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

[Cat Headed Eagle]

DA2 was still well loved in a way that made its detractors feel like haters - such goodwill wasn't there for Anthem or Andromeda.

Biodrones called anyone who criticized DA2 whiners on BSN. BioWare also created a new DA2 board which required a registered copy of the game to post there. BioWare devs are incredibly thin-skinned and can’t take any criticism.

This brings me to a new thought - we are probably talking too much here about the games themselves and the twisted fan base, but we are forgetting about how Bioware cleverly constructed a fan base to manipulate public opinion.

In that case, closing the forum and their blog were the biggest mistakes in the history of the company. Then Gaider's firing was a bigger deal in terms of losing his Tumblr than his scripts..

It's not that simple. The Biowarian fanbase became a product of BG1, the fact that the NPCs were more than just a character sheet and a paperdoll was admittedly a relatively new thing in the volume and scale that they did. Even in Fallout, most NPCs are actually quite simple. But here they had more complex morality systems and whatnot, at least relatively speaking. For the time, it was a jump ahead in many aspects, even though a lot of other things suffered when they shouldn't have. What matters is that the fanbase started making the romance mods on their own, on day 1, and the groundwork for the "biowarian" mindset was there since day one. There's no "before and after" with them. Bioware catered to that because even in BG1 the "complex" NPCs and companions were a selling point, and they felt romances were a bone thrown to the fanbase and also something they could market their games with (especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

The issue here became more of an actual problem when games became complex graphically too, when the npcs weren't just sprites but models that more or less resembled real people, and in fact they took human likenesses for several of them. It started with allowing you to post in certain forum parts if you had associated certain games to your account, later it became a thing of not being able to see those parts of the forum, etc. Then you have Bioware people admitting they didn't look at those quarantined parts out of shame. Closing the forums was probably something they wanted to do for a long, long time.

But I think the decline of Bioware wasn't caused just because of those things, it's plain and simple, The Witcher 2 came out and it shat on Bioware's stuff using their own tricks and maneuvers, and what was even worse, they dared to show nudity when Bioware was stuck in the skinemax cringe era. The effect TW2 had in the forum's identity and postings cannot be overstated. It was like a fatal blow and contrarians on there became a common sight after that game came out. Bioware was old news by then. Ironically, they managed to survive both DA2 and ME3, but TW2 did more to damage Bioware's "status" than those perceived flops.

Gaider leaving is only a problem because they can't find a replacement.

 

[Reinhardt]

i see codex celebration of pride month is in full bloom

 

[La vie sexuelle]

i see codex celebration of pride month is in full bloom
Bioware, unlike based Slavs from CPR, does not have a rainbow on Twitter.

DA2 was still well loved in a way that made its detractors feel like haters - such goodwill wasn't there for Anthem or Andromeda.

Biodrones called anyone who criticized DA2 whiners on BSN. BioWare also created a new DA2 board which required a registered copy of the game to post there. BioWare devs are incredibly thin-skinned and can’t take any criticism.

This brings me to a new thought - we are probably talking too much here about the games themselves and the twisted fan base, but we are forgetting about how Bioware cleverly constructed a fan base to manipulate public opinion.

In that case, closing the forum and their blog were the biggest mistakes in the history of the company. Then Gaider's firing was a bigger deal in terms of losing his Tumblr than his scripts..

It's not that simple. The Biowarian fanbase became a product of BG1, the fact that the NPCs were more than just a character sheet and a paperdoll was admittedly a relatively new thing in the volume and scale that they did. Even in Fallout, most NPCs are actually quite simple. But here they had more complex morality systems and whatnot, at least relatively speaking. For the time, it was a jump ahead in many aspects, even though a lot of other things suffered when they shouldn't have. What matters is that the fanbase started making the romance mods on their own, on day 1, and the groundwork for the "biowarian" mindset was there since day one. There's no "before and after" with them. Bioware catered to that because even in BG1 the "complex" NPCs and companions were a selling point, and they felt romances were a bone thrown to the fanbase and also something they could market their games with (especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

I think this can be explained by certain "waves of fans" that Bioware has learned to manage. First there was BG1, which attracted to the genre people who were not familiar with older, more difficult RPGs. BG2 is the extreme of the form proposed in the first game, but with a new element, romances (in my opinion it was planned as nothing more than embellishments). The modding scene showed Bioware that a) what direction company could take, b) these fan people could be managed! If Dragon Age was conservative (from the point of view of what an RPG is), Mass Effect was a new game in keeping with the times of consoles (an extension of the not entirely successful concepts from Jade Empire). Since then, we have had these communities of constant psychosis that Bioware surrounded itself with in its Golden Age.

