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

[Well Intentioned]

I repeat myself: don't play it then.

I don't.

If you care about "agendas" in media, then you do care about political and socially-driven aspects in your media.

Re-read what I said you ignorant fuck: I care when 'agenda' is put over at the expense of everything else. It makes for a horrible product that is uninteresting.

It's part of why the early social commentary X-Men stuff worked so well: it worked within the confines of the characters and story and it resonated with people. Or TOS/TNG/etc Star Trek.

Or countless other examples.

Don't say it's bad because of "LE WOKE AGENDAAAA"; just say it's bad because the story and gameplay are bad and incoherent and move on.

All creative choices are on the table when discussing why something did/did not work. And if there's something (microtransactions, invasive DRM, 'always online' gameplay, scrapping of PVE content, to cite just a few examples) becomes an issue, people are going to discuss it.

There was a conscious effort to take the Dragon Age franchise and put it in a progressive direction. Nothing wrong with that. But when the examples of poor story involve instances of shitty dialogue revolving around modern day progressive issues it is kind of hard to ignore it when critiquing it.

And 'just' saying it is bad would just lead to idiots going 'durr you can't even specify what is bad with it, opinion discarded.' It's all so fucking tiresome.

There's a fundamental difference between taking a critical eye towards something and examining it and whatever fantasy bullshit you've conjured up. You're attributing shit to me I haven't said.

Concord was a mediocre game with cool spaceships that people got mad over because "REEEE BLACK WOMAN IN VIDYA GAEMS".

You know this isn't ResetEra, yeah? This is a retarded reductionist take. I only learned of Concord because of some moron dev screeching about it on Twitter.

If a black woman connects with it, then good for her, but it wasn't made for you,

Okay, JRR Tolkien 'wasn't made' for Shaniqua, but if she enjoys the story and connects with the story of Frodo or whatever, good for her. And if someone is inspired enough to make an adaptation or put a different spin on shit? That's cool, too. I could not give a fuck.

But if something for example, the Cowboy Bebop Netflix live adaptation is the result (something which I believe was universally panned, I don't know, I never watched it) that means the likelihood of something interesting/good coming down the pipeline is lessened because 'market research shows audiences don't like [genre]' or whatever.

It's also weird how movies/games/etc that feature a minority (or whatever) that are actually interesting/well made do just fine and people don't screech about it. Almost as if the issue is with quality and not the fact it exists.

Once something is out in the world it is 'for' everyone, especially if it is using established IP that was broadly marketed to folks. You're also high if you don't think people get up in arms about shitty direct to DVD movies or whatever. Did you miss the whole decade where Uwe Boll was a thing?

so there's no reason to view it any differently from the many mediocre, forgettable games that come out every year.

I agree, which is why I don't play it and don't care about it up until some idiot is making a fool of themselves. Then I laugh about it and move on with my day.

You're kind of stupid if you don't understand why paying attention to major design/creative trends in gaming and whether they succeed/fail dictates what the industry will do in the future.

 

[Gruntgar The Indentured]

I'd gladly trade all of these "woke" devs and companies just to get back to the days of games produced by SSI, Sierra, Rowan, Broderbund, etc. MicroProse is on a bit of a comeback with Boat Crew (I recommend) and B-17 The Flying Fortress: The Bloody 100th (I haven't played yet) So I am withholding judgement on their current arc.

 

[Tablet County]

Sierra

I would do terrible things to bring Sierra back.

 

[mindlessobserver]

I still can't get over they named their qunari Xey/Xem after Satan. Toss up in my head if it was snuck in as a giggle by retarded lefties, or as a sneaky protest by a writer.

 

[Rockzo]

AA studios produce better games at a lower budget and kick the shit out of them.
There are tons of good and great games coming out every single year, and the only AAA games that are seen as must-buys are the rare Rockstar releases.

I just wanted to add this is probably the way the games industry is going in the future and what you're seeing right now is the market correction taking place. Never before has it been easier for companies in foreign lands like Japan, China or eastern Europe to find an English publisher, get the game translated in as many languages as possible then put it up on a market place where people from all over the world can see it.
And the thing is, these games make profit too. Half a million copies sold on steam might generate only $5 million dollars after steam and the publisher takes their cut but to a team of two that developed the game, that's life changing money and can easily give them the security they need to develop their next project without worrying if they need to pay artist, voice actors, translators and the like.

The AAA industry only existed because games were tightly controlled on consoles. Microsoft and Sony had their walled gardens and could dictate what got on. That's fallen out of favor as people move to PC, consoles fall into irrelevance and most games become multiplats because having exclusives in this day and age is stupid.
Nintendo is ever an exception to this because they have a core of first party titles that people can only play on their system.

Companies like Activision and EA can pump out yearly titles but I really do wonder just how sustainable that is in the long run, when the last CoDs take $700 million and 11 studios to make for a yearly title.

 

[AnOminous]

Concord was a mediocre game with cool spaceships that people got mad over because "REEEE BLACK WOMAN IN VIDYA GAEMS".

