So I have been trolling reddit for more delicious election salt, I thought that Jim’s subreddit would be a good place to find some and found that’s Jim’s
Subreddit is now 18+.
I’m almost certain it wasn’t before he trooned out as I did visit it when I used to use Reddit.
I’m guessing either his gross fucking thumbnails got reported or he got swept up in Reddit’s “no gay shit on the front page anymore guys” thing they did earlier this year.
If you cared about LGBTQ+ people and how they feel you wouldn't be sparing this game on its intent or because your friend worked on it. You'd be damning it on the execution while going "at least they tried, but they need to do better".
Thats the thing though, I said its written like the events happened IRL to the writer and Jim actually backs this up and agrees that its written similar to conversations he's had IRL.
Some of Rook’s thoughts closely mirror things I’ve said to other trans people who are starting their own gender adventure and looking for advice.
Good to see he is coping and defending the Veilguard, I was worried he would be smart and let this one go.
As these kinds of progressive games reach a fever pitch and are more and more obviously terrible and woke propaganda the smart wokies should denounce and have the average retard anti-woke guy at their heels, because that's what the most of them, especially the youtube influencers would do. Even Jim the transhog sterling would be lauded as a smart and normal progressive and be brought back to the mainstream fold because the majority of the anti-woke crowd can't wait to bend the knee to someone who compromises even a little.
Thankfully we dodged a bullet because Jim is to stupid to do that and will continue to fade into echochamber irrelevancy. He can't help it after all since denying these kinds of games is the same thing as denying himself.
Yeah that's what I was getting at, I just don't know enough about Dragon Age because I don't like the fantasy genre. This is the problem with the modern, DEI version of 'representation': it's not enough that these characters exist, they have take center stage and use every opportunity to make the conversation about their being different.
The main issue is that it simply isn't representation for the majority. Especially the lgba side most of them are the same as everyone else aside from their marriage certificate has a slightly different word on. You could say most characters are gay or whatever and it still be perfectly in canon because most gay people don't go around screaming it. The problem is that that actual representation simply doesn't validate the retards on Twitter and shit. Idk if you remember a while ago when Rowling was adding/revealing extra lore about Harry Potter. She said some shit like Gandalf and Spok are in a gay relationship or whatever happens in HP. But people got pissed off at her because those characters were not overtly gay in the books. They acted like normal people (like actual gay people) but Twitter retards accused her of straightwashing or some made up shit like that. It wasn't enough for those types of people to 'just' be confirmed to be gay and dating because the characters did not fit the stereotypes that Twitter users expect. They bullied people into adding the whole lispy faggot flapping his hands everywhere type shit. The sorts of hyper liberal retards want people to play up to those stereotypes because they think that simply being a normal man with a husband is internalised homophobia and repressing yourself because just like how trannies reinforce gender norms harder than any tradtard the hyper progay people reinforce gay stereotypes more than any actual homophobe. Idk if I said this here or somewhere else but I'll say it again the most homophobic shit I've ever heard have come from people on the left, the shit they say is worse than anyone here calling me a faggot or whatever. And as much as I hate trannies and think the entire community simply shouldn't exist, the majority of them are at least slightly less retarded than what veilguard portrays them as.
It's the subreddit itself not reddit being faggy. The subs kinda strange honestly. It has 0 posts from the past year outside of the past 10 days. The first post after a year is someone saying they just took over mod for it, so maybe the sub was locked or whatever happens when there's no active mods? From the comments it seems like it was locked or something. No one says anything concrete it's just faggy reddit autism.
Trying to find the sub I did find this though, literally the first result for 'jim sterling' is someone asking why he fell off so hard. It takes 5 posts for a search on Jim to turn up anything positive about him and even then I'd moreso say 'not negative' instead of 'positive' but it was 6 years ago so.
I'm not super familiar with formatting but kinda have a lot to rant on and will try my best
On representation, or more particularly having minority characters, it can be fine when it's a natural part of the artist or writer's vision, with no dei or the sjw "guideline book". *SPOILERS* hereon I guess, like Kaine in Nier. Been a bit since I had the lore, but basically she was screwed up on her recreation or whatever and got a dong. She was otherwise a woman, identified as one etc, and had the dysphoria as a result. got severely bullied. with the game's plot, it's easy for the player to understand the romantic feelings, and open up thoughts about it. it fits her character and the world, and she has an intricately written story. she winds up being part of why you can make the true ending's existential choice. vampire bund kinda marks you as a degen, regardless, it also has some good story arcs, there's a arc where a group of young werewolves who are trained as royal guards have a trial including mc, basically go into antarctica/alaska with minimal gear and have to rely on each other. noted as usually developing some gay relationships from the ordeal, one guy (named angel) is very effeminate and genuinely comes to love mc even though mc doesn't return anything besides brotherhood, and early on it's handled very well and dramatic. later the entire story becomes completely bat****, I think the writer legit went insane. in dragon age 1, shale is a woman that got forced into a masculine-ish rock form, so that's kind of an interesting, understated form of representation. zevran was kinda done a bit retarded imo but was okay as a spanish man whore. i thought cloud atlas did a really good job with the gay couple arc, when i first watched it i imagined gender swaps to a straight couple and it made me empathetic to (otherwise normal, non piss orgy) gay couples. zhang he in dynasty warriors was flamboyantly gay but also a badass on par with lu bu. dei or sjw characters are idubbz IM GAY or twitter political sperging, not characters or an artistic vision.
on dragon age in general, origins is pretty great, and then it just steadily gets worse and is ""connected"" so little each sequel ought as well be a reboot. to me, morrigan was probably the most consistent thing about it, i like romances, and her cliff notes plot of being a smart but stubborn, sometimes retarded evil/morally, ice queen that you kinda unthaw after some time, teach how to love, and kinda wants you to chase her/be with her but also doesn't want to get hurt is very good. the stand alone ending where you go after her with your dog buddy, and can find her, and can state you're willing to leave everything behind to be with her, entering a portal hand in hand as an open ended stand alone ending, was friggin awesome and the pinnacle of the series to me. flemeth arc was done kinda retarded imo though, lots of wasted potential too. could have had dark choices like possibly body jacking morrigan, maybe even having a romance with the pc like that.
