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

[Vyvian]

I think EA knew this was a stinker and that it wouldn't got any better, no matter how much longer they kept it in development.
So the best they could do is to throw it out now, praying that it can profit from BG3's success.

I'm confident Bioware still has enough drones to make this a sales success despite what a pile of shit it clearly will be.

 

[The Jester]

Kind of. My boyfriend is a zoomer

Did you groom him on Discord?

No, he's an adult and we met half a year ago when he came to sing in my choir.

Ah I see you guys are both consensual adults, carry on sir and happy Fag month!

 

[Semiurge]

So...still basically white people then?

"The wisest and fairest of all."

Yes.

In the gameplay, there is a SINGLE drop of blood?

Someone on Steam suggested that this is because the reveal video is china-friendly, and apparently they can't show misery porn in trailers there or else the people might get ideas.

If you don't romance characters in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, they'll find other partners for themselves

"In Dragon Age games, BioWare games, romance is a core part," Epler said. "We wanted to give each character their own flavour, or their own style, of romance. So some characters may be a little more steamy while some characters maybe a little bit more innocent. But for each one, you can build these relationships.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is impressive, beautiful, and will inevitably split opinion

I guess this game is releasing at a weird time. Dragon Age Origins was released as a spiritual successor to games like Neverwinter Nights and, yep, Baldur’s Gate. But over the years, it transformed dramatically from a Captial C ‘CRPG’ to a small ‘cRPG’, so to speak - pursuing more action-based combat and streamlining a lot of choices to make an accessible adventure.

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.

I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.

ADHD has nothing to do with it. It is the overall degeneration of cognitive capability brought about by social networks.

Microplastics and who knows what. It could be some kind of almost-asymptomatic virus developed in chink labs even, that only targets caucasoids.

Even 'rings of power' she-dwarves didn't have beards.

They actually did.

The Hobbit films had cool mockups for bearded dwarven women, but ended up not using them.
View attachment 50908

One of the expanded editions most definitely had bearded dwarf ladies.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[9ted6]

"Recognizably Dragon Age."

 

[GrainWetski]

they missed most important thing - most popular romance was semi-attractive shadowheart. do you see anyone even on that level in the list of da4 companions?

Gay bear sex and a gay, snarky vampire were far more prominent in the marketing.

Because unlike Bioware Larian knows how to market a game for maximum outreach while still making the actual game appealing to the average gamer. The actual in game stats showed that Shadowslut was the most romanced companion by a country mile compared to everyone else followed by the two other female party members, gay sassy vampire and bara bear druid were nowhere in sight. Majority of gamers are still straight males, something that current Bioware seems to refuse to accept.

It's hilarious that the local retards are so utterly blinded by turn-based combat, no matter how shitty, that they don't realize they already played Larian's Veilguard.

 

[Swen]

So sad to see all these old RPG studios trying to come close to the genius of BG3 but failing hard.

Reminds me of this:

 

[Reinhardt]

I think EA knew this was a stinker and that it wouldn't got any better, no matter how much longer they kept it in development.
So the best they could do is to throw it out now, praying that it can profit from BG3's success.

I'm confident Bioware still has enough drones to make this a sales success despite what a pile of shit it clearly will be.

nah, number of drones goes down over years while cost of development goes up. bioware did nothing to attract new people.

 

[Cryomancer]

So sad to see all these old RPG studios trying to come close to the genius of BG3 but failing hard.

Reminds me of this:

If they where trying to get BG3 levels of reactivity, would be great. But no, look to the dialog wheels in this Dragon Age game. Is FL4 tier trash.

 

[Semiurge]

Regurgitation. Everything in that trailer has been done before, and better. Where did those dementors come from? Why is the combat so weightless and.... flashy? Why is the city so bland?

I'll stick with the Witcher series and BG3, thanks. This is the product of a tyrannical committee (EA) controlling a team of hacks (what's left of Bioware).

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

It's hilarious that the local retards are so utterly blinded by turn-based combat, no matter how shitty, that they don't realize they already played Larian's Veilguard.

It's not just turn-based combat. BG3 has everything the Codex has clamored for since the early 2000s.

Choices and consequences, branching narratives, a more complex evil path than just "haha, I'll do the same thing the good character would, but I will ask for MONEY!", quests with scripting to handle player choices outside of a dialog tree, the ability to kill almost any NPC in the game and still play.

It also had about 3 or 4 games worth of content in one, and even then it still didn't contain what Larian originally planned to put in it.

That's what I'm talking about that Bioware is missing. Of course both games are woke. Almost every game made outside of Japan or Korea is woke now. Of course the writing is stupid and falls apart, it's a Larian game. But it still had value to the consumer because of the above.

It's the difference between making a turd-shaped lump of gold and selling it for $100,000 and just trying to sell a turd for the same price. They're missing the content that made it valuable.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's not just turn-based combat. BG3 has everything the Codex has clamored for since the early 2000s.

Choices and consequences, branching narratives, a more complex evil path than just "haha, I'll do the same thing the good character would, but I will ask for MONEY!", quests with scripting to handle player choices outside of a dialog tree, the ability to kill almost any NPC in the game and still play.

it was also boring shit with unlikeable cast.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

nah, number of drones goes down over years while cost of development goes up. bioware did nothing to attract new people.