If you think that's why people didn't buy it you're literally retarded. People that chudded up are maybe 1% of even the gaming population.

If you're trolling, well, congrats here's your >You

 

[Gruntgar The Indentured]

I would do terrible things to bring Sierra back.

Ditto...

 

[Tablet County]

If you think that's why people didn't buy it you're literally retarded. People that chudded up are maybe 1% of even the gaming population.

Despite making up only 1% of the gaming population...

 

[Cornfed]

It is important to remember that ALL of the talent at BioWare from the ME2 era has left. Many formed their own companies or existed the industry. BioWare has not existed for a good long while.
We have timeless games like ME2 or Origins to replay, and new companies coming out with great little gems to support. If the bottom line is that trannies burn EA to the ground, then fuck it, let em.

 

[AnOminous]

Ditto...

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Sierra. Isn't that company the one co-founded by a woman named Roberta Williams, who also personally invented the whole genre of games started with King's Quest back in 1979 or so? Oh and her husband too.

 

[crunchy bits are the best]

"Actual hobbies don't have this ridiculous drama"

Toy collecting has a couple and more to come:

 

[Meth Dick]

you'd think there'd eventually come a penance for convincing executives to waste all of this money and good will.

All I'm saying is if there was a guy I trusted to give me financial advice, and one day he started giving me advice that was losing me money with the promise that "it'll hit any day now, you just gotta stay the course and it'll all pay off", but investment after investment continued to crash and burn, and I was getting to the point where I had lost all of my profit and my savings, at a certain point I would not only stop listening to the guy, but I'd also be spreading the word to mutual acquaintances that this guy is just winging it and lying, and that people shouldn't trust him or do business with him, less they want to lose their money.

I think that day of reckoning is upon us. Big optimistic here, but I think even the slimiest of companies are seeing that writing on the wall and are reading it clearly, that being a liberal is no longer en vogue and more by more little by little this entire experiment they've been running for the last 10 years or so is going to peter out. Even Disney is walking back their inclusive prog shit because they're starting to see those profits go down.
Personally, I think Ubisoft is the next to either cut the dead weight or drown if it's not too late for them already. AC Shadows is the first of their big plan which included a massive online world thing as well as two other stand alone titles AC Jade and AC Hex and Shadows is already killing that pipe dream and it's still 2 months away from release.
I'm not expecting any of these companies to step up and say "we made a continuous miscalculation of what our fans have been wanting for too long and we apologize" but they will have to start firing the people that told them shit like "People totally aren't sick of Star Wars girl bosses" or "nigger samurais are totes chic!" I imagine there will be big severance packages along with NDA's with those firings but, there's not a chance that the bosses of all these companies aren't getting sick of losing because their products are shilling for a culture war running defense and "representation" of people that 1: they don't really give a fuck about, and 2: aren't the demographic that are even buying their games in the first place. How many fags and women actually play shit like AC, Far Cry, and Dragon Age? I don't think it's a big enough number to pander to them all the time. I imagine the number of people saying they enjoy these games and will buy them is a much, much higher number than the ones that actually do, and only say they do for xitter/reddit brownie points.

 

[Mystery Spy]

It is important to remember that ALL of the talent at BioWare from the ME2 era has left. Many formed their own companies or existed the industry. BioWare has not existed for a good long while.
We have timeless games like ME2 or Origins to replay, and new companies coming out with great little gems to support. If the bottom line is that trannies burn EA to the ground, then fuck it, let em.

You make a great point. People give way too much credit to brands and project leads and very little to the people that actually do the work.

It wasn’t BioWare who made those amazing games, it was those employees that aren’t around. EA just owns the brand, but not the people that made it great in the first place.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

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)

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.
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The most recent one or the entire franchise? Because I played the first game for hundreds of hours, but I am pretty sure it is not a good game.

 

[AnOminous]

It wasn’t BioWare who made those amazing games, it was those employees that aren’t around. EA just owns the brand, but not the people that made it great in the first place.

It's sort of a miniature version of the H-1B scandal. You import lower quality people to replace the quality people who make your product, then act amazed when the product goes to shit and the customers go elsewhere.

 

[johnny johnny yes papa]

View attachment 6915442
The fact that someone looked at a photo like this and genuinely thought it would succeed is honestly the most surprising part of all this.

"Hmm, yes, an ugly unlikable tranny. Just what the gamers want."

 

[mindlessobserver]

Honestly I am a hard core dragon age fan. I even enjoyed inquisition despite how fucking easy it was and the less grim dark direction.

I didn't even bother trying this drek.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I'm retarded and Dragon Age seems too complicated for me so I'm glad it failed as I'm not missing out on anything.

Even Origin isn't all that complicated to be honest, like the only "hard" thing that occurs in the series is that on high difficulty they turn on Friendly Fire so you can't AOE unless you Micromanage your Retard companions*


*This is not difficulty, tard wrangling the AI is just busywork.

 

[Spergichu]

Crazy to think this is the same company who put out KotOR. I know none of the people who worked on it had any hand in actually making this slop flop, but still.

 

[God of Nothing]

May Bioware's corpse die already.