The issue here became more of an actual problem when games became complex graphically too, when the npcs weren't just sprites but models that more or less resembled real people, and in fact they took human likenesses for several of them. It started with allowing you to post in certain forum parts if you had associated certain games to your account, later it became a thing of not being able to see those parts of the forum, etc. Then you have Bioware people admitting they didn't look at those quarantined parts out of shame. Closing the forums was probably something they wanted to do for a long, long time.

But I think the decline of Bioware wasn't caused just because of those things, it's plain and simple, The Witcher 2 came out and it shat on Bioware's stuff using their own tricks and maneuvers, and what was even worse, they dared to show nudity when Bioware was stuck in the skinemax cringe era. The effect TW2 had in the forum's identity and postings cannot be overstated. It was like a fatal blow and contrarians on there became a common sight after that game came out. Bioware was old news by then. Ironically, they managed to survive both DA2 and ME3, but TW2 did more to damage Bioware's "status" than those perceived flops.

Gaider leaving is only a problem because they can't find a replacement.

Since I don't believe in irreplaceable people, I would see the reasons in a) changes in the market (as you wrote) and b) the studio being overwhelmed by its own ideology. By this I mean that the company fell victim to propaganda originally created for marketing purposes, and over time it itself adapted to it. That's why people who were willing to dye their hair blue survived in the company.

However, when you attach reality to fiction, you end up creating a crippled ideatum. Bioware is not a caricature of itself, but a caricature of the studio's vision outside.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

i see codex celebration of pride month is in full bloom

Bioware, unlike based Slavs from CPRed, has not set up a rainbow Twitter.

 

[Camel]

It's not that simple. The Biowarian fanbase became a product of BG1, the fact that the NPCs were more than just a character sheet and a paperdoll was admittedly a relatively new thing in the volume and scale that they did. Even in Fallout, most NPCs are actually quite simple. But here they had more complex morality systems and whatnot, at least relatively speaking. For the time, it was a jump ahead in many aspects, even though a lot of other things suffered when they shouldn't have. What matters is that the fanbase started making the romance mods on their own, on day 1, and the groundwork for the "biowarian" mindset was there since day one. There's no "before and after" with them. Bioware catered to that because even in BG1 the "complex" NPCs and companions were a selling point, and they felt romances were a bone thrown to the fanbase and also something they could market their games with (especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

IIRC some BioWare dev said that they always considered romances to be a can of worms. Basically BioWare got tired with their fans and how they always theorized how one or the other BG1 NPCs loved a protagonist and so introduced romances in BG2.

(especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

Right.

That said, inspiration for Baldur’s Gate II’s much deeper companion stories came from an unlikely source. During a freezing winter smoke break in Edmonton, an Interplay producer named Dermot Clarke mentioned that Baldur’s Gate’s characters weren’t nearly as developed as those in Final Fantasy VII.
“I’m very competitive,” Ohlen says. “I went and played Final Fantasy VII and was like, ‘Oh my good god, these characters make ours look like a bunch of cardboard cutouts. This is terrible.’” The disparity convinced BioWare to up their game, leading to the complex journeys of companions like Jaheira

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/if...me-then-james-ohlen-is-correcting-the-balance

The issue here became more of an actual problem when games became complex graphically too, when the npcs weren't just sprites but models that more or less resembled real people, and in fact they took human likenesses for several of them. It started with allowing you to post in certain forum parts if you had associated certain games to your account, later it became a thing of not being able to see those parts of the forum, etc. Then you have Bioware people admitting they didn't look at those quarantined parts out of shame. Closing the forums was probably something they wanted to do for a long, long time.

I consider the BG fans as the best of the bunch. The DA fans are worse and has some romance fanatics but generally they're a better part of the BioWare fandom and they're mostly RPG fans. The ME fans, on the other hand... If you hear about BioWare schizos and weirdos there is 99% probablity that it's a ME fan. Tali sweat, a civil war between Miranda fans which led to the romance forum to be closed etc. are all ME fans, the worst part of the fandom.

 

[Oberon]

When the Viconia romance started up for me back in the day I was

 

[DemonKing]

Biodrones called anyone who criticized DA2 whiners on BSN. BioWare also created a new DA2 board which required a registered copy of the game to post there. BioWare devs are incredibly thin-skinned and can’t take any criticism.

Yeah I remember when the Bioware forums used to be a place where criticism was acceptable where the Mods were pretty even handed, but after the sale to EA went through any post vaguely critical got deleted and there was no point hanging out there anymore. No surprise they got shut down not long after as a forum where everyone has to agree with the Corporate Groupthink or get kicked is basically pointless.

