You forgot Varric! I can't blame you since the devs seemed to have forgotten him for most of the game too. Well past the first like 10 minutes at least.
Traash: I'm non-binary, call me they/them. Emmerich: Sure thing Taash. I'm Emmerich. Traash: Nah fam, you're corpse-guy. Emmerich: I don't like it, just call me by my name. Traash: Not happening corpse-guy. Such delicious irony. Such loveable character. Such rEtuRn tO foRm.
meanwhile.... if somebody was non-binary in fantasy world isn't it cooler if they just i dunno create a character that maybe gain knowledge of some advanced magic or something to change gender at will?
You can tell by the dialogue in this game that whoever wrote it probably lack social skills, social awareness and is uncapable of adapting modern words to a medieval fantasy universe. No wonder people feel condescended, the game feels like a teen writing a Tumblr fanfiction.
@fmor2779 I'm sure some game Devs are also introverted but happen to make amazing games with amazing gameplay and story just look at Miyazaki he had trouble understanding English literature but he had to try his best the result was he interpreted the story in his own way that's why the souls games were amazing
Taash is an example of a writer not only self-inserting but self-reporting. Their petulance and hypocrisy is on full display, particularly in the scenes with Emerich.
Taas is also a complete sex pest. you have a team meeting and their contribution is insisting to be gross. Companions have romances and unsurprisingly Taash is just gross and insists on talking about sex despite others clearly being uncomfortable, or rebuking even outright requests to not insist. When Taash comes in it suddenly sounds like a good idea for the Veilguard to hire HR.
Brilliantly said!!!! 💯🗣️💯 It's also evident that whoever wrote this insufferable character is attracted to children (as how do you even begin to try/WANT to build a romance with a character who is portrayed in personality to literally be like 12 years old??!!) and also this writer clearly has an obsession with Funatari? Futanari? -Whatever the fk it's called- too. It's giving *gross* in soooo many different ways!!!
Brilliantly said!!!! 💯🗣️💯 It's also evident that whoever wrote this insufferable character is attracted to children (as how do you even begin to try/WANT to build a romance with a character who is portrayed in personality to literally be like 12 years old??!!) and also this writer clearly has an obsession with Funatari? Futanari? -Whatever the fk it's called- too. It's giving *gross* in soooo many different ways!!!
@@gathorall9136this game would be a great game if we could kill the companions one by one... For Traash i even thought something very special just for her. Traash: i'm non-binary! Me smiling menacing... Traash: Why are you smiling? Me nothing. Then while Traash trash her own mother i go quietly behind her an snap Traash nexk. Her mother: Why did you do that with my baby? Me: You saw yourself, she was completely lost.. im sorry, but that thing wasn't your baby anymore... Traash mother: i supposed so, thanks anyway, i wouldn't have courage to do it myself. Me:, May her soul rest with Andraste now.
30:55 ...so the non-binary character who admonishes people who misgender them, refuses Emmerich's wishes to be addressed using his REAL NAME. Pure distilled irony.
It's the layers of not respecting that these people have. They want all the respect but they don't want to give any. I even had someone at my old job when I go buy a different name they were blatantly disrespectful and call me by my other name and I made it very clear I don't go by that name he was a full-on dickwad and actively antagonistic towards me. I made a habit of putting all the records on my phone on the notes and I quickly got him fired because I had two months of his bullying recorded.
I should also add to my previous comment, the outrage by some trans writers on trans characters not explicitly calling themselves trans is indicative of why many people's views of them have rolled back ten years minimum. For me, it rolled back by a century. I have never seen such a self-replicating cult of fascist thought in my life. Mussolini would have been proud of them. Everything for the Trans. Nothing Outside It. Nothing Against It. I've never met anyone from the community who had any shred of humility or decency. They are crass, rude, and view the world as Lebensraum for them to conquer and lord over. Rant aside, I hope in the next decade and further on more social, political and economical pushback happens against this. We've had enough.
@@Noqtis Andromeda was "The series took a huge blow but could recover". Veilguard proved the next Mass Effect will be "The series is irreversibly fucked. There's no way to salvage this, it will kill Bioware if Veilguard doesn't get them first."
What do you mean? Mass effect is an amazing trilogy. See the thing about trilogies is they tell a story across 3 entries, and then never make any more after that. Ever.
"Who doesn't like Dragons?" Do the writers not know why the game is called Dragon Age? Do they not know why the world is currently in the "Dragon Age?" Do they not know that all dragons without exception are evil, power hungry and blood thirst monsters? Do they not know about the fucking Archdemons?
since Traash is some sort of dragon, and the dragons supposedly can only have Queens, that whole evil power-hungry blood-thirsty monster angle would be quite problematic for their narrative. So yeah, it makes sense why these writers want people to 'like' dragons now.
No, they don't. These are not the same people who made the previous 3 games, and they didn't even bother to read any of the internal notes or design/lore documents, not even played the previous games. They just created their own headcanon and injected their mental illnesses into the game thinking they accomplished something stunning and brave.
Tash is insufferable. Why do developers and modern media portray LGBTQ+ characters as sooo one dimensional, purposely argumentative, and stereotypical. It does damage to the movement if anything.
cause its a fetish they push, which means ego which means they refuse any criticism of it as "bigot/incel/chud/phobic" and live in a echo chamber and most importantly cause they've never gone through any real hardship so "being offended" is the worse to them hence these pathetic characters focus being on ego being stroked
People who want to see themselves represented in fiction are narcissists. And they had the arrogance to do it to stuff primarily targeted at heterosexual males, to spite them. It was better when they made their own entertainment like “Will & Grace”, and didn’t invade the space of others. Modern LGBTQ is an authoritarian movement.
People who want to see themselves represented in fiction are narcissists. And they had the arrogance to do it to stuff primarily targeted at heterosexual males, to spite them. It was better when they made their own entertainment like “Will & Grace”, and didn’t invade the space of others. Modern LGBTQ is an authoritarian movement.
@@via_negativa6183 ever heard of "royal we"... people who refer to themself as they/them are like modern day self-proclaimed royalty but with no actual title, like this Trash character..
See and people like Coffee Man make me wish the potential was in better hands. He drinks so much coffee because he's more susceptible to the demon's possesion when he sleeps. So he tries to force himself to stay awake. The demon that was forced into him during his captivity by torturerous blood mages. WHOA! That's intense, Veilgaurd. Do you want to elaborate more on that? "NO I dont think I will"
Not even just that. They frame his relationship with Spite as an allegory for an abusive relationship... And then later have Emmerich and Spite get together. And they sweep the fact Spite is a stand-in for an abuser under the rug.
@TheRavenofSin I don't mean to come for you but I'm pretty sure Emmerich gets with Strife, not Spite. Why do they have such similar names? Don't know! Why is this Dalish elf named after a common language word? Don't know! 🤣
@nananderson7259 You are completely right. I couldn't manage to play the game that far and only had things told to me by a friend who did. Guess I mixed it together because Emmerich can hear Spite.
Ye like wtf.... That made no sense...... in the lore of Dragon age dragons are legit dangerous beings that you WOULD NOT WANT TO SEE!!!........ legit every Dialogue in this game boils down to FUNNY HAHA IN REAL LIFE HUMOR CUZ FUNNY HAHA, which in turn makes no sense for the in game Lore.
Wardens can literally feel the blight, it talks to them every waking moment. Having to convince a grey warden that a blight is coming is the dumbest thing in the world.
Trans guy here. Thank you for this video, it's so important that we, people directly impacted by this, speak out against this nonsense. Taash made me so angry at points I had to stop playing, the idiotic pushup scene, their vile, jarring reaction to their mother, while also acting completely disrespectfully to everyone else and you can't even call them out on anything! The character is so insulting to trans people who are not self-centered, delusional, entitled assholes, it almost feels like rage bait. It's such a shame, old Bioware were masters at making good queer representation in the past.
I really liked Krem for example. And I loved that each character had their own sexuality, not everyone is pansexual so it also doesn't make sense that you can romance everyone. I think dragon age already was progressive but they had to make it bad, forced, and childish, with bad writing, breaking the lore and making annoying characters instead of charismatic and interesting ones
For sure, I’m sorry trans peoples images will be affected by this. I have no idea why people constantly try and make your image worse with this garbage.
Veilguard really helped me realize just how much i took for granted when playing Inquisition. Inquisition felt like a real world, with people who act and react like sensible people would. Krem and Harding were two of my favorite side characters, whom i always looked forward to seeing. Dorian is my FAVORITE DA I character in writing and expression. His personal challenges and struggles were so good, and i loved that it was not him trying to find himself. He KNEW what he was about. It was about whether or not he wanted to lie to himself for the sake of power and influence. It was really good. Even Sera was written far better than Veilguard, and imo she had the weakest writing of the companion characters. Hell, even DA II Anders, who i previously saw as the worst written DA companion (i really dislike how his entire existence was as a plot mcguffin and you could no nothing to influence, or even help him). Even HE is written better than pretty much any character in Veilguard
Unfortunately, this is a reflection of the extreme left that has seeped into everyday online behaviour and now real life (western countries). You have men demanding lesbians date them...that's that most homophobic shit and yet they'll get coddled because they identify as anything other than a man. Doesn't matter what you identify as, facts are facts.
As a NB person-someone who feels neither male nor female (some people use it to mean a bit of both)-I have never felt this patronized about my own identity in my entire life as with Taash. Genuinely who is Taash for? People who aren’t NB are gonna feel condescended to, people who are NB are going to be given one of the most unpalatable examples of a NB person. I don’t know how to break it to our fellow LGBTQs, but you don’t get a pass to be a rude antisocial cunt just because you’re queer and have issues with being accepted as your true self by your culture and society. Literally no excuse. And if it’s “just their personality”, then their personality is that of a shitty self-absorbed child who is under the mistaken impression that their tediously obnoxious personality makes them somehow unique, or worth the cost that their existence charges the world. The excuses range from “oh you just can’t handle rudeness AFAB characters”. I love Lae’zel from BG3, next argument. “Taash is in their early 20s”. I was also in my early 20s once upon a time and never this rude to people unprompted. “Taash is autistic-coded”. I’m autistic, and “I’m rude because I’m autistic” is lazy weaponization of a disability. Autistic people can learn how not to be rude, some simply choose not to out of stubbornness, disinterest, or outright laziness. Taash is just a bully that doesnt know they’re a bully. You best believe if I was in Taash’s presence I’d be telling them to shut the fuck up every time they opened their mouth. If Taash’s “thing” is being rude, my “thing” is an intolerance for uncalled-for rudeness. Unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, who cracks first I wonder?
The thing that gets me the most about the game is how it ignores so much of its own universe. The Crows? You know, the assassins guild that uses child slaves as recruits, abuses them into obedient agents and puts a hit on them if they fail a job? Now they are heroic freedom fighters. Solas building an army and an intelligence network at the end of Inquisition? Nah, he's going at it completely alone. The Dalish worship of their gods being propaganda that should make them welcome them? Nope, they apparently know they are evil and they need to be taken down despite their whole culture revolving around them. This are big things of the setting. Things that the players know first hand. But they're not there anymore. Any possibly controversial thing is gone. You cannot even ask about the implications of it all. Some writers wanted to make the franchise softer to attract a young progressive audience. You know, the one they already had with its fascinating world and always being progressive and open?
I think they wanted to attract a younger audience in part bc of the economy- they’ve got mommy and daddy’s money and guess what major gift giving holiday is coming up?
