Dragon Age: The Veilguard - A woke disaster? Yep!

[Overly Serious]

Compared to the sequels it's flawless, but on its own, yeah, it's not as good as nostalgia makes it look.

Subjective, but DA was a top-down RPG where you could pause it, make tiny adjustments, let it go, pause and repeat. You could zoom around anywhere on the map, you could arrange things strategically and work out the best solutions with different ability combinations. It had to be played on Nightmare to really enjoy it, imo. Plus it had a lot of adult humour and the whole sex romance thing going on which was entertaining. And semi-realistic as far as fantasy goes. The second game had fucking blur lines on your character as you shoot around at Warner Bros. speeds with the camera attached to your character. DA:I gave some of the fun of the first one back but Dragon Age started at the top and went downhill.

 

[BiggerChungus]

Subjective, but DA was a top-down RPG where you could pause it, make tiny adjustments, let it go, pause and repeat. You could zoom around anywhere on the map, you could arrange things strategically and work out the best solutions with different ability combinations. It had to be played on Nightmare to really enjoy it, imo. Plus it had a lot of adult humour and the whole sex romance thing going on which was entertaining. And semi-realistic as far as fantasy goes. The second game had fucking blur lines on your character as you shoot around at Warner Bros. speeds with the camera attached to your character. DA:I gave some of the fun of the first one back but Dragon Age started at the top and went downhill.

The combat was definitely the best, same with the writing, though a lot of the humor isn't that funny looking back, and the overabundant sex dialogue/options really was a bad sign of things to come.

 

[Johan Hulth]

Origins also did great with the impactful plot decisions thing that Bioware used to be hugely respected for. Look how many different outcomes you can get from the Landsmeet, and the fact that the main villain can end up becoming a fully fledged party member is just crazy in retrospect. Both the grey zone morality and actual game changing effects that the decisions offered has just been watered down hugely ever since. I imagine the choice to spare the life of a slaver in exchange for a bunch of gold and a few dislikes from your companions won't be present in a current year Bioware game. Most likely Solas wanting to genocide the world to bring down the veil will be treated as a sensitive moral conundrum, while Tevinter nobles who use the phrase "knife ear" will be butchered and smugly quipped about.

 

[Übertroon]

What Dragon Age 4 should be
-The Qunari are beginning another holy war to defeat and subjugate the Tevinter Imperium. In response the Imperial Chantry have declared a new Exalted March to defend the imperium and the continent at large from Qunari expansion.
-The main character find themselves caught in the middle of the bloodiest conflict on the continent since the first Qunari war.
-The Qunari are launching relentless, often suicidal charges at the Imperium, the losses on both side catastrophic. The Qunari are using metal dreadnoughts, armored ground vehicles, and crude firearms and cannons to gain an edge, while the Tevinter unleashes ancient and dangerous sorcery upon the enemy.
-The Qunari are using oppression and fanaticism to maintain order, but struggling to hold occupied territory, and the converted continental races are having doubts about the Qun.
-The Tevinter Imperium has become embroiled in power plays and subterfuge, the chantry, noble houses, and the imperial court all scheming to grab as much power as possible while the conflict rages.
-Meanwhile Solas is planning to manipulate the conflict so that the bloodshed spills over unto the area of the Imperium where the first blight took place, tearing open the veil, and setting in motion the plot for the elves to reclaim lost power
-The story will finally bring a conclusion to the story of how the blight originated, the nature of the golden city, the archdemons, and the roles played by man and elf
-The grittiest story in dragon age yet. You'll have to choose a side in a conflict where both sides are performing daily atrocities. There is no good side. The destruction and deaths immeasurable. Some of the most dangerous magic ever casted will be unleashed, and the world faces several dangers all at once.
-The party will reflect the tone of the game. Companions haunted by their past and future deeds. Survival will not be guaranteed

What Dragon Age 4 will be
-It will still be about a conflict between the Qunari and Imperium, but it will be limited and take a backseat to the plot involving Solas.
-Qunari will be further white washed and portrayed as extreme utilitarians who let people do what they want to do and what they do best for the "commune". The evil Qunari will be those who don't let men and women be equal etc.
-Teviner will mostly focus on their evil patriarchy and their debauchery. The latter will be portrayed positively as hedonism is good, while the patriarchy will be defeated by the women and transgenders in the imperium.
-Oh yeah, your party will be a fucking burger king kid's club of characters, at least 2/3 will be homosexual, and at least two transgender people. They will all be quipping their way through the story and making jokes that makes redditors laugh.
-The story will just raise more questions than it answers.
-The gore will be toned down. Stuff from Dragon Age Origins like the lust demons will still be missing, but there will be trans dick for you to suck.
-In the end you bring peace between the Qunari and Tevinter through a wholesome 100 speech that makes everyone realize that war is stupid

 

[Psyduck]

Well it looks better than the Dragon's Dogma TV series.

Man, that one was so disappointing, was hoping for a recreation of the actual game's story, excited to see how they'd handle the final act, but it turned out to be just kind of a generic plot in the end

...Still hopeful for Dragon's Dogma 2...

