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

duskvile

Fabulous Optimist
Joined
Jun 3, 2023
Messages
292
Amazing... Avoid's so cringeworthy it's funny, but this was... sad. Pitiful. And I'm not disappointed, fuck Dragon Age, I tuned in for the mockery, but... You know how you've got shit that's bad, then you've got shit that's so bad it's funny? Well this went one step further, it's so hilariously bad that it transcends the funny.

I'm at a loss for words. They're really not enough.
rating_mca.gif
If you would get the say how would you imaging Dragon age: Dreadwolf/Veilguard? The story, narrative, open world ... ?
 

Skinwalker

*meows in an empty room*
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Village Idiot
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Why did they put "THE" in the middle of the title? Why not just call it Dragon Age: Veilguard? What does THE add to the table, other than being anti-pattern with Origins and Inquisition?

The Dragon Of The Age Of The Veilguard Of The.
 

Drakortha

Liturgist
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Terra Australis
Larian couldn't even implement day & night cycles and basic NPC scheduling.
So that's something that every game has? Nice timeline you're living in then.
No, but Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 had it in like 1998.
Nah it just shows that I can appreciate something even if it has flaws. The production values, the passion, the options, the abilities, the classes, the out of the box creative solutions (like in DOS2 and other imsims), the quests, the maps, women actually looking like women (of course with pronounced exceptions), the overall gameplay, the verticality of the maps and on and on. Shame it's D&D though, you can't win them all.
So you appreciate the Divinity Original Sin formula? Cool. That doesn't make it Baldur's Gate and a worthy sequel.

Dragon Age: Origins is a better Baldur's Gate game.
 

Incognito

Backlog incliner
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242
Why did they put "THE" in the middle of the title? Why not just call it Dragon Age: Veilguard? What does THE add to the table, other than being anti-pattern with Origins and Inquisition?

The Dragon of the Age of the Veilguard of the.

They were just avoiding the acronym DAVE and they failed. DAVE is the new retarded cousin.
 

TwoEdge

Scholar
Joined
Jan 27, 2017
Messages
312
So they have finally turned Dragon Age into Mass Effect, with skill wheel, two non controlable companions and shit.
Don't forget the UFO and aliens invading from rifts in outer space, typical of medieval dark fantasy settings!
 

Softgels

Scholar
Joined
Jan 5, 2017
Messages
140
3 or 4 dialogue choices, slashing the same monsters with the same boring combo over and over again.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,558
Have you faggots only played DA:I or something? Walk in na straight line - combat - walk in a straight line again - combat - walk in a straight line a little bit more - combat - is standard DA gameplay.
 

whydoibother

Arcane
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Messages
17,485
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bulgaristan
Codex Year of the Donut
So you appreciate the Divinity Original Sin formula? Cool. That doesn't make it Baldur's Gate and a worthy sequel.
A sequel is not a clone, quit being butthurt. Its not Divinity. Its not based on surfaces and teleportation and building castles with furniture, its a D&D game, and its much closer to BG2 and than it is to DOS2. You are being superficial, and being mad at the wrong game in the wrong thread, out of habit.
 

whydoibother

Arcane
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Codex Year of the Donut
Have you faggots only played DA:I or something? Walk in na straight line - combat - walk in a straight line again - combat - walk in a straight line a little bit more - combat - is standard DA gameplay.
The problem isn't the walk-fight-talk-loot loop, its the combat system itself.
And this was more of a Dragon Age 2 thing, but even there, you had enemy paratroopers falling in from random directions.
dao.JPG
 

Poseidon00

Arcane
Joined
Dec 11, 2018
Messages
2,220
The series still hasn't got an established art direction or lore. It's actually kinda amazing. Remember that Origins was supposed to be the ORIGIN STORY of the Grey Warden you'd play in all the sequels.

Quite right. Now that we are 4 games in, what was "Origins" supposed to be the Origins of? Modern-day decline?

The entire idea of Dragon Age as it was originally conceived is long dead. Like so many other things, they are wearing the skin-suit of a series that people once respected, while spitting on its legacy.
 

Gargaune

Arcane
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,636
Amazing... Avoid's so cringeworthy it's funny, but this was... sad. Pitiful. And I'm not disappointed, fuck Dragon Age, I tuned in for the mockery, but... You know how you've got shit that's bad, then you've got shit that's so bad it's funny? Well this went one step further, it's so hilariously bad that it transcends the funny.