Honestly this is how you know whoever made veilguard never played dragon age. 1st: Qunari don't have families, after they are born they are taken and raised in a sort of complex with everyone trained in what they excel at. Tal-Vishoth do have families but they would never consider themselves Qunari, because the Qun besides a religious ideology is also the governing system of their culture. Qunari are also wary of magic users because of the whole abomination thing and typically enslave any Qunari that can use magic to inhibit their powers and their connection to the fade. 2. DragonAge and mass Effect are the WORST games to shove these real world politics into because *fanfare* THEY ALREADY HAD THEM AND DID IT BETTER OVER 10 YEARS AGO. You want to have a gay male character? Zevran, Anders, and Dorian. Want a bisexual? Liliana, Fenris, Isabella, and Ironbull. Maybe some exciting roleplay? Cassandra is a closet romantic who everyday is the no nonsense take charge leader, who wants a man to sweep her off her feet and woo her. Forbidden romance? Our no nonsense Templar Cullen has a sweet spot for mage women, in fact in origins as a female mage you can find a diologue tree that you and Cullen were in love but duty kept you two apart and the demon is torturing him pretending to be you during the fall of the tower. Want some mixed race romance? In Dragon age 2 one of your missions is to save the son of a noble kidnapped by a qunari, only to find out that what really happened was the son ran away with his qunari husband and his closed minded father wanted him back. But also there were Trans people in the games. In Inquisition Ironbull's second in command, Krem, is a Tevinter trans-man, born a woman but identified as a man and drops two very important pieces of lore in regards to veilguard. 1: In Tevinter transgenderism is not permitted. Krem was going to be executed for being trans until bull saved him. That's how bull got the scar on his face. 2: the way to stop an execution for being Trans is to perform a ritual that would turn you into the actual gender. But Krem didn't want to be a cis-gender man, he wanted to be a trans-man because that's what he is. And that's JUST Dragon age. Sorry got a bit ranty there. It's just that I love Dragon Age and was looking forward to this game for years only to get... This.
Dragon Age Failguard ends when Rook hits his/her head, after the initial Solas' Ritual. They didn't go to the fade, Rook is in a coma, and 99% of the game never took place.
@Derrad333 It's the one character. The others are fine. No worse than the other games. Inquisition characters were way worse. Sera is insufferable, and Vivienne is absolutely terrible. And don't even get me started in DA II. The ending makes zero sense, and Anders is the worst. Sebastian is terrible. I barely remember Isabella in the game. The only one that's worth anything is Varric. So. No. This game isn't any worse.
I'm more in line of what somebody written somewhere: Next DA game starts with ending of this one, then it fades to black, then Varric voice says "Damn, you were not kidding when you said you were bad writer". Then scene changes and we see Cassandra slightly ashamed and closing an amateurishly designed book. She says "Well, then are you going to tell them everything yourself?". And then Varric laughs and starts the actual story of how it all ended.
Why the heck did the elf girl have to apologize for eating food? What is Taash, some sort of special snowflake that everyone has to cater to? So she ate the last bite. If Taash ate it, would she apologize? Probably not 🙄
I find it kind of funny that bioware both tried their hardest to court a very specific crowd with this game and simultaneously insulted them by assuming they couldn't figure out how to match two pictures together. At the very least, I hope that other studios see what happens when you develop games solely for social politics brownie points and they decide to make good video games instead.
Blackrock will give them some of their bazillions of dollars and say "keep making to lame and woke". Why do you thing "go woke, go broke" doesn't work ? Because Blackrock is paying the publishers, so they don't care if they have to close studios and release games that don't sell.
It goes even worse on the "specific crown of people", actually. To anyone who actually knows about the people behind this abomination, such as game director or writer, it's a shiny example of utterly negative representation of their minority group. I can't begin to imagine how anyone from that group who isn't completely insane, would feel about this.
Trick Weekes is also the spouse of Karen Weekes, Veilguard's lead editor. I think one of the reasons why Taash is so incredibly poorly written is simply because Trick poured so much of their non-binary identity into Taash and an environment of toxic positivity was unwilling to push back against genuinely bad writing out of fear of invalidating Trick's identity and experience. On top of that, their was a genuine and major conflict of interest between them and their spouse which allowed poor writing to consistently get a pass from the editors.
@@Li-Fu7What's amazing is they made Tash a caricature of a trans person completely by accident. An egotistical, self-centered, selfish person that disregards everyone else's feelings but their own.
I forever attach that non binary table scene to Peter Griffin say “Who the fuck start a conversation like that I just sat down”, like you could have started this conversation a better way
Even if the controversial trans stuff wasn't in the game the writing is absolutely atrocious. It feels so jarring and unfantastical that it feels like you aren't playing a fantasy game whenever you hear it. The reason the trans character in Inquisition works is because you don't need the word "transgender" to get across how a magical fantasy world would refer to a trans person. Like, imagine if in Elder Scrolls they referred to Redguards as "Black people." It would be so massively jarring.
The writing in Inquisition was bad, too. And DA II was 80% finished. Which is funny, because that's how much of the game I like. That last act is awful and doesn't make sense. Dragon Age Origins also has a lot of story issues.
What i find interesting is that in Inquisition, Iron Bull, Dorian, and Krem never flaunt their sexuality. They very briefly mention it only when asked, and then proceed to be characters with various other characteristics. It's even fully possible to never even learn that they're a bisexual, gay, and trans person respectively if the player never delves deep enough into them with dialogue or doesn't put in the right party member compositions that would bring up a few banter topics about it.
@@joshuakim5240 Exactly, and even Sera has a line when she's hit on by a male Inqusitor "I appreciate the sentiment, but there's a problem, you and me have too much in common. You see, we both like girls." Pharaphased slightly, because I don't quite remeberber the dialogue, but it's short, sweet and simple. None if this "I'm non-binary" bullcrap that Taash farts out.
This, the "woke" stuff is distracting and feels incredibly out of place, but not even taking that into consideration, the dialog and writing is just terrible.
Patrick Weeks wrote Taash. In fact, he is credited as the Lead Writer for this game. So, now you know who is responsible. For all of it. Every bit of writing done in this game. Every single word. Went through him. I think it might be time to single these people out. Call them by their names. Hold them responsible. Bioware sucks shit. Yes. It's not the same studio anymore. But Bioware is still just a studio. It's just a name. People like Patrick Weeks are the ones behind it now. And if we don't hold them accountable *specifically* then they'll just keep getting a pass. It's easy to ignore stuff like, "Bioware sucks." But when your name is the one being thrown around for these failures, that's a different story. Patrick Weeks. Mark that name. I know I will.
It’s sad because Trick Weekes has done decent writing for DA before, particularly with the Masked Empire in the lead up to Inquisition. Fantastic book, but it seems that his ideological shift seems to have deteriorated his writing capabilities
There is a concept art book for Veilguard that has a preview of 60 pages on Google Books. The original concepts were MILES and I mean MILES better. Here’s a few things they cut (there is so much more): - The base of operations being a ship, with a war room, that could be mobile and travel to different locations - Divine Victoria sending out fleets of warships to hunt for Solas - Working directly for the inquisitor - Solas becoming essentially worshipped as a mythical figure from the past - Dorian, Isabella and Morrigan as advisors - Solas having a more ruthless, right hand to help him with his plan, named Reva - having to fight the elves who joined with Solas at the end of DAI (which is literally never mentioned again) - A high stakes heist mission in Minrathous - Solas summoning a Titan from the Fade - Solas making himself tranquil to bind the Veil - The player’s patchwork party not getting along at first It also looks like some of the darker lore elements were shown in the art, like Ghilanain walking a bunch of Qunari on a leash. Slaves were everywhere in the pictures of minrathous, wearing collars. There’s a lot more, I’d urge you to look it up because I found it so interesting how much they wasted its potential. My personal opinion is we should have continued to play as the Inquisitor, since the end of Tresspasser made it seem like their story would continue. I ended up skipping all the companion cutscenes near the end just cause I needed to see how it ended for Solavellan lmao.
@@emPIEror Ikr, the heist would have been to a black market auction in Tevinter where the red lyrium idol would have been auctioned off, but Solas and his team would have ambushed you. I feel like that would have been such a stronger opening to the game...
100% agree that the inquisitor should've been the protagonist of Dreadwolf or at the very least the leader/commander of the team. Just give them like a mechanical arm or something.
Wow reading this makes me soooo sad for what could have been. Damn shame the entire og inquisition team left, and the only people they hired to work on this game were trans gender queermancers.
It is because this game supposed to be an dlc for Inquisition (dread wolf) that happens right after the main story with the same cast. They just repurposed the story to make it into a new separate game
Those Taash Emmrich scenes made me so angry. You would think that, as a non-binary person who angrily defends their right to be called "they," Taash would respect when someone says, "Hey, I don't like that name you're calling me, can you call me this instead?" Instead, they double down and act like a stubborn, petulant child. Imagine if this game was allowed to have balls and Emmrich called Taash a "she" when they call him "death mage?"
worst is just later in that clip Taash goes to call Emmrich a "skullfucker", no joke. Imagine calling someone such derogatory terms and expecting everyone to respect you.
Its part of the 'representation' myth, the originals looked to unhuman for them to handle. To many of these people in higher up creative positions think that if something isn't 98% human then people can't relate. Its an absolutely idiotic thought, always has been, but it has been around for over a decade. I would dare bet money that Taash alone was the reason, can't have your self insert be a literal demon.
@@frostreaper1607 They looked dogshit in Inquisition too tbf, more or less the same look as they have in Veilguard. In Dragon Age Origins they were just tall humans, so also kinda bad. The horns and demonic features weren't retconned in until Dragon Age 2, which imo is the only game in the series where they've looked good. And iirc you only saw males in 2. There was concept art for females in DA2, but they just looked like muscular human females with blueish skin and horns. So really, a good female Qunari design has never existed.
The modern lefties keep boiling everything down. Every concept, character, world, design, morality, language, themes etc. All must be sludge. They've been doing it for years.
100% Some people are going to always grift these sorts of things but its sad that we always have to fight a “culture war” every time we want to criticize art.
I'm so glad someone finally said it. This is so much more damning to the LGBTQ community than people realize. It's like all the good progress we've made up until now is being undermined, and it's nothing but infuriating. We need to stop being happy with just being included and fighting to be rightfully represented as people.
i mean outside of actual bigots this is the entire reason the anti woke crowd exists. notice the very large absence of criticism about claire from cyberpunk or krem from inquisition. Its almost like we're actually completely fine with inclusion its handled with nuance and not used by the devs to stand on a soapbox and preach about how virtuous they are. diversity as its systemically pushed by modern AAA devs is just an unfortunate but truthful metric to gauge the games writing by. The more they parade how inclusive they are around, the more i can tell how terrible the writing will be. modern woke games are either corporate tokenism by millionaire execs that just have boxes to tick in their games, or ideologically possesed devs who want to use the aforementioned soapbox, and just treat diverse peoples as champions for their cause instead of normal characters. considering taash is probably just a self insert of weekes, it looks like the latter in this case.
@@Sophnar0747 i think you'd enjoy the youtuber, nuhre's videos on failguard. she spicily trashes on the game in such a satisfying way. it's honestly therapeutic seeing people not care to be cuddly wholesome chungus when they review things.
@Sophnar0747 I will tell you honestly - I don't usually experience trans people making content that's made logically and interestingly. Having watched the whole video, i don't just respect you - i *feel* you. Modern games being WASTE of time and money, giving you nothing in return. No emotion, no fulfillment, no sense of achieving anything. I yearn for innovation and creativity; writing done by people more literate than a tiktok bot. Thank you for being the person that makes me warm up to lgbt community in gaming in normal, organic way - via interaction. And in return, i'd like to clean your palate with something i discovered - try the games made by studio Project Moon. They are challenging, but rewarding, and written in human, relatable way, but a pleasant, mature language and about unpleasant, mature things. If i recall Library of Ruina is on sale atm.
@@Sophnar0747 Reminds me of when TotalBiscuit used to go off about terrible games and practices, just with a bit less tact than him. Still your reviews are a breath of fresh air, need more.
I know one trans person, and she was always fascinated with trans representation done by BioWare in the shape of the Asari race from Mass Effect franchise. She could talk for hours about Asari, the biology of their species, the way they breed by effectively becoming one person for a short amount of time, their religion and so on. It's a shame the same studio could fall so low. I hope the inevitable backlash won't discourage the writers from touching the subject at all, and instead they'll be reminded by past examples that subtlety and metaphores could get them really far and make the subject understandable to people to whom otherwise it would be completely alien (like me).
Idk how the fuck the asari count as trans representation, there's nothing trans about them. At all. It's queer representation at best, but even then Asari perfectly conform to what is the default for their kind, which... isn't queer at all. It's perfectly conformist.
Know what was real character development? A smarmy templar that you learned uses comedy and misdirection to hide a very sad upbringing, ultimately culminating in a true heir to an embattled throne sacrificing his life so he can mean something to a lost friend.
the thing i hate about all of this is that this costs people jobs, programmers, artists, audio engineers, janitors etc. just because some writers and studio heads refuse to learn from the last failed game. how did the saints row reboot come out, fail because of its new direction and then kill its studio only for a bunch of other studios to go "nothing to learn from this".