 

[9ted6]

Stanrey Roo gonna ding dong bannu.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It's not that simple. The Biowarian fanbase became a product of BG1, the fact that the NPCs were more than just a character sheet and a paperdoll was admittedly a relatively new thing in the volume and scale that they did. Even in Fallout, most NPCs are actually quite simple. But here they had more complex morality systems and whatnot, at least relatively speaking. For the time, it was a jump ahead in many aspects, even though a lot of other things suffered when they shouldn't have. What matters is that the fanbase started making the romance mods on their own, on day 1, and the groundwork for the "biowarian" mindset was there since day one. There's no "before and after" with them. Bioware catered to that because even in BG1 the "complex" NPCs and companions were a selling point, and they felt romances were a bone thrown to the fanbase and also something they could market their games with (especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

IIRC some BioWare dev said that they always considered romances to be a can of worms. Basically BioWare got tired with their fans and how they always theorized how one or the other BG1 NPCs loved a protagonist and so introduced romances in BG2.

(especially since JRPGs were coming out as the brand new shiny toy and crpgs looked dull as fuck in comparison).

Right.

That said, inspiration for Baldur’s Gate II’s much deeper companion stories came from an unlikely source. During a freezing winter smoke break in Edmonton, an Interplay producer named Dermot Clarke mentioned that Baldur’s Gate’s characters weren’t nearly as developed as those in Final Fantasy VII.
“I’m very competitive,” Ohlen says. “I went and played Final Fantasy VII and was like, ‘Oh my good god, these characters make ours look like a bunch of cardboard cutouts. This is terrible.’” The disparity convinced BioWare to up their game, leading to the complex journeys of companions like Jaheira

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/if...me-then-james-ohlen-is-correcting-the-balance

The issue here became more of an actual problem when games became complex graphically too, when the npcs weren't just sprites but models that more or less resembled real people, and in fact they took human likenesses for several of them. It started with allowing you to post in certain forum parts if you had associated certain games to your account, later it became a thing of not being able to see those parts of the forum, etc. Then you have Bioware people admitting they didn't look at those quarantined parts out of shame. Closing the forums was probably something they wanted to do for a long, long time.

I consider the BG fans as the best of the bunch. The DA fans are worse and has some romance fanatics but generally they're a better part of the BioWare fandom and they're mostly RPG fans. The ME fans, on the other hand... If you hear about BioWare schizos and weirdos there is 99% probablity that it's a ME fan. Tali sweat, a civil war between Miranda fans which led to the romance forum to be closed etc. are all ME fans, the worst part of the fandom.

Players from legacy games in the BSN were a different type of person, I'm sure a lot of codexers frequented those parts of it too. Most of the talk was about BG and especially NWN. The BSN was a hub for modders of NWN and when it closed we lost a lot of interesting projects.

JRPGS also inspired Planescape Torment, famously. BUt in the long run the inspiration was misplaced -- CRPG makers want to ape cinema and literature, in the worthless effort of trying to pass games as art, but all jrpg devs are weebs and they introduced characterization details because they saw it in their favorite manga and anime. So it feels much more natural.

I do remember the thread about Miranda. They had a Miranda megathread that had like 3 thousand pages, and this was in 2013-4. However I don't remember the Tali sweat thread being that much of a thing, a lot of people actually called OP a weirdo and moved on, but the story grew when the knowledge of the thread "escaped" outside of the BSN.

 

[Frozen]

DA2 is a good game. Period.

I have near zero hope for DA4. Gonna likely be shit. I mean it's an action story game written by sjw nazis. *yawn*

What's good about it?

DA2 was also "an action story game written by sjw nazis"

Story was pointless shit; you were stuck doing fetch quests in just 1 location entire game, mechanics were dumbed down, and it looked uglier than Origins.

 

[Elttharion]

According to insider reports, which we’re working to corroborate, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will receive a full reveal this week, likely during Summer Game Fest. Whether it happens during the Summer Game Fest Showcase, Xbox Games Showcase, or elsewhere, however, remains to be seen.

Source

 

[Turbo normie]

If I could bet money on their full reveal trailer, I would bet on an attempt to hit like Larian with Baldur's gate 3 but nuBioware style. Something like a dwarf with rainbow hair running half naked in the grass screaming "MY BALLS ARE TICKLING" or a transgender dragon taunting cis bandits trying to steal them HRT. The epitome of giga homo comedy in 2024.

I'm 98% sure it will happen and we aren't ready for this.

