Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Thread

[Lord_Potato]

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.

Not sure if it's the correct estimation. The data we have is about 0,5 million units sold for Steam but DA games usually sold better on consoles. I'd say 1,5 million total. More on PS5 than on Steam, less on Xbox.

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.

It depends on the budget really. Every 100 million $ requires about 2 million in sales full price to break even (60 $ minus steam tax, I'm simpifying here, don't know the cut for PS5 store and xbox one). So if a game costed 150 million that's 3 million of units. If 250 - 5 million. I doubt it costed above 300 million but who knows.

They announced there won't be any DLC for it just days after release.

I think they already announced it prior to release. Development hell must have been truly terrible if EA does not want to milk the franchise with dlcs and decides to move the whole team to another project.

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'm really curious what EA announces in the investor report.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

They will double down on the clown faggotry in the next Mass Effect. These demons have no sense of self preservation. I can't wait to listen to a fucking space alien tell me about how it feels like a woman trapped in a man's body and plans to liberate it's self from it's penis

 

[Perkel]

It sold less than 1 mil across all platforms.

Not sure if it's the correct estimation. The data we have is about 0,5 million units sold for Steam but DA games usually sold better on consoles. I'd say 1,5 million total. More on PS5 than on Steam, less on Xbox.

That's because previous games from them were not sold on Steam but via EA play or something like that and i think there was even delay.
There has been major shift toward PC gaming in last 5 years.
Ton of franchizes now sell almost equal amount of games on PC as on consoles total.
Capcom aka console king now sells more games on PC than on consoles.

The 10:1 ratio is pretty established at this point and it actually counts consoles sales as well. Unless you are looking at console exclusive or delayed launch it is pretty accurate.

 

[Mauman]

Can you imagine the sheer amount of narcissism it takes for someone to claim to be "non-binary"?

I mean I understand some people have gender dysphoria, an illness that makes them think they're the wrong gender. But someone claiming to be "non-binary" is saying the entire world should invent a whole new concept of gender just for them. Languages need to be modified to account for their special existence.

And all for what? 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.

A combination of people unwilling to teach the next generation the concept of 'no', and teaching that everyone is special.

Once people found they're not in fact special, the weaker ones latched onto ANYTHING that would make them special. No matter how stupid it is.

 

[Swen]

Even the madhouse patients at Retardera having second thoughts...

 

[Storyfag]

They will double down on the clown faggotry in the next Mass Effect. These demons have no sense of self preservation. I can't wait to listen to a fucking space alien Asari tell me about how it feels like a woman trapped in a man's body and plans to liberate it's self from it's penis

FTFY, just to keep things as logical as BW likes.

 

[Falksi]

Thread's getting stale, no new memes? This turd is so boring it's even boring to laugh at it.

Agree. Problem is that even if you can let the flashy combat and the graphics carry you, everything you heard is true - it just gets really repetitive, increasingly contrived, and the endless mandatory enforced positivity becomes increasingly insufferable. Literally every combat you'll have companions squirting out praise "OMG GOOD JOB ROOK" at everything you do ... bitch, this is 500th generic skeleton I've smashed in a day, it stopped being impressive in the first half hour.

I did muster up the energy for another dive and ... lemme just say that when that, ah .... controversial character shows up, I was gobsmacked at how badly she was handled, that someone would write a self-insert character and make them so utterly insufferable. She's a straight up cunt about everything right from the jump, dropping the "yeah, I wear lots of things. You don't get to tell me who I am" literally in the second conversation you have with her.

And she's a high school student. You suffer through her mission, return to base, and there's a whole scene where her mom - repeating this, her mom - says she'll join the team, which she whines about The entire scene gives you a good sense of how incredibly unlikeable she's written:

Jesus wept, the fucking writing and voice acting...how can anyone reviewing this game consider either remotely decent?

Cleanse that pallet for me David...

 

[dbx]

It couldn't crack 90k and peaked at 89,418 concurrent players!

Are we absolutely certain it's not going to skyrocket during the weekdays?