The programmers etc are all sharing the same ideology so i am not sorry for them. Those with different ideas have been fired or left on their own long ago because of the toxic enviroment inside the studio.
@@emanueleioria7523 Don't be ridiculous. The ground-floor technical people share the 'put food on the table' philosophy. It's really hard in the general IT job market currently, and it's always been hard in gamedev specifically, and now it's even harder. Can't fault anyone who clings to their job no matter what. Nobody has enough money to quit for the reasons of 'my supervisor's manager's boss has pronouns'.
@rateater1857 your opinion could have been true at the beginning but the game has been in development for 8-10 years and after they got a good salary for 8 years to deliver a shitty product they deserve to lose the job. They earned enough to start their own indie studio now, we aren't talking about people working for minimum wage
@@emanueleioria7523the only ones even somewhat undeserving are those who came in during the last year. But everyone else had years of work, which is longer then most making well above decent wages
The biggest offence was the fact its almost like they are fetishising trans people and struggles. The fact you can have top scars just serves the developers making it and fetishises it. Also making it so I can't have a big dumpy or breasts above b cup is silly
This is one of my personal peeves. I was amazed at the lack of body modifications overall, but yeah, breast removal seems to be a major trade in the fantasy setting?
The funniest thing is, if you think about it. A character like Anders, deeply flawed, tormented by his and others fate. Doing radical change leading into catastrophe. And well then you have Taash or the Coffee Man...., what a shame. Trespasser was such a good ending to Inquisition. Only for this. Wasted Potential, that's all I can think of now... I loved that Dragon age was always very inclusive, but still keeping the boundaries of living in a believable/authentic medieval fantasy world. It was unique, until now.
Anders is one of my favourite characters and my favourite, horrifically tragic romance. Now that I know his story will never continue (or it will continue in this blighted defilement), I think I might just put him out of his misery in future playthroughs.
The “pulling a bharve” bs speech was such a mask off moment for the creators They’re full on saying “apologizing like an adult for minor or accidental inconvenience/slights to me isn’t enough. I want you to SWEAT and SUFFER for it. Only then will I deign you with my mercy and forgiveness.” Imagine if that was said to them in reverse, Twitter would break
It actually fits the theme of the game in a weird way. "It's not enough to make a nonbinary character in the game and have it there as a fact. No. You gotta suffer through an entire storyline of their struggle with terrible dialogue and positive supportive reactions to their bullshit, only then will you be deemed tolerant and accepting to nonbinary people"
The aqun-athlok vs nonbinary convo sounds even more asinine when you realize that that's literally the equivalent of a transgender person irl forcing everyone to use an entirely made up alien word when referring to transgender people, instead of just using the preexisting word that's already a part of the language they speak. "I am bleegblorp." "What is that?" "It means I don't identify as the gender assigned to me at birth." "So you mean you're transgender?" "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME??!?" I simply cannot fathom how the writers even came up with this and thought it was "good representation".
This reminds me of my go to: what is a woman? 2nd guy- a woman is a person who says they're a woman. How its like what is a ghyjy? A ghyjy is someone who identifies as a ghyjy.
31:03 The irony of Taash wanting to be referred to a certain way yet doesn't respect other people's wishes in the same way, yet the writers would almost certainly call us some variant of phobic for not liking them is... frustrating, to say the least.
That example about Krem from DA:I is super interesting. Trans, but... Not enough? Not explicit enough? Not modern enough? Interesting to compare, trans person woven into fantasy story vs modern language painted over the world building. One certainly feels more preachy than the other
Shoehorned into a setting where gender change spells probably exist, where even the wealthy have enough to worry about that being born in "the wrong body" wouldn't happen and associating with a culture that would brain-wipe her the second it found out.
Even if they didn't want to include a character from a previous game - let's say they didn't include Krem as a companion character because it would be too messy and complex to involve The Chargers - they still had Maevaris Tilani, another great trans character who could have been a great companion? She was RIGHT THERE. And Neve sucks, so it's not like it would be a difficult replacement? MAEVARIS WAS RIGHT. THERE.
I was shocked when you brought up some trans criticizing the previous trans character because they used a Qunari word to make it fit the world. How is that ANY different from native americans being "two spirit"? NOT EVERY CULTURE IN THE UNIVERSE LIVES BY MODERN AMERICAN VERNACULAR. God these people are sickening.
I understand what you're trying to say, but "two-spirit" really has nothing to do with any Native American tradition beyond the most macro-level thematic similarity. It was made up within the last fifty years for Canadian progressives to pretend they care about Native Americans, which is also why it's mostly just Canadians who ever actually say it.
Yeah, but they want to write about their "struggle" as a first world person who is "different". They don't want a good story or to address a real world issue within a game.
Im a lesbian and that word doesnt belong in fantasy media since it comes from historical earth context, it would make no sense in a fictional fantasy world so I dont want or expect to see it. The elf girl in DAI just stating she's only interested in women was a great way to get the point across without breaking immersion.
Addressing surgery scars: Not one single trans person on the face of the Earth wants surgery scars. Not a single human who is getting surgery to augment themselves or change the way they look on purpose wants the scars. They want the results They don't want the scars. Not one single person. The fact that they included surgery scars means that they did not consult a trans person or if they did they didn't listen to them. This is people trying to cash in on morality points and wielding a hammer to do so. Because they made the non-binary character insufferable and just completely revolting to everyone on every side, they have done such considerable damage to the discussions around inclusivity that it has to be on purpose. I really hope bioware goes out of business before they can release Mass Effect and do even more damage under the false pretense of good intentions.
I know there's so many things you could focus on but why the hell would people in a medieval fantasy setting where dragons are a constant threat and can level cities be talking about how "hecking cool and awesome" they are? They'd be scared to death of them. Liking dragons is a modern thing because people know they're not real and they like the stories about them but if there was a big fucker around threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands every day, that culture would not have developed. People would see them as pests or huge threats.
Because god forbid you have immersive writing anymore the characters have to be quirky Heck even iron bull praised dragons but stills says that they should be hunted down because they are dangerous
Not to mention the first game in the series is basically about the civilizational collapse caused by fears about a "blight". In other words most of the characters in that game don't even know that there is a dragon, they just think there _might_ be one, and that's enough to completely fuck an entire nation. If anything, dragons as they were originally presented in Dragon Age are worse than usual in fantasy. A powerful enough one, corrupted by darkspawn, is a potential apocalyptic event.
@@yewtewbstew547 add that to the fact that the Archdemons choose to (for some reason) take the forms of Dragons, further tarnishing the image Dragons have in this world.
The writers come across as having never truly suffered in life. To so flippantly focus on and obsess over sex is insulting to me as someone who has faced sexual challenges due to mental and physical health issues. Sex is also something that (I think) healthy people tie to the heart, and don’t just treat it casually. Taash is an unlikeable narcissistic predator. And how would a medieval society know about the term “binary” or the psychology of trans identities? I’m a trans woman myself and this game is awful. No heart, no soul, no humanity. 😢
I've seen a lot of people try to justify the use of modern language in these types of settings by claiming that them being fantasy means they aren't medieval, but that always seems disingenuous to me. You only need to look at these games for five seconds to see that they're clearly inspired by historical European culture, and yes, mostly medieval/renaissance with all the armored knights and castles. Some "anachronism" is fine, like I don't think anyone really had much of a problem with the dwarves in Dragon Age always having North American accents. And obviously nobody in medieval Europe would actually have spoken like any of the NPCs did, even in Dragon Age Origins. But clearly there's a balance to it, where suspension of disbelief is either made or broken. When you start bringing in relatively new words and phrases that people still aren't accustomed (or even willing, potentially) to use in 2024, and put those in a game with this type of setting, it's just jarring.
Character struggles in Baldur's Gate 3: My god, who was also my lover rejected me for dealing with some forbidden magic, that caused me to have time bomb in my chest Character struggles in DA: Failguard: My mommy doesn't love me because I don't feel like a woman.
I have no problem with trans-identities in fantasy games, but I object to them just adopting our socio-cultural understanding of trans identities. It's ironic that the writers, who seem to see trans-identities as an immutable reality, can't conceive of them beyond the rigid modern Western view of gender. One of the fundamental beliefs behind our understanding of trans-identities is that gender is, at least to some degree, a social construct, and therefore people should be free to define themselves in the manner that they are most comfortable with, that aligns with their internal understanding of themselves. However, our language still limits how and what we can define and how we understand ourselves. Plenty of cultures throughout history perceived gender in ways that were radically different from the gender binary, yet were also radically different from how we perceive gender today. In that way, I think fantasy can play with gender a lot, especially in ways that depart from modern concepts like transgender and non-binary, and yet Veilguard insists on reinforcing these concepts despite trying to critique the limitations of the traditional Western understanding of gender. Veilguard could easily create its own unique and multifaceted understandings of gender which offer insight into the world, cultures, and philosophies of Dragon Age, but instead it just reinforces something that feels so foreign to it. That's not trans representation to me, it's just bad fantasy writing.
youve come to the heart of what woke games actually are. Im not trying to say there arent bigots in the anti woke crowd, but most of us just see it as soulless corporate box checking or ideologically possessed insane devs. Nobody gives a damn about claire from cyberpunk or krem from inquisition being trans, because those characters are well written, and arent just token characters that the dev uses as a soapbox to preach to gamers about how morally good they are. Hell claire has a lot of the cyberpunk community with split opnions on her, and not any those opinions are because of claire being a trans lady. Taash's entire questline was basically just preaching. Isabella doing pushups as some sort of weird humiliation ritual and Taash refusing to see the irony in her calling Emmerich a death mage is just the strawberry on top of the closeted bigotry that is the modern woke game.
The part that really stood out to me was how Taash got triggered when her mom was politely confused, and then got triggered again when her mom tried to understand. Then asking why her mom is never impressed as if coming out out as non-binary would impress her. It's so narratively jumbled all over the place, and I don't think that Taash even knows how fortunate she is to have such a sensible mother. Because realistically in a medieval setting, Taash's mom would've likely beaten her ass for speaking such "blasphemy."
So what you're saying is, the mentally ill people who weren't hired on merit don't know what they are doing? CRAZY! On a side note, Taash would never have been "non binary" in Dragon Age at all. Non-binary is a completely modern idea that has never existed anywhere else in human history, let alone the FANTASY world of Thedas. I challenge any Dragon Age fan to show me an example in the lore prior to Veilguard where that word has ever been used a single time. It's being used to virtue signal, not make the story better, and that's everything wrong with modern writing in the west. Activists are being hired to make games instead of gamers and until this changes, nothing will.
Not to mention lore wise Quanari do not have relationships with their mothers. They are brought up by teachers in group homes essentially to prepare them for their future very rigid roles within the qun. Taash's whole storyline retcons a ton of very interesting and dark details about quanari culture which include forced eugenics and gender roles. No doubt this was done away with because the lore was too problematic for their kiddie Disney DA vision
@@moony2shoes It's so weird, because it'd be so easy to make lore-compliant, namely, Taash's mother getting pregnant outside the breeding program for whatever reason, and wanting to keep the baby, rather than give it up to the collective teachers, and thus abandoning the Qun while pregnant. There, it's lore-compliant now. But yes, the writers don't want to touch Qun as was written before, for many reasons. Marshmallow, soft, friendly worldbuilding for one, and also some activists on Twitter are making massive reaches calling Qunari lore islamophobic, somehow 🤣
To me the funniest part is when Taash gets triggered for not being called they/them, but insists on calling that necromancer character a "death mage" after his repeated requests to not do that. Like she expects everyone to respect her identity but has no respect at all for the identity of others. Imagine someone telling her "but you are a woman".
Why are we even having a sit down formal dinner with someone's mother to discuss such things in a game where the world is in danger of ending? If the nukes come down, I am not going to sit down with anyone's mother to discuss pronouns. Fucking game.
I verbally said “shut uuup” out loud during Taash’s recruitment question and I’ve never done that to any game ever. And THEN the tokenism started. I didn’t even take her out on quests unless she was required so seeing some of the banter in this video was painful
Disneyfied romantasy sums it up quite nicely. The issue, really, as with many games these days, is that the devs completely misjudge the target audience. If you were 18 when you played Origins fifteen years ago, you're now thirty-two while I'd say most are probably closer to their forties. And yet they made a game that might, on a good day, appeal to a section of fourteen year-olds.
