As a gamer who enjoyed playing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons and witnessed the remarkable transition to PCs through BioWare, Bethesda, and a few other, I am disheartened by the current state of the industry. It is dominated by individuals who are never satisfied with profits, targeting-spending players instead of appealing to a broader audience. The industry is marred by racism (e.g., Obsidian and BioWare Montreal) sexism (e.g., Ubisoft, Blizzard lawsuits), and fascism (e.g., BioWare, Bethesda, Activision community managers and management). These same individuals accuse us of being in the wrong. Additionally, terms like delusional, entitled, overpaid, and masters of failing upwards aptly describe many publishers and developers. Figures as Andrew Wilson, Microsoft leadership, and Todd Howard have taken successful formulas and ruined them. However, I believe this too shall pass. Larian Studios has demonstrated the winning formula once again. The studios I mentioned are already dead inside; they lack talent, skill, and the ability to handle criticism. They don't care, as they are paid well to be mere checkmarks instead of valuable assets. There is still hope. Studios like Owlcat, Larian, Deep Silver, inXile, Firaxis, Warhorse, Game Science, Undead Labs, and a few have produced in an era of terrible ruined by ideology. We don't need these problematic individuals. They need us. I am tuning them out because all they produce is noise and discord instead of excitement and enthusiasm.
You might like Larian's Divinity OS 1 and 2 in terms of meaningful side quest content. You probably have played them already, but hearing about Vailguard's lacking contents made me think of the times I spent agonizing over the outcomes of certain quests in those games where I stuck to getting some profit out of a quest, only to see how heartbreaking my actions or inactions were in the end.
It’s a shame what they did to Dragon Age. We waited 10 years for the next installment, only for them to shit out this terribly written, retconned nonsense
That was your mistake, anticipating a decent game. I gave up on DA franchise like 6 years ago because it was stuck in limbo. If you like Elder Scroll then brace yourself for a mediocre product. TES 6 was announced in 2018. I personally don't care much for Bethesda's games I'm just drawing a parallel here.
o boy they did Harding so dirty in this game... she was so composed in Inquisition, in this game she sounds and acts like someone else completly different----
Yeah she was so annoying by the end. I played through - or mainly just until the half of it because I got bored again - the game multiple times, and after some timre she became more annoying for me than Taash. If you ignore all her bias, she's not as bad, at least I could endure her dragon quests more. Harding however was unbearable, I don't know if it was the voice actress or her character in general, but I couldn't wait to sacrifice her at the end. Like it should be hard; a cute gryffon or a whiny dumbass.
@@ZeroOmega-vg8nq I agree. Izzy would never do push ups to be politically correct. Very character breaking. This version of BW is clueless and vision-less.
I think Dagna was supposed to be in the game but Bioware transplanted her character and story onto Harding. So Bioware made the same mistake with Anders in Dragon Age 2.
Maybe this is a really silly question and I'm just missing the obvious, but: If the elven gods are immortal as long as their archdemons live, wouldn't the logical thing be to hide them instead of sending them to the front lines?
Because if anyone other than a grey daddy kills an archdemon the essence of the archdemon will be transferred to the nearest dankspawn. Effectively making the archdemon "immortal".
@@thanellen8757 As long as there's at least a single Grey Warden, it's still a stupid idea to send them to the front lines IMHO. So that's still a pretty weak explanation.
My sister is a huge DA fan and I watched her finish her first playthrough. She was facepalming at the narrative choices and "subversive plottwists", really annoyed at how drawn out the end game was, and how this was a pretty decent and fun game but an absolutely dogshit DA game. She did want to replay in the hopes of romancing someone else (naturally what a lot of players want from these types of games) and to try to be evil. I warned her that she won't get to be evil and that the romances are super boring. But she's basically broke and this is the only 60 dollar game she's bought, she's forcing herself to squeeze all the value out of it. And it clear she's forcing it.
That god's design could be really cool, if she was far less animated. She could've had an eerie eldritch presence, but she moves like a character out of Spongebob, so I can't take her very seriously.
I played Origins, Awakening and am halfway through DA2 directly after playing DATVG (I have played them thousands of times, DATVG only once) and I'm having a much better time playing the older games, I don't think I'll ever play DATVG ever again, It's one of the Absolute worst games I've ever played. I plan on playing Through Oblivion and Skyrim again once I finish my Nightmare difficulty Run on DA2. DATVG isn't Hated enough imo, I absolutely love Dragon Age and DATVG makes me sad, every single person who worked on it should be Fired and Banned from making games.
In DAI they created such a great villain with Solas, at the end of trespasser he seemed so powerful and overwhelming…only to transform it into this nonsense in Veilguard
I mean is it really that hopeful that the "same" people would be steering the ship at bioware would remain the same for decades? No obviously the answer is no but here is the rub at hand. The people who knew the games and lore and mechanics and characters in these beloved games just left there was no passionate transition of programmed learning or mentoring they just left because of what was happening at the studio and do we blame them no we don't, now if the suits actually cared about these types of things like their gamer customers do and the developers who made them, then the new developers would have been mentored properly by the dev veterans of the studio but that never happened and is why bioware is not the same studio but only in name, such a sad sad shame.
I just wonder if it was worth it for these devs. Everyone hates your game. It lost you millions. You killed a franchise. You've limited the companies you'll be able to work with since this is on your resume. But you pushed the message. Congrats?
@@maxmillion7634no. He's just normal😕Most of us, whether right or left, just want good entertainment/escapism media, not garbage that is poorly made and pushes toxic identity politics. Games have always been well done and sometimes tackled social issues/themes with good stories and great characters. You don't have to be left or right wing to know this.
Dragon Age Origins made me feel bad about Lothering falling to the Blight just by showing black shit form up on the map and disallowing me to reenter the town. But this game just shows black tentacles and shit, and I'm like "oh, okay, then the Blight's not THAT bad." The fact that I thought that is proof enough that the narrative is utter crap. What a waste of what would have been a great franchise.
@@irena4545 I could never go through with burning Amaranthine. It just didn't make sense to burn the city when there clearly was a chance to save it. Also, I fully upgraded Vigil's keep, so I had faith the keep would hold. I did once pick the Amaranthine burn option just to see what happens and they sure as hell make you feel bad for making that choice LOL
@@andrewvincent7299 Containing the blight - which allegedly spread much faster in the city than it should have - seemed like a top priority, plus the option of destroying two armies instead of just one...I simply couldn't resist such pragmatism. Not to mention that going from the Hero of Ferelden to the Arsonist of Amaranthine was a great narrative twist (and honestly, I expected even worse fallout, anything from exile to execution). Eh, those were the days...
Lothering worked so well because there were key things there, that were gone once the area got locked off. If you neglected any side quests or ignored certain characters, too bad. Alongside those points, you knew Lothering had barely any defences, so anyone still there when Blight rolled in was screwed. The player had also recently seen just what the darkspawn hoards could do. It showed just how bad the Blight could be, and showed you why those three treaties were necessary.
From the second I saw the first ever gameplay reveal i KNEW it was going to be spongy AF and repetitive to the point of tear inducing. Completely ignoring ALLLLLL the other abundant and soul crushing issues with this game, the one that was basically the death knell for me was turning the Blight into a fucking DOT. I got flamed into bedrock by so many of the Community Panel cultists, spouting "oh but it's great, at least we have SOME consequences for the blight now... Like *WHAT* ?! The *whole assed point* of the blight is that if you're infected... If you even TOUCH the blight as a non-Grey Warden, it's basically a *death sentence* . The consequences are ALL OVER the first two games! It's not a fucking flu, it's a parasitic corruption that WILL kill or turn into Darkspawn ANYONE who's not a Grey Warden. Hawke literally lost a sibling to it. There's a whole blighted section of a map in Inquisition that shows the 'consequences' of unchecked blight. There are corrupted NPC's all through the first two games, and a few in Inquisition... and this mess of a game turned it into a 5 second contact DOT that prevents healing. That's it. The *second* I saw that retcon, I checked out. Everything I found out after that basically reinforced my decision to NEVER buy it. Ugh I'm ranting to the choir I'm sure. As always great vid. Thanks for being a voice of reason.
And let's not forget the dwarven woman's poem in the first game when you learn how the darkspawn mothers are made. Those are very real very fucking scary consequences of the blight. And if you played a dalish elf you got to see Tamlen become a dark spawn too 😭
Don't forget that it was the EVENT ITSELF that is called Blight. The actual corruption was called Taint and Veilguard ignored it fully to just call it all Blight.
Real though this game is the reason I won't buy the newest AC even though I've played all of them since I was like 8. Some of my best memories gaming come from UBI, but I can't do it if a company I had faith in is going in the same direction as them though.
Big Dragon Age fan, and im super greatful for alternative media for not lying to me, and helping make the right decision..not to even touch this mess.. i feel bad for all the suckers who believed the insane amount of fabricated hype, and fake reviews, same goes with sw outlaws.. so abysmal! Thank goodness for China, Japan and Korea this last year!
Not even the game gives a fuck about Jacobus though. At the end, after killing the blighted Jacobus, you go back to the Crow hideout, and then Teia is like "let's get drunk and celebrate our victory". Not even a word was said about the dead boy, everyone just celebrates like it's someone's birthday. :'D Anyways, I would like to see your takes on the companions.
This is the 1st Dragon Age game where I did a celibate playthru. The sidekicks were that off-putting. & starting a relationship when you're angry is a bad idea.
Tbh, I do have a soft spot for Bellara. The voice actress did a great job with her and she does seem to recognize the danger of the situation, she just acts immature. But I think she’s supposed to be barely 20, so I give it a pass for her.
i hate that solas was like "i molded you as someone the prison would accept" bro we just talked 4 times lmao. That was so dumb. It would've been way better if Varric was solas influencing the party to actually do that but nope. It was just a dumb stuff
110 hours of agony just so you can give us the autopsy of this game. Veilguard may be an abomination but at least it gave birth to videos like yours to listen/watch. Thank you.
Something you didnt even touch on is the fact that the writers who worked on Veilguard ret-conned a lot of well-established Dragon Age lore in the founding of the Chantry, Andraste and the Maker, etc into "that never happened, the elves did it". Also, the fact that they literally wipe out the enirety of Southern Thedas (where all 3 prior games took place) via a written note. Its just clear they didnt want to make a Dragon Age game. They wanted to make their own game and slap the Dragon Age name on it to get sales. Veilguard has no respect for the source material. Honestly, Bioware would have been better served just remastering Dragon Age Origin - it definitely would have sold MUCH better
They wanted to make a Dragon Age game. But a different one. A PVE hack and slash mosnter hunter live-service knockoff. EA scratched that concept. placed The Sims dev as the main/lead game designer and gave 2 years to build a 10 out of 10 single player 60$ game. Dev notes: 1. second-grade puzzles to prolong gameplay. 2. no in-game companion control/interaction because its supposed to be your coop partner (a-la borderlands). 3. random teleportation from location to location (previously known as "pick a prefered map to play in coop"). 4. lore-wise - it's Andromeda once again. Lack of professional vision nor direction + appeal to everyone slash agree with everything. Too much money was laundered at this point, had to ship it as it is.
