Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Thread

[Tyranicon]

 

[Siel]

Commander Chud, step forward.

Be safe.

 

[Semiurge]

This perseveres even when The Veilguard impotently attempts to showcase some horror. When you explore a Blight-infested village in an early section, the pulsating neon-red cysts and gratuitous use of tentacles is so cartoonish that it's impossible to feel the revulsion that the story wants you to experience. The Blight is ultimately left to just become a momentary obstacle, blocking paths until you destroy a bunch of connected nodes. It's just a mechanical nuisance that rears its head countless times throughout the game.

Yeah, the "faceless menace" often seen in sanitised media. When anything truly disturbing and controversial is outlawed, you get cheap gross-out attempts that still don't work because there's no real artistry behind it. It's not extreme body horror, just plain giant haemorrhoids and tentacles in your face. Banal reality for some, I reckon.

 

[Padzi]

I made some enchantments

I was thinking about your drawing today and wanted to see how I would do.

Edit: We forgot his/hers/its Adam’s apple. I can see it now.

 

[Semiurge]

Tublr quoted on reddit

"I was incredibly moved that not only can Rook be trans/nonbinary in the character creator if you so choose, but they get options to feel differently about their identity and journey, and it impacts their dialogue and how they relate to other characters! **To access this make sure to interact with Varric's Mirror in your room in the Lighthouse.** There are many conversation options throughout the game to discuss your identity with other characters, or relate your change of self to other situations. Crucially, it comes up when entering a romance and you have to communicate with your partner about it, which I never even THOUGHT of including in a game because it seemed impossible to even allow trans main characters to begin with. "

---

Meanwhile, for some people things just don't feel right:

"Your identity". What the fuck - Rook seemingly has NO identity beyond his idpol issues, you toxoplasmatic Tumblr cunts. Is this a game, or some coming out as trans- practice simulation for impressionable tweens?

 

[Camel]

See chuds? It must be good!

BioWare on Tumblr is fitting.

 

[quixotic]

Listen up, you heckin’ chuds. Y’all are on the wrong side of history, it’s time to give up, you LOST. Dragon Age was ALWAYS woke, you tourists are the REAL snowflakes. Look at all those glowing reviews! Bioware is BACK!

…

GET THESE BIGOTS OUT OF MY YOUTUBE RECOMMENDED, WHY IS THERE DISSENT ON MY SCREEN. HELP ME REDDIT, I’M LITERALLY SHAKING. I CAN’T EVEN ANYMORE.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

The remarkable thing to me is the writing catching heat. I was expecting the more sober reviewers to hit it for the subpar looking gameplay but thought the writing would be too much of a live rail to touch given the ideological baggage. Evidently not.

From the Forbes review:

It could have used some editing, more gameplay complexity and maybe some sharper writing in parts.

From the Guardian review:

Rook is our hero of the hour because, by their own admission, “no one else was there to do it”. It’s good to play as someone other than a magically chosen superhero for once, but Rook hasn’t got much of a personality behind their ill-timed quips. No matter which dialogue option you pick, a lot of it inevitably ends in some sort of joke, and sometimes even mildly embarrassing pop culture references and idioms. (I never want to hear a character say a griffon is “feeling his oats”, please. Please.) Veilguard isn’t the Guardians of the Galaxy-esque jokefest fans feared it might be after its first trailer, but Rook is written less like a person with opinions and more like someone who makes witty observations.

The central story is the least interesting thing about Veilguard, both in its narrative and gameplay. Many quests have you endlessly slotting crystals into receptacles to open doors or vanquish blight-boils, pulsing, fleshy growths that keep you from travelling to a place to fight a monster. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Dragon Age, but coupled with dissatisfying cameos and by-the-numbers gameplay, it left me feeling disappointed.

The companions save the day. The quality of writing does vary wildly, but it’s fun to get to know your new team.