There is a population of late teens-early 20s tumblr kids who want their character to be an exact Mary Sue-ified version of them and legitimately think the romances should take precedence over the whole “world in danger” plot, and rant and rave at the devs if anything gets in the way of their precious romance fanfic. I suspect BioWare listens to those people far, far too much.
I was 13 when Origins came out, and am playing Veilguard on what might legitimately be on my only DNF playthrough in the entire series at 28. Multiple times did I have to go and double check that this was a rated M game because even as what I suspect is a younger member of the median audience, I feel absolutely fucking *baffled* that this is what we waited a decade for. There's no grit, no respect for the player or the setting, and it's jarringly modern. Rook and co being full of quippy, snarky one-liners and comic relief gets grating after a few hours because almost none of the game actually warrants the levity everyone seems to have. Like fuck, BioWare, is the entire southern continent blighted and falling into chaos or is it safe enough to have a picnic? Are there two archdemons wreaking havoc or do my companions have time to start a book club and go grocery shopping? The tone is wildly inconsistent and multiple times I've just sat there, staring at my screen, wondering why I'm even playing since I'm not having fun.
Damn, you just made me realise that this game is written by people who think liking coffee is a personality trait. No, it's more than just that, it's something to base an entire character around. It's so shallow. I doubt the writers have any life experience or have read any good fiction in their entire lives.
If you think Bioware is dying, remember they made Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect in their prime. What were you people expecting? Didn't Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem give you ample amounts of red flags?
It's really refreshing to see a review from a trans person who is calling out the game for It's glaring flaws and not just singing It's praises for pushing a message in an awkward and poorly written way. The game is simply bad, and I don't want to be labelled a bigot for it. I have dated a fully transitioned trans woman. I knew she was born male, so did she. Neither of us were delusional and dishonest about it, so we would discuss it as adults, but then move on with the relationship. I never had to pander to her, but she didn't want that. I know who she WAS, but can accept her for who she IS now. Two rational adults in a relationship. The relationship didn't work out, but nothing to do with gender, we started arguing about money. Sometimes things just don't work out, and we're still friends. Edit: subbed.
@@Northern_Silverbird The average trans person just wants to live a regular boring life in peace. They even say that trans people come out of the closet just so that they could go into a different closet, and it's not too inaccurate. Of course it's not really an option when you end up lesbian or gay, but even then advertising your transness irl is by far not the norm. It's quite simply a lot safer to keep it to yourself as much as possible.
It's easy to see how people came to the conclusion that Taash is a self insert for the self proclaimed "Queerosexual Gendermancer" game directer because 1. You cannot disagree with Taash, you _have_ to support all of Taash's character flaws. This is probably because the director has these same flaws, but is veryd efensive about it and needed validation. 2. Qunari are the most unique and non-human design. People who are so flashy and showoffish about themselves, tend to heavily gravitate toward these type of characters in games, Qunari, Teifling, those creepy little guy from final fantasy online, whichever character race is the most special and unique. 3. Taash has a very modern temperment and vernacular, probably speaks and treats people pretty similar to how the director does. Taash is so out of place and just screams of a modern young person desperately trying to stand out and seek validation for their shortcomings.
@@Kylesico912x Yea compare identity crisis Trash to Karlach who was sold into slavery to fight for demons in hell only to somehow get out back to her old world - and that is before you even meet her...
Don’t compare our golden retriever vibes soldier girl with the hypocritical dumbsterfire disrespectful of everyone and anyone in her life while demanding pronouns
Damn. That whole section on Modernism needs to be clipped and shared across social media. It perfectly sums up the issue of Representation in media these days. There's so much of it that feels ham-fisted and performative that it ends up making the whole idea of diversity into something toxic. Not to mention it has now caused the public to just lambast anything that features non-white or non-hetero characters as being DEI trash or SBI garbage to where even positive examples (as few and far between as they are) are lumped in with awful propaganda like this game. Breaks my heart to know that characters like Dion from FFXVI are lumped in with shit-tier characters like T(r)aash
Only the Extremist, I think regular gamers can separate a guy who happens to be gay versus someone who’s just there to be gay, problem with that extremist faction is that everyone who disagrees with this kind of thing get lumped in with them and the more they’re proven right the more people join it’ll take a while before we can go back to how it was before a this bs
@@jellybeans2707you have far more faith in gamers as a whole than I do. I sometimes feel like a crazy person because I'm pro-Trump and anti-DEI but I seem to be one of the minority in that grouping that understands the nuances you, me, and folks like Sophia have highlighted.
It alwo doesn't help that there's a bunch of shills, sell-outs and "fans" who will praise blindly praise woke media before its release and then will scream "it only failed because of >insert buzzword here
There absolutely needs to be nuance @@jellybeans2707 There's a lesbian NPC in hogwarts legacy. Most of the origin characters in BG3 would probably come under the LGBT umbrella, as they can be romanced no matter what form your Tav is in. And Halsin is just... Halsin. There's gay and lesbian NPCs too. And none of that felt hamfisted because sometimes it was just an offhand comment about having a spouse referred to as her/him and you can out the rest together yourself. Much more natural language and the relevant bits come up in conversation. I'd say I'm more left wing but there's a way to do DEI properly - naturally and without shoving it into people's faces. If a woman NPC has some quest for you and happens to have a wife - cool if her wife comes up into conversation. But otherwise it's not relevant. Arguably it's much much easier to portray gay or lesbian relationships in a game naturally. But surely if they really wanted a trans character... Maybe a natural way to do it wouldn't be all these conversations about it. Maybe just a questline with and NPC who happens to be trans. And maaaaybe after each visit with them checking in between missions in that quest line, maybe their appearance or dress changes or maybe their style stays the same but they're trying to modulate their voice a little bit. But it doesn't necessarily have to come up in conversation until your own character asks as the whole point of the interactions would be ... The questline. Traits like these are cool for adding backstory and personality. But they don't define characterisation. This even applies to Halsin.
The irony of Traash saying, "You are a death mage." I would have loved Emrick if he gave a comeback like, "And you are a woman." 🤣 But no no, everyone gotta coddle Traash. Worst character in Dragon Age history.
I might be wrong but I think they were trying to make some commentary on if the roles were reversed and the misgendering/misrepresentation was from the other side, lol😂😂😂
Absurd how a game so obsessed with representation only manages to make the characters extreme stereotypes. Rook is just random friendly hero. Harding is a whimsical gnome dwarf Assassin Spaniard Guy is obsessed with coffee Tash is emotionally stunted and self absorbed Ballara is an overly apologetic asian woman The necromancer is a college professor style intellectual
coffee lovers, emotionally stunted narcissists, overly apologetic service industry types, college professors, lolsorandom whimsical quirky people... these are the only kinds of people that progressive writers have experience interacting with.
Krem is a great example of how to write a trans/non-binary character without ruining the worldbuilding in your FANTASY world. Traash is how you do the opposite. I hope that the grievance-mongers are happy now, because using modern terminology in a fantasy game is exactly what right-wingers will point to when they say that they don't want politics in their video games. The writing in general is relentlessly performative, preachy ass bullshit. And when it isn't being preachy, it is the worst example of the same goofy quip-laden millennial writing that doomed Forspoken. I'm starting to understand why every veteran at Bioware left. Here lies Dragon Age: Veilguard, it was so stunning and brave. I'll keep my shovel on hand to bury Mass Effect next to it.
Doom 2016 was a return to form Space Marine 2 was a return to form DAV is a painfully modern game in every way that's obnoxious and terrible, and T(r)aash is the peak of that.
@@Gaz4113 At this point, SM2 is a return to what games used to be. Just games, made for fun and for profit to the people that made them. A game that could've come out 2 decades ago and it would've been an above average action game. Now it's a "return to form" for gaming in general. Hence why I said that....and to take the piss from disingenuous journos.
@@ichigokage Bro, I just learned there is a game called G-Rebels coming out in 2025 which is a spiritual successor to G-police. G-POLICE!!! Indie gaming is SO good right now.
The most annoying thing is that… I don’t buy that these are warriors in a fantasy world. They talk like 19-year old American liberal arts students. I’m supposed to believe they fight insane monsters?
Hey, I bought the deluxe edition. I got a pack of Tampons to shove up my a$$, I new Webster dictionary with all new pronouns, a large black magic marker to draw breast removal scars on my chest and a self help kit to cut off my junk. Very modern day and very inclusive! Don't you think?
My God, Veilguard gets worse with every bit of it I see. Part of the issue with Dragon Age as a franchise is that the only one that wanted to be an RPG was Origins. DA2 tried to be ME2, DAI wanted to be Skyrim, and DAV is God of War 2018. It's like Bioware is *ashamed* of Origins somehow.
A lot of it is AAA is expensive and investors aren't willing to go back to the niche that is CRPG games. Investors want to see stock lines go up. So expensive games need to be made safe and cater to the masses. Writing a complex story and having slow, tactical gameplay like Origins does none of this. Which is ironic as CRPG's is what Made Bioware the company it was. BG1-2, Jade Empire, KOTOR. Hell Origins was a evolution/love letter to Bioware's older games. It was a CRPG which used a third person perspective. In the capitalistic hellscape we've found ourselves in making a profit isn't good enough. Investors want all the profit. So games (or hell, media in general now) needs to cater to the lowest denominator so everyone can be willing to buy. What we are seeing is pushback to this type of media. Marvel/Disney movies/shows are not doing as well as they hoped lately. Disney type games like Veilguard are facing criticism for the poor writing. Hopefully this means course correction. But this is being optimistic, I predict AAA games with continue to have basic games released on franchise name only which will do mediocre or bad until the franchise dies. If you want to find good stories I'd recommend looking at Indie titles.
"I'm non-binary" is a phrase that should never be in a fantasy world. Where did "they" learn that word and concept? In the medieval gender studies course THEY took?
And you know what's even worse about Lucien ? He's actually a racist caricature of an Italian. He loves pasta, he drinks coffee, he lives in Treviso ( which is an actual city in Italy), which looks exactly like Venice, and has an Italian surname. He speaks with a Spanish accents cause that's basically the same right?? Now,I'm Italian, born and raised in Italy, and idc, I think it's a bit cringe but whatever I'm not offended. What really bothers me is that for a game that REALLY shoves it's inclusively down it's throat, they're quite quick to make the Italian inspired character very stereotyped
I'm Italian too, but from North America - I notice these things too xD Funny how the double-standards work, isn't it? The same people who say racism is wrong are the ones who are the most stereotyping
@@midnightcoffee6463 At least you get a bad Italian accent. Simpsons had a episode with a Finnish Power plant recently and they did not get anyone to do even a bad accent, it is the guy who voices Kent Brockman doing a bad Swedish accent with a hint of German. Which also affects a throwaway joke at the end where they discover there are other Scandinavians playing Finns, because anyone who knows what a Finn sounds like knows the language is completely different and so is the accent.
Krem was my first introduction to how CRAZY the inclusionists are. I loved Krem. I loved that he didn't come at you with a bunch of attitude about being trans. If you didn't spend time talking to him, you'd never have known, but he does open up if you take time with him. But then the inclusivity crowd bitched and moaned BECAUSE he was passing. Nevermind that he was literally the first trans character I've ever seen in a major video game, and he was an interesting character whose past I was genuinely intrigued to learn about. Guess deep characters and compelling writing aren't good enough if you're the kind of person who demands genuflection to your cause.
"I'm an expert assasseeeen...! And anyone who comes after me winds up dead...! AND ALSO I WANT MY CAFFEE...!" New D&D one shot character voice, thanks.
Such a shame about DA:TV. I'm not even a hater of modern shit per se, I don't like it, I hate the marshmallow, safe, gelded worlds of modern entertainment, but I'm the first to say 'not everything is for me, and that's okay'. Thing is though, Dragon Age *used to* be for me. Origins was a game of my childhood, and the trend of incredibly irreverent handling of old games, and shitting on people who loved, and still love, the original versions is deeply hurtful to me. Same story with V:TM Bloodlines 2. The first Bloodlines is so beloved by its fans, they receive community patches 20 years later. But not by the corporate owners of the IP. They only care about - honestly, what do they even care about? They never cared about art, but now I feel like they don't even care about 'the message' anymore, or money, or their shareholders, or literally anything human. Empty ghouls.