lelianna was good, but after looking at her again was done pretty retardedly as well. you basically meet her as shes using religion as a complete crutch, to escape, and not a choice, you get to learn her history over time, but your choices become A. just agree with whatever she says and let her kinda be naive and hide and not herself, B., she becomes a turbo bad bitch cold killer where the world's just a game and there is no god basically. lol. REAAAALLLLY missing a middle ground that'd be similar to joshua graham from new vegas, religious of her own choice and will but not dumb, not psycho, and with the player's intervention comes to term with themself and their beliefs. she's more like dog/god from the same game, 2 sides that are necessary, but hate each other, without the ability to help mold them into a whole.
alistar is mostly good but his character development is literally insane. i think he's supposed to be charmingly dumb, that mans up over time, presumably while being charming and still funny, but he rapidly swaps from c dumb, to petty child, to dumb af, to ""cool"", to swearing a oath to hate you forever, to being a super cold prick. like with loghain, you wind up being in the stupidest, worst friggin place to ever straight up cap him in the floor, but no, while his daughter is the prospective queen, and his knowledge would come in super handy, alistar just goes WAH. KILL HIM RIGHT NOW OR I HATE YOU FOR ETERNITY. WAAAAH. while loghains daughter is metaphorically grabbing your leg screaming. its dumb af especially when you get to the friggin ending choice where "oh one of us has to potentially die, IF ONLY WE HAD A DEATH SEEKER WAR CRIMINAL HERE HUH, HECK HE COULD HAVE HELPED FIGHT THE ARMY OF ORC RIP OFFS TOO"
anyway, 2 was worse, transferring choices was a pia just like mass effect, because screw having a list of choices like "romance:a b or c, kill a b or c" when you can have to go through several websites, do a entire playthrough from the first, or else they literally choose dumb af options to encourage getting choice data lmao. it also sub genre swapped to less kotor more action. introduced varic who apparently the entire dev team must jack off to because i have no idea how a midget han solo is the character they wanted in every game as a major character over every other legacy option. inquisition swapped to a single player mmo type like ff12 where you have to walk across pretty empty areas for 30 minutes and started the more "diversity" crap with the weird iron bull stuff, multiple gay party members restricted from the other sex etc.
then after it's been so long and went through like 4 different titles, veilguard came out, and focuses heavily on what most likely appeals to less than 5% of the population, not widespread appeal. it's not having a gay character/s, it's explicitly making the game gay as possible to "own the chuds" or "youve had your straight stuff its our turn now bigot" etc. if you want a gay dragon age spin off, or a phone game, or a one off expac similar to gay tony, ok, you DO NOT make you flagship title unappealing to normies, that's called ending the franchise and player trust and excitement. the gameplay is even worse than 2 and inq. races like the qunari have been absolutely destroyed artistically, looking at concept art from 2 and then looking at current female qunari is an absolute joke. removing feminine bust or hip size, breast removal scars etc is blatantly to make trans feel better regardless of female representation or body types, or people wanting to make conventional females. its not a freeform character creator with trans options, it's limited on purpose. you can scream at your mother about how you're non binary in game and all the writing is just literal self insert trans fan fic that just hijacked the dragon age ip so they get more views. they do not care about darkspawn or the fade or rpg combat or writing varied characters, they want to be a strong powerful trans person that tells everyone to go fuck themselves. gameplay sucks, writing sucks, art sucks, so what do you have? where do you be generous? andromeda sucked but even the combat could be really really fun, enough to where going back to 1-3 feels like the party ai are crap, even though everything else is better.
jim in general obviously has some form of underlying mental issues, ones that aren't what he talks about. i used to binge most of his catalog, helped me help myself through bad times with his weird comedy and background noise etc. later i started learning about his weird degen stuff but could separate it from his content easy. where i really started asking questions was about the doa volleyball vid, where if i remember right he talked about "oh no people cant sexualize womyns lol incels", which is weird, because for someone that posts himself openly being a cuck and having semen on his glasses, the sr3 review waving around a dildo bat irl and stroking it, it's dumb af to hate digital pron. it's not just him that's done it, but it's very egregious with the level of stuff he does publically but apparently has an issue with people liking hot women digitally. if you're a free love hippy or a cuck in a polycule thing, you should be way past acceptance of sexual imagery. it's like having a scat fetish and calling people that find navels attractive horrible people.
also of note, i never ever EVER recall him talking about anything trans related at least til that point. imo, i think related to his gambling issues, he's a real case of ocd, or being extra gullible and susceptible to propaganda or peer pressure. partially obvious in how his "transition" is just weird even by their standards. hes non binary, but he wants to identify as a woman and be flirted with, and wants boobs, but he wants his first name still james and to be non binary not female. he went from hating shitty game companies and joking about it freely to suddenly going completely doomer mode talking about how everyones out to kill him, everybody hates him, america sucks, all gamers suck, most of his fans suck etc.
if he had done a joji, and had a last jimquisition ending with like "ive had a grand time all these years with you all, but i dont think games are going to change. i dont like them as much anymore, theyve made me feel bad in general, and i just cant cover it all anymore. ive found a passion in wrestling and i get great joy from it, and i plan to bring my characters and weird comedy there. i hope a lot of you check that out, but if not i still have all my old vids up and the fun we shared to rewatch and enjoy whenever you want. i just dont want to release shit content, we both deserve better than that. thank god for me, but more than that, thank god for all of you." BAM, he gets locked into being fondly remembered and can do whatever he basically wants going forward so long as he uses a separate channel or area. but instead of just transitioning but being him, he's been stuck in the twitter doom conspiracy spiral and hates and fears everything, his behavior just looks like a constant mental breakdown, and he talks about how much he hates the people that made his career and supported him and loves people that only started "watching"(asspatting not views) when he transed.
