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Wish you had told them how bad their last game was too, IDK wtf they are thinking... Everything Varric onwards has been trash... I hope they dont mess-up the next Mass Effect this bad... It looks like Disney made it or something wtf... Pixar characters would have worked if it turned dark... Bioware should fix it with a bloodmajic and fade Patch
Gunna be honest the two examples of facial animation were equally as bad. Both characters held. A facial expression that was unchanging while they talked which just felt stiff
This was one of the things I was a bit wary about. Spider-Man 2 felt very much like this to me and it was one of the main reasons I couldn't click with the writing in that game.
I started bg3 as Dark Urge just to see how evil the game will allow you to be - my usual way if testing rpgs. Let's just say the evil ending was engraved in my memory forever.
@@matteste THIS, it's one of those rare games were i actually decided to go the Evil route and WOW ! no spoil, also; here is a contract; sign please 😈 (might help you guess my mythic path LOL)!
the shit i hated most was that the inquisitor keeps dming you the whole game with stuff like 'bro ur so lucky ur not here, redcliffe just got nuked' or 'man, we just lost whole orlais, down to my last mag' and i was like motherfker i wanna play that game!
@@zakanyimen no it fucking isn't. good games are accessible and also have amazing combat and can be played for hundreds if not thousands of hours. both tf2 nd binding of isaac are, for example, highly accessible games with easy to understand skillsets
I had to do it with the most recent GoW. The dialogue in the game was way to marvel quippy or as my new fav saying goes “like HR was in the room with them” turned that shit on easy and just finished it and never thought about it again
You remember when you had to pick between a pack of werewolves who are people who wronged an elf who decided to torment them forever and made them kill their own families and become a plague upon the forest, thereby corrupting the forest itself to obtain some form of immortality, and between elves who were mostly unaware of the whole thing, but were complicit in that they knew something was corrupting the forest but did nothing to help, rather slaughtering the werewolves, even when they were their own people? Remember when you had to choose between killing a child possessed by a demon, or risk the life of a party member to try and save them? Where you had to choose whether to save the allegedly corrupt mages, or to side with the templars to avoid releasing abominations on the world? You remember how doing the right thing was not always clear to you and that you had a much bigger threat to take into consideration in all of your decisions, because werewolves were immune to the blight, but elves weren't? Because having an army of immortal golems inhabited by dwarf spirits was much more useful than a legion of suicidal dwarves? This game is disastrous. Worst part is, there's a part where the weirdo "qunari" says "The Qun says to take care of people" it absolutely does not. It says to remove the useless and the weak, to brainwash the dissident and that all must fulfill the role. How fanatically do Qunari believe this? A Qunari mage, treated worse than an animal, preferred to kill himself than betray the Qun. I despise these people and what they've done to this franchise.
Love this comment. I'd forgotten these specifics, but it's great contrast them to what we've seen in this review. THIS is why the game is bad. I can live with mediocre deliveries of mines, bad facial animations, weird art design, that's all superficial. I'm even fine with diverting from the original material or concepts when it works for titles. But this feels like a cheap attempt to win back fans after botching Anthem and Andromeda to unbelievable degrees. Everything feels safe because that's how they had to play it here. At first I thought this was all to get that "broader appeal" thing going, which is annoying but understandable, sales of games will always be the primary objective and I can usually live with the decisions made for that end. But this doesn't feel like an attempt at wider audience appeal. This all sounds like that toxic relationship trying to win you back by not doing anything wrong. Which misses the point, it's about doing things right.
This is what you get if the majority of the team that made The Veilguard haven't even played the previous games. They know nothing about key elements of the story up until now.
Technically it was "to get immortality AND revenge on his raped daughter and killed son", but also caused those events in the first place by trying to torment regular bloody foresters and lumberjacks into provoking the raid from the humans in retaliation.
I'm sorry but seeing the IGN review ( 9/10 ) mentioning "sweeping character arcs, top notch cinematics & nuanced character writing" after watching the footage here feels like being gaslit.
Dragon Age Origins: Your decisions can result in your teammates abandoning or even attacking you. "Dragon Age" Veilgaurd: You are not allowed to hurt anyone's feewings.
@@datboicasino Probably didn't want to spoil it for anyone just combing through the comments after hearing about SkillUps review. Also, not only is her design different and a lot more reserved especially knowing what we do about the character, I kinda didn't expect her to even show up in this game. Always a chance as her profession can really lead her anywhere but with no choices carried over from DA2 I barely expected anything else would either.
@datboicasino it's not an opinion. I'm describing a clip. One that you can find easily. Now this is an opinion. As someone who played and enjoy the first 2 dragon age game. This new one looks like hot garbage.
Mugthief called it "The ship of Theseus problem" and I couldn't agree more. It's the opposite problem Bethesda has. Bethesda has the old guard nailed themselves to the rudder and refuse to let go. Bioware keeps falling apart and patching itself up with new parts hoping to stay afloat.
Of course not. People change jobs all the time and this companies change. I am in the games industry for 24 years now and changed jobs 4 times since ME came out in 2007.
It has the budget of a Rockstar game, the character of a Filian stream, the art style of a crappy Netflix show, and the writing of a Darksydephil pre-stream.
Remember in Dragon Age 2, when you were hunting down a serial killer, who then violently killed your mother and brought her back as a disfigured zombie and made her attack you?
Genuinely don't know why Bioware double downed on this kind of quippy, kindergarden level dialogue that treats the audience like we're stupid when ME Andromeda got slammed for the exact same thing. You'd think they'd have learned.
@@CelestialDraconis As someone already said, this is not the Bioware we knew growing up. The people who made this crap are activists larping as game devs.
I've come back here to say, i gave it a fair shot, and tried to make my own mind up. 25 hours in, and I'd enjoyed almost nothing. The writing is awful, the combat is a slog, the story is generic and the main person i wanted to hear about (Solas) is barely present. People have said it gets better, but I dont have the time to waste on a game that only gets enjoyable 40 hours in. Your review described all of my fears about what the game was going to be. I decided to ignore it and form my own opinions. My opinions aligned with yours. RIP my Dragon Age.
I did the same as you, and there is something I do enjoy though. Technically it's solid. I haven't encountered a relevant bug in many hours, the performance is mostly fluid, and while the art direction is shit, it's still a solid game. And yes, you can make a good looking character with the editor. Also the combat is decent in some ways if you reduce the enemy health in the settings. Essentially I feel like it has the foundations of a solid game, but then some suits got involved and had absolutely no pushback. I swear some of the dialogues are poking fun at the audience from the utter absurdity.
@ivanlagrossemoule Definitely, performance wise it runs buttery smooth and I encountered pretty much no bugs. The combat I just didn't vibe with, I did the same as you and dropped enemy health while spiking their damage, hoping to make it a bit more dangerous and less spongey, and I still found it super button mashy. The particle effects and spell stuff is cool at first, but it ends up so cluttered that it got irritating. Plus the lack of enemy variety really started to wear on me.
There was a scene in the early game of Dragon Age: Origins where a merchant refused to sell his stuff to townspeople. When I went to convince him to sell his stuff there was an option like "Sell your stuff or else" or something. I selected that dialogue option and when he still refused to sell, my grey warden beheaded him in front of everyone. People started running everywhere in terror and I was really shocked, not expecting anything like that. That was how dark and serious these games were.
You're misremembering. He doesn't refuse to sell his stuff, he just sells it at an exorbitant price. A Sister of the Chantry is trying to convince him to go easy on the prices. You can either side with the Sister, making him sell his shit for a lower price (except for you), or you can drive the Sister off, and get a discount. You *can* drive the Sister off and *then* kill the merchant, but you don't get to kill him if you make him sell his stuff cheaper. It's not recommended to do the latter option if you plan to keep Leliana in the party because she absolutely loses her shit (minus 45 disposition, lol)
@@tonyj801wtf is woke about it. Companies overcorrecting to avoid offending potential buyers (while being totally out of touch with their interests because they are from a different social class) is capitalism at work. Of course, so is having a high budget video game in the first place, but still.
Doesn't even make sense in their world either. Considering that dragons are pretty much always bringers of mass destruction and death in their world. Maybe darkspawn should like dragons, but why would anyone else?
Are user scores slowly dropping? Wouldn’t surprise me. I saw a video on another fairly big channel (I think called Fextralife) that was alleging that EA or BioWare was withholding review codes from reviewers that criticized the preview/demo. If true, I have to wonder how far that goes in explaining the seemingly positive critical reception.
They dont care about origins or 2, this game was made to cater to the new audience inquisition brought in and shun the people who loved the first 2 games.
@@anon2752 I take issue with that statement, I've played the three previous games, Origins being my favorite. But I'm actually one of the few people that like Inquisition, I'm currently replaying it. And I'll tell you now, that from the beginning I did not like what I was seeing with Veilguard.
@@victordavila9812 I think the biggest thing is that a lot of current entertainment has moved away from that behavior. both instances we mentioned are 5+ years old. if you take into consideration the length of dev time of This game if tracks. I’m not a DEI thumper or some anti woke dude but there just gets to the point where taking edge and actual stakes away from things just nullifies anything substantial from happening. You can make a kick ass RPG and still be modern see “play BG3 it’s better then this”
@@racer4356 Pathfinder wrath of the righteous has a trans human lesbian dating a female Ork but they also let you sacrifice them to demons or eat then alive you can totally have diverse and still keep you edge but Bioware didn't get the memo. Ps totally recommend pathfinder in case you haven't played it yet
The necromancer and the skeleton manservant seems like such a missed opportunity, because turning a person's corpse into a happy, compliant pet really is dark and disturbing. Then the writer's could make it more disturbing/show more about the character by, later in the game, having him casually mention that the skeleton used to be his father or something like that. "He was never very good at taking care of me in life, so I'm giving him the opportunity to care for his son in death. Necromancy is all about 2nd chances. "
I can confirm even with this interesting thing with Manfred the skeletal butler, it's done in the safest, nicest way possible. None of that guesome necromancy. It's a "whisp" that inhabited a bunch of body parts that the necromancer put together. It's nobody's parent. It's not even a soul trapped inside. You can find Manfred in the player hub area and play Rock,Scissors Paper with it....
It's disneyified necromancy. Can't show something evil and disturbing like the idea you came up with. Can't be mean to anyone. Nobody can be mean to you except for the very bad guys. The Elves reaction to Elven gods returning? Nonexistent. Can't have the players think uncomfortable thoughts about how to react to the moral dilemma of how an oppressed and enslaved minority lashing out by siding with evil. Can't have potential villains whom we could sympathize with. Nope, we gotta have disney villains and disney heroes hitting each other with sticks and knives. Then again I don't even think there are slaves in Tevinter anymore? Maybe a couple is shown to the player? It's very subtle. And the people living here are always very nice. There doesn't seem to be any racism against elves. If I didn't know any better I'd say because of our perspective, we just had the wrong idea about Tevinter. They were actually the good guys while the south was just full of barbarian racist assholes. But of course I just know it's the writers who didn't want to show anything controversial or bad to the player. Slavery, racism, sympathetic villains, political commentary, etc. all had to go to the trashbin. So we got disneyified slaver empire.
I know that you mentioned Prince Charming from Shrek looking like a character in this game, but your player character looks almost identical to Shrek himself when he gets polymorphed into a human.
My initial thought exactly, and it's actually hilarious how obvious it is - you can't unsee it. Every character could easily have had a role in one of the Shrek movies. Dragon Age - The Shrek Guard.
A servant Skeleton who squeaks like a baby and an actual baby Griffon? Ok i didn't realise this was a Disney movie but I'm extremely glad i watched this review and avoided this.
I find it ironic that DA has been continually dumbed down with the justification that it will have more mass market appeal, and yet BG3, a sequel to a literal bioware series, doubled down on its CRPG roots and is on track to outsell the entire DA franchise.
@@a.trance6997BG3 is a Larian game. Would you also argue it's less complex than Original Sin? Considering they had to adapt it to 5e rules, I really don't think that's the case.
That MCU-esque bubbly, jokey dialogue no matter how dire or serious a situation is, is the most insufferable, cringey, terrible writing trope and I would gladly throw the entire MCU history into a fire to be rid of that writing style.
Tiny little example because I just started watching - at 4:26 Harding is apparently begging Rook to do something about the demon currently possessing a dude. Her pose is one hand on a cocked hip, not tense at all, presumably because the animators didn't want to make another pose.