It is both bizarre and concerning to hear Sophia explaining how players want to be rewarded and feel engaged, because the way she explains it is EXTREMELY similar to the way I heard an instructor explain absolutely BASIC principles of game design in an introductory class I attended over a decade ago, and he was recounting lessons he'd learned decades prior. Meaning that the people involved in this mess dont even understand the most basic design principles of their industry. Just... Wild.
20:59 Oh for the love of... God forbid a good writer skill is to use different terms that are context appropriate in a story for better immersion. How... incompetent do you have to be as a writer to even consider that MODERN words such as "trans" or "non binary" could possibly fit in a fantasy medieval world where such terms are none existent. Why do you think Dorian in Inquisition used "I prefer the company of men" instead of flat out say "I am gay dad! Deal with it!" BECAUSE THE LATTER SOUNDS TOO MODERN FOR THE CONTEXT! IT BREAKS THE IMMERSION!
The main reason you can't have an evil playthrough is because that would require the writers to think of horrible things to do and say to their self-inserts. Can you imagine the writers of this having to sit down and create dialogue that contradicts their beliefs? To understand the view-point of someone who doesn't agree with them? The amount of self-reflection that would require would be too much. And if you create a self-insert then you are going to be emotionally attached to that character, which means writing choices that disagree or insult that character would feel like a personal attack.
honestly.. i bought BG3 recently and it was a choice for me between it and veilgard. id stayed away from media from both of them pretty much because thats just how i am with games i intend to play but dont have $$ at the time to do so. having played through act 2 now, and just having seen a few of these veilgard reviews now im just... shocked at the concept of a fantasy rpg NOT having an evil playthrough. and honest, bg3 will now be my gold star for absolutly heinous shit refereced/contained within a video game. i love it. i love that i have that choice, because sometimes its just fun to be an asshole when you arent one, because there arent consequences in games for doing so. and just... yeah. while things got progressivly less evil in DA, even in inquisiton you could at least be an asshole to your companions. its just... ugh. such a departure from a game i love and tbh having seen these reviews i will never play veilgard. if i wanna find out what happens ill eitehr read a fanfiction or watch someone elses playthrough.
That's why self-insert writing can never be good. A good writer can create characters that are nothing like themself, and put them through hell and even kill them, however beloved they are, for the sake of an interesting story. Hell, a lot of fanfic writers do it better than this trainwreck of a writing team. I bet Chat GPT could do it better. Edit: typo
Calling this game insufferable is putting it kindly. This is further proof the BioWare we knew and loved is no more. Your review is another nail in the dev's coffin. Expect it to close in the days to come. Quoting John Travolta in Swordfish, this game also sums up the state of the Triple A gaming industry: "They make shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit."
The funniest thing I always found about them "fixing" Saint's Row is that the franchise was already progressive in a good way. The gang was diverse. You could literally sleep with any of them you wanted to. They were all one united whole. But because there was off-color humor, it suddenly turned "problematic" enough to warrant, as you say, disneyfying it.
Saint's Row was super progressive - but in a way that wasn't propagandistic. It wasn't trying to preach to you - but just naturally have diverse characters and not yammer on about it. People don't mind diversity - but they do mind feeling like they're at a political rally or feeling like they've just been shoved into an awkward conversation about sexuality.
Saint's row was once a competitor to GTA. Where GTA went with a bit more realism/grounded in their stories and satire Saints row really turned it up to 100 on its ridiculousness after 2. Not a bad thing, but coming from a game which was about fighting other gangs to fighting aliens as the president idk how the latest one dropped the ball so hard.
18:20 What's interesting is that I've seen a character obsessed with coffee done right. His name is Chesed from Lobotomy Corporation. He's always drinking coffee and uses it for metaphors, which in any other situation would be the most pretentious shtick ever, but then you find out that he drinks so much of it to stop sleeping because he's traumatized from watching all of his coworkers die constantly. He even compares grinding coffee beans to the corporate upperclass grinding the workers in his city. It goes to show that the writing of Veilguard is way below the bar.
@@BlinJe trust me, it isn't. Lobotomy Corporation is far more mature and introspective in its characters. It holds themes of cosmic horror, regret, and suffering. It is a far better game and the characters are far better and deeper.
Tokenism IS the only form of representation BioWare can do because all of this is target market, focus group, marketing department-driven cynicism. The only sincerity in any of it is the disdain, disrespect and loathing for past entries in the franchise because they were written with a heart this shell of a company no longer has.
I saw another video that pointed out this weird conundrum: Taash is so insistent she be referred to as they/them as she wishes.... But she doesn't understand when Emmerich wants her to call him by his name instead of "death mage" because, according to her, "that's what you are." 🙄
If Taash was created in the same way but with the intention for the character to be hated by the player, they'd give you an option of saying "but you are a woman". But no, the player is expected to like T(r)aash and be sympathetic.
I can't tell whether her writers and people like her irl are either totally lacking self-awareness or are fully self-aware and just deliberately being obnoxious for whatever reason
And the vielguard team is now working on ME5... And the writer for that game expressed how hard it is going to be to not scream at people publicly over politics (they are on bluesky screaming or at least were) SO that game is DOA too. The people defending the game are on another level
Its not conspiracy its called keeping your job. Games journalist have a vested interest in giving higher reviews and being incredibly lenient with scores because the only way they get review copies is if companies like them. Also for plenty of them games journalism wasn’t their first pick in their field so they aren’t exactly experts or very demanding. But a jobs a job. No conspiracy here, just capitalism.
its really interesting that we really have hit a point where things are being written by people who have never spoken to another human. i thought tumblr talk ended with tumblr but it just moved to rpg's. im surprised every conversation in this game doesnt end with "and then they all clapped"
21:47 That is ridiculous, it's akin to an actual lecture. The people putting this in games is doing more harm than good and yes, it's just one big virtue signal to get a pat on the back from their peers, it's not to help trans people, only themselves. I've seen many reviews on this game but you've highlighted areas I did not know. You've done a fine job. Well done.
god yes. at this point im going to check out everything else larian have done because bg3 is just good and if their other stuff is half as then itll be worth it.
I'm excited for Mass Effect 4. I can't wait to find out Shepard is non-binary because of being brought back to life in Mass Effect 2 and then we get a dinner scene where Shepard and Tali sit at a dinner table and he tells her "Soooooooo... I'm non-binary." And then Tali is like "What is that? Back in my homeland, people not assigned to their gender are called Quathilu-pop." And then Shepard gets pissed and goes "WHY CANT YOU BE HAPPY FOR ME TALI?! IVE NEVER FACED A HARDER BATTLE!" And then the Reapers Mk. 2 blow up the Avenger because they were busy fucking arguing about nonsense.
yep. Any time I see the clips where Taasha is cringe about their non-binary identity I fondly remniscence about ME3, in particular, the dialogue where sheppard learns about Steve Cortez's backstory - because it just shows to me, how badly bioware has declined in it's ability to write characters.
@@taln0reich I replayed the whole Mass Effect series 2 years ago (and ME3 for the first time along with it) in order. And Holy *shit* the moment I loaded up 3 I could tell right off the bat that the quality of the writing went right off the edge of a cliff. It was so readily apparent that the writers were hacks and had never had a real conversation with someone before, let alone spoken to someone face to face before the internet came about.
As a skyrim modder who has to rebuild every outfit to fit new bodies No its not hard to make clothes for every body type, its just a layer to be screeched, that's it they didnt do cause they are idiots
I don't at all recommend this game, but here's my Amazon affiliate link to it nonetheless, but honestly, don't buy it. It's bad.
amzn.to/4fHDZQD
She's back!
Rocket League anyone?
You forgot Varric! I can't blame you since the devs seemed to have forgotten him for most of the game too. Well past the first like 10 minutes at least.
Not a problem for me, as since this game came out I now identify as non buynary
@@zikli9249he was kind of bland in inquisition anyways I don't really understand why he is so loved, he was good in da2
Traash: I'm non-binary, call me they/them.
Emmerich: Sure thing Taash. I'm Emmerich.
Traash: Nah fam, you're corpse-guy.
Emmerich: I don't like it, just call me by my name.
Traash: Not happening corpse-guy.
Such delicious irony. Such loveable character. Such rEtuRn tO foRm.
Return to... store. 30k units.
meanwhile.... if somebody was non-binary in fantasy world isn't it cooler if they just i dunno create a character that maybe gain knowledge of some advanced magic or something to change gender at will?
in the end Emmerich was the one who had to apologize T_T
@@lezardy Yeah but then the writer can't project their self-victimization.
@@AngelisNotMyName Yeah it was ridiculous, it's like he suddenly realizes he's in the wrong when he's completly right about the whole conversation.
"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." - G. K. Chesterton
“Good quotation.” - Me
You can tell by the dialogue in this game that whoever wrote it probably lack social skills, social awareness and is uncapable of adapting modern words to a medieval fantasy universe. No wonder people feel condescended, the game feels like a teen writing a Tumblr fanfiction.
G.K Chesterson was a moron and I hate. Dragon age veilguard
@fmor2779 I'm sure some game Devs are also introverted but happen to make amazing games with amazing gameplay and story just look at Miyazaki he had trouble understanding English literature but he had to try his best the result was he interpreted the story in his own way that's why the souls games were amazing
@@mikeydflyingtoaster lol, well played 😅
Taash is an example of a writer not only self-inserting but self-reporting. Their petulance and hypocrisy is on full display, particularly in the scenes with Emerich.
Taas is also a complete sex pest. you have a team meeting and their contribution is insisting to be gross. Companions have romances and unsurprisingly Taash is just gross and insists on talking about sex despite others clearly being uncomfortable, or rebuking even outright requests to not insist.
When Taash comes in it suddenly sounds like a good idea for the Veilguard to hire HR.
Brilliantly said!!!! 💯🗣️💯
It's also evident that whoever wrote this insufferable character is attracted to children (as how do you even begin to try/WANT to build a romance with a character who is portrayed in personality to literally be like 12 years old??!!) and also this writer clearly has an obsession with Funatari? Futanari? -Whatever the fk it's called- too. It's giving *gross* in soooo many different ways!!!
Brilliantly said!!!! 💯🗣️💯
It's also evident that whoever wrote this insufferable character is attracted to children (as how do you even begin to try/WANT to build a romance with a character who is portrayed in personality to literally be like 12 years old??!!) and also this writer clearly has an obsession with Funatari? Futanari? -Whatever the fk it's called- too. It's giving *gross* in soooo many different ways!!!
self inserting as boh villain and vicim, ala isilreal style.
@@gathorall9136this game would be a great game if we could kill the companions one by one...
For Traash i even thought something very special just for her.
Traash: i'm non-binary!
Me smiling menacing...
Traash: Why are you smiling?
Me nothing.
Then while Traash trash her own mother i go quietly behind her an snap Traash nexk.
Her mother: Why did you do that with my baby?
Me: You saw yourself, she was completely lost.. im sorry, but that thing wasn't your baby anymore...
Traash mother: i supposed so, thanks anyway, i wouldn't have courage to do it myself.
Me:, May her soul rest with Andraste now.
30:55 ...so the non-binary character who admonishes people who misgender them, refuses Emmerich's wishes to be addressed using his REAL NAME.
Pure distilled irony.
It's the layers of not respecting that these people have. They want all the respect but they don't want to give any. I even had someone at my old job when I go buy a different name they were blatantly disrespectful and call me by my other name and I made it very clear I don't go by that name he was a full-on dickwad and actively antagonistic towards me. I made a habit of putting all the records on my phone on the notes and I quickly got him fired because I had two months of his bullying recorded.
Taash: You're a spirit. You're a dragon queen. You're a skullfucker. Etc.
Also Taash: You don't get to tell me who I am!
@@LuckoDaStars Ah yes, "these people."
Poor writing in the pandering game = LGBT people are disrespectful "dickwads." Classic.
Well it's consistent with those types like Taash in real life.
I should also add to my previous comment, the outrage by some trans writers on trans characters not explicitly calling themselves trans is indicative of why many people's views of them have rolled back ten years minimum. For me, it rolled back by a century.
