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

[McSchlomo]

are fextralife woke?

I don't know much about them, but I know they're pretty mainstream.

So yes, they literally have no choice.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I for once don't give a shit if they keep doing victory laps. So long as they're financially hurting and insisting into financially hurting themselves I'm okay with them keeping pumping fake numbers and pretending like everything's fine. I want everyone involved in this, investors included, to go bankrupt.

EA isn't going to go bankrupt but I would be shocked to my core if Bioware survives this. It's so massive of a failure.

Harmful Opinions says they were involved in some Twitch drama with embedded video players
does anyone know anything more about it?

fextralife is a wikipedia knock off - it gained traction and popularity as the "unofficial, official Souls Game wiki". So you wanted to look something up like (how many points does <WEAPON> need in <STAT>) - you would almost certainly wind up there.

All the info is generally user generated - so fextralife isn't doing any of the work, they just host the wiki. At some point in time, fextralife started streaming but for several years would embed their twitch stream into every page onto their website. So if you were looking up how many prayer beads there were in Sekiro? You were watching the fextra stream. Forgot how to make the Fire Claymore +10 in Dark Souls? Watching the stream.

They came from nowhere to start hosting ~15,000 watcher streams just because their twitch stream was embedded everywhere. They were basically viewbotting. It was one of the main reasons Twitch changed how embeds worked - so you can't be "forced" into a twitch stream.

 

[Ishtar]

The only reason anyone might play this game is for the lore reveals.

What have we got?

The evanuris story is basically a story of gods(or beings that might as well be) basically tearing themselves apart for…pretty normal mythological reasons.

Solas? Arch trickster deity, long suffering sad Byronic hero in his own story, more or less what we thought.

The blight? Related to the titans and the evanuris somehow, either a product or an intrusive pollutant.

The dwarves? Cut off from the titans?

Qunari? They seem…to be a product of Ghillan’ain’s experiments. Which is more or less where inquisition was taking them.

All in all-lore reveals and such are…honestly less surprising than I thought. A LOT of this like the spirits becoming the evanuris or Solas being bound to Mythal were speculated at by overly enthusiastic fans for years. It’s honestly surprising how few curveballs were actually thrown. No mention of the great dragons. I’d say the game actually just resolved most outstanding lore mysteries.*

I like DA lore, and for what it’s worth I don’t think this stuff is “bad” it’s just in a bad game.

*the origin of humans and whether or not the maker is real seem to be about the only thing left.

 

[Megatardingo]

EA isn't going to go bankrupt but I would be shocked to my core if Bioware survives this. It's so massive of a failure.

I know but doesn't stop me from praying for their downfall.

 

[Lightning]

So I gotta know, did they carry over the Absolution plot twist and put the red lyrium rock cameo somewhere in Troonguard?

 

[Absolute Ego Dance]

So, about a couple of hours in, and the game feels extremely low rent. The default button for jump is "F", which I assume Bioware chose out of spite. The game is full of truly atrocious decisions, but I will definitely commend Bioware for releasing the game without DRM.

 

[tigergrinder]

Someone at BioWare called up Smash JT to describe the dire situation with frustration and despair.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mEBfseh01Jw

I need to step in to briefly defend women. A massive percentage of Bioware's fans are women. It's a number that started steadily growing since (I'd argue) Mass Effect 1. Not all of them are MENSA material, I grant you, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. But a lot of women really like their games because of the caliber of writing, art direction, gameplay, etc. Thane Krios was such a massive hit with female players probably because the writers on ME2 asked the female employees which male celebs they found hot. Bioware was smart, they saw they had a growing market with female players, and decided to cash in on that intelligently. They didn't go, "Ew, women play our games? Fuck that pussy shit, quick, let's make all the male characters ugly, put all the women in titty armor, make them dumb as rocks, and give them traumatic rapey character arcs."

I disagree with Smash JT's argument that if you're a liberal lesbian woman, you'll thrive at Bioware. (Just as a little aside: a huge percentage of lesbians fucking HATE trannies, even if they can't outright say it due to social stigma or fear of being mobbed. They hate that troons pressure them into "corrective rape", having lesbian spaces invaded, etc. And I've seen a few lib women wake up from supporting troons and libshit after seeing what they think about women.) Not every woman is the enemy, dude. We just want to play our fucking games and have hot guys/women to look at in them. And no bikini/boobcup armor.

