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

[Foltest]

Awakening would have been good, if it was longer.
Just as you have gather your whole party, the game fucking end.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I doubt they even play the games. Probably tourists that instead watch the romance cutscenes on YouTube to flick their beans, draw ugly fanarts of themselves as glowing Dalish princesses, and develop parasocial relationships with the devs.

Based on the sales numbers this is correct

 

[Lt. H. DuBois]

don't you mean your cousin or whatever it was?
is there a special scene for that when you visit the alienage later in the game? i think i remember trying to look for it but not finding anything because few people are based and redpilled on the knife ear question

the lines about how capable the literally who female peasant city elf was were embarrassing and made me wish bioware was based enough to have a state where no one comes to save the elven ladies and female city elf if the player picked options to tell what's-his-name not to do anything because of competency delusions or consequences

Edit:

I found one
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PiBS2-6pXMQover a decade old, 240p, and under two hundred views
i'm surprised it even came up with how the algorithm works

You think she'd be more bitter about getting her ass sold. Then again, 40 sovereigns is way too much for an elf. I know Vaughan was buying his life too but still. At least the rest of the knife-ears have more of a visceral reaction, even if you help them out.

You know what discredits any and all opinion in my eye? A man playing an RPG as a woman character. Something fucked up fundamentally if especially on your first run of a game you think "Know what Ill be a girl"

 

[God of Nothing]

Not to sound like a smartass, but the video is only a year old?
Still some great stuff, you rarely see compilations of "main character does the most asshat move"

replayed Origins recently, it was a great thing through and through (with every fixpack installed)
can't say the same for the DLC tho, you can do them all at a brisk half hour pace, and Awakening was perhaps an intro for the future of the franchise (horribly rushed, extremely buggy, plot points that go nowhere, etc etc)

my caffeine brain haze made me misread it obviously
either that or my eyes
what the fuck kind of modern video is 240p?

You know what discredits any and all opinion in my eye? A man playing an RPG as a woman character. Something fucked up fundamentally if especially on your first run of a game you think "Know what Ill be a girl"

I've said something along these lines back in the Warhammer thread when the female space marines subject came up: these people want to play as guys with tits stapled on to them. The Sisters of Battle, an order of battle nuns, is something a horny neckbeard comes up with. There is nothing more grating than reading over a piece of lore or hearing some character rave about le legendary warrior wahmyn. Not even women do this. At best, you get the tard who brings up Boudica who doesn't know how questionable her existence actually is and leave out the baby killing the Iceni rebellion did to the Britains who dick ride her today. Wanna know why? You already know why. They're women: they don't fight or want to fight unless there's something off about them. It's not a coincidence you only ever hear of women fighting in the distant past in literal legends. There's Joan of Arc, but she was a self-admitted cheerleader, proud of it, and outright said she wanted to settle down after the war with England was over.

at least for the next ten years, we will have to suffer every other legendary figure or founder or pioneer being some women and be expected to accept this despite everything else in life telling us the contrary
the first mutilatereaver of bodyhorria, redstorm of bloodmountain, psionic spirit priest of the death realms, and dragonslayer of draconan were women, you know, don't you think that's badass????

 

[Johan Hulth]

Tried looking through Tumblr for more of the Weekes panel interview but can't navigate that horrible site for shit. Obviously it's mostly backlash for being weak woke etc... Can't really be arsed to even read most of it because it's just constant queer this and fascism that everywhere, basically every tumblr cliché you could imagine. Main takeaway quote that stands out though is how simple Patrick is uncomfortable with people cosplaying as Darth Vader because he's the baddie!! This explains a lot about Failguard being completely devoid of moral ambiguity or darkness:

"One of the pieces that I've spent close to 20 years not saying because I spent close to 20 years working at BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts that also had a number of licenses. I think that a problem with Star Wars leads to the question for me of whether, how much you can actually legitimately oppose an empire while living, not necessarily under that empire, but in a capitalist society. Because Star Wars is a big brand, and I just talked about Andor, and I thought Andor was fantastic. But especially in the EA games, especially in Battlefront, the Star Wars games, any game that has multiplayer, has spent a huge amount of time promoting the idea that you can play on the rebel team or the imperial team. And you can unlock unique skins, you can unlock Darth Vader, you can play as Darth Vader, and that's a cool hero skin for the imperial side. And they're really just kind of different teams. There's not actually a value judgment. I mean, it's kind of cool when the imperial side throws the force lightning and the rebels have the cool music, and they turned it into equal parties. And I hated that. I hated how much the idea of the fascist evil empire that was fairly clear in the movies, that capitalism turned into teams where, and people like my friends, this is an issue, and I don't think these people are evil, but people cosplay the 501st, the cosplayers who dressed up as stormtroopers, and they're a supportive, loving group. And it's like, but their thing is we're dressing up as the stormtroopers. And they were the bad guys, right? They were definitely the bad guys, and it's the attempt to tell the story has eventually turned into the marketing opportunity where they're just cartoon characters."

Tumblr link leads to a google doc with full transcript I think: tumblr cancer be warned

 

[Ishtar]

The 501st are absolutely cool and amazing though. How can you not love Temeura Morrison’s narration?

“Order had finally returned to the galaxy in no small part due to the efforts…of the fighting men of the 501st”

2nd grade me hearing that felt it was so badass.

 

[Mola Ram]

"One of the pieces that I've spent close to 20 years not saying because I spent close to 20 years working at BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts that also had a number of licenses. I think that a problem with Star Wars leads to the question for me of whether, how much you can actually legitimately oppose an empire while living, not necessarily under that empire, but in a capitalist society. Because Star Wars is a big brand, and I just talked about Andor, and I thought Andor was fantastic. But especially in the EA games, especially in Battlefront, the Star Wars games, any game that has multiplayer, has spent a huge amount of time promoting the idea that you can play on the rebel team or the imperial team. And you can unlock unique skins, you can unlock Darth Vader, you can play as Darth Vader, and that's a cool hero skin for the imperial side. And they're really just kind of different teams. There's not actually a value judgment. I mean, it's kind of cool when the imperial side throws the force lightning and the rebels have the cool music, and they turned it into equal parties. And I hated that. I hated how much the idea of the fascist evil empire that was fairly clear in the movies, that capitalism turned into teams where, and people like my friends, this is an issue, and I don't think these people are evil, but people cosplay the 501st, the cosplayers who dressed up as stormtroopers, and they're a supportive, loving group. And it's like, but their thing is we're dressing up as the stormtroopers. And they were the bad guys, right? They were definitely the bad guys, and it's the attempt to tell the story has eventually turned into the marketing opportunity where they're just cartoon characters."

Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, poor deluded Patrick.

I suffer no illusion this obviously mentally troubled man will ever read this, but on the off chance he does: Patrick, my boy. When you have this much trouble differentiating fiction from reality, it's time to hang up the writer jock and go into some trade or manual labor. Flip burgers. Trim hedges. Go for your CPA. Because you are no longer equipped psychologically or spiritually to deal with the nuances of fantasy worlds and distinguishing them from the one you actually inhabit.

 

[SIMIΔN]

A sad thing is Patrick Weekes used to be a good writer.
Wokeness destroys minds.

the only way to "save" dragon age is for a whole new company who were big fans of the franchise takes it over and retcons everything past trespasser and no one who used to work on DA past 2 gets even let in the door

Other than Larian, who are fed up with licensed properties, who else can be trusted to make a good Dragon Age game. Obsidian games are single character focused, and Owlcat games aren't pretty.
DA3 had the core of a good game, but it was drowned by pseudoMMORPG filler.

I think the art style has to be number 1 reason why it flopped. That first trailer was so off looking, like Dreamworks did a fantasy Fortnite movie, and it's using the in game models so what you see is what you get. Imagine if the next Mass Effect looked like that. I think that it could even be argued that DA (Origins at least) was a touch darker than ME. I guess they thought they could get away with it because Tumblr has been doing cutesy DA fan art for over a decade and they actually thought those couple of thousand weirdos were the fanbase. No one saw "So I'm Non Binary" and "pulling a Bharv!" until a couple of days before the game released and the damage was already done by then.

This, I played through repetitive DA2 mostly because of the brilliant Elf and Oxmen designs

It was already kinda like that by Inquisition

They made species look less distinct, but far better than the knife-eared humans or horned humans of VG. Maybe it was a woke attempt to make it obvious the elves were Black or Azn.