I have never seen such a self-replicating cult of fascist thought in my life. Mussolini would have been proud of them. Everything for the Trans. Nothing Outside It. Nothing Against It.
I've never met anyone from the community who had any shred of humility or decency. They are crass, rude, and view the world as Lebensraum for them to conquer and lord over.
Rant aside, I hope in the next decade and further on more social, political and economical pushback happens against this. We've had enough.
Mass Effect is fucked.
I wish it wasn't but I know in heart that they will destroy my fav game series even more.
People act like Andromeda doesn't exist
Bioware to Mass Effect: We'll bang, okay?
@@Noqtis Andromeda was "The series took a huge blow but could recover". Veilguard proved the next Mass Effect will be "The series is irreversibly fucked. There's no way to salvage this, it will kill Bioware if Veilguard doesn't get them first."
What do you mean? Mass effect is an amazing trilogy. See the thing about trilogies is they tell a story across 3 entries, and then never make any more after that. Ever.
"Who doesn't like Dragons?"
Do the writers not know why the game is called Dragon Age? Do they not know why the world is currently in the "Dragon Age?" Do they not know that all dragons without exception are evil, power hungry and blood thirst monsters? Do they not know about the fucking Archdemons?
they rewrote the lore to fit their own
since Traash is some sort of dragon, and the dragons supposedly can only have Queens, that whole evil power-hungry blood-thirsty monster angle would be quite problematic for their narrative.
So yeah, it makes sense why these writers want people to 'like' dragons now.
@@Hadgerz That just sounds like fan fiction made by a dragon fan. XD
No, they don't. These are not the same people who made the previous 3 games, and they didn't even bother to read any of the internal notes or design/lore documents, not even played the previous games. They just created their own headcanon and injected their mental illnesses into the game thinking they accomplished something stunning and brave.
Writer probably just finished watching Game of Thrones and thought it was cool. So made an OC around dragons using lore from another franchise.
Tash is insufferable. Why do developers and modern media portray LGBTQ+ characters as sooo one dimensional, purposely argumentative, and stereotypical. It does damage to the movement if anything.
😂 Cos it is accurate 😂
cause its a fetish they push, which means ego which means they refuse any criticism of it as "bigot/incel/chud/phobic" and live in a echo chamber
and most importantly cause they've never gone through any real hardship so "being offended" is the worse to them hence these pathetic characters focus being on ego being stroked
People who want to see themselves represented in fiction are narcissists. And they had the arrogance to do it to stuff primarily targeted at heterosexual males, to spite them. It was better when they made their own entertainment like “Will & Grace”, and didn’t invade the space of others. Modern LGBTQ is an authoritarian movement.
People who want to see themselves represented in fiction are narcissists. And they had the arrogance to do it to stuff primarily targeted at heterosexual males, to spite them. It was better when they made their own entertainment like “Will & Grace”, and didn’t invade the space of others. Modern LGBTQ is an authoritarian movement.
Because it's literally true.
>It does damage to the movement
Good.
Trash is one of the worst characters I've ever experienced in my entire life. Yes, auto correct changed their name, and no, I will not be fixing it.
Ok do 50 pushups or get banned by the devs!
"sounds like something a nazi would say" 🗿
Stop using thier. One person is not plural
@@via_negativa6183… stop using thier, it’s not a word.
@@via_negativa6183 ever heard of "royal we"... people who refer to themself as they/them are like modern day self-proclaimed royalty but with no actual title, like this Trash character..
See and people like Coffee Man make me wish the potential was in better hands.
He drinks so much coffee because he's more susceptible to the demon's possesion when he sleeps. So he tries to force himself to stay awake. The demon that was forced into him during his captivity by torturerous blood mages.
WHOA! That's intense, Veilgaurd. Do you want to elaborate more on that?
"NO I dont think I will"
>its just a giant stay woke bit
Anon, I... I don't know how to tell you.
That and he prefers a quiet cramp room... like a cell.
Not even just that. They frame his relationship with Spite as an allegory for an abusive relationship... And then later have Emmerich and Spite get together. And they sweep the fact Spite is a stand-in for an abuser under the rug.
@TheRavenofSin I don't mean to come for you but I'm pretty sure Emmerich gets with Strife, not Spite.
Why do they have such similar names? Don't know! Why is this Dalish elf named after a common language word? Don't know! 🤣
@nananderson7259 You are completely right. I couldn't manage to play the game that far and only had things told to me by a friend who did. Guess I mixed it together because Emmerich can hear Spite.
“Who doesn’t like dragons?!”
Oh, I don’t know… Maybe most of the world that has to fight doomsday dragon demon every once in a while?
Right only people in non fantasy settings actually like dragons.
If they like Dragons so much, then why do they kill every one of them?
Ye like wtf.... That made no sense...... in the lore of Dragon age dragons are legit dangerous beings that you WOULD NOT WANT TO SEE!!!........ legit every Dialogue in this game boils down to FUNNY HAHA IN REAL LIFE HUMOR CUZ FUNNY HAHA, which in turn makes no sense for the in game Lore.
Spyro: :'(
Paarthurnax: :O
Dragon Age: Hiroshima.
"Who doesn't like nukes?!"
Wardens can literally feel the blight, it talks to them every waking moment.
Having to convince a grey warden that a blight is coming is the dumbest thing in the world.
My head hurts
It's explicitly stated that this is not a regular blight.
"Archdemons control the blight. We would sense if one had arisen." It's the gods controlling it directly this time.
Trans guy here. Thank you for this video, it's so important that we, people directly impacted by this, speak out against this nonsense. Taash made me so angry at points I had to stop playing, the idiotic pushup scene, their vile, jarring reaction to their mother, while also acting completely disrespectfully to everyone else and you can't even call them out on anything!
The character is so insulting to trans people who are not self-centered, delusional, entitled assholes, it almost feels like rage bait.
It's such a shame, old Bioware were masters at making good queer representation in the past.
I really liked Krem for example. And I loved that each character had their own sexuality, not everyone is pansexual so it also doesn't make sense that you can romance everyone. I think dragon age already was progressive but they had to make it bad, forced, and childish, with bad writing, breaking the lore and making annoying characters instead of charismatic and interesting ones
For sure, I’m sorry trans peoples images will be affected by this.
I have no idea why people constantly try and make your image worse with this garbage.
Veilguard really helped me realize just how much i took for granted when playing Inquisition.
Inquisition felt like a real world, with people who act and react like sensible people would.
Krem and Harding were two of my favorite side characters, whom i always looked forward to seeing.
Dorian is my FAVORITE DA I character in writing and expression. His personal challenges and struggles were so good, and i loved that it was not him trying to find himself. He KNEW what he was about. It was about whether or not he wanted to lie to himself for the sake of power and influence. It was really good.
Even Sera was written far better than Veilguard, and imo she had the weakest writing of the companion characters.
Hell, even DA II Anders, who i previously saw as the worst written DA companion (i really dislike how his entire existence was as a plot mcguffin and you could no nothing to influence, or even help him). Even HE is written better than pretty much any character in Veilguard
Unfortunately, this is a reflection of the extreme left that has seeped into everyday online behaviour and now real life (western countries). You have men demanding lesbians date them...that's that most homophobic shit and yet they'll get coddled because they identify as anything other than a man. Doesn't matter what you identify as, facts are facts.
As a NB person-someone who feels neither male nor female (some people use it to mean a bit of both)-I have never felt this patronized about my own identity in my entire life as with Taash. Genuinely who is Taash for? People who aren’t NB are gonna feel condescended to, people who are NB are going to be given one of the most unpalatable examples of a NB person. I don’t know how to break it to our fellow LGBTQs, but you don’t get a pass to be a rude antisocial cunt just because you’re queer and have issues with being accepted as your true self by your culture and society. Literally no excuse. And if it’s “just their personality”, then their personality is that of a shitty self-absorbed child who is under the mistaken impression that their tediously obnoxious personality makes them somehow unique, or worth the cost that their existence charges the world.
The excuses range from “oh you just can’t handle rudeness AFAB characters”. I love Lae’zel from BG3, next argument. “Taash is in their early 20s”. I was also in my early 20s once upon a time and never this rude to people unprompted. “Taash is autistic-coded”. I’m autistic, and “I’m rude because I’m autistic” is lazy weaponization of a disability. Autistic people can learn how not to be rude, some simply choose not to out of stubbornness, disinterest, or outright laziness. Taash is just a bully that doesnt know they’re a bully. You best believe if I was in Taash’s presence I’d be telling them to shut the fuck up every time they opened their mouth. If Taash’s “thing” is being rude, my “thing” is an intolerance for uncalled-for rudeness. Unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, who cracks first I wonder?
The thing that gets me the most about the game is how it ignores so much of its own universe.
The Crows? You know, the assassins guild that uses child slaves as recruits, abuses them into obedient agents and puts a hit on them if they fail a job? Now they are heroic freedom fighters.
Solas building an army and an intelligence network at the end of Inquisition? Nah, he's going at it completely alone.
The Dalish worship of their gods being propaganda that should make them welcome them? Nope, they apparently know they are evil and they need to be taken down despite their whole culture revolving around them.
This are big things of the setting. Things that the players know first hand. But they're not there anymore. Any possibly controversial thing is gone. You cannot even ask about the implications of it all.
Some writers wanted to make the franchise softer to attract a young progressive audience. You know, the one they already had with its fascinating world and always being progressive and open?
Hit the nail on the head, my dude.
I think they wanted to attract a younger audience in part bc of the economy- they’ve got mommy and daddy’s money and guess what major gift giving holiday is coming up?
@@littlebird7383 because of what part of the economy? You're not eating the chips out of the paint spelling "doing well," are you?
Honestly this is how you know whoever made veilguard never played dragon age.
1st: Qunari don't have families, after they are born they are taken and raised in a sort of complex with everyone trained in what they excel at. Tal-Vishoth do have families but they would never consider themselves Qunari, because the Qun besides a religious ideology is also the governing system of their culture.
Qunari are also wary of magic users because of the whole abomination thing and typically enslave any Qunari that can use magic to inhibit their powers and their connection to the fade.
2. DragonAge and mass Effect are the WORST games to shove these real world politics into because *fanfare* THEY ALREADY HAD THEM AND DID IT BETTER OVER 10 YEARS AGO.
You want to have a gay male character? Zevran, Anders, and Dorian. Want a bisexual? Liliana, Fenris, Isabella, and Ironbull. Maybe some exciting roleplay? Cassandra is a closet romantic who everyday is the no nonsense take charge leader, who wants a man to sweep her off her feet and woo her. Forbidden romance? Our no nonsense Templar Cullen has a sweet spot for mage women, in fact in origins as a female mage you can find a diologue tree that you and Cullen were in love but duty kept you two apart and the demon is torturing him pretending to be you during the fall of the tower.
Want some mixed race romance? In Dragon age 2 one of your missions is to save the son of a noble kidnapped by a qunari, only to find out that what really happened was the son ran away with his qunari husband and his closed minded father wanted him back.
But also there were Trans people in the games. In Inquisition Ironbull's second in command, Krem, is a Tevinter trans-man, born a woman but identified as a man and drops two very important pieces of lore in regards to veilguard.
1: In Tevinter transgenderism is not permitted. Krem was going to be executed for being trans until bull saved him. That's how bull got the scar on his face.
2: the way to stop an execution for being Trans is to perform a ritual that would turn you into the actual gender. But Krem didn't want to be a cis-gender man, he wanted to be a trans-man because that's what he is.
And that's JUST Dragon age.
Sorry got a bit ranty there. It's just that I love Dragon Age and was looking forward to this game for years only to get... This.
Sanitized marvel slop is what DA has become, not to mention the big twist that there was a secret shadowy cabal behind everything along
Dragon Age Failguard ends when Rook hits his/her head, after the initial Solas' Ritual. They didn't go to the fade, Rook is in a coma, and 99% of the game never took place.
That’s officially my headcanon now.
I don't get the hate. It's one character. Everyone else is perfectly fine. Latching on to dumb stuff to be mad about.
@@soulknife20 its not just that ONE character, she just stands out as a bit worse then the rest of it.
@Derrad333 It's the one character. The others are fine. No worse than the other games. Inquisition characters were way worse. Sera is insufferable, and Vivienne is absolutely terrible. And don't even get me started in DA II. The ending makes zero sense, and Anders is the worst. Sebastian is terrible. I barely remember Isabella in the game. The only one that's worth anything is Varric. So. No. This game isn't any worse.