And the PC Gamer review:

And don't get me started on the romance dialogue. If you choose to do some very light flirting with a character once or twice, the game tries to fast track you into a relationship—complete with all the cliches. In a single hour I had not one but two stammering, bashful romantic encounters that turned the game into an antediluvian romcom. You know the ones: the "It's a date… no, I mean, not a date date" variety. There are some solid romantic encounters, eventually, but you have to trudge through a lot of rote rubbish to see them.

The Veilguard tries to create funny, silly, awkward and sincere conversations—the kind you'd have with your pals or potential partners—but it just spits them out so rapidly, and with so many cliches, that I started to dread my post-adventuring downtime, where I'd need to go from room to room having uninspired chats with some very nice but very boring people. That's ultimately The Veilguard's biggest stumbling block when it comes to the companions: they are simply good people. Thoughtful, open-minded, friendly—great for a group of mates, not so great for a story-driven RPG...

...I'm not really feeling very connected to my version of Rook, either. Though maybe "my version" is the wrong phrase. BioWare has stuck with the system it introduced in Dragon Age 2, where your responses are all clearly connected to a specific personality style or emotion—snarky, aggressive, positive, upset, that sort of thing. Despite being a bit limited, the system has worked well in the past, but this time it seems impossible to develop a character who isn't just a very brave, very generic hero. Maybe yours will be slightly gruffer, or a bit more sarcastic—but not that much. No matter what options you pick, it's going to sound broadly like something a hero would say. Actually impactful choices, meanwhile, are few and far between, offering no real opportunities to take Rook in different directions. You might as well be Captain America.

 

[Alienman]

Maybe the Blight was right.

 

[kapisi]

Listen up, you heckin’ chuds. Y’all are on the wrong side of history, it’s time to give up, you LOST. Dragon Age was ALWAYS woke, you tourists are the REAL snowflakes. Look at all those glowing reviews! Bioware is BACK!

…

GET THESE BIGOTS OUT OF MY YOUTUBE RECOMMENDED, WHY IS THERE DISSENT ON MY SCREEN. HELP ME REDDIT, I’M LITERALLY SHAKING. I CAN’T EVEN ANYMORE.

In one of the content police threads on resetera there was this flabbergasted dude who said something like "oh dear, is this creator bad? I watch his videos all the time, should I stop?"

If these people played Fallout 1, Shady Sands would be endgame content for them.

 

[Shaja]

Tublr quoted on reddit

"I was incredibly moved that not only can Rook be trans/nonbinary in the character creator if you so choose, but they get options to feel differently about their identity and journey, and it impacts their dialogue and how they relate to other characters! **To access this make sure to interact with Varric's Mirror in your room in the Lighthouse.** There are many conversation options throughout the game to discuss your identity with other characters, or relate your change of self to other situations. Crucially, it comes up when entering a romance and you have to communicate with your partner about it, which I never even THOUGHT of including in a game because it seemed impossible to even allow trans main characters to begin with. "

---

Meanwhile, for some people things just don't feel right:

Poor fella doesn´t now what a big corporation and criteria with proof means.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Hercules was far less serious than Xena. That kind of Aphrodite vs Nemesis cat fights is right up the series' alley.

Yes, Xena was a very serious series.

BTW

What a bzzarre fetish channel

That’s an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

Yes, but Xena was still Raimi series. He allways had taste in nice chicks and toddler jokes:



By the way, lesbos are still in love with the characters:



I think, to say something connected to DA, If a new game would have this same level of kindergarten humour and sense of happiness as Hercules/Xena, it would be truly loved, even if not by everyone, even with trannies and shit. But that need pretty girls, and that's a hard pass for modern Canadians.

 

[Tyranicon]

The remarkable thing to me is the writing catching heat.

Catching heat from the people who probably loved BG3's plot points, the writing here must be -5/10.

Also, they're trying to distance Mass Effect from DA now:

 

[Semiurge]

The remarkable thing to me is the writing catching heat. I was expecting the more sober reviewers to hit it for the subpar looking gameplay but thought the writing would be too much of a live rail to touch given the ideological baggage. Evidently not.

