What annoys me the most is how literally everything is just ancient elves. The veil? Made by elves. The Blight? Made by elves. The Golde City? Made by elves. The Old Gods? Made by elves. The dwarves' inability to dream? Caused by elves. It shrinks the world to just cleaning up elven messes.
Racism against knife-ears is completely justified because if they ever get into power again they'll do something else that threatens to destroy the world.
Jup not to mention that in the end it's all destroyed or gone. The blight GONE Grey Wardens GONE Ferelden GONE Kirkwall GONE And we all learn these things not even through a cool couple of cutscenes... No a 2 minute information dump by our inquisitor. Not even HOF!!! It's Morrigan! She can teleport anyone. Really, couldn't it be HOF or hof and the inquisitor.
@@fenixchief7 And there isn't even elf discrimination to be seen in the game! (Or mage discrimination, though that probably has to do with the locations we visit). Really, no one has ever commented on elven Rook in a negative way in my playthrough. No one. Not even in Tevinter. He might as well be human.
@@FragLordNo it can't be the HOF because he's voiceless. Do you really want to see the uproar if BioWare gives the HOF a voice. The HOF will never come back due to being voiceless and just a mess to deal with
I think the ultimate sin of this game is how it specifically, and intentionally invalidates almost everything you've ever done in the franchise. It's one thing to have your decisions ignored, or somewhat retconned for the sake of the plot. Look at Mass Effect 2 for an example of BioWare kind of disregarding a lot of your choices and story build-up in the first game; in service of a different story they wanted to tell. I personally didn't like that decision, but the game itself was good enough to overcome my displeasure. It's another thing entirely to have the authors of the lore we've been immersed in for years to say " None of that mattered. They're all dead. The cities and castles are destroyed. The only thing that matters is what we're showing you right now." It's feels like genuine betrayal. I have a hard time coming up a decent analogy because it's just something you don't do when it comes to story telling or world building. Sure you can subvert expectations by having the bad guys win, or killing important characters, or even the world ending, but you don't do it all off-screen without involving the reader/player . It would be like if Gorge R.R. Martin finally released the Winds of Winter, and in the prologue Theon explains how all of Westeros but the Iron Islands have been completely wiped out by the Others, and now the series is about Theon fighting the drowned god because they were the one controlling the Others all along. It's a slap in the face to long-time fans. I could have forgiven most of the flaws of the game, but I can't forgive what really feels like a deliberate insult to the people most invested in the story, lore, setting and characters of Dragon Age.
I haven't even played the game, but this is how I have felt since I first found out about this spoiler. Just don't understand how they thought that older fans would actually like that. It makes me want to never ever play or even buy this game. Even pirating this game would be...no, I won't allow BW to do this to me. I played ME3. That was enough. This? This would be so much worse.
@@Elora445The thing is, ME3 still had save importing. The devs still went out of their way to directly involve characters from past adventures, have story moments that would pay off arcs from both prior games. The Zhu's Hope colonists, if you saved them in ME1, are able to work together like a hive mind while assisting with the Crucible due to their connection with the Thorian. And even if it's just a codex entry, that means something. It means you are having a real impact on the world. And as much as they didn't stick the landing in the final 30 minutes of ME3, they still made a huge effort to pay off as many decisions as they could during the whole rest of the runtime of the game. Veilguard ditches that. Utterly. Nothing matters, Southern Thedas is gone, your decisions meant nothing, the 3 prior heroes left zero meaningful impact on Thedas. Literally the ONLY thing that matters is whether or not the Inquisitor was porking Solas. Isabella will ALWAYS be the leader of the Lords and ALWAYS have the same personality. Morrigan's child doesn't matter. Divine Victoria doesn't matter. Not even the other romance options matter for the Inquisitor. And we aren't even getting DLC to correct any of that, just a hard reset on the franchise, eat shit. This is not even on the same plane of existence as the ME3 ending. That was, "We had to make the game in 2 years and didn't have time to fix the ending. We really tried." This is, "We hate you. THIS is Dragon Age now. We had 6 whole years to make this, and deliberately decided to ditch the save importing and burn everything you care about. You will play OUR Dragon Age now. Enjoy your Marvel slop."
@@Enzar17 Indeed. But I followed the development for that game. I watched BW lie to people's faces, over and over. People counted their gathered points and realized that they wouldn't be able to unlock all the "endings" without playing multiplayer. One of the developers said that "Oh no, you can definitely do it without playing multiplayer!". Even when people showed their evidence that it was indeed impossible, they kept on lying. It wasn't possible until they patched the game. There was a reason as to why I bought ME3 much later than everyone else. But yes, DA:V seems even worse in so many ways, not to say the least in how they have treated fans of the older lore and games. Resetting a games lore this badly... I have no words for that. It's just so incredibly badly done.
@@Elora445 yep. The fact is, the people making this game were kids when the originals were released. This game was clearly made by people with no respect for the history of that very unique and well-considered game world. Seems like day one their first meeting was like "here’s a list of things our director finds ‘problematic’ about the original games. Blood magic, brood mother, desire demons, slavery, dark fantasy tone in general, being able to disagree or fall out with your teammates, player agency, being able to roleplay, etc etc etc. Now let’s make a list of things we want to include. Child-level socialization lessons, millennial identity politics, lecturing the players, making Rook what we want them to be, etc etc."
I agree with you, byt this betrayal was done a few times before, including original Baldurs Gate Bhaalspawn saga, where later on it was completely invalidated by WotC!
If the sexy demon was too "out of touch" for modern Bioware, they could have created a Mass Effect Asari Banshee style redesign. Turning sex appeal into horror.
Man... I love desire demons (not in a gooner way, just in a conceptual way). But they've been so absent that even I've forgotten about them. Sucks, but maybe it was for the best given that if they showed up here they would have had a terrible redesign.
@@failureoncommandagreed given what I've played of the game a desire demon would have just ended up being a glowy Harry Potter Dementor like the other demons
The game is clearly attempting to be sex-positive based on the cringe ‘spicy’ dialogue. But only amongst people with a male body type, as there are few women in the game with feminine body types. So weird.
Ah, Dragon Age. My favorite game trilogy. A shame that it ended on a cliffhanger. I would have loved to see what happens with Solas and the Veil. Guess we will never know. I heard BioWare dropped all of it's resources into a new, kid-friendly IP instead. What was it's name, again? Veil-something? Heard it flopped.
Absolutely love this approach... That cliffhanger was wild, wasn't it? Maybe one day another developer will pick it up somehow. Otherwise it was a great journey
Even if Taash's brattiness and awkwardness was intentional (which I dispute because she's generally portrayed as the righteous one), there are almost no instances where Rook or any companion can rebuke her bad attitude or behavior. She also doesn't experience much of a character change; she continued to act snotty and self-involved deep into the game. In previous DA games, if you didn't like a companion, they could be betrayed, killed, abandoned, etc., while in VG the harshest thing you're able to do is mildly chide them. The rest of the time, Rook coddles and cheerleads them. The game is supposed to be dark fantasy roleplaying. I think the writers wanted to protect the characters' feelings. You can't be mean, scheming, backstabbing ... your decisions made little difference to the story at all, unless you count romance - which is just more positivity. The writing was wrought with amateurish mistakes. Too much repetition of words/themes, awkward scene transitions, easy resolutions of disagreements, poor maintaining of mood (particularly the overuse of bathos), dreadful pacing issues (the bad guys seem to conveniently go on vacation while you do unrelated side quests), scenes that don't develop story or character, among other pitfalls that bad writers fall into. I don't have the time to analyze the infamous Taash scenes (like the Bharv one) but context doesn't rehabilitate them. The romance scene between Taash and Harding was particularly egregious. I didn't get the impression that Harding was into Taash at all, but because she's a people pleaser she just went along with it. Very creepy for a scene intended to be cutesy. Overall I think it's a shame that the fourth game in the series - which all the money and time they had - regressed so profoundly in its writing and roleplaying aspects.
Only thing I can disagree with here is that I did feel like Taash grew throughout the course of the game, albeit slightly. Otherwise, I believe you're mostly spot on.
I have a lot of things I don't agree in this video. Even more things that I do agree on. But there is one thing you touch on that seemingly noone did and I'm infinitely grateful for it. And it is the words rook said at the end about the stories that were before. I felt disdain towards the game the whole time but never really had strong emotions the whole way through. That one sentence broke me and made me cry because it finally sank in that DA was dead. Bioware killed the franchise then paraded it's corpse for 45 hours then expects us to believe it was out of respect. There are a few media that can give you the experience of a strong emotion and I'm happy that until Veilguard they were positive for me. This is the first game that gave me such a deep grief that I'm still melancholic even after a week of finishing it. I am truly happy, for those who can enjoy this game. I am overjoyed that I call one of those person my friend. It gives me at least a bit of solace while I'm still kneeling over the grave of something that was part of me for so long.
Same here, I finished the game on November 6th, and am still feeling sad, hurt, lost, and confused. Certainly not what I had expected, or wanted. My feelings at the moment bear an alarming ressemblence of actually grieving the loss of a loved one. Which is rediculous and immature (it's just a game, for heaven's sake!), but I can't help it - that's how I feel 😢
This game is not an rpg. Every Rook turns out the same, barring who you bone and who dies and doesn't at the end of the game. No choice matters, all dialogue choices are just different ways to say the same thing. Play Veliguard made me feel the same way I do when playing HALO or Mortal Kombat. No player input in regards to the story or character relations. You're just along for the ride. If it was a roleplaying game, I would be allowed to deny anyone joining my team, but I can't. Rook is always meant to be friends with everyone, even if I would never want to. NOT an rpg
I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of Taash's intended characterisation. Or, if you are correct, the writers have failed in a different aspect. One of two scenarios is possible. 1. The writers thought they were portraying a morally virtuous character. If this is true, they failed miserably. Taash refuses to refer to Emmrich by his name, telling him what he is (They specifically tell Rook that other people don't get to tell them who they are). Another example is the breaded cheese wand scene where Bellara takes the last one and Taash has no problem with Bellara doing push-ups to apologise for eating something for which they have no claim. 2. If Taash was meant to be portrayed as unlikeable, the writers were grossly incompetent at framing their actions and statements as such. You can't contradict them at all or call them out for being an asshole. There is nothing more frustrating than a character who behaves like a horse's ass but doesn't get their comeuppance in the story, or at least have someone call them out for it.
It's like they couldn't decide if they wanted to play Taash straight or as a joke when writing them, so they kinda made them this weird Frankensteins monster of both! And as you say, if they were 100% serious with Taash, they failed spectacularly in writing a character you could both take seriously and like at the same time, but if they meant for Taash to be a joke, it was the same type of joke as when someone says some outrageous stuff, and when someone challenges them on it, they fold and say it was just a joke to try and save face... Like most other things in the game, they tried to do everything, but instead ended up with nothing of substance as a result...
I'm gonna paste some things I wrote about Taash from another comment and build upon them: We know from a Ghil Dirthalen Q&A that she is canonically the youngest companion, being in her early 20s. We know she's never had a real romantic relationship from her romance scene. We see that she still lives with her mother, who has subdued her personality in a major way, and that she still lashes out at her like a teenager. It all clearly reads like someone who hasn't finished maturing; like someone who was, in a way or another, very sheltered throughout their life and never really learned how to do social interaction properly. Ultimately, it has nothing to do with "moral virtuousness". This is not an evil or an immoral character. It's an immature one. Still sucks that you can't push back against them much as Rook in order to correct some of the perspectives brought on by their immaturity, but eh. I think it is clearly depicted as a childish character.
@@failureoncommand The last time a character like this was introduced was Borderlands 3, and it was received equally if not more poorly than Taash. Plenty would argue that Ava singlehandedly ruined their experience being exactly that, an immature, selfish little shit that the player had no agency to simply shoot in the face. It's both a hallmark of poor writing and preachiness both. The argument then was similar to what you're positing now, that a child cannot be expected to have a modicum of maturity or sense, infantilizing a character that for all intents and purposes should be more mature than their years due to their circumstances, and by extension ruining immersion irreparably. The counterargument is simple; if they were that immature in this setting, they would be dead.
T(r)aash is a self-insertion by the writer of the character, who is Trans. I always make fun of people who self-insert themselves into games for lacking imagination. Asmongold for example self-inserts himself into almost every game plays. He plays human male and for the most part, warrior if possible because that is what he would imagine himself to be if he could. I also have an agenda when I make my characters. I make them nice to look at. this means, I mostly play female characters, because if I'm gonna spend over 100 hours staring at a characters behind, it might as well look good. However, I'm gonna make a male dwarf commoner in my next Origin playthrough and play it the most evil way possible with 1 exception: the dog gets to live :) no hurting dogs ok? And yes, I realize this means making Morrigan into a healer as Wynnie will eat dirt as soon as I get to the mage tower as I plan to recruit the templars. I plan to exile Alistair and side with Bhalen and the werewolves and yes I'll destroy the ashes too but trick Leliana into staying :D (you can do that, but wynnie will find out and leave if she is in your party)
@failureoncommand Taash is 100% autistic. I felt so much like Taash as you describe. Everyone loves taking her out of context and focusing on the cringe but to be fair. I think the op is also right because 100% the human writer Taash is inspired off of has no idea he is autistic. Many such cases
The only way I could bring myself to stomach finishing this walking abortion was to make a Disney-princess Rook, permanently slot Bellara in the party, always pick the comedic dialogue option, reject any direct links or reminders to the franchise (no Grey Warden or Qunari party members), skip any dialogue that pertains to the OG lore, and immerse myself in the belief that this was a perfectly playable 8/10 score Pixar-licensed generic fantasy mobile RPG developed by Netease and ported to PC by Bilibili. Oh, and brain myself on a streetside curb to forget everything I knew about Dragon Age.
" this was a perfectly playable 8/10 score Pixar-licensed generic fantasy mobile RPG developed by Netease and ported to PC by Bilibili. " ....... this!!!! yeah, this was a port of a switch or mobile game. keep clicking X till enemy dead. ooooo flashy neon colors
"In Veilguard everyone seems to know everything." This is exactly what happens in Paw Patrol, which our kid stopped watching when she was 5 because it was too basic for her.
Anticlimactic.The whole game. It's an extremely mediocre game, which misses all the great potential the previous games left, in its effort to target...who? Younger people? Stupider people? Not an ounce of respect for the fans who've been playing in this universe since 2009. It's not worthy to being called Dragon Age. I am beyond heartbroken that the DA IP seems to have come to such an awful end.
What did tickle me wrong is that elves were spirits. In DAI while Solas said spirits are sentient beings very close to humans, they are also very different, beings of singular purpose (even when twisted into demons), and that elves lived together with spirits before the Veil. It never felt like the "spirits become humans en masse" transition was organically there besides exceptions like Cole. Plus the "they killed and neutered Titans to make themselves bodies" just makes elves an even more disgusting faction, coupled with the whole Evanuris plot they are a comically evil race of selfish twats. They didnt actually live in harmony with the world, they moulded the world, and let their leaders to even worse things.
The worst offender for me is the story! Despite dealing with elven gods, rituals, and an impending apocalypse, it all feels so small! Rook is one of most boring player characters because he has to grit or edge and is forced into what the developers want instead of giving the players actual choice!
So you expect a gritty and dark story where your character can go either good or villainy from a studio that is based in California? I dont think they have that in them mate and you have not followed the situation in USA at all, honestly thas on you...
@@Dotalol123I don't fault people for wishing that, even though it is the lingering echos of mistaken nostalgia for a developer that lost its way more than a decade ago.
@@Bluelyre Californians will never let you to choose evil talk points in a video game because then you will get tools to be mean to alphabet people, im sorry but that's never gonna happen, its opposite of everything they believe in. Im not faulting anyone im telling you how it is...