also of note, i never ever EVER recall him talking about anything trans related at least til that point. imo, i think related to his gambling issues, he's a real case of ocd, or being extra gullible and susceptible to propaganda or peer pressure. partially obvious in how his "transition" is just weird even by their standards. hes non binary, but he wants to identify as a woman and be flirted with, and wants boobs, but he wants his first name still james and to be non binary not female. he went from hating shitty game companies and joking about it freely to suddenly going completely doomer mode talking about how everyones out to kill him, everybody hates him, america sucks, all gamers suck, most of his fans suck etc.
if he had done a joji, and had a last jimquisition ending with like "ive had a grand time all these years with you all, but i dont think games are going to change. i dont like them as much anymore, theyve made me feel bad in general, and i just cant cover it all anymore. ive found a passion in wrestling and i get great joy from it, and i plan to bring my characters and weird comedy there. i hope a lot of you check that out, but if not i still have all my old vids up and the fun we shared to rewatch and enjoy whenever you want. i just dont want to release shit content, we both deserve better than that. thank god for me, but more than that, thank god for all of you." BAM, he gets locked into being fondly remembered and can do whatever he basically wants going forward so long as he uses a separate channel or area. but instead of just transitioning but being him, he's been stuck in the twitter doom conspiracy spiral and hates and fears everything, his behavior just looks like a constant mental breakdown, and he talks about how much he hates the people that made his career and supported him and loves people that only started "watching"(asspatting not views) when he transed.
That's because "Jim Sterling" is the brand he's created, and is the entirety of his income, and he is unwilling to transition(lol) to anything else or even change up his content let alone completely disassociated himself from his online career. His narcissism act in his old content? It wasn't an act. He's still making 8-9 grand a month to produce halfassed videos once a week, while larping as a wrestler once a month or so. Has anything this man has ever said, indicate he's willing to face the real world?
@Birthday Cat I'm not going to neg-rate you on one of your first posts on the site but in future if you're gonna post a massive wall of text please consider containing it within spoiler tags; it just helps keep the thread tidy.
If you're unfamiliar, you can find it by clicking the three dots at the end of all the formatting options and clicking this icon:
P.S. Thank you for using line breaks.
I will repeat this in the next round up for reviews with new numbers, but this is currently relevant, if I have time I might even do a Review Review since it ties into a Jimquisition:
Dragon Age: The Veilguard [ARCHIVE], Jim gave it a 7.5/10. Metascore is 83, User Score is 3.8, and Steam All Reviews is 73%. Funnily enough not long ago the User Scores were much higher. There was some initial anti-review bombing inflating the scores and now it is swinging the other direction as people actually play the game. I also have heard that there's some aggressive censorship happening on Steam, but I can't confirm it myself.
Yup, it is time for THE REVIEW REVIEW! I'll hammer this out as fast as I can for you all. Also, fun thing I can't actually find where this review is sorted to on his site. It is listed in my RSS feed and on his home page, but he seems to have posted the wrong article to his Written Reviews section of his site, instead posting his Jimquisition Article which is just an embed of the video from YouTube.
Jim's Incredibly Shit Review said:
I’m not entirely sure I’m the kind of person Dragon Age should be actively appealing to.
It’s not as if I haven’t enjoyed BioWare’s games in the past - y’know, before Anthem and Andromeda - but its particular brand of roleplaying action has never been entirely my thing. Slowly plonking baddies with a stick while acting as my party’s Mission Control isn’t my idea of a good time, but it’s been loved by fans since at least Knights of the Old Republic.
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I can pull a gigantic mortar cannon out of nowhere and rapidly jizz a hail of ordnance before tossing the weapon like a huge explosive frisbee… while wearing a giant crow’s head.
My husband, a diehard Dragon Age fan, understandably feels left out in the cold by this shift in focus. They also really hate whatever happened to Dorian to make him look like that.
Veilguard alters not just the combat but the entire tone, and I completely understand how that would turn off those who’ve been all-in on the series since the very beginning. As I throw out my art deco turret and admire my ostentatious octopus-shaped bow, however, I cannot deny this game is absolutely my business.
This latest installment is a full bore action game, and it’s grown on me more and more. That’s not to say it isn’t free of problems, however, because it is in fact littered with annoying quirks that hold back what could have been top-tier stuff.
This is a much larger chunk than I normally grab at once from Jim, but these choppy paragraphs that feel a bit overly littered with line all represent a single thought that I think actually is a very mature line of thinking from a troon, recognizing that changing a thing to suit different tastes might not actually be a good call and can leave existing fans out while being. He points out he doesn't traditionally enjoy BioWare's games, points out how long going their particularly way of doing things goes back, and the fact that people liked such. He then points out that the new game has a completely different combat flow and tone while admitting it is something he prefers.
I called Jim out for this before, that he wants quick instant and flashy gratification even if it damages the tone and appeal of a game or setting previously set. He wants "lulsorandum" in his games with a complete disregard for any form of grounding in exchange for whatever flashy nonsense hits in the moment. Many people who like Dragon Age as a franchise prefer a degree of groundedness to their game and media this is a major clash of interest. Note my word choice. I didn't say we want something "realistic" I said we wanted it "grounded".