Message received: I bought Elden Ring for a friend as a Christmas present, and Stellar Blade for myself. I may even install and play it, i don't know. Your wallet is your weapon. Support the companies that appreciate your patronage, leave the rest for dead.
Hey, I'd be happy to see a companion analysis video. I had such high hopes for Lucanis. I mean, a mage-killer assassin possessed by a demon. I tried to romance him as a mage for the drama. Expecting a little change like when you romanced Cullen as a mage. No... no drama. Nothing. Such a shame.
I agree, I tried romancing him twice, but it's just so bland and soulless, he doesn't even reply to flirting, and still goes after Neve. His whole character should be dark and unapproachable, especially considering he's the Dragon Age demon possessed version of Ezio Auditore. Such a shame, I think the whole game can be considered a wasted potential. It feels like it's not even finished yet, just a shell of a "could have been good game".
@@mightymoon02 i dont think flirting is even suppose to be flirting in this game. I remember with some character i picked 8 times in row a romance option and latest conversation went something like this: -i think you are nice person -thanks
@mightymoon02 I've heard someone say that he was supposed to be the most "messed up" character, with the most messed up romance, like Astarion... bro, cmon... they didn't EVEN try!!!
OH MY GOD! Finally someone else comments on how MONUMENTALLY idiotic the decision Ghilanain makes with the dragon is. Like this is writing 101, this is fanfiction levels of plot hole and stupidity so large that it may as well be a black hole that swallows and spits out the story. She is INVINCIBLE here, she literally cant die, she is so much stronger than us that if she went and fought we would lose in an instant and ALL she needs to achieve her goals and rule the world forevever is to get this dagger, thats their entire plan, everything they are trying to achieve... WHERE THE FUCK ELSE IS THE DRAGON NEEDED?!!!!!! After this scene my already low investment just dropped to bellow freezing point and it rarely came up to try and take a breath for the rest of the game. I was just annoyed, dissapointed and questioning everything most of the time and the few times I did have fun are more and more lost the more time I take away from the game. I like that you compare it to Andromeda, a game that isnt look at favorably at all, or wasnt at least prior to Veilguard, especially given it was made by then still respected Bioware and a continuation of the beloved ME franchise no less. I actually enjoyed it, not to the degree I enjoyed the trilogy but I still put like 600 hours into it, several playthroughs worth, I saw all the flaws but there was still enough good to keep me going and I even still had that bug of seeing everything, seeing all the dialogue options and all the quest outcomes that I had for all the previous Bioware games, but I only finished Veilguard once... I started a second playthrough but I genuinely did not feel like playing the game, I forced myself to get like half way through before just dropping it, uninstalling and forgetting about it, thats honestly the best thing I can do about it, forget it existed, because I do want to keep liking Dragon Age.
This game probably would have been fine if it was its own IP. Sure, it was bad, but it would have had a small community that people would keep amongst themselves, and it wouldn't have been the disaster that it is today. Calling it a "Dragon Age" game is what killed it.
yea i dk. i really hope this little moment in time is legit over. these games all succ and surely, hopefully even game publishers cant survive only making flops
Thats what I've been saying pretty much! I couldn't care less if they were making the games they want. But they're not, they're changing the games they don't want into what they do. If they would just make games for them instead of altering games that aren't for them everyone would be happy. I don't think we'd even be having this conversation right now.
What’s funny about the city decision is that when you choose one and go there you take one of the companions with you to meet the third companion. Your other companions go to the other city and fail, which means they’re incompetent without Rook. I really tried with this game and, yeah, I could only get about 21 hours out of it.
And more than once they blamed Rook for choosing to help the other city! It was so ridiculous, absolute lack of logic. As if a city full of renowned faction leaders was absolutely incapable of defending their own city without one single person. Too much weight for a nobody that the protagonist was. It could be understandable if instead there was the Inquisitor with real power and weight but ...!!
Those boss fights look horrendous. Like they’re made for someone who’s never fought a boss and wants both of their hands held. I’m very glad you don’t have to play this anymore.
Funny how the "generic" Corypheus still ends up being more interesting villain. Also the butchering of the lore is vile. No Broodmothers, darkspawn just appear from stupid pods. Every major point of history of the world is because of Elves - magic, Veil, Dwarves, Blight, Titans - and Elves didn't live in harmony with the world, they changed it to suit their needs. Also spirits were not separate entities, although with unique sentience, spirits just became elves. And remember Corypheus having a blighted dragon? Well Veilguard has like two dozen of those. Instead of majestic force of nature, every dragon now is blighted or Archdemon, which is the same but with more health.
For some reason, your Rook just sitting in the middle of that awkward conversation with Taash and her mother looking back and forth is hilarious🤣🤣It looks as if any second he is going to say "....I should leave...."
It was so bad 😂. I finished it bc its dragon age but man... that was terrible. People said the ending was incredible.. the saving grace... on par with ME2... COME ON MAN... absolutely not 😂
ye they are delusional thinking it even remotely can compare to me2 ending. sacrificing people in the end game only actually matters when the people u are sacrificing are worth something, current bioware cannot grasp this concept unfortunately. I will say the best parts of the game were when solas was involved but he was clearly pushed to the sidelines 99.9% of the game
I sure would like to see a companion analysis, too. I always enjoy your presentations, and I don't find them too long either. It's not that often that people criticizing games take the time it takes to talk about a subject more in-depth and properly, like you do. I know that it's a shit ton of work to make these videos, especially longer ones. Also, for a game like this one, it sucks having to actually play it to do a proper analysis. However, if it's any comfort, I think your videos are well worth the effort you put into them as they are always well written, intelligent, balanced, entertaining, and fun to watch in their entirety. It's not surprising to see your channel has grown quite a bit in a short time. Well deserved!
28:49 As someone that writes for hobby. I think in this case they didn't forget the dagger thing. They wanted to show confrontation with her to hype fight with her. The problem is that they didn't think of good reason why she would leave and thought that viewer won't notice because they will be immersed emotionally in story. I think that mostly the case because I do like to watch Power Rangers shit. Tho there bad guys are better written.
Yeah its funny how the city you didnt help BLAMES you nad the game constantly shoves it in your face like oooooh thqt was a heavy choice, we have such hatd choiceeeees. It makes no sense that they would blame Rook,who is a NOBODY. And it was like the only meaningful choice in this embarrassment of a game.
"Mentally draining" sums it up perfectly. If you go in here with a good amount of common sense you're leaving the experience as an empty indoctrinated husk. It is safe to say that after 110h of forcing himself in here, Dez took more than just one for the team bringing us this content. The Veilguard & BioWare are nothing more than a propaganda machine for their sick ideologies forcing the player to adapt to it, i despise everything about it and i'm never going to buy their games again, just to make a statement. The ONE thing the new Dragon Age did right was bringing me back to traditional gaming experiences from the past like The Elder Scrolls & Fallout or opening my eyes to well written RPG's like Metaphor ReFantazio.
You know that one BioWare RUclipsr named Kala Elizabeth? She blocked me on Twitter and I’ve literally never interacted with her on there. And my account is private lmao
Don't bother, she is weird. She is also the type that doesn't see Dragon Age as a videogame, but as a romance/friendship simulator. Also, she has only played Inquisition, and to make it worse, she was in that "fan" council that helped with the game (which also explains why DAO and DA2 get so neglected, if the devs were only seeking Inquisition fans and not Dragon Age fans overall).
@@SeventhheavenDK Wait, what? She's only played Inquisition? I know she *started* with Inquisition but I thought she would have at least played the other games. Did she admit to only playing Inquisition and not the others? I know she said she hates the Origins gameplay.
If you let Hawke die in Inquisition, when Varric talks about it when you get back to Skyhold with Hawke's theme playing, it's actually very heartbreaking. That was the second game you played along sided Varric and even though it was two different protagonists, you got to know Varric well. So his sadness over Hawke dying was actually very heartbreaking. Here, it's just empty because it doesn't even feel like Varric.
You know the best part of this all? The people who were calling everyone bigots before the game came out, now hate the game quite vocally and yet claim that they aren't bigots. The kind of narcissism and megalomaniac in display is a source of endless mirth for me.
Because we didn't jump to conclusions based on reviews that heavily relied on the culture war to fuel the outrage against the game? I'm not a fan of Veilguard; I waited 10 years for DA4 and this is definitely not what I wanted. But the reasons I dislike it have nothing to do with identity politics or "wokeness". It is simply a badly written and rushed story that fails at being an RPG. There are a multitude of reasons this game fails at being a Dragon Age game, and none of them have anything to do with identity politics. Taash's story is shit because it's written badly and they're a cringe inducing teenage archetype, not because they're non binary. If you spend any time at all in fan spaces for this series you'd know the reception it's getting is a lot more complicated than "it's cringe" or "it's woke". We are heavily disappointed with what we got, while still enjoying some aspects or what it could have been. I hate that the discussion surrounding this game has fallen into the culture war bullshit because no one can have an honest discussion about where this game went wrong without bringing politics into it.
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product. Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game. A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is. Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion. But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on. Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years. Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product. Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game. A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is. Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion. But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on. Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years. Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product. Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game. A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is. Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion. But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on. Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years. Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
That's what these DEI devs love doing to legacy characters/world, they love to kill the main characters off and destroy the world so their MC (do not steal) will be the new face of the game.
@@TheDezembro It's so embarrassingly bad. As a player, you're supposed to be in awe of the spectacle in the background but you can't appreciate it when it's on a noticeable 5 second loop. FFS, at least break it up with an effect or something every other loop. It's so damned lazy!
I subscribed to you just to show my appreciation for playing this so I don't have to - I value the reviews of gamers like you over Steam anonymous, voiceless reviews, or the shills. I appreciate the detail you give to the reviews and the honest covering of opinion and experience.
Thank you for playing this game, so I don't have to. the reveal that Varrick is dead, is worse than discovering Mason was imagining Reznov in Black Ops 1
I just finished this game, and I completely understand why you took a month to make a video. I can't even find the words to describe my disappointment. I saw someone describe the game as Great Value Mayonnaise, and I think that's just perfect.
@40:57 Taash outburst is uncalled for, the mother is reasonable and explain that there is such a thing in Qunari tradition, there is no issue at all. The thing is THERE IS NO ISSUE. 😂 The game try to make it dramatic with hyped up music for nothing 😂
Every time music starts to rump up after she tells her mother she's non binary, I get second-hand embarrassment. Why??? Should this be a cathartic moment? I mean I get it for the people that in real life made coming out like hers or similar, but was it necessary at all in this manner? I'm flabbergasted.
@@inytule_4688 The problem is there is no such issue in the Qunari society as the mother explain it, so the whole scene doesn't make any sense at all. I think it was originally not gender issue, but they change it halfway. If Taash is talking about culural confusion between Qunari and Rivaini it makes more sense.
This is something I said in my review of this game on steam, and I'll say it here: The Veilguard feels like a fanfiction of a fanfiction of a Dragon Age game. I think I might've preferred a game that just felt like a fanfiction of a Dragon Age game, but this game felt like a step further removed. Like a beautiful veneer over an empty container. an empty cardboard box spray painted gold.
