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

[TrainWreckWatcher]

From a cursory web search, 13,000 people currently work at EA, and I have to ask myself, what the fuck are they all doing?

Waiting to be replaced by AI is my guess.


You know EA is going to jump on AI the second its viable.

Artists, programmers, and everything else under the sun are going to get gutted.

 

[regalterry]

Artists, programmers, and everything else under the sun are going to get gutted.

Still preferable to infinite jeets, and quite likely will result in a better product too.

 

[The Doom Slayer]

Been saying this but EA is in danger of becoming the next Ubisoft if they don't tard wrangle their devs. I mean let's look at their franchises.

Dragon Age - Dead
Mass Effect - Dead
Anthem - lol
Titanfall - Dead
Battlefield - Zombie franchise (Likely dead if/when the next entry fails)
Jedi games - Ending with the third one
Capeshit games - These haven't exactly been doing great lately

Apex, Sims and mainly sports slop are really the only things they have left, and I guess even that has now shown some weakness with the apparent underperformance of FC25.

 

[Miller]

Wasn't that faggot lisping Krogan also a part of the main group, or was "he" just a comically inept character from a boring sidequest?

That femake Krogan is not a companion, she is the head of a clan if I'm not mistaken, the biggest one. They have retconned a lof of shit, from the scientists reducing the effects of the genophage on the Krogans while they were in stasis to the females being pretty much everywhere including in merc groups.
The weird thing about that cutscene is that the writers completely forgot that the Krogans don't fight with their T-rex arms, they do headbutts.

 

[p1138]

I also found this hilarious-if-true article from a week ago, citing a rumour that 98% of staff who previously worked on the series have since left DICE. Then again, given how bad 2042 launched maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing to hand the series over to new blood. Hell, why not give it to Bioware now they've got nothing else to do.

Bad battlefield 2042 launched? V was "don't buy it if you don't like it". 1 launched as a buggy mess that included bugs leftover from 4. Hardline no one fucking wanted, asked for, expected, etc. but at least that was Visceral instead of DICE. If you consider when the last time it was DICE launched a game that could have actually been considered good at launch(battlefield 4 wasn't perfect but it was playable) they're just as bad as Bioware is since that was 2013.

EA is basically Ubisoft with more money - same woke hiring practices, same competency crisis, the only difference is that they still have IPs people want to play, so that the whole rotting carcass can keep rolling along for a few more years.

The only major difference is not even all of the EA sports games, it's just Madden, NBA, and FIFA that rake in the bucks with the microtransactions. Sure people buy the others, but they aren't making a billion a year in MTX from them. Ubisoft however wishes it had an annual franchise it could copy/paste and generate a billion a year.

Apex, Sims and mainly sports slop are really the only things they have left, and I guess even that has now shown some weakness with the apparent underperformance of FC25.

Even The Sims is in desperate need of a refresh, game is currently a decade old. There is that project r-something that was announced a couple years back I think before Sims 4 went free to play, but that'd be something else they haven't had anything worthwhile to announce anything for in years now.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

They had to do some ass pulls to ensure you still got to the ending despite some of your choices but I don't think anything they did in ME3 was as egregious as something like letting you definitively kill Leliana in DA just for her to wake up later so she can be in DA:I or redeeming Flemeth.

Actually... that's some vague descriptions of how Leliana survived the encounter against the Warden if killed.
But the problem is: if she died when confronts you corrupting the sacred ashes, makes a lot of sense about "being revived by the same temple of Andraste" and shit.
But if she dies in another part of the game, that doesn't make any sense.

But more than that, i think my next DA: O playthrought is killing both Wynne and Leliana in the temple. Evil playthroughts are interesting.

 

[Tanner Glass]

So I absolutely loved ME1 and ME2 when they were out, they were my fucking shit. I never actually played 3 because I heard all the choices you made through 1 and 2 didn't translate to 3 in a satisfying way and that the ending was so fucking bad that people lost their minds and started boycotting it and demanding re-writes.

My question is. Was 3 even worth playing? I always assumed the ME franchise died at 2.

No, not really.

There's only really two ways to play ME3

- One with a meticulously imported save file where all party members are present and accounted for so you can see all the "intended" stories play out. Some of these are great, some of them are horrible. It's been a long time, but I recall Wrex's referencing his brother (a character you've never met).
- One with a save file wherein all important characters are dead/missing so you can see all of the low effort "stand ins" that get ham-fistedly shoved in. It's one of the lower points of the writing and frankly embarrassing.

I'd recommend watching it on YT instead of actually playing it though. A whole lot of it is mediocre.

 

[Weltraumfürst]

It's been a long time, but I recall Wrex's referencing his brother (a character you've never met).

You ackchually meet Wreav in ME2 if Wrex died in ME1. So he doesn't really come out of nowhere.

 

[Tanner Glass]

You ackchually meet Wreav in ME2 if Wrex died in ME1. So he doesn't really come out of nowhere.

Yes, but that means you never actually meet him there.

Wrex (if alive in ME3) will reference his brother Wreav - who only appears if Wrex is killed. Thereby, if Wrex is alive to compare himself to his brother - that Shepard has never met his brother and has no idea wtf he's talking about. It make sense as the player (if you have meta knowledge of who replaces who when killed) but it never makes in-game sense.

 

[Mola Ram]

Yes, but that means you never actually meet him there.

Wrex (if alive in ME3) will reference his brother Wreav - who only appears if Wrex is killed. Thereby, if Wrex is alive to compare himself to his brother - that Shepard has never met his brother and has no idea wtf he's talking about. It make sense as the player (if you have meta knowledge of who replaces who when killed) but it never makes in-game sense.

