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

[Krokodil Overdose]

Watching the State of Play...

Gameplay looks like a Fantasy Masseffect 2/3

Imagine if they leaned hard into the Dark Fantasy aspect instead of the Troon shit

Imagine these people trying to write a Durge path. And remember, BG3 is heroic fantasy, not "dark."

 

[jspit2.0]

You have to kill Wrex in ME1 and trick Wreave. The game telegraphs this pretty explicitly. Wreave is stupid and also implied to be bad news, for the future, so tricking the Krogan is viewed as the best choice in terms of war assets-you can actually convince Mordin to go along with the trick if only Wreave lives.

If Wrex is alive in ME3 and you sabotage the cure-he finds out and you kill him in a scripted shootout scene. And you lose Krogan support. (Again consequences part of choices and consequences). The Salarians never reveal it was fake, so your memory is just incorrect here.

No, I'm sure he says he had a second salarian source...

Wrex learns about it from another source and attacks Shepard

His exact words, 'mordin wasn't my only source'. So a salarian tells him. A Salarian fucks over the galaxy and also his people. Which is dumb considering how pragmatic they are.

You either get Grunt's commando squad or the Rachni workers. And Grunt regardless, so long as you did his loyalty mission. Its basically the same if you kill the Rachni queen or save her in terms of war assets.

You're missing the point. The point is it's fucking STUPID for the Rachni to 1. be allowed to live knowing the reapers can drive them mad and 2. they can suddenly not go crazy.

It's a bullshit game with bullshit choices.

@TheAmbiguousLurker

I swear I remember someone actually calculating all the War Assets you can amass and proving that, prior to the Extended Cut, it was actually impossible to get enough War Assets for any of the endings' 'good' versions, without touching the multiplayer, if you didn't go full paragon throughout the trilogy.

I believe it. The 3rd game is were the rails REALLY became visible.

The ending for ME3 was doomed the moment the writers decided to save it for a monologue in the last five minutes where Shepard just stands there nodding along and taking everything at face value with little to no curiosity. Whether they went with the dark matter idea or the 'Organics will always come into conflict with one another. Making them all cyborgs will somehow fix this.' idea, nothing could save the ending when none of it or it's themes has any real build up in the story (the dark matter problem being briefly hinted at in a side tangent in ME2 does not count as legit build up).

If you redo the 3rd game it'd feel different, with the dark matter. But you are right. You can't magically fix a rushed ending like that. The only satisfying ending is telling the Reaper to go fuck itself.

An ending should be the culmination of a journey, of themes and questions that have been pervasive in that journey. You don't get to the end of a story and then tell the audience that the story was actually about all this shit that happened off screen and was never mentioned until now.

It's even more than that with BioWare. These aren't the greatest stories or characters. The selling point of a BioWare game is a story where you have decisions, those decisions have consequences, and those consequences have somewhat realistic outcomes.

My perfect example is Kotor. You can be a good guy. A Jedi boi and try to redeem Yuthara Ban. But man is that hard. You have to go through the trial, fight Uthar, then fight Yuthara. Then? Then you have to fight your way out of the academy.

It is MUCH easier to betray Yuthara and chill.

That's what I was hammering on about the morality rails...

Being a good guy is hard. It SHOULD be hard. Naivety is fine for Star Trek. But Mass Effect isn't supposed to be this Utopian ideal. It's a very dark universe. So is Dragon Age.

 

[gaystoner]

Imagine these people trying to write a Durge path. And remember, BG3 is heroic fantasy, not "dark."

Really surprising that BG3 became an example of 'dark fantasy' in today's writing age.

 

[jspit2.0]

Really surprising that BG3 became an example of 'dark fantasy' in today's writing age.

Yeah. Crazy thought. Wouldn't it have been awesome to have history repeat itself? Like Obsidian got to do a Dragon's Age Sequel?

 

[bort420]

Can't imagine modern day dragon age having these monsters ruining the positivity vibes
View attachment 6449919

you would never see the body horror of broodmothers in post-DA DA. a truly grim fate, one that is intrinsically linked to being female. and it involved a token lesbian relationship in DAO iirc

 

[Mola Ram]

you would never see the body horror of broodmothers in post-DA DA. a truly grim fate, one that is intrinsically linked to being female. and it involved a token lesbian relationship in DAO iirc

I don't think you can call it token when it essentially ended Oghren's marriage and continues to haunt him (in ways both serious and farcical) long after the Deep Roads.

That reminds me: are there any references to Broodmothers post-Awakening? I wonder if they're being quietly retconned out of existence for being too triggering.

EDIT: Apparently one of the Ser Ruth war table missions ends with her dying after slaying a Broodmother. It's not much, but at least as of Inquisition they were still around.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

in the latest state of play video of the game they used pronounce on the dragon before they was going to kill it, cant make up this shit lol

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Is that Qunari Companion wielding two pimp canes?

 

[Mola Ram]

in the latest state of play video of the game they used pronounce on the dragon before they was going to kill it, cant make up this shit lol

Can you link the video? In the one I found they just refer to the dragon as it and she, from what I could tell -- nothing out of place with that. High dragons have always been female.

More concerning is how weightless and fake everything feels. Rook jumping from side to side like a spaz is also pretty lame.

 

[Ishtar]

His exact words, 'mordin wasn't my only source'. So a salarian tells him. A Salarian fucks over the galaxy and also his people. Which is dumb considering how pragmatic they are.

I think you're misunderstanding the point of that scene? The point is that you betrayed Wrex and he's here to kill you for it.

Why or how Wrex got another Salarian source is irrelevant. (Also given Padok Wiks disagreed with the genophage, its a fair assumption others in the STG also felt it should be ended).

You're missing the point. The point is it's fucking STUPID for the Rachni to 1. be allowed to live knowing the reapers can drive them mad and 2. they can suddenly not go crazy.

