Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Thread

[Lyric Suite]

That was always the goal i'm not gonna assume there's still people out there who don't know this because you would have to be retarded at this point not to realize the plan was always that from the start.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's cultural parasitism. Like all that came out of postmodernism really. They took over universities, but they'll be cleansed eventually. Nature always finds a way.

 

[almondblight]

That subreddit... BG3 fans aren't really any better than Veilguard ones...

Your join date means that you should probably remember when about half of the Codex was saying things like that.



And we were all better off because of it.

 

[Shaja]

So... resetera won? Are the writing and quality standards going to be like this from now on?

 

[Lord_Potato]

So... resetera won?

Concurrent player peak:

Black Myth: Wukong: 2 415k
Cyberpunk 2077: 1 054k
Elden Ring: 953k
Hogwart's Legacy: 879k
Baldur's Gate 3: 875k
Dragon's Dogma 2: 228k
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Veilguard: 89k

Make of that what you will.

 

[aweigh]

 

[sebas]

How much does their life improve if society collectively spends that vast amount of effort required to accommodate them? It must be miniscule. The scale of selfishness and lack of perspective is mystifying.

I mean, the trans community definitely comes from a place of self loathe and wretchedness. Their whole forray into the sexual deviance limelight has been marked with demands, either for constant attention or for canceling any sort of criticism. I can only assume this comes from mental illness or a very fucked up childhood. Either way, they have nothing to give to society.

 

[aweigh]

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Looks like it won't beat DOS2 after all. Swen wins.

Swen wins by default by not being a tranny.

Lol swen is 100% onboard with the tranny/globohomo agenda. Same as ubi, ea, capcom, microsoft, sony and GTA dudes.

Yea there's a note in bg3 saying that shadowheart was fucking a trans elf in shar orgies not trolling

 

[Odoryuk]

So... resetera won? Are the writing and quality standards going to be like this from now on?

I hope you didn't really think that a modern high budget videogame might have good writing. Look at indies for writing.

 

[Warrax]

How much does their life improve if society collectively spends that vast amount of effort required to accommodate them? It must be miniscule. The scale of selfishness and lack of perspective is mystifying.

I mean, the trans community definitely comes from a place of self loathe and wretchedness. Their whole forray into the sexual deviance limelight has been marked with demands, either for constant attention or for canceling any sort of criticism. I can only assume this comes from mental illness or a very fucked up childhood. Either way, they have nothing to give to society.

The idea of accommodating transgenders is that since there's no cure for their illness, society might as well humor them to make them feel better. We can agree with that or not, but that's the idea. But there's no such idea for "non-binaries". There's no well-defined pre-existing third gender that they all feel they belong to. Creating and using gender-neutral pronouns doesn't alleviate their suffering in any meaningful way. Expecting everyone else to bend over backwards for something that doesn't even help them significantly is, if not extremely selfish, completely unreasonable and delusional.

 

[Perkel]

So... resetera won? Are the writing and quality standards going to be like this from now on?

It sold less than 1 mil across all platforms. It is a megabomba as Bioware has around 1500 people working on it. They needed around 6-7mil on launch just to be in the black. They announced there won't be any DLC for it just days after release.

Unless Mass Effect 5 is next year EA will shut them down or give a boot to major part of studios along with heads or marge them into soulless part like madden, fifa etc.

 

[Lacrymas]

Here's w0t I think about the situation in a big picture kind of way. The 10-year development cycle is what killed this game and potentially BioWare if the next ME is also a flop. There have been massive changes in the gaming zeitgeist in these 10 years, namely how turn-based has been turned into the preferred RPG combat style and how verisimilitude is slowly starting to get appreciated by the mainstream. I'd dare argue BG3 is almost as cringe as Veilguard, just a different kind of cringe. BG3 just has a great combat system and environmental interactions, but the content itself is very bad (like Solasta). The companions (except Astarion and fetish content farms like Halsin and Minthara) are all unsuccessful from a writing stand point.

BioWare had no chances of this ever being popular due to the enforced action combat. God of War bros won't touch this with a ten-foot pole and the new crop of RPG fans are expecting the next BG3, not a mutt with companions who are somehow even worse and don't even show T&A&D. As much as Corinne would hate me for saying this, this game needed one conventionally attractive white woman of standard stature to romance. There's a reason Shart is the most romanced character in BG3. I know RPG connoiseurs don't care about this and I personally would fill my companion roster with all kinds of freaks if I were to make a cRPG (but I wouldn't have romances either, so YMMV), but you have to have some kind of diplomatic sense when developing for the mass market and your budget is 100s of millions.

Also, this strange focus on gender issues is going about it the wrong way. DA:O had Shale who one can argue is some kind of trans because her current body obviously doesn't match her birth one. Having characters go "mom, I'm non-binary" is pointless at best, tone-deaf at worst. I'm starting to ramble about the writing again, but it wasn't my initial intention. My point is that the writing could've been ignored if the game had more RPG elements and had been TB or at least party-based RTwP.

My advice to BioWare going forward with the DA franchise if EA even allows them to make more - remake/remaster DA:O. Fix its combat issues (maybe even make it TB?), expand on the various stories which were left hanging or cut (especially stuff to do with Loghain and Orlais [and no, Corinne, Loghain isn't trans]), add 1-2 more origins (Dalish mage and/or human commoner) and promise the next DA would follow this formula more closely than the last 3 entries. This would give the devs much needed experience with how to create a game like DA:O in the future while providing them an already almost finished game which most people like for a much needed boost in revenue.