@@MMArtDamagewas about to say this is always misidentified, the MCU kept the tone that Whedon brought to it. It's not MCU dialogue, it's Whedon dialogue. Truly insane to see that part of his work be continued on I really couldn't have called it lol
@@MMArtDamageWhedon is a good writer, despite his issues as a person. Rewatch the first Avengers movie and the weaving of humor and plot relevant seriousness is fantastic. Whedon is good at that. The issue comes when trying to imitate that.
“It’s too scared to be truly confronting or dark.” Makes me thing back to Origins, and the build-up to the brood mother where Hespith recounts what happened to her and her fellow dwarves. Genuinely haunting stuff. It’s just an entirely different franchise now.
it's a general media problem that is hitting games harder nowadays that they are more mainstream: General audiences do not expect to feel any unease when they consume a product, consumeristic Art is supposed to be pure escapism.
It shocks me that this morons have a money printing machine and they decide to print shit over and over and over. Dragon Age Origins was something else.
@@groggod666 How can you say something like that in october, when everybody is tripping over themselves trying to watch, play, or listen to something horror related?
yeap...that is what i said from the start "it does not look like a world where a broodmother exist".... they should just came out and say "look we get it, we changed the franchise, we are going on a more colorful high fantasy direction and abandoning the grim dark from origin" it would at least be honest...instead they decide to remove the gamma correction from the video and wordplay "dark", some people truly will eat any shit as long as it's spoon feed to them
Yeah same. I also feel the same about Elder Scrolls, I don't want the Bethesda of today to make the new one, these great companies have unfortunately gone now
In inquisition there are disagreements about: slavery, economics, blood magic, demons, politics, the nature of man, and religion. In dragon age 2 almost everyone in that party is ready to kill the other members at any given time, save Varric. Dragon age 1 has some pivotal moments that can lead to you having to kill companions. Not having party conflict, is just bad writing, plain and simple, people don’t always agree.
Even in Mass Effect, it took time for the supporting cast to feel like a family. In the first game the squad all feel like coworkers who just happen to share a common goal. In ME2 relationships start to become more fleshed out though there are still those who distrust or outright hate each other. It's only by the time of Mass Effect 3 that Shepard can truly call them friends.
@@enrique6335Not to mention that you still had an option to kill Rex on Virmire, whether that's because you thought he was an ass or because you didn't have enough Paragon/Renegade points to talk him down.
@@Calvin_Coolage And you could also choose how Shepard reacted to it, either with regret or disregarding him as just another stereotypical krogan that went violent.
I stopped at 18 hr mark. I am a big fan of DA series. I’ve read the book and played the games. I actually fell a sleep playing it. I’ve never done that before. I hate the fact that we are being lectured as well I like everyone else play to escape I got this for my birthday from my husband as I’ve been going on and on about it. Hell I would have rather gone out for dinner instead. 😡
that's so disappointing, sorry it ended up being such a bummer birthday gift. i had really been thinking about upgrading to a ps5 for this game explicitly because i too have read the books and played all the games multiple times. but like... it really doesn't feel worth it. im so gutted to say that!
Conflict happens. A : "i like chocolate ice cream! " B : "no, chocolate ice cream is yucky! I dont like it! " C : " Now now, dont fight over it, B, you like strawberry, why dont you share your ice cream with A? " Holy shit... That dialogue.... Its physically painful..
This reminded me of that "I'm gonna cut your d**k" joke from Sr Pelo, but twisting it to be unfunny and boring. Now I know how to feel about this game without even playing it
The ever-positive vibes among the companions in-game is nothing more than a representation of the toxic positivity that plagues the company, where nobody, ever, can do wrong. Where there's no conflict, there's no growth, no evolution.
One companion from the first game was an assassin....who's target was YOU! And the game still respected choice enough to let you make the stupid decision to bring him into the group. Now hed have not tried to kill you because his bosses were "like total fascist buzzkills, so i decided i dont have to do what they say"
why wokeness is plague, same time these people want this positive spin to be nice one another, in fact they eat each other alive if you go against the narrative
Infantilized adults who only got a job because of diversity hiring, obviously they are detached with reality. The world is not all pink and rainbows, far from it. And struggle is what thrives humanity to keep improving
''Who dosen't like dragons?'' I don't know, maybe everyone that have their life ruined with a massive beast more akin to a force of nature; swooping down destroying your whole life.
They write that because they think Dragons are cool. The writers on this trash are utterly incapable of having any other perspective than their own. Most of these people are on heavy medication witch inhibits their cognitive capabilities and creativity.
You know the writers are woke narcissists because they are incapable of writing characters with the character's own perspective, it can only be done from their perspective and yeah when dragons are imaginary who doesn't like them? Problem is in this game world they are not. Morons.
I've also noticed that a lot of the praise I've seen is about it being cute and people are just dying to romance characters. It honestly feels like there are so many people who are satisfied with a cute skeleton and the ability to get thirsty with generic companions. It's like fan fiction has invaded a lot of media these days. Felt the same about rings of power. I just don't understand how people can say this is 10/10. It frustrates me.
A lot of people who got their start in writing through fanficiton have made their way into the creative industries as writers, and as a result we are getting writing influenced by all the things that are popular in fanfiction (quippy dialogue, shipping, etc.) because that's where these people came from.
@@Icipher353 these people are perpetual 14 year olds, infantile and immature, thinking quippy dialogue is peak of creativeness. The fact that these people became mainstream writers and western culture of our times is now shaped by these mental toddlers is mindblowing
"The writing is, frankly, terminal. It lacks any nuance, wit or wisdom. It cannot communicate ideas, except to say them aloud to the camera. It manufactures petty, unbelievable tension because it doesn't know how to create anything more real, and it's too scared to ever be truly confronting or dark for fear that it might make the audience uncomfortable. Every interaction between the companions feels like HR is in the room, and every interaction led by the main character Rook sounds like he's addressing an under-12 soccer team before a semi-final or teaching toddlers to properly share toys." I could've forgiven the sloppy combat, the out-of-place, oversaturated art style and character designs, but this right here? This is a deal breaker for me and what I absolutely did *not* want to hear about a Dragon Age game.
There was this game I played before. Tyranny. Shitty combat system was a slog to go through, but goddamn it hooked me with the discussion on power and evil. I wish Dragon Age went back to that level of nuance.
Thats what you get when you have script writers that have to always "feel positive" and are living in a make-believe, affirmational bubble. To some, being negative or attacking someone's character is tantamount to violence, as crazy as that sounds, which is why its not in the game; its full woke nonsense.
@@Blurredborderlines What an L take, this might shock you but games have had bad stories with boring and absurdly inoffensive character since the beginning. "Forcing the trans issue" (lol) wasn't needed at all to ruin this story and make all of its characters bland and without any agency. Bioware did all of that on its own. My gosh y'all are desperate 😂😂
@@MarkPTP7000 Yeah, same for me. I was really hoping that this would have good action combat instead of another middling take on RTWP but from the sound of it, they just traded a mediocre take on one type of combat for a mediocre take on another one. The specific point of recommending to turn down the difficulty really hurt to hear, because that is exactly how I handled Origins and DA2, once the repetition and generic nature of the encounters became too much.
@@floriandolder8111 Boomstick gaming and mortisimal, both mechanics focused channels, said the combat was fun and had plenty of variety. Enemy variety is pretty low. Basically I think Skillup either didn't engage with the systems or couldn't figure them out.
For years writers have been ignoring the content to make movies. Saints Row dev's changed there aesthetic look and writing to "toddler talk", Dragon Age dev's must of seen how "successful(sarcastic)" that was and been inspired to do the same. When one company does something good or bad, others will follow.
That's it right there! This is a great action adventure game for a 6 year old! Brilliant I'll be sure to let my nephew know it's probably right up his alley. Simple puzzles and life lessons like sharing is caring.
Yup, I don’t trust any mainstream journalism. I had to really look a review that was honest and not one sided. Honesty is getting more rare every day.. I get nobody wants their feelings hurt, but I’d rather have the truth.
@@michaelcole3140 it’s as if honest criticism is purely evil to these people.. Out of all the reviews I’ve seen, this was one of the most respectful while still being honest about the game. Dude even said it’s his opinion, that maybe other people would still love the game. He wasn’t bashing on anything or anyone. I bet it’s the title “I do not recommend” probably triggered them.
No blood magic IN TEVINTER (known for that same thing), Varric magically switched hair color and has a beard (he hated beards) and the Darkspawn look hilarious (don't get me started on the Qunari, their design peaked in DA2) Yeah, this was DOA
It's like they stripped the entire story for parts and thought they can do their version better. If this were a different series all together, it would've just been a poorly written generic fantasy hack and slash instead of a total perversion of an established series.
The unfortunate bit about this, is that it does cater to a large audience of gamers. It will sell well. There's a huge disconect between the online hate for the game, and the pre-release sales numbers. It's a top selling game on steam already, and PC isn't even the primary audience for this game. This year has been a very weak year for gaming as well. DAV will sell well. But those gamers buying it and loving it probably aren't Dragon Age fans, or at least not the original ones. I just find it so fucking sad that catering to a bunch of apathetic, borderline media illiterate normies, will sell Bioware more copies than catering to their original fanbase. Origins sits in my top 5 games of all time, and I'm very clearly not the target audience for Veilguard.
@@Julian-cn1ey idk, considering how other AAA games did like Concord, Forspoken, Saints Row and even Dustborn , I'd assume this'll be a total flop. Nobody likes this shit anymore
Well Qunari seem to be obsessed with dragons so that didn't bother me. But yeah most of what I've seen seem to have gone through some kind of a modern-speak filter.
@@aca347 The thing is it doesn't make sense in the context of the world. "who doesn't like dragons" is something we say irl because dragons obviously don't exist. In the DA universe they very much are real and pose a very real danger to many people. - So of course there are plenty of people who don't like dragons and have a damn good reason not to. It would be like a storm chaser irl saying "who doesn't like tornados?" That line even getting into the game shows that the writing staff have no clue how to world build or create immersion.
@@user-gm4kv2my4u Gold Star explanation right here. Right on the money and really a perfect example of bad writing and not understanding the world of DA.
"Oof" being a dialogue option in a high fantasy game is the nail in the coffin. The definitive proof the target audience is smaller than the budget spent to make the product.
@@SteveJonesOwnsDSPthey did not give review codes to some of the people who were critical in their preview. IGN had an exclusive marketing contract with the game and of course they gave it a 9.
I've been seeing comments "Every interaction sounds like HR is in the room" quoted in the comments section of OTHER videos covering this game... Dude single handily pinned the game down in one sentence.... dropping bars lol
Cyberpunk is raw, unapologetic and punk rock. It's refreshing during these dark times of political correctness, DEI and wokeness. These far left freaks have nearly destroyed every franchise.
15:59 i work at a childrens bookstore and this scene is written like its straight outa peppa pig. like just imagine arthur or dora the explorer saying these lines and youll get it.
I work with kids and this is how I see my colleagues talks with toddlers. I think the dialogue and how they resolve their “differences” would be great if this were targeted towards kids, but clearly they weren’t going for that.
16:33 "Who doesn't like Dragons?" is such an immersion-breaking line. It's a world of magic where dragons are real and I expect extremely dangerous. It's like these writers have never even heard of basic concepts like suspension of disbelief. Saying "I like dragons" is so blatantly Doylist, not to mention banal, it makes me want to throw up.
We’ve been told for years the younger generations were not growing up due to changes in parenting. As an older millennial I always wanted to dismiss this stuff but when I see writing like this it’s like newer writings have never advanced beyond a certain age of development, and we see it in many creative industries now.
It's kind of insane to think about how we went from Loghain's brilliantly written speech about hatred in Dragon Age Origins to whatever Veilguard ended up being. A game that doesn't want its audience to feel uncomfortable set in a universe with things like the Broodmothers, women that were turned into twisted breeding machines for monstrous abominations. A dark fantasy world filled with slavery, political intrigue, demons, and war turned into a safe and bland theme park. It is a true shame that what started off a series with lots of potential has been reduced to this.
>Broodmothers are sexist because they are showing violence towards women and are just to appease the male gaze with the fetishized and objectified female anatomy. >Slavery is racist, because of the Atlantic slave trade and triggering to African Americans. >Politics are harmful and a bad influence unless it's a liberal rebellion rising up against a fascist regime. >Demons are Christian propaganda and a dogwhistle slur for the LGBTQ community. >War is imperialist propaganda Did I do it right? Can I get into the Marxist reading club now?
Loghain was GOAT villain in DA for me, next only to the Arishok. I literally killed Alistair just to recruit him in my first play. But I also killed Ali to marry Anora too, so win-win.