I'm more in line of what somebody written somewhere:
Next DA game starts with ending of this one, then it fades to black, then Varric voice says "Damn, you were not kidding when you said you were bad writer". Then scene changes and we see Cassandra slightly ashamed and closing an amateurishly designed book. She says "Well, then are you going to tell them everything yourself?". And then Varric laughs and starts the actual story of how it all ended.
Why the heck did the elf girl have to apologize for eating food? What is Taash, some sort of special snowflake that everyone has to cater to? So she ate the last bite. If Taash ate it, would she apologize? Probably not 🙄
I find it kind of funny that bioware both tried their hardest to court a very specific crowd with this game and simultaneously insulted them by assuming they couldn't figure out how to match two pictures together. At the very least, I hope that other studios see what happens when you develop games solely for social politics brownie points and they decide to make good video games instead.
@AvalancheReviews the dialouge is trying to ripoff joss whedon dialouge from Buffy and angel but way way worse !
Blackrock will give them some of their bazillions of dollars and say "keep making to lame and woke".
Why do you thing "go woke, go broke" doesn't work ? Because Blackrock is paying the publishers, so they don't care if they have to close studios and release games that don't sell.
Its the marvel effect
It goes even worse on the "specific crown of people", actually. To anyone who actually knows about the people behind this abomination, such as game director or writer, it's a shiny example of utterly negative representation of their minority group. I can't begin to imagine how anyone from that group who isn't completely insane, would feel about this.
Everything about this game screams that it's for kids IMHO.
That character has to 100% be a self insert.
It is. The writer for it is Trick Weekes. Look it up
Trick Weekes is also the spouse of Karen Weekes, Veilguard's lead editor. I think one of the reasons why Taash is so incredibly poorly written is simply because Trick poured so much of their non-binary identity into Taash and an environment of toxic positivity was unwilling to push back against genuinely bad writing out of fear of invalidating Trick's identity and experience. On top of that, their was a genuine and major conflict of interest between them and their spouse which allowed poor writing to consistently get a pass from the editors.
@@Li-Fu7yup. A very succinct explanation of how overly focusing on identity is actually ruinous to the whole creative process.
@@Li-Fu7What's amazing is they made Tash a caricature of a trans person completely by accident. An egotistical, self-centered, selfish person that disregards everyone else's feelings but their own.
Yup, not only that but they are the most fan fiction character imaginable, with literal special powers and a wannabe robin hood backstory 😂
I forever attach that non binary table scene to Peter Griffin say “Who the fuck start a conversation like that I just sat down”, like you could have started this conversation a better way
Even if the controversial trans stuff wasn't in the game the writing is absolutely atrocious. It feels so jarring and unfantastical that it feels like you aren't playing a fantasy game whenever you hear it. The reason the trans character in Inquisition works is because you don't need the word "transgender" to get across how a magical fantasy world would refer to a trans person. Like, imagine if in Elder Scrolls they referred to Redguards as "Black people." It would be so massively jarring.
This!
The writing in Inquisition was bad, too. And DA II was 80% finished. Which is funny, because that's how much of the game I like. That last act is awful and doesn't make sense. Dragon Age Origins also has a lot of story issues.
What i find interesting is that in Inquisition, Iron Bull, Dorian, and Krem never flaunt their sexuality. They very briefly mention it only when asked, and then proceed to be characters with various other characteristics. It's even fully possible to never even learn that they're a bisexual, gay, and trans person respectively if the player never delves deep enough into them with dialogue or doesn't put in the right party member compositions that would bring up a few banter topics about it.
@@joshuakim5240 Exactly, and even Sera has a line when she's hit on by a male Inqusitor "I appreciate the sentiment, but there's a problem, you and me have too much in common. You see, we both like girls." Pharaphased slightly, because I don't quite remeberber the dialogue, but it's short, sweet and simple. None if this "I'm non-binary" bullcrap that Taash farts out.
This, the "woke" stuff is distracting and feels incredibly out of place, but not even taking that into consideration, the dialog and writing is just terrible.
"I just made the dialogue painful with my freaking MIND!"
"I make dialogue painful with my mind. That's what I do know" - Bioware lead writer.
@@antonkirilenko3116 His name is Patrick, btw. Don't use his stupid new name.
Uh huh I guess that’s just something I do now
“Whoa! Painful dialogue! That just happened!”
Do you have a golden bracelet?
Patrick Weeks wrote Taash. In fact, he is credited as the Lead Writer for this game.
So, now you know who is responsible.
For all of it. Every bit of writing done in this game. Every single word. Went through him.
I think it might be time to single these people out. Call them by their names. Hold them responsible.
Bioware sucks shit. Yes. It's not the same studio anymore. But Bioware is still just a studio. It's just a name.
People like Patrick Weeks are the ones behind it now. And if we don't hold them accountable *specifically* then they'll just keep getting a pass. It's easy to ignore stuff like, "Bioware sucks."
But when your name is the one being thrown around for these failures, that's a different story.
Patrick Weeks. Mark that name. I know I will.
It’s sad because Trick Weekes has done decent writing for DA before, particularly with the Masked Empire in the lead up to Inquisition. Fantastic book, but it seems that his ideological shift seems to have deteriorated his writing capabilities
I think you can boil this game down to 3 words, childish, immature and infantalized
D E I
It seems like the target audience are all way too young to buy an MA game.
Let me try:
Woke equals broke
Ironically while it's pretending to be the total opposite
what's frustrating is when you point that out the people who eat this stuff up say something like "do you hate respect and kindness" or some claptrap
There is a concept art book for Veilguard that has a preview of 60 pages on Google Books. The original concepts were MILES and I mean MILES better. Here’s a few things they cut (there is so much more):
- The base of operations being a ship, with a war room, that could be mobile and travel to different locations
- Divine Victoria sending out fleets of warships to hunt for Solas
- Working directly for the inquisitor
- Solas becoming essentially worshipped as a mythical figure from the past
- Dorian, Isabella and Morrigan as advisors
- Solas having a more ruthless, right hand to help him with his plan, named Reva
- having to fight the elves who joined with Solas at the end of DAI (which is literally never mentioned again)
- A high stakes heist mission in Minrathous
- Solas summoning a Titan from the Fade
- Solas making himself tranquil to bind the Veil
- The player’s patchwork party not getting along at first
It also looks like some of the darker lore elements were shown in the art, like Ghilanain walking a bunch of Qunari on a leash. Slaves were everywhere in the pictures of minrathous, wearing collars.
There’s a lot more, I’d urge you to look it up because I found it so interesting how much they wasted its potential. My personal opinion is we should have continued to play as the Inquisitor, since the end of Tresspasser made it seem like their story would continue.
I ended up skipping all the companion cutscenes near the end just cause I needed to see how it ended for Solavellan lmao.
A high stakes heist mission? If we would've gotten caught would it have been Fort Drakon rescue mission part 2?
We can only dream
@@emPIEror Ikr, the heist would have been to a black market auction in Tevinter where the red lyrium idol would have been auctioned off, but Solas and his team would have ambushed you. I feel like that would have been such a stronger opening to the game...
100% agree that the inquisitor should've been the protagonist of Dreadwolf or at the very least the leader/commander of the team. Just give them like a mechanical arm or something.
Wow reading this makes me soooo sad for what could have been. Damn shame the entire og inquisition team left, and the only people they hired to work on this game were trans gender queermancers.
@@jakeryan2805 You can critique the game without being hateful btw
Solas' story should have played out in Inquisition. Forcing some new MC that has no history with him to handle his big arc is criminal.
It is because this game supposed to be an dlc for Inquisition (dread wolf) that happens right after the main story with the same cast. They just repurposed the story to make it into a new separate game
Those Taash Emmrich scenes made me so angry. You would think that, as a non-binary person who angrily defends their right to be called "they," Taash would respect when someone says, "Hey, I don't like that name you're calling me, can you call me this instead?" Instead, they double down and act like a stubborn, petulant child. Imagine if this game was allowed to have balls and Emmrich called Taash a "she" when they call him "death mage?"
Hell yes
"Well alright, I'm a death mage, and you, I suppose, are a woman?" Would hit so hard daaaamn, Its my head canon now)
@@LudwigXVII. That would have instantly cemented Emmrich as a beyond-Vivienne tier savage. Alas, he's a safe cartoon Disney man.
worst is just later in that clip Taash goes to call Emmrich a "skullfucker", no joke.
Imagine calling someone such derogatory terms and expecting everyone to respect you.
@@Luminoxie The more I learn about this game, the angrier I get as a fan of fantasy RPGs and stories...
I seriously hate how they made the Quinari look. I don't understand why they ruined the design so thoroughly
Soy Tieflings.
Its part of the 'representation' myth, the originals looked to unhuman for them to handle. To many of these people in higher up creative positions think that if something isn't 98% human then people can't relate.
Its an absolutely idiotic thought, always has been, but it has been around for over a decade.
I would dare bet money that Taash alone was the reason, can't have your self insert be a literal demon.
Because the original design just wouldn't work with character customization.
@@frostreaper1607 They looked dogshit in Inquisition too tbf, more or less the same look as they have in Veilguard. In Dragon Age Origins they were just tall humans, so also kinda bad. The horns and demonic features weren't retconned in until Dragon Age 2, which imo is the only game in the series where they've looked good. And iirc you only saw males in 2.
There was concept art for females in DA2, but they just looked like muscular human females with blueish skin and horns. So really, a good female Qunari design has never existed.
The modern lefties keep boiling everything down. Every concept, character, world, design, morality, language, themes etc. All must be sludge. They've been doing it for years.
Here's a hot take: it's politics is the least of it's problems.
I will join you in this take. You can remove Traash completely and the game will still remain a beyond mediocre DA entry.
100%
Some people are going to always grift these sorts of things but its sad that we always have to fight a “culture war” every time we want to criticize art.
I'm so glad someone finally said it. This is so much more damning to the LGBTQ community than people realize. It's like all the good progress we've made up until now is being undermined, and it's nothing but infuriating. We need to stop being happy with just being included and fighting to be rightfully represented as people.
i mean outside of actual bigots this is the entire reason the anti woke crowd exists. notice the very large absence of criticism about claire from cyberpunk or krem from inquisition.
Its almost like we're actually completely fine with inclusion its handled with nuance and not used by the devs to stand on a soapbox and preach about how virtuous they are. diversity as its systemically pushed by modern AAA devs is just an unfortunate but truthful metric to gauge the games writing by. The more they parade how inclusive they are around, the more i can tell how terrible the writing will be.
modern woke games are either corporate tokenism by millionaire execs that just have boxes to tick in their games, or ideologically possesed devs who want to use the aforementioned soapbox, and just treat diverse peoples as champions for their cause instead of normal characters. considering taash is probably just a self insert of weekes, it looks like the latter in this case.
This is the type of bold and cold review we need back in gaming thank you for making this video you are amazing at it
I may have had a few strong feelings, lol
@Sophnar0747 u platinum this trash, u have full rights to unload lol
@@Sophnar0747 i think you'd enjoy the youtuber, nuhre's videos on failguard. she spicily trashes on the game in such a satisfying way. it's honestly therapeutic seeing people not care to be cuddly wholesome chungus when they review things.
@Sophnar0747 I will tell you honestly - I don't usually experience trans people making content that's made logically and interestingly. Having watched the whole video, i don't just respect you - i *feel* you. Modern games being WASTE of time and money, giving you nothing in return. No emotion, no fulfillment, no sense of achieving anything. I yearn for innovation and creativity; writing done by people more literate than a tiktok bot.
Thank you for being the person that makes me warm up to lgbt community in gaming in normal, organic way - via interaction.
And in return, i'd like to clean your palate with something i discovered - try the games made by studio Project Moon. They are challenging, but rewarding, and written in human, relatable way, but a pleasant, mature language and about unpleasant, mature things. If i recall Library of Ruina is on sale atm.
@@Sophnar0747 Reminds me of when TotalBiscuit used to go off about terrible games and practices, just with a bit less tact than him.
Still your reviews are a breath of fresh air, need more.