I'm at a loss for words. They're really not enough.
rating_mca.gif
If you would get the say how would you imaging Dragon age: Dreadwolf/Veilguard? The story, narrative, open world ... ?
I wouldn't.
 

Semiurge

Cipher
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Apr 11, 2020
Messages
7,698
Location
Asp Hole
Imagine waiting years for a big booty Qunari gf from one of the early concepts but in reality you get some manfaced Horizon Zero Dawn ripoff named Trash instead. The absolute worst timeline.

Yy7zdhu.jpeg

nIwNrfZ.jpeg


Just look at that monolithic lower face, the tiny forehead and huge ears. Even the eyebrows are too close together. Was this character modelled by a blind person? It's not a good sign when people can instantly point out things that they'd fix if given the chance, unless the objective was to add that essential wabi-sabi so that the deplorable would be unable to wank to it. That's the face of a scullery maid or a mother of 12, not that of your young heroine!
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
99,671
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Previews: https://www.eurogamer.net/whisper-i...the-unthinkable-it-looks-like-bioware-is-back

Whisper it, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard has me thinking the unthinkable: it looks like BioWare is back​

"The lesson was: get back to what you do well."

Right, let's get all the negative stuff out the way first. One: I'm not sure about the new name. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was much cooler than Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Okay! Now we've got all those negatives out of the way, on to the positive. After an extended hands-off demonstration of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's first hour I can say, with some confidence, this video game looks fantastic. The combat looks like a blast. The writing is cheesy, but deliciously cheesy - there is a place for this very specific, "I'm voicing my own D&D character out loud" flavour of high fantasy cheese. The character creator is vast. There are dialogue wheels and skill trees and waves of "we hear you" responses to fan requests. And it is utterly gorgeous, the first hour a luxurious nighttime romp through a crumbling city under a mix of twinkling starlight and lavish midnight blue. I've one or two questions that remain unanswered, but as far as hands-off demonstrations go, this is about as confident as they get.

Deep breath now though, and into the specifics. What we saw in the demo was a full walkthrough of the game's entire first hour, beginning with what seemed like an excellent character creator. Here you're given five categories to work your way through - Lineage, Appearance, Class, Faction, Playstyle - each with a range of subcategories within them, such as the eight subcategories within the "head" subcategory of your appearance alone.

Lineage dictates things like your race - the usual Dragon Age quartet of elf, qunari, human, and dwarf - as well as your backstory, a long standing fan request. Backstories include things like factions - some returning, some new - which offer three distinct buffs each, like being able to hold an extra potion or do extra damage against certain enemies, and the odd reference in dialogue. There are separate options for binary and non-binary pronouns and gender, "dozens and dozens of hairstyles," as Corinne Busche, Veilguard's game director, put it during the demo, with individual strands of hair rendered separately and reacting quite remarkably to in-game physics.

BioWare's work behind the scenes, meanwhile, goes as deep as not only skin tones but skin undertones, melanin levels, and the way skin reacts differently to light. Speaking of, there are also a range of lighting options within the character creator to check how your character looks - which sounds inconsequential, but as anyone who left that first oddly green cave of Dragon Age: Inquisition to find their once-handsome character transformed into a walking horror in the natural light of the overworld will know, makes a real difference. "Nothing worse than spending hours fine-tuning your character, you get into that first cutscene, and you go 'oh my god it looks so sterile in this lighting!' No worries about that," Busche joked, somewhat pointedly. There's also a range of full-body customisation options like a triangular slider between body types, and individual settings down to everything from shoulder width to, er, glute volume.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing three companion characters looking stern.Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing three companion characters posing with weapons.Image credit: BioWare
Beyond that, the three standard classes of Warrior, Mage, and Rogue return, but within those are three more specialisations each, such as duelist, saboteur, or veil ranger for the Rogue. Then there's playstyle settings, that include custom, distinct difficulty settings for options as granular as parry windows, that means players who might fancy that playstyle but typically struggle with the finer points of combat can give it a go.

After that somewhat lengthy prologue, the demo saw us take on the duelist subclass of the Rogue as protagonist Rook. A narrated intro from Varric laid the groundwork with some lore - it's been nine in-game years since Inquisition, Solus is back, and he's a baddie doing baddie things - then you're off, beginning with a tavern brawl (depending on dialogue options) and a stroll through the city of Minrathous in search of your Solus-tracker, Neve Gallus.