However.

Handmaidens. Handmaidens are a fucking nightmare. Handmaidens and troons ruin everything they touch, so it's no surprise that Bioware is going down the drain. Where you get one, you get the other. The watercooler talk sounds like something the trannies are doing, though, not the women (just look at any troon subreddit, they've got sex on their mind 24/7). I highly fucking doubt any normal woman working there (if there are any left) is at all comfortable with what's happening. You seriously think ANY woman hearing Taash say "Nobody enjoys being a woman" would feel comfortable with that? Imagine if this wasn't Bioware in 2024, but Bioware in 2010. You don't think they wouldn't kick up a huge fuss and demand the line be changed? Or go to HR and say that the writer who wrote that has a big misogyny problem? It's a fucking attack on womanhood, it's not some veiled metaphor. I totally agree with Smash's point about quality talent leaving Bioware due to not wanting to be about crazy genderspecial narcs, though: went through something very similar, myself (not saying that I'm talented, kek). You'd keep getting stymied and held back by a bunch of idiots who couldn't lead a knitting circle. And then you'd see they'd just hired ANOTHER likeminded creepy person and you think, "Why the fuck am I wasting my time with these people?"

I'm glad Bioware is a "house of cards" right now. Let it fucking collapse.

 

[Xev]

Idk if this is accurate but from what I've seen the Qunari troon is the Peebee of Dragon Age. Even more annoying and petulant which is a feat to not be admired.

 

[Megatardingo]

And no bikini/boobcup armor.

I've always found this retarded. Never in my life have I been crapping my briefs over males in barbarian armour showing off rippling muscles or full plate not showing anything or anything in between. It's just generally retarded.

 

[I See You]

It’s a long winded way of doing exposition but like somehow in the most unnatural way possible.


The blight appears to have been either pre resisting or corrupted titans blood. IDK? It’s not clear. The evanuris wanted to use the blight for supervillain reasons and they were stopped.

It’s basically a mythology tale about the hubris of gods, betrayal and regret.

Or at least it’s trying to be.

If I'm not mistaken, the Blight is the result of basically making the titans Tranquil: cutting them off from their dreams, i.e. cutting them off from the Fade. The Blight itself is those dreams, basically just a big ol' ball of anger and evil that corrupts whatever it comes into contact with. It raises some interesting questions, like what happens if you expose a Tranquil mortal to the Blight. Would they be immune? Extra susceptible? Who knows! It's highly doubtful we'll ever get a competent followup on any of this.

 

[tigergrinder]

I've always found this retarded. Never in my life have I been crapping my briefs over males in barbarian armour showing off rippling muscles or full plate not showing anything or anything in between. It's just generally retarded.

Imagine if each of your testicles were stretched out, then encased in a sphere of armor. That's what boob armor is. It doesn't make sense from any standpoint, so it should die off.

 

[tigergrinder]

Idk if this is accurate but from what I've seen the Qunari troon is the Peebee of Dragon Age. Even more annoying and petulant which is a feat to not be admired.

Oh god, wasn't Peebee's schtick not wanting to be like other asari, too? What the fuck is with the writers repeating the same goddamn tropes? The cast in ME1 were the complete opposite of this, but it worked because they all had nuance, and personality, and opinions (well, except for Tali). It also worked because Shepard was so unlike any other person in the galaxy. It was a nice balance. Come to think of it, I think that's why I fucking hated almost everyone in DA:I. They all had to be quirky, special, unique butterflies, competing with the Inquisitor.

 

[Observotron]

So, at this point I care less about whether the game succeeds or fails, if it's good or not - I'm more disgusted by the gaming media and Bioware trying to paint this game as successful. By all meaningful metrics, it's not the explosive hit they are trying to market it as.

So, here are some stats to look at regarding the game's metrics. Now don't take this seriously, I looked this stuff up for fun, but you can decide what to take from them.

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Amazon Best sellers for both Xbox and Playstation.



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Dragon Age Youtube videos sorted by views for the past week, notice how only two of the videos in the top 10 are 'Positive videos' and by proven mainstream/shill review outlets. Also notice how 2 videos have over 1mil views.



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Twitch Viewer numbers, close to Dragons Dogma 2, but hasn't passed it yet. Only has half the amount of peak channels as SM2



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Google Trends over the past year for other games with 2024 release dates.



