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

[Ghulgothas]

-DICE sets the bar, Bioware struggles to meet it.-

Is this being made with Free-Range Developers, rather than Factory-Farmed ones?

 

[eilef]

With the way they did Anthem and Andromeda, i am legit scared about DA4. I do not want its ending being locked away behind DLC (like it was with DAI). I mean DAI was fine, if you throw away all the empty filler junk, and add DLC content in to the main game. But this is EA we are talking about. We will probably will have to wait a year+ until they release "true ending".

 

[Readher]

With the way they did Anthem and Andromeda, i am legit scared about DA4. I do not want its ending being locked away behind DLC (like it was with DAI). I mean DAI was fine, if you throw away all the empty filler junk, and add DLC content in to the main game. But this is EA we are talking about. We will probably will have to wait a year+ until they release "true ending".

Andromeda was done by a B team from Montreal that has been since absorbed by EA Motive, so I wouldn't be afraid for anything of that scale. Anthem was done by the main studio, but the genre was far from what BioWare is used to. I'm optimistic that something like DA:I is still withing BioWare's capabilities, for better or worse. The main problems in DA:I for me were the MMO-like areas and quests, bad facial animations which we'll probably never escape from unless they change engine and quite a few unlikable companions. What surprised me was that there was a decent amount of varied responses in dialogue (for a fully voiced game anyway) and the pragmatic/stoic one was actually such (they're the ones I like the most, so I'm very happy whenever they're included). I also really liked the whole Val Royeaux main questline, which I consider the high point of the game. I'm surprised they actually let you side with Gaspard and even made him the best (for the Inquisition's interests anyway) option, since he's the poster fascist.

What I'm trying to say is that my expectations are none, but I have no nightmares either. I believe they're capable of delivering a decent RPG game (as good as AAA RPGs can be anyway), but also of making yet another blunder (third time's the charm after all). Which way they will go, only time will tell.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

EA/DICE cancelled further content updates for Battlefield 5 a little more than a year after launch.
If they haven't flushed any live service elements down the drain by now then it's over for them, only the most mindless fanboy is gonna buy in to that shit again.

 

[TemplarGR]

The main problem of Bioware is that they don't actually realize what are their strengths and what made them succesful in the past. They cannot make great CRPGs anymore because their playerbase are ignorant morons who:

a) Like and praise their BAD games, case in point: Dragon Age Origins
b) Dislike their actually good games, case in point: Dragon Age 2 (for many reasons that need a whole post, it is the best in the series, the reason people hate it is because it doesn't fit their expectations of being BG3, but it was never supposed to be that)
c) Like and praise some of their good games for the wrong reasons, for example they loved Mass Effect for the story and world building, which was indeed top notch, but as video games all the ME games were pretty mediocre. I loved them a lot for the space opera story, but i wouldn't miss anything if i had just watched movie versions on Youtube, the gameplay was "just there", not terribad, but nothing good either, just there. Like the Witcher 3 gameplay.

The problem with praising and buying mediocre/bad games and making good games flop, is that you are providing the wrong kind of feedback, and video game companies more than anything run on feedback on what is expected to sell. You keep buying stupid shit, you keep getting stupid shit, you don't buy good shit, you stop getting good shit, is how things work most of the time. For example, Dragon Age Inquision sold well and reviewed really well despite being a travesty of epic purportions. So as you could imagine Mass Effect Andromeda borrowed from it and you can expect the next DA game to be more of the same shit.

 

[DalekFlay]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

 

[TemplarGR]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

It is not Jedi Fallen Order's success (which was a decent game but hardly exceptional, if not Star Wars themed it would be yet another Lords of the Fallen), it is more about Anthem's and Battlefield's failures. EA is begining to realize that the golden goose that is multiplayer games with tons of microtransactions is dead. And it is dead. Major publishers like Activision, EA, Ubisoft, wanted to abandon single player and focus on multiplayer games because they are more easily moneytized and you can create self-reinforcing online communities so you can retain players for longer. But this fad has made people tired. Even battle royale is on decline now. People don't find satisfaction on playing online shooters 24/7 for years, with just a different gimmick or graphics. At some point they want to try new genres, they want stories, they want engagement, plus competitive gaming is not that great, it is soul-draining because there are always nolifers that are better than you because they do nothing else all day.

There is also the serious problem of hardware requirements. Major AAA publishers keep distancings themselves from the rest of the industry by pushing the envelope of production values. But this comes at a cost, especially since gpu manufacturers have formed an oligopoly and are price fixing for years, with various pretexts like the cryptocurrency bubble. This lead to AAA multilpayer experiences being poor on most peoples' rigs, and many people couldn't run them at all, and you can't form huge online communities in a heavily crowded market if you restrict your games to only 1000$+ rigs. That is why lower quality online games with simpler cartoony graphics rule the industry. The AAA advantage does not help companies like EA for multiplayer games, they are seriously disadvantaged there, and it seems they only realised it recently when many AAA shooters of them flopped while Fortnite has been making money like there is no tomorrow....

So AAA publishers have no alternative other than return to single player gaming and try to moneytize stuff like VR and make games grindy like Ubisoft to promote moneytization.

 

[RepHope]

With the way they did Anthem and Andromeda, i am legit scared about DA4. I do not want its ending being locked away behind DLC (like it was with DAI). I mean DAI was fine, if you throw away all the empty filler junk, and add DLC content in to the main game. But this is EA we are talking about. We will probably will have to wait a year+ until they release "true ending".

Why would you even buy a nuBioware game Day 1 anyway?

