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

[G19]

I salute all you brave souls who are still somewhat looking forward to whatever this shitshow of game is going to be. I look back very fondly on this franchise, but I know it's never going to get better.
Dragon Age Inquisition might be one of my very first redpills. Even as an open-minded kid, it was a jarring, whole new level of faggotry, evoking in me disgust that Origins and 2 never made me feel.
I did enjoy it enough to finish it, but it's the only one I never replayed. DAO and 2 were easily some of my most played RPGs growing up. One of my favorite ways to enjoy my time. I was more in it for the story and freedom of choice that I had never experienced in a game before, explaining why I never looked down on DA2 the way most have. So, in the end, Inquisition was nothing short of a shock, and I don't want to even look at whatever Dreadwolf has turned my beloved franchise into.

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.

This reminds me, I distinctly remember Sten's farewell scene in Origins' epilogue. He parted ways with words similar to this. "I hope, when the time comes, that we do not meet on the battlefield."
And I've been waiting for the time to come to this day. So many callbacks to past games, similar to this, that can be brought back and tied up in a proper fashion. But will they do it justice? I won't hold my breath.

The problem is that Bioware is way too woke now. 09 was fine because you want gay sex, it's optional. You want Leliana to be hardened thats optional. You want Wynne or Morrigan to leave (tho why would you) you can make them. You wanna marry Alistair and ruin Morrigan's ritual? Go ahead. Screw the dalish over? You can.

Now we're gonna be stuck with a non binary main character, a blonde troon party member, strang black wamen soldier, etc etc. They're way too sjw woke now. Krem was bad enough.

This. It was all about choice back then. It was all optional back then. But no more. Now you will have your rainbow party, listen to all their whining about how oppressive their families or societies are, and like it.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

Still miles better than Sera. Low bar, I know.

Sera was annoying but as a character *concept* I really liked her. They could have gone in so many irritating, tired directions with "elf who was raised by humans, is openly racist towards other elves, and doesn't know anything about her own origins" and they didn't. She's just some punk kid. Wish they gave her a less punchable face, though.

For me the "most useless" party member has to go to Cole. What a snooze that little doofus was. Though I did laugh at his personal mission that has you taking him out to lunch in Orlais -- which must be at least a few days' journey from your castle -- and then being right back at the castle later in the afternoon.

On another note, the point speculating about the Qunari "collective" makes me think they're gonna espouse some thinly-veiled anarcho-socialist-communist nonsense and therefore be the canon good guys. We've already seen from Krem's story that they're openly troon-friendly, whereas the Tevinter for whatever reason aren't despite being decadent faggots.

 

[Mola Ram]

Sera was annoying but as a character *concept* I really liked her. They could have gone in so many irritating, tired directions with "elf who was raised by humans, is openly racist towards other elves, and doesn't know anything about her own origins" and they didn't. She's just some punk kid. Wish they gave her a less punchable face, though.

I hated the whole "everything I do is justified if it's against the rich" excuse for her fuckery. When they decided to explore Red Jenny, I didn't realize they meant Commies.

For me the "most useless" party member has to go to Cole. What a snooze that little doofus was. Though I did laugh at his personal mission that has you taking him out to lunch in Orlais -- which must be at least a few days' journey from your castle -- and then being right back at the castle later in the afternoon.

See now, I liked a lot of Cole's weirdness and the obvious-after-the-fact revelation that he always knew Blackwall's and Solas's big secrets. What I hated about Cole was how much of his story was relegated to tie-in fiction. To this day I'm not terribly clear on who Rhys and Evangeline were, even though they seem to be pretty important -- Rhys is Wynne's long lost son, I think? I hate when they do that, and it happens a lot in Inquisition.

Agreed on the travel time, though. Time is absolutely wacky in DAI, to the point you don't even have day/night cycles in the various zone. Real immersive for an open world game.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

Some more concept art. It's shaping up to look like a Chinese phone game.
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I don't see what the cause for alarm is here tbh. I don't love this art but the style/mood isn't far from what we've seen for previous games.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I hated the whole "everything I do is justified if it's against the rich" excuse for her fuckery. When they decided to explore Red Jenny, I didn't realize they meant Commies.