Minrathous is a remarkably beautiful city, rich with giant statues, floating palaces, orange lantern glow and the green neon of magical runes - those acting "like electricity" as occasional signs above pubs and stores. "It's a stronger style," creative director John Epler tells me when I ask about the game's art direction, "but it's very much in keeping with the rest of the Dragon Age. It's not a massive departure. It's recognisably Dragon Age, and particularly because we're going into parts of the world like Tevinter, you see more magic, more colour, there is a little bit more vibrancy there. But there's also, as with anything, a lot of darkness - and the thing about darkness, especially the dark parts of the game, those often contain the biggest spoilers.

"Contrast is what allows darkness to really breathe and something that Dragon Age has had historically - and I've been on the franchise pretty much since Dragon Age Origins," Epler continues. " When everything is dark, nothing really feels dark. For this one, we really wanted to build that contrast again." And indeed, before long things take a quite dramatic turn towards the type of city-raising action that would typically occur in Dragon Age late-game, as Minrathous comes under attack. Into combat then, which in the simplest of terms looks brilliant. The duelist Rogue's skillset in this case revolves around a razor-sharp combination of dashes, parries, leaps, rapid slashes and combos.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing a forest environment.Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing a jungle environment.Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing the party in a Necropolis, ancient zombie-like statues either side.Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing a group of characters walking at night.Image credit: BioWare

The mechanics of that combat involve a mix of real-time action and the series' staple "pause and play" mechanic. Pausing, in this case, brings up a radial menu split into three sections - companions to the left and right, and your skills around the bottom, along with a targeting system at the top for getting them to focus on certain enemies in particular. This overlaps with a system of specific enemy resistances and weaknesses, and an apparently vast - but for us, still unseen - skill tree of unlockable options. You can, Busche explained, set up specific companions with certain kits, from tackling specific enemy types to being more of a supporting healer (with the return of much-requested healing magic), or flexible all-rounders.

Abilities themselves meanwhile can chain together, Busche said, with some apparently elaborate results. The example given was one companion using a kind of gravity well attack that sucked enemies together, another using a slow that kept them all in place, and you unleashing a big area of effect attack to catch them all at once. In practice, the pause system in particular looked like a method for players who want a bit of a challenge - stopping to think and act tactically, with you able to queue up your whole team's attacks as well - as opposed to sticking entirely to real-time.

That's still something you can genuinely do, Busche said, thanks to a shortcut system that lets you map a few abilities to a smaller pinned menu at the bottom of the screen. Beyond that, there are also specific class resource systems - the Rogue has "momentum", which builds up as you land consecutive hits - and each will always have a ranged option. I'm a particular fan of the "hip fire" option we saw for the Rogue's bow, letting you pop off arrows from the waist like a barely-concentrating Legolas. Warriors meanwhile can lob their shield at enemies, and apparently build an entire playstyle around that using the skill tree.

As for the game's seven companions, those include the fan favourite Scout Harding and new Neve Gallus. The returning Varric, meanwhile, is more of a special case. "Varric is a major character," Epler says. "Part of the franchise since Dragon Age 2, Varric obviously has a history with Solas. At the end of Trespasser, he's obviously going to try and stop him, and if you've read the comics, you can see he's part of the hunt for Solas and the Dreadwolf." Every regular companion is romanceable, meanwhile, though there's an emphasis from BioWare on making each character's friendship just as meaningful, romance or no. And if you don't romance them? Well, they may end up romancing each other.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing combat in a dark back alley.Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshot showing a busy combat screen.Image credit: BioWare
Back to the demo itself, and after some very light platforming amongst more richly detailed parts of the city, it's into a crumbling castle, where ancient elf secrets pop up around the place, seemingly just for the lore nerds, and after a teleport into another locale - the Arluthan Forest - it's time for a mini boss fight with a Pride Demon, which looks vicious and attacks rapidly in real-time (and with lots of nice, shiny particle effects). Then, a climactic confrontation with Solas, and a closing sequence of the game's remarkably grandiose opening mission that brought the demo to an end.

