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

[Prokhor Zakharov]

If the Maker is in the game there are two possibilties:

#1: The Maker is female and was harmed/imprisoned/violated by the magisters who are all now male even if they weren't in Origins. Because she is Powerful and Indepdnent™ she punished them by turning them into the archdemons but you have to assist her in regaining her freedom/throne/status. Although you wont actually be needed because she is Powerful and Independent™. What, you thought the Maker would be male?

#2: The Maker is revealed not to be the benevolent and good thing people imagine. Instead he is evil and vengeful and bent on destroying the world. Solas knows this and is trying to stop the Maker who was previously imprisoned by the Elven gods. The Magisters, are are all now male even if they weren't in Origins, were evil and tried to free the Maker which caused the cataclysmic fall of the elven gods. Now the Maker is about to break loose. The player must help destroy the Maker once and for all. This will be a Bold Twist as up until this point you believed the Elven gods were the villains but they were goodies all along. Solas will turn out to have a sister who will be critical to your character's success. She also will be bald.

If the maker exists, I can almost guarantee that there will be dialogue at one point along the line of "the maker, the infinite, beyond all dichotomy, good and evil, man and woman, etc..." so the maker can be an enby in canon.

 

[Nonga Tork]

The openworld portions of DAI would be more bearable if they hadn't idotically removed healing spells and hyper-limited your number of healing potions. Having to constantly be heading back to restock on heals early game made it an absolute nightmare.

 

[Sniperwoof]

The openworld portions of DAI would be more bearable if they hadn't idotically removed healing spells and hyper-limited your number of healing potions. Having to constantly be heading back to restock on heals early game made it an absolute nightmare.

Oh yea, I forgot they completely removed healing magic for some unexplainable reason.

I didn't like DAI in 2014 but it was even worse the more I remember.

 

[Ishtar]

I like the Hinterlands, it’s visually gorgeous.

The rest of the big maps are hit or miss honestly. The Exalted Plains map is a slog, and tries and fails to get across the Orlesian civil war, (who the fuck built those massive encampments both sides have?).The desert maps are some of the most unpleasant grind work I’ve ever done in a video game. Especially finding the shards. The emprise de lion and the emerald graves are also miserable. Except for the latter having three dragons to fight.

The storm coast isn’t very fun either. The Avar DLC-the frostbacks is very tedious not bad if you like the story. I like the deep roads map for what it’s worth.

It’s basically so some major quests, get points, come back for character specific stuff, collect items, finish off your lists. Build XP.

The War table stuff can vary between “hmm I wish we actually got to see this” and overwhelmingly miserable tedium. Real time passes. Sometimes over 24 hours. I was told one mission is literally seventy two hours.

That isn’t to say the maps aren’t gorgeous and there aren’t occasionally interesting side quests. The haunted house in the graves, or Imshael in the Emprise but overall one feels compelled to do them if they are a completionist(which I tend to be). Not because they are particularly rewarding otherwise.

 

[Mola Ram]

The Exalted Plains map is a slog, and tries and fails to get across the Orlesian civil war, (who the fuck built those massive encampments both sides have?

My favorite part of the Exalted Plains is the constant, nearly subaural droning whine that gives me a headache within 15 minutes every time I venture there. Man, I hope they gave a bonus to whoever was responsible for that sound design!

The Orlesian civil war is one of the most frustrating elements of the game to me. Sure, it's outlined in codex entries, but for such a crucial background event they sure are hoping you read their shitty tie in fiction so you have the faintest idea what's going on. That also seems to be the only way you'll have any investment in who wins. For me, DAI is at its most obnoxious when it delves into things that are totally dependent on ancillary material like books and comics.

 

[Super Hans v2]

IIRC, Frostbite was intentionally designed to be a tough nut to crack in order to deter cheaters. Great for something like the Battlefield games, but it also meant you couldn't really modify it to do anything else.

Frostbite is a pain in the ass because poor documentation and being purpose-made for Battlefield. So, when EA mandates that it's now the engine that all their games have to use, as an example you have devs finding out only after smashing their heads against a brick wall that cars don't drive in Need For Speed unless you put a model-less gun in front of the headlights.

 

[Sniperwoof]

My favorite part of the Exalted Plains is the constant, nearly subaural droning whine that gives me a headache within 15 minutes every time I venture there. Man, I hope they gave a bonus to whoever was responsible for that sound design!

The Orlesian civil war is one of the most frustrating elements of the game to me. Sure, it's outlined in codex entries, but for such a crucial background event they sure are hoping you read their shitty tie in fiction so you have the faintest idea what's going on. That also seems to be the only way you'll have any investment in who wins. For me, DAI is at its most obnoxious when it delves into things that are totally dependent on ancillary material like books and comics.

