doing evil stuff whose consequences the narrative has to nullify in order for you to continue on the narrative path which was designed with a good PC in mind
-> when an evil alternative is not provided, being forced to do good stuff while also not being provided adequate self-justifications through dialogue to properly frame your choices as an evil PC

Very good post.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Regardless is pretty hilarious to have BG3 come out, take over the whole conversation, leave people hungry for more, and then you have to show your 5 year old design based on 10 year old focus testing for an audience that no longer exists. No wonder these hacks were so eager to shit on turn based games.

I'll never forget when BG3 launched and all these devs came out to throw cold water on it.

View attachment 50927

Yeah the coping by the devs that it was a Rockstar level game to make was hilarious

 

[Semiurge]

It's the basic larceny plot. You create an interesting quality product that gains a loyal customer base. Then you gradually cheapen the product in order to find out just how much worse it can get before it begins to severely affect your profits.

This "sweet spot" is actually pretty low on the quality scale. People just don't care if the brand is recognisable enough. This is exactly what EA has been doing to both Mass Effect and Dragon Age since they took over. They streamline and pander for as long as they can get away with it.

The difference is Mass Effect as a series had an established identity in it's trilogy of games. In other words, it had a legacy to cheapen in the first place. Dragon Age had one game before radically altering the art style, lore, tone, core combat, and even genre. It's one thing to be a fan of DA titles individually, but when someone calls themselves a fan of a series that has no baseline, what the hell does that even mean?

EA shat on Mass Effect many times. It has Shepard, re-occurring side characters and a consistent look across all three Shepard games, but the cheapening started with ME2 already. A bland bug-alien race called "collectors" as the main villain instead of the fascinating reapers. "Ammo" drops of cooling rods everywhere instead of weapon cooldown. A focus on companions instead of expanding the game world. The companions themselves are "unique heroes" who can't wear regular armor or use custom weapons. Their only customisation options are cosmetic outfits, and most of them are from paid DLCs.

And then there's ME3's ending.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Which would've been more of a fair tradeoff if she was fully developed as a companion, but alas... she is not. Same as with the other non-origin characters.

Eh. In terms of polish, yes. In terms of content, she has more than most DAO characters.

If we compare BG3 to DAO instead, I think that Origins provides a superior illusion of narrative freedom due to how the dialogue is written.

At the very start, maybe. After that, it's almost 100% fake Bioware choices. The only thing they do sort of better is giving the player the "freedom" of the order they explore areas. Gather the 4 mcguffins etc., like in KOTOR.

Really not much different from picking which path to Moonrise, albeit Moonrise was a choke point in the middle instead of the endgame.

BG3 meanwhile gives you more concrete narrative choices to be evil only for it to result in less narrative content for your playthrough hence playing evil makes for a less defined PC

I disagree, since the evil acts you can commit are far more meaningful than the flavor evils of other games. Are you a Durge that gives into madness? Are you a custom PC who is evil in other ways? Are you a brain-eating mind flayer? Are you a manipulator who played the druids against the teiflings, or were you a chaotic evil psychopath who butchered the teiflings for the fun of it?

The simplified ending is the greatest sin, I agree, but before that, there are any number of choices you can make to define your character.

DAO had concepts that were dropped or streamlined in the following games like prologue vignettes, which I did feel were incline, but that didn't really matter much by the endgame in most cases. The exception being the human noble, who gets a little extra content. And in the end, you still defeat the Archfiend, and the only choice is whether you bang Claudia Black first or not.

-> doing evil stuff whose consequences the narrative has to nullify in order for you to continue on the narrative path which was designed with a good PC in mind

Here's how my Durge path went:

Act I
met the frog
saved Shadowcunt
recruited the gay elf (tautology)
saved Gale instead of killing him
met the teiflings
recruited Wyll
recruited Karlach
got the druids to kill the teiflings so no one blamed me for it
kept and used the Necronomicon
recruited Halsin (though I think this was more of a bug because he shows no reaction to the druids dying)
sided with Minthara, who invaded without me because the teifs were already dead
knocked out Wyll and Karlach before the goblin party so they wouldn't know what happened (I will admit it is weak that I have to do this, but it's bugged, since I didn't kill the teifs anyway and he and Karlach will still blame me)
did the underdark etc and then doubled back to do the creche
made it to act 2 without killing a companion

Act II
killed the drider
went to the harper village
betrayed the other chosen in order to gain Jaheira's trust
gave into my durge instincts and killed the Mary Sue dyke upstairs for fun
lied to Jaheira about doing it
recruited Jaheira
got the Slayer form as a payment for killing the Mary Sue dyke

And I'll skip ahead to the endgame where Jaheira finally asks me how I got that Slayer form and I told her "by killing every harper in Last Light". Or the very end, where because I didn't save the teiflings, Karlach's smith dies and she burns away to ashes on the dock.

I won't even complete the list here, but I think you can already see parts that differ from your game. You can still get Jaheria, Minsc etc. You can still recruit the vast majority of NPCs if you're creative, or just kill them for the fun of it. You can just leave the teiflings to die and shrug. You can save them and still be an evil bastard in Last Light, or you can play the long game and not give in to evil until the end. That's a lot of ways to define a character and playstyle to me.

