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

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

The only acceptable answer in this context is: "return to form" = detransition. Which, sadly, will never happen, as these big corporations double down on their failures all the time until they finally get sold out to the Chinese or Arab.

Yea, anyone who played Origins would know this is crap. Return to form after getting fucked.

 

[Red flaming panda]

The next Halo is completely fucked, isn't it?

It's all fucked. Time to find a new hobby.

 

[Mola Ram]

It's all fucked. Time to find a new hobby.

Nah, just avoid new games. The back catalog of video games couldn't be played in an entire lifetime.

 

[Ishtar]

When they say "return to form" they mean "its a return to the standard bioware experience after Andromeda/Anthem"-are they coordinating this response or has access journalism given a script? Maybe, no need for a central conspiracy.

Do remember Inquisition came out in Obama's second term, before Trump walked down the escalator. In terms of the video game industry it may as well have been two lifetimes ago.

Origins and DA2 are even further in the past. Most people have either not played these games or they have not played them in a long time. So people's expectations are going to be very much oriented to the near past, rather than some holistic continuity from 2009.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Nah, just avoid new games. The back catalog of video games couldn't be played in an entire lifetime.

I'm actually waiting for more details and vids on Greedfall 2. It's my current "don't fail me now, assholes" game to look forward to, but I'm keeping my expectations low anyway.

When they say "return to form" they mean "its a return to the standard bioware experience after Andromeda/Anthem"-are they coordinating this response or has access journalism given a script? Maybe, no need for a central conspiracy.

Most online sites are owned by one or two parent companies and the "reviewers" and "journalists" all belong to the same whisper network, circlejerk parties, Bluesky echo chamber, whatever. It is not hard to imagine that they plagiarize thoughts and opinions off one another.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

Nah, just avoid new games. The back catalog of video games couldn't be played in an entire lifetime.

This. That's what I'm doing because this console generation licks ass.

 

[bort420]

never made sense to me that different imprints of the same parent like ziffdavis are counted as separate reviewers by metacritic but metacritic/rottentomatoes are owned by the same circle of companies anyway so it's not surprising.

It wouldn't be hard to make a critic aggregator be upfront about ownership webs but we all know why they don't do it

 

[Miller]

The next Halo is completely fucked, isn't it?

You thought they would make a good Halo game after 4 bad ones in a row?

 

[Polystyrene Glioblastoma]

That is just fucking ridiculous. At least the companions in ME2 were people I wanted to save. I wanted the tranny to die!

What's funny is the only companion from ME2 I disliked was Jacob and that was because he's rather bland and also eventually cheats on a romanced femshep by knocking up a bitch he proposes to.

Jacob is far more palatable in comparison to the Troonari, Bellara, and Neve. The characters in even Andromeda were not this bad.

Somehow they made the female companions of DA: Woketard the most terrible. Probably because they don't understand women outside their bubble or sexual fantasies. The troon devs want them all to fall in their "acceptable" catagories.

The Troonari is the insufferable TikTok enby with anger problems, Bellara is the manic pixie Tumblr blogger, and Neve is the SJW self-hating woman of privilege.

Harding seems like the only decent woman, but from the interactions, you can tell they've put their blighted/pozzed touch on her a bit.

I couldn't imagine picking up this insulting game, so looking forward to the character analysis of how bad it can really get.

 

[Ishtar]

A guide to the ending is now available. I see people on Twitter grousing that you have to save certain companions to get the best ending, but to me the real eyebrow-raiser is that this is literally the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission with the numbers filed off.

https://www.powerpyx.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-endings-guide/

Wow, they at least remembered the continue the demon fight sidequest.

(You fight three high boss demons in the prior games-Gaxkang, Xexenbeck, and Imshael-all "forbidden ones"). Well at least that bit of lore carried over.

 

[DavidS877]

From a post on Steam Forums

Any companions that you have not completed their personal questline by a certain point in Act 3 will die.

If Taash is dead, you get locked out of the best ending.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd think Taash being dead is the best ending possible.

 

[Ishtar]

I suspect that may have been intentional-a character like Taash is going to rankle a lot of players, by design.

Of course, by "best ending" WTF does that mean? Ghillan'ain and Elgar'nan are defeated? Slave revolt in Tevinter?

Like, I'm really curious as to what the ending actually is.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

This makes me LOL.

Sauce: https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/199OYVwePa/who-wouldnt-want-to-play-a-game-/c/

 

[Spangled Drongo]

I want to formally apologise for being one of the 80 people who voted "Hell yeah, I want play it with my wife's son" I powered through Dragon's Dogma 2 and even kinda liked it so I thought if I could love that despite the glaring flaws, I could love the final entry to my favourite game series. But now look how they massacred my boy

Reminds me of how I played Baldur's Gate 3 despite people widely calling it woke, and found it rather fun - I knew Philosophy Tube had a small voice role in the game, but actually walked right past his character in the part where you're supposed to find him, and had to go back just to hear exactly how ridiculous Olly sounds talking about evil gods and shit in his same tranny voice. I want to give newer games a chance, I really do, especially RPGs as I'm a sucker for being able to create a pretty character and get immersed into the setting (and in many older games, creation options are limited or they look just plain goofy unless modded to hell and back - here's looking at you, Oblivion), there's only so many times you can replay old favourites until they get stale and you're craving something new, and I've played all the other DA games (though they aren't huge favourites) but will have to give this one a miss.