From the Forbes review:

It could have used some editing, more gameplay complexity and maybe some sharper writing in parts.

From the Guardian review:

Rook is our hero of the hour because, by their own admission, “no one else was there to do it”. It’s good to play as someone other than a magically chosen superhero for once, but Rook hasn’t got much of a personality behind their ill-timed quips. No matter which dialogue option you pick, a lot of it inevitably ends in some sort of joke, and sometimes even mildly embarrassing pop culture references and idioms. (I never want to hear a character say a griffon is “feeling his oats”, please. Please.) Veilguard isn’t the Guardians of the Galaxy-esque jokefest fans feared it might be after its first trailer, but Rook is written less like a person with opinions and more like someone who makes witty observations.

The central story is the least interesting thing about Veilguard, both in its narrative and gameplay. Many quests have you endlessly slotting crystals into receptacles to open doors or vanquish blight-boils, pulsing, fleshy growths that keep you from travelling to a place to fight a monster. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Dragon Age, but coupled with dissatisfying cameos and by-the-numbers gameplay, it left me feeling disappointed.

The companions save the day. The quality of writing does vary wildly, but it’s fun to get to know your new team.

And the PC Gamer review:

And don't get me started on the romance dialogue. If you choose to do some very light flirting with a character once or twice, the game tries to fast track you into a relationship—complete with all the cliches. In a single hour I had not one but two stammering, bashful romantic encounters that turned the game into an antediluvian romcom. You know the ones: the "It's a date… no, I mean, not a date date" variety. There are some solid romantic encounters, eventually, but you have to trudge through a lot of rote rubbish to see them.

The Veilguard tries to create funny, silly, awkward and sincere conversations—the kind you'd have with your pals or potential partners—but it just spits them out so rapidly, and with so many cliches, that I started to dread my post-adventuring downtime, where I'd need to go from room to room having uninspired chats with some very nice but very boring people. That's ultimately The Veilguard's biggest stumbling block when it comes to the companions: they are simply good people. Thoughtful, open-minded, friendly—great for a group of mates, not so great for a story-driven RPG...

...I'm not really feeling very connected to my version of Rook, either. Though maybe "my version" is the wrong phrase. BioWare has stuck with the system it introduced in Dragon Age 2, where your responses are all clearly connected to a specific personality style or emotion—snarky, aggressive, positive, upset, that sort of thing. Despite being a bit limited, the system has worked well in the past, but this time it seems impossible to develop a character who isn't just a very brave, very generic hero. Maybe yours will be slightly gruffer, or a bit more sarcastic—but not that much. No matter what options you pick, it's going to sound broadly like something a hero would say. Actually impactful choices, meanwhile, are few and far between, offering no real opportunities to take Rook in different directions. You might as well be Captain America.

Criticising the writing could also be a veiled jab towards the ideological shit since they can't really call Bioware out on that too directly.

 

[AfterVirtue]

This perseveres even when The Veilguard impotently attempts to showcase some horror. When you explore a Blight-infested village in an early section, the pulsating neon-red cysts and gratuitous use of tentacles is so cartoonish that it's impossible to feel the revulsion that the story wants you to experience. The Blight is ultimately left to just become a momentary obstacle, blocking paths until you destroy a bunch of connected nodes. It's just a mechanical nuisance that rears its head countless times throughout the game.

Yeah, the "faceless menace" often seen in sanitised media. When anything truly disturbing and controversial is outlawed, you get cheap gross-out attempts that still don't work because there's no real artistry behind it. It's not extreme body horror, just plain giant haemorrhoids and tentacles in your face. Banal reality for some, I reckon.

Maybe the Blight was right.

Make The Blight Great Again!

 

[solemgar]

So, how does it hold compared to Origins?

It's about the same. You should get it and stream for us.