I agree with everything except Varric stuff & the executors I wasn’t moved by this reveal cause it just ended up denying the time to actually mourn Varric over course of the game and he doesn’t even do anything with this twist. It doesn’t progress the story. And I does break my suspension of disbelief that nobody like ever talks about Varric being dead in front of Rook, esp with how interconnected Varric is as a character. Like alongside characters you mentioned he knows, he’s also the cousin of Maeveris Tilani’s dead husband. Varric even says she’s last of his family and they’re close. So fact Mae doesn’t even address this connection not try to seek answers or details or emotional support on the death of someone who was once her cousin-in-law & outright close family is bizzare. It just ends up ruining Varric as a character for me cause it feels disrespectful to his presence throughout the series. This is not a two hour movie with a fixed narrative like the 6th sense. This is supposed to be an RPG with tons of dialogue & choices. It also comes from a series of intricate relationships that are pre established. The executors to me do undermine agency of past villains & these figures aren’t interesting. It just feels like yet another betrayal from this game in a franchise I’ve been in love with for over 10 years
Drove me absolutely INSANE that Varric is in the Fade and doesn't mention Hawke or Bartrand being there (depending on choices you made in past games obviously). How much more impact would that goodbye have had if he'd just mentioned he has to go because he has a brother to apologise to, or a best friend to cause trouble with?? Such a dumb missed opportunity 😢😢
54:23 This is what honestly pissed me off the most because the Tapestry is an amazing thing that Bioware did and I spent countless hours mixing story choices and making different world saves.
I didn’t care about the art, the gender politics, or the combat. What made this game hot garbage for me was the horrible writing and pg Pixar bs. It was insulting. If they ever make another DA (and I don’t think they will) they should not bring back a single person that worked on this game. This game wasn’t made for adults, it was made for tweens.
The point here is Dragon Age: The Veilguard nor Mass Effect Andromeda were made for existing BioWare fans. They were made for a much younger new audience. It’s not made for their existing fans.
Problem is this was made for a current young audience that lives on cancel culture. If this were made for the young audience of the 00s it would be a good game, but tweeners are so quick to ban and cancel stuff the game tries so hard to not offend anyone and it feels stale and inhuman, like skillup said with HR in the room
@@AeschylusShepherd to be honest veilguard should've been made for the veteran players the next game could've been made differently because veilguard was the finale
It's even worse with picking choices. The choices say exactly what will happen, then we get text above saying the exact same thing in a different way. After picking a choice it, it says it again on the side. Talking about bashing my head against the wall.
Technically the people working on mass effect helped to make this game as well since the DA team was behind and nearly all the original developers were either fired or left the studio.
lol, about Taash's dialogue: "yeah, she is meant to be childish", her dialogue is meant to suck... You-, you get how that is worse right? As for the vilains, hard disagree on that one: they have the *potential* to be better than Corypheus, which is already introduced in a DLC at the end of DA2 too, but that potential is never seized upon. None of their lines or plans hit like Corypheus and his voice actor. Where is the emblematic line like :"Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty" from these elven non-gods? Centuries of lore and strife and you get none of that from them, not even a hint. They are, at best, at the very best, generic. And that's not praise in my eyes.
Concerning Taash's dialogue... I do think that that is NOT worse It's an immature character; do you want all your characters to be fully well-rounded adults with 0 flaws and issues? In regards to the villains... Can't deny that nothing quite hits like those Corypheus lines. But the issue with Corypheus is that he mostly felt un-present. In that sense, Ghil and Elgar'nan at least had him beat. Additionally, we got some hints that expanded upon them in codex entries and through that tree in the Crossroads, but maybe you missed those. You are right, however, that they had a lot of wasted potential and a chance to be infinitely more memorable.
@@failureoncommand I'm fine with flaws in a character; less so when it is coming through as abrasive and annoying all the time. The excuse that they are purposefully made that way by the writers is no victory in my book. I didn't have the same issues with Stern or Iron Bull, despite openly disagreeing with them at times in game. But I'm guessing this might be more of a personal pet peeve of mine: I had the same issue with Serah in DA:Inquisition, where talking to her and the consequences of her actions was met with scorn.
I'm just gonna reply to myself about my thoughts regarding the rest of the video: Unsurprisingly, I'm amongst those that took offence at the secret after ending credits scene. Simply put, how could one not take offence at it when the writers of the Veilguard, up to that point, failed to pull me into their story, or even their writing up until then? How could I take anything but poorly? Coming out days later to explain that, "no really, this is what we really meant" kinda shows they didn't do a good enough job in the first. That, plus the fact this game disregards previous choices, ignores the world the players have through their actions for more than a decade through the three previous games, made feel as if they really wanted to invalidate the past player experience. This is more consistent with what they did throughout the entire game, rather than a massive subtle twist. But clearly, the game had already lost well before that point, I didn't see the last act as anything "amazing" that redeem the game, and the reveal about Varrick's condition felt clever... as long as you don't think about. But then you realise that they killed a fan favorite character in the first five minutes of the game. Again, it all comes back to this "tabula rasa" of everything past and why I couldn't read any plot point, any story element as anything but insulting after a while, 'cause it all pulls in the same direction: screw the past. In that regard, the conclusion at the end of the video, the hypocrisy of it all, is masterfully done and on that, I couldn't agree more. Well done! Claiming to honour past stories but instead having ripped them to shreds really is what this game is all about in the end...
I could accept losing a lot of choices at the start of the game, but losing the impact of the well of sorrows and the choice of the Divine just makes so much of that work feel empty. The abysmal writing choices sink so many promising ideas amid a solid-enough combat system through a good handful of beautiful environments.
A little factoid. Solas's theme is written by Trevor Morris changed a bit by Zimmer but Zimmer didn't compose it. Also, if you get interactions with Morrigan you can hear soundtrack from Inquisition as well. Generally speaking Zimmer is overrated as a composer. No soundtrack stood up for me to remember. On the other hand I still relisten soundtracks to Inquisition. Forever epic.
Personally, I have always liked the music of every Dragon Age (tho I always hated that Inquisition didn't have battle themes for common mobs). But the music in Veilguard? I found it VERY disappointing and generic. And some of them felt not Dragon Age at all.
I disagree with the whole Zimmer overrated notion; I think he and his team are rightfully top-tier composers. Obviously, I would have preferred Trevor Morris. As I said in the video, the music wasn't as memorable here, and nothing came close to making me feel the way Solas's theme did.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Zimmer is overrated. I would rather suspect that Bioware's instructions were poor. They are responsible for giving the composer all the important information so that he understands what kind of music it should be.
You know what? Yeah, you are right. They repeated so many times during marketing campaign how they don't want to lower themselves down to meaningless one-liners and cameos in regards to custom world state only to give us most generic version of those one-liners and cameos. Pinnacle of hypocrisy indeed.
it feels like terrible fan-fiction. Instead of allowing for mystery, it tries to over-explain everything. I won't play it, and to me the series is done. I won't revisit it, and I won't run a Dragon Age RPG campaign, as I had previously planned.
I think the over-explaining is meant to be pay-off, which I don't mind. I just wish it was executed better. As for running a Dragon Age RPG campaign... Veilguard isn't making me abandon MY campaign. I've taken liberties in what I've adapted and the direction of things. You can do the same. Thedas remain to be a very fascinating setting, Veilguard aside.
I think the sentiment that ALL of the companions need to deal with their stuff is very lame and just a nice way for the game to say to the player that Companion Quests need to be done. They all have their quests to be dealt with but Lucanis is the one that fucked up when it was his time to shine. Hes the only character that is hinted at that the others are truly on guard for, saying they'll put him down if they need to. Even Taash having identity issues never puts them in a "I just cant defeat the gods because Im confused!" moment. Lucanis should have had story tied missions that you help him either deal with Spite or send him packing.
20:30 on the note of environments, yeah, there's a LOT of that. Lava underwater with zero explanation. Darkspawn literally like 50 feet from an open door in Kal-Sharok that just wait for YOU specifically to be there. Open flowing lava in Kal-Sharok that... is supposed to be a light, I think? Oh, and my personal favorite, the skybox in Treviso is literally rotated wrong, the sun is setting in the south and the moon is rising in the north.
Yeah, if the "gods" aren't actually gods but possess godlike power. The more practical term for them would be demi-gods. Which is what almost every fantasy setting calls mortals who have obtained godlike power.
That was really good breakdown. I want to add, that I didn't like Varrics story at all here. I mean, I'm biased, he is my favourite character, but also the fact, that no one reacts at all to him - at least give us a flashback after the reveal, what Rook forgot thanks to Solas.
I think missing a dwarven faction was a big miss, given how much more dwarf lore we get as an integral part of this story. The Lords of Fortune just kind of exist; I'd swap them for an actual visit to Kal Sharok in a HEARTBEAT. Plus the theme of the elves as an oppressed group finding out the reason for dwarves' dreamlessness would be sooooooo good if it were given the usual DA treatment.
i'm at 1:21:35 ... varric is a dwarf , dwarfs when they die return to the stone not in the veil... and btw... how can the force of the friendship with varric save yourself from a god's prison ? about the game, i was sad that it had such a mediocre feelings about that , and then it become the failure child in my eyes when the art concept for this game are so much more intriguing and beutiful .
Varric had been dead from the point where they "thwarted" Solas. That. Hurt. Yet, I have not even bought the game. I do not intend to. Learning about this from others and your assessment here, which I watched and listened to throughout the whole video, makes me loathe to even go near this paving over of the series' past. It feels like they cut down a forest to make a parking lot using the hearts of those of us who kept the dreams of more to come as asphalt.
Yeah sorry but "the game dialogue is fine, it's not the best"... I have to disagree here lol. Even you seem to immediately contradict yourself 'It's not so bad you guys... except when it is'. I get that you enjoyed it but it's still obnoxious.
It's complicated; it has it's issues, but I do ultimately believe it's acceptable. I usually like to regard dialogue on a relative basis. So in the case of Veilguard, relative to the tone of the game, the dialogue worked. It synced and flowed with the overall vibe. It's not the type of dialogue I love the most, but it is decent for what it is and what surrounds it.
It's an RPG made for people who don't like RPGs. I thought they stopped doing this over 15 years ago. By the way, Davrin and Bellara were also my favorites! I just couldn't get past Neve's hat. I know, I'm shallow.
I like RPG's and I like this game, but while you're at it, it's been 15 years of Bioware making more action oriented titles, so I don't understand all the salt over it being action rpg, like why are you surprised?
@@nocturnal03It is SUPPOSED to he a Dragon Age game. Dragon Age is an RPG series. Not an action game. Not to mention that Veilguard's writing is absolutely shit.
@@dookylove which is said everytime a new BioWare game comes out, along with admitting that a previously hated game was good (DA2 and inquisition say hello!)
My problem with the stylized is that I think it removes a bit of the seriousness of the situation, and the UI too removes a bit of the general tone of the game, it gets too cluttered sometimes, and I cant think for a reason why you would stop the player from playing to tell them they have concluded a 2 min quest. I hate the quest completed screen. The shiny giant loot chests that glow and have particles and have a shiny animation... its a bit too much. For me the gameplay for Warrior and Rogue doesnt make any sense, idk why everything looks like you can do magic while being a rogue crow assassin
This is absolutely the best review I've seen of The Veilguard. As someone who has also lived and breathed all things Dragon Age for the last 15 years, you've summarized exactly how I feel about this new game. A fair and critical review that discusses the real problems and not the online outrage. My biggest criticism of Veilguard's story/lore is that it mostly abandons one of Dragon Age's major themes and that is Religion. The Imperial Chantry, The Qun, & the Dalish beliefs should have played a much larger role in this game. Our party has that one conversation about disproving the Chantry, but that's all we get. I also just wish we could craft who Rook is and have real dialogue choices.
Thank you so much; I really wanted it to be clear that this whole review truly comes from a place of love for the franchise. And totally, the disregard for religion really diminished from the setting and the lore.
To me Bioware totally and completely disregarded the true fans of the Dragonage series by rushing through the making of Veilguard. This was supposed to be Dragonage 's swan song, it's coda, but instead f concentrating on all of the things that have made this series phenomenal they just hurriedly wrote out an abomination of a final story for Dragonage. They completely did a disrespectful service to Varric who is one of the most beloved characters of the series. Even if the voice actor no longer wanted to voice Varric, the writers should still have given Varric a more prominent Ole in Veilguard and when it came to time for his death they should have gave his ending more meaning and Varric should have gone out in a blaze of glory like the incredible hero he was and not the meaningless , unglorified death that Bioware gave him .
There are a number of major points that I disagree with you on, especially in regards to the writing acceptability of companion quests and dialogue, but I appreciate your thoroughness in addressing the issues with tone, lore, and ensoftening of the universe. You can feel the re-writes all over the place, because huge swaths of the game have contrived reasons for even being in the story (the Antaam joining the Evanuris, for example). To be blunt, I don't know how or if BioWare can course correct after this. DA2 was also divisive, but people accepted it over time. I don't really see Veilguard as getting that same treatment, and many of us in the longstanding audience are at the "fool me twice, shame on me" phase in our relationship with this franchise.
I do like the voice acting. I think it was professional all throughout. You have to cast aside the writing when you factor in the voice acting. If anything, Harding might have had the most annoying voice acting for me because it was so over-exaggeratory. But it was still acceptable.
The choices at the end of the game-Even those don’t really matter. If you’ve got everyone at HoV status and all the factions at max strength, there’s very little that can go wrong. After getting the good ending the first time, I reloaded and I actively tried to assign everyone to the worst jobs possible. Only one person died (other than the one person who always has to die) and it wasn’t even one of my companions. It was one faction leader.
Just because it was an intentional choice doesn't make it good or even good characterization. She's supposed to be a mature bad ass like iron bull. Instead she's a failed social media influencer with creepy and childish tendencies
Why is she supposed to be a mature bad ass like iron bull? Who said? It being intentional makes it a decent portrayal of a flawed character. Personal tolerance for these types of characters becomes a different matter entirely.
@failureoncommand that's her role in the team. It would be a portrayed character flaw if it was ever acknowledged as such. Noone calls it out or acts like her behavior is in needing of overcoming.
@unkemptjargon91 That's a fair point, but I think that's a byproduct of the tone, which seems so deathly afraid of confrontation (Rook can barely push back against anyone), as opposed to a direct testament to the writers' intent with the character.
@@failureoncommand Whilst true, I'm not sure that excuses the character per sé. After all, you want your characters to fit the tone of the story you are telling, and if the characterisation jeopardises the tone that is still a failure of the character. Thus you can still keep both characterisation and tone provided you add context within the story. For example: if Rook cannot push back on Taash, the mother should. The endline of their quest could well have had them grapple with the fact that, whilst flawed, their mother had good points about the need to conform to the view of others to avoid ending up alone, and that being shaped by someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. (this would in turn feed into the neglected 'found family' theme Veilguard tries to set up). Imagine a scene like the cheese wand, or someone misgendering Taash, only for them to let it go with a witty remark, something like "next time I want a cheese wand, you're paying". Not expecting others to immediately change, but showing the way forward. As is, the story neither has Taash change enough for many to accept it, nor so they justify the existing characterisation outside the implications of the backstory. If it was made clear that Taash has been sheltered by the Lords of Fortune and is not worldly at all, why is she going dragon-hunting alone, a job that all but demands people skills when navigating in foreign lands and cultures? Have her mention checking in with 'contacts' and have Isabela more explicitly being a mentor that handles the talking, and it becomes a fair bit more acceptable that she is as abrasive as she is. Ultimately, I find Taash to be an decent idea that then is somehow let down by lazy execution despite being a developer favourite based on the interviews.
