Dragon Age: the Veilguard

[hammerofglass]

Finished my playthrough, it was pretty good. It does have a really week first few hours when it tries to dump a series worth of exposition on you and it makes all the dialogue kind of weird for that reason but it gets a lot better. And yes I did end up playing on easy because the damage sponge combat got annoying.

In basic structure it's basically Mass Effect 2 and 3 combined. Build your team, follow their plotlines to make them loyal, gather and build up your allies for the final battle to save the world.

I'm guessing they don't expect to ever make another one, because they really did just systematically wrap up every plot thread and setting question in the franchise. Pretty much all of them it was the most obvious answer that everyone guessed sonce Origins anyway.

The Gods are Power Rangers villains, complete with giant monsters. I thought it was fun but there's no equivalent of the "wrong thing for understandable human reasons" villains like Logaine or Meredith or Anders.

Companions are mostly okay, but they seem like refugees from seperate YA novels or Disney animations half the time. Taash the dragon hunting tomb raider dealing with their second generation immigrant identity and mommy issues and Neve the magipunk film noir detective in a street war with blood mages (picking two at random) just don't feel like they're from the same story. My favorite ended up being necromancer Vincent Price and the cute skeleton he adopted.

For character creation I like the creator in general, it's fine. The seperate choices for pronouns and gender identity I suspect will probably be a standard before too long, it's very convenient. For faction I went with Lords of Fortune and it came up fairly frequently, but I could tell there would be a lot more content for Grey Wardens than anything else. I also find it very frustrating that you can play a Crow who grew up in Antiva but they didn't provide a voice option with a Spanish accent.

For cons, yeah the "everyone talks like HR is in the room" thing is real. The whole game has a YA feel to it, in the same way that the Mass Effect franchise does (especially Andromeda) and Dragon Age had previously avoided. You can't be evil or even mean, and even the sarcasm has less bite to it. I always play good characters anyway but it's weird not having the option. Like they want to hint at dark themes and have the characters be sexual beings but they don't really want to actually show it. Coming after Cyberpunk and BG3 it all just seems kinda quaint.

Cutting the carried over decisions to the ones Solas shippers would riot if they weren't there really didn't make that much difference but it's still annoying.

Overall 8/10, will definitely play again.

[Winter]

I've stopped playing the game for right now, no fault of the game I'm just dealing with a lot of personal issues right now and it was bleeding over to Veilguard and I want a bit of time away from it so I can more properly judge the game on it's own merits.

But as I did manage to get about halfway through the game and I will say that I find it to be a really solid game in it's own right. I was having a lot of fun while playing it and most of my major issues come more from choices apparently forced onto the game by EA and BioWare and not the actual developers. And credit where credit is due, this game's development was hell with uncertainty as to whether it would actually be single player or multiplayer and the fact that it's as enjoyable as it is is a testament to the talent to those who made the game.

I will say that I don't view it as canon because of how few choices of mine carried over (and the destruction of Southern Thedas was stupid though again that seems to be a result of Executive Meddling and not the fault of the writers) but on it's own it's still fun.

Best overall gameplay of the series, better pacing then the last two games in the series and overall enjoyable characters, if a bit shallow.

Could have been great but I get that is a tall order given everything that happened so I'm giving a lot of leeway and at the very least it's a massive improvement over Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Hopefully it's enough of a success for Mass Effect 5 to get BioWare truly on track.

Right now 7 out of 10 but might change the score when I get a chance to finish it.

[CharlesPhipps]

If they do continue the series after, well, wiping out the South of Thedas, I feel like they should wait a couple of centuries in-universe.

That way they don't have to answer, "Who was the Divine, who was the King/Queen of Ferelden, and so on."

[Winter]

If they do continue the series after, well, wiping out the South of Thedas, I feel like they should wait a couple of centuries in-universe.

That way they don't have to answer, "Who was the Divine, who was the King/Queen of Ferelden, and so on."

I get the feeling that we might get a reboot given how poorly this move has been. Even people who enjoy the game felt this was a bad idea. Even as someone who enjoys DAV I felt this was a poor choice since we're already ignoring our choices so why bother destroying the area, just pick a backstory and stick to it.

I get it if Mass Effect alters the canon as it has to account for 3 different endings but I can't help think that destroying half of Thedas is just a bad idea especially to long time fans of the series.

[hammerofglass]

I think if they do another one it will be set on one of the other continents. Whatever it is the Qunari are running from was basically the only mystery not wrapped up in a bow.

[CharlesPhipps]

I get the feeling that we might get a reboot given how poorly this move has been. Even people who enjoy the game felt this was a bad idea. Even as someone who enjoys DAV I felt this was a poor choice since we're already ignoring our choices so why bother destroying the area, just pick a backstory and stick to it.

I get it if Mass Effect alters the canon as it has to account for 3 different endings but I can't help think that destroying half of Thedas is just a bad idea especially to long time fans of the series.

I honestly don't think most people even noticed because it's not on screen and just mentioned Denerim falling and Orlais being badly injured. This is meant to be the Last Blight EverTM so I understand why they went all out in the background.

But yes, they're never ever going to incorporate choices from past games and that just flat out is something they can't do well.

So, it's best to just have a clean slate on choices mattering.

[hammerofglass]

Setting Inky to have been in a romance with Solas is highly recommended btw. It's just funny. By the second time Rook meets her Rook is so tired of Solas' shit that she's about ready to stage an intervention for miss "still pining after a guy I kissed once ten years ago".