Oopsie , forgot this is not the trigger the codex with a statement thread

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Make The Blight Great Again!

Let's start from " Make Blight a Thing Again!" and "Make DA Story a Story Not Character Driven Mess".

 

[ind33d]

The remarkable thing to me is the writing catching heat.

Catching heat from the people who probably loved BG3's plot points, the writing here must be -5/10.

Also, they're trying to distance Mass Effect from DA now:

View attachment 56859

mass effect 5 won't dabble with stylized visuals because bioware will be bankrupt by then

 

[Fedora Master]

Codex review please.

Codex GOTY

 

[shimadamada]

BioWare trannies went after MattyP and he has responded

I think it goes without saying, but today has been an extremely hard day. I really appreciate your patience as I looked into things.First off, I would like to apologize to everyone at BioWare and EA. I have already reached out to them to let them know the truth. We already have plans to sit down and have a conversation about it. That is my gameplay. It was never my intention for clips of Dragon Age to get released ahead of the embargo lifting. I had shared these two clips of the game with an editor of mine. It is to my understanding that these clips were then taken, shared again, and went down the chain to someone far removed from the both of us who then posted them claiming to be associated with me. So, yes, the clips are mine. If BioWare, EA, or any other game company chooses to not work with me over this, then I fully understand and accept that. If you, the viewers of my content, choose not to trust me because you deem me irresponsible with the privilege I was given as a game reviewer, I also fully understand and accept that.With that said, it’s extremely important for me to firmly shut down one element of this narrative going around about me. Whoever shared these clips on X with the attached hateful comments and replies is NOT me. I have no clue who runs that account. They are most definitely not my friend and they stand against everything I believe in. I am only speculating, but I think whoever took my game footage and tweeted it as if they were connected with me was quite deliberate as it’s an easy way to paint me in a bad light. Beyond any guesses I may have, I would never leak my own footage on an alt account and then use that exact same footage in my review. Said account no longer exists and it is my understanding that it is because it was reported multiple times following the public ridicule it rightfully received. There's no room for that type of hate.It also needs to be said that I have not deleted any comments on my review. I believe as a consumer of media, you have a right to call someone out on bullshit or say what you feel. I do have preset words for my channel filters that fall under racist, homophobic, etc. terms that automatically get caught by YouTube’s moderation system, but that’s it. I know I can’t convince each and every one of you, but I do think you all deserve an explanation. At the end of the day, my circle of trust was breached and it was my fault for sending a clip in the first place.I’m deeply disheartened by the amount of people who believed that this Twitter account was me. I don’t expect blind loyalty yet it hurts to see just how quickly I was thrown under the bus. The sad reality of it all is the damage is done and many people have made up their minds about me today.Since I have started covering this game, many angry opinions have fallen in my lap. When I played the preview, I thoroughly enjoyed it and had a chance to interview the game’s director, Corinne Busche. On that video, people were sending hate my way because they wanted their opinions heard. Now, I have put out my honest and objective review and people are still unhappy with my personal opinion. It has always been my goal to deliver fair, honest coverage of video games and elevate the conversation, not fan the flames. I’m deeply sad that my clips have played into the detraction of a game that, as stated in my review, others may enjoy more than me. Looking at the OpenCritic score, I’m glad to see it is that way. It’s been a tough cycle for the folks at BioWare and to know I played a part in the pain of the developer who made my favorite games ever is a regret that I don’t think I will ever live down, even if people choose to forgive me.I want to thank my wife, my best friends, and my LSM family who hung with me and didn’t lose faith in me. The statements made about my character today have broken my heart into a million pieces. I don’t say that so you feel bad for me, I just feel it’s important to give my love to those who willingly stood by me in the face of all this. I know it wasn’t easy having your ethics in question just by being in my vicinity.Lastly, I am not going anywhere. I will be continuing to make content about games across MrMattyPlays, Retro Rebound, and Defining Duke. I will also continue to pretend I know what I’m talking about when it comes to movies on Retro Rewind. Hopefully, I will see you there. If not, thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you have a good rest of your day.Stay sexy, stay active,Matty