Nah, Wreav gets snippy about Mordin being in the Hollows; Wrex tells you who he is; then Bakara shuts them both down. It's not a very memorable introduction, but he does appear before his death in a game where Wrex is alive, however briefly.

 

[Snekposter]

The weird thing about that cutscene is that the writers completely forgot that the Krogans don't fight with their T-rex arms, they do headbutts.

Eh, they can, but among them the headbutting is a dominance thing. Its why that cuntwipe rival to Clan Urdnot gets pissed as fuck when Shepard does it to him on Tuchanka in the dialogue with the Shaman during the initial phase Grunt's loyalty mission. Not only did a human tell him to shut the fuck up in fluent Kroganese, he knows that all he can do is impotently whine about it afterwards since he can't do shit against a Shepard that didn't get worn down by a thresher maw.

 

[Disc]

Eh, they can, but among them the headbutting is a dominance thing. Its why that cuntwipe rival to Clan Urdnot gets pissed as fuck when Shepard does it to him on Tuchanka in the dialogue with the Shaman during the initial phase Grunt's loyalty mission. Not only did a human tell him to shut the fuck up in fluent Kroganese, he knows that all he can do is impotently whine about it afterwards since he can't do shit against a Shepard that didn't get worn down by a thresher maw.

It's like getting your ass kicked by an 80 year old man. Not only is it humiliating to begin with, even if you come back and beat him later, so what? you beat an old man.

 

[regalterry]

What really hammers the "competency crisis" nail home is the fact that EA themselves admitted they can't make a new Sims.

At best they can cobble together sporadic updates for Sims 4 at a glacial pace, but actually creating a truly new, next-gen sequel is beyond the capabilities of their workforce.

I'm not sure what their plans are, but with Chinese and Korean developers eating up market share for both singleplayer and multiplayer games, they need to start trimming the fat fast, and actually hire competent people that know what they are doing and, more importantly, have the emotional maturity to give the audience what they want.

 

[Kane Lives]

What really hammers the "competency crisis" nail home is the fact that EA themselves admitted they can't make a new Sims.

At best they can cobble together sporadic updates for Sims 4 at a glacial pace, but actually creating a truly new, next-gen sequel is beyond the capabilities of their workforce.

I'm not sure what their plans are, but with Chinese and Korean developers eating up market share for both singleplayer and multiplayer games, they need to start trimming the fat fast, and actually hire competent people that know what they are doing and, more importantly, have the emotional maturity to give the audience what they want.

You'd think somebody would realise this and make a knockoff of The Sims 2 (easily the best Sims imo), and beat EA to the punch. Just name it something related like "The Townies" or something lol.

 

[p1138]

You'd think somebody would realise this and make a knockoff of The Sims 2 (easily the best Sims imo), and beat EA to the punch. Just name it something related like "The Townies" or something lol.

Paradox was making one and then cancelled it after a lame attempt at cross development resulted in using the model assets from Life By You(their sims clone) in Cities Skylines 2 causing the game to run like shit because nuts and bolts on cars(they had meshes for fucking car radiators even) that's barely visible in the game had geometry in addition to using the fully detailed characters from the sims clone(and many many other idiotic problems). Presumably there was a plan for some cross game integration.

Then there's that weird UE5 almost ai slop looking inZOI game from some korean dev with no reelease date.
Paralives, some indie sims clone that looks like its from 2015 with no release date.

 

[Finger Pistols]

I haven't seen anyone post this here. EA officially stated in their press release that the game performed below 50% of approximated expectations. They hoped it would sell 3 million copies, but it 'engaged approximately 1.5 million players'. Bioware is most likely getting axed.

(Link) | (Ghost archive)

Edit: I personally want to remind you that you don't hate videogame journos enough. Eat shit Jason Schreier, Dragon's crown is still kino.

 

[Kane lives in death]

I haven't seen anyone post this here. EA officially stated in their press release that the game performed below 50% of approximated expectations. They hoped it would sell 3 million copies, but it sold 1.5 million.
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(Link) | (Ghost archive)

they didnt even sell 1.5 million, they say they "engaged 1.5 million players", thats corpo speak, they probably included demo players, refunds and game pass subcriptions in that number.
And even if it actually sold 3 million it would probably still lose money, bioware is a AAA studio with like 8 years of dev time on veilguard. the fact the estimate by EA was 3 million means they probably always knew this garbage would bomb and didnt expect to recoup their money.
If bioware doesnt shut down after this catastrophe of a shitshow i dont know what will. its literally their third flop in a row. And each one is worse than the last, i dont know how it can get worse, but im sure mass effect 5 will be somehow even more garbage

 

[Mola Ram]

And each one is worse than the last, i dont know how it can get worse, but im sure mass effect 5 will be somehow even more garbage

Veilguard is not only their third flop in a row; it's the first one that is legitimately franchise-killing. Anthem was new territory; Andromeda was confined to a completely different galaxy with only a few tenuously linked characters like Garrus's father (I suppose one might consider it a gaiden game). Veilguard was the greatly anticipated followup to a game that ended on multiple cliffhangers a decade ago -- and with such a disastrous resolution, where is the story supposed to go now? Their best bet might be to figure out what the next age is called and advance the timeline another 50 years so everything that happened in this trainwreck is no more than vaguely-recalled history.

If BioWare somehow survives to produce ME5, then yes, as others have said then I think ME5 will be the last strike. But I really have my doubts they're going to be given the opportunity.

 

[Vibralldo]

I haven't seen anyone post this here. EA officially stated in their press release that the game performed below 50% of approximated expectations. They hoped it would sell 3 million copies, but it sold 1.5 million. Bioware is most likely getting axed.
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(Link) | (Ghost archive)

Nature is healing

 

[Looney Troons]

Gay game tanks and EA bleeds money. Sweet.