#da4 critical

[persephinae]

We can't keep making videogame stories for players who aren't paying attention to them

Let me get lost, I promise it's okay.

he's right and he should say it

RPG's are meant to be a dense, well written game that you have to dig into and pay attention to (same with books)

they shouldn't be watered down for the lowest common denominator for people who don't even care

if a game is made to be a story experience, then perhaps people who hate stories shouldn't be accounted for. this game was made as deep and wide as a puddle to try and attract a wider audience, and RPG's are NOT MEANT to be shallow no substance games

in Veilguard's case, i think this also doubles back to the fact that it was rebooted 3 times and was designed as a live service game. Darrah himself said that it was 4 games frankensteined together.

However, it was at EA's insistence that they make this shallow to try and lure in both crowds (and even casual trend-chasing casuals) for more $$$ and chasing that Netflix model (2 or more screens, so you have to TELL the viewer every single thing going on) and it really blew up in their faces because RPG's, again, ARE NOT MEANT TO BE THAT

to be brutually honest, i'm glad this game flopped hard for the above reason, and even Darrah is telling the Mass Effect team to use their failure as what NOT to do to get what they need to make a good game

[thedreadblog]

[Image description in ALT]

Welp, this tells us a few things. But mostly to leave Trick and other devs alone for a bit unless they've stated they don't mind.

[childofthestone]

i wont ever be over joplin for the rest of my life

[corseque]

thinking about Solas again

Even if your goal in the story was just to tell a story about a man changing his mind, you HAVE to set it up better than that. You can't just introduce it randomly and then have it happen on accident. There has to be a whole trajectory and arc to it.

We also have to like... know about what's in his mind. At some point.

You also can't have a story be about someone changing their mind when we literally don't know what he's changing his mind FROM. We also have very little idea (because we don't know what his point of view is) what exactly would be required to change his mind. We don't know if it's even worthwhile to change his mind, that's how little we're allowed to think or talk about it.

As it is, the story is a straight line that continues straightly and then at the very end, a hard cliff to sudden, bizarre, and kind of insultingly easy character change.

I still can't believe that he was just waiting for Mythal to tell him what to do. what the fuck man. I am trying to be coherent here and I'm still just floundering whenever I try to describe how little went into it.

[0alix0]

after recent AMA events it became very clear that every writing decision in the veilguard was made without any consideration, respect or love to an established lore or characters.

and so I want to remind everyone that we don't have to bend over backwards to justify and make sense out of stupid and inconsistent writing choices

the devs did not put this much thought to tie everything together, why must you?

[cryptidcomet]

Veilguard doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game for a multitude of reasons:

It doesn't allow you to butt heads with your companions over *anything*. It doesn't allow you to even converse with your companions outside of scripted scenes — you can't just approach them and open a dialogue wheel until they want to talk to Rook; you'll just get one-liners Rook can't respond to and passive NPC-exclusive interactions that Rook happens to overhear.

It doesn't allow you to ask about/discuss the world, culture, organizations, or its history (i.e. any previous installments, or your character's selected backstory). It never references any game outside of Inquisition, and barely references Inquisition despite being a direct sequel to it. None of your previous games decisions are imported or considered. There isn't even a proper "canon" they present, the past is just a void.

There's no small side stories, barely any ambient/passing npc talk, nor many side quests, (let alone complex or fulfilling ones just filler for large scale plot), there are companion Loyalty Quests that all converge to the main story that ends in a Suicide Mission.

Veilguard doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game, because it plays like a Mass Effect game.

[shoutydwarf]

and truly i am sorry i have very little good things to say about this game. like the rest of us here, i waited 10 years for it. i wanted it to be good. i scoffed at the bad reviews, i went into it with all my biases in favor of it. i had complete faith in bioware EVEN as someone that doesn't like inquisition and never once cared about the solas/elf plots. i cannot stress enough that i was a person completely set up to be pre-disappointed in the game, yet i was not.

i've logged 90 hours. i've completed it 1 1/2 times, i've seen all the endings and then i let all of that marinate for a week longer. the retrospection hit and it hit really fucking hard. i'm really tired of criticism of this game being shut down with "you're just a hater/tourist/grifter" especially when that's being directed at ME because yall.

i have been here, in the da community, since i was 13 years old. i am 26 now. my art would not exist without dragon age. my writing would not exist without dragon age. through this entire 10 year long drought i have contributed in NO small part to keeping this community alive. i've written 200 page google docs on dwarf culture. i completely rewrote characters like oghren and cullen. my MUSE, my magnum opus, my favorite of all favorites, is a dragon age oc (love u aeducan). my best friend and i get together at least once a month to sit in her garage for 3 days straight talking and planning out our dragon age ocs/stories/roleplays.

i have a right to be disappointed. i have a right to speak about that disappointment. i have a right to criticize the game. and odds are, the people criticizing it are just like me to some degree. if you're happy with the game GOOD FOR YOU. i wish i WAS YOU.

anyway tldr as mad as i sound in these critical posts, i'm actually just sad. and here lies the warning that this blog will continue being very critical of the game.

[moriemur]

I enjoy seeing almost all the bioware critical posts but occasionally one gets through where the thing people are furious about is that one of the writers doesn’t consider the original antagonist of the game his special pookie who did nothing wrong and must be protected at all costs. come on. be serious.

sure his writing was a downgrade but that’s the least of the game’s problems. it’s depressingly obvious that he (and his DAI romance) are the only things that got any attention at all from the writers lmao. jepler’s punch comments are very obviously there to deflect from the valid criticism that solavellans are the only returning players whose world states were acknowledged at all.

like I’m so serious if you’re one of the majority of players who did not play solavellan (despite the game attempting to force you to do so!) you just get the exact same scenes with half the lines cut out and jarring cuts in the music to compensate for your cutscenes being half the length

not even to get into the absolutely diabolical gender politics of morrigan’s entire narrative arc and bodily autonomy being sacrificed in service of a male character