This is the 3rd video I've watch today, and not one of them mentions blood magic, considering this game is set in Tevinter... I think? That's just bloody sad.
I wonder if the world spaces FEEL like Overwatch maps because they were made before the design shift away from multiplayer happened, and these are in fact multiplayer maps repurposed into the design basis for an overworld
The fact that this game was originally supposed to be a live service multiplayer at all tells you everything you need to know about EA/Bioware's priorities. It only changed back to singleplayer because Anthem bombed spectacularly lmao. Gotta follow where the money is, I guess.
Unbelievable that they did this again, remember when Dragon Age Inquisition was supposed to be an MMO and they changed it? Maybe it was just a rumour but if they did this two times...
its kind of crazy that after Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware has taken 3 shots at making another dragon age game and they somehow made them in the wrong genre every single time.
Fire all of your experienced gameplay , UX, and graphic devs Replace with unqualified college grads and checkbox applicants Results produced shown above
I heard the veterans of the studio created new studio filled with veterans in gaming industry and new talents, if its true i hope they will make a banger soon
Remember that quest in Mass Effect about the doctor using the bodies of desperate employees as test tubes to grow cloned organs and sell them? That was cool.
Mass effect was just so much cooler than this piece of garbage, even andromeda, which sucked at least had fun combat. Bioware died a long time ago and what we're seeing is just it's freakish stinking corpse.
Remember in DAO, you could sell your relatives/neighbors to the evil mages and get disowned by your father for doing so? Just because we won't be assholes doesn't mean we should be railroaded to a personality.
As a former preschool teacher of 6 years I can confirm that these are not adult conversations. This is entirely how you speak to children. These aren't even appropriate conversations for the story. It doesn't seem to fit at all even from a sidequest perspective. I dunno, I will play it when Epic eventually gives it away lol until then I'll pass unless it hits a deep sale
@@ShinzoX90 when I say deep sale I mean I'd maybe throw a fiver at it to see how I feel about the general gameplay myself. Who knows 🤷🏻 guess I get to do what I want with my money
@@vishnuteja2288 no you fool, game studios and devs STOPPED listening to the criticism and opinions of their customers because of DEI. Those customers then did what any paying customer would and stopped paying for products they dont want. For example: Im a big toyota fan, but if toyota started trying to sell me uni cycles instead of good cars that i want... well i wouldnt shop at a toyota dealership again. This is exactly what DEI has done to gaming, handed the steering wheel to fringe minority gender activists. Theyve taken all our feedback regarding the games we want and somehow managed to produce a game we dont want crammed full of all the things we dont like. The irony is those devs tell us not to buy their games, then call us bigots when we dont.
I get all my reviews from IGN. Best site for it. You look for the 7s. And then read the bullet points. If you find a 7 with 2 or more complaints, then that's a 9, and worth checking out. If you see a 7 with no complaints, that's a 4 or lower. You just gotta be fluent in IGNese.
As a huge Mass Effect fan, this review actually leaves me with the feeling that if this is the team that's going to be making the next game, I'd rather just not have one at all. I can't believe I'm saying that but here we are.
The sad truth is that the key staff who made BioWare successful are long gone. Until modern BioWare proves itself worthy of its own name by actually putting out a good game, I have zero hype for any of their projects. They haven't put out a good game since 2014, and they've barely done anything in those ten years period.
ive heard they wanted to make it more like mass effect 3 with less open world nonsense the bits and pieces shown to us were also leaning me towards positive. but yeah....im just huffing huge amounts of copium and think its a different team working on the next mass effect
This releasing a year after Baldur's Gate 3 really shows that Larian Studios is what BioWare was supposed to become. Alas, BioWare has been dead since Mass Effect: Andromeda, which saddens me immensly, as I love both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes.
@@GeorgiKolev85 I dunno Andromeda was bad but it was at least playable this is so bad it makes me think this was a third party studio that became a bioware studio
@GeorgiKolev85 Idk why people keep saying the ME3 ending was horrible. You had 3 choices. Everyone has different opinions, but I found no problem at all with the ending. In fact, I thought the ending was perfect.
The funny part is, Larian isn't the only one being better Bioware. Owlcat is carrying that torch for middle budget games as well. There has never been so much good competition for the Bioware niche and this is the most phoned in we have seen Bioware.
I think BioWare died around DA:Inquisition. I just gave up on that game's writing halfway and I was already bored out of my mind in the hinterlands. I pushed on thinking "maybe it will get interesting eventually". Me, the leader of a religious organization with power over numerous political factions, picking flowers for fucking peasants in the hinterlands. Now I already don't like the tired "CHOSEN ONE" plot in RPGs, but if I'm the Chosen One, then at least treat me like the Chosen One. I'm not gonna collect random shit for random nobodies. Unless it's an apocalyptic event that requires my divine intervention to save all of you ungrateful little ants, don't bother me. I'll ask one of my minions to fix that for you if I still remember you exist after 5 minutes. It took me until Disco Elysium to play another RPG again to the end. I was traumatized.
This game is an example as to why developers were coming out saying they didn't want BG3 to be the new gaming standard. This mediocrity is now no longer being accepted.
The thing is, this is not BG3's fault. From looking at this review, the game can't even compete with prior titles. Visually worse, strategically worse, storytelling is worse, character designs are worse, flow of combat is worse, and I could go on. As someone who was kinda hyped for this title, especially with Linux support, and being DRM-free, reviews (not just this one) has been a huge sobering moment. Instead of a day 1 purchase... maybe 75% off, if I even pick it up at all.
What's sad is that BG3 is itself pretty mediocre and was abandoned by Larian before it was even finished. Yet despite its many, many glaring failings, it's still head and shoulders above most of the competition.
Also, the companions in DAV will only flirt with you if you flirt FIRST. In BG3 many of the companions will come on to you and you have the option to flirt back or refuse them. But here, in DAV, you have to pursue them first.
I went through this with Borderlands 3, and that game actually had good gameplay compared to this. It made the experience insufferable. When narrative and character interaction is a major part of your game, it's impossible for it not to sour overall experience when it's so bad.
@@Psycorde I tried Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Mind you I've plat every single BL FPS game before that one: 1, 2 PS and 3. I couldn't finish TTW. The writing is atrocious, even worse than 3 in my opinion. Although, I played BL3 alongside my brother and TTW by myself. That's probably how I endured through 3.
I never finished Borderlands 3 personally it was already too bad, if you're doing the coop with friends OK... but solo, with those characters and story ? nope lol Tiny Tina's Wonderlands didn't even bought it, I got in with some Humble Bundle though, stopped not long after the introduction. I won't buy Borderlands 4 for sure. All those old AAA games are worthless now.
@@Nockblock It's most definitely conspicuously missing-especially when compared to the overwhelming amount of epileptic seizure-inducing particle graphics that distract from the combat. I remember seeing some blood in a cinematic clip, but outside of that, not much else.
That genuinely triggered me. It's been years since I played Origins, I entirely forgot that the series began as a bloody, grim and dark medieval fantasy. Seeing that armour brought me back. And it only rubbed salt into the wounds, making me realize just how far this series has fallen.
At this point, it may seem like I’m cherry-picking a negative review, but this is the only one that truly addresses what bothered me visually, audibly, intellectually, and emotionally during those gameplay reveals. Thank you for sharing your honest thoughts.
It feels like you're cherry-picking because they took a lot of care to only sand keys to people willing to sell their soul for a game key, and with "content creation" being such a an overcrowded space, the vast majority of people entering it will suck as many dicks as needed to get even the smallest modicum of an advantage. It is sadly a situation where integrity is not a virtue worth its cost anymore.
I was looking for a good counter argument, but there are none. The other reviews are fluff pieces to B-roll. No one counters these pointed critiques from Skillup with specific footage showing their positive impressions. The other positive reviews feel phoned in when compared to this.
Ikr everything and everyone has this weird smooth, almost perfectly immaculate shine on them. It feels extremely fake. Like you're watching a Disney movie rather than immersing yourself in a fantasy world
36:05 The camera changing between the object and the place it's meant to go into is a perfect way of saying "Are you fucking kidding me??" without a single word. lmao
@@swarley414 Did they finally fix all the game-breaking bugs? I wanted to play it but Owlcat games are always technical disasters until years after their initial release.
Larian Studio: Add evil endings for each character - blood, deaths, power, murders etc. Bioware (2024): Noooooo, just don't call a fellow party member a fool (((((
Ironic that on a technical level, this game seems excellent and BG3 was pretty trash at release and is still janky in its animations and such but writing and world building is where it gets reversed.
Reminds me how Totalbiscuit kept saying that you shouldn't be fan of anything. It might sound like a weird stance but if taken less literally it means just having healthy relationship with an entertainment industry. Enjoy good products, don't become too attached to companies as part of your identity.
It is fine to be fan of something that exists already. That won't change since it is already made. The problem is when people who are fans of something extrapolate those feelings onto new products just because they share some superficial letters in the title. Like I am a big fan of Lord of the Rings. I still spend hours each week doing something LotR related. Mostly painting Lord of the Rings miniatures or playing the "Warhammer" game based upon it. But I am only a fan of the content related to it that I have experienced and then made up my opinion on. Anything new I am skeptical on and will have to try before I can say if I am a fan of it or not. If anything being a previous fans only raises the bar on something new for me. Not lower it. I cringe every time I see people say they like RoP because it is more Middle-Earth. That would be fine if it was a good show but it is terrible and you shouldn't enjoy it just because it has the same names. That only dilutes what you truly like and incentives companies to continue butcher whatever you liked first until at some point there are more bad stuff than good stuff in a franchise. Anything new we should be skeptical of and gatekeep the hell out of. Quality standards are fine and if you are a fan of something it should be a requirement to Gatekeep any changes to it.
There should be a rule if 2/3rds of company leave, they should change the name. I mean this is an insult to Bioware as we old players know it. Thank God there are people who see things for what they are and not for what OTHERS WISH they would be.
I was thinking the exact same thing. There isn’t really a safeguard for this kind of…deceit but that’s what it feels like…deceit. Riding on the success on an old studio name when virtually no one who made the studio good is around anymore.
Instead we as consumers should remind ourselves the sheer folly of long term brand loyalty. There was a point where the expression was "The Three B's always make great games: Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard" (and when xbox fanboys said it, they added Bungie cuz halo was peak zeitgeist). When was the last time any of those companies released a good game despite them just a decade and some change ago were considered the absolute peak of the industry? Nothing good can last forever. Luckily other great studios have risen up in their wake.
@@silverwolfe3636 I will never understand brand loyalty. These CEOs don't know who you are, stop thinking that they care about you. I have Nike and Adidas, I have NVIDIA and AMD, I am not loyal to any company. I buy whichever has the best reviews.
Remember when you played a female city elf in DA:O and in less than 10min you survived a murder and a rape attempt? And go on a rampage to save your relatives? Damn, me neither...
That's because DA:O trusted players to delve into a dark world where the good guys fail and the bad guys usually win the day and no one is safe. In the first few hours they put you through generally traumatic origins, kills off your mentor figure, kills the brave righteous king, backstab you, and leave you to middle your way through a word being ravaged by a horde of monsters killing their way across the nation. DA2 bro brought a deeply personal rise to power story with morally grey characters, no right options, and dealing with complex topics like slavery, oppression, and how often a tyrannical force can themselves end up creating the villain they've claimed to guard against. I did not like Inquisition much, tbh, but it still brought some dark moments with morally dubious options and a plot that forces the player to walk the edge of oppressive cult or religious savior. Veilguard seems more interested in a cuddly adventure with non-threatening supporting characters in a world designed with bumper rails that can never be too scary else it scar the sensitives of their players.
The brave righteous king? The whole point was that the King was running into a death trap. He was going to die, they all die, the Origin is supposed to be dark. It is always dark at the beginning. But things get brighter as the day goes on. Things get dark again as the day draws to a close. So do not worry. If you want dark to come again, it will be dark once more. But when it does, you will need light. So get it while it is hot.
@@arkainin4638just started Veilguard and had an entire town decimated by blight with ghoul villagers roaming the place, with a dude getting choked out by tentacles and then we left a man to die cause I didn't like him... There's dark themes, this dude just wants to hate it. The Qunari in Antivan were gnarly too
BioWare is literally not the company you remember. Its almost entirely a brand new swath of people just wearing the brand of "BioWare". The soul is different
Soft purge followed by replacement hiring on an ideological basis. Many such cases. Worse is that this dynamic also occurred upstream in the edu pipeline so, even if the corpos decide they like money again, there’s no fast way of unsalting the earth
once EA bought them they were already bioware i didn't remember, you saw it in mass effect 2 how much changed from the first game not just combat, was dialogue and tone
To be fair, this never happened. There was one guy that worked for a big studio (don't remember which one) that said on social media people shouldn't compare future RPG games to BG3. Then the media ran with that story and turned it into AAA developers saying not to compare games to BG3. And unfortunately, people like you read something and believe it at face value.
