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

[kapisi]

2009 - Duncan shanking fools who refuse to drink from the goblet

2024 - baby griffon sooo cute like oh ma gahde, I know who I'M romancing

 

[Baron Tahn]

Probably. If what someone else said is true and companion loyalty quests are as much of a main feature as current rpg tradition/ME2 might suggest then yeah, stuck with it. Seems dumb like if they were going to chop all the party gameplay out why leave the soap opera shit. Could've just made it a solo PC.

 

[moon knight]

And more on topic, this will probably be the plot:

And then Solas will have to sacrifice himself at end and become the tragic hero of the story. I've seen this before.

At least let be this the final chapter of Dragon Age

 

[9ted6]

And more on topic, this will probably be the plot:

With 100% unironic sincerity I think they're going to make the Maker show up and be real but with one of two exceptions:
1. He's evil and didn't make anything and is just a superpowered pride demon.
or 2. He's an androgynous bald black person who talks about how xyi hates people assuming xyi's a man.

Or it's revealed Solas is the Maker which already seems like a likely outcome.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Is that how you remember it?

I remember thinking they were following some grand plan from the beginning, and not just making shit up as they go...


So naive.

Awakening was too easy. The Blight was ended in Origins at great cost, both personal and by the kingdom. In Awakening the world is saved and no one even realizes it. It turns out, it was all just some dude. He dies and the blights are gone forever. So lame.

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I thought I recall an interview where Gaider admitted he didn't like the Darkspawn and wanted to write them out of the story. It was a common criticism that they were 'generic orcs', which was hardly true, but in any case Gaider had nothing to replace them with except even more generic demons. He really just wanted to 'fix' the setting by freeing the mages. Much the same as Rian Johnson, after being handed a serviceable story with The Force Awakens, writes The Last Jedi as a big Fuck You to Star Wars fan while shitting on every piece of lore he could think of.

Imagine Tolkien dies of a heart attack midway through writing LotR. Christopher takes over and, instead of finishing the existing plot, he kills Sauron off in an anti-climax, declared there was nothing wrong with the ring after all, and the real villains were Gondor for oppressing the poor, impoverished orcs.

David Gaider is a man of no real imagination. He can't put himself into the shoes of another person and try to see the world from his perspective. He can only impose his narrow worldview on everything he sees with no regard to sense, logic, or verisimilitude. He can't imagine how a regular medieval human would react to a very real danger of living demonic conduits in their midst, or the ever present threat of being consumed by hellbeasts from the nether realms. Gaider can only imagine how to enacapsulate a story within a narrative of social justice, and ensure the player reaches the 'correct' conclusion by the end. This is why DA2 always ends the same, the mages *will* be freed during the story. The idea of a group of special people being held in bondage, even in fiction--and everyone being pretty okay with it--was unbearable.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I think that the worst thing about the lore post-DAO was how they made everything traceable back to the elves tbqh. Cheapens all the other mythologies and makes elven lore convoluted as well.

 

[Crispy]

IS THIS GAME OUT YEY?.

IT LOOKS FUCKIN\ COOLK

Posted from the My X-Box Series-S Social Platform where we respect all Genders, Preferences, Races, Creeds, Religions, Points-of-View, Fetishes, Choices of Lifestyle and Facial Hair Styles

 

[Frozen]

Imagine having a kid and he plays Fortnite and likes this kind of shit of a game.

You might as well kill him and then yourself for failing in crumbling civilization.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Is that how you remember it?

I remember thinking they were following some grand plan from the beginning, and not just making shit up as they go...


So naive.

Awakening was too easy. The Blight was ended in Origins at great cost, both personal and by the kingdom. In Awakening the world is saved and no one even realizes it. It turns out, it was all just some dude. He dies and the blights are gone forever. So lame.

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I thought I recall an interview where Gaider admitted he didn't like the Darkspawn and wanted to write them out of the story. It was a common criticism that they were 'generic orcs', which was hardly true, but in any case Gaider had nothing to replace them with except even more generic demons. He really just wanted to 'fix' the setting by freeing the mages. Much the same as Rian Johnson, after being handed a serviceable story with The Force Awakens, writes The Last Jedi as a big Fuck You to Star Wars fan while shitting on every piece of lore he could think of.

Imagine Tolkien dies of a heart attack midway through writing LotR. Christopher takes over and, instead of finishing the existing plot, he kills Sauron off in an anti-climax, declared there was nothing wrong with the ring after all, and the real villains were Gondor for oppressing the poor, impoverished orcs.