Not getting as much content as a good character because you specifically choose to murder all the NPCs isn't a negative. It should be expected. Otherwise there is no real consequence, and you just get the good flavor replaced with the evil flavor.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Lots of Mexicans and blacks now have the money to buy games

Still not enough. Also, I'm pretty sure most Mexicans don't wanna play as black characters in videogames, either.

I agree, but I think this is why these decisions are made, beyond ESG bucks.

 

[Tytus]

So she is just a clone of that retarded Asari from Andromeda (Peebee). Awesome.

 

[Storyfag]

the cheapening started with ME2 already. A bland bug-alien race called "collectors" as the main villain instead of the fascinating reapers.

Meh. The Reapers should have been a one-off thing, gone with the defeat of the Sovereign, not an overarching nemesis for 3 games.

 

[Sweeper]

They definitely don't like it: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/larian-already-made-the-dragon-age-4-i-was-hoping-for/

Never in my life did I think I'd end up saying this but, based vidya journos.

 

[Semiurge]

the cheapening started with ME2 already. A bland bug-alien race called "collectors" as the main villain instead of the fascinating reapers.

Med. The Reapers should have been a one-off thing, gone with the defeat of the Sovereign, not an overarching nemesis for 3 games.

Then they should've offered something better than mouthless bug people.

 

[Tyranicon]

Journos are reading our doomposts.

Also very surprised that PCGamer is going so hard on Dragon Age. Guess someone missed a payment

Goddam.

 

[Sweeper]

Journos are reading our doomposts.

The US government is controlled by 2.4% of the population that happens to hold dual citizenship.
The bolshevik leadership and the Soviet government were made up of the same population, in an equally disproportionate amount.
Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
JFK was assassinated by the CIA.
Operation Northwoods wasn't just a conspiracy theory.
Covid stopped existing when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Alex Jones is right.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Where is this from? I don't see it in the article.

 

[Tyranicon]

Where is this from? I don't see it in the article.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/dragon-age/larian-already-made-the-dragon-age-4-i-was-hoping-for/

 

[Semiurge]

If Vincent Price were still alive he should sue them for Emmrich.

A dwarf with magic powers?! Did they retcon that too at some point, or is she a halfbreed?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Which would've been more of a fair tradeoff if she was fully developed as a companion, but alas... she is not. Same as with the other non-origin characters.

Eh. In terms of polish, yes. In terms of content, she has more than most DAO characters.

She has neither a personal quest (not that DAO were anything fancy, mind you) nor enough camp dialogue, Her romance likewise is half-assed and doesn't have a proper gradual progression.

Although on this note, I guess a big negative in general is the difference between origin and non-origin companions since it ends up feeling jarring when the content isn't reasonably standardized. Same as with the sidekicks in Deadfire.

At the very start, maybe. After that, it's almost 100% fake Bioware choices. The only thing they do sort of better is giving the player the "freedom" of the order they explore areas. Gather the 4 mcguffins etc., like in KOTOR.

Sure, but it's the dialogue that does the heavy lifting imho. As previously mentioned, your choice can be interpreted differently depending on how you frame it for your PC and that adds depth to your PC. I also think that they did a reasonable job of balancing the content between the various faction choices that end the zonal storylines. And whichever faction you pick, the amount of content you get afterwards is equal (i.e. null besides who shows up for the battle at the end).

I disagree, since the evil acts you can commit are far more meaningful than the flavor evils of other games. [...] That's a lot of ways to define a character and playstyle to me.

Not getting as much content as a good character because you specifically choose to murder all the NPCs isn't a negative. It should be expected. Otherwise there is no real consequence, and you just get the good flavor replaced with the evil flavor.

Not sticking by the good playthrough just makes it narratively awkward. Sure, you can have your headcanon explanations for your machiavellianism if you're playing a less conventional playthrough, but the game itself doesn't acknowledge it nor does it provide extra content to tie things together in a more satisfying way. In DAO, the dialogue choices you had were designed with that in mind hence they gave flavor to your choice even when the choice itself was otherwise morally neutral (which is also why DA2 was such a downgrade when it stripped away the 'superfluous' dialogue lines in favor of a streamlined dialogue wheel with just temperament-based options).

As for murdering NPCs resulting in less content, sure. But if that's what the evil path is mostly reduced to, then that's bad design. There should be consequences to your actions in the game, but evil actions should be tied to the quests themselves just as much as good actions. There should be a symmetry of content in terms of unique quests, quest rewards and narrative branching for good and evil playthroughs. Larian's design though doesn't really take alignment into account. There's the broader content that was designed with a good character in mind and then there's the evil content added as an afterthought and poorly latched onto the preexisting 'neutral' path designed with good PCs in mind (with the obvious exception of the Durge, but that's due to it being a unique origin rather than a general evil path).

 

[Space Satan]

This game would fare better as a rhitm arcade

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

She has neither a personal quest (not that DAO were anything fancy, mind you) nor enough camp dialogue, Her romance likewise is half-assed and doesn't have a proper gradual progression.