Despicable, the other extreme of a toxic working place with abusive bosses and whatnot, the "Bioware" who worked on this game are completely sanitized and castrated, the infantilized adults living in their imaginary safe bubbles instead of taking their meds and trying to be better, a functional member of society
Its like the other commentor said. The heads are too big so everyone has mallet proportions. I saw a photoshop where someone resized the heads and shoulders and the characters looked 5x better
if u tried enshrouded(survival game) it feels like the character's skeleton is similar to that. like they feel like short people but not really, cant explain it lol
Theres journo outlets out there that give this game a 9/10 and call it "The best Bioware game ever made"...above Mass Effect...above Kotor...and above past Dragon Age games. Yea..no.
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Let's give it a like before BioWaste will force video down for some reason.
Wish you had told them how bad their last game was too, IDK wtf they are thinking... Everything Varric onwards has been trash... I hope they dont mess-up the next Mass Effect this bad... It looks like Disney made it or something wtf... Pixar characters would have worked if it turned dark... Bioware should fix it with a bloodmajic and fade Patch
Gunna be honest the two examples of facial animation were equally as bad. Both characters held. A facial expression that was unchanging while they talked which just felt stiff
No thanks, keep that service for yourself
Graphics are awful, never played one of these games, can’t see me jumping in here. Characters have all the facial emotions of the thunderbirds.
"Every interaction sounds like HR is in the room" is maybe the most damning critique of this game any reviewer could have said lmao
And no lies were told 😂
Pure gold
This was one of the things I was a bit wary about. Spider-Man 2 felt very much like this to me and it was one of the main reasons I couldn't click with the writing in that game.
It's a trend.. Case in point the Spider-man games.
Yeah that makes my stomach turn like almost nothing else
DA1: sacrificing entire tribes of elves to demons just to get a little extra power.
DA4: can't call people an idiot.
The elves had it coming
It wasn't demons it was werewolves.
You shemlen tourists haven't played dragon age before so why pretend!
damn knive ears 🦾
@@rumplstiltztinkerstein Easiest 100 gold in my life
It wasn't demons it was werewolves!
You shemlen tourists haven't played dragon age before so why pretend!
BG3: You wanna be evil? Let’s get EVIL!
Veilguard: Oh no! You hit the mean dialogue option by accident. We’ll fix that for you.
No toxic masculinity allowed of course. What a time to be alive!
I started bg3 as Dark Urge just to see how evil the game will allow you to be - my usual way if testing rpgs. Let's just say the evil ending was engraved in my memory forever.
the evil run in BG3 is thrash just like veilguard
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous: Haha, Swarm go BZZZZT.
@@matteste THIS, it's one of those rare games were i actually decided to go the Evil route and WOW !
no spoil, also; here is a contract; sign please 😈 (might help you guess my mythic path LOL)!
the shit i hated most was that the inquisitor keeps dming you the whole game with stuff like 'bro ur so lucky ur not here, redcliffe just got nuked' or 'man, we just lost whole orlais, down to my last mag' and i was like motherfker i wanna play that game!
Lol, I didn't even know about that. Never read the "Missives" coming in.
ahahahah calling those things DMs is so genz.
Turning down the difficulty to just be done with the game sooner is a huge red flag.
This happens when you design the combata around "accessibility"
@@zakanyimen no it fucking isn't. good games are accessible and also have amazing combat and can be played for hundreds if not thousands of hours. both tf2 nd binding of isaac are, for example, highly accessible games with easy to understand skillsets
It's awful when games decide difficulty by slightly hard hits and giant hp sponges
I had to do it with the most recent GoW. The dialogue in the game was way to marvel quippy or as my new fav saying goes “like HR was in the room with them” turned that shit on easy and just finished it and never thought about it again
I kept doing that when playing Andromeda thanks to the over the top damage sponges combined with "scaling".
During the dialogue scenes, I was half-expecting the characters to look at the camera and say "So, kids, what have we learned today?".
Don’t give them any more ideas
That's so brutally funny, thank you :D
"They fly now!?"
Thanks gi Jane. Now we know
There are children’s books that treat the reader with more respect than does the dialogue in this game.
You remember when you had to pick between a pack of werewolves who are people who wronged an elf who decided to torment them forever and made them kill their own families and become a plague upon the forest, thereby corrupting the forest itself to obtain some form of immortality, and between elves who were mostly unaware of the whole thing, but were complicit in that they knew something was corrupting the forest but did nothing to help, rather slaughtering the werewolves, even when they were their own people?
Remember when you had to choose between killing a child possessed by a demon, or risk the life of a party member to try and save them? Where you had to choose whether to save the allegedly corrupt mages, or to side with the templars to avoid releasing abominations on the world?
You remember how doing the right thing was not always clear to you and that you had a much bigger threat to take into consideration in all of your decisions, because werewolves were immune to the blight, but elves weren't? Because having an army of immortal golems inhabited by dwarf spirits was much more useful than a legion of suicidal dwarves?
This game is disastrous. Worst part is, there's a part where the weirdo "qunari" says "The Qun says to take care of people" it absolutely does not. It says to remove the useless and the weak, to brainwash the dissident and that all must fulfill the role. How fanatically do Qunari believe this? A Qunari mage, treated worse than an animal, preferred to kill himself than betray the Qun.
I despise these people and what they've done to this franchise.
Love this comment. I'd forgotten these specifics, but it's great contrast them to what we've seen in this review. THIS is why the game is bad. I can live with mediocre deliveries of mines, bad facial animations, weird art design, that's all superficial. I'm even fine with diverting from the original material or concepts when it works for titles. But this feels like a cheap attempt to win back fans after botching Anthem and Andromeda to unbelievable degrees.
Everything feels safe because that's how they had to play it here. At first I thought this was all to get that "broader appeal" thing going, which is annoying but understandable, sales of games will always be the primary objective and I can usually live with the decisions made for that end. But this doesn't feel like an attempt at wider audience appeal. This all sounds like that toxic relationship trying to win you back by not doing anything wrong. Which misses the point, it's about doing things right.
This is what you get if the majority of the team that made The Veilguard haven't even played the previous games. They know nothing about key elements of the story up until now.
Wym by “these people”
Well said!
Technically it was "to get immortality AND revenge on his raped daughter and killed son", but also caused those events in the first place by trying to torment regular bloody foresters and lumberjacks into provoking the raid from the humans in retaliation.
"who doesn't like dragons?!"
I thought seeing a dragon in Dragon Age was a sign of the apocalypse
I'm sorry but seeing the IGN review ( 9/10 ) mentioning "sweeping character arcs, top notch cinematics & nuanced character writing" after watching the footage here feels like being gaslit.
We all saw it coming, I'd read it but I'm not giving them a click
anyone who takes gaming journalism seriously after 2010 is an idiot and deserves to lose money on these games.
Don't be sorry for pointing that out.
They're all paid off
IGN reviews are just ads. It's a marketing company that companies pay to hype up their game
Dragon Age Origins: Your decisions can result in your teammates abandoning or even attacking you.
"Dragon Age" Veilgaurd: You are not allowed to hurt anyone's feewings.
theres a clip showing how one character apologized by doing 10 push ups for says "she" instead of "they"
@@ragnarok400 You are clearly a tourist for not knowing which character that is, your opinion is invalid
@@datboicasino Cry pussy
@@datboicasino Probably didn't want to spoil it for anyone just combing through the comments after hearing about SkillUps review. Also, not only is her design different and a lot more reserved especially knowing what we do about the character, I kinda didn't expect her to even show up in this game. Always a chance as her profession can really lead her anywhere but with no choices carried over from DA2 I barely expected anything else would either.
@datboicasino it's not an opinion. I'm describing a clip. One that you can find easily.
Now this is an opinion.
As someone who played and enjoy the first 2 dragon age game. This new one looks like hot garbage.
Bioware 2024 is NOT the same Bioware that created the original mass effect trilogy and kotor
Highly doubtful BioWare exists after this
No shit Sherlock. Normal people knew that since ME3 ended.
Mugthief called it "The ship of Theseus problem" and I couldn't agree more. It's the opposite problem Bethesda has. Bethesda has the old guard nailed themselves to the rudder and refuse to let go. Bioware keeps falling apart and patching itself up with new parts hoping to stay afloat.
bruh it just he name holder ,after 2022 all key personal already left
Of course not. People change jobs all the time and this companies change. I am in the games industry for 24 years now and changed jobs 4 times since ME came out in 2007.
This game has the budget of a AAA block buster, the art style of a budget indie game and the writing of a Cocomelon episode.
How dare you say that! Cocomelon has way better writing
It has the budget of a Rockstar game, the character of a Filian stream, the art style of a crappy Netflix show, and the writing of a Darksydephil pre-stream.
@@Unethical.FandubsGamesWhich show?
Your wrong. You never played it.
I finished the game, but never seen a cocomelon episode
The art direction still looks like a mobile game commercial to me.
Mobile doesn't have an art style. It looks like WoW which is a computer game.
Hey! more respect to mobile games commercials!
Everything about this game looks mobile to me. It's only missing a gacha system.
Raid shadow legends is a crap game but at least the Art direction is passable. DA4 is dogshit
hard to believe that it is the same studio that made Anthem. Say what you want about the game, but it did look great.
Remember in Dragon Age 2, when you were hunting down a serial killer, who then violently killed your mother and brought her back as a disfigured zombie and made her attack you?
Jesus
@@BunkPhD at least we got pronouns
Don't get me wrong there are lots of things wrong with DA 2 but that was one of the best moments. It was hard and real.
@@bad3032 it's not the pronouns that ruined this game.
@@bad3032English can’t function as a language without pronouns. Everyone uses them.
That dialogue was genuinely hard to listen to.
Even the voice acting was not great
Genuinely don't know why Bioware double downed on this kind of quippy, kindergarden level dialogue that treats the audience like we're stupid when ME Andromeda got slammed for the exact same thing. You'd think they'd have learned.
Rook: “what’s that Dragon’s Age veilguard?”
@@CelestialDraconis As someone already said, this is not the Bioware we knew growing up. The people who made this crap are activists larping as game devs.
IGN gave it a 9.
I've come back here to say, i gave it a fair shot, and tried to make my own mind up. 25 hours in, and I'd enjoyed almost nothing. The writing is awful, the combat is a slog, the story is generic and the main person i wanted to hear about (Solas) is barely present. People have said it gets better, but I dont have the time to waste on a game that only gets enjoyable 40 hours in.
Your review described all of my fears about what the game was going to be. I decided to ignore it and form my own opinions. My opinions aligned with yours.
RIP my Dragon Age.
Too late. Your purchase has reinforced EA into thinking this game was a success.
@@Vespyr_ piracy exists
I did the same as you, and there is something I do enjoy though. Technically it's solid. I haven't encountered a relevant bug in many hours, the performance is mostly fluid, and while the art direction is shit, it's still a solid game. And yes, you can make a good looking character with the editor.
Also the combat is decent in some ways if you reduce the enemy health in the settings.
Essentially I feel like it has the foundations of a solid game, but then some suits got involved and had absolutely no pushback. I swear some of the dialogues are poking fun at the audience from the utter absurdity.
@@Vespyr_ I don't buy AAA games without trying them for free first.
@ivanlagrossemoule Definitely, performance wise it runs buttery smooth and I encountered pretty much no bugs.
The combat I just didn't vibe with, I did the same as you and dropped enemy health while spiking their damage, hoping to make it a bit more dangerous and less spongey, and I still found it super button mashy. The particle effects and spell stuff is cool at first, but it ends up so cluttered that it got irritating. Plus the lack of enemy variety really started to wear on me.
There was a scene in the early game of Dragon Age: Origins where a merchant refused to sell his stuff to townspeople. When I went to convince him to sell his stuff there was an option like "Sell your stuff or else" or something. I selected that dialogue option and when he still refused to sell, my grey warden beheaded him in front of everyone. People started running everywhere in terror and I was really shocked, not expecting anything like that. That was how dark and serious these games were.
HmmMmm extremely cringe, this is.
@@LegoYoda_69420no, it was a tale of a better game.