David Gaider is a man of no real imagination. He can't put himself into the shoes of another person and try to see the world from his perspective. He can only impose his narrow worldview on everything he sees with no regard to sense, logic, or verisimilitude. He can't imagine how a regular medieval human would react to a very real danger of living demonic conduits in their midst, or the ever present threat of being consumed by hellbeasts from the nether realms. Gaider can only imagine how to enacapsulate a story within a narrative of social justice, and ensure the player reaches the 'correct' conclusion by the end. This is why DA2 always ends the same, the mages *will* be freed during the story. The idea of a group of special people being held in bondage, even in fiction--and everyone being pretty okay with it--was unbearable.

When Mass Effect was confirmed to be a trilogy, they had one game out, a rough sketch of the second, and the third was just a paragraph.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Dunno, perhaps it's due to its lack of symmetry in the C&C department which lowers my appreciation for the dialogue itself. I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad or too underdeveloped, but it didn't leave as much of an impression as DAO's did. Then again, DAO also went much more into the whole 'morally grey' area with the limited C&C that they did provide, at least for the big consequential stuff hence it's primarily the dialogue that defines the moral alignment of your character. BG3 might offer more C&C, but it's slanted towards good characters rather than being about neutral actions that can be justified either way morally.

Well, it is D&D and 5E Forgotten Realms, so moral grayness isn't really encouraged by the setting, unless it's a "good" demon, since that's apparently a thing in D&D now.

The closest you seem to get is accidental evil, like trying to steal the idol to stop the ritual (Chaotic Good or Neutral) and ending up slaughtering all the druids.

That entire conflict had some gray potential, but they kept beating it into the player's head how the teiflings were innocent and the druids were led by the wannabe elf Trumpen Führer, who kills children. It would have been better had you been able to try to negotiate a deal with the goblins to spare the teiflings, thus saving them from the druids, in exchange for the teiflings opening the gate. The goblins would invariably try to kill them later anyway, and maybe you could have to pass a persuasion check, or have an extremely hard fight to save them, or run, or just let them do it. But you couldn't have that, since teiflings were an allegory for innocent refugees who could do no wrong, and they'd never open the gate for an enemy.

What I'm saying that the emphasis shouldn't be put on that sort of thing when designing evil content. That's just low effort crap, same as with other games that outright conceptualize evil playthroughs as allowing the player to be a murderhobo.

But you don't have to be a murderhobo to be evil. There is zero need for you to lift a finger to kill the teiflings. Just ignore them and they'll die.

As previously mentioned, I don't think that the tiefling content post-grove is particularly significant or even good, but it's asymmetrically designed when compared to the one you get for siding with the goblins.

I just don't know how you expect killing NPCs to result in more NPCs for you to deal with.

Should it work that way for every character? Kill one and a replacement pops up so you won't feel disenfranchised by your choice to murderhobo? I know there are some DMs who will reinvent an entire story when their players decide to burn, loot and murder, but in a game, you can only go so far with that.

I can only agree with you in terms of the companions. It does suck that Halsin, Wyll and Karlach (all of whom are terrible companions anyway) all can leave your party because of one choice that the game does advertise.

There should have been more than just Minthara. We should have been able to pick up Hag Viconia to replace Hag Jaheira. We should have had Edwin (and I disagree with anyone who says Lorroakan was Edwin based on that larpy D&D book that's not canon).

But as far as having some extra equivalent of Last Light for evil players or whatever, I don't think that's a fair ask. You get your bloody gobo party. You get your sex scene with Drow Dr Girlfriend. You get your post-mindrape Minthara. Is what it is.

I don't mind it being optional, but it's outside of that particular backstory that the evil content is most lacking. Perhaps that's part of the reason why if they originally intended it to be the default origin.

Yeah, that's part of what I'm saying. If you have hours of content dedicated to the evil path, you might say "well, Evil has enough content." But then you change that in the last year of development because playtesters crapped themselves at their character being fantasy Patrick Bateman.

 

[Skinwalker]

Imagine Tolkien dies of a heart attack midway through writing LotR. Christopher takes over and, instead of finishing the existing plot, he kills Sauron off in an anti-climax, declared there was nothing wrong with the ring after all, and the real villains were Gondor for oppressing the poor, impoverished orcs.

Christopher Tolkien would never do such a thing! He is a legend, and we have him to thank for the Silmarillion being painstakingly put together out of his father's disparate writings. He knew his father's intentions and took them very seriously.

Not sure what happened with Simon, though. Nature glitched out on that one.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

But you don't have to be a murderhobo to be evil. There is zero need for you to lift a finger to kill the teiflings. Just ignore them and they'll die.