I find the varric reveal to be one final insult to the player. Its a cheap trick to bait out emotion from the one character people actually care about in this game. Varric also has loose plot threads not wrapped up but he's plotbound to die and you can't save him. Dumb and lazy as hell.
Great video! I had so many issues with this game but nothing made me rage more than that preachy ending. Having Varric there in the clouds and that stuff about being grateful while they fired his writer really turned my stomach.
I feel like with only 5 more questions in CC, the game could have been way more impactful and less of a spit in the face to our previous world builds: - Was Hawke left in the Fade? - Did Hawke and Varric kill Bartrand? - Did Morrigan romance the Warden? - Did Isabella romance Hawke? - Who is on the throne of Ferelden? (Just to reference it in the dogsh*t codex would have been something at least). Let me know if you guys think of anymore. But I think those 5 would have made a huuuuuuge difference to us feeling like recurring characters were connected to our past games!! I wanted to feel GUILTY for saving Hawke all those years ago because now Varric has to walk the Fade alone!! Or bittersweet that he could find his brother and make things right. But they just don't even get a mention. So sad 😢
I do think there was previously a plan to have the Elven Gods be the corrupted old gods/archdemons or at least have them all be connected. Maybe not all the way back at the beginning of Origins but definitely by the time they finished Inquisition. That being said, the reveal could've been handled better regardless.
32:17 I'm happy that I'm not the only one!!!! Solas has proved it, Lore has proved it. What are they? "Gods" said by everyone!!! I could make memes out of this one alone!!!
I discovered myself watching to every spoiler from this game and not caring at all. Meaning I'm not interested in playing it. A shame and a disappointment for me, as an old Dragon Age fan who played every other game on Day 1 (and who loved Dragon Age II, possibly my favorite of the series just because of the ambiance of that game).
I'm personally on the "DA 2 was massively over-hated train". It has huge faults, but with the production process for that game, it's a miracle we got something so narratively rich.
I’ll be honest the hate for this game can ruin it for you. It can tarnish your perspective. I still enjoyed playing this game, as long as you throw away your hope of the past to be reflected.
Of all the lore-butchering in this game, I really hate that apparently they basically imply Andraste was a host of Mythal. Like, seriously? I haven't played the game (and DEFINITELY don't want to now), but is there any long-reaching implication from this? Do the Chantries ever learn of it? And everything is due to the Elven deities? No Maker or anything? The Dragons were just tools? Such a bastardization of the lore EDIT: Watched the Lore Discussion part. They really just shat on Andrastianism and nothing even comes of it? Really seeing some Anti-Church sentiments thinly veiled there, wokists
it is not really lore butchering in this case it was sorted hinted back in origins given their similar backstories along with one of the gifts or codex entries I forget which of the two alluding to andraste getting her power from being a mage.
@@majicalpandatech Her being a mage isn't that much of an issue (their whole belief is that magic exists to serve man, not the other way around) But her being a vessel for Mythal can imply that she was essentially "serving" magic. It's an unceremonious way to attack the Chantry's beliefs, and that's fine, but it just feels kind of... tasteless? You'd think the Divine should be the first person to learn about such a thing, that it would be a pretty huge deal? Maybe there's missing context? They don't explore the idea any further and just leave it at: "Oh, Andraste is actually Mythal, too. Oops. Looks like the Chantry was wrong. Aaaanyways..."
It’s interesting that you think it’s a no-brainer for an uninvolved Rook to save Treviso. I thought it was a no-brainer for an uninvolved Rook to save Minrathous, if for no other reason than that significantly more lives are at stake in Minrathous. Minrathous is the largest city in Thedas. Treviso isn’t even the largest city in Antiva. Also, the fact that Minrathous does have a standing army is exactly why it’s more dangerous for Minrathous to fall into the wrong hands… more so than it already has.
Yeah, this could have been a very good decision to give to the player. All the writers should have done is actually run with the consequences, which they didn't do at all even though they attempted it to a degree: If you save Minrathous, your overall position should have been strengthened massively. Maybe you get the Tevinter army to save Weisshaupt or something like that. All at the cost of Treviso being completely razed. On the other hand, if you save Treviso, the People of Minrathous should be fine, the city has the best defences on the entire continent after all. But you hand the Imperium to your enemies, which should make getting a good ending much more difficult. Thats how i thought the game would play out when the choice came up, the framework is clearly there.
@bonusvampirus Good point! I guess the way I thought about it was that Rook was always going to get to the other city eventually (as already happens in the game, but you arrive when it's too late). SO to me, it made sense to START with Treviso because I presumed at the very least Minrathous could hold out until I got there.
Out of all the reviews I saw and read about this game, yours is the first one that truly resonated with me, thanks to our similar relationship to the setting and the lore as a whole. You have my sincere gratitude for talking about this game in a way and adressing things many other reviews missed or simply disregarded. I am so tired of hearing all the hate about this game while only repeating the same things over and over. So thank you for that and be assured, that I and many other people share your sadness and pain. Let's carry it together.
Dont like what they did with the blight. They took a horrifying force of evil and corruption... and turned it into a saturday morning cartoon villain you would expect to see in a he-man episode. Overall though they completly sandblasted all the edges off dragonage with this one. Its like taking a slasher horror movie and turning it PG13... the whole thing feels so sanitized and corporatized to make the whole thing more advertiser friendly.
I don't see how tentacles and nasty looking exploding cysts translate to Saturday morning cartoon. At least you actually see things look corrupted unlike Origins where supposed tainted land looks just like every other brown spot you'd find in Fereldon
@@Drums_of_Liberation Origins had the brood mothers and they clearly explained how darkspawn are produced in the most horrible way imaginable, fleshy growths only apearing at the heart of corruption and people that get infected turning into emaciated ghouls before suffering a death so painfull that the soldiers at ostagar tell you its a mercy to just kill an infected person Veilguard? Oooh spooky glib tentacles that turn peoples eyes red and cover them with black goo! And you can actually save people aslong as you kill the head vampi.. err the "god" controlling the blight... CONTROLLING THE BLIGHT... i liked it more when the blight was suposedly a divine punishment for humans greed and avarice. Now its just a bioweapon that creates flumpy saturday morning cartoon goons. Ive seen more terrifying designs in power ranger villains! Thats some "corruption" shit on the level of World of warcraft! Infact it literally is.. thats how the "old gods" in world of warcraft corrupt shit. Dragon age reduced to World of Warcraft slob...
I'D argue Inquisition had better verticality. Consider that veilguard doesn't even allow you to take fall dmg you can only go down 2 floors or it the jump resets. Also I feel inquisitor could jump higher. veilgaurd, you can't roll off a cliff cause they add bumper rails.
This was such an amazing overview of the game, and you took the words right from my brain and expressed them in a coherent manner. I agree with everything you said. That is rare for me to say, haha. Your love of the story and world definitely shined through, and I was so let down. I have to say as someone who has played an Elf Mage as my first character EVERY time (except DA2 of course), this game was such a let down. As a new player, I'd have enjoyed it more -- but I know for a fact I should have been called "knife ear", talked down to, and I would have corrected ANYONE who dared called them Gods...not continued to do it myself. Sigh. I was OK with the need to ignore most of my past choices, given this was a different area but there was absolutely no reason to break apart my spirit by telling me how all these places I worked hard to save, were just completely destroyed and abandoned. Hearing people spill Grey Warden secrets that took me years to learn myself in casual conversation just shook me. Watching Davrin live when my own warden sacrificed themselves made my eyes widen, but I could accept it as a change with the blight -- however, there are so many things you can accept with a quick line of "oh, the powerful mages have changed the rules". The romances were so awful. I cannot even touch those, knowing how strong they were in the past and coming off playing BG3? Oh, Bioware, it is clear the people who wrote/worked on this or had the final say in these decisions never actually played.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It really is sad, and you've put into words more and more of the wasted opportunities here and the insults to veterans of the franchise. Glad you enjoyed the video, and thank you for the kind words!
No they didn't, actually. The entire premise of Andromeda that was also marketed was that the expedition was launched before the Reaper invasion, it's not dropped on the player as a surprise in the middle of the game. Sure, the Milky Way is way too far to be consequential in any way for Andromeda but they didn't just canonise "the Reapers won" in a throwaway line, instead they just left the events totally open. For a self-contained story like the ME trilogy, I think it was an alright choice to leave the conclusion of it open for the player's own headcanon and take the series into another direction. The execution was a train wreck, but at least it's better than go "by the way all your previous efforts in this massive story were entirely useless and everything is destroyed now" in the middle of a story.
You've gone deeper into the franchise and explained a lot of parts of the game that I didn't previously knew. I only saw one part of the game instead of seeing the whole product. I'm so sorry that you experienced that disappointment. I see that it's way deeper than any kind of writing agenda someone has. Fundamentally changing the story has crushed this game and ignoring the past games.
They had so much plot with rhe elevs vs the humans. Remnants of mages v templars. They even added to the dwarf lore from the dlcs but squashed into Harding's plot. A surface dwarf. She should've been an advisor especially since she had the connections.
For me, the voice acting was a very mixed bag. Forgetting the dialogue and tone, the VAs for Bellara and Lace delivered their lines with a lot of enthusiasm and charisma. Unfortunately, along with all of Taash's other issues, their VA was just terrible sometimes. Even flubbed lines seemed to make their way in. e.g. the infamous dinner scene with their mother, she trips up during the "So I'm supposed to struggle [odd pause] with who I am? ...".
The director in charge of this department did really horrible job at this. Throughout the game, a lot dialogue are read wither with no emotion or emotions that are really off putting on top of the already bad writing.
@mikeydflyingtoaster I dunno; I felt like Taash's voice acting was fine relative to the kind of character she was meant to portray (young, childish, socially inept). I don't know what happened with that one dinner scene line though.
I have mad respect for your capacity to find things to like and/or tolerate in this game aside from nice graphics and it not crashing. Special note goes to your voice, it's got good flow and nice tone and made the length of the video very palatable (though I tend to like longform essays anyway so I was sold from the get-go lol) I wish I could be more patient with the things I used to love being completely dismantled and set on fire but alas, I'm old and surly and the first tattoo I got when I was 18 (Grey Warden on my arm) burns psychosomatically when I'm reminded of what happened to Dragon Age as a series (#Dalish Elves 4 Lyfe!!)
In a sense, I've invested too much in this franchise not to have hope or some modicum of positivity. Ya know? And thanks a ton! Glad you enjoyed the ride. On a different note, don't let Veilguard ruin the significance of that tattoo. This was a good franchise once; let it be a reminder of that.
As a newcomer to this series(a friend of mine recommended this series after LOVING bg3) I felt in love with having consequences of my choices from previous games and even replaying 50 hours of inquisition when I realised that SPOILER WARNING FOR INQUISITION chosing who to save in the fade could of been MY alistair the one from 2 games ago and the previous character, that alone made me replay the game again just to feel connected to the history i had chosen the history i had built. The same friend that recommended this series and I were talking about replaying all 3 games again to have a new save with diferent choices just to see what would change and worst part was since i was playing from my friends library from steam I didnt get to chose even the 3 things from inquisition and this time i couldnt care less, almost dropped the game since combat was getting repetitive my choices in game didnt really matter but saw that luality(bg3 streamer) said that the ending was really really good have a chance and honestly i dont know if it was for good or bad cause it made me hate it less and be more dissapointed as you said on the video about what could it have been, the wasted potential this would of been an failuare as an "independent" story of DA, as an ending from the last 3 games ESPECIALLY inquistion was one of the biggest dissapointents playing games ever even after just having played this series 1 year ago I cant even imagine what has been for every1 that has been playing them since DAO. PD: Loved your video and ur channel :D
Wow, I finished the entire video, it was very cool and interesting, your tone of voice helped a lot too. My comment is going to be quite long, so I apologize in advance. I was entertained the entirety of your video. More than with the game itself 😂. I just want to point out some things. 1)The marvel/disneysification of the franchise, is precisely that Hollywood ish tone that you are mentioning. I also played the game, and personally , I don't think that many of the scenes and writing that are criticized by others are presented out of context at all, they truly are that bad 😂. 2) I totally disagree (probably the ONE thing I am going to really argue about your video) with what you say about Taash. She wasn't intended to be portrayed as an annoying teenager, she IS NOT even a teenager in the first place, she is an adult, and a very bad written self insert. And it's very obvious to me that the writer wanted desperately for the player to agree and empathize with her completely, but it was so badly and forcefully written that it backfired. 3) I am one of those who think the post credit scene ruins a lot of things and it's total BS. And the John Epler's statement you presented at the end looked to me, mostly, as damage control and mere excuses because of the backlash. Exactly as when the first trailer dropped and almost everyone was mad, and then the devs came out saying that they didn't agree with that first trailer either, and that it didn't represent the tone of the game at all, and then after playing the game I can see the trailer actually portrayed the tone of the game perfectly. 4) Davrin and Bellara were also my favorite, characters too. Tho, in my case they were also the ONLY ones I liked. Everyone else was annoying, boring, bland to me (Emmerich was okayish, but, again, he and his entire quest felt like something coming from Disney, despite the great potential with the spirit sacrifices). Davrin is an amazing character, he deserved a better game. Bellara surprised me because while at first glance she may be the most Disneyish character, she is actually very mature. I had her in the battle at Weisshaupt and her seriousness in that mission was very refreshing. 5) I had the same problem with Inquisitor's voice, I also used the male British one. Tho, I actually wondered if the actor himself was maybe older and his voice was deteriorating. I don't know 🤔. 6) What you said at the end is precisely how I felt, EXACTLY like that, I also found myself devastated when the epilogue slides came and they said they were grateful with the past stories, I felt like if I was being laughed at, even insulted. They totally disrespected them. I was already tired of the game by the end, but when the last letter of the Inquisitor came, I was furious, for me that was the last straw. After that I just rushed through the game, I didn't even enjoy the final missions, despite objectively they can considered the best part of the game. While doing the final missions I was just thinking: What happened to the people of Southern Thedas, and especially Ferelden? What happened to my Hero of Ferelden, my favorite protagonist? What happened to her Warden lover Alistair? What happened to the Vigil's Keep Wardens like Nathaniel and Oghren? Whay happened to Hawke's friends (my Hawke died in Inquisition)? I didn't even care when Harding sacrificed herself. I would have preferred to see Nathaniel and Oghren instead of those lame characters, Evka and the Ratatouille guy (and I know they come from the comics). I just wanted to finish the game and uninstall it (which I did). At least I was able to punch Solas again in the face and give him the ending he deserved while he left screaming he was a GOD and showing his hypocrisy 😂. Overall, this game was very disappointing to me, worst Dragon Age ever, and even as a standalone ARPG it's very generic as you said. I was left with a sense of guilt and revulsion for having contributed to the sales of this game. In my book this game IS NOT CANON, my Dragon Age story ends when my Inquisitor and his team defeat Corypheus, my Hero of Ferelden found the cure for her calling and Alistair's, and Varric continued as Viscount of Kirkwall, always supported by Aveline, while always remembering Hawke's sacrifice. (Definitely I am not playing Trespasser ever again 😂) Thank you for this video, it was AMAZING, there are other things I agree and disagree with your video, but in the end that's what opinions are about. But, at least, I can say with all confidence that a lot of us, fans of Dragon Age, agree that this game was very disappointing, especially because of the 10 years of waiting, the great and wasted potential of Trespasser's ending, and the disrespect to the past games.