You're misremembering. He doesn't refuse to sell his stuff, he just sells it at an exorbitant price. A Sister of the Chantry is trying to convince him to go easy on the prices. You can either side with the Sister, making him sell his shit for a lower price (except for you), or you can drive the Sister off, and get a discount. You *can* drive the Sister off and *then* kill the merchant, but you don't get to kill him if you make him sell his stuff cheaper. It's not recommended to do the latter option if you plan to keep Leliana in the party because she absolutely loses her shit (minus 45 disposition, lol)
@@drip1orddiorDon't worry, no grown man uses the word "cringe"
@@LegoYoda_69420 Talking like a green little man from a childrens movie isn't cringe at all.
I think the qunari design sums up this game pretty well:
Soft, safe, fake,
You forgot the biggest one….WOKE
@@tonyj801 Woke is a buzzword frequently regurgitated by alt-right rejects. Find a better word that's properly descriptive.
@ no it’s more than true. This happy go lucky bullshit and not wanting to offend people…we are over it. They are destroying the content we love
@@tonyj801wtf is woke about it. Companies overcorrecting to avoid offending potential buyers (while being totally out of touch with their interests because they are from a different social class) is capitalism at work. Of course, so is having a high budget video game in the first place, but still.
@@callmemc6 The Qunari speaks for itself
OMG the dialogue literally sounds like it was written for 8yr olds. “What? Who doesn’t like dragons?” JAIL.
Doesn't even make sense in their world either. Considering that dragons are pretty much always bringers of mass destruction and death in their world. Maybe darkspawn should like dragons, but why would anyone else?
@BasilAbdef
Yep, this isn't Dragonlance and Paladine, or Bahamut from D&D with glorious and majestic metallics etc...
Dragons in DA are horrifying...
Right to jail. Right away.
cuz it was
@ that’s deeply concerning considering they let you edit bulge size/chest size. That’s not for kids.
This review already is aging like fine wine. Top tier boss
Are user scores slowly dropping? Wouldn’t surprise me. I saw a video on another fairly big channel (I think called Fextralife) that was alleging that EA or BioWare was withholding review codes from reviewers that criticized the preview/demo. If true, I have to wonder how far that goes in explaining the seemingly positive critical reception.
A Dragon Age that is afraid to be dark? Do they not know what series this is?
They don't care because they could totally do it better. Don't you like micro aggressions over arguments and handsome squidward Quinari?
I mean They clearly don’t, look what they did to the Qunari alone lol, it was so easy to not mess that up and they somehow found a way
They dont care about origins or 2, this game was made to cater to the new audience inquisition brought in and shun the people who loved the first 2 games.
Dragon Age has literally _never_ had a coherent vision. Each installment completely overhauls things.
@@anon2752 I take issue with that statement, I've played the three previous games, Origins being my favorite. But I'm actually one of the few people that like Inquisition, I'm currently replaying it. And I'll tell you now, that from the beginning I did not like what I was seeing with Veilguard.
“The Gods are standing right behind me aren’t they?” gotta be a line in this game from what I’m seeing..
Has the same energy as "they fly now ? They fly now!
@@victordavila9812 I think the biggest thing is that a lot of current entertainment has moved away from that behavior. both instances we mentioned are 5+ years old. if you take into consideration the length of dev time of This game if tracks. I’m not a DEI thumper or some anti woke dude but there just gets to the point where taking edge and actual stakes away from things just nullifies anything substantial from happening. You can make a kick ass RPG and still be modern see “play BG3 it’s better then this”
@@racer4356 Pathfinder wrath of the righteous has a trans human lesbian dating a female Ork but they also let you sacrifice them to demons or eat then alive you can totally have diverse and still keep you edge but Bioware didn't get the memo.
Ps totally recommend pathfinder in case you haven't played it yet
inb4 I just blew up the veil with my FREAKIN MIND.
"Erm, he's RIGHT BEHIND me, isn't he?"
on my first baldurs gate 3 playthrough, shadowheart wanted to murder laezel, and i let her do it, now thats conflict within the party
In Dragon Age Origins, you could make Wynne leave the party and fight against you...
Comparing this souless game with BG3 feels just so wrong.
@@marceachucarro8834 Good thing they didnt then.
In KoTOR you could make Zaalbar murder Mission.
@@marceachucarro8834 Which is sad given Bioware is a bigger company with more money and resources
Two weeks in and we're starting to see major gaming outlets backtrack on their praise for The Veilguard. I am now a believer in the church of SkillUp.
"Bioware games live and die by their writing, and Veilguard absolutely dies by it" is a cold bar, NGL
They wrapped the noose around their necks just to get beheaded by a guillotine
Better dead that linger as undead corpse eaten by dei-worms.
Without strong writing the game would have to fall back on play mechanics. But clearly they knew as much about game design as they did about writing.
Skill Up is a bum. Play the game and form your own opinion.
@@marko6947 Or don't spend money on something you know will suck. That sounds like an even better option.
The necromancer and the skeleton manservant seems like such a missed opportunity, because turning a person's corpse into a happy, compliant pet really is dark and disturbing. Then the writer's could make it more disturbing/show more about the character by, later in the game, having him casually mention that the skeleton used to be his father or something like that. "He was never very good at taking care of me in life, so I'm giving him the opportunity to care for his son in death. Necromancy is all about 2nd chances. "
The HR commissar says that you have committed a thoughtcrime and must immediately be laid off.
I can confirm even with this interesting thing with Manfred the skeletal butler, it's done in the safest, nicest way possible. None of that guesome necromancy. It's a "whisp" that inhabited a bunch of body parts that the necromancer put together. It's nobody's parent. It's not even a soul trapped inside.
You can find Manfred in the player hub area and play Rock,Scissors Paper with it....
Just reading this comment gave me more entertainment and had more intrigue than 40 hours of this game.
Actually a pretty good joke lol
It's disneyified necromancy. Can't show something evil and disturbing like the idea you came up with. Can't be mean to anyone. Nobody can be mean to you except for the very bad guys. The Elves reaction to Elven gods returning? Nonexistent. Can't have the players think uncomfortable thoughts about how to react to the moral dilemma of how an oppressed and enslaved minority lashing out by siding with evil. Can't have potential villains whom we could sympathize with. Nope, we gotta have disney villains and disney heroes hitting each other with sticks and knives.
Then again I don't even think there are slaves in Tevinter anymore? Maybe a couple is shown to the player? It's very subtle. And the people living here are always very nice. There doesn't seem to be any racism against elves. If I didn't know any better I'd say because of our perspective, we just had the wrong idea about Tevinter. They were actually the good guys while the south was just full of barbarian racist assholes.
But of course I just know it's the writers who didn't want to show anything controversial or bad to the player. Slavery, racism, sympathetic villains, political commentary, etc. all had to go to the trashbin. So we got disneyified slaver empire.
I know that you mentioned Prince Charming from Shrek looking like a character in this game, but your player character looks almost identical to Shrek himself when he gets polymorphed into a human.
Holy crap, I just saw it on Google...wtf...
My initial thought exactly, and it's actually hilarious how obvious it is - you can't unsee it. Every character could easily have had a role in one of the Shrek movies. Dragon Age - The Shrek Guard.
I can’t unsee it now lol 😭
Holy crap you're right
OMG. That's literally what I was trying to place, but it was on the tip of my tongue.
A servant Skeleton who squeaks like a baby and an actual baby Griffon? Ok i didn't realise this was a Disney movie but I'm extremely glad i watched this review and avoided this.
I find it ironic that DA has been continually dumbed down with the justification that it will have more mass market appeal, and yet BG3, a sequel to a literal bioware series, doubled down on its CRPG roots and is on track to outsell the entire DA franchise.
TBF, BG 3 is a dumbed down crpg. Accessible, yet engaging.
turns out giving true freedom works
Other companies can bioware better tham bioware can these days
@@a.trance6997BG3 is a Larian game. Would you also argue it's less complex than Original Sin? Considering they had to adapt it to 5e rules, I really don't think that's the case.
@@fredwin BG3 is literally a neverwinter nights remaster with quality cut scenes.
Those dialog clips lowered my IQ
Wait there’s more lmao
not even copious amounts of alcohol can stop the pain
you can't blame them... their face is tired
Man i even considered not continue watching the reveiw
Wait until you get to the "unlock trans identity" and 15 minute long pronoun debates between the crew and how offensive it all is.
That MCU-esque bubbly, jokey dialogue no matter how dire or serious a situation is, is the most insufferable, cringey, terrible writing trope and I would gladly throw the entire MCU history into a fire to be rid of that writing style.
Joss Whedon was the viral vector here.
Sorry, but this leagues below the MCU, at least in the clips shown here....
Tiny little example because I just started watching - at 4:26 Harding is apparently begging Rook to do something about the demon currently possessing a dude. Her pose is one hand on a cocked hip, not tense at all, presumably because the animators didn't want to make another pose.
@@MMArtDamagewas about to say this is always misidentified, the MCU kept the tone that Whedon brought to it. It's not MCU dialogue, it's Whedon dialogue. Truly insane to see that part of his work be continued on I really couldn't have called it lol
@@MMArtDamageWhedon is a good writer, despite his issues as a person.
Rewatch the first Avengers movie and the weaving of humor and plot relevant seriousness is fantastic.
Whedon is good at that.
The issue comes when trying to imitate that.
Dragon Age: The Kindergarten would've been a better fitting name to it.
The qunari look like me trying to make fantasy characters in the sims 4 where I only have one slot for headwear and limited alpha cc
youre not far from the truth there
Lord Farquad-lookin asses smh 😂
You made me laugh :)
the main dev worked on the sims, so i can see why you'd think that hahahah
@@trumanashforth That explains SO much
“It’s too scared to be truly confronting or dark.” Makes me thing back to Origins, and the build-up to the brood mother where Hespith recounts what happened to her and her fellow dwarves. Genuinely haunting stuff. It’s just an entirely different franchise now.
Yeah, that was grotesque horrible. How they make broodmothers is the stuff of nightmares.
it's a general media problem that is hitting games harder nowadays that they are more mainstream: General audiences do not expect to feel any unease when they consume a product, consumeristic Art is supposed to be pure escapism.
It shocks me that this morons have a money printing machine and they decide to print shit over and over and over. Dragon Age Origins was something else.
@@groggod666 How can you say something like that in october, when everybody is tripping over themselves trying to watch, play, or listen to something horror related?
yeap...that is what i said from the start "it does not look like a world where a broodmother exist".... they should just came out and say "look we get it, we changed the franchise, we are going on a more colorful high fantasy direction and abandoning the grim dark from origin" it would at least be honest...instead they decide to remove the gamma correction from the video and wordplay "dark", some people truly will eat any shit as long as it's spoon feed to them
Well that’s not the title you want to see pop up in your subscription feed after being a life long Dragon Age fan
Yep. That was my initial thought too.
Same
With how far out of play this thing is compared to origins let along inquisition its to be expected though....
Yeah but he isn't a fan of the series. Form your own opinions
Hopefully, I still really enjoy it as I plan to play it day one. But man this is discouraging.
You know this is the most legit review of the game when it doesn't feature the Qunari companion in the thumbnail
"Just play Baldur's Gate 3. It's way better".
Shit, you don't have to tell me twice.
I say play bg2 and never winter nights.
Larian and owlcat will keep good RPGs alive
Yeah man Baldur's Gate 3 such an amazing 3rd person action RPG, totally comparable to Dragon Age lmao
Even NeverWinter free2 play is better than this.
BG3 is a turn based experience. Completely different.
I actually hope we DON’T get a new mass effect game if it’s made by these guys
ohh it will be a new ME unfortunately...
This, rather let ME die with dignity
I just hope these guys just role themselves with synthetic turf and stay there until doomsday
Hope springs eternal 🤞
Yeah same. I also feel the same about Elder Scrolls, I don't want the Bethesda of today to make the new one, these great companies have unfortunately gone now
In inquisition there are disagreements about: slavery, economics, blood magic, demons, politics, the nature of man, and religion. In dragon age 2 almost everyone in that party is ready to kill the other members at any given time, save Varric. Dragon age 1 has some pivotal moments that can lead to you having to kill companions. Not having party conflict, is just bad writing, plain and simple, people don’t always agree.
Even in Mass Effect, it took time for the supporting cast to feel like a family. In the first game the squad all feel like coworkers who just happen to share a common goal. In ME2 relationships start to become more fleshed out though there are still those who distrust or outright hate each other. It's only by the time of Mass Effect 3 that Shepard can truly call them friends.