 

[Morgoth]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

Mike Laidlaw must be feeling really pissed if that's true. His entire vision for DA4 was wiped in favor of some lootbox/money-grab-scheme... only to be reverted again? Lol.

Either way, the real question is: Where the heck is Kotor III??? Star Wars + Bioware? It's so simple.

 

[RepHope]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

Mike Laidlaw must be feeling really pissed if that's true. His entire vision for the DA4 was wiped in favor of some lootbox/money-grab-scheme... only to be reverted again? Lol.

Either way, the real question is: Where the heck is Kotor III??? Star Wars + Bioware? It's so simple.

Star Wars is a bitch to work with. Everything has to fit within the “canon” now, so you get the losers from LucasArts who are autistic about making sure the Aurebesh is correct but let Abrams and Johnson rape the franchise constantly going over your work. Plus I think they plan on reserving the Old Republic time period for future films.

 

[vortex]

Either way, the real question is: Where the heck is Kotor III??? Star Wars + Bioware? It's so simple.

I bet there will be Knights of the High Republic in the future.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

Mike Laidlaw must be feeling really pissed if that's true. His entire vision for DA4 was wiped in favor of some lootbox/money-grab-scheme... only to be reverted again? Lol.

Either way, the real question is: Where the heck is Kotor III??? Star Wars + Bioware? It's so simple.

SWTOR killed our chances for that and already ruined both Revan and the Exile.

 

[Morgoth]

Well they could launch a new RPG franchise then. I'd favor that over resurrecting Commander Shepard.

 

[Dodo1610]

I half expect them to copy elements from Larian recent games like the COOP since Larian has started to copy Dragon Age's cinematic dialogues.
What actually surprises me is just how much this looks like Inquisition with improved graphics that gives me some hope that they actually want to make Dragon Age 4 and not some MMO spin-off. And yes I know this is pure fabulous optimism

.

 

[Semiurge]

Well they could launch a new RPG franchise then. I'd favor that over resurrecting Commander Shepard.

Mass Effect: Blasto!

 

[NPC451]

I half expect them to copy elements from Larian recent games like the COOP since Larian has started to copy Dragon Age's cinematic dialogues.
What actually surprises me is just how much this looks like Inquisition with improved graphics that gives me some hope that they actually want to make Dragon Age 4 and not some MMO spin-off. And yes I know this is pure fabulous optimism

.

I agree, there seems to be a convergent evolution with most new rpgs nowadays. Wasteland 3 is also adopting several of these elements.

 

[DalekFlay]

I bet there will be Knights of the High Republic in the future.

KotOR is previous canon and I don't think anything new can be in the old canon, so they'd have to start over anyway.

 

[fantadomat]

The last game Bioware will ever make......

I honestly don't know what kind of retard you have to be to get excited over bioware game at this point. Most of their fans are already old by now,and don't even care about games, another part of their fans just decided to stop play their games after one garbage game or another.

 

[anvi]

praise their BAD games, case in point: Dragon Age Origins
b) Dislike their actually good games, case in point: Dragon Age 2

Do you really believe that or are you roleplaying a shitposter or something?

 

[HoboForEternity]

i predict it will be axed before it ever came out

 

[Yosharian]

Imagine still giving enough of a shit about Bioware or their franchises to be 'scared' about the quality of whatever turd they shit out next

 

[eilef]

Jedi Fallen Order's success had some EA guys commenting about reinvesting into singleplayer, so there's a chance DA4 might be more offline than it was planned to be years ago. Who knows though. Inquisition was basically an offline MMO anyway.

Mike Laidlaw must be feeling really pissed if that's true. His entire vision for DA4 was wiped in favor of some lootbox/money-grab-scheme... only to be reverted again? Lol.

Either way, the real question is: Where the heck is Kotor III??? Star Wars + Bioware? It's so simple.

Kotor III is where it belongs - in the hearts and minds of series fans. And perhaps in some unreleased scripts. Making that game now, under Disney new canon and EA - will be a disaster and a disservice to the memory of the first two games, and everyone who enjoyed them. They cannot produce the product of the same quality anymore. They can only make originals worse.


And no, SWTOR Revan line and novel does not exist. Making them disappear was like the only good thing about wiping the canon clear.


I mean, i have doubts Bioware can handle DA4 and make it decent. Giving them Kotor III would be a huge mistake. My personal opinion is that studios that could have made it - remained in the past.

 

[deama]

Should be easier for bioware this time around than they had with DA:I because EA forced them to use their frostbite engine and not only did bioware have to learn it, they needed to also develop the rpg mechanics, interfaces, etc... so DA:I could work.
This time though they've had experience with DA:I, anthem, and even adromeda to some extend, in addition to having the frameworks already done from DA:I.
So overall, it's not looking too bad, there's a good chance they'll make something better than what they made with DA:I.

 

[Yosharian]

Should be easier for bioware this time around than they had with DA:I because EA forced them to use their frostbite engine and not only did bioware have to learn it, they needed to also develop the rpg mechanics, interfaces, etc... so DA:I could work.

That is a fair point actually, but Bioware's problems are wayyyy bigger than that

 

[TemplarGR]

Do you really believe that or are you roleplaying a shitposter or something?

Ofcourse i believe that. Seriously, play them today, one after another. Which is going to be more enjoyable? I replayed them both last spring, seriously Origins was a slog and i wanted to kill myself for playing it. Dragon Age II was actually pretty fun and although not the best RPG experience by any means, was fun enough and the story was interesting enough.