One caveat amongst the excitement is worth mentioning, which is the lack of wider context as ever with this kind of limited, and overtly scripted demo. We don't know the real shape and nature of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's overall world, and the wider 'loop' of gameplay that informs your interaction with it. This particular mission felt strictly linear in direction for instance - and it's worth emphasising that the broader loop and world structure was one of the key issues with this studio's last major effort, in Anthem. Still, Epler says BioWare has learned lessons there.

"We are a studio that does really well when we do single-player RPGs that are based around characters and going back to our strengths," Epler tells me. "It comes down to knowing what you do well, knowing the things you're experts on, and knowing what you've built your studio to build. BioWare has always been built around single-player RPGs. So for us, the lesson was: get back to what you do well, get back to what you know how to do well, and in the case of Dragon Age, get back to what the franchise is known for."

Throughout the demo there was one very clear impression - that BioWare really does seem to be back here, and not just back but back with a renewed sense of confidence and faith in itself. For all of Veilguard's long and reportedly troubled development, and all the issues with Anthem and more, the first hour of it looks like those troubles never happened. It was simply an uninterrupted hour of one big, grand, thoroughly triple-A video game. One that was also campy, sincere, melodramatic and potentially very accomplished - and, one the surface at least, indisputably BioWare through and through.
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
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Joined
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Goddamn gameplay looks boring as fuck, 3 skill buttons really? It's literally repeating the same movement over and over brainlessly because the enemy is way too slow to do anything
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Epler told me that the introductory Tevinter geography is definitely not representative of later regions. Veilguard is no open worlder, but you can expect Hinterlandy areas that are designed for exploration - and it's here, I hope, that the revised combat might rediscover some of Dragon Age's older complexity.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/th...eel-as-much-like-mass-effect-2-as-inquisition

The first 45 minutes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard feel as much like Mass Effect 2 as Inquisition​

A more focused action-RPG with the promise of complexity deeper in

Good news, everybody! Dragon Age: The Veilguard - previously Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, strictly speaking Dragon Age 4 - is not the bantzy heist romp suggested by its debut trailer. Less Good News for returning players: going by the 45 minute segment I was shown at Summer Game Fest, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is more of a single-character action-RPG plus entourage, than a proper party-based affair in the vein of 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition. You do get a party, drawn from a retinue of seven, larger-than-life, romanceable companions encompassing a range of classes, abilities and go-faster hairdos, but control of that party has been streamlined, and there's a God Of Warlike emphasis on booting Fade demons into pits. Hmmm.

If you were fondly hoping for a top-down table-topper like the BioWare RPGs of auld, you may be disappointed. But wait, there is yet More News: the slice of the game's intro I saw reminded me of the amazing Mass Effect 2, partly because it starts in the middle of a catastrophe - as creative director John Epler put it during our presentation, "a beginning which feels like the ending of another game". Beware spoilers for Inquisition and its DLC in the paragraphs ahead.

The catastrophe is the work of Solas - Inquisition's wry and unreadable Elf mage, who is eventually revealed to be an ancient god of deceit in The Trespasser DLC. Many centuries ago, Solas imprisoned the other, even naughtier Elf gods in another dimension, the Veil, sealing them away at the cost of the magic, freedom and immortality of the Elven race. Now, Solas is performing a ritual to rip the Veil down, a change of heart that threatens to render Thedas uninhabitable for anybody who isn't an elf god or a demon.

You play Rook, a new protagonist who has teamed up with Varric, Dragon Age's velvety crossbow-fancying dwarf chronicler, to put a stop to the Solapocalypse. Thus the origins of the titular Veilguard, a fellowship of world-savers who include familiar faces like Scout Harding from Inquisition and newcomers like Neve Gallus, a rakish wizardress with a cocked hat and a stiletto wand.

Rook is a custom protagonist, and Dragon Age's character creator has seen a massive glow-up. It allows you to shape your character's body shape for the first time in the series, by twiddling around with what BioWare absolutely aren't calling "the triangle of girth", though the creator does explicitly let you customise your "bulge size". The character creator includes a suite of sample lighting conditions that show you how your Rook appears standing in blazing forest sunshine versus the glare of an underground temple.

This chance to test out your character's aesthetics is amply justified. In addition to adding posh flourishes such as newly mobile, extra-hairy hair, BioWare have revised Dragon Age's art direction to make character models a little more consistent with the series' lovely Tarot-inspired menu art. Flesh is ruddy to the point of painterly; facial features and bodily proportions are thicker and more striking, as though the characters had been cut from clay. While the saturated colours can be a bit cloying, I think the new character designs are gorgeous. Hopefully the same will prove true of the costumes, because Inquisition had some absolutely hideous armour. My warrior qunari Inquisitor dressed like a bargain-bucket Xmas tree, pretty much. It might seem a superficial complaint, but when you have to spend 100+ hours with a character you want them to look their best.

