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

[Brap God]

It goes way deeper then just the world ending. I love Bioware and think their writing is pretty good as a whole but their stories usually have a bunch of similar plot points.
View attachment 6929710

That's not really a Bioware thing, though. It's one of the most by-the-books formulas for going from zero to hero that tons of RPGs use.

 

[ZMOT]

The fuck does male slop even mean?

slop for males or something? slop made by males?

the left simply can't meme.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I will say the problem with this stuff is it's started to infect everything around it, we're calling out genuine cases of DEI/Woke idealogy ruining a game, but also just labelling everything as that (Whether that be due to trolls fucking around, or people losing their mind over anything which isn't nuclear-family/christian friendly), makes me wonder if FalloutNV was to release today would people be hyperfixating on how ""Woke"" Veronica is. I guess my point in this is that I have come to hate the word/term and discussion around "Woke" culture since for every genuine case of it (Dustborn, this) there's a ton of other games which are just labelled the same because "Oh wow, female protag who isn't some anime girl with giant tits with retarded jiggle physics" and it is retarded to hear about, keep hearing my parents answer most questions I ask them in life with "Because of the woke/trans crowd" and it genuinely invokes an eyeroll.

New Vegas would not release today.

"Woke" isn't just about inserting people of color - it's about a treating every single medium (including video games) as an "education tool". There's a 0% chance you'd get modern Obsidian to ever have a storyline where you humanize Enclave Soldiers (aka Nazis) into likeable people - they would literally just Sieg Heil and be wearing MAGA hats in 2025. Caesar's Legion would have 0 nuance and the NCR would literally be the unassailable good guys - "the power of democracy and diversity". Veronica and Christine would get together and make a new, "better" chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel where "all are welcome". House would just be turned into a thinly veiled Elon Musk reference and would not be allowed to succeed under his own merit. There would probably be a quest arc around "returning" the Vegas Strip to the native tribes that House "colonized".

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

and utterly destroyed its sales while Sega bit its lip,

they didn't have any security measures? EA basically destroyed their company doing that

the D20 system in general, even when altered, is one of the worst table top systems around

why?

That’s part of the problem-no matter how shit a game is, liberals and trannies will defend it until it literally ceases to exist simply so the “chud incels” don’t get a rhetorical victory lap

i assume its bots, when the punisher netflix show came out every fag on reddit was defending it, second it got canceled it was like a light switch suddenly you couldn't find a single person defending that shit.

It's their idea of what social networking used to be 20 years ago, and they're hoping their buddies can get them jobs as nepo hires and what not.

it probably worked 20 years ago, only myspace had more than a million active users a month, asking your buddies on the next biggest forum probably did work.

The fathers of both fantasy and science fiction that have writen the most influential century spanning works of art are all deeply religious, conservatives or reactionaries.

while true, i think they're just talking about the last half century and why despite the "founding fathers" of these genres being conservative it hasn't been that way for a long time.

The Same way Andrew Jackson is clearly a badass in the classic conservative way, but the modern democratic party is fucking shit. over the last 40 years how many popular conservative fantasy and sci fi books have there been? same thing with television or film. its like using leni riefenstahl as proof that women directors are better than men, you'd have to be hilariously ignorant of modern trends or just a lying faggot only using that example to convince people to watch the latest Lena Dunham film.

" It's "Holy shit, the left must work VERY VERY HARD to suppress conservative creators."

is that true though? like how is the left keeping right wing artists from selling video games on STEAM? same thing with books, obviously there are right wing fantasy authors that are doing very well, but a decade of steam letting any asshole sell their video game and outside of FNAF you don't really see indie conservative game studios.

Like yes we have proof of fuckery in tv and film, and its telling how quickly reactionary podcasts become the biggest ones out there, but where are all these right wing game studios making the next Hades or Undertale?

but the lack of patronage for right wingers in the creative fields.

thats probably 99% it, but that wouldn't really keep the indie devs away, FNAF was a passion project as was undertale, and beyond that there's always bank loans or house mortgages to get you Hades or other under 25 employee game studios. like we're over a decade past gamergate and somehow no CHUD devs are making some indie game people love?

contemporary

the last half century isn't exactly contemporary, Stephen King started writing in the 1970s and he's about 80 and slowing down and a notorious lefty. if anything the fact that conservatives gave up on writing great works since the 1970s overall proves something must be wrong in their thinking.

