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

[La vie sexuelle]

Bioware was one of the first to adopt the rainbow faith and will be one of the first to die. Their fate is the fate not only of the gaming industry, but also of the entire corporate sector. Only companies that work with matter will survive.

Maybe there will be some symbolism in it - DA:O contained woke seeds buried in the soil brought by Generation X; Dragon Age 2 corporatizie everything and the seeds was starting to sprout; in DA:I everything has already bloomed with stinking flowers. And DA4 is the death of this disgusting plant, because it has used up all the soil available to it, without which it cannot live.

 

[Lacrymas]

Оh, trust me, you feel matter when you have a dick in your mouth.

 

[Vic]

Bioware was one of the first to adopt the rainbow faith and will be one of the first to die.

It's already dead.

 

[Camel]

In August 2023, BioWare fired 50 people working on Dreadwolf and the next Mass Effect game.[14] In October, seven of them sued BioWare for additional compensation, complaining that BioWare's NDAs prevented them from adding their work on Dreadwolf to their portfolio.[15]

Fired Bioware devs should consider not being allowed to put Dreadwolf on their resumes a blessing not a curse.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Оh, trust me, you feel matter when you have a dick in your mouth.

I trust your expertise, but why did you write this?

Bioware was one of the first to adopt the rainbow faith and will be one of the first to die.

It's already dead.

Not yet. Agony is not death. But when the real death finally occurs, no one will pay much attention to it. There won't be a long thread about this.

 

[santino27]

This reads like a complete clusterfuck

correction. its three clusterfucks feeding into each other.

A mega clusterfuck comprised of individual clusterfucks.

 

[mediocrepoet]

None of this makes any sense at all.

All Dragon Age lore after Origins is easily explained in two parts
1. Elves did everything
2. Everyone is gay

So... doesn't #1 necessarily imply #2?
I mean, you've seen "male" elves, right?

 

[Rhobar121]

None of this makes any sense at all.

All Dragon Age lore after Origins is easily explained in two parts
1. Elves did everything
2. Everyone is gay

So... doesn't #1 necessarily imply #2?
I mean, you've seen "male" elves, right?

This joke was already old in the Amiga era.

 

[Lord_Potato]

In August 2023, BioWare fired 50 people working on Dreadwolf and the next Mass Effect game.[14] In October, seven of them sued BioWare for additional compensation, complaining that BioWare's NDAs prevented them from adding their work on Dreadwolf to their portfolio.[15]

Fired Bioware devs should consider not being allowed to put Dreadwolf on their resumes a blessing not a curse.

They're also demanding money because cheap Bioware failed to pay them a proper severance package as required by Canadian law (1 month wage for every year they worked in the company, which for these guys is on average 14, I think).

 

[Camel]

They're also demanding money because cheap Bioware failed to pay them a proper severance package as required by Canadian law (1 month wage for every year they worked in the company, which for these guys is on average 14, I think).

Sounds reasonable. I’d say this wouldn’t have happened under the doctors if the lawyers are right.

 

[Roguey]

"EA have cut our funding by this amount, we need to start cutting jobs, so it makes sense to lose many of the oldest, highest-paid workers (but not management or leads of course) so we still have enough people to make this big game."

"Uh, turns out firing these employees is a lot more expensive than we thought..."

I do enjoy Bioware getting fucked by its own government.

Also it's no wonder that it was a common scummy tactic of theirs to guilt trip old employees into quitting themselves (happened to Preistly and Woo).

 

[Maxie]

None of this makes any sense at all.

(with the exception of that one guy in Inquisition)

ftfy

And the elfoid from Inquisition.

Sad, 182 pages for a game from a franchise where the original game was utter shit, and it has only gotten worse since then.

I think Origins was passable. Great compared to the sequels.

origins was fairly ok and i don't get the criticism some people have with deep roads being too dungeon crawly
i mean dungeon crawly parts are those in which hardly anybody engaged in bioware dialogue??

 

[Roguey]

origins was fairly ok and i don't get the criticism some people have with deep roads being too dungeon crawly
i mean dungeon crawly parts are those in which hardly anybody engaged in bioware dialogue??