To be totally fair she is an actual, literal child, her attitude is portrayed as immature (if understandable, given her upbringing), and your other party members (esp. my girl Vivienne) do not like her bitchy little ass, either.

(Fully expecting them to recast Vivienne's actress if she even appears in the new one, as the previous VOA was white and that's not allowed anymore.)

I played a Qunari woman in my DAI and I did not realize that was Sera's type. She started coming on to me during one of our little rooftop therapy sessions and I noped the hell out, "romancing" a damaged and angry teenager honestly felt exploitative and I kinda thought it was gross that it was even an option. Shades of Jack in ME2, though at least Jack is an adult woman. Sera acts and *looks* like a kid.

See now, I liked a lot of Cole's weirdness and the obvious-after-the-fact revelation that he always knew Blackwall's and Solas's big secrets. What I hated about Cole was how much of his story was relegated to tie-in fiction. To this day I'm not terribly clear on who Rhys and Evangeline were, even though they seem to be pretty important -- Rhys is Wynne's long lost son, I think? I hate when they do that, and it happens a lot in Inquisition.

So many of my issues with Inquisition come from the sheer amount of backstory I was expected to be versed in. Major characters just sort of appeared with no introduction and I was apparently supposed to recognize them from some 5 year old DLC I had never played? It doesn't make sense within the game either, characters would ask me my opinion of some event that had occurred in DA2 and there was never an option to be like, "How the fuck am I supposed to know? I'm literally just some random who stumblefucked into this position, why would I have an opinion about the political intrigue of some city there's no reason to believe I've ever been to?"

God I felt stupid for hooking up with Blackwall, though. My Dumb Bitch Juice translates into the realm of gaming, too, apparently.

 

[Zaryiu2]

Honestly, Inquisitions pseudo-MMO structure is was killed the game for me and keeps me from finishing it to this day. You can really tell that the game was originally planned to be an MMO, but the MMO hype train started dying around 2012-2013 so they repurposed it into the game we ended up getting.

Say what you will about DA:2, it at least "sort of" felt like DA: O in game play and combat, if nothing else, and it at least carried me through the game. DA:I combat, despite being the most over the top, felt like it had the least amount of weight, and I will never forgive the dumbing down of the talent tree's and stat point allocation. Anyone working on an RPG who pitches an idea to make a game feel less like an RPG should be fired on the spot (or at least given a written warning).

Anyways, while I get everyone complaining about the woke b.s that will inevitably be in the game, I'll bet that's going to be far from Dreadwolfs only problem. We all know that game is going to come out with a tacked on multiplayer mode that's shitty, unnecessary, and drained resources from the main game, over priced micro-transactions for both the single player and multiplayer in an attempt to make it "games-as-service-y", and is probably going to release in a glitched riddled, half finish state due to being rushed out by EA so as to meet the holiday dead-line.

Speaking of which, does anyone want to start making bets on how long it takes before we start seeing price cuts for Dreadwolf after its release? Andromeda barely lasted over a month before big retailers started cutting its price, I wouldn't be surprised if Dreadwolf doesn't even make it a full month before a price drop.

I don't know if a game being obviously originally an mmo is in and of itself a deathbed, Kingdoms of Amalur is that too and yet to me it seems that despite that i assume there are quite a few who would say that is not a bad game me included, I think it's because besides being obviously an mmo is that whether as the sums of it's part or individually Inquisition is plain awful

Pillars 2 didn't flop because they forgot to market it but it flopped because it was shit.

Im a huge crpg fans, but even I can't stand the shitty plot and mechanics. Doesn't take a genius to know that answering multiple choice questions (ship battles) is an idiotic game mechanic.

...Seems I should have actually looked up the options of people before getting both games (at least it was at a hefty discount)

Pillars 2 didn't flop because they forgot to market it but it flopped because it was shit.

