#da critical

[alenkorra]

you'll never be able to convince me the evolution of mages in dragon age wasn't the lamest thing ever

how did we go from arcane warrior, spirit healer, bloodmage and shapeshifter to ice mage? that's it? that's your specialization? ice? boo boriiiiing 🍅🍅🍅

[jzargo]

It's kind of incredible how easily and effortlessly Divinity: Original Sin 2 went "Yes, Sourcerers are powerful, some of them misuse that power to terrifying ends, and the evil that seeks to exploit them - the Void - is a threat that absolutely needs to be destroyed" while also saying "And yet the system in place to try and prevent these things - the Magisters - is cartoonishly evil and corrupt, and even though there may be a few good Magisters who want to change the system and recognize the abuses it commits, they are not enough to outweigh the evils of the system." in the same breath. Something Dragon Age struggled to do. For four games.

[baejax-the-great]

One of the things missing in Veilguard is any sort of meaningful power struggle. By keeping to the poorer parts of the city-settings, we don't really deal with corrupt or powerful nobles. By defanging the Crows, an organization who famously has lethal squabbles between factions, they turned them into some weird, benevolent family organization. Even the assassin trying to make "evil" power plays doesn't actually manage to kill any of his targets, and his ruthless relatives? Also don't kill him in revenge. In the end, the status quo is maintained. Nothing has changed.

In Tevinter, we have the Threads, an organized crime unit who we know runs "protection" rackets on the locals and is involved in some kind of smuggling (it's Tevinter--so presumably this would involve slavery and dangerous artifacts, but it's Veilguard, so I guess not). Instead of them beefing with the Shadow Dragons, who presumably ruin some of their deals with their pesky "freeing the slaves" thing, and instead of their main issue being with any sort of law enforcement, something which doesn't exist in Veilguard beyond one singular templar who does all of jack shit the entire game, their main power struggle is with the Venatori, who are evil just to be evil.

And instead of the Veilguard siding with law enforcement or the threads and enlisting their help to, idk, unseat the corrupt head of the templars or otherwise deal with the venatori shit, the threads are highly favored by the storyline, and in the end the only real choice is to make Neve a thread or to make her... idk, the same Neve? The game calls her an "inspiration", but it's not like she's part of any organization, so we can't call her a figurehead. It's just like, see that random citizen right there? She rules. And I don't really see how that increases the power of the rule of law, because even if one good person is working within rule of law to get things done, she's not part of the system, and everyone already know the system is corrupt in Minrathous. Random citizens in fucking Ferelden know the system is corrupt in Minrathous, or they would if they weren't all dead. Neve is now just playing on hard mode to appear righteous, which, good for her, but I'm sorry, won't inspire all that many people who are still paying "protection" money to the local mafia.

(Putting Neve in charge of the Threads is an absolutely whackadoodle decision by the devs that I don't even know how to respond to. She has a single Thread contact. Presumably the Threads have a hierarchy. She has never demonstrated interest in being a smuggler. Being a detective really has no overlap with being a crime boss. Telling a group of criminals that they are all detective's helpers now is sure to go over like a lead balloon. What the fuck was that. Why did that happen.)

Maevaris and Dorian arguing came out of nowhere and lasted a fairly long time, which was interesting, but after the most recent election in the states, Maevaris's position sounds unbearably naive and trite, and this hardly counts as a power struggle as they both say they will support the other depending on what some random outsider thinks should happen. (That is soooo not a basis for a system of government. Why would Maevaris OR Dorian cede their power to Rook, someone they don't know and who doesn't matter)

The power struggle within the Wardens is also very stupid and easily solved. The First Warden is a moron. He dies (kind of). For some reason the extremely hot and competent couple who we first encounter in the middle of nowhere are next in command, so, phew. Problem solved there. A question of what the Wardens will do now that the Blights are over would have been interesting. Do they keep recruiting lest the Blight somehow reoccur and nobody remembers the Warden secrets? Or do they disband? Do they set themselves to seeking a cure and nothing else?

The closest you get to that is deciding what the griffons will do, which, again, why the fuck is Rook deciding that, but also there are 13 of them, in two or three more generations they will be dead unless a lot of mages bone up on genetics real fast.

Who is left? We have Rivain, which is just pointless in this game. I played as a Lord of Fortune, but you could drop that faction and not a single thing changes in the game. Pirates who don't loot valuable artifacts because they are elvhen? Give me a fucking break.

Same for the Mourn Watch. There is pretty much nothing going on in that region. You could excise it from the game and nothing changes in the slightest. There is not a single excuse for them not using the Eluvians to help the Veilguard earlier in the game, given just how little they have going on.

The Veiljumpers are just missed opportunities all over the place. They could have had factions debating whether to join the god of vengeance in fucking up the human civilizations as payback for, you know, everything. They could have had people joining Cyrion in thinking that a Forgotten One might be the best way to face down the gods, given they'd done it before. There could have been a HUGE cultural impact on "what do we do now that we know our gods are evil fuckfaces--what do we keep and what do we throw away," but Veilguard ain't that deep. They could have had knowledge of a super-weapon or some elvhen bullshit that would help the Veilguard fight the gods... but nah.

In DAO, your decisions not only affected the political futures of the various regions, but they decided who would help you and how. Did the dwarves have golems? Did you have templars or mages? That whole wolf thing with the Dalish that I no longer remember that well? And the Dalish deciding to help changed how they were viewed in Ferelden. The mages helping you meant the monarch would treat them favorably. It fucking mattered.

