Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Frozen]

I haven't played any DA games in years, but I remember there being a pretty dramatic shift in art style from DA:O to DA 2. Maybe everything after that is more in line? Or maybe I'm misremembering? I don't know. It's all crap, regardless. Just different flavors.

I remember people being mad(?) at the art shift, but I think in hindsight it really wasn't that big of a move besides the bullshit Qunari.

Out of curiosity I looked at some footage of the two games and it seems just like different flavors of the same.

DA:O on left, 2 on the right. God, why is the templar armor so ugly? Looks like someone doing bad 40k cosplay.

View attachment 33184

Not true. Origins had way better visuals then all other Dragon Age games. I assume even today with mods that game looks better than all other because they went full juvenile shit since DA:2 (probably also because it had support for modding not like other console crap)

Just compare Darkspawns in Origins and DA:2 In first case they were trying to make them look scary and in second they look like kids joke from a circus.

 

[A-Minish]

• Combat is completely in real-time and similar to a hack and slash. I'm told the guiding reference point was the God of War (2018), and that shows.

By the look of the "dude" doing a jump-kick while in full armor they probably took exemple on the WWE games as well.

Think about it, "Dragon Age: Arena", go from arena to arena across Thedas to wrestle with the weirdest opponents and with the strongest creatures. Imagine wrestling with an old Divine in its ridiculous robes to become the head of the church. The final boss would be the Maker or Andraste.

• Oh and the player character's hair looked glorious. I mean, it was clipping right through their helmet. But it was flowing and bouncing as they moved. Finally, no more stiff ass hair. Now, let's hope we have more than just two black hairstyles.

They are in a development hell and they still managed to do this. "Priorities".

Now, as BioWare knows its target audience, does it mean they animated more body parts for sex romance scenes ? Imagine the physics for 2 huge dwarf milkers or the movement realisme of a qunari dong. Come on BioWare, you need to do this at the very least if you want to compete with Larian

About artstyle I think the only good things were the tarot cards, the artworks, the environments(The Descent was pretty good if you like underground world) and a few exceptions(DAO's golems and dwarf armors, Morrigan's dress, ogre and may be the mounts). But the worst for me is that DAO's stylized interface and text font were progressively replaced by ones worthy of a shovelware.

Speaking of art, did they said anything about the composer ?

 

[Aarwolf]

I made that mistake and went to reddit to see how resident monkeys there are seeing the changes and... No, there's no hope for this franchise and for RPGs as a mainstream thing. Maybe it's for the better - they will have their God of War shit, and we will have our things, much without interlapping between.

My favourite comment is this one:

"I like pausing and telling them what to do on occasion. I like that I don't need to know each aspect of their character and tree in order for them to do their jobs effectively. It helps, but I don't want to devote brainpower to remembering each nuance of Bull's different trees and abilities and then using them in each combat. I devote enough brainpower to these games, I don't have much more to spare.

This is honestly the big barrier for me with BG3's EA. I haven't gotten far in it, because I hate having to play each character's turn in every battle. On occasion fine, but not every single encounter. It makes the battles drag, and honestly I don't have the energy or focus to spend 10 minutes on 1 fight as everyone stops to take a turn. Maybe they changed it, I don't know, I really hope they added an option. But could you imagine walking in the Hinterlands and doing that every time with each encounter?"

That monkey in question seems to have only one brain cell and is unable to grasp anything more than buttonmashing the controller, and its attention span is too short to play even this watered down RPG that modern Baldur's Gate is. It's fascinating in its own way, just like watching David Attenborough documovie or something.

Hilarious.

 

[Rahdulan]

I made that mistake and went to reddit to see how resident monkeys there are seeing the changes and... No, there's no hope for this franchise and for RPGs as a mainstream thing. Maybe it's for the better - they will have their God of War shit, and we will have our things, much without interlapping between.

My favourite comment is this one:

"I like pausing and telling them what to do on occasion. I like that I don't need to know each aspect of their character and tree in order for them to do their jobs effectively. It helps, but I don't want to devote brainpower to remembering each nuance of Bull's different trees and abilities and then using them in each combat. I devote enough brainpower to these games, I don't have much more to spare.