They do indeed manage to make banal the horrendous destruction of a famous, lore-heavy Dragon Age city full of Thedan people. The very "choice" given the player- the Sophie's Choice- isn't meaningful, just an arbitrary loss, just spiteful on their part. The devs say, "We're going to kill one of your franchise's biggest cities. Just... gonna kill one. So... pick one, I guess." Then they add letters from their reworked version of your own Inquisitor to tell Rook that all the gameworld you ever experienced in the previous games has been wiped from the canvas of the game by "blight." Casually and sweepingly. And that destruction of Dragon Age also gets delivered as... just happening. It's a loss that's never earned. Like the death of Varric that just happens. There's not even resonant buildup to these otherwise devastating losses as something Rookie- and thereby the player- is invested in. It just... happens. The comprehensiveness of the damage done to the franchise doesn't in any way make it more meaningful, more gripping, more emotional as a story. It's just more pathetic- the desperate act of a talentless storyteller demonstrably stooping that low. It simply exercises their hostility toward and lack of appreciation of the gameworld, the dev team that forged that gameworld, and the player base that has loved that gameworld for over a decade. It does generate drama, but the drama it generates isn't immersive, isn't a sense of loss for the cartoonish Rookie we're required to accompany and help complete the destructive narrative. It's a drama entirely based OUTSIDE the game as a conflict between the new dev team (plus EA) vs genuine fans of the franchise. The ire it draws isn't against elven gods or the Big D who they left off the title to make it about the Strong V: it's deserved ire against the current devs of Bioware and their patron EA as the conspicuous villains of the actual story of V-tard. Ultimately I don't find their destruction of Dragon Age compelling because the arbitrariness of the destruction simultaneously warrants me arbitrarily considering none of it canon. V-tard is the incompetent attempt at a 4th DA game. It failed and is thus fully dismissible. The plot contrivances are worse than you mention: the dagger these superbeings somehow can't manage to simply swipe from Rookie was literally at their feet as soon as it fell out of Varric at the bottom of the stairs. Then, instead of returning to get it... they sent a darkspawn doofus to fetch it... and run to where exactly? The entire game after that is predicated on their stupidity as villains. I mean, people lambasted Corypheus as a comically lame villain, but at least he had the gravitas of a functioning gameworld lore and intelligent interactions. These V-tard Duo are just a couple of overpowered nitwits that win through pure contrivance until the devs decide you can finally stop enduring their amateurish hijack of a franchise... Frankly the game failed because Traash's mommy never at any moment during the game pulled a barf.
RIP Bioware, this is their 3rd dud, so now there is a clear pattern of them not being able to release a game with good systems or a good story. At least they spent years on good looking shrubs and rocks...
Why would you assume that a studio where all of the talent left is going to be able to produce good games? The studio name alone doesn't give them magic powers... Gamers having no standards has consequences.
I'm glad the RUclips community is a lot more critical and constructive about why this game sucks as a Dragon Age fan, rather than Reddit calling the average fan of the series a bigot just because I don't like the poor writing and characters.
Veilguard was never a game for the fans. It's a game for people who hate Dragon Age. You can literally see it in all the game design and story beats. It's the same as with Inquisition, and hence why I consider both games non-canon and just pretend they don't exist.
@@MarwolfAeducan Inquisition is a single player grind MMORPG with no side quests that were handcrafted. No loot, Easy ass dragons, infinite grind. The Best Part of Inquisition was Solas. The rest was DEI/LGBTQ goop and its obvious they spent more time making companion quests than overarching story. Grinding for random skulls to get a 1% fire resistance "Buff" was insulting.
Let’s not pretend Inquisition is anywhere near the train wreck Veilguard is. Inquisition was made in less time with a smaller team and from my perspective, they chose to focus on story over gameplay, which is absolutely what I would have wanted them to prioritize. Veilguard is the exact opposite. Origins still clears both, but inquisition earned a place in my heart.
@Kserijaro You didn't play Inquisition. I played Inquisition, it has hand crafted side quest, and loot. You've also never played an MMO in your life, I played pretty much every big mmo that came out when MMOs were at their peak. I've played WoW for 9 years, and ESO and FF14 for 10. Inquisition is like none of those games at all. The only "grind" in Inquisition is the power grind, and even that isn't really a grind, especially in the MMO since of the word. You should really stop regurgitating other people's opinions so adamantly.
For me, BioWare and its IPs died with Dragon Age Inquisition. I will not give the new Mass Effect any chances. Thank you for those carthartic videos nonetheless. Hopefully you'll be able to do videos discussing better games in the futur.
Honestly this game made me feel so sad :( I was really looking forward to it before launch, with Dragon Age being my favorite IP of all time. Then the game finally came out and I was so massively disappointed. This doesn't feel like the Dragon Age I fell in love with. This was also supposed to be a direct sequel to Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC, but it really doesn't feel like it. The biggest issue I have is with the writing and world-building in this game. You touched on the Crows issue in the video, which is a good example of what bothered me as well the most. Retconning established lore like they did in this game is just something that upsets me massively, especially when they don't even properly explain why things were changed from what we knew from before. While I don't have it myself, I have seen the Veilguard artbook consepts online and that just makes me even more sad. Those consepts were so good! THAT would have been more in line with what I personally expected from a Dragon Age game and Inquisition's sequel. I don't know why they scrapped so much of those ideas, but it is a shame that they did. If we ever get another Dragon Age game (which I somewhat doubt now, but you never know), I hope that is more in line with the older games when it comes to tone and writing. As for Mass Effect (my second favorite IP of all time), I am now very VERY vary of the new game. I will certainly watch more than one review of it when it comes out before touching it myself.
I hold the dialogue for Veilguard on the same level as Forspoken... at least Forspoken wasn't destroying one of my favorite IP's with its terrible writing.
This game did one good thing for me. It showed me why I love the games from software made so much. Because fromsoft says here try to beat it if you can and BioWare said aww your a cute little they them lets all hold hands and face no real challenges
36:10 They could have done it with just saying if you have the dagger they can't attack you.. and this was the reason Solas always had this dagger with him, to be safe.. I mean its not good reasoning but its waaaaay better than nothing.
I would love videos analyzing the silly companions, etc. I'd also be interested in a comparison of the concept art/art book vs final product. An analysis of the intense "solavellan" copium over this game would be welcome as well, but probably exhausting lol 😂
Loved the video. About Varric and Rook about their friendship. They could’ve just done the same as in DAI where you get to know Varric, started as strangers and ended up as bffs or whatever. The concept isn’t new for BioWare but they still went with some bullshit idea. Genuinely sad, loved this franchise learnt all the lore and loved all of the games. This isn’t dragon age, I didn’t wait 10 years for this :(
Thank you for "taking one for the team" and playing through the game, really sinking your teeth into the meat, so to speak. So all the sycophants of this game can't accuse you of "you can't sh1t-talk this game when you haven't even played it!"
I remember being 13 years old and playing KOTOR for the first time and so excited that I could play as a female Jedi and was like wowed they had my gender as an option. That was exciting. However, it never took away from the story for me. I’ve played as MaleShep and Male Inquisitor and had just as much fun. I’m straight and I’ve romanced everyone (looking at you Liara) I have never ever felt like BioWare was a company to complain about when it came to inclusivity and to have it blatantly shoved in our throats is so weird. Also, we’re in a world with fucking dragons and elves and mages, why would I care???? Like just give me some grit and danger and angst my god I miss old BioWare
You have suffered way to much for this. Have our gratitude. Many just can't grasp the ammount of effort and discipline needed to go through 60+ hours of slop and grind. People like you should be hired by game studios as consultants. Not prazites like SBI
I waited a decade for what should have been a masterpiece, instead we got this lazily made slop from developers, I cannot express enough how deeply ashamed the developers should be of themselves.
People saying "why can't you just shut your brain off and enjoy it" I think are missing the point of storytelling. People like stories because people like thinking (well, except like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Gray, which are just porn for women), your brain wants to see patterns, to figure things out, to connect dots and apply the knowledge it gains to help survive. What these people really mean is "I have tied my identity to this franchise and I see the holes in it as well as you do but it's more important to my psyche to cover for it and not recognize that this thing I used to love is now a steaming, corporate pile of dogshit." Btw a clip from Face/Off? By far the best movie with a forward-slash in the title.
Skyrim truly has an insane amount of replayability. A large part of that is absolutely down to the modding community keeping it updated and relevant, but even the base game is more fun to play than Veilguard was. Skyrim itself also didn’t have a lot of traditional roleplay elements (and was criticised for the lack of NPC reactions to things like, for example, the player’s potential race), but also still managed to give the players more choices than Veilguard. Skyrim was also highly repetitive (I swear 75% of quests were just “go to this tomb/Dwemer ruin and fetch something”), but somehow they managed to make it fun and engaging. Veilguard felt like a slog.
I can’t describe how pissed off I was as a long time dragon age fan who played the first game when it first came out and was blown away by the world building, lore and general feel of the game. DA 2 seemed rushed and I didn’t enjoy it as much but it was still a dragon age game. I know a lot of people didn’t like inquisition, and don’t get me wrong, it had its problems, but I never felt like I’d been ripped out of the universe completely. Veilguard is just a slap in the face to long term fans and only exists to push an agenda. Any fans of it will try to slap you down by calling you a bigot or right wing, but the simple fact is that we just wanted a dragon age game, after waiting a DECADE for one. So, so disappointed. And it’s got nothing to do with having trans, gay or whatever else characters in there… it’s how it’s so violently pushed in your face at the cost of everything else. The romances are terrible, the writing is terrible… the combat? Terrible. There’s even a jazzy lounge singer in the cobbled swan, that was so wildly out of place in a so called dark fantasy game. It felt like a Pixar / marvel game. You can’t be mean or have an opinion. It’s just childish woke garbage.
Honesty i am so done with bioware. I personaly felt that Andromeda was my breaking point but i still held some hope that maybe, just maybe they will make something good out of dragon age again, I platniumed inquistion and had mixed feelings about it but at least that game had an interesting story and the world was interesting to explore just like dragon age origins. But noo the devs just had to put their dumb capes on and make the most braindead dei game to come out in 2024, Hell probably top 3 worse games of all time in my opinion.
I remember back when it was announced as Dreadwolf. The focus was announced to be about working toward & planning for different heist missions. Makes you wonder how well that version would have done with this team?
I sorry to say it...but it's apathetic people like yourself that are the reason we got here. At multiple points in this video you express this sense of acceptance. This same type of attitude is pervasive in film media as well. Star wars, marvel etc, people are willing to praise absolute slop because it has 5 min of ok content (Vader in the hallway). The only way to combat this trash is to denounce it and remove support immediately. That's why I haven't and would never buy Veilgaurd even out of curiosity. Same reason I haven't watched a single second of anything post The Farce Awakens or an episode of Game of Thrones after season 5. The next time one of these "triple A" developers tries to shovel slop down your throat don't let them.