First off, thanks a ton for watching the whole thing! I really appreciate that, and all the kind words. Warms my heart, truly. As for your thoughts: 1) Yeah I suppose that's true as far as disneyfication/marvel-ification = generic hollywood, but I felt it didn't get as bad as those two are. 2) I don't know, man. I'm pretty sure she was. We know from a Ghil Dirthalen Q&A that she is canonically the youngest companion, being in her early 20s. We know she's never had a real romantic relationship from her romance seen. We see that she still lives with her mother, who has subdued her personality in a major way, and that she still lashes out at her like a teenager. It all clearly reads like someone who hasn't finished maturing; like someone who was, in a way or another, very sheltered throughout their life and never really learned how to do social interaction properly. Her writing sincerely didn't feel forced to me. And I don't know why you believe Patrick Weekes wrote her as a self-insert. Is it because Weeks uses they/them pronouns? I have more good will for them than that; they've done some good stuff for both Tevinter Nights and Inquisition. 3) Agree to disagree. I just personally never interpreted that way, but maybe you have a point in its interpretation leaning towards it disregarding all that was built up. 4) Davrin and Bellara are awesome! Though I did feel like Davrin's backstory in regards to his Dalish roots needed a lot of work; we meet that Dalish uncle of his in a house in the middle of Arlathan and no one else from his clan. It's weird that his uncle guy was alone anyways, and that he lives in a static location (as opposed to wandering like the Dalish). As for the other companions, I'd say all were fine to me. I enjoyed the campiness of Emmerich and his story; I feel like DA has had campy characters like this before, maybe not as much, but in a similar vein. It amused me. If anything, I feel like Neve and Harding were the most underwhelming to me, but still decently acceptable. 5) I remember seeing a reddit post that analyzed the game's audio files and found that his recordings were fine initially (but maybe im misremembering). Though given that he has some lines that sound normal, and given that the abnormal lines sound like they've been artificially pitched down, idk if it is an actor thing. But who knows. 6) Totally, man. Totally. Fortunately, I managed to immerse myself enough to enjoy the ending before eventually being re-hit by all these realizations. But it is a major disappointment nevertheless. Calling Antoine Rataouille guy is insane lol. Genuinely got a chuckle out of me. While I miss Oghren and Nathaniel and all our other Warden allies... It's been around 20 years since the events of the 5th blight. Many of these Wardens are nearing their calling... As for canon... I'm sticking to how I've adapted things in my D&D Dragon Age campaign lol. Maybe that sounds like I have a big head, but meh. I've invested too much into this franchise; I'm still waiting on Bioware to email me asking for my help. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! This comment was a blast to read, seriously.
@@failureoncommand. Thanks to you. 😁 It was a very cool video. The hour passed quickly, believe me. 👍 In the end, all of us are fans who love Dragon Age, and it's very sad that this happened with Veilguard.
This is an excellent video, and I deeply appreciate your neuanced and very thorough analysis. I know exactly how you feel about the franchise and following it for years, entirely enamored by its lore and characters, only to feel so conflicted and disappointed by much of veilguard. Well done. Best review I've seen (and I've seen quite a few now).
But... The Evanuris being the so called old gods have been hinted on for quite some time. People have theorized about it for years. Small hints have been given in earlier games. Anyhow, Veilguard feels like the sequel Star Wars movies at this point: kill off what came before just because. A betrayal of the older games. Southern Thedas, as in where the other games have taken place, is more or less gone? Nope, not okay with that. That is how bad writers are handling things. Heck, not even the Diablo universe have screwed things up that badly, and they have even killed off a very beloved character in Diablo 3. Also, if I want to play an action RPG, I'd rather play D3 rather than ever play DA:V. At least there, the gameplay is good.
Similar, but different, as the previous comment said. DA:V was so much more of a betrayal than ME:A was, I say as a fan of both series. ME:A didn't completely ruin the lore and areas of the previous games. DA:V did.
@@arkeshn729 yeah after I finished the video, i took DA out of my wishlists and started prepping myself for how the ME reboot, if utilizing the same writing where player choices dont have real weight (fallout 4) I need to be ready to be disappointed...
I'd say it's closer to the original unpatched ending to ME3. It just takes everything you've invested into the series and makes you go "what's the point?"
The veilguard is the first dragon age game I have played. And I was genuinely disappointed when I found out how cool the lore and world building originally was. I adore cool fantasy stories and the veilguard just didn’t feel right. It’s not even entirely bad which makes it much sadder, this game could have been great. The ideas are there, the execution and writing just really missed.
as a city elf enjoyer, thank you for finally bringing up actual criticisms that i've had from a fan perspective and not like the grift channels who just cry 'broke cuz woke' who have clearly never played the series, i actually liked the game but you brought up all the criticisms i've had as well
Am I the only one who wonders how the D&D statblock of the Hurlock Alpha has 150 hit points with 12d8 + 48 HD calc, when the max possible for that should be 144? Unless it is a standard average calculation (102) and they gain their bonus from Con twice somehow? Forever DM here.
Lol I was waiting for this comment. I run a meaty, high-difficulty campaign, so I am prone to buffing monster HP on the regular, and sometimes, I don't remember/don't bother to edit the corresponding hit die and con bonus.
Thank you for your video! Sorry, but I have to use my native language and hope that Google translates my following speech right. Пусть я и не согласна с вами во всем, но я точно могу сказать одно - слова из конца игры так же вызвали во мне ощущение усталости и дикого разочарования. Я прошла Veilguard за 70 часов и никогда еще мне не было так жалко своего времени. Я злилась на мир первые 7 часов, потом дико смеялась и тыкала любые диалоговые опции еще часов 10, торговалась сама с собой, чтобы найти хоть что-то позитивное, впадала в апатию на заданиях напарников и отрицала выборы без выбора. А на финальных словах пустила слезу от досады и разочарования. Но думаю, что я сейчас я готова принять тот факт, что моя любимая вселенная изменилась. Нынешний ее вид не для меня. Спасибо еще раз за ваш труд. Пойду играть в Origins.
Re: the outro Nah man, I appreciate you analyzing this game to this degree WITHOUT completely rashing & razing it to the ground. It serves as a good, more even-handed take on things to listen to, as the ears of a non-DA person. Besides, despite the past illness how much you're emotionally invested in things readily shined through
The Executors are Bioware and the game developers. David Gaider said that there is a massive plot secret to Dragon Age... I think the writers are creatively bankrupt to do something stupid where the entire world of Dragon Age is really a game.
On the hair: it’s your pc or your settings. The hairstyles look absolutely gorgeous, as well as the physics. Yours look stiff as if you’re on a low setting.
I realize I have the option for more "realistic hair" turned off in my setting, but I wasn't really commenting on the quality or the physics. I talked about the hairstyles themselves. Barely any are period-appropriate, and a lot are outright ugly. It has nothing to do with graphics.
I do get how insulting it is to have the south of Thedas basically wiped out. I reallh do feel it too. However, I am a little sympathetic because this is a consequence of having the previous games be so open-ended. There is a reason DA games always move geographically - they simply cannot revisit old locations that we can substantially change and account for our choices. So something has got to give. Either we get something like this or we simply never visit these old locations again. I know it sucks, but the first three games are as much to blame for this for setting up the problem as Veilguard is for its, admittedly inelegant, solution.
As a fan of the franchise from its inception, Veilguard is the embodiment of Kylo Ren. . "Let the past die: kill it if you have to." . Unfortunately, the long dev times between installments make me feel that this will happen to ALL beloved franchises. Devs are forced to chase new players to replace the portion of the player base that might have aged out/moved on from the IP. An IP becomes a franchise only if you can keep it in the public eye.
I've been thinking about writing a lengthy review of this game. I've never once made a video essay, but as someone who has always been so connected to this franchise, I have so much I need to say. That being said, this video scratched a lot of itches that I couldn't reach myself, and I really appreciate you taking such a deep dive into this game that so many other reviews lack.
While I'm quite happy I got to scratch a little bit of that itch for you, I do still encourage you to go all in and make a video essay. I'm sure you have a lot more interesting opinions to bring to the table, and finding a creative outlet like that through videos is pretty awesome. I'd watch it.
... The combat is a massive downgrade from Inquisition. It seems rather disingenuous to say it has depth when all the earlier games had way more stuff.
Hard disagree. I don't think Inquisition's combat was better than this. They're different at the core to begin with, so it's hard to compare them, but I do believe whole-heartedly that Veilguard's is much more complex.
@failureoncommand It cannot be more complex, objectively. You have fewer spells and combat actions available, by an order of magnitude seemingly. You can't spec your companions how you want to spec them, which further reduces choice both in combat and in what companions you want to bring with you in the first place for narrative/dialogue reasons. You could switch to other companions in combat to make the best use of their abilities when you needed to. You don't have the tactical screen in Veilguard either, which while not being my favourite feature of Inquisition combat was still useful in a pinch, particularly when you wanted to contain enemies that were agro against your player character. And you could set the AI behaviour of companions, which frankly is a sorely needed feature in Veilguard given the micro you need to do with them. I guess my point is how can there be more depth when they've removed a large number of attack types and whole mechanics, yet have not replaced them with anything of the same scale?
@@failureoncommandInqusition had warriors and mages and used the armor system from divinity original sin 2, it as well had a tactical view but offender was that stupid healing mechanic of collecting limited healing potions. At higher levels it becsme a puzzle to figure out if you were to become screwed three hours later in game as there be no way to heal back the wounds.
And Taash's VA was there, too (which is essentially just me clowning on the forced "I have a deep voice because I want to sound more masculine and also I growl and hiss all the time because I'm part scaly" stuff lol)
There’s definitely a huge gender gap in the hair model responses. Women and non-binary people think they have tons of style and flair and options. Cis guys feel disappointed because they have to dig through the options to find common patterns from real life. But that’s part of the genre, and DA is embracing the fantastic, over the top style in its presentation now more than in the past.
Wait a second. The Evanuris started as powerful mages. They become gods. So Uldred was right in the first game? A mage is only the first step towards "something greater?" The cliche-ass villain line was RIGHT?!
This was a great conclusion. Thanks a lot for all your work, emotion and energy! I've also loved Dragon Age from the first game on. And I share many of your thoughts. All Solas-Parts were the best in the game for me. And - as you - I saw the quality-difference of the last act compared to the first two. Maybe, it was, because they worked on "The Dreadwolf" and changed the concept of the entire game "last minute"? Well - I could also talk hours about this topic
Talking Solas down with Minthara doesn't make much sense since the last time they met he murdered her and stole her power in order to enact these plans which are almost complete .
I loved your review. As a long time DA fan as well I HATED this game, everything you said was spot on! I LOATHED this game not so much because of its issues but more because this means the end of DA and the Bioware we knew and loved it 🥲 this thought even got me a bit emotional in my review 🥲 P.s. your voice is *amazing!* You sound like a seasoned grey warden! 😊🤩 🤺 🛡
Dragon Age the Failguard commits the ultimate cardinal sin, as Disney did with Star Wars, of pissing all over what came before it to suit its narrative. the game makes everything you did in Origins, awakening, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisiton pointless and undoes everything. None of the other games matter in the lore now. But to us fans, everything else but this game matters and that is the truth.
After replaying through the game, its actually surprsing how many times varrics fate is hinted at, everyone who does know him acts as if something more tragic happend while our character is uncomfortably casual about his death. And all the characters who never would of met him address him formally. The biggest hint is with the second inquisitor meeting when they mention solas killed someone close to them.
it's true... people who only play through it once or don't even make through their first playthrough are missing out. It becomes a lot more interesting on a second go around and you notice a lot more things when you have all the details. it really is hinted at quite a bit. on my first playthrough I could tell something was very wrong with him, but I figured it was that the lyrium dagger had weakened/poisoned him in some way and he was slowly dying, and that's why he wasn't getting better.
Fair enough, but it still doesn't justify the lack of commentary or responsivity from other important people in his life, like Harding, Morrigan, the Inquisitor, Isabela, Dorian, Mae, and so on.
@failureoncommand true... I agree. But also Rook does find out that Solas did something to them, some kinda magic manipulation to make Rook not realize the truth. Solas even admits to this. So maybe it was just a case of "selective hearing" on Rook's part and not that nobody actually mentioned it.
oh my. oH. WTF. I was so excited for this game to release? and? it's such a disappointment? starting from the very launch - the game loading time was 40 freaking minuets! mind you, my pc indeed clears the recommended specs. on the second launch it was 20-ish minutes. and then, clearing the sharers folder did help with this problem, buT WAIT! THERES MORE! playing prologue became a fewer dream of epileptic person, with all flashing lights and stripped lines. after clearing the prologue this issue disappeared istg I have no idea what and why. and then I couldn't bring myself to play this game after close to 2-ish hours, I've refunded it. aND WOOO BOY! SO glad I did! Thank you for the recap. I would surely be super angry and heartbroken with what this game became and my lost money o7
![The Complete Story of Destiny! From origins to Shadowkeep [Timeline and Lore explained]](/img/1.gif)
What annoys me the most is how literally everything is just ancient elves. The veil? Made by elves. The Blight? Made by elves. The Golde City? Made by elves. The Old Gods? Made by elves. The dwarves' inability to dream? Caused by elves. It shrinks the world to just cleaning up elven messes.
Racism against knife-ears is completely justified because if they ever get into power again they'll do something else that threatens to destroy the world.
Jup not to mention that in the end it's all destroyed or gone.
The blight GONE
Grey Wardens GONE
Ferelden GONE
Kirkwall GONE
And we all learn these things not even through a cool couple of cutscenes... No a 2 minute information dump by our inquisitor. Not even HOF!!! It's Morrigan! She can teleport anyone. Really, couldn't it be HOF or hof and the inquisitor.
Makes the whole elf discrimination aspect make much more sense tho lol
@@fenixchief7 And there isn't even elf discrimination to be seen in the game! (Or mage discrimination, though that probably has to do with the locations we visit). Really, no one has ever commented on elven Rook in a negative way in my playthrough. No one. Not even in Tevinter. He might as well be human.
@@FragLordNo it can't be the HOF because he's voiceless. Do you really want to see the uproar if BioWare gives the HOF a voice.
The HOF will never come back due to being voiceless and just a mess to deal with
I think the ultimate sin of this game is how it specifically, and intentionally invalidates almost everything you've ever done in the franchise.
It's one thing to have your decisions ignored, or somewhat retconned for the sake of the plot. Look at Mass Effect 2 for an example of BioWare kind of disregarding a lot of your choices and story build-up in the first game; in service of a different story they wanted to tell. I personally didn't like that decision, but the game itself was good enough to overcome my displeasure.
It's another thing entirely to have the authors of the lore we've been immersed in for years to say " None of that mattered. They're all dead. The cities and castles are destroyed. The only thing that matters is what we're showing you right now."
It's feels like genuine betrayal. I have a hard time coming up a decent analogy because it's just something you don't do when it comes to story telling or world building. Sure you can subvert expectations by having the bad guys win, or killing important characters, or even the world ending, but you don't do it all off-screen without involving the reader/player .
It would be like if Gorge R.R. Martin finally released the Winds of Winter, and in the prologue Theon explains how all of Westeros but the Iron Islands have been completely wiped out by the Others, and now the series is about Theon fighting the drowned god because they were the one controlling the Others all along.
It's a slap in the face to long-time fans. I could have forgiven most of the flaws of the game, but I can't forgive what really feels like a deliberate insult to the people most invested in the story, lore, setting and characters of Dragon Age.
I haven't even played the game, but this is how I have felt since I first found out about this spoiler. Just don't understand how they thought that older fans would actually like that. It makes me want to never ever play or even buy this game. Even pirating this game would be...no, I won't allow BW to do this to me. I played ME3. That was enough. This? This would be so much worse.