 

[Mukhrani]

the last half century isn't exactly contemporary, Stephen King started writing in the 1970s and he's about 80 and slowing down and a notorious lefty. if anything the fact that conservatives gave up on writing great works since the 1970s overall proves something must be wrong in their thinking.

You don't just do roofing work for 20 years, sit down, and shit out a magnum opus. Writing is a craft and it requires practice like any other. Any great writer works himself up to that point - they write short stories, gets a job as a screenwriter, or some other such work to learn how to write well while transitioning into it as a career. Then they publish a few books before reaching the apex of their skill and putting out a great work. It's that first step that the shitlibs have an ever-tightening stranglehold on. They control all the entry points into the writing career, and only recently have ways to sidestep their aggressive gatekeeping arisen. If those doors stay open, it will take decades for the conservative writers that take the plunge to reach the level of past 'greats'.

And those decades of gatekeeping have taken their toll. Back in the day writing used to be seen as ideology-neutral, but due to the industry's polarization it is now perceived as a left wing thing. That will take a while to fade away, and a young conservative man might avoid writing for the same reason he would avoid acting, horticulture, academia, wine, or painting - these are all perceived as being hives of leftism that will fuck with and try to expel from the industry anyone who disagrees with the hive mind. It's a risk that you're taking with your livelihood.

Also, as a counterpoint to King, Crichton was his contemporary and was also more on the conservative side with a similar huge footprint on popular culture.

 

[The Crescent King]

I think fundamentally, old-school Bioware games were never created for the casual gamer, they've always catered to an already established niche audience.

Baldurs Gate 1 & 2. hardcore D&D audience. Knights of the Old Republic, EU Star Wars audience.

With the Dragon age, and Mass effect era, they were able to essentially copy the settings themselves, but without the licensing issues, and take that core audience with them. However, with the Dragon age: and Mass effect era, fundamental changes were being made to appeal to a wider audience, stuff like the "dialogue wheel, simplified skill trees, streamlined gameplay".

The telemetry data from this era changed the direction the company went. They started to cut content, because they wanted reduce production costs. They didn't want to make content that 90% of casual players weren't going to see. The focus became the casual gamer, not the niche RPG audience.

The fatal mistake of the company was to abandon their base, and chase market trends for higher profits.

With regards to political stuff, Bioware has always had elements of proto-woke hippie crap, but 2007-12 it started to become increasingly decadent. As soon as we got to the 2014-19 Inquisition, Andromeda, Anthem era Bioware was in full blown decline, politics started to take over. This era picked up a lot of casual female fans who were attracted to the romance simulator aspects of Inquisition.

Great post fam, and I agree completely. Dragon Age Origins was the first serious RPG I ever played; this was back in 2012 when I was 10-11, and have been part of the fandom ever since. Looking back, I believe it was Inquisition and not Veilguard that was the death knell of the Dragon Age franchise. Bioware implemented massive changes in the tone and mechanics of the games, resulting in a watered down product that appealed to casual gamers looking for a romance simulator with RPG elements than a grimdark fantasy adventure with deep mechanics.

1) Origins had fairly deep gameplay, at least for a younger gamer like me unfamiliar with the isometric RPGs from the 90s and early 2000s. In addition to tactical combat that relied heavily on factors like armour stats, builds and spell/ability combinations, the option to learn additional skills like poisoning, trapping and speechcraft added to the game's replay value. Dragon Age 2 kept only the former mechanics and was far more action oriented, which I actually didn't mind as the game was far smaller in scope; the hack and slash combat seemed more fitting to a small city scape than the tactical combat of Origins. Inquisition's combat was horrific - zero tactics or depth, bad camerawork and none of the battles were memorable as Inquisition's maps were huge empty zones.

2) A huge hangup for me with Inquisition is the lack of memorable side quests and the main quests are short, level-gated and tied to a boring gameplay loop. Origins' mission design, where every large "hub" you visited was home to one main quest and a dozen side quests splintering off from your main mission and tied to named NPCs was genius; not only was exploration worth your time, it allowed you to be absorbed into the setting at your own pace. DA2 had one major conflict per act with several missions leading up to that conflict; similar enough to Origins but altered to suite Kirkwall's city scape. Inquisition has no memorable NPCs or side content in the main game whatsoever, and the maps are vast and lifeless.