Late to this video, but thank you for stating that The Failguard is tons worse in the writing category then Andromeda by far. Andromeda has it's weak and questionable dialogue, but overall it's average to decently good IMO. Great video though and my condolences to the 100+ hours you dropped into that waste of time known as The Veilguard. Keep up the great work homie, I'm loving this consistent and quality uploads. Definitely an inspiration to me, im procrastinating my comeback with my new videos, but when I do soon, I'm gonna try to match you (even if that isn't possible, lol.) Much love and respect homie. 🙏🖤🔥
something probably a lot of people doesnt know, in inquisition there is a level, the temple of Dirthamen, where solas makes an important asumption that Dirthamen is alive and free from the fade since quite a while, also that hes neutral and doesnt trust Solas neither Mythal and can be made a important allied later on. Is also where we can see for the first time the susness of Solas.
This game was definitely written by AI. The constant nonsense of things just happening one after another with the story constantly forgetting what's going on and never knowing where it's going or where it's been is really AI mentality when it makes stories. There's like 10% of the game you can tell was handwritten by someone and the rest was just chat GPTed to fill out the rest. I'm also convinced that a lot of the dialog was AI too, because i've never heard such soulless voice acting in anything other than AI voices
What makes FF7 Rebirth so good is that the developers love the game’s lore, world and story as much as fans do. The Veilguard is the complete opposite of that.
The comparison to ME is true. I replay the trilogy annually at this point. Even though the remaster does not completely negate its tedious aspects, I can't put it down because of the writing and characters. I'd also argue that despite its outdated graphics, conversations and cutscenes are a lot more dynamic than Veilguard's static characters. In ME, people are simultaneously talking, walking and doing something. Inquisition was my first introduction to DA and was completely aware of its faults pointed out by more hardcore fans but having not played prior installments, I enjoyed it. I finished DA:O right after and understood the mixed reception around Inquisition. DA:O is superior across multiple aspects, though I did not love Inquisition any less. I thought I could love Veilguard the same way but I could not stand the dialogue 2 hours in and decided I stay for the combat which I found fun. 15 hours in, it becomes a chore due to a large but overall surface level skill tree, the inability to control only 2 of your party members, and repetitive enemies. Huge fromsoft fan here, so any boss I come across, I judge them critically... and my god, that double dragon boss was painful and abysmal. Also wanna touch on the level design since it's rarely discussed. They are poorly designed linear levels that feel arcade'y to explore. There is hardly good incentive to stray off the beaten path because the rewards are almost always inferior to your current equipment, which are looted on the main path. These levels are constantly sprinkled with balancing beams, ladders, blight bubbles, ladders, etc. 'Exploring' these areas means either going straight for the quest marker, or trailing your companion. It surprises me that DA:O, a 16 year old game with extremely outdated visuals and level design held back by hardware limitations, still manages to sucker punch Veilguard with its atmosphere, environmental storytelling and direction. I noticed too, the lack of gore present in Veilguard when in DA:O - there is the broodmother, and all the carcasses and viscera littering the deep roads. What just really upsets me is not even the game itself. It's what could have been Dragon Age: The Dreadwolf. I was wondering if you've made a video on Project Joplin, the scrapped, original vision for Veilguard? I think you'd find it interesting that Taash was initially very feminine, and there was supposed to be a spirit companion, Imshael, who could alternate between a male and female form. Think they would have made a better 'non-binary' character. It would fit the lore and universe of DA, the same way Legion was a collective entity in ME. I'd love a deep dive on the companions! Fantastic video.
The only clarification i feel should be made, is that Rook never actually says out loud to anyone that they are talking to Varric after the events at the ritual, and instead always frames it like it was advice Varric gave you in the past, or only says to themselves that they are going to speak with Varric. So the reason the crew doesn't question it, is that it's not unusual to follow ideals, advice and strategy you heard years ago, and it was Solas using blood magic on you that made sure the illusion never got broken... So the twist is still insulting, but the game actually does explain it and keep it consistent with how the interactions go from what i remember, which honestly makes it worse for me! How come the only competent writing in the game, involves one of the worst and most insulting plot twists Bioware has ever cooked up!?
honestly just from the teaser trailer. I knew it was gonna be a trainwreck, cause as soon as i saw character designs i was like "Yea this is gonna be bad", and funnily enough i thought with my knowledge at the time that the dragon slayer "Taash" was actually a guy. I mean the only character i sorta like out this vast cast of "quirky cringe" is actually the Necromancer Emmerich. Then again i get your idea of just how dull the combat is. i mean early game the combat could be sorta slow and more lax, so as to ease you into gimics and the combat, so as to give you the idea of recognizeing attack patterns and movement. then later on as it gets more chaotic, you can actually just blaze through hordes of enemies as their health is actually "lesser" in tandem with your power/damage is growing. So as to give you the sense of actually your character becomming stronger and able to well "kick ass and take names", insted of just doing the same old "ping pong" as your doing with that shield ranged attack at 10:40, cause that just feels super tiresome to use. Cause in fantasy games, in any sense of the world should make you feel like your powerful. Idk if you played the game "Pathfinder wrath of the rightious" made by owlcat, but that game has your character actually become powerful. As you in the same sense as this abomination we now know as "Veilguard", you are fighting demons of the abyss, to fight two dark almost godlike demons who is pretty much causeing immense death and mayham. Couple that with the different paths your character can take and ascend in (both good, evil and well abit more ambigious). Either way your makeing valid points, i am just happy i did not need to buy this abomination and just from gameplay and cutscenes just feel the cringe and sadness for all those who bought it in the hopes of it not being as bad as it looked.
Its really just a bunch of people that had nothing to do with the past games callong themselves “Bioware”. Bioware is gone, this is a new studio and this new studio has yet to produce a single game we like
I tried with this game. I could ignore the gender nonsense in a fantasy setting and even the repetitive and dull gameplay. Dragon age has never had great combat IMO. What i cant get past is how utterly boring the game is. How badly written it is. I dont understand how these people even have jobs when this is their skill level
I’m glad RUclips recommended this to me. You scripted this out excellently, giving us a very cogent and smart analysis. I’m going to give you a sub; keep up the good work, man. I have a feeling your channel is going to succeed.
Your bit about Gordon Ramsay has me 🤣🤣 You won a sub! 😄 You're right about the people in bioware, bethesda, etc and the horrible games they made that have nothing to do with the legacy IPs.
Failguard: "So... I'm non-breaking even." Biowaste: "What does that mean?" Failguard: "It means I'm neither too good or so bad is good... so I'm going with woke."
Related Videos & Time Stamps!
* - * - * - * - *
Review part 1 - ruclips.net/video/90AeKxOyG8Y/видео.html
Taash Deep Dive -ruclips.net/video/pcjlAB8U0GA/видео.html
WTF are 'WOKE' games? - ruclips.net/video/wUJU5N-c19E/видео.html
Veilguard simp article breakdown - ruclips.net/video/SlRiS8-9iWU/видео.html
Demonization of Gamers video-essay - ruclips.net/video/5_F5XtZH1YE/видео.html
* - * - * - * - * - *
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - intro
1:31 - Crippling Repetitiveness
7:31 - Combat dullness
13:31 - Crushing Soullessness
26:24 - Story & Presentation
39:06 - Companions
42:57 - Conclusion
* - * - * - * - * - * - *
SOCIALS & SUPPORT:
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As a gamer who enjoyed playing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons and witnessed the remarkable transition to PCs through BioWare, Bethesda, and a few other, I am disheartened by the current state of the industry. It is dominated by individuals who are never satisfied with profits, targeting-spending players instead of appealing to a broader audience. The industry is marred by racism (e.g., Obsidian and BioWare Montreal) sexism (e.g., Ubisoft, Blizzard lawsuits), and fascism (e.g., BioWare, Bethesda, Activision community managers and management). These same individuals accuse us of being in the wrong. Additionally, terms like delusional, entitled, overpaid, and masters of failing upwards aptly describe many publishers and developers. Figures as Andrew Wilson, Microsoft leadership, and Todd Howard have taken successful formulas and ruined them.
However, I believe this too shall pass. Larian Studios has demonstrated the winning formula once again. The studios I mentioned are already dead inside; they lack talent, skill, and the ability to handle criticism. They don't care, as they are paid well to be mere checkmarks instead of valuable assets.
There is still hope. Studios like Owlcat, Larian, Deep Silver, inXile, Firaxis, Warhorse, Game Science, Undead Labs, and a few have produced in an era of terrible ruined by ideology. We don't need these problematic individuals. They need us. I am tuning them out because all they produce is noise and discord instead of excitement and enthusiasm.
At this point man stop talking about the game,stop!
Stop talking about the game,you think people who love the game see this not therefore there is no argument and it's not fair....
You might like Larian's Divinity OS 1 and 2 in terms of meaningful side quest content. You probably have played them already, but hearing about Vailguard's lacking contents made me think of the times I spent agonizing over the outcomes of certain quests in those games where I stuck to getting some profit out of a quest, only to see how heartbreaking my actions or inactions were in the end.
@@griffonclawI believe Goldhawk is another team worth keeping an eye on, though their library is quite limited.
It’s a shame what they did to Dragon Age. We waited 10 years for the next installment, only for them to shit out this terribly written, retconned nonsense
pretty much. was hoping to play it but with the videos i've had been shown on the game, i think i'll go on a different game.
That was your mistake, anticipating a decent game. I gave up on DA franchise like 6 years ago because it was stuck in limbo. If you like Elder Scroll then brace yourself for a mediocre product. TES 6 was announced in 2018. I personally don't care much for Bethesda's games I'm just drawing a parallel here.
It's not a game anymore...its a sermon to spread the message
@@MrJackfridayI read that in the Critical Drinker's voice 😅
OMG that dinner table scene was cringe. Can't they take cues from well-executed scenes in Andor, The Expanse, etc and learn that "less is more"?
o boy they did Harding so dirty in this game... she was so composed in Inquisition, in this game she sounds and acts like someone else completly different----
Yeah she was so annoying by the end. I played through - or mainly just until the half of it because I got bored again - the game multiple times, and after some timre she became more annoying for me than Taash. If you ignore all her bias, she's not as bad, at least I could endure her dragon quests more. Harding however was unbearable, I don't know if it was the voice actress or her character in general, but I couldn't wait to sacrifice her at the end. Like it should be hard; a cute gryffon or a whiny dumbass.
almost like none of the original writers or people who give a damn about SOME character consistency worked on this trash.
@@ZeroOmega-vg8nq I agree. Izzy would never do push ups to be politically correct. Very character breaking. This version of BW is clueless and vision-less.
I loved her in INQ, but the Vailgaurd vr i would sacrafice to a dragon
I think Dagna was supposed to be in the game but Bioware transplanted her character and story onto Harding. So Bioware made the same mistake with Anders in Dragon Age 2.
Maybe this is a really silly question and I'm just missing the obvious, but:
If the elven gods are immortal as long as their archdemons live, wouldn't the logical thing be to hide them instead of sending them to the front lines?
Yes
Do you really think that even ONE of these DIE mouthpieces even had one thought whether the story made sense or not?
Because if anyone other than a grey daddy kills an archdemon the essence of the archdemon will be transferred to the nearest dankspawn. Effectively making the archdemon "immortal".
@@thanellen8757 As long as there's at least a single Grey Warden, it's still a stupid idea to send them to the front lines IMHO.
So that's still a pretty weak explanation.