If you intend for your game to allow for properly evil playthroughs, then evilness shouldn't be a result of fail states to possible quests. An evil playthrough should be about evil actions, not evil consequences as a result of your inaction (which makes your PC neutral if anything). Otherwise it's just bad design and unsatisfying in any case.

I just don't know how you expect killing NPCs to result in more NPCs for you to deal with.

Should it work that way for every character? Kill one and a replacement pops up so you won't feel disenfranchised by your choice to murderhobo? I know there are some DMs who will reinvent an entire story when their players decide to burn, loot and murder, but in a game, you can only go so far with that.

[...] But as far as having some extra equivalent of Last Light for evil players or whatever, I don't think that's a fair ask. You get your bloody gobo party. You get your sex scene with Drow Dr Girlfriend. Is what it is.

I'm not arguing in favor of adding content for being a murderhobo. Issue is that you can join the goblins as an opposing faction hence they should likewise get content on par with the one you get for joining the good faction. If you were only allowed to either side with the tieflings or ignore them, then there'd be no evil route. Larian gave us an evil route by allowing us to side with the gobbos, but made it less developed than the good counterpart.

Ultimately though, we can agree to disagree whether they were equal in content since we're getting bogged down in this particular example. My issue isn't necessarily with this case (I don't expect perfect symmetry on a case by case basis anyway), but with the broader game since you get even less stuff later on as an evil character. The critical path is simply thought out with a good PC in mind, so the game has to railroad you back onto that path even if it gives you the illusion of there being an evil alternative in how you approach Ketheric, Gortash etc.

Yeah, that's part of what I'm saying. If you have hours of content dedicated to the evil path, you might say "well, Evil has enough content." But then you change that in the last year of development because playtesters crapped themselves at their character being fantasy Patrick Bateman.

Agreed. That's the unfortunate reality of what happens when you change things radically so late in development. Same shit with Daisy being cut and the Emperor being shoehorned in in terms of narrative fuckups.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

If you intend for your game to allow for properly evil playthroughs, then evilness shouldn't be a result of fail states to possible quests.

They aren't though. They're the result of deliberate choices. It just so happens that evil choices, especially those resulting in death, close more doors than they open.

Issue is that you can join the goblins as an opposing faction hence they should likewise get content on par with the one you get for joining the good faction.

They do: Moonrise towers. It's just that the good "faction" can also experience that content. Likewise, if you don't go murder hobo, you can be evil and experience the good faction's content.

You say you're not for creating more content, but I don't see a way around this without creating a separate goblin camp for you to visit and, uh, hang out with the goblins(?) the way you can at Last Light. (Except Last Light is also content for evil players, since you have an evil faction member there in secret and can assassinate the dyke.) And I just don't see a goblin village being anything more than filler though, since gobos aren't essential to the story and were just low-level foot soldiers to fight in the early game.

Ultimately though, we can agree to disagree whether they were equal in content since we're getting bogged down in this particular example.

No, I agree that there's less content. I just disagree that it's a problem rather than the only possible outcome for mass murdering two sets of NPCs in the first act (druids and teiflings), and potentially another in the second act.

I don't think content needs to be even at all. All I want is for the ending to have some more polish than it does.

The critical path is simply thought out with a good PC in mind, so the game has to railroad you back onto that path even if it gives you the illusion of there being an evil alternative in how you approach Ketheric, Gortash etc.

There were definitely illusory choices here, though Gortash's at least gets you to the endgame before breaking the illusion.

Same shit with Daisy being cut and the Emperor being shoehorned in in terms of narrative fuckups.

Now there's something we can agree on. Asinine choice btw. So you replace the slightly rapey dream character that the player designed with an even more rapey tentacle monster who wants to brainwash you like he did his last victim. So what if most people don't side with Daisy. Most people won't bang the mind flayer, but they still put that in.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

No, I agree that there's less content. I just disagree that it's a problem

I think it's more of a problem for me due to the way the game is frontloaded. Unless you're playing Durge, later game just doesn't offer as much stuff for an evil character. Then again, it's generally disappointing regardless of 'alignment'. Game could've used some more time in development.

I don't think content needs to be even at all. All I want is for the ending to have some more polish than it does.

Eh, some extra fancy visuals as already advertised for the upcoming patch and a few more bugfixes won't change much. Originally I had higher hopes for a proper enhanced edition that would add more of the cut content and/or expand the preexisting content more broadly, but now I doubt that we'll get much besides what they've already patched in.

though Gortash's at least gets you to the endgame before breaking the illusion.