This is honestly the big barrier for me with BG3's EA. I haven't gotten far in it, because I hate having to play each character's turn in every battle. On occasion fine, but not every single encounter. It makes the battles drag, and honestly I don't have the energy or focus to spend 10 minutes on 1 fight as everyone stops to take a turn. Maybe they changed it, I don't know, I really hope they added an option. But could you imagine walking in the Hinterlands and doing that every time with each encounter?"

That monkey in question seems to have only one brain cell and is unable to grasp anything more than buttonmashing on controller, and its attention span is to short to play even this watered down RPG that modern Baldur's Gate is. It's fascinating in its own way, just like watching David Attenborough documovie or something.

Hilarious.

I recently came across this video, and it's more or less exactly how I imagine those sort of people.

 

[mediocrepoet]

My favourite comment is this one:

"I like pausing and telling them what to do on occasion. I like that I don't need to know each aspect of their character and tree in order for them to do their jobs effectively. It helps, but I don't want to devote brainpower to remembering each nuance of Bull's different trees and abilities and then using them in each combat. I devote enough brainpower to these games, I don't have much more to spare.

This is honestly the big barrier for me with BG3's EA. I haven't gotten far in it, because I hate having to play each character's turn in every battle. On occasion fine, but not every single encounter. It makes the battles drag, and honestly I don't have the energy or focus to spend 10 minutes on 1 fight as everyone stops to take a turn. Maybe they changed it, I don't know, I really hope they added an option. But could you imagine walking in the Hinterlands and doing that every time with each encounter?"

Thank God these people have companies like EA to make RPGs for people who hate RPGs. It's pretty gross to think that people who hate their VN being interrupted by gameplay like Hamburger Helper aren't unique, so you can actually find comments like this in the wild.

 

[Lodis]

I mean the Dragon Age subreddit having absolutely garbage opinions and being more concerned about how many gay romances the game will have rather than if the game will be any good makes complete sense when you look at their demographics. The reality is that this is the DA fanbase and these are the types of people Bioware wants to cater to if that wasn't obvious enough over the past several years.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

>reddit

 

[Salvo]

Terminally online people are trannies, what a surprise

Someone nuke the world please

 

[Edgetard]

I mean the Dragon Age subreddit having absolutely garbage opinions and being more concerned about how many gay romances the game will have rather than if the game will be any good makes complete sense when you look at their demographics. The reality is that this is the DA fanbase and these are the types of people Bioware wants to cater to if that wasn't obvious enough over the past several years.

This chart is so retarded, "no one identified as far right" if they did theyd get banned why would anyone right of the lolbertarian party ever go on r*ddit. Of course you're going to get a biased sample set bent towards the left on reddit.
"Oh wow we sure did get alot of people identifying themselves as far right, Nazis, and dissident right on stormfront" this is just as retarded. As for the percentages I really gotta wonder how many of these women on the DA reddit are actual women, then again the NB/OTHER is probably all women, lmao.
Also I find it fucking hilarious that a "right wing" person was counted in the NB/OTHER category shows how fucked the current year is that those nutbags are getting filtered as conservatives.

 

[lycanwarrior]

I mean the Dragon Age subreddit having absolutely garbage opinions and being more concerned about how many gay romances the game will have rather than if the game will be any good makes complete sense when you look at their demographics. The reality is that this is the DA fanbase and these are the types of people Bioware wants to cater to if that wasn't obvious enough over the past several years.

This chart is so retarded, "no one identified as far right" if they did theyd get banned why would anyone right of the lolbertarian party ever go on r*ddit. Of course you're going to get a biased sample set bent towards the left on reddit.
"Oh wow we sure did get alot of people identifying themselves as far right, Nazis, and dissident right on stormfront" this is just as retarded. As for the percentages I really gotta wonder how many of these women on the DA reddit are actual women, then again the NB/OTHER is probably all women, lmao.
Also I find it fucking hilarious that a "right wing" person was counted in the NB/OTHER category shows how fucked the current year is that those nutbags are getting filtered as conservatives.

Not to mention threats of doxing or even financial/bank accounts terminated.

And a lot of the "men" there might as well be women lmao.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

cue the r/teenagers drama caused by, well, r/drama

Spoiler

r/Drama basically gathers all the inner drama that other subreddits have. They have drama-worthy content themselves, but their time in the spotlight happened when they decided to make the subreddit +18 to avoid having kids fucking shit up there. The way they went through this was setting a bot that autobanned users who also participated in subreddits aimed at underage people, like r/teenagers. Several people cam DMing the mods of r/Drama claiming they weren't underage, but 30, 40, 50 and I think even 60 years old.