In this case grounded within the existing lore, setting, world, magic, and rules of the setting. Dragon Age is a setting where the current religion and society of dominance achieved this after a slave revolt against a previous empire ruled by mages, who must be born with magical potential, that had a habit of keeping their slaves around to be used as little more than sacrificial blood bags that will be burned up for whatever spell they choose to want to cast that day. Elves are historically a slave race and are, even in the modern day, significantly worse off than other races and it is even revealed in Dragon Age: Inquisition that they had lost so much of their culture and history due to repeated slavery that their "traditional" markings and tattoos are actually just slave markings that they continue to wear because they don't even understand that they continue to brand themselves as slaves. It is pretty easy to say that the tone isn't exactly cheerful or hopeful in this setting just from that. Then we get to mages. Mages are universally reviled around the setting not only due to the crimes they have committed in the past when in power, but because the rules of magic and demons in Dragon Age are copy-pasted from Warhammer and a mage is exceptionally vulnerable to being possessed by demons who will then bring devastation. Not only that but mages are powerful beyond anything the non-magically inclined can ever hope to fight back against if they decide to start committing atrocities if left unchecked, and there's nothing stopping a random mage from dipping their toes into blood magic to provide more potent fuel for their spells in the form of their own blood which is inherently demonic magic that will eventually escalate to using others as living batteries. Even a healer who dabbles in blood magic is liable to go from "cutting your own hand to fuel a more powerful healing spell to help children" to "bleeding tens of thousands of others of their blood to fuel a powerful spell to eradicate a plague that would've killed half as many". As a result even after the abolition of slavery in most forms, mages are taken from their families by force as children and brainwashed and imprisoned by the state, church, or whichever mage oppression systems are present in a given culture.
I could go on, but this is enough to tell the average person about the tone of the world we're in. The gameplay often resembles this to some degree. Characters will respond to elven characters with slightly less friendly dialogue at certain points, elves are generally less trusting of others. Mages face certain social barriers unique to them. Magic and mana are a part of the setting, and a mage who wants to overcome those limitations of mana will have to commit the crime of delving into blood magic and upsetting a lot of other people, something that mechanically can be done by the player. Sure, the games concoct reasons why the player doesn't have to hide their blood magic and why their mage is allowed to roam freely for gameplay reasons, but the world follows certain rules and to a degree the player is interfacing with those rules. Humour is present, but it is typically dark like the rest of the setting. Dragon Age is not a happy setting. Magic isn't very common due to being untrusted so we aren't going to see a lot of fancy looking magic arms and armour, instead they will be designed for brute efficiency. It is not a traditionally "fun" setting and lights in this dark are welcomed and beloved. This actually feeds into the tactical focus of BioWare's traditional combat formula, as gritter settings tend to lend themselves to slower and more tactical combat.
Jim, as shown by his writing here and mentioning what appeals to him about this game and others, cares not about that as he prefers media where things happen to be flashy in the moment. He likes action, he likes absurdity, and he cares more about the laughs than the drama.
Regarding the premise, you’re called Rook this time, and you accidentally unleash two screwball elven gods while trying to stop that dickhead Solas from shitting demons everywhere. It’s a decent enough story presented in BioWare’s typical writing style - that is to say, it’s got some fun characters and excellent individual moments, but the narrative connective tissue is often awkward and clumsy.
BioWare’s lack of subtlety will give away big plot points by dropping a loaf’s worth of breadcrumbs for observant players to pick up. The expectation is that you’ll be wowed by all the clues on a replay, but it’s just trying too hard to show how clever it thinks it is.
This is definitely an issue that is increasing overtime with BioWare, mostly due to the fact that BioWare tends to design their games to have standalone isolated areas and side areas you can visit in a branching and semi-dynamic order with multiple concurrent connected, but independent, stories playing out at once that come together near the end. Though this is worsening as BioWare becomes ever more the Ship of Theseus.
There’s also no need for dialog to point out how funny it is when bad guys complain about everyday problems, but they can’t resist explaining the joke. One particular scene, in which your companions uniformly explain how they all have personal problems that need solving before the climax, is so infuriatingly unnatural they may as well look at the camera and start promising you the XP will be worth it.
This is not actually that typical of a BioWare issue, this has merely become an issue due to the success of Mass Effect and also the abandonment of the company by many of their more talented staff for greener pastures where they aren't forced to recycle the same franchises perpetually. Mass Effect 2 is the cause of this problem because it made these things necessary due to the demands of the suicide mission ending. Due to the success of that game they've been trying to imitate everything that game did haphazardly without understanding why it worked since the people who did it aren't with the company any longer.
There is, however, an exception to the series’ literary gilding of lilies…
Contrary to the whining you may see online, Veilguard’s dialog regarding trans and non-binary experiences is the most natural sounding stuff in the game. You can actively choose to create a trans and/or non-binary Rook, one who can speak of their relationship with gender roles and may use it to help Taash, a dragon slaying companion, figure out their non-binary identity.
I was worried it would be as cringeworthy as some claim based on the studio’s prior attempts at writing marginalized characters, but I personally found the interactions impressively relatable. Some of Rook’s thoughts closely mirror things I’ve said to other trans people who are starting their own gender adventure and looking for advice.
It’s an important step for representation in games done better than I expected. Well done.
I want to really stop on this part since this is the big controversial part of this game and the discussion around this review.
I am just going to point out what I said here and add on that I have friends (and recently family) who have came to me because I am open about my non-binary identity for those who go poking or when it is relevant to a topic (I don't do a big coming out, I just mention it when it is relevant to a conversation over things like politics, pronouns, et cetera or if someone asks) and my discussions were completely different from anything in this game. This is the exact opposite of relatable for me. It doesn't sound natural, it sounds predatory and manipulative at its worse and preachy and pandering at best. Anyone thinking otherwise is too deep into the cult to realize it.
Maybe it is because I don't view gender or sexual identity as something that other people need to concern themselves with and instead consider it a personal thing you handle yourself, something that you come to terms with yourself and doing so is the only way to be what these people like to call one's "authentic self" without the burden of needing people to reassure you of your own self. Furthermore I don't believe anyone can tell you if you are trans/enby/agender/whatever other non-cisgendered bullshit they are claiming that you are. Like sexuality that is something only you can tell about yourself. Anyone who is telling you anything else is dangerous and shouldn't be trusted. Anyone who seeks to "validate" you is dangerous. Identity is an internal thing, and when you sort out your own identity you don't need validation. You don't fear or get upset by being misgendered or having people use the wrong pronouns or deadname you. You can continue on in comfort and without offense. This is the same advice I give each time someone asks about this.