It's five maps (plus one optional) full of largely-samey combat. I ran the numbers myself due to autism

90 enemies in 11 encounters in Aeducan (30 darkspawn, 63 deepstalkers) 40 minutes,
120 enemies in 20 encounters in Caridin's (61 darkspawn, 51 deepstalkers 1 revenant) 1 hour
67 enemies in 14 encounters in Ortan (6 darkspawn, 1 spider boss, 35 spiders, 20 corrupted spiders, 4 golems, 1 demon) 1 hour
146 enemies in 21 encounters in Dead Trenches (11 undead, 115 darkspawn, 4 bosses, 12 spiders) 1.5 hours
42 enemies in 9 encounters in Anvil (28 darkspawn, 13 golems, one boss) 45 minutes
99 enemies in 11 encounters in Shale's DLC area (57 darkspawn, 1 boss, 1 bronto, 40 deepstalkers)

Think they could have cut all those numbers in half and it'd be more palatable. Like I said in my Kingmaker review

Combat areas on the critical path regularly have 10-12 encounters per map which feels like twice as much as there should be, especially since several areas contain multiple maps. In an interview conducted with us before his cognitive decline, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer said "Sometimes as a designer, when you look at a screen, and you realize like 'Wow, there's nothing there, oh I gotta put something there,' but it's okay. Or maybe that thing that you put there is like a container, or it's something to harvest, or just a little thing. The important thing is that it changes; it can't just be a fight, a screen, and a fight," which is advice Owlcat really ought to take.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, Deep Roads are simply samey. I find the Fade much more unplayable after the first time.

 

[Maxie]

origins was fairly ok and i don't get the criticism some people have with deep roads being too dungeon crawly
i mean dungeon crawly parts are those in which hardly anybody engaged in bioware dialogue??

It's five maps (plus one optional) full of largely-samey combat. I ran the numbers myself due to autism

90 enemies in 11 encounters in Aeducan (30 darkspawn, 63 deepstalkers) 40 minutes,
120 enemies in 20 encounters in Caridin's (61 darkspawn, 51 deepstalkers 1 revenant) 1 hour
67 enemies in 14 encounters in Ortan (6 darkspawn, 1 spider boss, 35 spiders, 20 corrupted spiders, 4 golems, 1 demon) 1 hour
146 enemies in 21 encounters in Dead Trenches (11 undead, 115 darkspawn, 4 bosses, 12 spiders) 1.5 hours
42 enemies in 9 encounters in Anvil (28 darkspawn, 13 golems, one boss) 45 minutes
99 enemies in 11 encounters in Shale's DLC area (57 darkspawn, 1 boss, 1 bronto, 40 deepstalkers)

Think they could have cut all those numbers in half and it'd be more palatable. Like I said in my Kingmaker review

Combat areas on the critical path regularly have 10-12 encounters per map which feels like twice as much as there should be, especially since several areas contain multiple maps. In an interview conducted with us before his cognitive decline, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer said "Sometimes as a designer, when you look at a screen, and you realize like 'Wow, there's nothing there, oh I gotta put something there,' but it's okay. Or maybe that thing that you put there is like a container, or it's something to harvest, or just a little thing. The important thing is that it changes; it can't just be a fight, a screen, and a fight," which is advice Owlcat really ought to take.

isn't the case really. if the system was more engaging you wouldn't be counting that time in the first place, not to mention getting better and more interesting item rewards

 

[Vic]

heh funny you guys are talking about Origins as I'm currently playing that. Good game.

 

[Fedora Master]

Deep Roads and Fade are boring but as far as design goes that's the worst aspect, they're not complete disasters like we regularly get today.

Rename thread to "Dragon Age Discussion: Why the series failed"

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Every Dragon Age thread will eventually become a Dragon Age Origins thread.

 

[Camel]

Also it's no wonder that it was a common scummy tactic of theirs to guilt trip old employees into quitting themselves (happened to Preistly and Woo).

Couldn't happen to nicer people, both were terrible mods. Guess they should've held the rine. Stanrey Woo was a QA tester and got fired by Bioware then he returned as a BSN mod.

 

[Falksi]

Deep Roads and Fade are boring but as far as design goes that's the worst aspect, they're not complete disasters like we regularly get today.

Rename thread to "Dragon Age Discussion: Why the series failed"

I'll be honest, I really enjoyed both of those areas on Nightmare difficulty. Some of the encounters were pretty well designed.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Dragon Ass: Origins was shit for various reasons, but the biggest one was the writing. If I recall correctly, they had 2 different writing teams, one for the world lore, and one for the actual dialogues/plotlines/etc. The former was actually pretty decent, the whole thing with the Fade, and other stuff was alright. But the in-game writers were absolutely terrible.

You can have mountains of great writing (PST, Witcha games, Disco Disco), or you can have excellent games with simple to the point writing (Piranha Bytes games, Battle Brothers), but the cardinal sin, which has been the hallmark of post-BG1 Bioware, is mountains of shit writing. Bioware's problem is they think they have great writers when they really don't. So Origins was filled to the brim with verbal diarrheas, pointless shit that you had to dig your way through.

 

[Zeriel]

origins was fairly ok and i don't get the criticism some people have with deep roads being too dungeon crawly
i mean dungeon crawly parts are those in which hardly anybody engaged in bioware dialogue??