@@Elora445The thing is, ME3 still had save importing. The devs still went out of their way to directly involve characters from past adventures, have story moments that would pay off arcs from both prior games. The Zhu's Hope colonists, if you saved them in ME1, are able to work together like a hive mind while assisting with the Crucible due to their connection with the Thorian. And even if it's just a codex entry, that means something. It means you are having a real impact on the world. And as much as they didn't stick the landing in the final 30 minutes of ME3, they still made a huge effort to pay off as many decisions as they could during the whole rest of the runtime of the game.
Veilguard ditches that. Utterly. Nothing matters, Southern Thedas is gone, your decisions meant nothing, the 3 prior heroes left zero meaningful impact on Thedas. Literally the ONLY thing that matters is whether or not the Inquisitor was porking Solas. Isabella will ALWAYS be the leader of the Lords and ALWAYS have the same personality. Morrigan's child doesn't matter. Divine Victoria doesn't matter. Not even the other romance options matter for the Inquisitor. And we aren't even getting DLC to correct any of that, just a hard reset on the franchise, eat shit. This is not even on the same plane of existence as the ME3 ending. That was, "We had to make the game in 2 years and didn't have time to fix the ending. We really tried." This is, "We hate you. THIS is Dragon Age now. We had 6 whole years to make this, and deliberately decided to ditch the save importing and burn everything you care about. You will play OUR Dragon Age now. Enjoy your Marvel slop."
@@Enzar17
Indeed. But I followed the development for that game. I watched BW lie to people's faces, over and over. People counted their gathered points and realized that they wouldn't be able to unlock all the "endings" without playing multiplayer. One of the developers said that "Oh no, you can definitely do it without playing multiplayer!". Even when people showed their evidence that it was indeed impossible, they kept on lying. It wasn't possible until they patched the game. There was a reason as to why I bought ME3 much later than everyone else.
But yes, DA:V seems even worse in so many ways, not to say the least in how they have treated fans of the older lore and games. Resetting a games lore this badly... I have no words for that. It's just so incredibly badly done.
@@Elora445 yep. The fact is, the people making this game were kids when the originals were released. This game was clearly made by people with no respect for the history of that very unique and well-considered game world. Seems like day one their first meeting was like "here’s a list of things our director finds ‘problematic’ about the original games. Blood magic, brood mother, desire demons, slavery, dark fantasy tone in general, being able to disagree or fall out with your teammates, player agency, being able to roleplay, etc etc etc. Now let’s make a list of things we want to include. Child-level socialization lessons, millennial identity politics, lecturing the players, making Rook what we want them to be, etc etc."
I agree with you, byt this betrayal was done a few times before, including original Baldurs Gate Bhaalspawn saga, where later on it was completely invalidated by WotC!
People never talk about how they just pretend that desire demons don't exist.
If the sexy demon was too "out of touch" for modern Bioware, they could have created a Mass Effect Asari Banshee style redesign. Turning sex appeal into horror.
Man... I love desire demons (not in a gooner way, just in a conceptual way). But they've been so absent that even I've forgotten about them. Sucks, but maybe it was for the best given that if they showed up here they would have had a terrible redesign.
@@failureoncommandagreed given what I've played of the game a desire demon would have just ended up being a glowy Harry Potter Dementor like the other demons
The game is clearly attempting to be sex-positive based on the cringe ‘spicy’ dialogue. But only amongst people with a male body type, as there are few women in the game with feminine body types. So weird.
Ah, Dragon Age. My favorite game trilogy.
A shame that it ended on a cliffhanger.
I would have loved to see what happens with Solas and the Veil. Guess we will never know.
I heard BioWare dropped all of it's resources into a new, kid-friendly IP instead. What was it's name, again? Veil-something? Heard it flopped.
Trespasser was such a great "to be continued" smh
Absolutely love this approach... That cliffhanger was wild, wasn't it? Maybe one day another developer will pick it up somehow. Otherwise it was a great journey
trilogy? i didn't know origins ever got a sequel
Kid-friendly? Propagating transgender ideologies, defaming feminin beauty and hating white masculinity are supposed to be kid-friendly??
. . . okay.
More people playing Skyrim than that kids game.
Even if Taash's brattiness and awkwardness was intentional (which I dispute because she's generally portrayed as the righteous one), there are almost no instances where Rook or any companion can rebuke her bad attitude or behavior. She also doesn't experience much of a character change; she continued to act snotty and self-involved deep into the game. In previous DA games, if you didn't like a companion, they could be betrayed, killed, abandoned, etc., while in VG the harshest thing you're able to do is mildly chide them. The rest of the time, Rook coddles and cheerleads them. The game is supposed to be dark fantasy roleplaying. I think the writers wanted to protect the characters' feelings. You can't be mean, scheming, backstabbing ... your decisions made little difference to the story at all, unless you count romance - which is just more positivity.
The writing was wrought with amateurish mistakes. Too much repetition of words/themes, awkward scene transitions, easy resolutions of disagreements, poor maintaining of mood (particularly the overuse of bathos), dreadful pacing issues (the bad guys seem to conveniently go on vacation while you do unrelated side quests), scenes that don't develop story or character, among other pitfalls that bad writers fall into. I don't have the time to analyze the infamous Taash scenes (like the Bharv one) but context doesn't rehabilitate them. The romance scene between Taash and Harding was particularly egregious. I didn't get the impression that Harding was into Taash at all, but because she's a people pleaser she just went along with it. Very creepy for a scene intended to be cutesy. Overall I think it's a shame that the fourth game in the series - which all the money and time they had - regressed so profoundly in its writing and roleplaying aspects.
Only thing I can disagree with here is that I did feel like Taash grew throughout the course of the game, albeit slightly. Otherwise, I believe you're mostly spot on.
The RPG without RP. More like action adventure than role playing game.
The reason you cant tell the companions to stfu is bc the writers self inserted and that would be like beeing mean to the writer itself
What happens when you put amateur writers to do a job meant for experienced writers.
I have a lot of things I don't agree in this video. Even more things that I do agree on. But there is one thing you touch on that seemingly noone did and I'm infinitely grateful for it. And it is the words rook said at the end about the stories that were before. I felt disdain towards the game the whole time but never really had strong emotions the whole way through. That one sentence broke me and made me cry because it finally sank in that DA was dead. Bioware killed the franchise then paraded it's corpse for 45 hours then expects us to believe it was out of respect. There are a few media that can give you the experience of a strong emotion and I'm happy that until Veilguard they were positive for me. This is the first game that gave me such a deep grief that I'm still melancholic even after a week of finishing it. I am truly happy, for those who can enjoy this game. I am overjoyed that I call one of those person my friend. It gives me at least a bit of solace while I'm still kneeling over the grave of something that was part of me for so long.
Well-said, man.
Same here, I finished the game on November 6th, and am still feeling sad, hurt, lost, and confused. Certainly not what I had expected, or wanted.
My feelings at the moment bear an alarming ressemblence of actually grieving the loss of a loved one. Which is rediculous and immature (it's just a game, for heaven's sake!), but I can't help it - that's how I feel 😢
It's time for our childhoods to end. Maybe we shouldn't play games now at all?
You need to get some bitches brother
The writing at the end was just a cherry on top of a pile of dung. A cherry made out of red dung mind you, so nothing good either
This game is not an rpg. Every Rook turns out the same, barring who you bone and who dies and doesn't at the end of the game. No choice matters, all dialogue choices are just different ways to say the same thing. Play Veliguard made me feel the same way I do when playing HALO or Mortal Kombat. No player input in regards to the story or character relations. You're just along for the ride.
If it was a roleplaying game, I would be allowed to deny anyone joining my team, but I can't. Rook is always meant to be friends with everyone, even if I would never want to.
NOT an rpg
I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of Taash's intended characterisation. Or, if you are correct, the writers have failed in a different aspect. One of two scenarios is possible. 1. The writers thought they were portraying a morally virtuous character. If this is true, they failed miserably. Taash refuses to refer to Emmrich by his name, telling him what he is (They specifically tell Rook that other people don't get to tell them who they are). Another example is the breaded cheese wand scene where Bellara takes the last one and Taash has no problem with Bellara doing push-ups to apologise for eating something for which they have no claim. 2. If Taash was meant to be portrayed as unlikeable, the writers were grossly incompetent at framing their actions and statements as such. You can't contradict them at all or call them out for being an asshole. There is nothing more frustrating than a character who behaves like a horse's ass but doesn't get their comeuppance in the story, or at least have someone call them out for it.
It's like they couldn't decide if they wanted to play Taash straight or as a joke when writing them, so they kinda made them this weird Frankensteins monster of both!
And as you say, if they were 100% serious with Taash, they failed spectacularly in writing a character you could both take seriously and like at the same time, but if they meant for Taash to be a joke, it was the same type of joke as when someone says some outrageous stuff, and when someone challenges them on it, they fold and say it was just a joke to try and save face... Like most other things in the game, they tried to do everything, but instead ended up with nothing of substance as a result...
I'm gonna paste some things I wrote about Taash from another comment and build upon them:
We know from a Ghil Dirthalen Q&A that she is canonically the youngest companion, being in her early 20s. We know she's never had a real romantic relationship from her romance scene. We see that she still lives with her mother, who has subdued her personality in a major way, and that she still lashes out at her like a teenager. It all clearly reads like someone who hasn't finished maturing; like someone who was, in a way or another, very sheltered throughout their life and never really learned how to do social interaction properly.
Ultimately, it has nothing to do with "moral virtuousness". This is not an evil or an immoral character. It's an immature one. Still sucks that you can't push back against them much as Rook in order to correct some of the perspectives brought on by their immaturity, but eh. I think it is clearly depicted as a childish character.
@@failureoncommand The last time a character like this was introduced was Borderlands 3, and it was received equally if not more poorly than Taash. Plenty would argue that Ava singlehandedly ruined their experience being exactly that, an immature, selfish little shit that the player had no agency to simply shoot in the face. It's both a hallmark of poor writing and preachiness both.
The argument then was similar to what you're positing now, that a child cannot be expected to have a modicum of maturity or sense, infantilizing a character that for all intents and purposes should be more mature than their years due to their circumstances, and by extension ruining immersion irreparably. The counterargument is simple; if they were that immature in this setting, they would be dead.
T(r)aash is a self-insertion by the writer of the character, who is Trans. I always make fun of people who self-insert themselves into games for lacking imagination. Asmongold for example self-inserts himself into almost every game plays. He plays human male and for the most part, warrior if possible because that is what he would imagine himself to be if he could. I also have an agenda when I make my characters. I make them nice to look at. this means, I mostly play female characters, because if I'm gonna spend over 100 hours staring at a characters behind, it might as well look good. However, I'm gonna make a male dwarf commoner in my next Origin playthrough and play it the most evil way possible with 1 exception: the dog gets to live :) no hurting dogs ok? And yes, I realize this means making Morrigan into a healer as Wynnie will eat dirt as soon as I get to the mage tower as I plan to recruit the templars. I plan to exile Alistair and side with Bhalen and the werewolves and yes I'll destroy the ashes too but trick Leliana into staying :D (you can do that, but wynnie will find out and leave if she is in your party)
@failureoncommand Taash is 100% autistic. I felt so much like Taash as you describe. Everyone loves taking her out of context and focusing on the cringe but to be fair. I think the op is also right because 100% the human writer Taash is inspired off of has no idea he is autistic.
Many such cases
The only way I could bring myself to stomach finishing this walking abortion was to make a Disney-princess Rook, permanently slot Bellara in the party, always pick the comedic dialogue option, reject any direct links or reminders to the franchise (no Grey Warden or Qunari party members), skip any dialogue that pertains to the OG lore, and immerse myself in the belief that this was a perfectly playable 8/10 score Pixar-licensed generic fantasy mobile RPG developed by Netease and ported to PC by Bilibili.
Oh, and brain myself on a streetside curb to forget everything I knew about Dragon Age.
" this was a perfectly playable 8/10 score Pixar-licensed generic fantasy mobile RPG developed by Netease and ported to PC by Bilibili. "
....... this!!!!
yeah, this was a port of a switch or mobile game. keep clicking X till enemy dead. ooooo flashy neon colors
"In Veilguard everyone seems to know everything." This is exactly what happens in Paw Patrol, which our kid stopped watching when she was 5 because it was too basic for her.
Anticlimactic.The whole game. It's an extremely mediocre game, which misses all the great potential the previous games left, in its effort to target...who? Younger people? Stupider people? Not an ounce of respect for the fans who've been playing in this universe since 2009.
It's not worthy to being called Dragon Age. I am beyond heartbroken that the DA IP seems to have come to such an awful end.
What did tickle me wrong is that elves were spirits. In DAI while Solas said spirits are sentient beings very close to humans, they are also very different, beings of singular purpose (even when twisted into demons), and that elves lived together with spirits before the Veil. It never felt like the "spirits become humans en masse" transition was organically there besides exceptions like Cole. Plus the "they killed and neutered Titans to make themselves bodies" just makes elves an even more disgusting faction, coupled with the whole Evanuris plot they are a comically evil race of selfish twats. They didnt actually live in harmony with the world, they moulded the world, and let their leaders to even worse things.
The worst offender for me is the story! Despite dealing with elven gods, rituals, and an impending apocalypse, it all feels so small! Rook is one of most boring player characters because he has to grit or edge and is forced into what the developers want instead of giving the players actual choice!
Rook is Mass Effect Andromeda's Ryder.
So you expect a gritty and dark story where your character can go either good or villainy from a studio that is based in California? I dont think they have that in them mate and you have not followed the situation in USA at all, honestly thas on you...
@@Dotalol123I don't fault people for wishing that, even though it is the lingering echos of mistaken nostalgia for a developer that lost its way more than a decade ago.
@@Bluelyre Californians will never let you to choose evil talk points in a video game because then you will get tools to be mean to alphabet people, im sorry but that's never gonna happen, its opposite of everything they believe in. Im not faulting anyone im telling you how it is...
Dragon Age in 1 word: CHOICE
Dragon age the Veilgaurd in 1 sentence: LACK OF CHOICE
I agree with everything except Varric stuff & the executors
I wasn’t moved by this reveal cause it just ended up denying the time to actually mourn Varric over course of the game and he doesn’t even do anything with this twist. It doesn’t progress the story. And I does break my suspension of disbelief that nobody like ever talks about Varric being dead in front of Rook, esp with how interconnected Varric is as a character. Like alongside characters you mentioned he knows, he’s also the cousin of Maeveris Tilani’s dead husband. Varric even says she’s last of his family and they’re close. So fact Mae doesn’t even address this connection not try to seek answers or details or emotional support on the death of someone who was once her cousin-in-law & outright close family is bizzare. It just ends up ruining Varric as a character for me cause it feels disrespectful to his presence throughout the series. This is not a two hour movie with a fixed narrative like the 6th sense. This is supposed to be an RPG with tons of dialogue & choices. It also comes from a series of intricate relationships that are pre established.
The executors to me do undermine agency of past villains & these figures aren’t interesting. It just feels like yet another betrayal from this game in a franchise I’ve been in love with for over 10 years
Good points, especially in regards to Varric.
Drove me absolutely INSANE that Varric is in the Fade and doesn't mention Hawke or Bartrand being there (depending on choices you made in past games obviously). How much more impact would that goodbye have had if he'd just mentioned he has to go because he has a brother to apologise to, or a best friend to cause trouble with?? Such a dumb missed opportunity 😢😢
54:23 This is what honestly pissed me off the most because the Tapestry is an amazing thing that Bioware did and I spent countless hours mixing story choices and making different world saves.
I didn’t care about the art, the gender politics, or the combat. What made this game hot garbage for me was the horrible writing and pg Pixar bs. It was insulting. If they ever make another DA (and I don’t think they will) they should not bring back a single person that worked on this game. This game wasn’t made for adults, it was made for tweens.
The point here is Dragon Age: The Veilguard nor Mass Effect Andromeda were made for existing BioWare fans. They were made for a much younger new audience. It’s not made for their existing fans.