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Long story short, it doesn't look like there has been much interest in the game, at least not as much as they're claiming.

Nothing about this is conclusive, and some comparisons probably don't hold much weight, but still interesting to look at the numbers.

 

[Lurking no more]

Imagine if each of your testicles were stretched out, then encased in a sphere of armor. That's what boob armor is. It doesn't make sense from any standpoint, so it should die off.

You're right, armor should not emphasize the female form, it's completely ridiculous and impractical. Obviously we would never have armor that would emphasize sexual features.

Spoiler: Dick Armor

 

[God of Nothing]

Decided to fully play through Origins because it's the one Bioware original I haven't played. I'm having fun. As I posted earlier, the trash ass tactic system really bogged down the early game for me. I hate all the early guides that recommended I go frost mage because I did no fucking damage for way too long. It's good for CC and killing dragons. Everything else? God, it's useless. Fire is infinitely more useful and Morrigan was geared towards that anyway along with telekinesis and mind-related shit. Maybe I'll pick it back up on my new character once I've finally got blood magic's one abiltiy.

I banged Morrigan, a desire demon for the lols (then I reloaded and got blood magic and reloaded again to get the skill/spell tome), and that one knife-ear's crush for the lols as well.
could you see the team that made the new shitheap ever allow you to do the latter two things?

 

[Xev]

Oh god, wasn't Peebee's schtick not wanting to be like other asari, too? What the fuck is with the writers repeating the same goddamn tropes? The cast in ME1 were the complete opposite of this, but it worked because they all had nuance, and personality, and opinions (well, except for Tali). It also worked because Shepard was so unlike any other person in the galaxy. It was a nice balance. Come to think of it, I think that's why I fucking hated almost everyone in DA:I. They all had to be quirky, special, unique butterflies, competing with the Inquisitor.

Bioware's pick-me trope is now basically 'I'm not like the other troons'

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7XqjZbCACvA
Crowbcat isn't here to do their thing, but NikTek rises to the occasion!

There's more YouTubers covering Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

 

[Deus Exica]

And people forget: Inquisition wasn't THAT fondly remembered to begin with.

Yeah, from what I remember the response to Inq was pretty lukewarm at release and the response to it getting GOTY was a shrug. It sold fairly well but even the biggest DA fans (that aren't Solas fangirls anyway) admit that it was fairly flawed but overall better than 2. The hope was that Dreadwolf would trim the fat off of Inq and be much, much, better.

I actually reinstalled Inq today and it definitely does not hold up. People surprised with how ugly this is must have forgotten Inquisition, which has an art direction that feels actively hostile to the eye.

and gameplay and art-direction doesn't seem horrible

How on earth can you look at that clothing and character design and type 'doesnt seem horrible' with a straight face?

need to step in to briefly defend women. A massive percentage of Bioware's fans are women.

Wasn't it actually more than half circa Inquisition? Dragon Age for some reason really captured a massive foid audience, probably because it lets you marry an incredibly handsome joss whedon character and literally become a princess.

 

[Tablet County]

If I'm not mistaken, the Blight is the result of basically making the titans Tranquil: cutting them off from their dreams, i.e. cutting them off from the Fade. The Blight itself is those dreams, basically just a big ol' ball of anger and evil that corrupts whatever it comes into contact with.

It's oddly upsetting that this shitty game seems to have provided an actually interesting explanation for the Blight. The apocalypse being the result of the gods not being allowed to dream is downright Kirkbridian.

Imagine if each of your testicles were stretched out, then encased in a sphere of armor.

I don't have to imagine the balldo.

 

[Site of Origin]

After DAO, I remember hating 2 so much when it came out. Replayed it on PC recently and it's not as bad as playing it on 360. I also kind of enjoy the smaller scale story, focusing entirely on Hawkes family and their situation in Kirkwall.

When DAI came out, I was relieved there was more then 4 environments, but let down by the grindy MMO shit that my OCD won't let me ignore. That said, I didn't hate it and still replay it from time to time.

Hard to believe this was all 10+ years ago. If I was younger, I might pirate Veilguard to try it out. However, I have a family now and just don't have time to waste on trash media, hate watching or playing for the lolz just isn't worth it anymore.

All this to say, I guess my Dragon Age journey ended back in 2014, and some things will just have to remain a mystery. At least until EA gives this IP to a more competent dev team.