Act Man chimes in

There is so much going on under the surface for everyone to be acting like this. This is up there with trying to explain why you fled the cult compound or why you betrayed Robespierre and the French revolutionaries

 

[Fedora Master]

Wasn't it with Moorcock that the moral revisionism of fantasy began? The first novel, a fix-up of short stories from the 1960s, had themes of incest, sadomasochism, cuckoldry, homosexuality, transvestism, transsexualism and hermaphrodism. Plus a lot of nihilism. And yet Elric, Jerry's multiverse variant, is the basis of both the beloved Codex The Wither and Warhammer...

I think we can safely admit that today's state of fantasy is just another step in the great march away from Tolkien and Howard.

Even Moorcock has more nuance than any of this slop though.

 

[AfterVirtue]

Let's start from " Make Blight a Thing Again!"

There, done.

 

[Pink Eye]

I'm getting the feeling that where ever I look, the troons and their pets outnumber the based by at least 10:1. I thought the pendulum was supposed to be swinging back. There's not a single place outside Codex where you could be safe from their insipid bullshit. They can't be that numerous.

Well, I mean, it's hard to do anything when you get banned or removed from a community for wrong think. Call it an echo chamber or whatever, but so far, 4chan and RPGCodex have been the only communities where I haven't been banned from. The problem is this: most people don't compete for janitorial positions because it's gay and stupid. Only the mentally ill with attention seeking disorders gravitate towards positions of power, the amateur, the younglings, who seek some form of power in their sad life in order to validate themselves, to impose control over others so they feel better about themselves; and thus, guess who runs these mainstream communities, the weirdos, guess who is more than willing to act as enforcers for big corpo in a public gaming forum, the very same weirdos.

If you take away a man's ability to discuss then you've effectively won. You don't need to articulate a better point or engage meaningfully in proper discourse if you can simply ban someone and shut the discussion down. Censorship is evil not because it limits free speech but because it destroys the very fundamentals of a free thinking society. People should be able to judge for themselves on the merits of an idea and discuss it vigorously amongst each other. The issue however is that this is nearly impossible in today's online communications. Where any topic can be labeled as taboo then immediately forbidden for discussion. Participants that attempt to discuss taboo topics are immediately removed from the community, forever, regardless of their seniority in said community.

It's not a matter of being 'numerous', it's all about controlling the conversation.

BioWare trannies went after MattyP and he has responded

I didn't read the whole thing but that Matty person is beyond pathetic. If someone makes an attempt at ruining your livelihood, or disrespecting your persons in such a manner, you don't get on your knees and beg for forgiveness like some dame. All it does is further embolden these children. When children act up, you don't encourage them - you ignore them.

How is women, blacks and gays having more rights a bad thing for western society?

Funny enough, I've seen more racism, bigotry, than ever before. All because of this huge push for DEI in entertainment media. The "progressives" of today have successfully undermined colored representation, women, and gays by portraying them in an unfair manner in media - read: ugly, badly characterized, forced, and awkwardly written. Whilst aggressively pushing moderates, centrists, into choosing sides if said moderates attempt to notice or speak up regarding their favorite media being clearly hijacked by activists who do not care about culture, entertainment, but to push a clear agenda.

The issue of the first world isn't the evil racists, which no one takes seriously, or the ignorant, the issue of the first world is a bunch of weird liberals acting as arbiters on what's right or wrong on behalf of a populace, a populace I might add, that is increasingly getting tired of being preached to by liberals who are out of touch on reality.