3) Voiced protagonist and dialogue wheel. While this was introduced in DA2, that game likely produced the best iteration of that mechanic with the personality system that gave Hawke character outside of dialogue choices. The Inquisitor is a boring blank slate without the personality of Hawke or the character depth of the Warden; perfect for casual gamers to project themselves onto.

These changes, along with the obvious sanitisation of the series' tone, led to a massive change in the DA fanbase. The people who loved Origins (and either tolerated, liked or loathed DA2) are not the people Inquisition or Veilguard was made for. When I peruse r/DragonAge I can tell that most of the posters entered the series with Inquisition; what they like about Veilguard are the shitty elements of the series introduced in DAI. Admittedly, I do feel a little bit of schaudenfraude that not even their Solavellan fantasies made it into Veilguard lol.

As an aside, does anyone even like video game romances? I've never played a game where they've been well implemented, and they only serve to attract weird coomers. This is coming from someone who wanted to be wifed up by Boone and Joshua Graham in Fallout New Vegas badly. I'm glad NV didn't have any romances though, as there's something sterile and awkward about them. (Honestly, I would retract this post if Loghain was a romance option in Origins lmao).

 

[Brap God]

You don't just do roofing work for 20 years, sit down, and shit out a magnum opus. Writing is a craft and it requires practice like any other. Any great writer works himself up to that point - they write short stories, gets a job as a screenwriter, or some other such work to learn how to write well while transitioning into it as a career. Then they publish a few books before reaching the apex of their skill and putting out a great work.

This isn't a given. The only thing in common between all successful authors is that they had the gumption to actually get their stuff published. Mark Lawrence, for example, never planned to be an author but he gave it a shot after he saw someone he knew that wanted to get into writing keep building some elaborate setting instead of actually getting to the point and decided to give it a shot himself. He was a math PhD before that.

 

[Endless Torment]

Plus fundies like Meloniamac

She was a former SJW who had all the same modern day progressive talking points and only switched sides and became a right wing grifter when she got divorced, the rumor being her husband became gay.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

The Same way Andrew Jackson is clearly a badass in the classic conservative way, but the modern democratic party is fucking shit. over the last 40 years how many popular conservative fantasy and sci fi books have there been? same thing with television or film. its like using leni riefenstahl as proof that women directors are better than men, you'd have to be hilariously ignorant of modern trends or just a lying faggot only using that example to convince people to watch the latest Lena Dunham film.

The argument isn't over whether or not currently conservatives are dominating arts, its whether or not conservatism inherently prohibits creativity, that is what ishtar was claiming.

I'm arguing that there is nothing inherent about conservatism that inhibits the arts, and I brought those writers up as an example. I think the reason the arts are dominated by leftism is quite simply tribalism and nepotism.

 

[Mola Ram]

The argument isn't over whether or not currently conservatives are dominating arts, its whether or not conservatism inherently prohibits creativity, that is what ishtar was claiming.

I'm arguing that there is nothing inherent about conservatism that inhibits the arts, and I brought those writers up as an example. I think the reason the arts are dominated by leftism is quite simply tribalism and nepotism.

"Conservatives are too closed-minded to be artists" is lefty horseshit that only has cachet precisely because the arts have been dominated by the left for so long, and Ishtar's argument merits absolutely no engagement.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

If EA were run by smart people then they would make another DEF JAM game with with no microtransactions.

They wouldn’t even have to shove any extra LGBT stuff in, half the rappers are already gay!

 

[LiquidKid]

they didn't have any security measures? EA basically destroyed their company doing that

Sega was(and is largely still is) a terribly ran company. They had nothing to prevent EA and could either play ball or get utterly curb stomped.

As for the D20 stuff, that’s a tl;dr for another thread, but the gist of it is that the system is very restrictive to the type of games it can accurately play and while you can home brew elements of it, you really have to throw away the majority of it to get any level of creative freedom from it, which at that point you might as well be doing a different system all together. Pathfinder works as a D20 game because it’s basically just D&D 3.5 but updated.
There’s actually several essays about why the system of a TTRPG matters. Here’s just one of them

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

There would probably be a quest arc around "returning" the Vegas Strip to the native tribes that House "colonized".