That was just so lazy, man. How hard would it be to add a few new lines of dialogue for an alternate ending. And it's not like they haven't gone out of their way already for that post-epilogue meetup, so they could've done more for Gortash as well. I guess the community just didn't care as much about that as they did about Minthara who at least got somewhat expanded content (and I doubt that it was all just bugs that made said extra content not trigger).

Now there's something we can agree on. Asinine choice btw. So you replace the slightly rapey dream character that the player designed with an even more rapey tentacle monster who wants to brainwash you like he did his last victim. So what if most people don't side with Daisy. Most people won't bang the mind flayer, but they still put that in.

And it just weakens the plot's cohesiveness imho. Although in general I think that the game's plot was poorly handled. Kind of like with Deadfire's plot being split between geopolitical stuff and deity stuff, here it's with mindflayer stuff and Dead Three stuff. It still works overall, but meh.

 

[9ted6]

I think that the worst thing about the lore post-DAO was how they made everything traceable back to the elves tbqh. Cheapens all the other mythologies and makes elven lore convoluted as well.

It's even weirder when you consider the elves being a defeated slave race rather than the ancient omnimportant ubermensch was a point of praise DAO's setting frequently got. People seemed to like Bioware's take on elves and stated it alot. I don't think anyone was out there wanting them to become mary sue demigods for the millionth time in a fantasy setting and Bioware knew that but just didn't give a shit.

 

[Tyranicon]

Imagine having a kid and he plays Fortnite and likes this kind of shit of a game.

You might as well kill him and then yourself for failing in crumbling civilization.

TBF, that's probably exactly what our fathers thought when we were playing video games instead of getting laid and becoming aerospace engineers.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Imagine having a kid and he plays Fortnite and likes this kind of shit of a game.

You might as well kill him and then yourself for failing in crumbling civilization.

TBF, that's probably exactly what our fathers thought when we were playing video games instead of getting laid and becoming aerospace engineers.

 

[9ted6]

Is that how you remember it?

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I thought I recall an interview where Gaider admitted he didn't like the Darkspawn and wanted to write them out of the story.

It's even more than that. Darkspawn originally weren't in Dragon Age at all but one of the executive producers suggested the idea. Gaider didn't like them but wrote them in begrudgingly, and they turned out to be what was one of the most interesting parts of DA lore.

Coincidentally that exec producer didn't work on any of the sequels and immediately the darkspawn got turned into an irrelevant joke so we could get Gaider's unique and super interesting plots of gay schizo mages blowing up chantries and bald elf redditors blowing up the world.

I imagine the Grey Wardens were added after the darkspawn too, so their retcon to irrelevance is probably why the Wardens got Stalined out of the picture. Because nobody likes the generic ancient order of heroes fighting demonic hordes, they want self insert mage daddy issues and sweaty gay BDSM sex with qunari and transelves. But not with dwarves, never with dwarves. You sick fuck.

 

[Takamori]

I saw the gameplay trailer, they simply decided to say fuck it no one that played the previous game will want to play this diarrhea turd sandwich, so might as well give a leap of faith and try to cater to the ADHD zoomer retard. It's still a train crash in progress, will it be competing with any other relevant game during its release or at least they were wise enough to pick a dead month?

 

[Modron]

Finally watched the gameplay clip, looked like a crappy attempt to make a Snowblind game.

 

[thesheeep]

As expected, the gameplay looks less shit than the awful trailer made it seem, but still looks extremely dumbed down compared to previous entries.
So... great for mass market appeal, I guess, but I'm out.

 

[Reinhardt]

I finally watched the trailer. Yeah, its terrible but why do I feel like this will play exactly like ME2? Recruit companions -> loyalty missions -> suicide mission to stop egghead.

maybe i will even watch video of sucide mission with zero loyalty missions completed just for laughs.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

maybe i will even watch video of sucide mission with zero loyalty missions completed just for laughs.

 

[Reinhardt]

again, for suicide mission to work you should first care about characters dying. last time i cared about pipo in my party dying in a crpg was... fortress of regrets, i think?
famous rapist avellone is probably the only person in western vidya who can pull it. even his joke gobbo in kangmaker was head above everyone else. that scene when he builds gobbo totem for you and gets rejected...

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

again, for suicide mission to work you should first care about characters dying.

Lol, wat? You assume people didn't do it wrong on purpose to kill characters they didn't like.

And I thought Tali and Zaheed were ok. Grunt too. And edgy Garrus.

But yeah, Jacob is getting sent to his death every time. He volunteered after all.