@@enrique6335Not to mention that you still had an option to kill Rex on Virmire, whether that's because you thought he was an ass or because you didn't have enough Paragon/Renegade points to talk him down.
@@Calvin_Coolage And you could also choose how Shepard reacted to it, either with regret or disregarding him as just another stereotypical krogan that went violent.
@@enrique6335 remember that huge fight between Miranda and Jack? that was fantastic writing
@@atlanteean And then they upgrade to being frenemies. XD
I stopped at 18 hr mark. I am a big fan of DA series. I’ve read the book and played the games. I actually fell a sleep playing it. I’ve never done that before. I hate the fact that we are being lectured as well I like everyone else play to escape I got this for my birthday from my husband as I’ve been going on and on about it. Hell I would have rather gone out for dinner instead. 😡
that's so disappointing, sorry it ended up being such a bummer birthday gift. i had really been thinking about upgrading to a ps5 for this game explicitly because i too have read the books and played all the games multiple times. but like... it really doesn't feel worth it. im so gutted to say that!
Conflict happens.
A : "i like chocolate ice cream! "
B : "no, chocolate ice cream is yucky! I dont like it! "
C : " Now now, dont fight over it, B, you like strawberry, why dont you share your ice cream with A? "
Holy shit... That dialogue.... Its physically painful..
Doesn't matter cause its Neapolitan Ice Cream ending.
Finally...pure cringe
Is this a game for babies lol?
its like dealing with a conflict between infant siblings
This reminded me of that "I'm gonna cut your d**k" joke from Sr Pelo, but twisting it to be unfunny and boring. Now I know how to feel about this game without even playing it
The ever-positive vibes among the companions in-game is nothing more than a representation of the toxic positivity that plagues the company, where nobody, ever, can do wrong. Where there's no conflict, there's no growth, no evolution.
One companion from the first game was an assassin....who's target was YOU! And the game still respected choice enough to let you make the stupid decision to bring him into the group. Now hed have not tried to kill you because his bosses were "like total fascist buzzkills, so i decided i dont have to do what they say"
why wokeness is plague, same time these people want this positive spin to be nice one another, in fact they eat each other alive if you go against the narrative
If they only used a braincell in their collective hivewoke mind, they'd realise it's a complete nonsense... Evolution is driven by conflict.
''Where there's no conflict, there's no growth, no evolution.'' Doesnt Mordin say this in ME2 during normandy conversations?
Infantilized adults who only got a job because of diversity hiring, obviously they are detached with reality. The world is not all pink and rainbows, far from it. And struggle is what thrives humanity to keep improving
''Who dosen't like dragons?''
I don't know, maybe everyone that have their life ruined with a massive beast more akin to a force of nature; swooping down destroying your whole life.
CURSEEEE YOU BAYLEEEEE
They write that because they think Dragons are cool. The writers on this trash are utterly incapable of having any other perspective than their own. Most of these people are on heavy medication witch inhibits their cognitive capabilities and creativity.
you can't say that, you will hurt their feelings, boohoo /s
You know the writers are woke narcissists because they are incapable of writing characters with the character's own perspective, it can only be done from their perspective and yeah when dragons are imaginary who doesn't like them? Problem is in this game world they are not. Morons.
Yes... swooping is bad.
I've also noticed that a lot of the praise I've seen is about it being cute and people are just dying to romance characters. It honestly feels like there are so many people who are satisfied with a cute skeleton and the ability to get thirsty with generic companions. It's like fan fiction has invaded a lot of media these days. Felt the same about rings of power. I just don't understand how people can say this is 10/10. It frustrates me.
It’s near impossible to reason with cult members.
A lot of people who got their start in writing through fanficiton have made their way into the creative industries as writers, and as a result we are getting writing influenced by all the things that are popular in fanfiction (quippy dialogue, shipping, etc.) because that's where these people came from.
@@Icipher353 these people are perpetual 14 year olds, infantile and immature, thinking quippy dialogue is peak of creativeness. The fact that these people became mainstream writers and western culture of our times is now shaped by these mental toddlers is mindblowing
The irony is that there is almost zero romance in the game.
?
That sums up rpgs today, the fans like them because they are dating simulators. None of these games have brought anything new for a long time.
"The writing is, frankly, terminal. It lacks any nuance, wit or wisdom. It cannot communicate ideas, except to say them aloud to the camera. It manufactures petty, unbelievable tension because it doesn't know how to create anything more real, and it's too scared to ever be truly confronting or dark for fear that it might make the audience uncomfortable. Every interaction between the companions feels like HR is in the room, and every interaction led by the main character Rook sounds like he's addressing an under-12 soccer team before a semi-final or teaching toddlers to properly share toys."
I could've forgiven the sloppy combat, the out-of-place, oversaturated art style and character designs, but this right here? This is a deal breaker for me and what I absolutely did *not* want to hear about a Dragon Age game.
I knew I was gonna at least pirate the game, but this is what made me stop and reconsider even doing that.
There was this game I played before. Tyranny.
Shitty combat system was a slog to go through, but goddamn it hooked me with the discussion on power and evil.
I wish Dragon Age went back to that level of nuance.
Sounds like the average JRPG tbh
@@adamkallin5160 I take it you haven't played Metaphor then...
@@Revenant-oq9ts new vegas devs made that, so no wonder, really
The obsession of the script to not upset any fictional character is absurd.
They needed to force the Trans issue - of course everything even remotely offensive had to be astroturfed in order to even be palatable.
Lol all the dialogue I've heard so far sounds 100 % ChatGPT. They just had an AI write everything and never checked what it produced.
Thats what you get when you have script writers that have to always "feel positive" and are living in a make-believe, affirmational bubble. To some, being negative or attacking someone's character is tantamount to violence, as crazy as that sounds, which is why its not in the game; its full woke nonsense.
It appeals to mentally ill people.
@@Blurredborderlines What an L take, this might shock you but games have had bad stories with boring and absurdly inoffensive character since the beginning. "Forcing the trans issue" (lol) wasn't needed at all to ruin this story and make all of its characters bland and without any agency. Bioware did all of that on its own.
My gosh y'all are desperate 😂😂
“The less combat that you have to do in Dragon Age: Veilguard, the better.”
Ouch.
Not a good sign for an action game, because I doubt this is really an rpg.
In fairness, that's been the case for pretty much all the Dragon Age games for me. To still be like that after four games though...
@@MarkPTP7000 Yeah, same for me. I was really hoping that this would have good action combat instead of another middling take on RTWP but from the sound of it, they just traded a mediocre take on one type of combat for a mediocre take on another one. The specific point of recommending to turn down the difficulty really hurt to hear, because that is exactly how I handled Origins and DA2, once the repetition and generic nature of the encounters became too much.
@@floriandolder8111 Boomstick gaming and mortisimal, both mechanics focused channels, said the combat was fun and had plenty of variety. Enemy variety is pretty low. Basically I think Skillup either didn't engage with the systems or couldn't figure them out.
it was dreadful in origins too nothing new
For years writers have been ignoring the content to make movies. Saints Row dev's changed there aesthetic look and writing to "toddler talk", Dragon Age dev's must of seen how "successful(sarcastic)" that was and been inspired to do the same. When one company does something good or bad, others will follow.
The second-hand cringiness I'm feeling during the "conflict resolution" conversations physically hurts. It's like listening to an episode of Caillou.
i think u r saying cringiness not clinginess
That's it right there! This is a great action adventure game for a 6 year old! Brilliant I'll be sure to let my nephew know it's probably right up his alley. Simple puzzles and life lessons like sharing is caring.
@@arricarry3832 Ha! You're right. That's auto-correct for you. Haha!
In an era of access journalism and incessant bootlicking, I just want to thank you for an honest opinion.
Yup, I don’t trust any mainstream journalism. I had to really look a review that was honest and not one sided. Honesty is getting more rare every day.. I get nobody wants their feelings hurt, but I’d rather have the truth.
It's so bad that his review link is now being censored on Facebook.
@@michaelcole3140 it’s as if honest criticism is purely evil to these people.. Out of all the reviews I’ve seen, this was one of the most respectful while still being honest about the game. Dude even said it’s his opinion, that maybe other people would still love the game. He wasn’t bashing on anything or anyone. I bet it’s the title “I do not recommend” probably triggered them.
He didn't address the major wokeism
@@Svrahe He’s guilty of “wrong think” by the people who made this trash heap of a game. So he must be silenced like he lives in current day China.
Ah yes, so *_this_* is why AAA devs were begging us not to compare their games to BG3.
Edit: meeeeow, these comments. Ladies, you're all beautiful 😂
@@TheSMR1969 so is ur opinion lol
@@Nightheart973 u triggered?
@@TheSMR1969 It is pretentious, very much so. But it's much superior to this.
@@TheSMR1969ah you must be the diversity hire
Bg3 is like 2 generations ahead of veilguard, bioware just isn't competent enough to compete.
So basically this is not dragon age...very sad. The first one was a hardcore RPG and they changed it into an action adventure game
No blood magic IN TEVINTER (known for that same thing), Varric magically switched hair color and has a beard (he hated beards) and the Darkspawn look hilarious (don't get me started on the Qunari, their design peaked in DA2)
Yeah, this was DOA
It's like they stripped the entire story for parts and thought they can do their version better.
If this were a different series all together, it would've just been a poorly written generic fantasy hack and slash instead of a total perversion of an established series.
Seriously? No Blood Magic? Laaaaaame
Varric has Blackwall's head. It's sooooo distracting
@@jenniferhanses So... -Blackwall- Thom Rainier stole Varric's identity as well? Maker's breath, I've thought I convinced that fella to be better!
So THATS why he looked so weird! Damn
Don't worry about the fact they aren't going to be giving you early access anymore SkillUp. After all, this is probably their last title.
If that’s the case bring back Laymen Gaming.
@@LoyalHulk07 Daaamn! Unfortunately it's not happening.
The unfortunate bit about this, is that it does cater to a large audience of gamers. It will sell well. There's a huge disconect between the online hate for the game, and the pre-release sales numbers. It's a top selling game on steam already, and PC isn't even the primary audience for this game. This year has been a very weak year for gaming as well. DAV will sell well.
But those gamers buying it and loving it probably aren't Dragon Age fans, or at least not the original ones. I just find it so fucking sad that catering to a bunch of apathetic, borderline media illiterate normies, will sell Bioware more copies than catering to their original fanbase. Origins sits in my top 5 games of all time, and I'm very clearly not the target audience for Veilguard.
@@Julian-cn1ey idk, considering how other AAA games did like Concord, Forspoken, Saints Row and even Dustborn , I'd assume this'll be a total flop. Nobody likes this shit anymore
EA is keeping them afloat for some reason.
they have shut down studio for way less but Bioware survived all their flops.
"Who doesn't like dragons" has to be the most ridiculous and stupid thing to say in the dragon age universe.
Well Qunari seem to be obsessed with dragons so that didn't bother me. But yeah most of what I've seen seem to have gone through some kind of a modern-speak filter.
@@aca347 The thing is it doesn't make sense in the context of the world. "who doesn't like dragons" is something we say irl because dragons obviously don't exist. In the DA universe they very much are real and pose a very real danger to many people. - So of course there are plenty of people who don't like dragons and have a damn good reason not to.
It would be like a storm chaser irl saying "who doesn't like tornados?"
That line even getting into the game shows that the writing staff have no clue how to world build or create immersion.
@@user-gm4kv2my4u Gold Star explanation right here. Right on the money and really a perfect example of bad writing and not understanding the world of DA.
@@user-gm4kv2my4u This reminds me of how amazed Sera was every time you killed one in Inquisition
Exactly what I would hear from a random person who tried to relate to topic they dont know at all.
"Oof" being a dialogue option in a high fantasy game is the nail in the coffin. The definitive proof the target audience is smaller than the budget spent to make the product.
Now we know why its no longer called "Dreadwolf". There is no dread at all
not true! it sounds like skill up was feeling so much dread just realizing he had to finish the game.
Dreadwolf is objectively a better name
The standards for games , and Bioware, have dropped -- and they are hoping that the gaming audience accepts this.
@@SteveJonesOwnsDSPthey did not give review codes to some of the people who were critical in their preview. IGN had an exclusive marketing contract with the game and of course they gave it a 9.
It was too spooky for the devs, they couldn't stomach it without their rainbow unicorn pillow by their side
I've been seeing comments "Every interaction sounds like HR is in the room" quoted in the comments section of OTHER videos covering this game... Dude single handily pinned the game down in one sentence.... dropping bars lol
Cyberpunk is raw, unapologetic and punk rock. It's refreshing during these dark times of political correctness, DEI and wokeness. These far left freaks have nearly destroyed every franchise.