In Veilguard, the only situation remotely close to that is the dragon decision at the beginning, which was one of the fucking dumbest plot points in a video game I have ever played. It was the first thing that made me set my controller down and go... what? What the fuck? The idea that Rook, a nobody, is the only person singularly capable of driving back a dragon in the entire north is laughable. What the fuck was Dorian up to that day? How is Rook more capable than every single Crow? How is it the two companions you sent to the other city were absolutely useless? If Lucanis/Neve + two companions were unable to drive a dragon away, what makes them think Rook would be the deciding factor? What makes them blame Rook when they themselves couldn't fucking do it? Neve in particular was a big part of fucking up that ritual and releasing the gods, so why is Rook taking all the fire for this?

AND WHY IS THEIR RESPONSE TO A BLIGHT TO FIND A SINGLE DRAGON HUNTER? HEY DIPSHITS, THE DRAGON IS HUNTING YOU. YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THAT PART. YOU NEED AN ARMY.

But Treviso or Minrathous being spared doesn't change the global political situation at all. It would have been really interesting if it did. Tevinter hobbled? How many kingdoms would be salivating to take a bite out of their territory? With the trade princes of Antiva being absolutely fucked over by the Blight, who is taking over that trade? Who is getting rich?

Nobody, I guess, because why would Rook know or care about that, because, as previously mentioned, they are a nobody who doesn't matter and honestly shouldn't be listened to.

The stakes in this game are nothing because the bad guys are all so obviously bad that you know, as a video game player, that you are going to defeat them. Oh, the Antaam are just mindless, faceless brutes fucking up Treviso? Okay, let's kill them. Venatori again? I'm pretty sure they aren't the heroes of this game. There's no power struggle, and in the end all we've done is revert to the status quo, (except i guess Treviso is no longer occupied).

Except for the south. The south is dead. but we didn't have anything to do with that for some reason. Couldn't even be bothered to house some refugees in our safehouse that was built specifically to house refugees. The Inquisitor, who has access to the eluvians, couldn't figure out how to get other people through them or something so... sorry, every single Orlesian, Fereldan, and Marcher.

[mrs-theirin]

"people saying veilguard doesn't feel like a dragon age game are just whining because the choices don't matter, they didn't matter in previous games so grow up" actually people are saying veilguard doesn't feel like a dragon age game because rook is doing snow angels in the blight. actually people are saying veilguard doesn't feel like a dragon age game because characters no longer speak like they're from a fantasy game and instead say things like "full stop" which is MODERN SLANG. people are saying veilguard doesn't feel like a dragon age game because it doesn't. thanks

[ichorknight]

"they act like their fanfiction of datv would be better" lol. lmao yeah. because it would be. is that not the point. is that not how its always been with fanworks. because its made with passion from fans for fans and not there to Appeal to the Average Consumer and Make Money.....

our fanfiction is better than dao and da2 and dai too by the way like, if it makes you feel any better

and i know what the actual argument is, its that fans apparently wanted datv to be something that wasnt within the realm of possibility.

except this shadow cabal of fans with unreasonable demands is a strawman, right next to the solas-obsessed LA gangs that were apparently trying to shoot epler dead in the street

because i know and you know that what we wanted was the bare minimum of the world the game took place in. da2 did it and it got forgiven for sucking because it at least respected the established setting enough that fans en-mass didnt feel the urge to decanonize the entire story from their world states because it feels that out of place in it

did bioware management and development hell make everything worse and a nightmare, obviously. im not unaware that that likely affected the quality of their work. but no actually you cannot point at one ragebaiter saying varric shouldve been the maker that everybody has blocked in the critical tags and then pretend thats everything we have to say

we wanted a sequel to the story the game before had set up, and what we got was a story that just didnt feel like it. that is nobodys fault but the people who signed off on the final version. and until proof comes out that trick weekes and john epler were tied up in the broom closet with duct tape over their mouths while corrine busche stood at a fold out table with an evil sneer on her face as she wrote "drown the world in demons" into the script 20 times, that will continue to include them

[silver-horse]

it makes me lose my mind that a mobile game has top notch save file carry-over system where it remembers all my fucking choices from 4 previous stories, can account for 3 different protags and all their possible story paths, all the possibilities for which minor characters are alive or dead and 6-7 romance options for each of the 3 protags.... but oh yeah, bioware couldn't be bothered to do that for the continuation of fucking dragon age 💀💀💀💀

[theredjenny]

Okay I am certain someone else could do like a better full analysis of this than me. But does anyone else feel like it's. Really weird and gross. That the singular white woman companion in DATV (Harding), is the one who gets the storyline that pushes the narrative that she is the biggest victim Ever. And everyone(but especially the elves) should Feel Bad and Guilty and Apologize for how Awful the. Ancient elves from thousands of years ago. Treated the Titans. Especially when. Both elven companions are POC.

[rachelamberish]

soo….

Before I thought that this was another classic tale of EA forcing an insane development cycle that left BioWare with scraps of the game they really wanted to make, piecing together a patchwork game that was the best they could do on this timeline.

Now I think it’s more nuanced than that. Now I think through layoffs and the general culture it promotes, EA has turned BioWare into a fundamentally different company than what it was 10, 15 years ago.

Because that AMA was a fucking shitshow. And there’s no “oh it must be EA!” that I can say to any of that.

Like I was willing to give the writers and devs such a huge benefit of the doubt but I’m going to be real it sounds like some (not all) of them are actual fucking morons. And don’t seem to understand the story that they wrote or the grander world of Dragon Age at all.

So I’m kind of done defending them after this. 🤷