It's five maps (plus one optional) full of largely-samey combat. I ran the numbers myself due to autism

90 enemies in 11 encounters in Aeducan (30 darkspawn, 63 deepstalkers) 40 minutes,
120 enemies in 20 encounters in Caridin's (61 darkspawn, 51 deepstalkers 1 revenant) 1 hour
67 enemies in 14 encounters in Ortan (6 darkspawn, 1 spider boss, 35 spiders, 20 corrupted spiders, 4 golems, 1 demon) 1 hour
146 enemies in 21 encounters in Dead Trenches (11 undead, 115 darkspawn, 4 bosses, 12 spiders) 1.5 hours
42 enemies in 9 encounters in Anvil (28 darkspawn, 13 golems, one boss) 45 minutes
99 enemies in 11 encounters in Shale's DLC area (57 darkspawn, 1 boss, 1 bronto, 40 deepstalkers)

Think they could have cut all those numbers in half and it'd be more palatable. Like I said in my Kingmaker review

Combat areas on the critical path regularly have 10-12 encounters per map which feels like twice as much as there should be, especially since several areas contain multiple maps. In an interview conducted with us before his cognitive decline, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer said "Sometimes as a designer, when you look at a screen, and you realize like 'Wow, there's nothing there, oh I gotta put something there,' but it's okay. Or maybe that thing that you put there is like a container, or it's something to harvest, or just a little thing. The important thing is that it changes; it can't just be a fight, a screen, and a fight," which is advice Owlcat really ought to take.

I think the bigger issue is how samey all combat encounters are in DA:O and DA in general. There just isn't a varied bestiary. A combat centric design works in D&D because the monster manual is so huge and interesting. It doesn't work when your "monster manual" amounts to about 5 distinct enemies, and they are mostly just variations of the same damn race. Pillars also had this issue to a lesser degree, despite trying to lamely copy some D&D races like illithids.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

origins was fairly ok and i don't get the criticism some people have with deep roads being too dungeon crawly
i mean dungeon crawly parts are those in which hardly anybody engaged in bioware dialogue??

It's five maps (plus one optional) full of largely-samey combat. I ran the numbers myself due to autism

90 enemies in 11 encounters in Aeducan (30 darkspawn, 63 deepstalkers) 40 minutes,
120 enemies in 20 encounters in Caridin's (61 darkspawn, 51 deepstalkers 1 revenant) 1 hour
67 enemies in 14 encounters in Ortan (6 darkspawn, 1 spider boss, 35 spiders, 20 corrupted spiders, 4 golems, 1 demon) 1 hour
146 enemies in 21 encounters in Dead Trenches (11 undead, 115 darkspawn, 4 bosses, 12 spiders) 1.5 hours
42 enemies in 9 encounters in Anvil (28 darkspawn, 13 golems, one boss) 45 minutes
99 enemies in 11 encounters in Shale's DLC area (57 darkspawn, 1 boss, 1 bronto, 40 deepstalkers)

Think they could have cut all those numbers in half and it'd be more palatable. Like I said in my Kingmaker review

Combat areas on the critical path regularly have 10-12 encounters per map which feels like twice as much as there should be, especially since several areas contain multiple maps. In an interview conducted with us before his cognitive decline, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer said "Sometimes as a designer, when you look at a screen, and you realize like 'Wow, there's nothing there, oh I gotta put something there,' but it's okay. Or maybe that thing that you put there is like a container, or it's something to harvest, or just a little thing. The important thing is that it changes; it can't just be a fight, a screen, and a fight," which is advice Owlcat really ought to take.

I think the bigger issue is how samey all combat encounters are in DA:O and DA in general. There just isn't a varied bestiary. A combat centric design works in D&D because the monster manual is so huge and interesting. It doesn't work when your "monster manual" amounts to about 5 distinct enemies, and they are mostly just variations of the same damn race. Pillars also had this issue to a lesser degree, despite trying to lamely copy some D&D races like illithids.

It depends on the quality of your combat system. If your combat system is typical DnD (yeah, it's pretty good by RPG standards, but pretty boring in absolute terms), so you are literally casting the same few spells in a loop most of the time, you need the flavor to come from something else. But when you have a really deep combat system, you can do just fine with only a small enemy variety (e.g. KCD, Battle Brothers).

 

[The Jester]

Does this mean we'll finally understand all the lore behind the darkspawn, Dark City, the Maker, elven gods, dwarves, qunari, the Fade, and archdemons? And how it all beautifully ties in together in poetic ways none of us could have predicted?

Here's your lore bro.

 

[Lacrymas]

Elves were a mistake.