As much as I hate new Bioware and DAI I'll be fair and say that isn't entirely their fault. DAI had at least two cancelled DLCs that we know of so they did apparently want to wrap up some of these unresolved plot threads but EA/management said no.

 

[Ishtar]

My favorite part of the Exalted Plains is the constant, nearly subaural droning whine that gives me a headache within 15 minutes every time I venture there. Man, I hope they gave a bonus to whoever was responsible for that sound design!

To be entirely fair, wasn't that the elven weapon/trap thing that caught Celene's forces outside their fortress?

I get what they were trying to achieve with the exalted plains map, it just falls flat. For one thing the big wooden encampments you see-its just a matter of realism, and they look cool admittedly, it just breaks my SOD-these sides are fighting, they don't have time to build fantasy WW1 bunkers.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

The War table stuff can vary between “hmm I wish we actually got to see this” and overwhelmingly miserable tedium. Real time passes. Sometimes over 24 hours. I was told one mission is literally seventy two hours.

I'm just grateful whoever decided the War Table needed to be a thing didn't account for people being able to just freely change the time on their console - I played Inquisition on my PS4, I just went to the home screen and changed the date in my settings to bypass those "missions" entirely.

 

[Ishtar]

Wasn't Dragon Age 2 supposed to have an expansion like Awakenings, but because of the Frostbite mandate they scrapped it and used all of the story beats they had planned for it for Inquisition.

That's probably why everything is fetch side quests. The story was literally meant for an expansion.

There was supposed to be an Exalted March DLC. You see evidence of this with Sebastian's oddly limited role, Leliana showing up and warning about an exalted march, and the occasional references we get to the Chantry's interest in the boiling pot that is Kirkwall.

Apparently Varric would have died at the end, and some elements were carried over into Inquisition. For example-Sebastian does attack Kirkwall, if Anders is still alive.

Cassandra herself is introduced in DA2 and I expect the Seekers of Truth were retooled for Inquisition.

The other way around actually. Dragon Age 2 feels shallow, short, and incomplete because it itself was a cancelled DLC for Origins that got hastily retooled into a standalone game.

I haven't heard that? But I do know DA2 had a very limited development cycle. You can see this with the reused assets, the limited amount of DLCs, etc...

Apparently the game was developed in nine months.

Apart of me honestly wishes we had gotten the "full" DA2 even if that meant Inquisition had been backended to the later 2010s.

Wow, 40 pages in just over a month. You all must be super excited for Dreadwolf.

Apparently, there are people who actually like the DA games. And don't just want to rehash anti woke complaints.

Maybe a DA General or Bioware Game general thread, could be made?

 

[Snekposter]

Frostbite is a pain in the ass because poor documentation and being purpose-made for Battlefield. So, when EA mandates that it's now the engine that all their games have to use, as an example you have devs finding out only after smashing their heads against a brick wall that cars don't drive in Need For Speed unless you put a model-less gun in front of the headlights.

And in an unsurprising twist, it turned out it would have been cheaper and easier to keep paying the license fees for outside engines. While Andromeda had a ton of issues, and most of them can be blamed on the devs, a fair chunk are down to EA mandating a switch to Frostbite halfway through. Thankfully they at least already had a shooter game though unlike the poor Need for Speed devs.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

The Orlesian civil war is one of the most frustrating elements of the game to me. Sure, it's outlined in codex entries, but for such a crucial background event they sure are hoping you read their shitty tie in fiction so you have the faintest idea what's going on. That also seems to be the only way you'll have any investment in who wins. For me, DAI is at its most obnoxious when it delves into things that are totally dependent on ancillary material like books and comics.

If you have read the books and know of Cole's origin and past, you very likely won't think it's cute to have him hanging around or it's so kawaii to have him lose his virginity to some poor unsuspecting person. Shame that there is no option to exorcise that ugly thing out of existence.

 

[Ishtar]

If you have read the books and know of Cole's origin and past, you very likely won't think it's cute to have him hanging around or it's so kawaii to have him lose his virginity to some poor unsuspecting person. Shame that there is no option to exorcise that ugly thing out of existence.

As I understand it, he creeped on people bathing? Cole to be entirely fair may as well be an alien from another planet. Or dimension. Which he basically is.

He’s a spirit of compassion. In DA spirits are relatively simple beings that just propagate whatever their theme or concept they’ve latched onto is.

I tend to think it best to make him more of a spirit than human. Because at the core he’s not a human being, he’s another creature from a dimension that lacks the nuances of civilization and even basic social norms. All he knows how to do is simplistically make people’s pain go away-and he can’t even do that in any way more than making them forget their problem.