 

[Fedora Master]

If I could bet money on their full reveal trailer, I would bet on an attempt to hit like Larian with Baldur's gate 3 but nuBioware style. Something like a dwarf with rainbow hair running half naked in the grass screaming "MY BALLS ARE TICKLING" or a transgender dragon taunting cis bandits trying to steal them HRT. The epitome of giga homo comedy in 2024.

I'm 98% sure it will happen and we aren't ready for this.

And then Dexers will come here and ask "wow this game is bad, why is it bad?!"

 

[The Jester]

What is it about that bald faggot that makes 40 years old roasties wet?

 

[Volourn]

"What's good about it?"

Fuk off. Go read other da2 threads for the TRUTH. I know full well that any reply I give you you will just poo poo. It's an old game, your or my opinion will not change.

Just admit you are wrong on this. Da2 is a good game. Now go play your precious FO4.

Da2/Me2 are the last good bio games. All newer ones are shit. You will not be allowed to ruin my memories of good bio. Go play the nu bio shit.

 

[Fedora Master]

"Good Bioware"

GIGGLESQUEE

 

[9ted6]

If I could bet money on their full reveal trailer, I would bet on an attempt to hit like Larian with Baldur's gate 3 but nuBioware style. Something like a dwarf with rainbow hair running half naked in the grass screaming "MY BALLS ARE TICKLING" or a transgender dragon taunting cis bandits trying to steal them HRT. The epitome of giga homo comedy in 2024.

I'm 98% sure it will happen and we aren't ready for this.

Unironically the reveal will probably go one of two ways.

1. Cringe Borderlands Marvel shit where it's quirky, there's modern pop music playing while characters are backflipping over enemies and doing ninja moves and winking at the camera. Multiple trailer cut quip lines.
or
2. Tries to be epic and serious in the way DA2 did and it's even more cringe, with additional wokeness from the new companions, one of them rumored to be a self insert traifu Gaider made for a shitty comic.

Both trailers will showcase some sort of romance element, almost assuredly gay, or something to do with idpol.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

If I could bet money on their full reveal trailer, I would bet on an attempt to hit like Larian with Baldur's gate 3 but nuBioware style. Something like a dwarf with rainbow hair running half naked in the grass screaming "MY BALLS ARE TICKLING" or a transgender dragon taunting cis bandits trying to steal them HRT. The epitome of giga homo comedy in 2024.

I'm 98% sure it will happen and we aren't ready for this.

Unironically the reveal will probably go one of two ways.

1. Cringe Borderlands Marvel shit where it's quirky, there's modern pop music playing while characters are backflipping over enemies and doing ninja moves and winking at the camera. Multiple trailer cut quip lines.
or
2. Tries to be epic and serious in the way DA2 did and it's even more cringe, with additional wokeness from the new companions, one of them rumored to be a self insert traifu Gaider made for a shitty comic.

Both trailers will showcase some sort of romance element, almost assuredly gay, or something to do with idpol.

1. Was done in DAO
2. Was done in DAI

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Seems like Dragon Age Dreadwolf going to be renamed to Dragon Age 4.

"It's not a Dragon Age 1 Remake. It's just not Dreadwol

https://www.resetera.com/threads/je...e-marks.890637/?post=123960270#post-123960270

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Seems like Dragon Age Dreadwolf going to be renamed to Dragon Age 4.

"It's not a Dragon Age 1 Remake. It's just not Dreadwol

https://www.resetera.com/threads/je...e-marks.890637/?post=123960270#post-123960270

What does that even mean? Bioware come up with of Origins retcon inside Dreadwolf?

 

[Fedora Master]

THIS IS THE NEW SHIIIIT

 

[Dodo1610]

Seems like Dragon Age Dreadwolf going to be renamed to Dragon Age 4.

"It's not a Dragon Age 1 Remake. It's just not Dreadwol

https://www.resetera.com/threads/je...e-marks.890637/?post=123960270#post-123960270

What does that even mean? Bioware come up with of Origins retcon inside Dreadwolf?

Nothing, game journalists said that they won't show DA: Dreadwolf, so people started assuming that they had made another DA game like the rumoured DAO remake. But now he says that nothing has changed they just renamed Dreadwolf for marketing reasons

Of course, this is in line with the franchise's history

 

[scytheavatar]

They changed the name cause they were afraid of the DAD jokes being spread.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Yep, Dragon Age DreadWolf no more. Now it's Veilguard. They really dropped a renamed.. 7 days before the gameplay reveal

 

[Falksi]

Yep, Dragon Age DreadWolf no more. Now it's Veilguard. They really dropped a renamed.. 7 days before the gameplay reveal

Brilliant

It looks shit but the name was pretty cool, and now they've flushed that down the toilet too.

Never change Biowank, never change.