@@Art0r1a that's becouse it is, in the Inquistion Corypheus was smart enough to corrupted gray wardens so he could use his archdemon
The bare minimum was to much for this new team to accomplish
"The bare minimum" is absolutely unreachable by all AAA companies right now
My sister is a huge DA fan and I watched her finish her first playthrough. She was facepalming at the narrative choices and "subversive plottwists", really annoyed at how drawn out the end game was, and how this was a pretty decent and fun game but an absolutely dogshit DA game. She did want to replay in the hopes of romancing someone else (naturally what a lot of players want from these types of games) and to try to be evil. I warned her that she won't get to be evil and that the romances are super boring. But she's basically broke and this is the only 60 dollar game she's bought, she's forcing herself to squeeze all the value out of it. And it clear she's forcing it.
Lmao, tell her to play BG3 (and if she already has, tell her to play it again 😂)
It would be therapeutic after DA:The FailHard.
I torrented it and played for 2 hrs then gave up.
I want money for that time spent still. It was work playing that little bit 😂
That god's design could be really cool, if she was far less animated. She could've had an eerie eldritch presence, but she moves like a character out of Spongebob, so I can't take her very seriously.
Do you mean the ancient elven gods? Epstein and Ghislane?
Ghilanain acts like a posh idiot the entire time so she needs also a change of concept
Haha yes, and maybe if the art style was not so cartoonish, she'd look a bit more intimidating..
I've been more engaged fighting two dragons at once in Skyrim.
Those 2 dragons also had an interesting introduction. Smashing through the ice of a frozen lake is definitely memorable
I played Origins, Awakening and am halfway through DA2 directly after playing DATVG (I have played them thousands of times, DATVG only once) and I'm having a much better time playing the older games,
I don't think I'll ever play DATVG ever again, It's one of the Absolute worst games I've ever played.
I plan on playing Through Oblivion and Skyrim again once I finish my Nightmare difficulty Run on DA2.
DATVG isn't Hated enough imo, I absolutely love Dragon Age and DATVG makes me sad, every single person who worked on it should be Fired and Banned from making games.
@xLionsxxSmithyx let's not act like dragon age 2 is some monolith of the game.
@@iandevine3063 if that's how it came across to you then you have severely misunderstood what I wrote.
@xLionsxxSmithyx Oh, I thought you said u played DA2 "thousands" of times, my bad.
In DAI they created such a great villain with Solas, at the end of trespasser he seemed so powerful and overwhelming…only to transform it into this nonsense in Veilguard
Bioware at this point is the ship of Theseus. Is it really the same studio if everyone who made it Bioware have left?
BioGone soon enough.
I mean is it really that hopeful that the "same" people would be steering the ship at bioware would remain the same for decades? No obviously the answer is no but here is the rub at hand. The people who knew the games and lore and mechanics and characters in these beloved games just left there was no passionate transition of programmed learning or mentoring they just left because of what was happening at the studio and do we blame them no we don't, now if the suits actually cared about these types of things like their gamer customers do and the developers who made them, then the new developers would have been mentored properly by the dev veterans of the studio but that never happened and is why bioware is not the same studio but only in name, such a sad sad shame.
They only have soy in the cafeteria, so eventually every becomes a blue hair
No
I still don't understand how people don't realize this is the case for almost every studio that's still lauded for some godforsaken reason
I just wonder if it was worth it for these devs. Everyone hates your game. It lost you millions. You killed a franchise. You've limited the companies you'll be able to work with since this is on your resume. But you pushed the message. Congrats?
Because your too right wing
@@maxmillion7634no. He's just normal😕Most of us, whether right or left, just want good entertainment/escapism media, not garbage that is poorly made and pushes toxic identity politics. Games have always been well done and sometimes tackled social issues/themes with good stories and great characters. You don't have to be left or right wing to know this.
@@orboakin8074 because your Trump fanboy
@@maxmillion7634you're
@@maxmillion7634you're a
Dragon Age Origins made me feel bad about Lothering falling to the Blight just by showing black shit form up on the map and disallowing me to reenter the town. But this game just shows black tentacles and shit, and I'm like "oh, okay, then the Blight's not THAT bad." The fact that I thought that is proof enough that the narrative is utter crap. What a waste of what would have been a great franchise.
The same here with Lothering, it gave me real chills. Or burning Amaranthine... that was a true gutpuncher.
@@irena4545 I could never go through with burning Amaranthine. It just didn't make sense to burn the city when there clearly was a chance to save it. Also, I fully upgraded Vigil's keep, so I had faith the keep would hold. I did once pick the Amaranthine burn option just to see what happens and they sure as hell make you feel bad for making that choice LOL
@@andrewvincent7299 Containing the blight - which allegedly spread much faster in the city than it should have - seemed like a top priority, plus the option of destroying two armies instead of just one...I simply couldn't resist such pragmatism. Not to mention that going from the Hero of Ferelden to the Arsonist of Amaranthine was a great narrative twist (and honestly, I expected even worse fallout, anything from exile to execution). Eh, those were the days...
Lothering worked so well because there were key things there, that were gone once the area got locked off. If you neglected any side quests or ignored certain characters, too bad.
Alongside those points, you knew Lothering had barely any defences, so anyone still there when Blight rolled in was screwed. The player had also recently seen just what the darkspawn hoards could do. It showed just how bad the Blight could be, and showed you why those three treaties were necessary.
From the second I saw the first ever gameplay reveal i KNEW it was going to be spongy AF and repetitive to the point of tear inducing.
Completely ignoring ALLLLLL the other abundant and soul crushing issues with this game, the one that was basically the death knell for me was turning the Blight into a fucking DOT. I got flamed into bedrock by so many of the Community Panel cultists, spouting "oh but it's great, at least we have SOME consequences for the blight now... Like *WHAT* ?! The *whole assed point* of the blight is that if you're infected... If you even TOUCH the blight as a non-Grey Warden, it's basically a *death sentence* . The consequences are ALL OVER the first two games! It's not a fucking flu, it's a parasitic corruption that WILL kill or turn into Darkspawn ANYONE who's not a Grey Warden. Hawke literally lost a sibling to it. There's a whole blighted section of a map in Inquisition that shows the 'consequences' of unchecked blight. There are corrupted NPC's all through the first two games, and a few in Inquisition... and this mess of a game turned it into a 5 second contact DOT that prevents healing. That's it.
The *second* I saw that retcon, I checked out. Everything I found out after that basically reinforced my decision to NEVER buy it.
Ugh I'm ranting to the choir I'm sure. As always great vid. Thanks for being a voice of reason.
And let's not forget the dwarven woman's poem in the first game when you learn how the darkspawn mothers are made. Those are very real very fucking scary consequences of the blight.
And if you played a dalish elf you got to see Tamlen become a dark spawn too 😭
Hawke can lose 2 siblings to it
They didn’t want to stigmatize the infected.
A decade later I shudder from it @junecatira
Don't forget that it was the EVENT ITSELF that is called Blight.
The actual corruption was called Taint and Veilguard ignored it fully to just call it all Blight.
God I really hate this game and everyone who worked on it
Same
You don't hate them enough
Lol. I'm tired of seeing Taash's face everywhere make it stop
This game gets alot of hate. Personally, I dont think it gets enough
Why tho?
I personally think this game was really important. It really gave me the courage i needed to come out as non-buynary
Real though this game is the reason I won't buy the newest AC even though I've played all of them since I was like 8. Some of my best memories gaming come from UBI, but I can't do it if a company I had faith in is going in the same direction as them though.
Big Dragon Age fan, and im super greatful for alternative media for not lying to me, and helping make the right decision..not to even touch this mess.. i feel bad for all the suckers who believed the insane amount of fabricated hype, and fake reviews, same goes with sw outlaws.. so abysmal! Thank goodness for China, Japan and Korea this last year!
Can you believe this game was released then just left to the ether? They are so horrible for ruining this franchise with this garbage…
Not even the game gives a fuck about Jacobus though. At the end, after killing the blighted Jacobus, you go back to the Crow hideout, and then Teia is like "let's get drunk and celebrate our victory". Not even a word was said about the dead boy, everyone just celebrates like it's someone's birthday. :'D
Anyways, I would like to see your takes on the companions.
This is the 1st Dragon Age game where I did a celibate playthru. The sidekicks were that off-putting.
& starting a relationship when you're angry is a bad idea.
Tbh, I do have a soft spot for Bellara. The voice actress did a great job with her and she does seem to recognize the danger of the situation, she just acts immature. But I think she’s supposed to be barely 20, so I give it a pass for her.
i hate that solas was like "i molded you as someone the prison would accept" bro we just talked 4 times lmao. That was so dumb. It would've been way better if Varric was solas influencing the party to actually do that but nope. It was just a dumb stuff
That would have been amazing
110 hours of agony just so you can give us the autopsy of this game. Veilguard may be an abomination but at least it gave birth to videos like yours to listen/watch. Thank you.
Something you didnt even touch on is the fact that the writers who worked on Veilguard ret-conned a lot of well-established Dragon Age lore in the founding of the Chantry, Andraste and the Maker, etc into "that never happened, the elves did it". Also, the fact that they literally wipe out the enirety of Southern Thedas (where all 3 prior games took place) via a written note.
Its just clear they didnt want to make a Dragon Age game. They wanted to make their own game and slap the Dragon Age name on it to get sales. Veilguard has no respect for the source material.
Honestly, Bioware would have been better served just remastering Dragon Age Origin - it definitely would have sold MUCH better
They wanted to make a Dragon Age game. But a different one.
A PVE hack and slash mosnter hunter live-service knockoff.
EA scratched that concept. placed The Sims dev as the main/lead game designer and gave 2 years to build a 10 out of 10 single player 60$ game.
Dev notes: 1. second-grade puzzles to prolong gameplay.
2. no in-game companion control/interaction because its supposed to be your coop partner (a-la borderlands).
3. random teleportation from location to location (previously known as "pick a prefered map to play in coop").
4. lore-wise - it's Andromeda once again. Lack of professional vision nor direction + appeal to everyone slash agree with everything.
Too much money was laundered at this point, had to ship it as it is.
The goal wasnt to make a good game. The goal was to send a message.
Message received: I bought Elden Ring for a friend as a Christmas present, and Stellar Blade for myself. I may even install and play it, i don't know.
Your wallet is your weapon. Support the companies that appreciate your patronage, leave the rest for dead.
buy Kingdome come 2 instead no modern message
The message has absolutely been received and im afraid for Mass Effect 5
@@TheSolarium18that has massively changed in the last two days. Forced gay sex scenes confirmed
Hey, I'd be happy to see a companion analysis video. I had such high hopes for Lucanis. I mean, a mage-killer assassin possessed by a demon. I tried to romance him as a mage for the drama. Expecting a little change like when you romanced Cullen as a mage. No... no drama. Nothing. Such a shame.
I agree, I tried romancing him twice, but it's just so bland and soulless, he doesn't even reply to flirting, and still goes after Neve. His whole character should be dark and unapproachable, especially considering he's the Dragon Age demon possessed version of Ezio Auditore. Such a shame, I think the whole game can be considered a wasted potential. It feels like it's not even finished yet, just a shell of a "could have been good game".