Problem is this was made for a current young audience that lives on cancel culture. If this were made for the young audience of the 00s it would be a good game, but tweeners are so quick to ban and cancel stuff the game tries so hard to not offend anyone and it feels stale and inhuman, like skillup said with HR in the room
I wish they sell the IP to Lerian and the first thing Lerian dose is to remake veilguard and make it a proper ending and not this bullshittry
@@AeschylusShepherd to be honest veilguard should've been made for the veteran players the next game could've been made differently because veilguard was the finale
@ I agree.
Game insulted my below average intelligence for going "Look ladder climb it" and "Waterfall treasure behind it" Iam not that stupid
Ditto, I'm a basket case, not an imbecile
It's even worse with picking choices. The choices say exactly what will happen, then we get text above saying the exact same thing in a different way. After picking a choice it, it says it again on the side. Talking about bashing my head against the wall.
Now imagine playing this as a grown gifted kid, you can feel your neurons melting
It was made for retarded people
The new darkspawn are just a reskin of Mass Effect's reaper ground forces. They use the same AI and everything
The even change them so it fits the lore. They made the taint reaper indoctrination for god sake...
@@roiking2740 Oooh god they did. . . thanks for the clarification I hate it xD
Technically the people working on mass effect helped to make this game as well since the DA team was behind and nearly all the original developers were either fired or left the studio.
I felt as if i was playing a Mass Effect game the whole time, but couldn't pinpoint why. Guess this explains it.
@ even some of the sounds and music track sounds the same.
lol, about Taash's dialogue: "yeah, she is meant to be childish", her dialogue is meant to suck... You-, you get how that is worse right?
As for the vilains, hard disagree on that one: they have the *potential* to be better than Corypheus, which is already introduced in a DLC at the end of DA2 too, but that potential is never seized upon. None of their lines or plans hit like Corypheus and his voice actor. Where is the emblematic line like :"Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty" from these elven non-gods? Centuries of lore and strife and you get none of that from them, not even a hint. They are, at best, at the very best, generic. And that's not praise in my eyes.
Concerning Taash's dialogue... I do think that that is NOT worse It's an immature character; do you want all your characters to be fully well-rounded adults with 0 flaws and issues?
In regards to the villains... Can't deny that nothing quite hits like those Corypheus lines. But the issue with Corypheus is that he mostly felt un-present. In that sense, Ghil and Elgar'nan at least had him beat. Additionally, we got some hints that expanded upon them in codex entries and through that tree in the Crossroads, but maybe you missed those. You are right, however, that they had a lot of wasted potential and a chance to be infinitely more memorable.
@@failureoncommand I'm fine with flaws in a character; less so when it is coming through as abrasive and annoying all the time. The excuse that they are purposefully made that way by the writers is no victory in my book. I didn't have the same issues with Stern or Iron Bull, despite openly disagreeing with them at times in game.
But I'm guessing this might be more of a personal pet peeve of mine: I had the same issue with Serah in DA:Inquisition, where talking to her and the consequences of her actions was met with scorn.
I'm just gonna reply to myself about my thoughts regarding the rest of the video:
Unsurprisingly, I'm amongst those that took offence at the secret after ending credits scene. Simply put, how could one not take offence at it when the writers of the Veilguard, up to that point, failed to pull me into their story, or even their writing up until then? How could I take anything but poorly? Coming out days later to explain that, "no really, this is what we really meant" kinda shows they didn't do a good enough job in the first. That, plus the fact this game disregards previous choices, ignores the world the players have through their actions for more than a decade through the three previous games, made feel as if they really wanted to invalidate the past player experience. This is more consistent with what they did throughout the entire game, rather than a massive subtle twist.
But clearly, the game had already lost well before that point, I didn't see the last act as anything "amazing" that redeem the game, and the reveal about Varrick's condition felt clever... as long as you don't think about. But then you realise that they killed a fan favorite character in the first five minutes of the game. Again, it all comes back to this "tabula rasa" of everything past and why I couldn't read any plot point, any story element as anything but insulting after a while, 'cause it all pulls in the same direction: screw the past.
In that regard, the conclusion at the end of the video, the hypocrisy of it all, is masterfully done and on that, I couldn't agree more. Well done! Claiming to honour past stories but instead having ripped them to shreds really is what this game is all about in the end...
The rest of all characters act childish that Taash becomes background noise.
I could accept losing a lot of choices at the start of the game, but losing the impact of the well of sorrows and the choice of the Divine just makes so much of that work feel empty. The abysmal writing choices sink so many promising ideas amid a solid-enough combat system through a good handful of beautiful environments.
A little factoid. Solas's theme is written by Trevor Morris changed a bit by Zimmer but Zimmer didn't compose it. Also, if you get interactions with Morrigan you can hear soundtrack from Inquisition as well. Generally speaking Zimmer is overrated as a composer. No soundtrack stood up for me to remember. On the other hand I still relisten soundtracks to Inquisition. Forever epic.
Personally, I have always liked the music of every Dragon Age (tho I always hated that Inquisition didn't have battle themes for common mobs).
But the music in Veilguard? I found it VERY disappointing and generic. And some of them felt not Dragon Age at all.
Zim peaked with Lion King
Zimmer is known to have a team working for him, he didn't put a finger on this work
I disagree with the whole Zimmer overrated notion; I think he and his team are rightfully top-tier composers. Obviously, I would have preferred Trevor Morris. As I said in the video, the music wasn't as memorable here, and nothing came close to making me feel the way Solas's theme did.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Zimmer is overrated. I would rather suspect that Bioware's instructions were poor. They are responsible for giving the composer all the important information so that he understands what kind of music it should be.
You know what? Yeah, you are right. They repeated so many times during marketing campaign how they don't want to lower themselves down to meaningless one-liners and cameos in regards to custom world state only to give us most generic version of those one-liners and cameos. Pinnacle of hypocrisy indeed.
it feels like terrible fan-fiction. Instead of allowing for mystery, it tries to over-explain everything.
I won't play it, and to me the series is done. I won't revisit it, and I won't run a Dragon Age RPG campaign, as I had previously planned.
I would say that its still posible but i understand that sometimes its best left the things die.
I think the over-explaining is meant to be pay-off, which I don't mind. I just wish it was executed better.
As for running a Dragon Age RPG campaign... Veilguard isn't making me abandon MY campaign. I've taken liberties in what I've adapted and the direction of things. You can do the same. Thedas remain to be a very fascinating setting, Veilguard aside.
@@failureoncommand yea I am not stop playing my 3 favorite games i just won't play veilguard
"Flattened and smoothed over" perfectly describes this game on so many levels.
Bought by brain balloons
I think the sentiment that ALL of the companions need to deal with their stuff is very lame and just a nice way for the game to say to the player that Companion Quests need to be done. They all have their quests to be dealt with but Lucanis is the one that fucked up when it was his time to shine. Hes the only character that is hinted at that the others are truly on guard for, saying they'll put him down if they need to. Even Taash having identity issues never puts them in a "I just cant defeat the gods because Im confused!" moment. Lucanis should have had story tied missions that you help him either deal with Spite or send him packing.
20:30 on the note of environments, yeah, there's a LOT of that. Lava underwater with zero explanation. Darkspawn literally like 50 feet from an open door in Kal-Sharok that just wait for YOU specifically to be there. Open flowing lava in Kal-Sharok that... is supposed to be a light, I think? Oh, and my personal favorite, the skybox in Treviso is literally rotated wrong, the sun is setting in the south and the moon is rising in the north.
Yeah, if the "gods" aren't actually gods but possess godlike power. The more practical term for them would be demi-gods. Which is what almost every fantasy setting calls mortals who have obtained godlike power.
It is heartbreaking to see something you love so much grow only for it to abandon everything that made you fall in love with it in the first place
That was really good breakdown. I want to add, that I didn't like Varrics story at all here. I mean, I'm biased, he is my favourite character, but also the fact, that no one reacts at all to him - at least give us a flashback after the reveal, what Rook forgot thanks to Solas.
Thanks! And fair enough.
I think missing a dwarven faction was a big miss, given how much more dwarf lore we get as an integral part of this story. The Lords of Fortune just kind of exist; I'd swap them for an actual visit to Kal Sharok in a HEARTBEAT. Plus the theme of the elves as an oppressed group finding out the reason for dwarves' dreamlessness would be sooooooo good if it were given the usual DA treatment.
i'm at 1:21:35 ... varric is a dwarf , dwarfs when they die return to the stone not in the veil... and btw... how can the force of the friendship with varric save yourself from a god's prison ?
about the game, i was sad that it had such a mediocre feelings about that , and then it become the failure child in my eyes when the art concept for this game are so much more intriguing and beutiful .
Varric had been dead from the point where they "thwarted" Solas. That. Hurt.
Yet, I have not even bought the game. I do not intend to. Learning about this from others and your assessment here, which I watched and listened to throughout the whole video, makes me loathe to even go near this paving over of the series' past. It feels like they cut down a forest to make a parking lot using the hearts of those of us who kept the dreams of more to come as asphalt.
Yeah sorry but "the game dialogue is fine, it's not the best"... I have to disagree here lol. Even you seem to immediately contradict yourself 'It's not so bad you guys... except when it is'. I get that you enjoyed it but it's still obnoxious.
It's complicated; it has it's issues, but I do ultimately believe it's acceptable. I usually like to regard dialogue on a relative basis. So in the case of Veilguard, relative to the tone of the game, the dialogue worked. It synced and flowed with the overall vibe. It's not the type of dialogue I love the most, but it is decent for what it is and what surrounds it.
It's an RPG made for people who don't like RPGs. I thought they stopped doing this over 15 years ago. By the way, Davrin and Bellara were also my favorites! I just couldn't get past Neve's hat. I know, I'm shallow.
I like RPG's and I like this game, but while you're at it, it's been 15 years of Bioware making more action oriented titles, so I don't understand all the salt over it being action rpg, like why are you surprised?
@@nocturnal03we’re surprised cuz BioWare used to make amazing games.
And now they make dogshit.
@@nocturnal03It is SUPPOSED to he a Dragon Age game. Dragon Age is an RPG series. Not an action game.
Not to mention that Veilguard's writing is absolutely shit.
@@dookylove which is said everytime a new BioWare game comes out, along with admitting that a previously hated game was good (DA2 and inquisition say hello!)
@@masha22092000r it is a Dragon Age game and it is a RPG, you should be happy.
My feelings after finishing the game was that it is an OK game. As a Dragon Age game though, it's bad.
the ending of this video hit me hard -> bioware putting fistful of salt and forgetting all our choices, I feel so empty now. Time to move on.
My problem with the stylized is that I think it removes a bit of the seriousness of the situation, and the UI too removes a bit of the general tone of the game, it gets too cluttered sometimes, and I cant think for a reason why you would stop the player from playing to tell them they have concluded a 2 min quest. I hate the quest completed screen.
The shiny giant loot chests that glow and have particles and have a shiny animation... its a bit too much.
For me the gameplay for Warrior and Rogue doesnt make any sense, idk why everything looks like you can do magic while being a rogue crow assassin
This is absolutely the best review I've seen of The Veilguard. As someone who has also lived and breathed all things Dragon Age for the last 15 years, you've summarized exactly how I feel about this new game. A fair and critical review that discusses the real problems and not the online outrage. My biggest criticism of Veilguard's story/lore is that it mostly abandons one of Dragon Age's major themes and that is Religion. The Imperial Chantry, The Qun, & the Dalish beliefs should have played a much larger role in this game. Our party has that one conversation about disproving the Chantry, but that's all we get. I also just wish we could craft who Rook is and have real dialogue choices.
Thank you so much; I really wanted it to be clear that this whole review truly comes from a place of love for the franchise. And totally, the disregard for religion really diminished from the setting and the lore.
To me Bioware totally and completely disregarded the true fans of the Dragonage series by rushing through the making of Veilguard. This was supposed to be Dragonage 's swan song, it's coda, but instead f concentrating on all of the things that have made this series phenomenal they just hurriedly wrote out an abomination of a final story for Dragonage. They completely did a disrespectful service to Varric who is one of the most beloved characters of the series. Even if the voice actor no longer wanted to voice Varric, the writers should still have given Varric a more prominent Ole in Veilguard and when it came to time for his death they should have gave his ending more meaning and Varric should have gone out in a blaze of glory like the incredible hero he was and not the meaningless , unglorified death that Bioware gave him .
There are a number of major points that I disagree with you on, especially in regards to the writing acceptability of companion quests and dialogue, but I appreciate your thoroughness in addressing the issues with tone, lore, and ensoftening of the universe. You can feel the re-writes all over the place, because huge swaths of the game have contrived reasons for even being in the story (the Antaam joining the Evanuris, for example). To be blunt, I don't know how or if BioWare can course correct after this. DA2 was also divisive, but people accepted it over time. I don't really see Veilguard as getting that same treatment, and many of us in the longstanding audience are at the "fool me twice, shame on me" phase in our relationship with this franchise.
11:17 - 11:19 "Voice acting is top notch"
Me- You sure about that ok I guess
Yeah gave me a pause. Like are we hearing the same lines?
Outside of Harding and Solas, the acting varies from terrible to ok-ish.
With whatever they were given I do think they tried their best
I do like the voice acting. I think it was professional all throughout. You have to cast aside the writing when you factor in the voice acting.
If anything, Harding might have had the most annoying voice acting for me because it was so over-exaggeratory. But it was still acceptable.
The writing of the main story and that disrespectful send off of Varric really destroyed any redemption for this game in my book.
Yeah that send off for his character was so contrived & just impossible to actually buy as a real plot twist in a video game like dragon age
@ALtheuncommonicedragon8360
I'm just shocked by such bad writing.
That's one of the few things I felt they did right, frankly.
Nuanced perspectives are very welcome.
The choices at the end of the game-Even those don’t really matter. If you’ve got everyone at HoV status and all the factions at max strength, there’s very little that can go wrong. After getting the good ending the first time, I reloaded and I actively tried to assign everyone to the worst jobs possible. Only one person died (other than the one person who always has to die) and it wasn’t even one of my companions. It was one faction leader.
Just because it was an intentional choice doesn't make it good or even good characterization. She's supposed to be a mature bad ass like iron bull. Instead she's a failed social media influencer with creepy and childish tendencies
Why is she supposed to be a mature bad ass like iron bull? Who said?
It being intentional makes it a decent portrayal of a flawed character. Personal tolerance for these types of characters becomes a different matter entirely.
@failureoncommand that's her role in the team. It would be a portrayed character flaw if it was ever acknowledged as such. Noone calls it out or acts like her behavior is in needing of overcoming.
@unkemptjargon91 That's a fair point, but I think that's a byproduct of the tone, which seems so deathly afraid of confrontation (Rook can barely push back against anyone), as opposed to a direct testament to the writers' intent with the character.
@@failureoncommand Whilst true, I'm not sure that excuses the character per sé. After all, you want your characters to fit the tone of the story you are telling, and if the characterisation jeopardises the tone that is still a failure of the character. Thus you can still keep both characterisation and tone provided you add context within the story. For example: if Rook cannot push back on Taash, the mother should. The endline of their quest could well have had them grapple with the fact that, whilst flawed, their mother had good points about the need to conform to the view of others to avoid ending up alone, and that being shaped by someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. (this would in turn feed into the neglected 'found family' theme Veilguard tries to set up).
Imagine a scene like the cheese wand, or someone misgendering Taash, only for them to let it go with a witty remark, something like "next time I want a cheese wand, you're paying". Not expecting others to immediately change, but showing the way forward.