DA2 could have been good..... If it did not had an absurd short dev time.

This, 100%

 

[regalterry]

Obsidian games are single character focused

Obsidian also has zero talented writers left. It's just the faggot Tim Cain herding a bunch of retarded, obese liberal women.

And yes, there's basically zero cRPG developers left I'd trust with any property. Larian and Owlcat was as woke and degenerate as BioWare, inXile is a nonentity, and beyond that there's nobody left with the manpower and resources to tackle an ambitious cRPG.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

A sad thing is Patrick Weekes used to be a good writer.

Unless there is something drastic at play like a brain injury, a good writer doesn't become crap overnight. Mark Waid, for example, is completely brain rotted, but his writing is still heads and shoulders above the average diversity hire.

I strongly suspect a lot of Weekes's "good" works were likely redid or did over by Gaider and other writers. When you have tight deadlines and that one idiot in the team keeps giving unusable dreck, sometimes the only thing to do is to curse under your breath and make major sweeping changes to the work while letting the idiot keep the credit - or else the whole thing tanks due to that idiot.

Speaking from my experience as an editor here.

 

[SIMIΔN]

has zero talented writers left. It's just the faggot Tim Cain herding a bunch of retarded, obese liberal women.

Worse, they promote talented writers to technical / management roles.
Carey Patel did a great job writing "Peril on Gordon" but was disastrously bad when leading the entire Avowed game.

. Larian and Owlcat was as woke and degenerate as BioWare,

WotR's wokeness was mostly mandated by Paizo, so Owlcat doesn't deserve the blame. Rogue Trader wasn't woke.
Larian has a silly sense of humour, that's all. Having gay terrorists and a hard-to-find nihilism cultist troon doesn't make a game woke.

 

[Forgotten Beast]

But especially in the EA games, especially in Battlefront, the Star Wars games, any game that has multiplayer, has spent a huge amount of time promoting the idea that you can play on the rebel team or the imperial team. And you can unlock unique skins, you can unlock Darth Vader, you can play as Darth Vader, and that's a cool hero skin for the imperial side. And they're really just kind of different teams. There's not actually a value judgment. I mean, it's kind of cool when the imperial side throws the force lightning and the rebels have the cool music, and they turned it into equal parties. And I hated that. I hated how much the idea of the fascist evil empire that was fairly clear in the movies, that capitalism turned into teams where, and people like my friends, this is an issue, and I don't think these people are evil, but people cosplay the 501st, the cosplayers who dressed up as stormtroopers, and they're a supportive, loving group. And it's like, but their thing is we're dressing up as the stormtroopers. And they were the bad guys, right? They were definitely the bad guys, and it's the attempt to tell the story has eventually turned into the marketing opportunity where they're just cartoon characters."

Finally! It took 6 years, but somebody has found a way to make a worse argument than the infamous "There you are, playing a WWII shooter, and all of a sudden you are a Nazi" Extra Credits video. "Why can we play as the bad guys in a silly video game? Where's the political message in that?". We have a man who supposedly made a career writing video games, stating clearly as day that fun and narrative should be sacrificed at the altar of lukewarm political commentary. Seeing somebody so... metaphysically buck-broken sent a shiver down my spine. How do you even reach this point?
Those are the words of a man who has lost everything chasing a parasocial pie in the sky. At this point, I'm pretty used to seeing people in the industry falling down the "woke" rabbit hole, but this is pathetic on a whole new level. This extends beyond the political; when authors take a political stance, there's usually a passion behind their work that can make it enjoyable for people who don't share their beliefs. Piss and vinegar can make for the best ink. Weekes is the polar opposite, a person so poisoned by social pressure that he decided to creatively lie on the floor and die rather than challenge anything. "No, we can't have slavery. No, not even to make a point about it. "No, we can't have bad guys, good vibes only", "Fantasy worlds should only exist as a low-tech version of current-year Seattle, but with people with funny ears".
Hearing it put his thoughts into words explains so much about Veilguard.
I'd love to know what happened to this man's life, because this whole interview goes beyond the usual indoctrination. This is someone who has given up.

