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

[Mola Ram]

The War Table was one of the very few times I was glad to be a Console Pleb - being able to just go and fuck with my PS4’s Date and Time info, without having to close out of the game, let me cheese the absolute shit out of the War Table.

Was it still an annoying mechanic, fuck yes, but at least I could avoid dealing with it as much as possible. Is it still funny how blatant of a scrapped MMO mechanic it was, kinda.

There are plenty of workarounds on the PC, too, including mods that just reduce all War Table times to 0:00:00.

I actually thought it was a fun mechanic in theory, demonstrating how the Inquisition truly is a continent-spanning organization that's much bigger than any one person. But then they had to do things like stick Corypheus's origins in the War Table, make the correct choices cryptic more often than clear, and to top it all off make some missions 24 hours long ... some of which might reward you with Jack and Shit, and Jack left town.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

and to top it all off make some missions 24 hours long ... some of which might reward you with Jack and Shit, and Jack left town.

See, I was fine with them when the Amulet’s of Power were still in the game, giving whichever character they were for a Free Skill.

Then someone found a Dupe, so instead of patching the Dupe, Bioware just removed Amulet’s of Power.

 

[Mola Ram]

See, I was fine with them when the Amulet’s of Power were still in the game, giving whichever character they were for a Free Skill.

Then someone found a Dupe, so instead of patching the Dupe, Bioware just removed Amulet’s of Power.

True, but not all the 24 hour missions gave Amulets as a reward. The one I was thinking of is the last Grey Warden mission available if you recruit them -- already a notoriously difficult chain of missions to get right. The reward is a schematic for some powerful Warden armor or weapon, I forget which. Trouble is, if you used the Golden Nug, or just found it randomly while adventuring ... you get literally nothing. After waiting a minimum of 18 hours Ok, it's more like 12-18 hours depending on how many Agents Cullen has, but that's still way too much. Any mission over six hours should give you something, no matter the circumstances, and frankly 6 hours is probably the absolute limit of what kind of time this bullshit should take.

As for the Amulets, there's another mod that puts all the old ones back. Honestly, with a level 27 cap I don't think it's really necessary, but fuck BioWare. I want my OP gibs.

 

[LazyLizard]

why even remove it? it's a singleplayer game you don't need to balance it that badly, if someone wanted a "pure" playthrough then they wouldn't use the exploit.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

why even remove it? it's a singleplayer game you don't need to balance it that badly, if someone wanted a "pure" playthrough then they wouldn't use the exploit.

I’m assuming that the Dupe - somefuckinghow - had an effect on the tacked on Multiplayer mode. I don’t know, I mostly ignored that mode beyond getting the Dragon Skull Throne unlocked…

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

The multiplayer mode is actually quite fun, but it gets boring fast when you find yourselves doing the same maps and fights over and over. Shame. I can see some potential in that and the Mass Effect 3 multiplayers, but BioWare will always BioWare.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Fucking Bioware. Now we'll never get that Jade Empire remaster will we

 

[Kane Lives]

Fucking Bioware. Now we'll never get that Jade Empire remaster will we

Monkey paw just curled. You get a jeeted AI upslop version instead.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Why would you want the current BioWare to remaster anything? I shudder to imagine the mutant results of their efforts.

 

[Green Kitbash]

Why would you want the current BioWare to remaster anything? I shudder to imagine the mutant results of their efforts.

They couldn't even fucking do Pinnacle Station for ME1 or the MP in ME3 (HALF THE FUCKING GAME). Imagine how fucked any other remasters would be.

"Oh guys we lost the files to Monk Zheng, no we will not rebuild them that takes time and money and its out of our scope"

 

[Mola Ram]

They couldn't even fucking do Pinnacle Station for ME1 or the MP in ME3 (HALF THE FUCKING GAME). Imagine how fucked any other remasters would be.

"Oh guys we lost the files to Monk Zheng, no we will not rebuild them that takes time and money and its out of our scope"

Their excuse for Pinnacle Station was that the source code was completely unretrievable, and reconstructing it would add six months onto the development time.

Amazingly, exactly six months after the game was released, a mod dropped that restored Pinnacle Station just about perfectly.

I think people would have been happy to wait, guys.

 

[Jace on ice]

Why would you want the current BioWare to remaster anything? I shudder to imagine the mutant results of their efforts.

I thought it was really funny that Bioware made an absolutely huge deal out of censoring the ME2 Miranda ass shots in Legendary Edition like it was some huge feminist victory but they left the gratuitous ass shots of both Tali and EDE in.

I guess Xeno and Android women don't matter according to Cerberus, I mean Bioware.

 

[Mola Ram]

I thought it was really funny that Bioware made an absolutely huge deal out of censoring the ME2 Miranda ass shots in Legendary Edition like it was some huge feminist victory but they left the gratuitous ass shots of both Tali and EDE in.

I guess Xeno and Android women don't matter according to Cerberus, I mean Bioware.