@@JediKnightoftheTifaCult touch grass dude
@@dylanhnhgoing outside only makes it more obvious that the left are disgusting freaks
@@JediKnightoftheTifaCultnobody who worked on this game is a leftist. Just alt-right.
15:59 i work at a childrens bookstore and this scene is written like its straight outa peppa pig. like just imagine arthur or dora the explorer saying these lines and youll get it.
Next one even more so:(((
I work with kids and this is how I see my colleagues talks with toddlers. I think the dialogue and how they resolve their “differences” would be great if this were targeted towards kids, but clearly they weren’t going for that.
16:33 "Who doesn't like Dragons?" is such an immersion-breaking line. It's a world of magic where dragons are real and I expect extremely dangerous. It's like these writers have never even heard of basic concepts like suspension of disbelief. Saying "I like dragons" is so blatantly Doylist, not to mention banal, it makes me want to throw up.
We’ve been told for years the younger generations were not growing up due to changes in parenting. As an older millennial I always wanted to dismiss this stuff but when I see writing like this it’s like newer writings have never advanced beyond a certain age of development, and we see it in many creative industries now.
@@cendrizziit proves these writers have no life experience and only deal with people who think like them.
Prince charming would look out of place but only because he's a conventionally masculine white guy.
DragonAge went from a 1500-page epic dark fantasy novel to a 250 page Young Adult “fantasy” series.
Young Adult blue hair fantasy 😂
God, I am so done with cheesy shitty YA dialogue in games and books
That's not fair at all.
YA novels are significantly better written than this.
@@alaskarii007 truth. Solo Leveling and Omniscient Reader are both YA and they both hit on some dark shit.
Feels like attempting Whedon/MCU dialogue without understanding what made those work for their very specific niches.
It's kind of insane to think about how we went from Loghain's brilliantly written speech about hatred in Dragon Age Origins to whatever Veilguard ended up being. A game that doesn't want its audience to feel uncomfortable set in a universe with things like the Broodmothers, women that were turned into twisted breeding machines for monstrous abominations. A dark fantasy world filled with slavery, political intrigue, demons, and war turned into a safe and bland theme park. It is a true shame that what started off a series with lots of potential has been reduced to this.
>Broodmothers are sexist because they are showing violence towards women and are just to appease the male gaze with the fetishized and objectified female anatomy.
>Slavery is racist, because of the Atlantic slave trade and triggering to African Americans.
>Politics are harmful and a bad influence unless it's a liberal rebellion rising up against a fascist regime.
>Demons are Christian propaganda and a dogwhistle slur for the LGBTQ community.
>War is imperialist propaganda
Did I do it right? Can I get into the Marxist reading club now?
Loghain was GOAT villain in DA for me, next only to the Arishok. I literally killed Alistair just to recruit him in my first play. But I also killed Ali to marry Anora too, so win-win.
You know what they say man. Go woke go broke
yeah this age of safe products is really the death of art
This is the 3rd video I've watch today, and not one of them mentions blood magic, considering this game is set in Tevinter... I think? That's just bloody sad.
I wonder if the world spaces FEEL like Overwatch maps because they were made before the design shift away from multiplayer happened, and these are in fact multiplayer maps repurposed into the design basis for an overworld
Could be true. I feel almost sick to my stomach thinking about how they destroyed dragon age.
The fact that this game was originally supposed to be a live service multiplayer at all tells you everything you need to know about EA/Bioware's priorities. It only changed back to singleplayer because Anthem bombed spectacularly lmao. Gotta follow where the money is, I guess.
That's what I thought. They look just like how Inquisitions multiplayer maps looked like.
Unbelievable that they did this again, remember when Dragon Age Inquisition was supposed to be an MMO and they changed it? Maybe it was just a rumour but if they did this two times...
A safe Game?, sounds about right from a big AAA. the only surprise is the lack of Bugs. 😂
its kind of crazy that after Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware has taken 3 shots at making another dragon age game and they somehow made them in the wrong genre every single time.
I think dragon age 2 is fine. it has some good moments in it. Everything else sucks though
Choices don't matter though @@shionsonozaki5730
Holy shit the writing is painful. A disrespect to every serious writers that these guys get to work on a legendary franchise.
All the woke bs is absolute poison and ruins everything it touches 🤡
Sad but true. Nepotism and DEI over talent.
So childish, sounds like high school kids talking 😢
It really does make me wonder who the good fantasy writers even are these days.
>Fire one of your best writers.
>Writing is bad.
Wow I can't believe it!!!
Fire all of your experienced gameplay , UX, and graphic devs
Replace with unqualified college grads and checkbox applicants
Results produced shown above
Same shit happened to Bethesda after kirbride
I heard the veterans of the studio created new studio filled with veterans in gaming industry and new talents, if its true i hope they will make a banger soon
@@verios44Don't forget to hire as many blue hair activists as possible.
@Tacti_cat stuff can be bad and now because of " the woke" believe it or not
Remember that quest in Mass Effect about the doctor using the bodies of desperate employees as test tubes to grow cloned organs and sell them? That was cool.
Mass effect was just so much cooler than this piece of garbage, even andromeda, which sucked at least had fun combat. Bioware died a long time ago and what we're seeing is just it's freakish stinking corpse.
When was that? I just remember Ceberus kidnapping people in the Afterlife to turn them into reaper monster of sorts.
I just finished that mission.. I shot him lol
Remember in DAO, you could sell your relatives/neighbors to the evil mages and get disowned by your father for doing so? Just because we won't be assholes doesn't mean we should be railroaded to a personality.
i was hearing this in chris farleys voice
My favorite part of Dragon Age Inquisition was the dialogue. Dorian and Solas especially. This game just makes me want to go back to Inquisition.
As a former preschool teacher of 6 years I can confirm that these are not adult conversations. This is entirely how you speak to children. These aren't even appropriate conversations for the story. It doesn't seem to fit at all even from a sidequest perspective. I dunno, I will play it when Epic eventually gives it away lol until then I'll pass unless it hits a deep sale
All leftwingers are like children.
Why would you even buy it? Pirate the gaym if u have to play it or better just dont
Why would you support this sale or no sale?
@@ShinzoX90 when I say deep sale I mean I'd maybe throw a fiver at it to see how I feel about the general gameplay myself. Who knows 🤷🏻 guess I get to do what I want with my money
@@TheDahveeed lol what money.
Rest in peace Bioware. Thank you for the wonderful childhood. You were loved
Ruined by DEI shills
Amen. I am waiting for ME 4 for ever. Now I am pretty sure I do not want it as it could somehow corrupt the love I have for the trilogy….
@@TheGiltanasWe have Mass Effect 4 at home!
It’s called Mass Effect Andromeda 😂😂😂
Expect Mass Effect 5 to be a garbage fire as well.
@@jcm2789 You "DEI" complainers are what have made game devs and studios afraid to experiment and unable / unwilling to take level-headed criticism
@@vishnuteja2288 no you fool, game studios and devs STOPPED listening to the criticism and opinions of their customers because of DEI. Those customers then did what any paying customer would and stopped paying for products they dont want. For example: Im a big toyota fan, but if toyota started trying to sell me uni cycles instead of good cars that i want... well i wouldnt shop at a toyota dealership again.
This is exactly what DEI has done to gaming, handed the steering wheel to fringe minority gender activists. Theyve taken all our feedback regarding the games we want and somehow managed to produce a game we dont want crammed full of all the things we dont like.
The irony is those devs tell us not to buy their games, then call us bigots when we dont.
Its a sign of the times that seeing a game get 9/10 on IGN causes alarm rather then anticipation for gamers.
Wtf are you talking about? IGN scores have been a joke for decades
I get all my reviews from IGN. Best site for it. You look for the 7s. And then read the bullet points. If you find a 7 with 2 or more complaints, then that's a 9, and worth checking out. If you see a 7 with no complaints, that's a 4 or lower.
You just gotta be fluent in IGNese.
Now if IGN give high score, it must be so woke that they can't deduct point.
Ign gives high scores to the WORST games. Ones that are braindead or basic pandering are their favorite
IGN and other videogame outlets like kotaku have been known to do reviews for favors since the 2000's.
I'd really like Bioware to answer a single question:
"When did you start assuming that your audience is too dumb for a good game."
As a huge Mass Effect fan, this review actually leaves me with the feeling that if this is the team that's going to be making the next game, I'd rather just not have one at all. I can't believe I'm saying that but here we are.
Yeah not looking forward to the next mass effect game at all
The paranoia of it being turned into a movie or show has always loomed. I guess we can add game to that list as well.
The sad truth is that the key staff who made BioWare successful are long gone. Until modern BioWare proves itself worthy of its own name by actually putting out a good game, I have zero hype for any of their projects. They haven't put out a good game since 2014, and they've barely done anything in those ten years period.
Yeah I'd rather *this* game didn't exist. Some people were really so delusional expecting this game to be good, I tried to warn them.
ive heard they wanted to make it more like mass effect 3 with less open world nonsense
the bits and pieces shown to us were also leaning me towards positive.
but yeah....im just huffing huge amounts of copium and think its a different team working on the next mass effect
This releasing a year after Baldur's Gate 3 really shows that Larian Studios is what BioWare was supposed to become. Alas, BioWare has been dead since Mass Effect: Andromeda, which saddens me immensly, as I love both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universes.
I’m of the mind that Inquisition was a mid game at best so you can say that the downward trajectory started with the botched ending of Mass Effect 3.
@@GeorgiKolev85 I dunno Andromeda was bad but it was at least playable this is so bad it makes me think this was a third party studio that became a bioware studio
@GeorgiKolev85 Idk why people keep saying the ME3 ending was horrible. You had 3 choices. Everyone has different opinions, but I found no problem at all with the ending. In fact, I thought the ending was perfect.
The funny part is, Larian isn't the only one being better Bioware. Owlcat is carrying that torch for middle budget games as well. There has never been so much good competition for the Bioware niche and this is the most phoned in we have seen Bioware.
I think BioWare died around DA:Inquisition. I just gave up on that game's writing halfway and I was already bored out of my mind in the hinterlands. I pushed on thinking "maybe it will get interesting eventually". Me, the leader of a religious organization with power over numerous political factions, picking flowers for fucking peasants in the hinterlands.
Now I already don't like the tired "CHOSEN ONE" plot in RPGs, but if I'm the Chosen One, then at least treat me like the Chosen One. I'm not gonna collect random shit for random nobodies. Unless it's an apocalyptic event that requires my divine intervention to save all of you ungrateful little ants, don't bother me. I'll ask one of my minions to fix that for you if I still remember you exist after 5 minutes.
It took me until Disco Elysium to play another RPG again to the end. I was traumatized.
This game is an example as to why developers were coming out saying they didn't want BG3 to be the new gaming standard. This mediocrity is now no longer being accepted.
The thing is, this is not BG3's fault. From looking at this review, the game can't even compete with prior titles. Visually worse, strategically worse, storytelling is worse, character designs are worse, flow of combat is worse, and I could go on. As someone who was kinda hyped for this title, especially with Linux support, and being DRM-free, reviews (not just this one) has been a huge sobering moment. Instead of a day 1 purchase... maybe 75% off, if I even pick it up at all.
which is good. BG3's characters are absolutely fantastic except maybe Halsin
What's sad is that BG3 is itself pretty mediocre and was abandoned by Larian before it was even finished. Yet despite its many, many glaring failings, it's still head and shoulders above most of the competition.
@@TheCaliforniaHP Karlach is actually the worst. Stronk Female Power-lifter that talks like a 20 year-old zoomer. absolutely trash tier character.
@@BasilAbdef How was it abandoned? If you mean cut content that's almost every game ever made.
Also, the companions in DAV will only flirt with you if you flirt FIRST.
In BG3 many of the companions will come on to you and you have the option to flirt back or refuse them. But here, in DAV, you have to pursue them first.
I don't think I'll check out any more reviews. I've seen enough here to know I won't be buying this game. Thank you.
You'll be back when you feel you are missing out...
@@ameet672😂😂😂 that's hilarious..you can't see for yourself?
Wise choice bro! There's much better games to spend money on..
@@darianstarfrog Seeing for yourself based on one review? The fucking irony.
@@ameet672 Man you're so right. I am just desperate for those top surgery scars on my characters.
The dialog is actually even worse than what is showcased in this video, and that is impressive.