@@mightymoon02 i dont think flirting is even suppose to be flirting in this game. I remember with some character i picked 8 times in row a romance option and latest conversation went something like this:
-i think you are nice person
-thanks
@mightymoon02 I've heard someone say that he was supposed to be the most "messed up" character, with the most messed up romance, like Astarion... bro, cmon... they didn't EVEN try!!!
Same. I miss the drama and tension So much
@@ZdravdratWtf who would say that and why?🤣 People who wrote these conversations have never flirted with a human being before, I'm sure.
That character with the floor tile glued to the side of her head, looks ridiculous
Yup..they totally fukd her up in this mess
Don’t forget the peg-leg too
@@vladik87that had to have been a demand from some DEI consultant to make her even more diverse.
Lmao
Don't forget her dead inside voice. It's so jarring how her flat voice performance was even allowed to make it into the final game.
OH MY GOD! Finally someone else comments on how MONUMENTALLY idiotic the decision Ghilanain makes with the dragon is. Like this is writing 101, this is fanfiction levels of plot hole and stupidity so large that it may as well be a black hole that swallows and spits out the story. She is INVINCIBLE here, she literally cant die, she is so much stronger than us that if she went and fought we would lose in an instant and ALL she needs to achieve her goals and rule the world forevever is to get this dagger, thats their entire plan, everything they are trying to achieve...
WHERE THE FUCK ELSE IS THE DRAGON NEEDED?!!!!!! After this scene my already low investment just dropped to bellow freezing point and it rarely came up to try and take a breath for the rest of the game. I was just annoyed, dissapointed and questioning everything most of the time and the few times I did have fun are more and more lost the more time I take away from the game.
I like that you compare it to Andromeda, a game that isnt look at favorably at all, or wasnt at least prior to Veilguard, especially given it was made by then still respected Bioware and a continuation of the beloved ME franchise no less.
I actually enjoyed it, not to the degree I enjoyed the trilogy but I still put like 600 hours into it, several playthroughs worth, I saw all the flaws but there was still enough good to keep me going and I even still had that bug of seeing everything, seeing all the dialogue options and all the quest outcomes that I had for all the previous Bioware games, but I only finished Veilguard once...
I started a second playthrough but I genuinely did not feel like playing the game, I forced myself to get like half way through before just dropping it, uninstalling and forgetting about it, thats honestly the best thing I can do about it, forget it existed, because I do want to keep liking Dragon Age.
This game probably would have been fine if it was its own IP.
Sure, it was bad, but it would have had a small community that people would keep amongst themselves, and it wouldn't have been the disaster that it is today.
Calling it a "Dragon Age" game is what killed it.
Imagine a Mario game that stars a black toad and the enemy is the systemic racism the princess is responsible for
I dunno, did Dustbin get its own community?
yea i dk. i really hope this little moment in time is legit over. these games all succ and surely, hopefully even game publishers cant survive only making flops
Thats what I've been saying pretty much! I couldn't care less if they were making the games they want. But they're not, they're changing the games they don't want into what they do. If they would just make games for them instead of altering games that aren't for them everyone would be happy. I don't think we'd even be having this conversation right now.
@@arostwocents And the Princess is actually a man in a wig with a gay "Princess" lover in a yellow dress.
Dragon Age 2 is starting to look good lol
I can't hear you over the sound of installing Dragon Age 2.
@@kentonbaird1723 🤣🤣😂
At least it felt like it took place in the same universe.
What’s funny about the city decision is that when you choose one and go there you take one of the companions with you to meet the third companion. Your other companions go to the other city and fail, which means they’re incompetent without Rook.
I really tried with this game and, yeah, I could only get about 21 hours out of it.
And more than once they blamed Rook for choosing to help the other city! It was so ridiculous, absolute lack of logic. As if a city full of renowned faction leaders was absolutely incapable of defending their own city without one single person. Too much weight for a nobody that the protagonist was. It could be understandable if instead there was the Inquisitor with real power and weight but ...!!
@ well, my Rook was a Grey Warden who saved that village from the Blight that one time and everyone keeps mentioning it 🤦🏻♂️
@ one more thing: I’m actually surprised, considering how she is written, the Asian elf (Bellara) doesn’t say “kawaii!” at some point.
@@zliani3991 One person who is supposed to be an underdog and a nobody, no less
Those boss fights look horrendous. Like they’re made for someone who’s never fought a boss and wants both of their hands held. I’m very glad you don’t have to play this anymore.
Drag On Age: The Child Guard
Veilguard is an example of a game made by people who never mentally got past the 5th grade but were given millions to make an RPG.
Funny how the "generic" Corypheus still ends up being more interesting villain. Also the butchering of the lore is vile. No Broodmothers, darkspawn just appear from stupid pods. Every major point of history of the world is because of Elves - magic, Veil, Dwarves, Blight, Titans - and Elves didn't live in harmony with the world, they changed it to suit their needs. Also spirits were not separate entities, although with unique sentience, spirits just became elves. And remember Corypheus having a blighted dragon? Well Veilguard has like two dozen of those. Instead of majestic force of nature, every dragon now is blighted or Archdemon, which is the same but with more health.
Thank you for your service.
A service would have been to be there when it mattered.
-GG 2014
For some reason, your Rook just sitting in the middle of that awkward conversation with Taash and her mother looking back and forth is hilarious🤣🤣It looks as if any second he is going to say "....I should leave...."
The character designs are all lower quality too, the talent must be very diverse these days but surprisingly lacking skill.
It was so bad 😂. I finished it bc its dragon age but man... that was terrible.
People said the ending was incredible.. the saving grace... on par with ME2... COME ON MAN... absolutely not 😂
ye they are delusional thinking it even remotely can compare to me2 ending. sacrificing people in the end game only actually matters when the people u are sacrificing are worth something, current bioware cannot grasp this concept unfortunately. I will say the best parts of the game were when solas was involved but he was clearly pushed to the sidelines 99.9% of the game
I sure would like to see a companion analysis, too. I always enjoy your presentations, and I don't find them too long either. It's not that often that people criticizing games take the time it takes to talk about a subject more in-depth and properly, like you do.
I know that it's a shit ton of work to make these videos, especially longer ones. Also, for a game like this one, it sucks having to actually play it to do a proper analysis. However, if it's any comfort, I think your videos are well worth the effort you put into them as they are always well written, intelligent, balanced, entertaining, and fun to watch in their entirety. It's not surprising to see your channel has grown quite a bit in a short time. Well deserved!
28:49 As someone that writes for hobby. I think in this case they didn't forget the dagger thing. They wanted to show confrontation with her to hype fight with her. The problem is that they didn't think of good reason why she would leave and thought that viewer won't notice because they will be immersed emotionally in story. I think that mostly the case because I do like to watch Power Rangers shit. Tho there bad guys are better written.
Yeah its funny how the city you didnt help BLAMES you nad the game constantly shoves it in your face like oooooh thqt was a heavy choice, we have such hatd choiceeeees.
It makes no sense that they would blame Rook,who is a NOBODY.
And it was like the only meaningful choice in this embarrassment of a game.
Thank you for your efforts in finishing this painful game. All of your videos on Veilguard have had good analysis and humor.
"Mentally draining" sums it up perfectly. If you go in here with a good amount of common sense you're leaving the experience as an empty indoctrinated husk. It is safe to say that after 110h of forcing himself in here, Dez took more than just one for the team bringing us this content. The Veilguard & BioWare are nothing more than a propaganda machine for their sick ideologies forcing the player to adapt to it, i despise everything about it and i'm never going to buy their games again, just to make a statement. The ONE thing the new Dragon Age did right was bringing me back to traditional gaming experiences from the past like The Elder Scrolls & Fallout or opening my eyes to well written RPG's like Metaphor ReFantazio.
You know that one BioWare RUclipsr named Kala Elizabeth? She blocked me on Twitter and I’ve literally never interacted with her on there. And my account is private lmao
The only explanation I can think of is she went out of her way to find my Twitter because she saw a comment I left on a Veilguard video she made.
Don't bother, she is weird.
She is also the type that doesn't see Dragon Age as a videogame, but as a romance/friendship simulator.
Also, she has only played Inquisition, and to make it worse, she was in that "fan" council that helped with the game (which also explains why DAO and DA2 get so neglected, if the devs were only seeking Inquisition fans and not Dragon Age fans overall).
@@SeventhheavenDK Wait, what? She's only played Inquisition? I know she *started* with Inquisition but I thought she would have at least played the other games. Did she admit to only playing Inquisition and not the others? I know she said she hates the Origins gameplay.
You are doing something right. 👍
@@dostwood5103 imagine if she start to playing origins and see how much dark and serious was.
especially the broodmother lmao
💀💀
If you let Hawke die in Inquisition, when Varric talks about it when you get back to Skyhold with Hawke's theme playing, it's actually very heartbreaking. That was the second game you played along sided Varric and even though it was two different protagonists, you got to know Varric well. So his sadness over Hawke dying was actually very heartbreaking. Here, it's just empty because it doesn't even feel like Varric.
So basically they have no idea what made the games great, and don't understand what fans loved about it, and did the opposite.
You know the best part of this all? The people who were calling everyone bigots before the game came out, now hate the game quite vocally and yet claim that they aren't bigots. The kind of narcissism and megalomaniac in display is a source of endless mirth for me.
Because we didn't jump to conclusions based on reviews that heavily relied on the culture war to fuel the outrage against the game?
I'm not a fan of Veilguard; I waited 10 years for DA4 and this is definitely not what I wanted. But the reasons I dislike it have nothing to do with identity politics or "wokeness". It is simply a badly written and rushed story that fails at being an RPG. There are a multitude of reasons this game fails at being a Dragon Age game, and none of them have anything to do with identity politics. Taash's story is shit because it's written badly and they're a cringe inducing teenage archetype, not because they're non binary.
If you spend any time at all in fan spaces for this series you'd know the reception it's getting is a lot more complicated than "it's cringe" or "it's woke". We are heavily disappointed with what we got, while still enjoying some aspects or what it could have been. I hate that the discussion surrounding this game has fallen into the culture war bullshit because no one can have an honest discussion about where this game went wrong without bringing politics into it.
@@macapaca951 My response is up there. It keeps getting removed for some reason. Let me know if you can see it
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product.
Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game.
A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is.
Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion.
But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on.
Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years.
Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product.
Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game.
A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is.
Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion.
But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on.
Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years.
Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
@@macapaca951 Those are very valid reasons for disliking the end product.
Thing is, and I'm not talking about you because you've clearly taken the time and have a comprehensive discussion with me on this. But a massive amount of people I have been talking to - and this isn't projection. I can literally link you to the discussion forums if you'd like, though I'd be ending up doxxing myself in the process - refuse to believe that they and their couple of friends aren't the only intelligent human beings in the world who have an opinion on a massively well-known game.
A game isn't just a ludic process, I think you'll agree. Nor is it a mere narrative. It's neither a product of pure politics, nor devoid of politics, nor pure art, and definitely not a pure cashgrab. It's nuanced, is what it is.
Sure there are people who don't get that on either side of the debate. Sure there are people who actually believe that "woke" is absolute good/evil. There are also people who believed Biden was Jim Carrey in a rubber mask. We have flat earthers too. We don't consider those people as the voice of reason either for or against a motion.