Its funny because the only ex-tribe/casino family you can do that to in the base game are the ultra-luxurious, murder-happy faceless cannibals.
The other tribe you can extensively support in the base game is a bunch of leather-using raiders who get crucified unless you tell then to fuck off or not support the romaboo slavers.

 

[AnOminous]

CS Lewis literally wrote narnia as a means to proselytize children and JJR tolkien was so conservative when catholic church abolished latin mass he spent the rest of his life protesting it.

I think that's rather oversimplifying both of their politics. While they were both conservative, Tolkien had open contempt for racism and anti-Semitism at a time that wasn't normal. He was a Tory but disliked Winston Churchill. He was also utterly opposed to nuclear weapons.

Along with a lot of paleoconservative (even for the time) opinions, he also held a number of positions that would have been considered liberal.

Disapproving of the change from the Tridentine Mass after Vatican II was also not synonymous with extremism like it is now (although this is somewhat unfair since not all those who think the old Mass has merit are some kind of Hutton Gibson skinwalkers).

 

[Lazy Drei]

The B in IMDB stands for Based.

An amusing detail is that IMDB still lists the tranny lead dev by their original name.
View attachment 6922858

 

[AnOminous]

"Woke" isn't just about inserting people of color - it's about a treating every single medium (including video games) as an "education tool".

Except it doesn't work when they're such shit nobody actually plays them, much less buys them.

 

[ZMOT]

Like yes we have proof of fuckery in tv and film, and its telling how quickly reactionary podcasts become the biggest ones out there, but where are all these right wing game studios making the next Hades or Undertale?

hades is the game from an already established studio, undertale is an accidental hit that happens every once in a while like FNAF.

like we're over a decade past gamergate and somehow no CHUD devs are making some indie game people love?

steam had almost 19000 releases last year, I don't think those are literally 19k liberal games, never mind no one has been able to define "conservative" games yet. competent white protagonist? heterosexual relationship? christian imagery?
if anything people are going back to old games, which were made by a much bigger variety of developers, or outright china and anyone calling them liberal would be retarded (same to a lesser degree for japan).

Along with a lot of paleoconservative (even for the time) opinions, he also held a number of positions that would have been considered liberal.

turns out most people have a myriad of different opinions you can't collectively slap a label on.
even the most racist skinhead will be buddy with ali from the kebab-shop, interestingly there are a lot less "100% nazis" than "100% communists" (but then most of them are just subhuman opportunists anyway).

 

[Ishtar]

The argument isn't over whether or not currently conservatives are dominating arts, its whether or not conservatism inherently prohibits creativity, that is what ishtar was claiming.

I'm arguing that there is nothing inherent about conservatism that inhibits the arts, and I brought those writers up as an example. I think the reason the arts are dominated by leftism is quite simply tribalism and nepotism.

You misunderstood me, I wasn’t saying “conservatism” inhibits creativity. I was saying conservatives’ tend to be less creative for inherent psychological reasons.

 

[Mettaur]

You misunderstood me, I wasn’t saying “conservatism” inhibits creativity. I was saying conservatives’ tend to be less creative for inherent psychological reasons.

Explain

 

[Stephen Rothman]

Overall this is a good video but I should preface that I don't have any attachment to Dragon Age and I'm viewing this as a tourist pretty much so I don't have any real input to balance his takes with to really be sure.
Throughout the video, though, there'll be these off the cuff moments where he will poison the well about arguments or complaints made against Veil guard kind of as a strawman and it almost gets to the point where he almost does the "Stunning and Brave" Schtick and a few minutes ago he was saying something about bigots and gay representation so watcher beware theres going to be random pozzed moments that fly at you fast.

Video's really good, but you can tell he pulls his punches especially when it comes to Veilguard. Agree on the weird moments, at one point he just goes "these evil guys in veilguard=maga!!". He also views Veilguard as "comfort media," but Bioware's shambling corpse is more depressing to me than anything positive.
Ignoring Veilguard which has already been video essayed to death, it was really interesting to learn not only how little your choices matter from game to game, but also about major elements like the Architect being dropped entirely since there's no good way to handle them without locking in one player choice over another. Apparently most of the best shit was in post release DLC as well.