I went through this with Borderlands 3, and that game actually had good gameplay compared to this. It made the experience insufferable.
When narrative and character interaction is a major part of your game, it's impossible for it not to sour overall experience when it's so bad.
@@Psycorde
I tried Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Mind you I've plat every single BL FPS game before that one: 1, 2 PS and 3. I couldn't finish TTW. The writing is atrocious, even worse than 3 in my opinion.
Although, I played BL3 alongside my brother and TTW by myself. That's probably how I endured through 3.
He was being cautious about what he showed and talked about. It gets SO much worse.
@@BritBox777Bro knows what's up.
I never finished Borderlands 3 personally it was already too bad, if you're doing the coop with friends OK... but solo, with those characters and story ? nope lol
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands didn't even bought it, I got in with some Humble Bundle though, stopped not long after the introduction.
I won't buy Borderlands 4 for sure.
All those old AAA games are worthless now.
*Two powerful Elven Gods vowing to destroy the world*
Rook: "Oh no I hope I don't offend them"
I'm surprised the game still has combat at this point.
@@everworldjalil2165 Sounds like even that is pretty much gone, unless you like slapping a sponge all day.
I quit playing after 30h. I just couldn't take it anymore. From a BioWare Fan who has 400 h in DA and 600h in ME LE.
Go and play persona 5 royal guys.
Having the blood dragon armor in a game with no blood is Diabolical work
That was one of the main selling points of DA:O, lol. The blood spatter effects and etc, this entire franchise has a huge identity crisis
This is just objectively false right? Could’ve sworn I saw blood splatter when they swiped weapons in multiple different pieces of footage.
@@Nockblock It's most definitely conspicuously missing-especially when compared to the overwhelming amount of epileptic seizure-inducing particle graphics that distract from the combat. I remember seeing some blood in a cinematic clip, but outside of that, not much else.
I cackled out loud 😂
That genuinely triggered me. It's been years since I played Origins, I entirely forgot that the series began as a bloody, grim and dark medieval fantasy. Seeing that armour brought me back. And it only rubbed salt into the wounds, making me realize just how far this series has fallen.
At this point, it may seem like I’m cherry-picking a negative review, but this is the only one that truly addresses what bothered me visually, audibly, intellectually, and emotionally during those gameplay reveals. Thank you for sharing your honest thoughts.
Yes! Same here.
It feels like you're cherry-picking because they took a lot of care to only sand keys to people willing to sell their soul for a game key, and with "content creation" being such a an overcrowded space, the vast majority of people entering it will suck as many dicks as needed to get even the smallest modicum of an advantage.
It is sadly a situation where integrity is not a virtue worth its cost anymore.
You are! Embrace it!😂
So am I
@@davidcopperfield5345 Fair point! Oh well, EA and BioWare cherry-picked reviewers, and thus, so can we! 😅
I was looking for a good counter argument, but there are none. The other reviews are fluff pieces to B-roll. No one counters these pointed critiques from Skillup with specific footage showing their positive impressions. The other positive reviews feel phoned in when compared to this.
The aesthetic of the game and characters make it look like a Dragon age fortnite event, rather than.. a Dragon Age.
Ikr everything and everyone has this weird smooth, almost perfectly immaculate shine on them. It feels extremely fake. Like you're watching a Disney movie rather than immersing yourself in a fantasy world
That’s an amazing description. Nailed it.
Very original comment. Got it from twitter?
@@666slateran666 very original comment. did it anger you?
Good description. I thought the characters look straight out of a Pixar movie. But Fortnite fits even more.
36:05 The camera changing between the object and the place it's meant to go into is a perfect way of saying "Are you fucking kidding me??" without a single word. lmao
The fact that we got Baldurs Gate 3 is a downright miracle. Probably won’t see it’s like for another decade
Rogue trader is pretty good
@@Demunguyreborn21049214 damn straight. Love my boy Pasqual. The pillars of eternity games are pretty top tier also.
@@swarley414 Did they finally fix all the game-breaking bugs? I wanted to play it but Owlcat games are always technical disasters until years after their initial release.
Appreciate it and man veilguard had. The potential to be great as bg3 but ruined by appealing to new audience and toss our world states out the window
@@Spectacular_Insanityit's pretty good now, didn't have to use toybox to fix my save, the way I did in Wrath of the Righteous.
After Anthem I don't know why ANYONE would purchase a new Bioware game without being extremely cautious and skeptical.
*after Ass Effect: Andromeda
*after Mass Effect: green, red or blue
You have to be extremely cautious and skeptical with buying any game these days
@@john_squatsonto be fair Andromeda had massive potential it was just unfinished. Was it as good as DA Inquisition? Nope but it it was still decent
@BabyKobeeee never know if they will keep a promise or immediately break it.
Where did all the adult writers go?
They all got called racist
They either started taking hormones in their delusional depression or they got kicked out of the writer's room when they refused.
Cyberpunk have it i think i mean adlut story and characters and true RPG
Got kicked out of the room when delusional loons took over.
Same place your "adult" brains went.
I'm actually shicked by how childish the dialogues are. I had no idea they'll be that bad
Larian Studio: Add evil endings for each character - blood, deaths, power, murders etc.
Bioware (2024): Noooooo, just don't call a fellow party member a fool (((((
Lol, It deserves likes
I guess if these devs take only a small peek into a Durge playthrough, they would probably faint lmao
I even commanded my companions to kill themselves in one of the durge endings lol loved it.
A historical and important reminder of why a studio should never sell out their identity and talent to a large corporate overlord.
Ironic that on a technical level, this game seems excellent and BG3 was pretty trash at release and is still janky in its animations and such but writing and world building is where it gets reversed.
Reminds me how Totalbiscuit kept saying that you shouldn't be fan of anything. It might sound like a weird stance but if taken less literally it means just having healthy relationship with an entertainment industry. Enjoy good products, don't become too attached to companies as part of your identity.
Definitely this. It's not that hard to keep a healthy perspective. Really don't why people turn everything they do into a religion.
It is fine to be fan of something that exists already. That won't change since it is already made. The problem is when people who are fans of something extrapolate those feelings onto new products just because they share some superficial letters in the title.
Like I am a big fan of Lord of the Rings. I still spend hours each week doing something LotR related. Mostly painting Lord of the Rings miniatures or playing the "Warhammer" game based upon it. But I am only a fan of the content related to it that I have experienced and then made up my opinion on. Anything new I am skeptical on and will have to try before I can say if I am a fan of it or not. If anything being a previous fans only raises the bar on something new for me. Not lower it.
I cringe every time I see people say they like RoP because it is more Middle-Earth. That would be fine if it was a good show but it is terrible and you shouldn't enjoy it just because it has the same names. That only dilutes what you truly like and incentives companies to continue butcher whatever you liked first until at some point there are more bad stuff than good stuff in a franchise. Anything new we should be skeptical of and gatekeep the hell out of. Quality standards are fine and if you are a fan of something it should be a requirement to Gatekeep any changes to it.
It's a good advice, but wasn't TB a massive Warhammer fan?
He left a gaping hole when he left. Loved his critiques!
Or, be attached to things that can't get worse anymore because they're finished. Reboots can easily be ignored.
There should be a rule if 2/3rds of company leave, they should change the name. I mean this is an insult to Bioware as we old players know it. Thank God there are people who see things for what they are and not for what OTHERS WISH they would be.
What if the founders just die..
I was thinking the exact same thing.
There isn’t really a safeguard for this kind of…deceit but that’s what it feels like…deceit.
Riding on the success on an old studio name when virtually no one who made the studio good is around anymore.
Instead we as consumers should remind ourselves the sheer folly of long term brand loyalty. There was a point where the expression was "The Three B's always make great games: Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard" (and when xbox fanboys said it, they added Bungie cuz halo was peak zeitgeist). When was the last time any of those companies released a good game despite them just a decade and some change ago were considered the absolute peak of the industry? Nothing good can last forever. Luckily other great studios have risen up in their wake.
Maybe it won't matter much. After this and Anthem, they'll be making shitty phone games.
@@silverwolfe3636 I will never understand brand loyalty. These CEOs don't know who you are, stop thinking that they care about you. I have Nike and Adidas, I have NVIDIA and AMD, I am not loyal to any company. I buy whichever has the best reviews.
They talk to each other like how i talk to my son. My son isn’t even 1.
Remember when you played a female city elf in DA:O and in less than 10min you survived a murder and a rape attempt? And go on a rampage to save your relatives?
Damn, me neither...
That's because DA:O trusted players to delve into a dark world where the good guys fail and the bad guys usually win the day and no one is safe. In the first few hours they put you through generally traumatic origins, kills off your mentor figure, kills the brave righteous king, backstab you, and leave you to middle your way through a word being ravaged by a horde of monsters killing their way across the nation.
DA2 bro brought a deeply personal rise to power story with morally grey characters, no right options, and dealing with complex topics like slavery, oppression, and how often a tyrannical force can themselves end up creating the villain they've claimed to guard against.
I did not like Inquisition much, tbh, but it still brought some dark moments with morally dubious options and a plot that forces the player to walk the edge of oppressive cult or religious savior.
Veilguard seems more interested in a cuddly adventure with non-threatening supporting characters in a world designed with bumper rails that can never be too scary else it scar the sensitives of their players.
The brave righteous king?
The whole point was that the King was running into a death trap. He was going to die, they all die, the Origin is supposed to be dark.
It is always dark at the beginning.
But things get brighter as the day goes on.
Things get dark again as the day draws to a close.
So do not worry. If you want dark to come again, it will be dark once more. But when it does, you will need light. So get it while it is hot.
DA:O pulled zero punches and the city elf origin still sticks with me to this day. Like dogs Shianni is THE most raw line in the entire saga
@@arkainin4638just started Veilguard and had an entire town decimated by blight with ghoul villagers roaming the place, with a dude getting choked out by tentacles and then we left a man to die cause I didn't like him... There's dark themes, this dude just wants to hate it. The Qunari in Antivan were gnarly too
@@JohnSmith-qb9ex also, Sacred Lies are a thing.
BioWare is literally not the company you remember. Its almost entirely a brand new swath of people just wearing the brand of "BioWare". The soul is different
Soft purge followed by replacement hiring on an ideological basis. Many such cases.
Worse is that this dynamic also occurred upstream in the edu pipeline so, even if the corpos decide they like money again, there’s no fast way of unsalting the earth
Yeah it truly is sad but it's how it is with every company. Once the founders are bought out and gone, it's over.
BioWare was this company since Baldurs Gate 2, you were just younger and didn't notice how poor the writing and characters were.
once EA bought them they were already bioware i didn't remember, you saw it in mass effect 2 how much changed from the first game not just combat, was dialogue and tone
@@Owennerd disagree Jade empire, Kotor, dragon age origins had good dialogue
Remember when developers and journalists where begging not to compare other games to Baldurs Gate 3?
yeah its because of watered down slop like this.
“We don’t want to have to actually try when making our games, please stop pointing out the flaws”
Yeah, now it makes even more sense that bioslop... Ugh, sorry, bioware developers were seething so much back then.
To be fair, this never happened.
There was one guy that worked for a big studio (don't remember which one) that said on social media people shouldn't compare future RPG games to BG3.
Then the media ran with that story and turned it into AAA developers saying not to compare games to BG3.
And unfortunately, people like you read something and believe it at face value.
Man, I miss Mass Effect 2, where you're free to skip loyalty missions, but you'll also have to deal with the potential consequences.
"Every interaction sounds like HR is in the room” ooooof.
Despicable, the other extreme of a toxic working place with abusive bosses and whatnot, the "Bioware" who worked on this game are completely sanitized and castrated, the infantilized adults living in their imaginary safe bubbles instead of taking their meds and trying to be better, a functional member of society
it looks like every character is a dwarf or halfling or something. i feel like the human proportions are bizarre
It’s the heads, all heads have been scaled up about 20% for no reason.
Its like the other commentor said. The heads are too big so everyone has mallet proportions. I saw a photoshop where someone resized the heads and shoulders and the characters looked 5x better
The bit at 8:00 is just grim, the faces can't express themselves properly, literally "my face is tired" all over again
if u tried enshrouded(survival game) it feels like the character's skeleton is similar to that. like they feel like short people but not really, cant explain it lol
Someone figured out why. It's the head. They're a bit big. Lol.
Theres journo outlets out there that give this game a 9/10 and call it "The best Bioware game ever made"...above Mass Effect...above Kotor...and above past Dragon Age games.
Yea..no.
Those are some fighting words
Fextralife got a pretty interesting video on this