But there's the rest of humankind out here too. When you leave out the people who are with you on an issue, and those who are mindless, you're left with people who have similarly well thought out reasons as you, or something close. Those of us who saw the patterns of Vailguard, and Concord, and Suicide Squad, and Dustborn, and so on and decided that there is a particular set of design elements which are associated with a certain set of ideological association and narrative (and metanarrative) quality. We did not want to reward companies who were producing these materials. Nor did we want to reward companies who employ people who openly speak about hating gamers. Or people who publicly speak about how bigoted they are. Or people who have spoken on record, displaying their disconnect from either gaming as a whole or the franchise they are working on.
Many of value our time and money and didn't have the patience for endless second chances. It's not like someone deserves a second chance from us just because they exist. Why should they? Why would we owe them so many chances? Also, many of us simply didn't want to give them our money just so we could decide whether our money was wasted, since we were over 50% sure that it would be given numerous examples in the last several years.
Now most of the people I'm talking about, will and do say things like "none of that matters, y'all just bigots". Sure, if that's what they feel. But when they play the game and reiterate the same arguments that we knew would rise, why do these things suddenly matter, yet they ain't bigots, and we'all are still bigots? And like I said, if you wish, I can show you several such actual discussions. Involving people like Ashe Parise and their ilk.
That's what these DEI devs love doing to legacy characters/world, they love to kill the main characters off and destroy the world so their MC (do not steal) will be the new face of the game.
45:11 The wolf/dragon loop pretty much sums up this game 🤣🤣🤣
No wonder it took Solas a 1000 years to trick them 🤣
😂😂😂 it all makes sense now.
@@TheDezembro It's so embarrassingly bad. As a player, you're supposed to be in awe of the spectacle in the background but you can't appreciate it when it's on a noticeable 5 second loop. FFS, at least break it up with an effect or something every other loop. It's so damned lazy!
I subscribed to you just to show my appreciation for playing this so I don't have to - I value the reviews of gamers like you over Steam anonymous, voiceless reviews, or the shills.
I appreciate the detail you give to the reviews and the honest covering of opinion and experience.
Thank you for playing this game, so I don't have to.
the reveal that Varrick is dead, is worse than discovering Mason was imagining Reznov in Black Ops 1
That fuschia coloring was a portent of bad things to come
I just finished this game, and I completely understand why you took a month to make a video. I can't even find the words to describe my disappointment. I saw someone describe the game as Great Value Mayonnaise, and I think that's just perfect.
@40:57 Taash outburst is uncalled for, the mother is reasonable and explain that there is such a thing in Qunari tradition, there is no issue at all. The thing is THERE IS NO ISSUE. 😂 The game try to make it dramatic with hyped up music for nothing 😂
Every time music starts to rump up after she tells her mother she's non binary, I get second-hand embarrassment. Why??? Should this be a cathartic moment? I mean I get it for the people that in real life made coming out like hers or similar, but was it necessary at all in this manner? I'm flabbergasted.
@@inytule_4688 The problem is there is no such issue in the Qunari society as the mother explain it, so the whole scene doesn't make any sense at all. I think it was originally not gender issue, but they change it halfway. If Taash is talking about culural confusion between Qunari and Rivaini it makes more sense.
This is something I said in my review of this game on steam, and I'll say it here: The Veilguard feels like a fanfiction of a fanfiction of a Dragon Age game. I think I might've preferred a game that just felt like a fanfiction of a Dragon Age game, but this game felt like a step further removed. Like a beautiful veneer over an empty container. an empty cardboard box spray painted gold.
They do indeed manage to make banal the horrendous destruction of a famous, lore-heavy Dragon Age city full of Thedan people. The very "choice" given the player- the Sophie's Choice- isn't meaningful, just an arbitrary loss, just spiteful on their part. The devs say, "We're going to kill one of your franchise's biggest cities. Just... gonna kill one. So... pick one, I guess." Then they add letters from their reworked version of your own Inquisitor to tell Rook that all the gameworld you ever experienced in the previous games has been wiped from the canvas of the game by "blight." Casually and sweepingly. And that destruction of Dragon Age also gets delivered as... just happening. It's a loss that's never earned. Like the death of Varric that just happens. There's not even resonant buildup to these otherwise devastating losses as something Rookie- and thereby the player- is invested in. It just... happens. The comprehensiveness of the damage done to the franchise doesn't in any way make it more meaningful, more gripping, more emotional as a story. It's just more pathetic- the desperate act of a talentless storyteller demonstrably stooping that low. It simply exercises their hostility toward and lack of appreciation of the gameworld, the dev team that forged that gameworld, and the player base that has loved that gameworld for over a decade. It does generate drama, but the drama it generates isn't immersive, isn't a sense of loss for the cartoonish Rookie we're required to accompany and help complete the destructive narrative. It's a drama entirely based OUTSIDE the game as a conflict between the new dev team (plus EA) vs genuine fans of the franchise. The ire it draws isn't against elven gods or the Big D who they left off the title to make it about the Strong V: it's deserved ire against the current devs of Bioware and their patron EA as the conspicuous villains of the actual story of V-tard.
Ultimately I don't find their destruction of Dragon Age compelling because the arbitrariness of the destruction simultaneously warrants me arbitrarily considering none of it canon. V-tard is the incompetent attempt at a 4th DA game. It failed and is thus fully dismissible.
The plot contrivances are worse than you mention: the dagger these superbeings somehow can't manage to simply swipe from Rookie was literally at their feet as soon as it fell out of Varric at the bottom of the stairs. Then, instead of returning to get it... they sent a darkspawn doofus to fetch it... and run to where exactly? The entire game after that is predicated on their stupidity as villains. I mean, people lambasted Corypheus as a comically lame villain, but at least he had the gravitas of a functioning gameworld lore and intelligent interactions. These V-tard Duo are just a couple of overpowered nitwits that win through pure contrivance until the devs decide you can finally stop enduring their amateurish hijack of a franchise...
Frankly the game failed because Traash's mommy never at any moment during the game pulled a barf.
RIP Bioware, this is their 3rd dud, so now there is a clear pattern of them not being able to release a game with good systems or a good story. At least they spent years on good looking shrubs and rocks...
Why would you assume that a studio where all of the talent left is going to be able to produce good games?
The studio name alone doesn't give them magic powers...
Gamers having no standards has consequences.
I'm glad the RUclips community is a lot more critical and constructive about why this game sucks as a Dragon Age fan, rather than Reddit calling the average fan of the series a bigot just because I don't like the poor writing and characters.
32:32 The way that darkspawn on the left runs looks like it crapped itself, and it's awkwardly trying to make it to the toilet before he gets worse.
Veilguard was never a game for the fans. It's a game for people who hate Dragon Age. You can literally see it in all the game design and story beats. It's the same as with Inquisition, and hence why I consider both games non-canon and just pretend they don't exist.
It’s a game made by and for emotional toddlers who jumped on board with inquisition, and see Dragon age as a shipping vehicle only.
Question what are your issues with da inquisition
@@MarwolfAeducan Inquisition is a single player grind MMORPG with no side quests that were handcrafted. No loot, Easy ass dragons, infinite grind. The Best Part of Inquisition was Solas. The rest was DEI/LGBTQ goop and its obvious they spent more time making companion quests than overarching story.
Grinding for random skulls to get a 1% fire resistance "Buff" was insulting.
Let’s not pretend Inquisition is anywhere near the train wreck Veilguard is. Inquisition was made in less time with a smaller team and from my perspective, they chose to focus on story over gameplay, which is absolutely what I would have wanted them to prioritize. Veilguard is the exact opposite. Origins still clears both, but inquisition earned a place in my heart.
@Kserijaro You didn't play Inquisition. I played Inquisition, it has hand crafted side quest, and loot. You've also never played an MMO in your life, I played pretty much every big mmo that came out when MMOs were at their peak. I've played WoW for 9 years, and ESO and FF14 for 10. Inquisition is like none of those games at all. The only "grind" in Inquisition is the power grind, and even that isn't really a grind, especially in the MMO since of the word. You should really stop regurgitating other people's opinions so adamantly.
For me, BioWare and its IPs died with Dragon Age Inquisition. I will not give the new Mass Effect any chances.
Thank you for those carthartic videos nonetheless.
Hopefully you'll be able to do videos discussing better games in the futur.
That’s about 5 days you’ll never get back
Yeah mate, please do the companion analysis. They are so bad they are good lol. Like The Room level good.
Honestly this game made me feel so sad :( I was really looking forward to it before launch, with Dragon Age being my favorite IP of all time. Then the game finally came out and I was so massively disappointed. This doesn't feel like the Dragon Age I fell in love with. This was also supposed to be a direct sequel to Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC, but it really doesn't feel like it. The biggest issue I have is with the writing and world-building in this game. You touched on the Crows issue in the video, which is a good example of what bothered me as well the most. Retconning established lore like they did in this game is just something that upsets me massively, especially when they don't even properly explain why things were changed from what we knew from before.
While I don't have it myself, I have seen the Veilguard artbook consepts online and that just makes me even more sad. Those consepts were so good! THAT would have been more in line with what I personally expected from a Dragon Age game and Inquisition's sequel. I don't know why they scrapped so much of those ideas, but it is a shame that they did.
If we ever get another Dragon Age game (which I somewhat doubt now, but you never know), I hope that is more in line with the older games when it comes to tone and writing. As for Mass Effect (my second favorite IP of all time), I am now very VERY vary of the new game. I will certainly watch more than one review of it when it comes out before touching it myself.
I hold the dialogue for Veilguard on the same level as Forspoken... at least Forspoken wasn't destroying one of my favorite IP's with its terrible writing.
This game did one good thing for me. It showed me why I love the games from software made so much. Because fromsoft says here try to beat it if you can and BioWare said aww your a cute little they them lets all hold hands and face no real challenges
36:10 They could have done it with just saying
if you have the dagger they can't attack you..
and this was the reason Solas always had this dagger with him, to be safe..
I mean its not good reasoning but its waaaaay better
than nothing.
I would love videos analyzing the silly companions, etc. I'd also be interested in a comparison of the concept art/art book vs final product.
An analysis of the intense "solavellan" copium over this game would be welcome as well, but probably exhausting lol 😂
Loved the video.
About Varric and Rook about their friendship. They could’ve just done the same as in DAI where you get to know Varric, started as strangers and ended up as bffs or whatever. The concept isn’t new for BioWare but they still went with some bullshit idea.
Genuinely sad, loved this franchise learnt all the lore and loved all of the games. This isn’t dragon age, I didn’t wait 10 years for this :(
Thank you for "taking one for the team" and playing through the game, really sinking your teeth into the meat, so to speak. So all the sycophants of this game can't accuse you of "you can't sh1t-talk this game when you haven't even played it!"
Bioware died a long time ago. Is time to accept it and move on.
I still watch Nuhre’s analyses. So I say go for it.
Nuhre's analysis is really good.
Based department has been calling you
God the framing at 40:51 had me in tears, dude's head just looking back and forth with that look of "How did my life lead up to this point?"
love the Vampire The Masquerade music! Unironically one of my favourite RPGs of all time.