Im a huge crpg fans, but even I can't stand the shitty plot and mechanics. Doesn't take a genius to know that answering multiple choice questions (ship battles) is an idiotic game mechanic.

...Seems I should have actually looked up the options of people before getting both games (at least it was at a hefty discount)

I hated the whole "everything I do is justified if it's against the rich" excuse for her fuckery. When they decided to explore Red Jenny, I didn't realize they meant Commies.



See now, I liked a lot of Cole's weirdness and the obvious-after-the-fact revelation that he always knew Blackwall's and Solas's big secrets. What I hated about Cole was how much of his story was relegated to tie-in fiction. To this day I'm not terribly clear on who Rhys and Evangeline were, even though they seem to be pretty important -- Rhys is Wynne's long lost son, I think? I hate when they do that, and it happens a lot in Inquisition.

Agreed on the travel time, though. Time is absolutely wacky in DAI, to the point you don't even have day/night cycles in the various zone. Real immersive for an open world game.

If I remember correctly Wynne died in a tie-in book, in fact the one which introduced Cole

 

[Mukhrani]

The funny thing is that as much as a faggot David Gaider is, Origins wasn't really pozzed. As the series goes on however, yes. More pozzed than a degenerate cumdumpster.

I think the big thing that DA taught me is that a gaming series as a medium is just not cut out for telling a good, long-term story or building a compelling world. One of the things that was so cool about Origins was discovering this interesting setting with a carefully crafted mythological background - the Fade, the Golden City, the Magisters Sidereal, Old Gods, the Blights, the Elves, Dwarves, Lyrium, etc. You can tell that there was a guiding hand behind it that was good at this sort of thing. But when you have these long development cycles, and development is a team exercise, you have people who drop out, new people who take over, and eventually you have a Ship of Theseus situation. It's not like a book where the author has absolute control, or even a game which is one-and-done. The story is almost always going to come apart at the seams as the people responsible for stewarding it are replaced by personnel churn - and in this case you had well over a decade of mass political retardation poisoning the environment.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Why would Dorian fuck Krem? Krem is the worst lol.

Also this is not a popular opinion but I gotta say that Jean Gilpin was absolutely fabulous as Meredith. Especially since she's been living in LA for over 20 years you think she'd have lost her accent. She's also great in Skyrim as Ellenwen and Meridia. She perfectly captures that haughty 'the gloves are off' power hungry leader who goes insane from her delusions of grandeur. Meredith fucking terrified me when I pissed her off.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I think the big thing that DA taught me is that a gaming series as a medium is just not cut out for telling a good, long-term story or building a compelling world. One of the things that was so cool about Origins was discovering this interesting setting with a carefully crafted mythological background - the Fade, the Golden City, the Magisters Sidereal, Old Gods, the Blights, the Elves, Dwarves, Lyrium, etc. You can tell that there was a guiding hand behind it that was good at this sort of thing. But when you have these long development cycles, and development is a team exercise, you have people who drop out, new people who take over, and eventually you have a Ship of Theseus situation. It's not like a book where the author has absolute control, or even a game which is one-and-done. The story is almost always going to come apart at the seams as the people responsible for stewarding it are replaced by personnel churn - and in this case you had well over a decade of mass political retardation poisoning the environment.

If it's already written and the only thing left is the execution then it can be good, but as games are rarely set up for long term beyond maybe a notion of sequel hook and are overall a group effort with a hard limit on money and time, this is extremely rare.

But DA's (and any "choices matter" game) biggest problem is that they essentially turn creating a single game into creating multiple games, that only gets exponentially difficult with each new iteration.

 

[CarlosDanger]

Even though this game is likely to suck harder than a Thai hooker, the amount of batshit insanity from the fanbase will give us content for months.

 

[Mukhrani]

Why would Dorian fuck Krem? Krem is the worst lol.