As is, the story neither has Taash change enough for many to accept it, nor so they justify the existing characterisation outside the implications of the backstory. If it was made clear that Taash has been sheltered by the Lords of Fortune and is not worldly at all, why is she going dragon-hunting alone, a job that all but demands people skills when navigating in foreign lands and cultures? Have her mention checking in with 'contacts' and have Isabela more explicitly being a mentor that handles the talking, and it becomes a fair bit more acceptable that she is as abrasive as she is.
Ultimately, I find Taash to be an decent idea that then is somehow let down by lazy execution despite being a developer favourite based on the interviews.
If it's a roleplaying game: It doesn't have good role-playing in it.
If it's an action game: It doesn't have good action in it.
When you said 16 in 2016 I had Saving Private Ryan ageing scene😅
I find the varric reveal to be one final insult to the player. Its a cheap trick to bait out emotion from the one character people actually care about in this game. Varric also has loose plot threads not wrapped up but he's plotbound to die and you can't save him. Dumb and lazy as hell.
Great video! I had so many issues with this game but nothing made me rage more than that preachy ending. Having Varric there in the clouds and that stuff about being grateful while they fired his writer really turned my stomach.
All the OGs are gone, but yeah, it's so strange they even let go of Mary Kirby.
It's a terrible boring and poorly written and composed game, it's not a dragon age, neither it is in any way a remotely good rpg. RIP.
Retarded take 🤡
I feel like with only 5 more questions in CC, the game could have been way more impactful and less of a spit in the face to our previous world builds:
- Was Hawke left in the Fade?
- Did Hawke and Varric kill Bartrand?
- Did Morrigan romance the Warden?
- Did Isabella romance Hawke?
- Who is on the throne of Ferelden? (Just to reference it in the dogsh*t codex would have been something at least).
Let me know if you guys think of anymore. But I think those 5 would have made a huuuuuuge difference to us feeling like recurring characters were connected to our past games!!
I wanted to feel GUILTY for saving Hawke all those years ago because now Varric has to walk the Fade alone!! Or bittersweet that he could find his brother and make things right. But they just don't even get a mention. So sad 😢
I do think there was previously a plan to have the Elven Gods be the corrupted old gods/archdemons or at least have them all be connected. Maybe not all the way back at the beginning of Origins but definitely by the time they finished Inquisition. That being said, the reveal could've been handled better regardless.
32:17 I'm happy that I'm not the only one!!!!
Solas has proved it, Lore has proved it. What are they? "Gods" said by everyone!!! I could make memes out of this one alone!!!
It's utterly ridiculous.
I discovered myself watching to every spoiler from this game and not caring at all. Meaning I'm not interested in playing it. A shame and a disappointment for me, as an old Dragon Age fan who played every other game on Day 1 (and who loved Dragon Age II, possibly my favorite of the series just because of the ambiance of that game).
I'm personally on the "DA 2 was massively over-hated train". It has huge faults, but with the production process for that game, it's a miracle we got something so narratively rich.
I’ll be honest the hate for this game can ruin it for you. It can tarnish your perspective. I still enjoyed playing this game, as long as you throw away your hope of the past to be reflected.
Of all the lore-butchering in this game, I really hate that apparently they basically imply Andraste was a host of Mythal. Like, seriously?
I haven't played the game (and DEFINITELY don't want to now), but is there any long-reaching implication from this? Do the Chantries ever learn of it?
And everything is due to the Elven deities? No Maker or anything?
The Dragons were just tools?
Such a bastardization of the lore
EDIT: Watched the Lore Discussion part. They really just shat on Andrastianism and nothing even comes of it?
Really seeing some Anti-Church sentiments thinly veiled there, wokists
it is not really lore butchering in this case it was sorted hinted back in origins given their similar backstories along with one of the gifts or codex entries I forget which of the two alluding to andraste getting her power from being a mage.
@@majicalpandatech Her being a mage isn't that much of an issue (their whole belief is that magic exists to serve man, not the other way around)
But her being a vessel for Mythal can imply that she was essentially "serving" magic.
It's an unceremonious way to attack the Chantry's beliefs, and that's fine, but it just feels kind of... tasteless?
You'd think the Divine should be the first person to learn about such a thing, that it would be a pretty huge deal? Maybe there's missing context?
They don't explore the idea any further and just leave it at: "Oh, Andraste is actually Mythal, too. Oops. Looks like the Chantry was wrong. Aaaanyways..."
It’s interesting that you think it’s a no-brainer for an uninvolved Rook to save Treviso. I thought it was a no-brainer for an uninvolved Rook to save Minrathous, if for no other reason than that significantly more lives are at stake in Minrathous. Minrathous is the largest city in Thedas. Treviso isn’t even the largest city in Antiva. Also, the fact that Minrathous does have a standing army is exactly why it’s more dangerous for Minrathous to fall into the wrong hands… more so than it already has.
Yeah, this could have been a very good decision to give to the player. All the writers should have done is actually run with the consequences, which they didn't do at all even though they attempted it to a degree:
If you save Minrathous, your overall position should have been strengthened massively. Maybe you get the Tevinter army to save Weisshaupt or something like that. All at the cost of Treviso being completely razed.
On the other hand, if you save Treviso, the People of Minrathous should be fine, the city has the best defences on the entire continent after all. But you hand the Imperium to your enemies, which should make getting a good ending much more difficult.
Thats how i thought the game would play out when the choice came up, the framework is clearly there.
@bonusvampirus Good point! I guess the way I thought about it was that Rook was always going to get to the other city eventually (as already happens in the game, but you arrive when it's too late). SO to me, it made sense to START with Treviso because I presumed at the very least Minrathous could hold out until I got there.
Out of all the reviews I saw and read about this game, yours is the first one that truly resonated with me, thanks to our similar relationship to the setting and the lore as a whole. You have my sincere gratitude for talking about this game in a way and adressing things many other reviews missed or simply disregarded. I am so tired of hearing all the hate about this game while only repeating the same things over and over.
So thank you for that and be assured, that I and many other people share your sadness and pain. Let's carry it together.
Thank you so much. It really comes from a place of love, and thus subsequently, immeasurable disappointment.
Dont like what they did with the blight. They took a horrifying force of evil and corruption... and turned it into a saturday morning cartoon villain you would expect to see in a he-man episode. Overall though they completly sandblasted all the edges off dragonage with this one. Its like taking a slasher horror movie and turning it PG13... the whole thing feels so sanitized and corporatized to make the whole thing more advertiser friendly.
I don't see how tentacles and nasty looking exploding cysts translate to Saturday morning cartoon. At least you actually see things look corrupted unlike Origins where supposed tainted land looks just like every other brown spot you'd find in Fereldon
@@Drums_of_Liberation Origins had the brood mothers and they clearly explained how darkspawn are produced in the most horrible way imaginable, fleshy growths only apearing at the heart of corruption and people that get infected turning into emaciated ghouls before suffering a death so painfull that the soldiers at ostagar tell you its a mercy to just kill an infected person
Veilguard? Oooh spooky glib tentacles that turn peoples eyes red and cover them with black goo! And you can actually save people aslong as you kill the head vampi.. err the "god" controlling the blight... CONTROLLING THE BLIGHT... i liked it more when the blight was suposedly a divine punishment for humans greed and avarice. Now its just a bioweapon that creates flumpy saturday morning cartoon goons. Ive seen more terrifying designs in power ranger villains!
Thats some "corruption" shit on the level of World of warcraft! Infact it literally is.. thats how the "old gods" in world of warcraft corrupt shit.
Dragon age reduced to World of Warcraft slob...
@@Drums_of_Liberation
The dark spawn design in Veilguard is the least intimidating they have ever looked.
I'D argue Inquisition had better verticality. Consider that veilguard doesn't even allow you to take fall dmg you can only go down 2 floors or it the jump resets. Also I feel inquisitor could jump higher. veilgaurd, you can't roll off a cliff cause they add bumper rails.
You have a point, but Idk. Inquisition is still very awkward as far as traversal.
This was such an amazing overview of the game, and you took the words right from my brain and expressed them in a coherent manner. I agree with everything you said. That is rare for me to say, haha. Your love of the story and world definitely shined through, and I was so let down. I have to say as someone who has played an Elf Mage as my first character EVERY time (except DA2 of course), this game was such a let down.
As a new player, I'd have enjoyed it more -- but I know for a fact I should have been called "knife ear", talked down to, and I would have corrected ANYONE who dared called them Gods...not continued to do it myself.
Sigh. I was OK with the need to ignore most of my past choices, given this was a different area but there was absolutely no reason to break apart my spirit by telling me how all these places I worked hard to save, were just completely destroyed and abandoned.
Hearing people spill Grey Warden secrets that took me years to learn myself in casual conversation just shook me.
Watching Davrin live when my own warden sacrificed themselves made my eyes widen, but I could accept it as a change with the blight -- however, there are so many things you can accept with a quick line of "oh, the powerful mages have changed the rules".
The romances were so awful. I cannot even touch those, knowing how strong they were in the past and coming off playing BG3? Oh, Bioware, it is clear the people who wrote/worked on this or had the final say in these decisions never actually played.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It really is sad, and you've put into words more and more of the wasted opportunities here and the insults to veterans of the franchise.
Glad you enjoyed the video, and thank you for the kind words!
1:07:16 They did the same thing with Mass Effect Andromeda, and somehow, they didn't learn their lesson from that game.
If they make another Dragon Age game… (If this is the direction BioWare going in) I will pass on all their games moving forward.
No they didn't, actually. The entire premise of Andromeda that was also marketed was that the expedition was launched before the Reaper invasion, it's not dropped on the player as a surprise in the middle of the game. Sure, the Milky Way is way too far to be consequential in any way for Andromeda but they didn't just canonise "the Reapers won" in a throwaway line, instead they just left the events totally open. For a self-contained story like the ME trilogy, I think it was an alright choice to leave the conclusion of it open for the player's own headcanon and take the series into another direction.
The execution was a train wreck, but at least it's better than go "by the way all your previous efforts in this massive story were entirely useless and everything is destroyed now" in the middle of a story.
You've gone deeper into the franchise and explained a lot of parts of the game that I didn't previously knew. I only saw one part of the game instead of seeing the whole product. I'm so sorry that you experienced that disappointment. I see that it's way deeper than any kind of writing agenda someone has. Fundamentally changing the story has crushed this game and ignoring the past games.
Exactly that! It's a shame.
They had so much plot with rhe elevs vs the humans. Remnants of mages v templars. They even added to the dwarf lore from the dlcs but squashed into Harding's plot. A surface dwarf. She should've been an advisor especially since she had the connections.
For me, the voice acting was a very mixed bag. Forgetting the dialogue and tone, the VAs for Bellara and Lace delivered their lines with a lot of enthusiasm and charisma. Unfortunately, along with all of Taash's other issues, their VA was just terrible sometimes. Even flubbed lines seemed to make their way in. e.g. the infamous dinner scene with their mother, she trips up during the "So I'm supposed to struggle [odd pause] with who I am? ...".
The director in charge of this department did really horrible job at this. Throughout the game, a lot dialogue are read wither with no emotion or emotions that are really off putting on top of the already bad writing.
@mikeydflyingtoaster I dunno; I felt like Taash's voice acting was fine relative to the kind of character she was meant to portray (young, childish, socially inept). I don't know what happened with that one dinner scene line though.
I have mad respect for your capacity to find things to like and/or tolerate in this game aside from nice graphics and it not crashing. Special note goes to your voice, it's got good flow and nice tone and made the length of the video very palatable (though I tend to like longform essays anyway so I was sold from the get-go lol)
I wish I could be more patient with the things I used to love being completely dismantled and set on fire but alas, I'm old and surly and the first tattoo I got when I was 18 (Grey Warden on my arm) burns psychosomatically when I'm reminded of what happened to Dragon Age as a series
(#Dalish Elves 4 Lyfe!!)
In a sense, I've invested too much in this franchise not to have hope or some modicum of positivity. Ya know?
And thanks a ton! Glad you enjoyed the ride. On a different note, don't let Veilguard ruin the significance of that tattoo. This was a good franchise once; let it be a reminder of that.
Objectively from a pure video game stance. I don't know how u can love this game idk
As a newcomer to this series(a friend of mine recommended this series after LOVING bg3) I felt in love with having consequences of my choices from previous games and even replaying 50 hours of inquisition when I realised that SPOILER WARNING FOR INQUISITION chosing who to save in the fade could of been MY alistair the one from 2 games ago and the previous character, that alone made me replay the game again just to feel connected to the history i had chosen the history i had built. The same friend that recommended this series and I were talking about replaying all 3 games again to have a new save with diferent choices just to see what would change and worst part was since i was playing from my friends library from steam I didnt get to chose even the 3 things from inquisition and this time i couldnt care less, almost dropped the game since combat was getting repetitive my choices in game didnt really matter but saw that luality(bg3 streamer) said that the ending was really really good have a chance and honestly i dont know if it was for good or bad cause it made me hate it less and be more dissapointed as you said on the video about what could it have been, the wasted potential this would of been an failuare as an "independent" story of DA, as an ending from the last 3 games ESPECIALLY inquistion was one of the biggest dissapointents playing games ever even after just having played this series 1 year ago I cant even imagine what has been for every1 that has been playing them since DAO.
PD: Loved your video and ur channel :D
Wow, I finished the entire video, it was very cool and interesting, your tone of voice helped a lot too. My comment is going to be quite long, so I apologize in advance.
I was entertained the entirety of your video. More than with the game itself 😂.
I just want to point out some things.
1)The marvel/disneysification of the franchise, is precisely that Hollywood ish tone that you are mentioning.
I also played the game, and personally , I don't think that many of the scenes and writing that are criticized by others are presented out of context at all, they truly are that bad 😂.
2) I totally disagree (probably the ONE thing I am going to really argue about your video) with what you say about Taash. She wasn't intended to be portrayed as an annoying teenager, she IS NOT even a teenager in the first place, she is an adult, and a very bad written self insert.
And it's very obvious to me that the writer wanted desperately for the player to agree and empathize with her completely, but it was so badly and forcefully written that it backfired.
3) I am one of those who think the post credit scene ruins a lot of things and it's total BS. And the John Epler's statement you presented at the end looked to me, mostly, as damage control and mere excuses because of the backlash. Exactly as when the first trailer dropped and almost everyone was mad, and then the devs came out saying that they didn't agree with that first trailer either, and that it didn't represent the tone of the game at all, and then after playing the game I can see the trailer actually portrayed the tone of the game perfectly.
4) Davrin and Bellara were also my favorite, characters too. Tho, in my case they were also the ONLY ones I liked. Everyone else was annoying, boring, bland to me (Emmerich was okayish, but, again, he and his entire quest felt like something coming from Disney, despite the great potential with the spirit sacrifices).
Davrin is an amazing character, he deserved a better game. Bellara surprised me because while at first glance she may be the most Disneyish character, she is actually very mature. I had her in the battle at Weisshaupt and her seriousness in that mission was very refreshing.
5) I had the same problem with Inquisitor's voice, I also used the male British one. Tho, I actually wondered if the actor himself was maybe older and his voice was deteriorating. I don't know 🤔.
6) What you said at the end is precisely how I felt, EXACTLY like that, I also found myself devastated when the epilogue slides came and they said they were grateful with the past stories, I felt like if I was being laughed at, even insulted. They totally disrespected them.
I was already tired of the game by the end, but when the last letter of the Inquisitor came, I was furious, for me that was the last straw. After that I just rushed through the game, I didn't even enjoy the final missions, despite objectively they can considered the best part of the game. While doing the final missions I was just thinking: What happened to the people of Southern Thedas, and especially Ferelden? What happened to my Hero of Ferelden, my favorite protagonist? What happened to her Warden lover Alistair? What happened to the Vigil's Keep Wardens like Nathaniel and Oghren? Whay happened to Hawke's friends (my Hawke died in Inquisition)? I didn't even care when Harding sacrificed herself.