I remember being 13 years old and playing KOTOR for the first time and so excited that I could play as a female Jedi and was like wowed they had my gender as an option. That was exciting. However, it never took away from the story for me. I’ve played as MaleShep and Male Inquisitor and had just as much fun. I’m straight and I’ve romanced everyone (looking at you Liara) I have never ever felt like BioWare was a company to complain about when it came to inclusivity and to have it blatantly shoved in our throats is so weird.
Also, we’re in a world with fucking dragons and elves and mages, why would I care???? Like just give me some grit and danger and angst my god I miss old BioWare
You have suffered way to much for this. Have our gratitude. Many just can't grasp the ammount of effort and discipline needed to go through 60+ hours of slop and grind.
People like you should be hired by game studios as consultants. Not prazites like SBI
I waited a decade for what should have been a masterpiece, instead we got this lazily made slop from developers, I cannot express enough how deeply ashamed the developers should be of themselves.
People saying "why can't you just shut your brain off and enjoy it" I think are missing the point of storytelling. People like stories because people like thinking (well, except like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Gray, which are just porn for women), your brain wants to see patterns, to figure things out, to connect dots and apply the knowledge it gains to help survive. What these people really mean is "I have tied my identity to this franchise and I see the holes in it as well as you do but it's more important to my psyche to cover for it and not recognize that this thing I used to love is now a steaming, corporate pile of dogshit."
Btw a clip from Face/Off? By far the best movie with a forward-slash in the title.
Just as I was trying to find a video for my dinner time. Luckyyy
Damn you do this too?
I thought im the only one😬
@@ShadmehR_23 we all do😂
Skyrim truly has an insane amount of replayability. A large part of that is absolutely down to the modding community keeping it updated and relevant, but even the base game is more fun to play than Veilguard was. Skyrim itself also didn’t have a lot of traditional roleplay elements (and was criticised for the lack of NPC reactions to things like, for example, the player’s potential race), but also still managed to give the players more choices than Veilguard. Skyrim was also highly repetitive (I swear 75% of quests were just “go to this tomb/Dwemer ruin and fetch something”), but somehow they managed to make it fun and engaging. Veilguard felt like a slog.
I can’t describe how pissed off I was as a long time dragon age fan who played the first game when it first came out and was blown away by the world building, lore and general feel of the game. DA 2 seemed rushed and I didn’t enjoy it as much but it was still a dragon age game. I know a lot of people didn’t like inquisition, and don’t get me wrong, it had its problems, but I never felt like I’d been ripped out of the universe completely. Veilguard is just a slap in the face to long term fans and only exists to push an agenda. Any fans of it will try to slap you down by calling you a bigot or right wing, but the simple fact is that we just wanted a dragon age game, after waiting a DECADE for one. So, so disappointed. And it’s got nothing to do with having trans, gay or whatever else characters in there… it’s how it’s so violently pushed in your face at the cost of everything else. The romances are terrible, the writing is terrible… the combat? Terrible. There’s even a jazzy lounge singer in the cobbled swan, that was so wildly out of place in a so called dark fantasy game. It felt like a Pixar / marvel game. You can’t be mean or have an opinion. It’s just childish woke garbage.
Honesty i am so done with bioware. I personaly felt that Andromeda was my breaking point but i still held some hope that maybe, just maybe they will make something good out of dragon age again, I platniumed inquistion and had mixed feelings about it but at least that game had an interesting story and the world was interesting to explore just like dragon age origins. But noo the devs just had to put their dumb capes on and make the most braindead dei game to come out in 2024, Hell probably top 3 worse games of all time in my opinion.
I'm here to cast my vote of wanting a big companion quest breakdown video.
I remember back when it was announced as Dreadwolf.
The focus was announced to be about working toward & planning for different heist missions.
Makes you wonder how well that version would have done with this team?
The cartoonish characters really destroyed the "mood" of Dragon Age. It looks like it was made for 12 year olds.
Of course i want companion analysis..
Guys you with me???
I sorry to say it...but it's apathetic people like yourself that are the reason we got here. At multiple points in this video you express this sense of acceptance. This same type of attitude is pervasive in film media as well. Star wars, marvel etc, people are willing to praise absolute slop because it has 5 min of ok content (Vader in the hallway). The only way to combat this trash is to denounce it and remove support immediately. That's why I haven't and would never buy Veilgaurd even out of curiosity. Same reason I haven't watched a single second of anything post The Farce Awakens or an episode of Game of Thrones after season 5. The next time one of these "triple A" developers tries to shovel slop down your throat don't let them.
Late to this video, but thank you for stating that The Failguard is tons worse in the writing category then Andromeda by far. Andromeda has it's weak and questionable dialogue, but overall it's average to decently good IMO. Great video though and my condolences to the 100+ hours you dropped into that waste of time known as The Veilguard.
Keep up the great work homie, I'm loving this consistent and quality uploads. Definitely an inspiration to me, im procrastinating my comeback with my new videos, but when I do soon, I'm gonna try to match you (even if that isn't possible, lol.)
Much love and respect homie.
🙏🖤🔥
something probably a lot of people doesnt know, in inquisition there is a level, the temple of Dirthamen, where solas makes an important asumption that Dirthamen is alive and free from the fade since quite a while, also that hes neutral and doesnt trust Solas neither Mythal and can be made a important allied later on.
Is also where we can see for the first time the susness of Solas.
This game was definitely written by AI. The constant nonsense of things just happening one after another with the story constantly forgetting what's going on and never knowing where it's going or where it's been is really AI mentality when it makes stories. There's like 10% of the game you can tell was handwritten by someone and the rest was just chat GPTed to fill out the rest.
I'm also convinced that a lot of the dialog was AI too, because i've never heard such soulless voice acting in anything other than AI voices
I am still in shock after playing Veilguard. I just don't understand what happened to BioWare.
What makes FF7 Rebirth so good is that the developers love the game’s lore, world and story as much as fans do. The Veilguard is the complete opposite of that.
The comparison to ME is true. I replay the trilogy annually at this point. Even though the remaster does not completely negate its tedious aspects, I can't put it down because of the writing and characters. I'd also argue that despite its outdated graphics, conversations and cutscenes are a lot more dynamic than Veilguard's static characters. In ME, people are simultaneously talking, walking and doing something.
Inquisition was my first introduction to DA and was completely aware of its faults pointed out by more hardcore fans but having not played prior installments, I enjoyed it. I finished DA:O right after and understood the mixed reception around Inquisition. DA:O is superior across multiple aspects, though I did not love Inquisition any less. I thought I could love Veilguard the same way but I could not stand the dialogue 2 hours in and decided I stay for the combat which I found fun. 15 hours in, it becomes a chore due to a large but overall surface level skill tree, the inability to control only 2 of your party members, and repetitive enemies. Huge fromsoft fan here, so any boss I come across, I judge them critically... and my god, that double dragon boss was painful and abysmal.
Also wanna touch on the level design since it's rarely discussed. They are poorly designed linear levels that feel arcade'y to explore. There is hardly good incentive to stray off the beaten path because the rewards are almost always inferior to your current equipment, which are looted on the main path. These levels are constantly sprinkled with balancing beams, ladders, blight bubbles, ladders, etc. 'Exploring' these areas means either going straight for the quest marker, or trailing your companion.
It surprises me that DA:O, a 16 year old game with extremely outdated visuals and level design held back by hardware limitations, still manages to sucker punch Veilguard with its atmosphere, environmental storytelling and direction. I noticed too, the lack of gore present in Veilguard when in DA:O - there is the broodmother, and all the carcasses and viscera littering the deep roads.
What just really upsets me is not even the game itself. It's what could have been Dragon Age: The Dreadwolf. I was wondering if you've made a video on Project Joplin, the scrapped, original vision for Veilguard? I think you'd find it interesting that Taash was initially very feminine, and there was supposed to be a spirit companion, Imshael, who could alternate between a male and female form. Think they would have made a better 'non-binary' character. It would fit the lore and universe of DA, the same way Legion was a collective entity in ME.
I'd love a deep dive on the companions! Fantastic video.
The only clarification i feel should be made, is that Rook never actually says out loud to anyone that they are talking to Varric after the events at the ritual, and instead always frames it like it was advice Varric gave you in the past, or only says to themselves that they are going to speak with Varric.
So the reason the crew doesn't question it, is that it's not unusual to follow ideals, advice and strategy you heard years ago, and it was Solas using blood magic on you that made sure the illusion never got broken...
So the twist is still insulting, but the game actually does explain it and keep it consistent with how the interactions go from what i remember, which honestly makes it worse for me! How come the only competent writing in the game, involves one of the worst and most insulting plot twists Bioware has ever cooked up!?
this reminds me of 13 reasons why, where a middle aged man, the author, imagines himself being a teenage girl
So, we can agree that Dragon Age ended up in Inquisition and we are still waiting for the next game?
Veilguard never happened.
No one stops people from retconning this out of existence, once someone better owns the IP.
honestly just from the teaser trailer. I knew it was gonna be a trainwreck, cause as soon as i saw character designs i was like "Yea this is gonna be bad", and funnily enough i thought with my knowledge at the time that the dragon slayer "Taash" was actually a guy. I mean the only character i sorta like out this vast cast of "quirky cringe" is actually the Necromancer Emmerich. Then again i get your idea of just how dull the combat is. i mean early game the combat could be sorta slow and more lax, so as to ease you into gimics and the combat, so as to give you the idea of recognizeing attack patterns and movement. then later on as it gets more chaotic, you can actually just blaze through hordes of enemies as their health is actually "lesser" in tandem with your power/damage is growing. So as to give you the sense of actually your character becomming stronger and able to well "kick ass and take names", insted of just doing the same old "ping pong" as your doing with that shield ranged attack at 10:40, cause that just feels super tiresome to use. Cause in fantasy games, in any sense of the world should make you feel like your powerful. Idk if you played the game "Pathfinder wrath of the rightious" made by owlcat, but that game has your character actually become powerful. As you in the same sense as this abomination we now know as "Veilguard", you are fighting demons of the abyss, to fight two dark almost godlike demons who is pretty much causeing immense death and mayham. Couple that with the different paths your character can take and ascend in (both good, evil and well abit more ambigious). Either way your makeing valid points, i am just happy i did not need to buy this abomination and just from gameplay and cutscenes just feel the cringe and sadness for all those who bought it in the hopes of it not being as bad as it looked.
Its really just a bunch of people that had nothing to do with the past games callong themselves “Bioware”. Bioware is gone, this is a new studio and this new studio has yet to produce a single game we like
I tried with this game. I could ignore the gender nonsense in a fantasy setting and even the repetitive and dull gameplay. Dragon age has never had great combat IMO. What i cant get past is how utterly boring the game is. How badly written it is. I dont understand how these people even have jobs when this is their skill level
I’m glad RUclips recommended this to me. You scripted this out excellently, giving us a very cogent and smart analysis. I’m going to give you a sub; keep up the good work, man. I have a feeling your channel is going to succeed.
Your bit about Gordon Ramsay has me 🤣🤣 You won a sub! 😄 You're right about the people in bioware, bethesda, etc and the horrible games they made that have nothing to do with the legacy IPs.
Failguard: "So... I'm non-breaking even."
Biowaste: "What does that mean?"
Failguard: "It means I'm neither too good or so bad is good... so I'm going with woke."