 

[CarlosDanger]

I think it may well bite them in the ass when they learn that Twitter feeds, YouTube autists, and Tumblr refugees aren't enough to make a game the success EA wants.

IE The last two Battlefield games.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Compared to the sequels it's flawless, but on its own, yeah, it's not as good as nostalgia makes it look.

How I remember it the first thing people talked about the game was how many ways you could play the prologue and have choices during the campaign. Not the gameplay.

 

[BiggerChungus]

-Teviner will mostly focus on their evil patriarchy and their debauchery. The latter will be portrayed positively as hedonism is good, while the patriarchy will be defeated by the women and transgenders in the imperium.

Tevinter's gonna be butchered the worst. They've already said that a (MTF) tranny Tevinter magister is gonna be one of the companions, and in the comic he first shows up in almost every line of dialogue he has is something sexual and it's all played off as lolsoquirkyandempowering. Tevinter's the perfect vehicle for the new team to project their hatred of "the patriarchy" and authority while also pushing their nymphomaniacal magic realm fanfiction.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Long as Dorian shows up I'm cool with it.
Oh and female quinari please god. Don't fucking screw us over like with the only female turian who bites it because lazy programmers. Preferably voiced by Grace Jones or Geena Davis.

 

[ShoFuKan]

Origins also did great with the impactful plot decisions thing that Bioware used to be hugely respected for. Look how many different outcomes you can get from the Landsmeet, and the fact that the main villain can end up becoming a fully fledged party member is just crazy in retrospect.

Also relationships. There's a specific path where a noble warden can romance Alistair or Anora, make them king/queen, become king/queen of Ferelden and yet still see a hardened Leliana on the side. It's a specific path that not everyone will find yet it was included because it was an option a warden could end up in.
One of my most memorable playthroughs was a female mage warden, going after Alistair, trying to get him and Anora together. She backstabbing at the landsmeet (one of the only times I can remember them actually siding with Loghain in all my playthroughs) because she didn't want an elf as a side hoe for her to be husband, having to fight out of there and making Alistair king anyway, he wouldn't accept mage warden as queen because noble sires and all that, so she scarified herself to kill the arch-demon denying Morrigan her ritual.
So many little changes like a different origin, romance option, landsmeet outcome and finally ending resulting in a playthrough I remember a decade later.
DA2 never had this level, DAI didn't have this level. Dreadwolf won't have this level.

What Dragon Age 4 should be

Unironically sounds amazing. Something like Tyranny but you're just a grunt caught in the middle going after Solas amidst a deadly conflict. Something like this could bring Bioware back I think, having an RPG like this is what people would crave.

Tevinter's gonna be butchered the worst. They've already said that a (MTF) tranny Tevinter magister is gonna be one of the companions, and in the comic he first shows up in almost every line of dialogue he has is something sexual and it's all played off as lolsoquirkyandempowering. Tevinter's the perfect vehicle for the new team to project their hatred of "the patriarchy" and authority while also pushing their nymphomaniacal magic realm fanfiction.

God I miss Wynne. A motherly grandmother character berating me because she's cranky is something I never thought I'd miss. It speaks to the level of quality in characters that they're pushing diversity first instead of actual interesting characters.

 

[Mola Ram]

Tevinter's gonna be butchered the worst. They've already said that a (MTF) tranny Tevinter magister is gonna be one of the companions, and in the comic he first shows up in almost every line of dialogue he has is something sexual and it's all played off as lolsoquirkyandempowering. Tevinter's the perfect vehicle for the new team to project their hatred of "the patriarchy" and authority while also pushing their nymphomaniacal magic realm fanfiction.

I've been saying since I saw the sad little market square that was supposed to be Val Royeaux that if they fuck up Tevinter after so many years of buildup, then this series is dead in the water.

I did not know they would fuck it up intentionally.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

One of the biggest parts of the series was having your choices matter between games, but I wonder if anyone still has that 8+ year old saved data on his hard drive, or even if he remembers the choices he made to actually appreciate them. Heck, I fucking doubt Bioware as the capabilities to actually parse that data anymore, from what I understood all the firing of old personal and replacing them with trannies has basically resulted in gaming dark ages where companies forgot how their own systems work.

 

[Mola Ram]

One of the biggest parts of the series was having your choices matter between games, but I wonder if anyone still has that 8+ year old saved data on his hard drive, or even if he remembers the choices he made to actually appreciate them. Heck, I fucking doubt Bioware as the capabilities to actually parse that data anymore, from what I understood all the firing of old personal and replacing them with trannies has basically resulted in gaming dark ages where companies forgot how their own systems work.

This is what led to the Dragon Age Keep, a website (and app, maybe?) where all the choices are laid out for you and you can tailor your game experience to suit a particular outcome. Good thing, too, because you can no longer upload your DA: Origins data, so unless you uploaded saves before they were rendered nonfunctional, you have to use the Keep if you want the Origins part of the story to be tailored to your liking.