I would have preferred to see Nathaniel and Oghren instead of those lame characters, Evka and the Ratatouille guy (and I know they come from the comics).
I just wanted to finish the game and uninstall it (which I did).
At least I was able to punch Solas again in the face and give him the ending he deserved while he left screaming he was a GOD and showing his hypocrisy 😂.
Overall, this game was very disappointing to me, worst Dragon Age ever, and even as a standalone ARPG it's very generic as you said. I was left with a sense of guilt and revulsion for having contributed to the sales of this game.
In my book this game IS NOT CANON, my Dragon Age story ends when my Inquisitor and his team defeat Corypheus, my Hero of Ferelden found the cure for her calling and Alistair's, and Varric continued as Viscount of Kirkwall, always supported by Aveline, while always remembering Hawke's sacrifice.
(Definitely I am not playing Trespasser ever again 😂)
Thank you for this video, it was AMAZING, there are other things I agree and disagree with your video, but in the end that's what opinions are about.
But, at least, I can say with all confidence that a lot of us, fans of Dragon Age, agree that this game was very disappointing, especially because of the 10 years of waiting, the great and wasted potential of Trespasser's ending, and the disrespect to the past games.
First off, thanks a ton for watching the whole thing! I really appreciate that, and all the kind words. Warms my heart, truly. As for your thoughts:
1) Yeah I suppose that's true as far as disneyfication/marvel-ification = generic hollywood, but I felt it didn't get as bad as those two are.
2) I don't know, man. I'm pretty sure she was. We know from a Ghil Dirthalen Q&A that she is canonically the youngest companion, being in her early 20s. We know she's never had a real romantic relationship from her romance seen. We see that she still lives with her mother, who has subdued her personality in a major way, and that she still lashes out at her like a teenager. It all clearly reads like someone who hasn't finished maturing; like someone who was, in a way or another, very sheltered throughout their life and never really learned how to do social interaction properly.
Her writing sincerely didn't feel forced to me. And I don't know why you believe Patrick Weekes wrote her as a self-insert. Is it because Weeks uses they/them pronouns? I have more good will for them than that; they've done some good stuff for both Tevinter Nights and Inquisition.
3) Agree to disagree. I just personally never interpreted that way, but maybe you have a point in its interpretation leaning towards it disregarding all that was built up.
4) Davrin and Bellara are awesome! Though I did feel like Davrin's backstory in regards to his Dalish roots needed a lot of work; we meet that Dalish uncle of his in a house in the middle of Arlathan and no one else from his clan. It's weird that his uncle guy was alone anyways, and that he lives in a static location (as opposed to wandering like the Dalish).
As for the other companions, I'd say all were fine to me. I enjoyed the campiness of Emmerich and his story; I feel like DA has had campy characters like this before, maybe not as much, but in a similar vein. It amused me.
If anything, I feel like Neve and Harding were the most underwhelming to me, but still decently acceptable.
5) I remember seeing a reddit post that analyzed the game's audio files and found that his recordings were fine initially (but maybe im misremembering). Though given that he has some lines that sound normal, and given that the abnormal lines sound like they've been artificially pitched down, idk if it is an actor thing. But who knows.
6) Totally, man. Totally. Fortunately, I managed to immerse myself enough to enjoy the ending before eventually being re-hit by all these realizations. But it is a major disappointment nevertheless.
Calling Antoine Rataouille guy is insane lol. Genuinely got a chuckle out of me. While I miss Oghren and Nathaniel and all our other Warden allies... It's been around 20 years since the events of the 5th blight. Many of these Wardens are nearing their calling...
As for canon... I'm sticking to how I've adapted things in my D&D Dragon Age campaign lol. Maybe that sounds like I have a big head, but meh. I've invested too much into this franchise; I'm still waiting on Bioware to email me asking for my help.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! This comment was a blast to read, seriously.
@@failureoncommand. Thanks to you. 😁
It was a very cool video. The hour passed quickly, believe me. 👍
In the end, all of us are fans who love Dragon Age, and it's very sad that this happened with Veilguard.
This is an excellent video, and I deeply appreciate your neuanced and very thorough analysis. I know exactly how you feel about the franchise and following it for years, entirely enamored by its lore and characters, only to feel so conflicted and disappointed by much of veilguard.
Well done. Best review I've seen (and I've seen quite a few now).
Thanks a ton! Means a lot, I swear.
But... The Evanuris being the so called old gods have been hinted on for quite some time. People have theorized about it for years. Small hints have been given in earlier games.
Anyhow, Veilguard feels like the sequel Star Wars movies at this point: kill off what came before just because. A betrayal of the older games. Southern Thedas, as in where the other games have taken place, is more or less gone? Nope, not okay with that. That is how bad writers are handling things. Heck, not even the Diablo universe have screwed things up that badly, and they have even killed off a very beloved character in Diablo 3. Also, if I want to play an action RPG, I'd rather play D3 rather than ever play DA:V. At least there, the gameplay is good.
Yeah, I did mention that in the video. Still, I would have personally preferred if it was bundled up differently so that not everything was ELVES.
I havent finished the video yet, but the jist im getting is Veilguard is to Dragon Age players how Andromeda was to Mass Effect players.
Veilguard is worse. Mass Effect Andromeda is 600 years after ME3 in another galaxy. It doesn't retcon the lore of the trilogy and negate its choices.
Similar, but different, as the previous comment said. DA:V was so much more of a betrayal than ME:A was, I say as a fan of both series. ME:A didn't completely ruin the lore and areas of the previous games. DA:V did.
@@arkeshn729 yeah after I finished the video, i took DA out of my wishlists and started prepping myself for how the ME reboot, if utilizing the same writing where player choices dont have real weight (fallout 4) I need to be ready to be disappointed...
I'd say it's closer to the original unpatched ending to ME3. It just takes everything you've invested into the series and makes you go "what's the point?"
The veilguard is the first dragon age game I have played. And I was genuinely disappointed when I found out how cool the lore and world building originally was. I adore cool fantasy stories and the veilguard just didn’t feel right. It’s not even entirely bad which makes it much sadder, this game could have been great. The ideas are there, the execution and writing just really missed.
as a city elf enjoyer, thank you for finally bringing up actual criticisms that i've had from a fan perspective and not like the grift channels who just cry 'broke cuz woke' who have clearly never played the series, i actually liked the game but you brought up all the criticisms i've had as well
Random Guy 36 J posted an AWESOME argument between Sten and Evataash (taash) lol worth watching, i love it.
You mean Evatraash😂
Am I the only one who wonders how the D&D statblock of the Hurlock Alpha has 150 hit points with 12d8 + 48 HD calc, when the max possible for that should be 144? Unless it is a standard average calculation (102) and they gain their bonus from Con twice somehow? Forever DM here.
Lol I was waiting for this comment. I run a meaty, high-difficulty campaign, so I am prone to buffing monster HP on the regular, and sometimes, I don't remember/don't bother to edit the corresponding hit die and con bonus.
Thank you for your video! Sorry, but I have to use my native language and hope that Google translates my following speech right.
Пусть я и не согласна с вами во всем, но я точно могу сказать одно - слова из конца игры так же вызвали во мне ощущение усталости и дикого разочарования.
Я прошла Veilguard за 70 часов и никогда еще мне не было так жалко своего времени. Я злилась на мир первые 7 часов, потом дико смеялась и тыкала любые диалоговые опции еще часов 10, торговалась сама с собой, чтобы найти хоть что-то позитивное, впадала в апатию на заданиях напарников и отрицала выборы без выбора.
А на финальных словах пустила слезу от досады и разочарования.
Но думаю, что я сейчас я готова принять тот факт, что моя любимая вселенная изменилась. Нынешний ее вид не для меня.
Спасибо еще раз за ваш труд. Пойду играть в Origins.
Well said. I felt the same way. I'll be joining you in Origins soon enough.
Re: the outro
Nah man, I appreciate you analyzing this game to this degree WITHOUT completely rashing & razing it to the ground. It serves as a good, more even-handed take on things to listen to, as the ears of a non-DA person. Besides, despite the past illness how much you're emotionally invested in things readily shined through
I'm really glad. Thanks a ton!
The Failgaurd has destroyed the franchise
The Executors are Bioware and the game developers. David Gaider said that there is a massive plot secret to Dragon Age... I think the writers are creatively bankrupt to do something stupid where the entire world of Dragon Age is really a game.
On the hair: it’s your pc or your settings. The hairstyles look absolutely gorgeous, as well as the physics. Yours look stiff as if you’re on a low setting.
I realize I have the option for more "realistic hair" turned off in my setting, but I wasn't really commenting on the quality or the physics. I talked about the hairstyles themselves. Barely any are period-appropriate, and a lot are outright ugly. It has nothing to do with graphics.
I do get how insulting it is to have the south of Thedas basically wiped out. I reallh do feel it too. However, I am a little sympathetic because this is a consequence of having the previous games be so open-ended. There is a reason DA games always move geographically - they simply cannot revisit old locations that we can substantially change and account for our choices. So something has got to give. Either we get something like this or we simply never visit these old locations again.
I know it sucks, but the first three games are as much to blame for this for setting up the problem as Veilguard is for its, admittedly inelegant, solution.
I had the same problem with my Inquisitor's voice. Huh, I thought I just picked the wrong option while creating him, but maybe it's a bug.
As a fan of the franchise from its inception, Veilguard is the embodiment of Kylo Ren.
.
"Let the past die: kill it if you have to."
.
Unfortunately, the long dev times between installments make me feel that this will happen to ALL beloved franchises. Devs are forced to chase new players to replace the portion of the player base that might have aged out/moved on from the IP. An IP becomes a franchise only if you can keep it in the public eye.
I've been thinking about writing a lengthy review of this game. I've never once made a video essay, but as someone who has always been so connected to this franchise, I have so much I need to say. That being said, this video scratched a lot of itches that I couldn't reach myself, and I really appreciate you taking such a deep dive into this game that so many other reviews lack.
While I'm quite happy I got to scratch a little bit of that itch for you, I do still encourage you to go all in and make a video essay. I'm sure you have a lot more interesting opinions to bring to the table, and finding a creative outlet like that through videos is pretty awesome. I'd watch it.
... The combat is a massive downgrade from Inquisition. It seems rather disingenuous to say it has depth when all the earlier games had way more stuff.
Hard disagree. I don't think Inquisition's combat was better than this. They're different at the core to begin with, so it's hard to compare them, but I do believe whole-heartedly that Veilguard's is much more complex.
@failureoncommand It cannot be more complex, objectively.
You have fewer spells and combat actions available, by an order of magnitude seemingly. You can't spec your companions how you want to spec them, which further reduces choice both in combat and in what companions you want to bring with you in the first place for narrative/dialogue reasons.
You could switch to other companions in combat to make the best use of their abilities when you needed to. You don't have the tactical screen in Veilguard either, which while not being my favourite feature of Inquisition combat was still useful in a pinch, particularly when you wanted to contain enemies that were agro against your player character.
And you could set the AI behaviour of companions, which frankly is a sorely needed feature in Veilguard given the micro you need to do with them.
I guess my point is how can there be more depth when they've removed a large number of attack types and whole mechanics, yet have not replaced them with anything of the same scale?
@@failureoncommandInqusition had warriors and mages and used the armor system from divinity original sin 2, it as well had a tactical view but offender was that stupid healing mechanic of collecting limited healing potions. At higher levels it becsme a puzzle to figure out if you were to become screwed three hours later in game as there be no way to heal back the wounds.
i feel like an easy fix for the first warden would just to refer to him as the warden commander
I think the VA's did a great job with the drivel they were given.
And Taash's VA was there, too (which is essentially just me clowning on the forced "I have a deep voice because I want to sound more masculine and also I growl and hiss all the time because I'm part scaly" stuff lol)
Dragon Age: Death of a Franchise.
There’s definitely a huge gender gap in the hair model responses. Women and non-binary people think they have tons of style and flair and options. Cis guys feel disappointed because they have to dig through the options to find common patterns from real life. But that’s part of the genre, and DA is embracing the fantastic, over the top style in its presentation now more than in the past.
Wait a second. The Evanuris started as powerful mages. They become gods.
So Uldred was right in the first game? A mage is only the first step towards "something greater?"
The cliche-ass villain line was RIGHT?!
I Iike this game
This was a great conclusion. Thanks a lot for all your work, emotion and energy! I've also loved Dragon Age from the first game on. And I share many of your thoughts.
All Solas-Parts were the best in the game for me. And - as you - I saw the quality-difference of the last act compared to the first two. Maybe, it was, because they worked on "The Dreadwolf" and changed the concept of the entire game "last minute"?
Well - I could also talk hours about this topic
I feel you. And thank you so so much for your kind words!
You must have Christ's capacity for love if you can love any aspect of _that_ .
Lol that's a good one
Talking Solas down with Minthara doesn't make much sense since the last time they met he murdered her and stole her power in order to enact these plans which are almost complete
.
I loved your review. As a long time DA fan as well I HATED this game, everything you said was spot on!
I LOATHED this game not so much because of its issues but more because this means the end of DA and the Bioware we knew and loved it 🥲 this thought even got me a bit emotional in my review 🥲
P.s. your voice is *amazing!* You sound like a seasoned grey warden! 😊🤩 🤺 🛡
Thanks a ton, man! Appreciate it!
@@failureoncommand I'm actually a woman and no problem i meang it. You did an amazing job here! 😊
Dragon Age the Failguard commits the ultimate cardinal sin, as Disney did with Star Wars, of pissing all over what came before it to suit its narrative. the game makes everything you did in Origins, awakening, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisiton pointless and undoes everything. None of the other games matter in the lore now. But to us fans, everything else but this game matters and that is the truth.
After replaying through the game, its actually surprsing how many times varrics fate is hinted at, everyone who does know him acts as if something more tragic happend while our character is uncomfortably casual about his death. And all the characters who never would of met him address him formally. The biggest hint is with the second inquisitor meeting when they mention solas killed someone close to them.
it's true... people who only play through it once or don't even make through their first playthrough are missing out. It becomes a lot more interesting on a second go around and you notice a lot more things when you have all the details. it really is hinted at quite a bit. on my first playthrough I could tell something was very wrong with him, but I figured it was that the lyrium dagger had weakened/poisoned him in some way and he was slowly dying, and that's why he wasn't getting better.
Fair enough, but it still doesn't justify the lack of commentary or responsivity from other important people in his life, like Harding, Morrigan, the Inquisitor, Isabela, Dorian, Mae, and so on.
@failureoncommand true... I agree. But also Rook does find out that Solas did something to them, some kinda magic manipulation to make Rook not realize the truth. Solas even admits to this. So maybe it was just a case of "selective hearing" on Rook's part and not that nobody actually mentioned it.
@feyfolken1655 exactly, that's what I said I was headcanon-ing it as in the video. That's why I was actually fine with the reveal.
oh my. oH. WTF.
I was so excited for this game to release? and? it's such a disappointment?
starting from the very launch - the game loading time was 40 freaking minuets! mind you, my pc indeed clears the recommended specs. on the second launch it was 20-ish minutes.
and then, clearing the sharers folder did help with this problem, buT WAIT! THERES MORE! playing prologue became a fewer dream of epileptic person, with all flashing lights and stripped lines.
after clearing the prologue this issue disappeared istg I have no idea what and why.
and then I couldn't bring myself to play this game after close to 2-ish hours, I've refunded it.
aND WOOO BOY! SO glad I did! Thank you for the recap. I would surely be super angry and heartbroken with what this game became and my lost money o7
It was supposed to be the finale and it ruined it all i was angry and disappointed