 

[Edgetard]

cue the r/teenagers drama caused by, well, r/drama

Spoiler

r/Drama basically gathers all the inner drama that other subreddits have. They have drama-worthy content themselves, but their time in the spotlight happened when they decided to make the subreddit +18 to avoid having kids fucking shit up there. The way they went through this was setting a bot that autobanned users who also participated in subreddits aimed at underage people, like r/teenagers. Several people cam DMing the mods of r/Drama claiming they weren't underage, but 30, 40, 50 and I think even 60 years old.

Remember the Pit that is 4chan trys to keep kids off of it even the "safe for work" blue boards, meanwhile a subreddit that is aimed at teens is filled with dudes trying to get underage girls/boys

 

[Dishonoredbr]

This shit is just Assassin's Creed Odyssey, down to the fucking UI. Fuck Bioware.

 

[BrotherFrank]

I expected nothing and new bioware somehow still managed to limbo under my expectations and disappoint me in ways i never thought possible.

No party skill trees or management of your party in combat of any kind?!? This is worst then DA2 going all button awesome or the downward spiral of the mass effect series when it came to skill trees.
I never thought i’d say this, but i might end up looking fondly on inquisition and thinking i was too harsh, i mean sure there is a lot to hate about it but at least there was skill trees and party management.

 

[Volourn]

Shit. Shit. Shitty shit shit.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I never thought i’d say this, but i might end up looking fondly on inquisition

looking fondly

fondly

Fuck no. 2 and inquisition are what they've always been: pure shit.
Origins didn't have sequels.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I never thought i’d say this, but i might end up looking fondly on inquisition

looking fondly

fondly

Fuck no. 2 and inquisition are what they've always been: pure shit.
Origins didn't have sequels.

This, Inquisition in particular is absolutely soulless.

 

[BrotherFrank]

The more I think about it, the more it boggles my mind.

How the fuck did we get from a game with mostly classical crpg trappings and an awesome tactics system so you could semi automate how your party handle themselves in any situation to a game where the player is no longer trusted to have any input whatsoever on how companions act or develop?

JFC when a bioware dev suggested there should be an option to skip gameplay because it's too hard and the entire internet roasted her, turns out we should not have laughed, she was just being prophetic and nowadays reddit would be praising her for getting rid of that oh so hard icky rpg ewwness so they can focus on the REAL intense high iq decisions: deciding whether to suck off iron bull or that tevinter mage dude.

 

[Tyranicon]

The more I think about it, the more it boggles my mind.

How the fuck did we get from a game with mostly classical crpg trappings and an awesome tactics system so you could semi automate how your party handle themselves in any situation to a game where the player is no longer trusted to have any input whatsoever on how companions act or develop?

JFC when a bioware dev suggested there should be an option to skip gameplay because it's too hard and the entire internet roasted her, turns out we should not have laughed, she was just being prophetic and nowadays reddit would be praising her for getting rid of that oh so hard icky rpg ewwness so they can focus on the REAL intense high iq decisions: deciding whether to suck off iron bull or that tevinter mage dude.

I imagine at some point BioWare or their corporate masters came sat down and came to a realization.

1. They no longer have the talent or devs needed to sustain traditional RPG gamedev at the quality needed
2. They should pivot the series to a dating simulator/cater to a different audience, one with lower expectations
3. Something something, Critical Role and the entire new wave of RPGers
4. This is wildly more profitable for the effort-returns ratio

Look at other AAA/AA rpgs and tell me you don't see a pattern.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Could be, but I suspect that it's going to be dog shit as an action game too. The main thing will be catering to losers who can be happy that the NPCs are their friends and lovers.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Could be, but I suspect that it's going to be dog shit as an action game too. The main thing will be catering to losers who can be happy that the NPCs are their friends and lovers.

Just like every Bioware game in the last quarter-century.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Could be, but I suspect that it's going to be dog shit as an action game too. The main thing will be catering to losers who can be happy that the NPCs are their friends and lovers.

Just like every Bioware game in the last quarter-century decade and a half.

