Dragon Age Veilguard: A rook can only move horizontally or vertically

[Gorth]

Checked out a number of reviews and then reviews of the reviews (no kidding, something stank to heaven about the way the all looked identical). Looks like a bunch of "positive" reviews were so much lookalike, even an AI could do better at pretending not being cut and pasted from the same EA Template handed out to reviewers. Those not on EA's "payroll" seems to mostly focus on the story and characters rather than game mechanics (the latter apparently not being worth mentioning). Summary from almost a dozen videos, the story is bad, like really, really bad (the only exception being the ending last few hours which weren't disastrously bad) and the characters and the dialogue in particular is going to meet Rings of Power in a UFC match for worst writing ever.

 

Edit: I.e. a no interest from me. Fooled me once with Inquisition, shame on you. Fool me twice with Veilguard? Shame on me.

[Also gorgon]

Yep, I smell a rat as well.

It runs really well according to digital foundry, it's an actual PC game and not a crappy console port, but that doesn't help the rest of the experience.

[majestic]

Changed my mind, I'll play The Veilguard once it unlocks this evening.

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

Those not on EA's "payroll" seems to mostly focus on the story and characters rather than game mechanics (the latter apparently not being worth mentioning).

Name the last Bioware game with really strong gameplay and interesting combat (or even game) mechanics you can come up with where the good parts were not the story, the characters or the presentation of the gameplay over the actual gameplay that simply added a layer of fun to the game because it is just too cool to shoot your enemies with lightning all the time, all the while the gameplay is actually really just "click on enemy until it dies" and "click on mine to disarm it".

Not being facetious, really. Genuinely curious, honestly.

Spoiler

I have a hard time coming up with one. There's a certain irony in the most interesting one in recent memory being the much hated Mass Effect: Andromeda, where the gameplay clearly benefitted from moving to Frostbite, but everything else suffered, and it was never used in any involved or fun way, so it also mostly falls flat. The inconsistent writing did the rest.

Could make a case for Jade Empire. That was 20 years ago, and people hated it for the gameplay.

 

Edited Thursday at 09:51 AM by majestic

[kanisatha]

20 hours ago, Tale said:

The reviews I've seen all point to some big emotional finale of the franchise so far. And that has kind of sold me on it. If it can stick an ending and wrap things up, I guess I can work with that.

DAO will always hold a dear place for me. And I think each installment has less magic than the last. 

But if this is potentially answering some of those big questions from long ago, I can't resist. I think I spent way too much time after DAO speculating on the nature of the Fade, the Blight, and the Black City to pass up.

I suspect this will be my perspective as well. The game is not to my RPG tastes anymore, but because of my love of DA:O and of the franchise overall (which is to say, the setting and its lore), I will view Veilguard as my fond (but also sad) farewell to the franchise.

[kanisatha]

On 10/30/2024 at 7:09 AM, BruceVC said:

@Wormerine

Wormie its got Romance, does that make it immediately better 

"  And don't get me started on the romance dialogue. If you choose to do some very light flirting with a character once or twice, the game tries to fast track you into a relationship—complete with all the cliches. In a single hour I had not one but two stammering, bashful romantic encounters that turned the game into an antediluvian romcom. You know the ones: the "It's a date… no, I mean, not a date date" variety. There are some solid romantic encounters, eventually, but you have to trudge through a lot of rote rubbish to see them." 

 

 

Well, I'll be playing this game despite the romance elements in it and not because of them. I generally don't care for the romance elements in my RPGs, but the romance mechanic in this game looks to be especially atrocious and entirely without attraction to me.

Thank you, Obsidian, for not wasting your development resources or my valuable time on a romance mechanic in Avowed.

[Also gorgon]

Do I get to customise my genitalia.

That's a veilguard question not a general life question.

[HoonDing]

Maybe it's the election season, but the Steam forum are more deranged than usual. So most likely it's game of the millennium.

[marelooke]

Hmm...

Honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least. Then again, buying games on release is just gambling anyway. We'll see in a few months where the opinions land.

[majestic]

Oh noes. I just had to set my pronouns and had a mild shock at having a third gender option with "non-binary". Not going to lie, we're off to a very bad start here.

[Hurlshort]

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

Oh noes. I just had to set my pronouns and had a mild shock at having a third gender option with "non-binary". Not going to lie, we're off to a very bad start here.

Oh no! Next they are probably going to make you choose some sort of fantastical race like a dwarf or an elf.

[majestic]

Just now, Hurlshort said:

Oh no! Next they are probably going to make you choose some sort of fantastical race like a dwarf or an elf.