In many places of the world this was a three day weekend, due to friday being a holiday for many countries (basically, plenty of catholic ones). So if DAV had any chance of hitting peaks, it was during these days. We'l have to see if the game gets down to 50k before next sunday.

Wasn't it also diwali in India? So even people that usually play with literal shit aren't playing this slop

 

[Rieser]

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.

They're already thinking about it, according to an interview John Epler made a few days ago. Seems the devs are reluctant because they'd have to work harder (lol). Ultimately the sales of Veilguard will probably decide what EA decides to do. Quote from the article;

“I think I’m one of about maybe 20 people left at BioWare who’s actually used Eclipse,” Epler says. “It’s something that’s not going to be as easy Mass Effect, but we do love the original games. Never say never, I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

They're talking about it in the article as if they have to remaster all three games, however (probably due to the journalist's brain rot), which is obviously retarded given how different the DA games are from one another. Like you said, just remaster or - better yet - remake the first one. There's no crowd for a remaster of the second game anyway, and the third doesn't warrant one.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

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.

They're already thinking about it, according to an interview John Epler made a few days ago. Seems the devs are reluctant because they'd have to work harder (lol). Ultimately the sales of Veilguard will probably decide what EA decides to do. Quote from the article;

“I think I’m one of about maybe 20 people left at BioWare who’s actually used Eclipse,” Epler says. “It’s something that’s not going to be as easy Mass Effect, but we do love the original games. Never say never, I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

They're talking about it in the article as if they have to remaster all three games, however (probably due to the journalist's brain rot), which is obviously retarded given how different the DA games are from one another. Like you said, just remaster or - better yet - remake the first one. There's no crowd for a remaster of the second game anyway, and the third doesn't warrant one.

They should do a game in between DA:O and DA2 --something like BG: Siege of Dragonspear. They should also hire beamdog's writers.

 

[kigmathelm]

Thread's getting stale, no new memes? This turd is so boring it's even boring to laugh at it.

Agree. Problem is that even if you can let the flashy combat and the graphics carry you, everything you heard is true - it just gets really repetitive, increasingly contrived, and the endless mandatory enforced positivity becomes increasingly insufferable. Literally every combat you'll have companions squirting out praise "OMG GOOD JOB ROOK" at everything you do ... bitch, this is 500th generic skeleton I've smashed in a day, it stopped being impressive in the first half hour.

I did muster up the energy for another dive and ... lemme just say that when that, ah .... controversial character shows up, I was gobsmacked at how badly she was handled, that someone would write a self-insert character and make them so utterly insufferable. She's a straight up cunt about everything right from the jump, dropping the "yeah, I wear lots of things. You don't get to tell me who I am" literally in the second conversation you have with her.

And she's a high school student. You suffer through her mission, return to base, and there's a whole scene where her mom - repeating this, her mom - says she'll join the team, which she whines about The entire scene gives you a good sense of how incredibly unlikeable she's written:

Jesus wept, the fucking writing and voice acting...how can anyone reviewing this game consider either remotely decent?

Cleanse that pallet for me David...

This 2nd one sounds like that one time in high school when they forced us to go to theater - it was just as I started my hormone blockers but that made me even more sick. Yuck. Is that the Underrail game everyone is talking about? If so - I never want to play that game.

Not sure I'll have time to post again today, have to make an appointment with my therapist after hearing this.

 

[duskvile]

Ok, here it is. I like the game. Combat is fun but I wish they increase the difficulty levels. The biggest letdown is the writing. A lot of repetitive sequences, reminders. Bioware writers need to write hardcore fantasy. It's a step forward and a step backward. Looking forward to next DA game.

 

[jaekl]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

 

[Lacrymas]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

The best remakes are ones who fix issues with the original (Age of Mythology) or make it graphically more palatable for contemporary sensibilities (Starcraft), or straight up improve everything in it (AoE2). Remakes in of themselves aren't bad, the execution is key.

 

[Butter]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

 

[cvv]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

The best remakes are ones who fix issues with the original (Age of Mythology) or make it graphically more palatable for contemporary sensibilities (Starcraft), or straight up improve everything in it (AoE2). Remakes in of themselves aren't bad, the execution is key.