I've never understood how in the past we had great shows like Afro Samurai, The Boondocks, Black Dynamite, the entirety of the Blaxploitation film genre, the Hip Hop movement from the 90s-2000s, and so on; what has changed from then to now that all of a sudden we need to push for diversity everywhere - oh yeah, a bunch of autocratic douches who saw the rising racial tensions after George Floyd as a means to grab power for themselves whilst tightening their control over the entertainment industry by labeling the opposition as "bigots" and cancelling them out of the industry. All of this done on the backs of women, colored people, and gays under the guise of improving society.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

The remarkable thing to me is the writing catching heat. I was expecting the more sober reviewers to hit it for the subpar looking gameplay but thought the writing would be too much of a live rail to touch given the ideological baggage. Evidently not.

From the Forbes review:

It could have used some editing, more gameplay complexity and maybe some sharper writing in parts.

From the Guardian review:

Rook is our hero of the hour because, by their own admission, “no one else was there to do it”. It’s good to play as someone other than a magically chosen superhero for once, but Rook hasn’t got much of a personality behind their ill-timed quips. No matter which dialogue option you pick, a lot of it inevitably ends in some sort of joke, and sometimes even mildly embarrassing pop culture references and idioms. (I never want to hear a character say a griffon is “feeling his oats”, please. Please.) Veilguard isn’t the Guardians of the Galaxy-esque jokefest fans feared it might be after its first trailer, but Rook is written less like a person with opinions and more like someone who makes witty observations.

The central story is the least interesting thing about Veilguard, both in its narrative and gameplay. Many quests have you endlessly slotting crystals into receptacles to open doors or vanquish blight-boils, pulsing, fleshy growths that keep you from travelling to a place to fight a monster. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Dragon Age, but coupled with dissatisfying cameos and by-the-numbers gameplay, it left me feeling disappointed.

The companions save the day. The quality of writing does vary wildly, but it’s fun to get to know your new team.

And the PC Gamer review:

And don't get me started on the romance dialogue. If you choose to do some very light flirting with a character once or twice, the game tries to fast track you into a relationship—complete with all the cliches. In a single hour I had not one but two stammering, bashful romantic encounters that turned the game into an antediluvian romcom. You know the ones: the "It's a date… no, I mean, not a date date" variety. There are some solid romantic encounters, eventually, but you have to trudge through a lot of rote rubbish to see them.

The Veilguard tries to create funny, silly, awkward and sincere conversations—the kind you'd have with your pals or potential partners—but it just spits them out so rapidly, and with so many cliches, that I started to dread my post-adventuring downtime, where I'd need to go from room to room having uninspired chats with some very nice but very boring people. That's ultimately The Veilguard's biggest stumbling block when it comes to the companions: they are simply good people. Thoughtful, open-minded, friendly—great for a group of mates, not so great for a story-driven RPG...

...I'm not really feeling very connected to my version of Rook, either. Though maybe "my version" is the wrong phrase. BioWare has stuck with the system it introduced in Dragon Age 2, where your responses are all clearly connected to a specific personality style or emotion—snarky, aggressive, positive, upset, that sort of thing. Despite being a bit limited, the system has worked well in the past, but this time it seems impossible to develop a character who isn't just a very brave, very generic hero. Maybe yours will be slightly gruffer, or a bit more sarcastic—but not that much. No matter what options you pick, it's going to sound broadly like something a hero would say. Actually impactful choices, meanwhile, are few and far between, offering no real opportunities to take Rook in different directions. You might as well be Captain America.

Criticising the writing could also be a veiled jab towards the ideological shit since they can't really call Bioware out on that too directly.

We can live in hope. As I've mentioned before, I think we're approaching the end of an era in popular culture given the repeated recent failures of this type of social justice inspired entertainment product. Probably too early for DA4 to fail completely but playing the hits for rabid libs now feels pretty passé.

Edit: though I'm somewhat concerned that what comes afterwards for gaming will be a race to the bottom between Queer porn addicts and Anime porn addicts, the hobby entering an eternal CumZone till exhaustion and death.

 

[AfterVirtue]

Even Moorcock has more nuance than any of this slop though.

More like "Even Sapkowski has more nuance than any of this slop though."