What I saw when I went looking for these scenes reminded me more of someone trying to groom someone into being anything other than cisgendered. It absolutely triggered a hostile response in me. I've witnessed enough grooming bullshit that I actively wanted to find who wrote these lines and beat them to death and leave them hanging by their own intestines out front of the BioWare offices. I tried to find footage from people trying to frame it positively as well, and I just don't think you can knew that footage in a positive light unless you have already been groomed into a very unhealthy community and way of thinking about your own identity and sense of self and wanted to spread that unhealthy mindset. The fact Jim seems to be defending this aspect of the game means he is, if we are generous and try to assume the best, perpetuating an abusive cycle I don't even know if he knows he's a part of. If we assume the worst then Jim is a groomer who defends groomers.
I will copy and paste something I said to a younger relative who messaged me about this stuff on Facebook due to awkward teenage years and their parents suggesting they bug me about it as they just weren't equipped to handle it and just want someone they trust to help their kid rather than creeps on the internet. This is that same general advice I give to everyone on the topic:
Me to my little cousin said:
I can't tell you if I think you're maybe trans or non-binary or not, nor can anyone else tell you such. The same goes for if you thought you were gay or something like that. I can just give you some advice based on what I figured out in life.
Don't try to convince yourself you are or aren't any given gender/sexuality. That's unhealthy and will lead you to misery as you try to fake something you aren't. Anyone who claims they can tell you or help you know who you are shouldn't be trusted. That's a personal understanding you need to come to on your own as this is a matter of personal identity and is entirely internal and nothing external will make a difference nor really help you get to where you're going. The only thing I can say is that your sex is male and nothing can ever change that, but your sex is not your gender and unless you're a neanderthal you live in a society where gender doesn't determine your place or role in life, nor does it dictate your behaviour. It is an identity thing and that is for you to figure out.
I will give you some blanket advice that goes for if you're cis, trans or anything in between. Same if you're gay, straight or something else, and this is the one thing I do believe can help you in life when dealing with this stuff:
People might not accept or like it and some of those people might even matter a lot to you. You don't need their acceptance, validation, or agreement. You just need their tolerance so far that you can continue to be in each other's lives without fighting constantly. You can make your wishes known, but until you have that peace in yourself over your gender/sexuality then it doesn't matter what people call you. People using the right terms and pronouns or using your chosen name isn't going to make it better. It isn't going to get rid of these feelings you're having. None of that will actually help you. It won't actually do anything to help sort yourself out. It won't make you happier. It won't make your doubts and insecurities go away. This shit is messy and everyone's different. There's no right way to do it. There's nothing you can do other than make the behavioural adjustments that feel right to you and feel things out and get to where you need to be. Other people's behaviour, beliefs, words, and image of you will never make you truly happy. The only person who matters to your happiness, sense of self, and personal understanding is yourself. Once you come to that personal understanding, acceptance, and peace then it won't matter what they call you or how they treat you because you'll know who and what you are. That's true freedom to be yourself. Learn who you are and then either learn to love that person or change that person. Anyone saying otherwise wants you to be miserable and dependent on them for your self worth. Avoid those people. Self worth comes from the self and no one else. That's why we call it "self worth".
The people who truly care for you will just want what they think is best for you, they won't tell you to cut out your family and friends just because they don't do what you want. If they do tell you to start cutting ties it will be due to them actively hurting you. Watch out for the people looking for isolate you so they can prey on your or use you to feed their own insecure egos. Those people hurt everyone they come in contact with. I learned that first hand, and I have witnessed it happen to plenty of others. Real friends don't ask you to change to fit in, they don't tell you that you need to be something to be their friends. They won't tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Find those people and hold onto them. Especially when you're going through this. Kids your age need real friends and not people who want to turn you into their next project.
I will also toss in a bit here to say that I really don't think this is something you can really know about yourself when you're young. Everyone goes through insecurity, dissatisfaction with their body, and questioning of their identity when they are young. Don't make big decisions about those things until you're in your mid-twenties. I know you're going to fool around and experiment while you feel things out. Do it safely. Don't take weird drugs that people say will fix your problems. If you're going to do something illegal, at least make sure it is something that is only illegal because of your age and not because it is just straight up illegal. Don't go asking your doctor to give you things that aren't suggested by a professional who has time to actually treat you. Get therapy if these feelings go on much longer. Your parents got good benefits so you should use them and I already told them to do so. Avoid adults who actively seek to have conversations about sex, gender, and all that with you unless your parents or you approached them first. There's people out there who never figured themselves out and they cope with it by ruining how other people think of themselves.
This should tell you a lot about my opinion on the gender issue. That these discussions being in media in the form they take aren't a good thing. That this way of handling it are harmful and a sign of predatory behaviour at worse, and ignorant and abuse perpetuating at best.
Anyway, the game’s controls are rather rubbish.
Veilguard has an issue I’ve seen in many a big budget game, one of over-animation. With a focus on “realistic” momentum and flourishing motions, Dragon Age places form over function. It looks nice, but it doesn’t always feel so.
Should you nudge the analog stick, Rook will lunge into a walk unless you’re really slow, and they’ll not stop moving until a moment after you stop telling them to. This compounds the conflict any game has when it foolishly maps the interaction button to the jump button, which is further compounded by items having a small pickup radius. Hope you enjoy hopping!
You can remap buttons, but your controller’s layout is pushed to capacity and input conflicts are unavoidable. The default setup’s already doing the best it can.