Also this is not a popular opinion but I gotta say that Jean Gilpin was absolutely fabulous as Meredith. Especially since she's been living in LA for over 20 years you think she'd have lost her accent. She's also great in Skyrim as Ellenwen and Meridia. She perfectly captures that haughty 'the gloves are off' power hungry leader who goes insane from her delusions of grandeur. Meredith fucking terrified me when I pissed her off.

She also voices Admiral Merlwyb for the first segment of FF14. When she stops doing the role because of a contract change that Square went through, the character becomes so underwhelming - I really think she is one of the best VAs out there, and is one of the only ones that I instantly recognize.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Seriously? Fuck that noise.

Give me Allister, Oghren, Morigan, Leliana, hell give me the Grey Wardens, where's my Grey Wardens.

Shit I even wouldn't mind Hawke, Isabela, Fenris and even Varric showing up in this.

Lets hope Vivian doesn't show up in this game but knowing Bioware they most likely have a diversity quota to meet.

I think Vivian would’ve made a lot more sense as a character if they hadn’t basically abandoned the more grimdark aspects of mages from Origins. Playing politics because the other options involve potentially sundering reality and having huge swathes of your people get possessed is not something anyone wants to have to deal with.

 

[otis]

I liked when da2 made everyone bi just because it didn’t tie in some real world dilemma of sexuality or gender. Your character didn’t have to be gay and the moment you shot them down it was done, end of story. Inquisition deciding to throw in that there’s homophobia and transphobia with Dorian and Krem took me out of the fantasy setting. If I’m playing a game why would I want to be reminded of that shit? People praise Dorian’s romance story and I don’t understand why would you as a gay man want to once again see an example in media of you being a victim as opposed to just living your life accepted and free.

I love dragon age but I’m really not looking forward to this next installment because I know they’re following the trend of licking every minority’s shoe. Representation can be done right without making everyone a victim that needs pity. We have enough victimized characters and people IN this fantasy setting, why do we need real life examples too? It makes me feel like they think their audience is too dumb to pick up any nuances that maybe just maybe groups of people and dilemmas in a piece of fiction can represent the real world problem without outright saying it.

 

[Übertroon]

She also voices Admiral Merlwyb for the first segment of FF14. When she stops doing the role because of a contract change that Square went through, the character becomes so underwhelming - I really think she is one of the best VAs out there, and is one of the only ones that I instantly recognize.

SEVEN HELLS!

 

[G19]

You can tell that there was a guiding hand behind it that was good at this sort of thing. But when you have these long development cycles, and development is a team exercise, you have people who drop out, new people who take over, and eventually you have a Ship of Theseus situation. It's not like a book where the author has absolute control, or even a game which is one-and-done. The story is almost always going to come apart at the seams as the people responsible for stewarding it are replaced by personnel churn - and in this case you had well over a decade of mass political retardation poisoning the environment.

Mark Darrah was still the man at the helm up until now. Same franchise, same captain. So how did the ship change so much, you think? Did this man really change so much over the years, or was his authority as captain as fickle as the wind and it just got worse over time?

Still, now with Dreadwolf, even he is finally gone too, so this vessel sails in an unrecognizable direction now. Dragon Age in lore only.
Also just did some quick googling and apparently Darrah quit in 2020, and his successor, a Christian Dailey, quit just now in Feb 2022, leaving no information as to who is Exec Producer now? It's kinda comical how much no one wants to work on this game.

 

[Mega Black]

"How the fuck am I supposed to know? I'm literally just some random who stumblefucked into this position, why would I have an opinion about the political intrigue of some city there's no reason to believe I've ever been to?"

One of the biggest writing blunders in Inquisition is how the plot is written around the protagonist just... being the protagonist for reasons never really made clear. Like the game does everything short of blatantly breaking the fourth wall to justify why you're put in charge of the Inquisition (which is itself a whole can of worms I'll sperg about some other time.)