Okay you have completely misunderstood the Rachni here. The Rachni are basically irrelevant gameplay wise except as a moral barometer. Do you playing as Shepard want to give the Rachni another chance or not? Do you think they can be rehabilitated? The game strongly leads in this direction.

As for the Catalyst, its logic is fundamentally sound.

Organics create machines, to improve their lives. There is a fundamental disconnect between organic(evolved) life and synthetic life, which does not the irrationality present in organic life. So synthetics can't understand organics.

The problem is Synthetics by the Leviathans observation will always turn on their creators, for one reason or another. Whether because they are oppressed, or genocidal terminators or just to maximize resources.

So the Catalyst's mandate-which is to preserve life at any cost, is finding a solution to this problem. Something that we do see throughout the trilogy-Organic-Synthetic conflict in particular.

 

[Generic Harem Master]

Between this and the poojeet thread, finally got inspired to actually make a new account 'cause fuck searching through burner emails.

I can't remember what page it was on, but I find it really interesting that the race picture - you know, what usually includes the differences physically is only age and aesthetics. Both sexes are shown as being the total same - no, men are not taller on average and that's a heckin' bio-hate-truth, bigot.

My perfect example is Kotor. You can be a good guy. A Jedi boi and try to redeem Yuthara Ban. But man is that hard. You have to go through the trial, fight Uthar, then fight Yuthara. Then? Then you have to fight your way out of the academy.

It's been brought up a couple of times, but I noticed a similar thing in Rogue Trader. I can see part of it being argued as part of the setting, but Dogmatic and Heretical are, in some cases, ridiculous and overly punishing - lots of options which will straight up lose you characters, lose you opportunities, screw you out of a lot of stuff.

Not only that, the benefits for focusing on Dogmatic or Heretical were minute or even detrimental. Heretical, for example, gave an alright boost to critical hit rates in exchange for auto-invoking Perils of the Warp whenever you crit - which could end up just summoning more daemons or screwing you, because Perils were still a huge downside you wanted to avoid.

Compare this to Iconoclast, which is framed as the 'pragmatic' option, but it's really just Chaotic Good in a lot of places compared to Dogmatic's Lawful Evil and Heretical's Chaotic Neutral/Evil. Not only do nearly all the options tend to be good (I think there's one which possibly introduces a Genestealer Cult to your ship, but that's the only objectively bad one I can think of), but Iconoclast's freebie skills are amazing. Triple your movement? Crit damage and crit boosts? Extra attacks? Compare that to '20% chance to not use a medkit' or 'If you deal burning damage, it lasts one round extra'.

It really does feel like a lot of 'You can be a prick who backs the Imperium, but really, being a heckin' good person is what we want'.

 

[jspit2.0]

I don't think you can call it token when it essentially ended Oghren's marriage and continues to haunt him (in ways both serious and farcical) long after the Deep Roads.

That reminds me: are there any references to Broodmothers post-Awakening? I wonder if they're being quietly retconned out of existence for being too triggering.

EDIT: Apparently one of the Ser Ruth war table missions ends with her dying after slaying a Broodmother. It's not much, but at least as of Inquisition they were still around.

This. I don't remember, then again, they really made the darkspawn almost irrelevant in DA2 and Inquisition kindof had them...there. I guess.

Can you link the video? In the one I found they just refer to the dragon as it and she, from what I could tell -- nothing out of place with that. High dragons have always been female.

More concerning is how weightless and fake everything feels. Rook jumping from side to side like a spaz is also pretty lame.

That's what I remember Inquisition feeling like. The characters, the missions. It all felt kindof empty. The whole world felt forced and hollow.

 

[Weltraumfürst]

You have to go through the trial, fight Uthar, then fight Yuthara. Then? Then you have to fight your way out of the academy.

Are you sure you don't misremember how that turns out? I'm pretty sure you only have to take on the academy if you kill both Uthar and Yuthura to become head honcho yourself. If you spare her she just leaves and then shows up on Dantooine if it hasn't been destroyed yet.

 

[glitterglue]

I remember really liking the first game, and 2nd was shite, so I did not countinue playing the 3rd. They marketed it as a dating simulator, so it did not seem appealing. Cannot imagine this is any better.

 

[glitterglue]

I remember really liking the first game, and 2nd was shite, so I did not countinue playing the 3rd. They marketed it as a dating simulator, so it did not seem appealing. Cannot imagine this is any better.

 

[FuckMeGentlyWithAChainsaw]

Here's the trailer with the dragon fight.

 

[Miquella]

Aren't those more gooner types vs romantics? There's something sexless about it all, not even safe horny.

I don't give them the benefit of the doubt, I've interacted with enough of those insupportable crazies to know it's simply a fetish

Here's the trailer with the dragon fight.

Holy shit what is that shite dialogue and VA???

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Do you playing as Shepard want to give the Rachni another chance or not? Do you think they can be rehabilitated? The game strongly leads in this direction.

Right up until the rachni get brainwashed yet again, no matter if you chose to love and support the bugs.

 

[YumeNoHero]

We've reached the point where people are making Oblivion's character creator but on purpose.

TBF in Oblivions you can make a technically butt ugly character face but the overall game's colors, lightings and excess bloom always make them look funny as shit, same as the goblins you can make in Souls games. Hyper realistic lighting and gazillion K textures in this game just make ugly shit even more ugly and unbearable to look at.

 

[LazyLizard]

Here's the trailer with the dragon fight.

so now darkspawn just spawn out of summoned shadow? they're not corrupted humans, dwarves and elves anymore? also the new designs look so ugly and generic. i'm guessing the tentacle lady is suppose to be another one of the magisters that entered the golden city, don't know how tentacles got involved in it though....