 

[Storyfag]

mental illness or a very fucked up childhood

The latter often leads to the former.

 

[Warrax]

When David Gaider left Bioware in 2016, it was apparently because the culture had turned hostile to writers and they kept asking how they can have less writing. It's probably a side effect of the increased complexity of their engine. Back in the Infinity days the engine was simple and most of the game was its text and hand-drawn art. Probably as programmers became more important in the company, they began to push back against the writers. Everybody thinks writing is easy and programmers especially tend to think anything English majors do they can do just as well.

Extrapolating to the present, in Veilguard you can tell they tried to strip the game of complex writing and story branches as much as possible. It seems they're still chasing the ideal button=awesome game that requires no writers at all.

It's unlikely they're going to suddenly wake up and realize writing was the most important part of their IP all long.

 

[Swen]

You guys should all thank me, because of me redditors and other vermin have higher expectations for crpg's. The success of BG3 is literally one of the biggest reasons this failed even harder than originally thought.

I deserve a special tag here Infinitron "Bioware killer"

 

[Perkel]

When David Gaider left Bioware in 2016, it was apparently because the culture had turned hostile to writers and they kept asking how they can have less writing. It's probably a side effect of the increased complexity of their engine. Back in the Infinity days the engine was simple and most of the game was its text and hand-drawn art. Probably as programmers became more important in the company, they began to push back against the writers. Everybody thinks writing is easy and programmers especially tend to think anything English majors do they can do just as well.

Extrapolating to the present, in Veilguard you can tell they tried to strip the game of complex writing and story branches as much as possible. It seems they're still chasing the ideal button=awesome game that requires no writers at all.

It's unlikely they're going to suddenly wake up and realize writing was the most important part of their IP all long.

If you think it is the programmers that is the cause i have a bridge to sell to you. If anything programmers love to increase complexity of their games.

What you are looking at is typical middle management looking at focus groups and non developement to guide development rather than to make good game and then try to market it.

With increasing budgets you also have to fight for money. The people with money are thinking like this: This project can give me 1.5 rate return, that one 2.5 and project over there 4.5. You come to them with your project and it has like 2.0 return rate chance. Guess which one moneybags will fund instead.

This is why AA development effectively doesn't exist. Because investors want to rather invest in project with high ROI with high budget than high ROI and low budget. The A market is fine because this type of games are usually funded by developers themselves or private entities while AA requires up to 100-150mil which is not something lies around un-invested.

 

[Konjad]

You guys should all thank me, because of me redditors and other vermin have higher expectations for crpg's. The success of BG3 is literally one of the biggest reasons this failed even harder than originally thought.

I deserve a special tag here Infinitron "Bioware killer"

You already have the shitposter tag, don't get too greedy.

 

[Lagole Gon]

So... resetera won? Are the writing and quality standards going to be like this from now on?

It sold less than 1 mil across all platforms. It is a megabomba as Bioware has around 1500 people working on it. They needed around 6-7mil on launch just to be in the black. They announced there won't be any DLC for it just days after release.

Unless Mass Effect 5 is next year EA will shut them down or give a boot to major part of studios along with heads or marge them into soulless part like madden, fifa etc.

I call BS on your numbers.
>Bioware atm is around 1500 employees. 1500 across 6 studios.

Bioware doesn't have 6 studios. It has two, Edmonton and Austin. Other studios were closed or cannibalized a decade ago +/-, it was a failed EA megamilking experiment.
And there's no fucking way they have 1500 employees.

 

[Passerby Crocodile]

I barely remember what happened in DA:O other than happy elf genocide and trading a boy's soul for demon sex or blood magic, if you're a faggot.
Writing was not a priority for this series.

 

[Morgoth]

They currently have ~400-500 employees across two studios. The vast majority in Edmonton.

 

[Warrax]

If you think it is the programmers that is the cause i have a bridge to sell to you. If anything programmers love to increase complexity of their games.

No I don't think programmers are the cause. The blame is 100% with the EA managers. I'm saying programmers becoming more important is probably what fooled the managers into thinking the writers aren't needed. Gaider talked about how they had this notion that if the game was good enough the story would magically take care of itself.

The amount of money they wasted on getting Hans Zimmer to write the bland music for Veilguard would have been enough to retain some of their best writers for a few yerars.

The point is they didn't even make the right business decision. They're operating on the incorrect assumption that they can spend no money on writing and still have a high ROI.

 

[Junmarko]

Concurrent player peak:

Black Myth: Wukong: 2 415k
Cyberpunk 2077: 1 054k
Elden Ring: 953k
Hogwart's Legacy: 879k
Baldur's Gate 3: 875k
Dragon's Dogma 2: 228k
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Veilguard: 89k

Make of that what you will.

Wow that is pathetic.

Knew it was going to suck, but I thought on mere brand recognition they'd be able to swindle 300k players at least.

Even normies are getting sick of this woke shit.

 

[Perkel]

They currently have ~400-500 employees across two studios. The vast majority in Edmonton.

Seems that i have old info then. at 500 people you are looking at 3-4 mil sales just to break even. Assuming no outside work was needed.

edit:
andromeda had like 2000 people in credits. Obviously not all of them on full pay for whole duration of developement but 400-500 seems too small to me.

 

[Bohrain]

Due to the development taking so long I think the game would've had to sell close to 10 million to be considered a success even with a dev team of team of 200-300 people. This thing had actual marketing too.