This issue doesn't surprise me after Jim mentioned that this is a more of an action game. Action games are a lot harder to get the controls right for than more traditional RPGs. BioWare also comes from a background of RPGs and RPGs, despite what many people will argue, are a genre made for and best suited for PC where we have a lot more buttons to space. They also aren't as precise of a genre in how they need to control as action games are. This is less of an issue in the earlier entries in the franchise as they made heavy use of the option to pause the action to select your abilities and aim them as they were more CRPGs than anything, but as you move towards more real-time action that stops being an option and you need to reduce the amount that is expected of the player to juggle so they can focus on inputting things quickly. CRPGs also tend to also use animations to create a sense of cooldown. If you play any classic CRPG that is "real-time" you will find a bunch of auto-pause options and realize that they actually have more in common in their flow with turn-based games than anything else. Lengthy animations with a lot of flourishes are a way to stop the feeling of the characters standing around waiting for their turn to come around when the explicit turns don't exist. That's part of what all those timers and cooldowns, and all of that are for. It's to hide the turn-based game design under it all.
That said, these are valid critiques of the game and something Jim leaves out far too often when it comes to his reviews. I actually want to hear about how a game plays when I read a review about it, not be bored shitless by whining about the monetization of the game or gushing about how he likes a particular goofy aspect for six paragraphs.
When games add a level of automatic parkour while sprinting, I’m always a fan… unless I end up accidentally jumping over a “guardrail” and plummeting into a chasm. Veilguard is one of the plummety ones, and Rook’s aforementioned momentum can lead you to gracefully hurdle over all sorts of things you didn’t mean to.
Videogames, can we please start flagging barriers as barriers in games with auto parkour?
Falling off of things is pretty easy to do even without the enthusiastic hurdling. Combat often unfolds in high places, Rook has an awful jump, and there are bouts of shitty platforming. Luckily, pitfalls respawn you without any damage, and enemies are hilariously easy to instakill by flinging them into the same pits.
I’m tempted to call that latter element an acceptable tradeoff for Veilguard’s hungry, hungry holes.
More valid critiques that I can't condemn Jim for, and more complaints that are born of BioWare not really having action game expertise, but instead having CRPG expertise which traditionally don't have systems remotely like these and therefore don't need to deal with these issues or learn how to resolve them. A good part of this seems like level design issues, something that can be very different between genres and clearly BioWare didn't realize that they should go stealing from other more experienced teams to address these issues.
As far as combat goes, it took a while to win me over thanks to the flowery animations impacting how responsive it felt. Once I got used to Veilguard’s rhythm, I started enjoying combat quite a lot. Took a while though, given how sprawling the controls are and how commands for your two chosen companions will have an asymmetrical hotkey layout at best.
For ally commands, I stuck with the radial menu instead of memorizing a sprawl of hotkeys for anyone but Rook. The only problem there is that, unlike animations, this menu is too responsive. It’s a twitchy little bugger and I don’t like it.
This here seems very much like a remanent of the CRPG roots of the system, something Jim already admits he doesn't seem to like, so this continuing to be an issue isn't a surprise to me.
There’s no denying this is a heavily actionized sequel, as shown by simplified ally commands and an increased emphasis on blocking, parrying, and ranged headshots depending on your class. Things move way too chaotically for me to bother with precision moves, but I’m certainly not against the chaos itself.
The flexibility offered when building a character means I could eventually make my bow more efficient as a hipfire weapon anyway. Chaos reigns.
Battles rage swiftly and are startlingly aggressive - if you don’t have Davrin or Taash popping off taunts, prepare to have demons and darkspawn in your face as if you’re made of twatnip. Each fight is visually busy, full of enemies, special effects, and a perpetual spamming of AoE attacks. I can’t deny it looks cool, and only feels moreso when Rook grows stronger and their attacks get more grandiose.
Dragon Age as a franchise has always had a trend towards progressively more and more flashy AoE attacks as you power up, tossing in more action focused visual flair style would make this busier and more visually chaotic. I am actually surprised he didn't point this out about the earlier games here to compare to what came before and how the series has both changed and stayed the same. He pointed it out at the start, but not mentioning it here especially feels odd.
Lock-on targeting can help navigate the anarchy, but it’s not altogether reliable, chiefly because so many enemies break it by charging or fucking teleporting. This is remarkably frequent and makes me wonder if locking on’s been undermined on purpose for some bizarre reason.
While I have many little grievances with the mechanics, fighting in Veilguard consistently endeared itself to me as I built my character. It really has been enjoyable to dodge around and pop off arrows or rapier jabs in between abilities that are figuratively and/or literally explosive.
I am just going to say I am happy to see Jim actually explain mechanics in his reviews for once so we can understand what he is praising or damning. He fails to do this way too often. Most of these issues do show how out of place BioWare making a more action focused game really is.
As you gain levels and pump points into a freely respeccable skill tree, you’ll be able to equip a number of delightful cooldown abilities and pick an “Ultimate” move from which most of the game’s entertaining silliness comes from. It’s all very over-the-top, though the skill tree itself has a maze of a layout.
Companions have their own - and far less complex - skill trees, serving the usual array of roles that compliment your chosen class. Spell Combos from previous games are reworked as Detonations, where some moves inflict special status effects on enemies that other moves can trigger to deliver additional punishment. True to the game’s action focus, Detonations are straightforward and easy to use.
I like how he is talking about the detonation system was simplified, when it is actually unchanged from the older Dragon Age games and Mass Effect. It is harder to trigger now though due to the fact you can't customize the AI as much to chain attacks off of you like you once could, a feature that has been reduced throughout the series. Oh, and you can tell that the progression is vestigial of the RPG roots of the series.
What look like a few vestigial remnants of the game’s original “live service” roots rear their heads, mostly extensively with the weird in-game economy. Some merchants belong to Factions and will sell more gear as you rank up your reputation with them. In any other game, you’d gain these ranks by buying items, but here you have to sell stuff. It’s not just any old stuff either - an entire class of item labeled as Valuables exist, and they’d just be typical RPG vendor trash if not for non-faction merchants selling the things complete with rarity levels as if they were loot.