Agreed except I hated the Starcraft remake. They HD-ed the graphix but everything else got stuck in the 1990s - pathfinding, limited grouping, animations, models, the lot. I played the "SC1 in the SC2 engine" mod previously and had WAY better time, especially with BW.

 

[Franny Frogpill]

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.

What about the magic DEI money pool? Has it dried up?! I thought companies nowadays are paid for spreading "The Message", thus improving their ESG rating for even more money.
"To be in the black", decent sales, viability, profits... is it important again? Have I missed something? Please, please explain!

 

[Storyfag]

Agreed except I hated the Starcraft remake. They HD-ed the graphix but everything else got stuck in the 1990s - pathfinding, limited grouping

Altering these would alter the gameplay loop.

 

[dbx]

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.

Even AI could easily write stuff miles better then what's in failguard, they could ditch writers altogether if they wanted to and still have good writing. The writing being shit is intentional, not a result of shitty writers.

 

[cvv]

Agreed except I hated the Starcraft remake. They HD-ed the graphix but everything else got stuck in the 1990s - pathfinding, limited grouping

Altering these would alter the gameplay loop.

Yes, for the better.

 

[jaekl]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

The best remakes are ones who fix issues with the original (Age of Mythology) or make it graphically more palatable for contemporary sensibilities (Starcraft), or straight up improve everything in it (AoE2). Remakes in of themselves aren't bad, the execution is key.

I hope you're the first one that gets walked to the showers.

Agreed except I hated the Starcraft remake. They HD-ed the graphix but everything else got stuck in the 1990s - pathfinding, limited grouping

Altering these would alter the gameplay loop.

Yes, for the better.

You next.

 

[Storyfag]

You guys are always going on about jews but the people who really need a holocaust are the people who buy remakes and remasters of games that are already easy to buy and play.

The best remakes are ones who fix issues with the original (Age of Mythology) or make it graphically more palatable for contemporary sensibilities (Starcraft), or straight up improve everything in it (AoE2). Remakes in of themselves aren't bad, the execution is key.

I hope you're the first one that gets walked to the showers.

Nein, he ist korrekt. Zherefore, nein gas for him. He vill go zu ze lab vith me, und ve shall have fun vith needles und injektions, ja?

 

[Ryzer]

 

[Xorazm]

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.

What about the magic DEI money pool? Has it dried up?! I thought companies nowadays are paid for spreading "The Message", thus improving their ESG rating for even more money.
"To be in the black", decent sales, viability, profits... is it important again? Have I missed something? Please, please explain!

Eh, I wouldn't get your hopes about the doom of Bioware. I can't pretend to be an industry expert, but Ascendency Studios still exists, which put out Immortals of Aveum last year, a game that EA sank 120 million dollars into, which included about 40 million for marketing. Now just close your eyes for a second and try to imagine what the peak Steam player count for that was.

Ready?

Sure?

751

Don't ask me why I do this to myself, probably because I'm morbidly fascinated by failures, but I checked out Aveum on gamepass and the writing might even be worse than Veilguard. Gun to my head, I'd probably say Aveum is the worst of the two because they had the preposterous arrogance to make their sub-sub-sub-sub MCU banter cutscenes unskippable.

I didn't last that long with that one, but I did get my sick, perverted jollies for staring with slack jawed wonder at how anything could be that bad.

120 million dollars. Converting that to Serbian, carry the 1, back of the envelope gets me ... roughly 4 kabillion Underrails.

Anyway, EA slashed them to the bone, but they're still around. Bioware is still the gatekeepers of DA and Mass Effect, and so it'll be interesting to see how the ME5 team reacts to VG's mixed reception, because they've got to be watched it very closely knowing that if VG's sales choke and splutter and general perception sours, ME5 will be the last stand of the studio.

The Bioware brand has been toxic around here for, I reckon, decades, but normies are still badly hoping that a new ME game will recapture what magic they seem to think existed in the franchise (never my thing). If the best they can deliver is middling results that underperform their history, then I'd start to wonder if EA takes them out behind the shed.

 

[fantadomat]

Trans Age: The GayGuard

So how is going,did they beat the page number of the thread with their player count or ?!