The linkage among the three games has been rather haphazard and generally unsatisfying, though not completely awful. The situation with Morrigan in Inquisition can be very different depending on how you ended Origins, though it seems clear to me they still haven't decided what the fallout from preserving Urthemiel's soul will be (though if the theories about the Old Gods having some connection to or even being the Elven gods turn out to be true, I assume it'll be a big part of Dreadwolf). On the other hand, a potentially amazing scenario in Inquisition where you'd have to choose between saving Hawke or your original Warden wound up getting scotched because they couldn't think of a satisfying way to do the Warden's voice ... so the choice ends up being Hawke or Stroud. I honestly couldn't remember who the fuck he was the first time I encountered this.

(It's possible to have Loghain or even Alistair in Stroud's place, and that's actually very neat ... but obviously doesn't have the same impact the Warden would.)

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

We know for a fact that Cullen isn't returning, thank god. Greg Ellis is mentally insane. (I'm actually surprised there is no thread for him here)

 

[Maude Snew]

One of the biggest parts of the series was having your choices matter between games, but I wonder if anyone still has that 8+ year old saved data on his hard drive, or even if he remembers the choices he made to actually appreciate them. Heck, I fucking doubt Bioware as the capabilities to actually parse that data anymore, from what I understood all the firing of old personal and replacing them with trannies has basically resulted in gaming dark ages where companies forgot how their own systems work.

That's not a new thing at all, even beyond gaming. A lot of the time you have the x guy, could be UI, could be database, could be whatever you want and he quits or is fired or dies or whatever and nobody else knows how to work any of that shit. Goes on everywhere where computers are used really to the point where NASA has to keep finding people who know COBOL or some arcane shit that's just not really used a lot anymore. Can't really blame this one on the tranny menace.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

That's not a new thing at all, even beyond gaming. A lot of the time you have the x guy, could be UI, could be database, could be whatever you want and he quits or is fired or dies or whatever and nobody else knows how to work any of that shit. Goes on everywhere where computers are used really to the point where NASA has to keep finding people who know COBOL or some arcane shit that's just not really used a lot anymore. Can't really blame this one on the tranny menace.

Depends on the time that passed from the original creation, I think I heard it happens on the context of Paradox games that should be relatively new.

 

[Maude Snew]

Depends on the time that passed from the original creation, I think I heard it happens on the context of Paradox games that should be relatively new.

Yes and no? Bad hiring can always help make such problems worse but there's lots of companies that lose "the guy" for a wide variety of reasons. I'm saying it can and does happen a lot regardless of companies trying to farm woke points. It's just as easy for some insufferable moron to drive away the employees that get shit done whether said moron wears a dress or not.

 

[Übertroon]

This is what led to the Dragon Age Keep, a website (and app, maybe?) where all the choices are laid out for you and you can tailor your game experience to suit a particular outcome. Good thing, too, because you can no longer upload your DA: Origins data, so unless you uploaded saves before they were rendered nonfunctional, you have to use the Keep if you want the Origins part of the story to be tailored to your liking.

The linkage among the three games has been rather haphazard and generally unsatisfying, though not completely awful. The situation with Morrigan in Inquisition can be very different depending on how you ended Origins, though it seems clear to me they still haven't decided what the fallout from preserving Urthemiel's soul will be (though if the theories about the Old Gods having some connection to or even being the Elven gods turn out to be true, I assume it'll be a big part of Dreadwolf). On the other hand, a potentially amazing scenario in Inquisition where you'd have to choose between saving Hawke or your original Warden wound up getting scotched because they couldn't think of a satisfying way to do the Warden's voice ... so the choice ends up being Hawke or Stroud. I honestly couldn't remember who the fuck he was the first time I encountered this.

(It's possible to have Loghain or even Alistair in Stroud's place, and that's actually very neat ... but obviously doesn't have the same impact the Warden would.)

It will get messier and messier as time goes though. Mass Effect 3 was filled with moments where they pulled shit out of thin air to fill the gaps left by previous choices.
Exterminated the Rachni queen? Well the reapers just so happens to have one laying around.
Legion dead in Mass Effect 2? Well we've got a copy who has a holographic copy of the wounds suffered by legion.
etc.
Dragon Age 4 would likely have to throw in a lot of ass pulls just to make shit work.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Since I am an overly optimistic fool I have the slimmest hope that the people making the game will see the success and popularity of other isometric RPGs that have come out over the past few years and try to make something like the original. I really liked DA, especially because it came out during a time where no one was really making that type of game anymore. I went back and played it again and although it shows it's age I thought a lot of the little details were neat.

I also played DA2 and thought it sucked. I remember beating it but I couldn't tell you what happened in the story at all. I tried to play Inquisition and couldn't get past an hour of gameplay. It has something to do with closing rifts? I don't know.

Should I even bother with the lore at all after origins? If by some miracle this game launches and isn't a complete pile of dogshit like we all know it's going to be I don't really want to be in the dark on stuff and I'm not going to play Inquisition.

 

[Ser Prize]

Long as Dorian shows up I'm cool with it.
Oh and female quinari please god. Don't fucking screw us over like with the only female turian who bites it because lazy programmers. Preferably voiced by Grace Jones or Geena Davis.

Holy shit shut the fuck up about Dorian every five posts.