Well, yes, but its even worse, you can be a Qunari, just like in Inquisition. Which means being a fantasy mooslim is an option in the game. Vote Trump!

[MrBrown]

Haven't gotten past the "compiling shaders" -bit yet. Apparently something you have to do an hour before starting one of these new AAA games.

Edited Thursday at 06:48 PM by MrBrown

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Oh noes. I just had to set my pronouns and had a mild shock at having a third gender option with "non-binary". Not going to lie, we're off to a very bad start here.

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Well, yes, but its even worse, you can be a Qunari, just like in Inquisition. Which means being a fantasy mooslim is an option in the game. Vote Trump!

You naughty

But I can't really see this as much of a surprise, Cyberpunk 2077 and BG3 both did this at least a year before (dragonborn genitals are horrifying). I think we all know that a segment of the internet is addicted to being mad, but this is just getting pathetic. Please just let me hate on the game for looking uncanny and having bad combat without getting spammed by videos from some mediocre youtube guy with 100 gigs of CP hentai on his hard drive. It's like NuTrek all over again, let me hate in peace you maidenless reprobates.

[kanisatha]

Finally got the chance to watch the Skill Up and Matty videos in full, and also check some other negative reviews, and then very sadly went into my Steam wishlist to remove DA:V from it.

If I ever play the game, and now that has become a big if, it will be years from now, and I don't want it cluttering up my wishlist.

[majestic]

I found some elves. There's a token black elf and two asian elves, one of which is a companion. 'Tis so inclusive, it wokes me out of my immersion. To make matters worse, none of the women in the game are masturbatory material, at least so far, and Neve (one of the companions) almost sounds like that transsexual in Hogwart's: Wokacy, even though they have different voice actors.

On the techincal side, turning on RT makes the game look and feel better, but it also introduces the typical glowy reflective surfaces of lesser implementations of ray traced reflections. They're not as bas as they were in Hogwart's Legacy though, so it is mostly fine. Initially, the game was excessively unstable, crashing to the desktop with an NVIDIA driver error. I changed a few things in Afterburner*, turned off the EA app overlay and use full screen mode and vsync with a 50% frame lock, i.e. the game now runs at 60 fps. Have been playing without crashes ever since. I don't know which one of these was the problem, but it is stable now.

Otherwise the game's running fine with all the RT bells and whistles turned on, even without DLSS. The gameplay is a hybrid between Dragon Age: Inquisition and Darksiders, which is where I guess a lot of the dislike for the combat comes from. I'd say it is not a good fit for a Dragon Age game, but then again, what is the gameplay of a Dragon Age game really? DA:O had a more traditional RPG combat system where fiddling with the AI scripts for an hour or two was necessary to make most of the tedium go away, Dragon Age 2 had a silly click to win action combat system and Dragon Age: Inquisition was Mass Effect with melee weapons and an optional tactical mode that was by far and large completely useless.

So, is it actually bad so far? No. However, there are two key elements to the game that can put off players if they actively dislike such things (but such is the case for every game). I mean, outside of the inclusive elements causing incel rage, like the companions not having Tali style thigh gaps or there being a token minority character at every turn.

• The gameplay is really rather action oriented, you're dodging across the screen, you have to - unless playing on Storymode - use minor combo attacks and ideally perfectly block attacks which you can use to counter attack, all the while you're managing your own abilities with mana costs and cooldowns. It is about as far removed from Dragon Age: Origins as you can possibly get. 
• The party banter and companions might as well have been written by James Gunn or Joss Whedon. If you don't like quippy banter or actively dislike character interactions like those in Guardians of the Galaxy or Firefly, then don't bother.

Just early impressions though. There was one sad moment for long time fans of the series, and that comes really early. Bianca dies.

*I had a custom voltage/frequency curve set up. It was within spec, it just turned off the boost by capping the voltage and fequency at the stock spec clock of 2600MHZ. That should not have caused the instability, but who knows. Every other game, including Cyberpunk 2077, was rock solid with that curve setting so far, but eh, yeah. I can just switch back to it once I am done playing Veilguard.

Edited yesterday at 11:29 AM by Gorth
Lets try it without the offensive slurs

[Tale]

Only a handful of hours and I feel like I'm playing a AA fantasy action adventure instead of a AAA RPG. It's going to need to really nail the landing to end up getting a positive review from me by the end.

The biggest issue might be how cinematic it wants to be while not quite managing it well. The game wants to have frequent cutscenes, but very little worth having a cutscene. Very little drama or action. Just dialogue dragged on a bit too long. Needed an editing pass to cut back the word count and add some drama.