The censored Miranda ass shot was always a tempest in a teapot, and a perfect example of how anti-woke crusaders will go too far or make a mountain out of a molehill. FWIW, I absolutely believe moving the camera in that one scene was done for the reasons they claimed -- a gratuitous ass shot spoiled the emotional tone they were going for with Miranda's fears for her sister and what's really her first moment of actual vulnerability. It may be hard to swallow with the state of the BioWare crew in 2020-2021, but in this case I think their excuse was sincere.

And for proof of that, I submit this shot, which is left completely unaltered in the remaster:



A clearer example of "cleaning up" an old shame would be how the third game got rid of the glaring cameltoe in two of EDI's costumes, but nobody ever made an issue of that, presumably because anyone who did would be exposed as an absolute skeev.

 

[Jace on ice]

The censored Miranda ass shot was always a tempest in a teapot, and a perfect example of how anti-woke crusaders will go too far or make a mountain out of a molehill. FWIW, I absolutely believe moving the camera in that one scene was done for the reasons they claimed -- a gratuitous ass shot spoiled the emotional tone they were going for with Miranda's fears for her sister and what's really her first moment of actual vulnerability. It may be hard to swallow with the state of the BioWare crew in 2020-2021, but in this case I think their excuse was sincere.

And for proof of that, I submit this shot, which is left completely unaltered in the remaster:

View attachment 8024619

A clearer example of "cleaning up" an old shame would be how the third game got rid of the glaring cameltoe in two of EDI's costumes, but nobody ever made an issue of that, presumably because anyone who did would be exposed as an absolute skeev.

I don't actually give a fuck about less butt shots or EDE's robo vulva I just think it's very very revealing how incredibly proud of the censorship Bioware was at the time.

When LE was being released more marketing and fawning articles revolved around the censorship than graphical improvements, bug fixes ect.

Bioware was absolutely feasting on the praise from lefty gaming sites for being brave feminist crusaders or whatever.

Looking back it's very easy to see how Veilguard happened, they are ideologically captured to a crazy degree.

Hopefully the Saudis shut them down and fire everyone.

 

[Mola Ram]

I don't actually give a fuck about less butt shots or EDE's robo vulva I just think it's very very revealing how incredibly proud of the censorship Bioware was at the time.

It does put a new light on the accusations (or excuses) from the Dragon Age team that BioWare always gave preference to the Mass Effect crew. You have to wonder how much tension there was between a team that was remastering a decade old game with most of its visuals and all of its writing intact and the one that was putting hideous neologisms like "non-binary" into a fantasy world.

 

[Jace on ice]

It does put a new light on the accusations (or excuses) from the Dragon Age team that BioWare always gave preference to the Mass Effect crew. You have to wonder how much tension there was between a team that was remastering a decade old game with most of its visuals and all of its writing intact and the one that was putting hideous neologisms like "non-binary" into a fantasy world.

The closest thing I can find to a concrete figure on a budget for Veilguard is 260 million from an old article on reddit.

It sure doesn't seem like they were hurting for money especially since the finished product looked like warmed over dogshit.

 

[Mola Ram]

The closest thing I can find to a concrete figure on a budget for Veilguard is 260 million from an old article on reddit.

It sure doesn't seem like they were hurting for money especially since the finished product looked like warmed over dogshit.

100 million is the absolute minimum that turd cost, and that's really a paltry estimate that assumes only 10 million per year between it and Inquisition. They had the money; they didn't have the vision or the talent.

 

[Kharash]

it's very very revealing how incredibly proud of the censorship Bioware was at the time.

They were probably just living in an echo chamber that was the BSN(BioWare Social network, their old forums), full of Tumblrette harpies who'd screech about exactly this sort of thing.
The irony being that while they listened to this minuscule fraction of the playerbase they were always chasing the Gears of War/Halo/wider audience. What percentage of the people who actually played ME2 would have minded those ass shots I wonder? Never forget that before tons of modern pushing femshep players didn't even reach 10% back in ye olden days, and most of those were probably just dudes doing lesbo runs with Liara.

 

[Mola Ram]

those were probably just dudes doing lesbo runs with Liara.

Ah Lesbo Runs, the little sister to the Kessel Run.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

100 million is the absolute minimum that turd cost, and that's really a paltry estimate that assumes only 10 million per year between it and Inquisition. They had the money; they didn't have the vision or the talent.

Whichever team that did Mass Effects 1 and 3 are gone anyway, as the team behind Mass Effect Andromeda was just a little less HIV+ than the Bush Tranny and Fat Fuck Weekes.

It's like there is something about the progressive kuru that makes these mutants unable to create likable, believable, and relatable characters as well as compelling story lines. Their default mode seems to be "I'm writing about my anime avatar in a game that is all about ME-EEE-EEE-EEE and my bel-eee-eee-eee-efs to own the phobes and chuds and FUCK YOU TRUMP!!!!111111"