In DA it makes sense that you're in a sudden position of authority because all the other Grey Wardens are dead, there's nobody else to turn to for The Blight except you. In Inquisition you're just some stupid fuck who got blown up, and now has a macguffin stuck on your hand. At first you're imprisoned, then not imprisoned, then Casandra (who should actually be in charge) is asking for your input on wartime matters and deferring to you. They say you have 'the mark' but if anything that should make you less important, you certainly shouldn't be paving the fucking way forward, if the PC is the only one who can physically stop Satan's Anus from spewing demons out then you shouldn't have them punching a personal hole through the hordes.

The whole 'Andraste's chosen' thing feels like a bum angle. Neither Cassandra nor Leliana are actually dumb enough to believe you're some kind of special Jesus figure, at best you'd be a puppet through whom they ruled and gave orders. That would have required some kind of nuance on Bioware's part and made it so you couldn't be THE BIGGEST COOLEST CHOSEN ONE EVER so that was too hard to write.

Inquisition deciding to throw in that there’s homophobia and transphobia with Dorian and Krem took me out of the fantasy setting

It's inconsistent and doesn't gel with worldbuilding either. Homophobia and such makes sense as an inclusion in a grounded fantasy setting since it's societal stigmata that we ourselves deal with, but in this case it's applied to the wrong cultures in-universe. The Qunari are totally cool with Krem cutting her hair short and saying she's a 'he' now? They even have their own super-special word for it? This is the same culture where Sten will pull you aside and ask why you're not in the kitchen and pushing babies out of your vagina if you're a female Warden? Sure Bioware.

Or Dorian, who comes from a society of blood-magic loving, demon cohorting, sex-hungry mage degenerates? Oh, yeah, I'm sure they hate the faggots there, just like in Greece. Somehow Fereldan, barbarian shithole of mud and blood, is more tolerant of these things. Bullshit.

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

I hope the new game continues the tradition of having a heart icon I can press to have sex with a character. Truly the most important thing to Dragon Age fans. I keep pressing the heart button here on KF expecting similar results.

In DA it makes sense that you're in a sudden position of authority because all the other Grey Wardens are dead, there's nobody else to turn to for The Blight except you.

And even still, everyone in DAO is like "Fuck you." and doesn't respect or believe you or give you any actual authority until you do stuff. Everyone isn't bowing down to you at the start like DAI.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

the events leading to Inquisition's plot really are retarded

>be me, Corypheus, an eldritch horror with super strength
>finally find the Orb of Destruction, the object that will help complete my goals
>an old woman slaps my hand
>i drop the orb
>rando picks it up
>rando now has super powers and ruins my plans
>fml

 

[Mola Ram]

Or Dorian, who comes from a society of blood-magic loving, demon cohorting, sex-hungry mage degenerates? Oh, yeah, I'm sure they hate the faggots there, just like in Greece. Somehow Fereldan, barbarian shithole of mud and blood, is more tolerant of these things. Bullshit.

The sense I got from Dorian was less that Tevinter is especially homophobic (though I won't be surprised if it's portrayed that way in Dreadwolf) and more that he simply refused to marry a woman to further his bloodline or even for appearance's sake. The problem with that is that it means Dorian, a character we're supposed to take as pretty heroic, thinks it's more important everyone knows he prefers to get his squeakhole snaked than it is to give anything up for the obligations of his patrician family. Not really a hero, but a selfish, decadent pervert.

Unintentionally based BioWare?

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

the events leading to Inquisition's plot really are retarded

>be me, Corypheus, an eldritch horror with super strength
>finally find the Orb of Destruction, the object that will help complete my goals
>an old woman slaps my hand
>i drop the orb
>rando picks it up
>rando now has super powers and ruins my plans
>fml

DAI's villain was a disappointment. Like, oh, that jobber from the DA2 DLC? I was hoping maybe there'd be a swerve and even bigger villain by the end, but nope. Not to mention, yeah, he's some dumb clutz loser.

And the new game is gonna be about... fucking Solas, the worst character in DAI? Yeah, maybe he was "hiding his power level" but who cares, really? I mean, other than the Bioware Tumblrites who loved DA2/DAI.