Right after the prologue when the new big threat is revealed, the party gathers round to discuss next steps. The other two characters come into scene by kicking back with cups of tea and I am a little lost as to why everyone is so cozy. 

There's just a jarring absence of tension 90% of the time. 

And the new darkspawn designs are the worst yet. But, on the other hand, the blight is the best yet. 

[melkathi]

So is the tl;dr that Bioware heard people love Spider AA RPGs and are trying to copy that?

[Tale]

The game this most felt like it wanted to be after I started up is Jedi Survivor/Fallen Order. But not as good. 

The prologue is this linear cinematic action affair with a zipline and a slide even. But it doesn't sell the action or adventure nearly as well. 

[MrBrown]

8 hours in.

Hard to say anything about the story yet. I liked the setup. Also feel like this relies heavily on knowing what happened in DA:I, more so than any Bioware game about their preceding games. Not sure how it'll feel like for people who didn't play DA:I.

I expected the combat to be more like Mass Effect with swords, but it's way more actiony. All those button combinations... I tried playing a mage, but the battle field was so full of flashy stuff I couldn't keep up with it. Warrior works better for me.

Graphics are fine, most of the time. They're a bit more cartoony, but it works out fine most of the time. One exception so far is the Darkspawn Ogre, who's faces look way too cartoony.

[LadyCrimson]

I was actually watching his (first ever) YT livestream when he interrupted it to stare at the camera to make his "early thoughts" video (that his editors cut out and post alone). Watching him play a bit, he does seem to be enjoying the game in a visceral way. But the specific dialogue and certain game systems he runs across, not so much.

He's also still very early in the game. I'll be curious if it's one of the games he actually finishes or abandons the playthrough. He doesn't style himself as a reviewer, but he's (usually) a pretty optimistic/non-negative/rational sort. Always liked him.

Sidenote: it's entirely possible my simplistic arpg brain might like some gameplay aspects about this game, but in my case I would be impatiently spamming my way through dialogue/cutscenes and getting irritated with the dialogue wheel, no matter whether it was good or not. It all looks so banal/been there conceptually before, and I wouldn't have the patience anymore. That's just me tho. I don't tend to play/choose games for immersive story.

 

Edited Friday at 10:02 PM by LadyCrimson

[Hurlshort]

9 hours ago, MrBrown said:

8 hours in.

Hard to say anything about the story yet. I liked the setup. Also feel like this relies heavily on knowing what happened in DA:I, more so than any Bioware game about their preceding games. Not sure how it'll feel like for people who didn't play DA:I.

Great, Inquisition was like a decade ago. All I remember was I had a cool granite table in my castle where I planned stuff. 

[Gorth]

I think this guy nailed my own observations (about the writing and dialogue) pretty well... also his delivery is funny if you like snark

 

 

[LadyCrimson]

^ Yeah, the writing being "tutorial/hand holding" or "feel good therapy" seems to be a common complaint with those who don't like it. Can't say what I've seen contradicts it much. Combat looks like flashy but nothing special arpg flailing about. But I'm not playing it first hand so *shrug*.

What Dragon Age was supposed to be the "good one/s," anyway? I vaguely recall the early ones coming out and I wasn't interested in those way back then either, because of my personal interests.

[MrBrown]

Regarding dialogue, the game makes it pretty clear what's going on, ie, "X is the bad guy, and now we need to take care of their underlings Y". I think some of it has to do with what I said earlier about the game relying heavily on what happened in Inquisition, so maybe the writers felt they really needed to be clear on things. It certainly feels more boring than say Inquisition, that had a lot of stuff like "Ok, there's a hole in the sky, let's speculate on why, and then go find out stuff about it".

Another thing I wanted to note, the game uses the ME2 and ME3 approach of missions (or "quests" because this is fantasy). As in, there's central hubs where you can do various minor things, but when you go on a specific quest, there's a specific area for it and you can't leave until you finish it (personally I preferred the semi-open world approach of DA:O and DA:I). And this leads to the dialogue also being very focused on what you're currently doing, ie., "let's go there to place X".

Personally, the dialogue is so far at the level that I don't mind it (because there's a good skip function), but also haven't found any that's particularly good, yet.

Edited Saturday at 11:20 AM by MrBrown

[MrBrown]

18 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

What Dragon Age was supposed to be the "good one/s," anyway? I vaguely recall the early ones coming out and I wasn't interested in those way back then either, because of my personal interests.

Most people seem to prefer DA:O. At least those are the ones that make the most noise, maybe the people who prefer the others don't make youtube videos about it.