While you pick up Valuables during play, the trash you buy for no other reason than to sell it (at a loss) will rank you up faster. It’s a system best described as fucking stupid. Convoluted and initially confusing, it has to be a holdover - only a “service” game would have such a moronically fucked up economy.
It actually makes sense that you'd need to give certain items to factions to rank up with them, but that is a more simulationist aspect that is normally abstracted away entirely. The fact it is tacked onto the standard shopping mechanics is what is weird here. It is definitely the type of thing I would expect of a sim or "hard-RPG" rather than something like what BioWare puts out. I wouldn't call it "fucking stupid" on principle, but the execution absolutely is. I agree with Jim this is likely a weird holdover from a live service game design that they never streamlined or tidied up the execution of and refused to cull entirely. Honestly, I would just change the interface to not have you selling the items to them, but instead gifting them the items for nothing but reputation in return. So long as what those items are made sense for each faction it would make more sense than just doing business with them like Jim suggests. Mind you I am also the person who thinks it is stupid how every merchant in every game both sells you stuff, but also will buy virtually anything from the player regardless of what type of business they run. I think the weirdest part is that this game has such a reputation system at all, and as such I think it is more of a live service holdover than anything. Video games having moronic economies is standard though, as they don't ever actually have economies unless the players are controlling them. They have the approximation of an economy with the level of understanding of a child who only views money as a way to buy candy.
While I’m at it, why can’t you preview the gear you’re buying? You can’t even make the small picture in the vendor’s menu bigger to get a better look. Considering the amount of cosmetic-only armor skins on sale, the inability to view them in detail or context is almost as dumb as the junkonomy.
While I don't think previewing gear is a critical feature when buying for stats, stuff that is purely cosmetic is weird to not be able to preview. Though I can think of very few games with a preview mechanic. Normally this is left out due to console limitations. Loading and unloading the swapped out models when browsing for a large collection is actually pretty hard for the perpetually behind technology used in gaming consoles to keep them cheap, as the rate that the hardware improves isn't fast enough to outpace the perpetually increasing expectations of detail and resolution ballooning the size of the models that need to be moved in and out of the VRAM. This makes your game look shoddy when it hitches and lags on the load during rapid previewing, or the clunky UI design needed to hide that such is happening, so you avoid circumstances when this could happen as best you can, or you make the sacrifices and create less responsive menus to open and close so that you can unload the graphics for the game world and load in all the extra models. Jim wouldn't understand that though.
I have an opinion about Darkspawn I’d like to shoehorn in.
Their art design is great this time around. Darkspawn always looked a little dull to me in prior games, but the mutant ones in Veilguard are freaky body horrors. I can’t say the same for Demons, who are considerably more generic looking now. The dichotomy between these enemy designs emphasizes what a mixed bag this game’s visuals are.
Some characters have good facial animations, while others have faces that ooze over their skulls with uncanny slipperiness. Combat animations - indulgent as they are - look very pretty, but people are charmlessly stiff in other contexts. Some environments are colorful and interesting, while others are thoroughly uninspired. At no point is the game horrible to look at, it’s just rather inconsistent.
I don't have much to say about Jim's discussion of the visuals here other than Jim's low-key consistent insistence that everything be a colour explosion when sometimes the better art design and vision demands the opposite. Sometimes "uninspired" is exactly what is needed to set the tone, mood, and vibes just right. Don't get me wrong, I don't want a return to the window of 2005-2015 where everything was brown, gray, and desaturated, but I also have come to realize that sometimes that is exactly what you need. Frankly, everything these days feels like it is taking its art design exclusively from Blizzard and it feels far more uninspired as a result. I hate the aesthetic changes for the series in this game to being far more overtly fantastical and impractical.
One thing that really stands out is the game’s pace. Veilguard moves along at a good clip, getting into the action right away and keeping things going through quests that largely feel more condensed than usual. While there are some lengthier objectives, the story does its best to not drag on too much.
I'd argue the passing was spastic and unfocused, deathly afraid of the player getting bored. So you know, the exact thing someone like Jim would love.
That said, true to the Veilguard’s dual nature, there’s a level of repetition that can certainly slow things down. The main problem is how many bloody missions are padded out with simplistic “puzzles” in which you run around lighting braziers or turning statues to face different directions. It’s not exciting to begin with, much less after multiple occurrences.
Downtime is a good thing, but I will agree that video games need to stop using such half assed puzzles. Make people feel like fucking retards again with actual puzzles.
While there’s a lot of running back and forth through the same environments, a very convenient fast travel system keeps backtracking to a minimum. Travel points are liberally dotted around every location, and no matter where you are you can hop to any discovered point across the world. Combined with Veilguard’s fast loading, you don’t lose much time at all to covering the same old ground.
I'm in the "Get rid of nice quick and convient fast travel entirely" camp. If your game needs fast travel to overcome unengaging travel turn it into a linear game and accept your "open world" fucking failed at justifying itself and standing on its own two feet as a worthwhile contribution to the experience. Fast travel has ruined level and world design and people like Jim praising it are the problem. Same with the constant need for uptime. Downtime in a game is a good thing. It gives you time to reflect on the events and the story as well as decide on your next action and recollect yourself after the action and just take in the world around you. Constant uptime is some maximum goyslop tier marvel ass bullshit entertainment.
One consistent positive is the cast of characters you align with. As well as capable fighters, the people you befriend are likable folks.
I am just going to skip everything he says about these characters. He's a fucking moron on all of them. They all suffer from chronic Marvel writing at their best, and are fucking forgettable and boring at their worst. Once I am done this Review Review I will return to forgetting about them all rapidly.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is heavy on the action, light on the bullshit, and gets progressively more enjoyable as you expand your abilities and get used to some wonky controls. Its tone, art direction, and exaggerated combat is most certainly not the Dragon Age of old, but what can I say? It’s the Dragon Age I’ve enjoyed the most, even if I can name a laundry list of things that piss me off about it.