Hey fuck you. I mean, ftfy.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

It’s kind of funny they’re going action. Something I remember seeing quite a lot of while looking at the old BioWare forums before they got shutdown was people over there asking them to make the next Dragon Age game play like Dragon’s Dogma. And then sometime someone from BioWare would come in and pooh-pooh the idea like they were above Dragon’s Dogma’s gameplay and doing something better.

Although if God of War 2018 is their big inspiration that seems like a stupid move. Putting aside that GoW2018 sucks, that game’s whole big thing is it’s kind of a third person shooter that kind of seems inspired by RE6...they’ll name drop RE4, but having normal melee attacks is more like RE2. And I doubt a Dragon Age game is going to have that third person shooter aspect of hitting enemies in the legs or whatever with some range attack to set up for other attacks. I also doubt they’ll have the juggling of GoW’18.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The more I think about it, the more it boggles my mind.

How the fuck did we get from a game with mostly classical crpg trappings and an awesome tactics system so you could semi automate how your party handle themselves in any situation to a game where the player is no longer trusted to have any input whatsoever on how companions act or develop?

JFC when a bioware dev suggested there should be an option to skip gameplay because it's too hard and the entire internet roasted her, turns out we should not have laughed, she was just being prophetic and nowadays reddit would be praising her for getting rid of that oh so hard icky rpg ewwness so they can focus on the REAL intense high iq decisions: deciding whether to suck off iron bull or that tevinter mage dude.

I imagine at some point BioWare or their corporate masters came sat down and came to a realization.

1. They no longer have the talent or devs needed to sustain traditional RPG gamedev at the quality needed
2. They should pivot the series to a dating simulator/cater to a different audience, one with lower expectations
3. Something something, Critical Role and the entire new wave of RPGers
4. This is wildly more profitable for the effort-returns ratio

Look at other AAA/AA rpgs and tell me you don't see a pattern.

Their best selling game all being action games probably has something to do with it.

They’ve been inching towards action with Dragon Age since Dragon Age 2. The series is 13 years old, and for 11 of those years they’ve been at this shit crossroads of not fully committing to the action stuff they so clearly want to do.

I am surprised they would take away the players able to fully control the party. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake game has action combat, and that lets you switch between everyone. Even if they fully went all in on the action, they should’ve kept the tactical aspect of being able to tell your party where to go.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The more I think about it, the more it boggles my mind.

How the fuck did we get from a game with mostly classical crpg trappings and an awesome tactics system so you could semi automate how your party handle themselves in any situation to a game where the player is no longer trusted to have any input whatsoever on how companions act or develop?

JFC when a bioware dev suggested there should be an option to skip gameplay because it's too hard and the entire internet roasted her, turns out we should not have laughed, she was just being prophetic and nowadays reddit would be praising her for getting rid of that oh so hard icky rpg ewwness so they can focus on the REAL intense high iq decisions: deciding whether to suck off iron bull or that tevinter mage dude.

I imagine at some point BioWare or their corporate masters came sat down and came to a realization.

1. They no longer have the talent or devs needed to sustain traditional RPG gamedev at the quality needed
2. They should pivot the series to a dating simulator/cater to a different audience, one with lower expectations
3. Something something, Critical Role and the entire new wave of RPGers
4. This is wildly more profitable for the effort-returns ratio

Look at other AAA/AA rpgs and tell me you don't see a pattern.

Their best selling game all being action games probably has something to do with it.

They’ve been inching towards action with Dragon Age since Dragon Age 2. The series is 13 years old, and for 11 of those years they’ve been at this shit crossroads of not fully committing to the action stuff they so clearly want to do.

I am surprised they would take away the players able to fully control the party. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake game has action combat, and that lets you switch between everyone. Even if they fully went all in on the action, they should’ve kept the tactical aspect of being able to tell your party where to go.

Dragon Age Origins' development was too slow and as you said the "secondary" project (Mass Effect) ended up being much more successful than DAO. Certainly for the eyes of the critics and the public. Some people swear by Mass Effect 2 and call it the best RPG ever made. Regardless of your opinion about the game, Bioware saw that the simplified action game was much more successful than the slow and methodical rpg. Squeenix saw that too, but FF7R has been rather negatively received by the public, and in FF15 you can't control your party (you have "tag team" attacks though).