That's part of the idea behind the woke. Lots of Mexicans and blacks now have the money to buy games. Lots of LGBTQ freaks have money from their Silicon Valley jobs and zero impulse control.

Why spend the time and money to make a really good game when you can just make something shiny, put a black main character in the demo and slap a rainbow flag on the side?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

it was also boring shit with unlikeable cast.

It's almost like I just said that.

Of course the writing is stupid and falls apart, it's a Larian game.

Watch a streamer or any normie play it. They will be too busy having fun to care about any of that until they're 40+ hours past the refund window.

Is BG3 great? No. Is it better? Unquestionably.

 

[Reinhardt]

Is it better? Unquestionably.

very low bar to clear. it's like cripple kicking corpse.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It's hilarious that the local retards are so utterly blinded by turn-based combat, no matter how shitty, that they don't realize they already played Larian's Veilguard.

It's not just turn-based combat. BG3 has everything the Codex has clamored for since the early 2000s.

Choices and consequences, branching narratives, a more complex evil path than just "haha, I'll do the same thing the good character would, but I will ask for MONEY!", quests with scripting to handle player choices outside of a dialog tree, the ability to kill almost any NPC in the game and still play.

It also had about 3 or 4 games worth of content in one, and even then it still didn't contain what Larian originally planned to put in it.

Not defending BioWare here, but BG3 is a mid game whose extremely positive reception just goes to show how shit their competition is.

It has some good stuff here and there, but it's mostly frontloaded. And once you reach the city, you can see how it's basically two chapters (a.i. lower & upper city) crammed into one while obvious cut content is obvious (particularly Cazador's who was intended to tie in more to the main plot besides just his relationship to Astarion). As for the evil path, that's just crap. Evil, Durge tailored stuff aside, equating less content rather than proper branching. Companion content is likewise lacking. Non-origin companions are barebones and even the origins themselves are flawed if you pick one for your PC in terms of reactivity and (extra) choices.

 

[Mark Richard]

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?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

very low bar to clear. it's like cripple kicking corpse.

Such a low bar that it's made hundreds of millions of dollars.

You're just complaining to complain if you can't also point out what's right with the game.

 

[Reinhardt]

very low bar to clear. it's like cripple kicking corpse.

Such a low bar that it's made hundreds of millions of dollars.

You're just complaining to complain if you can't also point out what's right with the game.

i dropped it in the underdark after playing without rests for hours and sustaining my party on potions alone. just asked myself a few questions.

"why you chugging potions instead of resting at camp?" - "because i don't want to interact with my companions"
"do you want to know what happens next?" - "no"
"why you doing this to yourself?" - "i don't know"

so i uninstalled it and never had an urge to install it again.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Not defending BioWare here, but BG3 is a mid game whose extremely positive reception just goes to show how shit their competition is.

It has some good stuff here and there, but it's mostly frontloaded. And once you reach the city, you can see how it's basically two chapters (a.i. lower & upper city) crammed into one while obvious cut content is obvious (particularly Cazador's who was intended to tie in more to the main plot besides just his relationship to Astarion). As for the evil path, that's just crap. Evil, Durge tailored stuff aside, equating less content rather than proper branching. Companion content is likewise lacking. Non-origin companions are barebones and even the origins themselves are flawed if you pick one for your PC in terms of reactivity and (extra) choices.

I agree with pretty much all of this to a degree. But take BG3 and ignore the woke and the bad writing. Compare it to any RPG from 1999 afterward. It's still more complex. It still has more content. You can say X choice is fake, but there are enough real ones that you don't notice.

Arcanum was a broken mess on release with terrible combat, but we all played it for metric ton of choices and consequences. And that's exactly why even people who hate turn-based combat are playing this.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

i dropped it in the underdark

I really don't care.

I dropped it at the start of Act 3 the first time, but neither of us are normies.

Some of you are so invested in "BG3 Bad" that you can't see why it was a success any more than Bioware can.

 

[Aemar]

Nigger Age.

 

[Old Hans]

very low bar to clear. it's like cripple kicking corpse.

Such a low bar that it's made hundreds of millions of dollars.

You're just complaining to complain if you can't also point out what's right with the game.

i dropped it in the underdark after playing without rests for hours and sustaining my party on potions alone. just asked myself a few questions.

"why you chugging potions instead of resting at camp?" - "because i don't want to interact with my companions"
"do you want to know what happens next?" - "no"
"why you doing this to yourself?" - "i don't know"

so i uninstalled it and never had an urge to install it again.

the downside is that no matter much you put it off, there's always a segment at the end of the map that forces you to camp, which just ends up playing ALL the cutscenes. Theres no escape

 

[Reinhardt]

but we all played it for metric ton of choices and consequences.

c&c has no meaning if you don't care about world at all. "oh noes! druids/tieflings/gobbos will die!" "and?"
that's main problem with unlikeable cast.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

but we all played it for metric ton of choices and consequences.

c&c has no meaning if you don't care about world at all. "oh noes! druids/tieflings/gobbos will die!" "and?"
that's main problem with unlikeable cast.

I'm mostly disappointed in the evil C&C since it just means less content. 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, siding with Gortash in chapter 3 just meaning that you avoid a fight and later on he unceremoniously dies anyway in order to railroad you to the same endings as if you didn't side with him. And on the companion side, not really providing proper evil companions and Minthara still being barebones despite Larian's deflection that it was just due to bugs on release.