Jim, what you're describing is sunk cost fallacy. The type of thing gambling addicts and weak willed people with poor self control suffer from. You can't even blame your ADHD. I am severely ADHD and I don't suffer from those issues. Though I will once again praise you for recognizing that this is not like the other Dragon Age games even if you liked it. Good on you.
The fact you can make it very gender is a huge positive, especially since the only people claiming it’s “forced” on you are lying through their stupid teeth. It’s there to help more players feel seen, and that’s only a good thing.
All that said, character creation won’t let me make Rook’s tits even half as big as mine actually are. A true step backwards for representation, I think you’ll agree.
This being his sign off is hilarious to me, as he's trying to reference a controversy that people tried to turn into a race issue concerning the fact that the character creation is very limited to make the "proportions more realistic to real women" when there's plenty of women who go way larger than anything in this game. BioWare handled that all poorly. Black women tried to then say it was racist because apparently only black women have large tits and asses. Which anyone who isn't a racist fucking nigger would know isn't true.
Imagine looking at DA:V and think "Yeah, that's totally a good representation of tranny shit".
These people are so fucking retarded it makes it extremely obvious that this entire tranny bullshit was astroturfed. These brainless fucks could never have gotten the massive amount of power they got without someone giving it to them.
It's been a long time since I saw any of Jim's wrassle wrassle, I forgot how bad he is at it. You'd think even with the twink he was hugging helping him out Jim could at least give the illusion of throwing the dude, but you can practically watch his disc slip in real time as he barely got him a foot off the ground with that limp-wristed toss.
All that matters is that it is representation. Like Jim said in his own review, having this cringe shit in a video game makes troons 'feel seen'. They are the most base level consoomer nigger cattle bugmen you will ever find, and damn proud of it.
Jim is doubling down on defending Veilguard and is taking up the stance that Bioware has actually always been dogshit at writing and only now have they become better. Post
Jim is doubling down on defending Veilguard and is taking up the stance that Bioware has actually always been dogshit at writing and only now have they become better. View attachment 6633628 Post
Bold how he even admits he never liked Bioware's old writing, but miraculously now that it panders to him it's a massive improvement. My almonds could not be more activated.
By the way, he lost another 1k subs on Saturday. 42k left to go.
Jim is doubling down on defending Veilguard and is taking up the stance that Bioware has actually always been dogshit at writing and only now have they become better. View attachment 6633628 Post
I started playing videogames in early 00s and Jimmy boy is full of various fecal matter. Quality of writing is deteriorated in comparison to bioware's early work. Take for example Jade Empire morality. Despite it's implementation, it's a very interesting concept. Open palm is a goody-two-shoes path, but it can be interpreted as benevolent tyranny, as you fix problems of other people, whether they like it or not. On the other side is closed fist. It's an opposite of it. Some may see it as evil, but it also there are some choices that are pushing people to accept that their fate in their own hands and do something about it instead of relying on others for help. It's unusual for the time and I never saw it anywhere else. @Oliver Onions Very surprising that he lost it so soon. Let's not get our hopes up. 43k until under 700000
The problem isn't even that it's a historical setting, but that it's a fantasy one. These people have absolutely no imagination and put absolutely no thought into how or why trans people would exist and what they would actually look like within the cultures they're trying to insert themselves into. The most important detail being that there's magic to consider. These days it's sure as shit that if there's a trans character in a piece of media, it will be "subtly signalled" to you by having them undress and reveal various scars associated with transition surgery...but why would an aspiring AGP mutilate their body in ways associated with modern surgery's best estimations when they could just ask the local wizard to snap his fingers and avoid all that trauma and pain to get a far more authentic result?
You don't even need to consider modern stuff like Pathfinder where magic HRT is a legit thing they put in to pander to these people, even in classic AD&D there's all sorts of stuff you could point to that would make more sense. Belts of Femininity, permanent polymorph spells, wishes, etc. Some of which have even been canon plot points over time (hello Elminster). Trans people wouldn't exist - not because medieval society would preclude it but because, unlike in real life, in Fantasy you really can be a woman.
But they don't actually want that. These people, like Jim, want to be trans. Not women. And they want their media to be a mirror they can look into, not an actually thoughtful exploration of what gender dysphoria might look like in a different culture and with different resources available. So surgical scars and rambling about pronouns it is.
Nobody gave a shit about Cyberpunk having a trans side character and letting you play as a trans person if you wanted to. That only got complaints from the sort of people Veilguard is trying to appeal to. Because they are morons.
Cyberpunk is the other side of the coin in how you can't actually please them. What would trans people look like in that world?
Well, body modification is extremely advanced and commonplace, so those who transitioned into a particular sex would likely be physically unrecognisable from genuine examples. But it's also a hyper-sexualised, hyper-commercialised, and degenerate culture, so you would expect there would be some who deliberately go for the intersex look and that they would be packaged up and sold the same way everything and everyone is in Night City. Cue billboard advertisements with a prominently trans character popping up in places. Cue freakouts from the genderspecial community because they're being fetishised and it's pandering to chasers or something.
Without a shadow of irony or hint of self-awareness, they are literally the RedLetterMedia 'I CLAPPED! I CLAPPED WHEN I SAW IT' meme. The perfect goyslop consoomer.
I started playing videogames in early 00s and Jimmy boy is full of various fecal matter. Quality of writing is deteriorated in comparison to bioware's early work. Take for example Jade Empire morality. Despite it's implementation, it's a very interesting concept. Open palm is a goody-two-shoes path, but it can be interpreted as benevolent tyranny, as you fix problems of other people, whether they like it or not. On the other side is closed fist. It's an opposite of it. Some may see it as evil, but it also there are some choices that are pushing people to accept that their fate in their own hands and do something about it instead of relying on others for help. It's unusual for the time and I never saw it anywhere else.