Her progression is off, but there is some. And yeah, her "quest" is basically just the main quest, but it gives her content after you do it.

Karlach is similar though, apart from her romance and repair quests, since she's tied to Gortash. And Wyll's quest coincides with the main quest as well. So she's not entirely out of place.

As previously mentioned, your choice can be interpreted differently depending on how you frame it for your PC and that adds depth to your PC.

I just don't get how you give DAO points for it when BG3 does almost the same thing, but with the addition of non-dialog reactivity.

Sure, you can have your headcanon explanations for your machiavellianism if you're playing a less conventional playthrough, but the game itself doesn't acknowledge it nor does it provide extra content to tie things together in a more satisfying way.

The game absolutely acknowledges it when you kill Last Light. Every NPC, not just the evil ones, has a reaction to it. There are reactions to you killing the teiflings as well, but they remove NPCs - which is a consequence that I agree is too heavy handed narratively, but it's still a consequence that you chose.

That's the thing: you did it. You chose it. You took a goodie goodie to a murder party and you can't just act like it's not fair that they don't like it. You can replace them with a generic NPC from Withers if they leave and move on, or you can use the game's systems to avoid the consequences. But it is a choice that you made to get here when you could have just skipped it and left the druids to die by not helping either party.

Larian's design though doesn't really take alignment into account.

The characters all have relatively clear alignments as their basis, even if it's not shown in-game. The way they are written and the way they react to things. There is no know alignment spell being cast on you to see if you're evil ever, and there's not evil/good meter in the game, but I don't see this as a big negative, since most developers gamify such systems too much and they don't reflect how alignment is supposed to work anyway.

There's the broader content that was designed with a good character in mind and then there's the evil content added as an afterthought and poorly latched onto the preexisting 'neutral' path designed with good PCs in mind (with the obvious exception of the Durge, but that's due to it being a unique origin rather than a general evil path).

It was meant to be the main character for the game though. And there's a ton of content there. I'd say the choice to allow players to skip all of that and make a custom character as opposed to forcing a Reven/Jack the Ripper backstory on us was massive incline.

 

[Elttharion]

I finally watched the trailer. Yeah, its terrible but why do I feel like this will play exactly like ME2? Recruit companions -> loyalty missions -> suicide mission to stop egghead.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I finally watched the trailer. Yeah, its terrible but why do I feel like this will play exactly like ME2? Recruit companions -> loyalty missions -> suicide mission to stop egghead.

It's the "I peaked at highschool" energy

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I just don't get how you give DAO points for it when BG3 does almost the same thing, but with the addition of non-dialog reactivity.

Dunno, perhaps it's due to its lack of symmetry in the C&C department which lowers my appreciation for the dialogue itself. I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad or too underdeveloped, but it didn't leave as much of an impression as DAO's did. Then again, DAO also went much more into the whole 'morally grey' area with the limited C&C that they did provide, at least for the big consequential stuff hence it's primarily the dialogue that defines the moral alignment of your character. BG3 might offer more C&C, but it's slanted towards good characters rather than being about neutral actions that can be justified either way morally.

The game absolutely acknowledges it when you kill Last Light. Every NPC, not just the evil ones, has a reaction to it. There are reactions to you killing the teiflings as well, but they remove NPCs - which is a consequence that I agree is too heavy handed narratively, but it's still a consequence that you chose.

That's the thing: you did it. You chose it. You took a goodie goodie to a murder party and you can't just act like it's not fair that they don't like it. You can replace them with a generic NPC from Withers if they leave and move on, or you can use the game's systems to avoid the consequences. But it is a choice that you made to get here when you could have just skipped it and left the druids to die by not helping either party.

We don't disagree here. It's good that killing NPCs has such reactivity. What I'm saying that the emphasis shouldn't be put on that sort of thing when designing evil content. That's just low effort crap, same as with other games that outright conceptualize evil playthroughs as allowing the player to be a murderhobo.

As for the particular case with the grove. Sure, you could take neither side and it's fine that you're allowed to skip content. My issue isn't with that, but with the sort of content that you get afterwards if you do pick a side. As previously mentioned, I don't think that the tiefling content post-grove is particularly significant or even good, but it's asymmetrically designed when compared to the one you get for siding with the goblins.

The characters all have relatively clear alignments as their basis, even if it's not shown in-game. The way they are written and the way they react to things. There is no know alignment spell being cast on you to see if you're evil ever, and there's not evil/good meter in the game, but I don't see this as a big negative, since most developers gamify such systems too much and they don't reflect how alignment is supposed to work anyway.

Sure, ideally you shouldn't gamify it too much. DAO didn't and it worked quite well. I just don't think that BG3 did as good of a job (again, in terms of symmetry).

It was meant to be the main character for the game though. And there's a ton of content there. I'd say the choice to allow players to skip all of that and make a custom character as opposed to forcing a Reven/Jack the Ripper backstory on us was massive incline.

I don't mind it being optional, but it's outside of that particular backstory that the evil content is most lacking. Perhaps that's part of the reason why if they originally intended it to be the default origin.