It’s like Justice with Anders-in the real world, Justice is messy, abstract and depends a lot on where you’re standing. A spirit of justice doesn’t understand these nuances. All it can do is basically propagate itself by doing “just” things whether that makes any sense or not.

Spirits in DA are basically just idea replication memes given life. They aren’t capable of introspection nor can they grasp complex moral problems or the trade offs that life entails.

You see this with Cole, with justice even in awakening-if you side with the architect, he’ll turn on you because the actual nuances of your decision(maybe having a Darkspawn that wants to get rid of the old gods’ song could be good) just doesn’t register.

A spirit of command in Inquisition-it angrily rages when out of the fade that the material world won’t bend to its will, but it has to “follow” its meme so you go and kill a rage demon so she can say she commanded something.

All that said, Cole is not a person. He’s not even a simulacrum of human-he’s an idea ghost wearing a human skinsuit.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

If you read Asunder, Cole is a walking euthanasia kit, only none of the mages he killed asked to be euthanized. He simply decided that these mages were destined for the Rite of Tranquility or just a sad life in general, so killing them was the best course of action.

You can relate to him or emphatize with him... but do you want him around to put you or your people down, out of mercy because he judges these people in need of euthanasia by his own inhuman standards?

 

[Ishtar]

Exactly my point, Cole is incapable of nuance or any sort of reasoning that isn't absolutely binary(and I don't use therapybabble speak lightly).

Suffering? Die or mind wipe? Not suffering? No interest in you.

Cole is basically the abstraction of a concept.

 

[Belegar]

Yeah but she's ugly.

Yeah but he's ugly.

This is the thing with new games I cannot imagine getting invested in ugly and gay. In the end what I remember most about Bioware games are the characters. Miranda, Bastilla, Morrigan the list goes on and on.
Maybe Cassandra has a great story, I will never know im not in to lesbians.

 

[LovisXVI]

Maybe Cassandra has a great story, I will never know im not in to lesbians.

Cassandra is the only straight woman in that game.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

If you have read the books and know of Cole's origin and past, you very likely won't think it's cute to have him hanging around or it's so kawaii to have him lose his virginity to some poor unsuspecting person. Shame that there is no option to exorcise that ugly thing out of existence.

I liked Asunder..... Cole is an interesting character despite looking like emaciated Evan Peters. Evangeline and Rhys are characters who should have appeared in his personal quest. Hell maybe Wynne could force ghost her way in as a cameo.

As for Sebastian it is interesting you say that @Ishtar (love your username) because I had wondered what the purpose of his character was. Aside from THE CHANTRY, NOOOOO!!!!! his character just felt like an unfinished placeholder that gets scrapped or molded into something else during production.

I miss Shale. Unfortunately I just discovered that her voice actress, Geraldine Blecker, passed away in 2021 at the age of 76. Her widower confirmed it. They were together for 26 years and married for 6. The feels....

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Exactly my point, Cole is incapable of nuance or any sort of reasoning that isn't absolutely binary(and I don't use therapybabble speak lightly).

Suffering? Die or mind wipe? Not suffering? No interest in you.

Cole is basically the abstraction of a concept.

It's a pretty botched abstraction.

What is the point of this character?
His story is tied to Rhys and Evangeline, so without those two, he's just here because David Gaider loves his creation so much that he just has to put that thing in.

Cole is trying to... what? Understand human compassion? That makes sense... if he doesn't have the ASSASSIN specialization and you don't bring him out to murder bears and soldiers alike. This game should have done some extra work and give him a better specialization - maybe a support class that happens to use dual daggers - to make this character a more cohesive one. Otherwise, he's just the murder knife given an anorexic Evan Peters skin while the game tells me ohhhhh he needs to learn how to be a human or spirit better. Yeah, teach him by making him kill more people!

This has me thinking: the specializations in the previous two games make sense.

Yes, Wynne is a spirit healer because that's her specialty that ties in well with her stern but maternal personality. Leliana makes sense as an Orlesian bard, and Morrigan is a Witch of the Wild so of course she is a shapeshifter. Nathaniel Howe spent years in the wild so yes, he's a ranger. The next game ups things by giving companion that isn't a sibling a customized specialization that fits their personality and background.

The third game has me scratching my head a bit. How on earth does a Tevinter mage that loves fire spells become specialized in a Nevarran school of magic? Why is Blackwall is tank when his history makes him more of a front line attacker? Vivienne... an Arcane Knight when she's not even taken seriously by the Orlesian court? Why can't Cassandra get a seeker specialization instead of templar? Oh well, the things that the third game could have been, but isn't.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

Exactly my point, Cole is incapable of nuance or any sort of reasoning that isn't absolutely binary

So, he's autistic.