Unless there is something drastic at play like a brain injury, a good writer doesn't become crap overnight

Old age, drugs, and heavy depression can make a writer noticeably worse, but I agree that Weekes probably was never good to begin with, just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

 

[El Chacal De La Trompeta]

inXile is a nonentity

inxile is doing some bioshock monstrosity starring of course a woman

 

[regalterry]

Rogue Trader wasn't woke.

lol

It was, just not to the degree of their other games. Owlcat had wanted to shove a troon in Kingmaker and fucking Paizo had to tell them not to do it.

Larian has a silly sense of humour, that's all. Having gay terrorists and a hard-to-find nihilism cultist troon doesn't make a game woke.

Yeah, let's ignore all the degenerate faggotry, the overabundance of minorities, women in positions of authority, getting punished for kicking out squatters and all the other shit in BG3.

The project might not have started as that woke in EA, but it sure as fuck became unrecognizable by the end of it. And yeah, maybe you can blame WotC for that, but consider that Larian was on such good terms with WotC writers that they gave up on further BG3 support after WotC corporate reined in their resident child predators.

Larian is on the same exact trajectory as every other cRPG developer, just an endless escalation of woke shit on their path to becoming the new BioWare. Just like Owlcat, just like Obsidian, just like inXile, just like CDPR.

The whole industry is about as fucked as the tabletop counterpart.

 

[El Chacal De La Trompeta]

i was legit disgusted with all the woke shit in bg3. it creeps slowly but at the end of act two you have to legit see the dyke almost fucking eachother on screen.

 

[StacticShock]

what's with the BG3 talks? i see many kultur war faggots try to do their gaytarded shit outside the farms but they conveniently ignore that people have been waiting for BG3 for eons, same as silksong and HL3... if the games aren't absolute buggy shit then it is bound to sell well form sheer name alone.
something i don't think it really applies to dragon age, from origins to 2 the game changes drastically and it only gets worse on inquisition and then it does another radical change on veilguard.
mass effect is more "consistent" than dragon age if you compare them, 1 was a mess including the running/equipment mess and on 2/andromeda they went on a similar route with little gameplay changes.

 

[Anon88]

WotR's wokeness was mostly mandated by Paizo, so Owlcat doesn't deserve the blame. Rogue Trader wasn't woke.

Owlcat is such a weird company when it comes to woke stuff so I would believe it. For everything woke they throw in they put something that's the opposite. For examples you can commit rape in the demon path in WOTR, Kingmaker has Regongar who acts like he belongs in BG3, but hardly anyone puts up with his him and his banters are everyone telling him to shut up and during interviews one of the devs for Rogue Trader told a bunch of reporters who were upset about the lack of gay romances "and I wanted a kroot companion, we all can't get what we want." Which is about the most based thing I've ever seen anyone say to a journalist.

 

[Need for Sped]

Other than Larian, who are fed up with licensed properties, who else can be trusted to make a good Dragon Age game. Obsidian games are single character focused, and Owlcat games aren't pretty.
DA3 had the core of a good game, but it was drowned by pseudoMMORPG filler.

Obsidian might have been able to do something with this...10 or 15 years ago. Nowadays, they are Bioware-lite, especially with beauties like Avowed and The Outer Worlds under their belt in the recent years.

As for Inquisition...the whole game was shit. The story was absolute crap, the decisions were inconsequential, the combat was a snoozefest, and the amount of meaningless content to pad the runtime would have made Ubisoft blush.

On a side note, I'm still fucking amazed how they've been able to coast on the nostalgia for a company that hasn't existed as such for almost 15 years. Consumers are absolute suckers.

 

[God of Nothing]

For examples you can commit rape in the demon path in WOTR

I saved a screenshot from /crpg/ because I couldn't believe it

I'm surprised there hasn't been a reddit video essay about the "problematic" aspects of WotR crying about the demons being demons and doing demon things or a screenrant article about misogyny because Irabeth gets broken by simple ass ghouls.

 

[StacticShock]

I saved a screenshot from /crpg/ because I couldn't believe it
I'm surprised there hasn't been a reddit video essay about the "problematic" aspects of WotR crying about the demons being demons and doing demon things or a screenrant article about misogyny because Irabeth gets broken by simple ass ghouls.

maybe it's because a lot of people forgets that pathfinder exists, it's a extremely forgettable game like pillars of eternity.