What really irks me about the exchange over "misgendering" the enbie character is the way they didn't even try to cleverly disguise it with fantastical terminology or lore that makes sense within the setting - they jumped straight to using modern lingo i.e. non binary and the transgender experience, because for all they go on about their identities in an almost mystical way - "my gender is a swirly mass of sparkly cosmic energy beyond normal human comprehension" apparently the pronoun people are too dumb to infer that a fictional character is sharing the same wacky starry eyed nonsense thoughts, it has to be explicitly spelled out for them that this character is a they/them!

But on the other hand, if having characters with a canonical case of the genders will stop them from insisting their troon headcanons are the only valid interpretation... I'd say let them have it, but only if they make their own damn media specifically to share amongst themselves rather than forcing their way into big companies and popular pre-existing series. Or better yet, just stop telling kids that puberty is optional and they can cut up their genitals when they grow up.

 

[Three Gorillion Dollars]

But then again, even when a character is genderless, usually when they are a robot or some genderless creature, they are usually called by the pronouns that suit their voice. An example is Legion from Mass Effect, he is a Geth that is part of the Geth collective, thus not only he is a genderless being but he is technically many. With that said, Legion is usually referred by male gender pronouns given the fact he is voiced by a man.

Legion would also understand that adopting a gender is just a part of assisting acclimatization when dealing with the other species, making him seem more normal and diplomatic and less of a scary robot, which he essentially says when he takes the name Legion in the first place. Legion would also understand that taking a name and being called he/him wouldn't actually be an attack on his various Geth programs. Legion knows that going "REEE! WE ARE GETH! WE ARE THEY/THEM! WE ARE BEYOND YOUR BINARY!" would get him melted down for parts.

 

[SmugAutist]

Dragon Age Origins was my first Bioware game. I still have the collector's edition (PS3). Went back and played their catalogue after that first taste of RPG greatness. Unfortunately, I caught the tail end of the golden years since just a couple of years later they'd disappoint with Dragon Age 2.

Bioware is not even the same company that was bought up by EA anymore. It's just an empty husk with IPs that were once valuable, but without a team to properly make a fleshed out story out of those worlds. I encourage anyone to read the 2013 interview with Greg Zeschuk after he was the last of the founders to leave the company. "EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself with" indeed.

You can't really blame EA for this. They're greedy bastards who'll milk IPs drier than the Sahara desert, but it was Bioware who chose to hire these people, Bioware who were in charge of the creative decisions, and Bioware who ultimately decided to greenlight this horseshit. Total Canadian Death.

 

[Town Drunk]

Dragon Age Origins was my first Bioware game. I still have the collector's edition (PS3). Went back and played their catalogue after that first taste of RPG greatness. Unfortunately, I caught the tail end of the golden years since just a couple of years later they'd disappoint with Dragon Age 2.

Bioware is not even the same company that was bought up by EA anymore. It's just an empty husk with IPs that were once valuable, but without a team to properly make a fleshed out story out of those worlds. I encourage anyone to read the 2013 interview with Greg Zeschuk after he was the last of the founders to leave the company. "EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself with" indeed.

You can't really blame EA for this. They're greedy bastards who'll milk IPs drier than the Sahara desert, but it was Bioware who chose to hire these people, Bioware who were in charge of the creative decisions, and Bioware who ultimately decided to greenlight this horseshit. Total Canadian Death.

This is the thing people are missing in brand loyalty. Yes, Bioware made good games, but the people who made those games are long gone. Bioware is a husk living on it's reputation of the people who were actually competent. It's like when you see a sign "voted best best restaurant in 2000" Well that was a long time ago, what happened in 20 years to make you not win that award again?

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Looking at the progression of the companions from game to game, I'd imagine that these would be the companions for the next Dragon Age.

 

[DavidS877]

View attachment 6580815

Looking at the progression of the companions from game to game, I'd imagine that these would be the companions for the next Dragon Age.

I didn't know they announced the casting for the live action Dragon Age TV show.

 

[MsFrancisFoster]

I found one of those exact people (Gallery is NSFW) I was talking about earlier in the thread on DeviantArt today. It is honestly hilariously pathetic, and kind of pitiful, that they cannot just accept canon as it is, and need to make elaborate au's for this dumb shit.

This person's gallery is a funny read through all the same. Spent a moment poking through it, and this is the exact kind of person Trannyguard is made for. People who don't actually care about the canon source material at all.

Kind of sad really, cause the art isn't half bad itself, it's just that this person can't enjoy the world without twisting it to fit their gross little fetishes and agendas.