Aside from selecting a skin tone for all seasons, you'll choose your race - elf, dwarf, human and qunari - and starting class - warrior, mage or rogue, each of which has three specialisations. The warrior, for instance, can be specialised into a Reaper, equipped with lifesteal and other freaky powers, a Slayer who can wield the biggest blades, or a tanky Champion. You'll also choose an origin story and a factional association such as the nosy Antivan Crows or the Blight-busting Grey Wardens. Choice of faction may give you specific dialogue options, and also confers statistical boons - the Shadow Dragons deal extra damage to Venatori blood cultists, for example. It's very much of a piece with the character backstory ramifications of Origins and Inquisition.

A dark wizard city in Dragon Age: The Veilguard with a flying castleImage credit: EA

The combat, though? That's more of a departure. Like chess-boxers in spiked shoulderpads, the Dragon Age games have long alternated between real-time fisticuffs and freeze-time planning. Veilguard is still about collaborating with party members and pulling off those precious synergies where you prime an enemy with an ability or spell and detonate it with another. But going by the skirmishes I saw, it's much less elaborate. Our old friend the ability wheel is back, but it only has slots for three abilities from each party member, and there doesn't appear to be much scope to position characters on the field or set up terrain traps and the like.

The ability design itself is closer to that of a purebred actioner, with quick-recover prompts, boss battles in which you roll through puddles of incoming AOE, and the aforesaid hoofing of baddies into crevices. It's recognisably a continuation of Inquisition, which also let you shove enemies into things, but it's more focussed and reflex-driven. The introductory areas - set in the mageocracy of Tevinter, where there are literal castles in the sky - support this with a brace of corridor-shooter devices such as ziplines between levels.

How much of this is a reflection of our demo being taken from the early game? I can't really comment on how the battles might evolve, but Epler told me that the introductory Tevinter geography is definitely not representative of later regions. Veilguard is no open worlder, but you can expect Hinterlandy areas that are designed for exploration - and it's here, I hope, that the revised combat might rediscover some of Dragon Age's older complexity. Veilguard also brings back base management from Inquisition, though Epler says it's not on the same level as ruling over Skyhold. Makes sense: you're leading a crack squad, not a rogue nation. I'll miss being able to choose Skyhold's curtains, though.

If I have misgivings about the fighting, it's an unambiguous pleasure to return to the comfortingly dark fantasy world of Thedas and reunite with some of Inquisition's finest. Our demo included some encounters with Solas himself, who is still one of BioWare's most engaging creations in being at once empathic and calculating and sorrowful and sinister - though he's less enthralling, of course, now that we know who he really is.

I've never liked Varric as much as BioWare does - his twinkly-eyed roguishness has always felt rather phoned-in - but he performs well as a kind of north star when navigating the saga's louder, brasher or tricksier personalities, such as Sera (who I really hope is in this one). I also approve of BioWare's classic party trick of upgrading a side character like softly-spoken Scout Harding into a front-row badass. And to circle belatedly back to those Mass Effect 2 comparisons, I like that Veilguard's opening dialogue choices engage immediately with the prospect of losing major characters. The whole game has the makings of another Suicide Mission, given that you are up against a god with the ability to collapse dimensions.

A sunny coastal area with overhanging caves and green trees in Dragon Age: The VeilguardImage credit: EA
I am definitely in mourning for the less kinetic, more strategic Dragon Age that might have been, but I'm more excited for Veilguard than I thought I'd be after copping the first trailer, which makes the whole thing look like the origin story for a C-list Marvel team. It's worth remembering that Inquisition was often too knotty and expansive for its own good: its battle system is unwieldy, its story is a classic example of midgame bloat, and while Skyhold is a grand and imposing place, it's also a managerial nightmare in which you routinely forget where the crafting tables are, 70 hours in. If Veilguard can carve out the cruft without reducing party members to sidekicks, it could be the soft reboot this long-absent RPG series needs. Just, please lay off with the ghastly tinted chainmail this time. The qunari deserve better.
 

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