I know one trans person, and she was always fascinated with trans representation done by BioWare in the shape of the Asari race from Mass Effect franchise. She could talk for hours about Asari, the biology of their species, the way they breed by effectively becoming one person for a short amount of time, their religion and so on.
It's a shame the same studio could fall so low. I hope the inevitable backlash won't discourage the writers from touching the subject at all, and instead they'll be reminded by past examples that subtlety and metaphores could get them really far and make the subject understandable to people to whom otherwise it would be completely alien (like me).
Idk how the fuck the asari count as trans representation, there's nothing trans about them. At all. It's queer representation at best, but even then Asari perfectly conform to what is the default for their kind, which... isn't queer at all. It's perfectly conformist.
Know what was real character development? A smarmy templar that you learned uses comedy and misdirection to hide a very sad upbringing, ultimately culminating in a true heir to an embattled throne sacrificing his life so he can mean something to a lost friend.
the thing i hate about all of this is that this costs people jobs, programmers, artists, audio engineers, janitors etc. just because some writers and studio heads refuse to learn from the last failed game. how did the saints row reboot come out, fail because of its new direction and then kill its studio only for a bunch of other studios to go "nothing to learn from this".
It's alot like G4 and Firewalk Studios, the people involved simply turned out to be as awful as the people that recommend them.
The programmers etc are all sharing the same ideology so i am not sorry for them. Those with different ideas have been fired or left on their own long ago because of the toxic enviroment inside the studio.
@@emanueleioria7523 Don't be ridiculous. The ground-floor technical people share the 'put food on the table' philosophy. It's really hard in the general IT job market currently, and it's always been hard in gamedev specifically, and now it's even harder. Can't fault anyone who clings to their job no matter what. Nobody has enough money to quit for the reasons of 'my supervisor's manager's boss has pronouns'.
@rateater1857 your opinion could have been true at the beginning but the game has been in development for 8-10 years and after they got a good salary for 8 years to deliver a shitty product they deserve to lose the job. They earned enough to start their own indie studio now, we aren't talking about people working for minimum wage
@@emanueleioria7523the only ones even somewhat undeserving are those who came in during the last year. But everyone else had years of work, which is longer then most making well above decent wages
The biggest offence was the fact its almost like they are fetishising trans people and struggles. The fact you can have top scars just serves the developers making it and fetishises it. Also making it so I can't have a big dumpy or breasts above b cup is silly
This is one of my personal peeves. I was amazed at the lack of body modifications overall, but yeah, breast removal seems to be a major trade in the fantasy setting?
The funniest thing is, if you think about it. A character like Anders, deeply flawed, tormented by his and others fate. Doing radical change leading into catastrophe. And well then you have Taash or the Coffee Man...., what a shame. Trespasser was such a good ending to Inquisition. Only for this. Wasted Potential, that's all I can think of now... I loved that Dragon age was always very inclusive, but still keeping the boundaries of living in a believable/authentic medieval fantasy world. It was unique, until now.
Anders is one of my favourite characters and my favourite, horrifically tragic romance. Now that I know his story will never continue (or it will continue in this blighted defilement), I think I might just put him out of his misery in future playthroughs.
The best summary of Veilguards crap dialogue I've heard so far is: "This games writing feels like HR is in the room"
Don't forget they had to pull writers from the Mass Effect team to rewrite the majority of the script cuz they said the original script was so cringe.
God skillup is such a good reviewer
The “pulling a bharve” bs speech was such a mask off moment for the creators
They’re full on saying “apologizing like an adult for minor or accidental inconvenience/slights to me isn’t enough. I want you to SWEAT and SUFFER for it. Only then will I deign you with my mercy and forgiveness.”
Imagine if that was said to them in reverse, Twitter would break
It actually fits the theme of the game in a weird way. "It's not enough to make a nonbinary character in the game and have it there as a fact. No. You gotta suffer through an entire storyline of their struggle with terrible dialogue and positive supportive reactions to their bullshit, only then will you be deemed tolerant and accepting to nonbinary people"
The aqun-athlok vs nonbinary convo sounds even more asinine when you realize that that's literally the equivalent of a transgender person irl forcing everyone to use an entirely made up alien word when referring to transgender people, instead of just using the preexisting word that's already a part of the language they speak.
"I am bleegblorp."
"What is that?"
"It means I don't identify as the gender assigned to me at birth."
"So you mean you're transgender?"
"WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME??!?"
I simply cannot fathom how the writers even came up with this and thought it was "good representation".
This reminds me of my go to: what is a woman? 2nd guy- a woman is a person who says they're a woman. How its like what is a ghyjy? A ghyjy is someone who identifies as a ghyjy.
31:03 The irony of Taash wanting to be referred to a certain way yet doesn't respect other people's wishes in the same way, yet the writers would almost certainly call us some variant of phobic for not liking them is... frustrating, to say the least.
It's pretty accurate, at least. The woke tend to be the rudest, most disrespectful, bigoted people in society.
That example about Krem from DA:I is super interesting. Trans, but... Not enough? Not explicit enough? Not modern enough? Interesting to compare, trans person woven into fantasy story vs modern language painted over the world building. One certainly feels more preachy than the other
Tokenism! That's the word, I should have kept watching before I typed
Shoehorned into a setting where gender change spells probably exist, where even the wealthy have enough to worry about that being born in "the wrong body" wouldn't happen and associating with a culture that would brain-wipe her the second it found out.
Even if they didn't want to include a character from a previous game - let's say they didn't include Krem as a companion character because it would be too messy and complex to involve The Chargers - they still had Maevaris Tilani, another great trans character who could have been a great companion? She was RIGHT THERE. And Neve sucks, so it's not like it would be a difficult replacement? MAEVARIS WAS RIGHT. THERE.
I was shocked when you brought up some trans criticizing the previous trans character because they used a Qunari word to make it fit the world. How is that ANY different from native americans being "two spirit"? NOT EVERY CULTURE IN THE UNIVERSE LIVES BY MODERN AMERICAN VERNACULAR. God these people are sickening.
I understand what you're trying to say, but "two-spirit" really has nothing to do with any Native American tradition beyond the most macro-level thematic similarity. It was made up within the last fifty years for Canadian progressives to pretend they care about Native Americans, which is also why it's mostly just Canadians who ever actually say it.
Yeah, but they want to write about their "struggle" as a first world person who is "different". They don't want a good story or to address a real world issue within a game.
its never enough.
Im a lesbian and that word doesnt belong in fantasy media since it comes from historical earth context, it would make no sense in a fictional fantasy world so I dont want or expect to see it. The elf girl in DAI just stating she's only interested in women was a great way to get the point across without breaking immersion.
2 spirit was invented in the 1990s lmao
Sophia, I want to thank you for giving us your honest opinion. I appreciate the time and effort it took you to play this game and review it.
Your name is how I feel right now, burnout. lol.
Addressing surgery scars:
Not one single trans person on the face of the Earth wants surgery scars. Not a single human who is getting surgery to augment themselves or change the way they look on purpose wants the scars.
They want the results They don't want the scars. Not one single person.
The fact that they included surgery scars means that they did not consult a trans person or if they did they didn't listen to them.
This is people trying to cash in on morality points and wielding a hammer to do so. Because they made the non-binary character insufferable and just completely revolting to everyone on every side, they have done such considerable damage to the discussions around inclusivity that it has to be on purpose.
I really hope bioware goes out of business before they can release Mass Effect and do even more damage under the false pretense of good intentions.
I know there's so many things you could focus on but why the hell would people in a medieval fantasy setting where dragons are a constant threat and can level cities be talking about how "hecking cool and awesome" they are? They'd be scared to death of them. Liking dragons is a modern thing because people know they're not real and they like the stories about them but if there was a big fucker around threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands every day, that culture would not have developed. People would see them as pests or huge threats.
Because god forbid you have immersive writing anymore the characters have to be quirky
Heck even iron bull praised dragons but stills says that they should be hunted down because they are dangerous
They would see them as The Shepard did in Fire & Blood. And he was correct.
Not to mention the first game in the series is basically about the civilizational collapse caused by fears about a "blight". In other words most of the characters in that game don't even know that there is a dragon, they just think there _might_ be one, and that's enough to completely fuck an entire nation. If anything, dragons as they were originally presented in Dragon Age are worse than usual in fantasy. A powerful enough one, corrupted by darkspawn, is a potential apocalyptic event.
@@yewtewbstew547 add that to the fact that the Archdemons choose to (for some reason) take the forms of Dragons, further tarnishing the image Dragons have in this world.
or worshiping them as a deities
2/10, was angry just being in the same room as Soph playing it, would not do again, do not recommend
A real person wrote these lines and someone was like “Yeah players are gonna love this” “This game is gonna bring our studio out of the dirt”.
The writers come across as having never truly suffered in life. To so flippantly focus on and obsess over sex is insulting to me as someone who has faced sexual challenges due to mental and physical health issues. Sex is also something that (I think) healthy people tie to the heart, and don’t just treat it casually. Taash is an unlikeable narcissistic predator. And how would a medieval society know about the term “binary” or the psychology of trans identities? I’m a trans woman myself and this game is awful. No heart, no soul, no humanity. 😢
I've seen a lot of people try to justify the use of modern language in these types of settings by claiming that them being fantasy means they aren't medieval, but that always seems disingenuous to me. You only need to look at these games for five seconds to see that they're clearly inspired by historical European culture, and yes, mostly medieval/renaissance with all the armored knights and castles.
Some "anachronism" is fine, like I don't think anyone really had much of a problem with the dwarves in Dragon Age always having North American accents. And obviously nobody in medieval Europe would actually have spoken like any of the NPCs did, even in Dragon Age Origins. But clearly there's a balance to it, where suspension of disbelief is either made or broken. When you start bringing in relatively new words and phrases that people still aren't accustomed (or even willing, potentially) to use in 2024, and put those in a game with this type of setting, it's just jarring.
Character struggles in Baldur's Gate 3: My god, who was also my lover rejected me for dealing with some forbidden magic, that caused me to have time bomb in my chest
Character struggles in DA: Failguard: My mommy doesn't love me because I don't feel like a woman.
I have no problem with trans-identities in fantasy games, but I object to them just adopting our socio-cultural understanding of trans identities. It's ironic that the writers, who seem to see trans-identities as an immutable reality, can't conceive of them beyond the rigid modern Western view of gender.
One of the fundamental beliefs behind our understanding of trans-identities is that gender is, at least to some degree, a social construct, and therefore people should be free to define themselves in the manner that they are most comfortable with, that aligns with their internal understanding of themselves. However, our language still limits how and what we can define and how we understand ourselves. Plenty of cultures throughout history perceived gender in ways that were radically different from the gender binary, yet were also radically different from how we perceive gender today.
In that way, I think fantasy can play with gender a lot, especially in ways that depart from modern concepts like transgender and non-binary, and yet Veilguard insists on reinforcing these concepts despite trying to critique the limitations of the traditional Western understanding of gender.
Veilguard could easily create its own unique and multifaceted understandings of gender which offer insight into the world, cultures, and philosophies of Dragon Age, but instead it just reinforces something that feels so foreign to it. That's not trans representation to me, it's just bad fantasy writing.
This, hypersexual content is so odd when it takes a very long time to even bring it up as a joke with actual people in actual job environments.
youve come to the heart of what woke games actually are. Im not trying to say there arent bigots in the anti woke crowd, but most of us just see it as soulless corporate box checking or ideologically possessed insane devs. Nobody gives a damn about claire from cyberpunk or krem from inquisition being trans, because those characters are well written, and arent just token characters that the dev uses as a soapbox to preach to gamers about how morally good they are. Hell claire has a lot of the cyberpunk community with split opnions on her, and not any those opinions are because of claire being a trans lady.
Taash's entire questline was basically just preaching. Isabella doing pushups as some sort of weird humiliation ritual and Taash refusing to see the irony in her calling Emmerich a death mage is just the strawberry on top of the closeted bigotry that is the modern woke game.
The part that really stood out to me was how Taash got triggered when her mom was politely confused, and then got triggered again when her mom tried to understand. Then asking why her mom is never impressed as if coming out out as non-binary would impress her. It's so narratively jumbled all over the place, and I don't think that Taash even knows how fortunate she is to have such a sensible mother. Because realistically in a medieval setting, Taash's mom would've likely beaten her ass for speaking such "blasphemy."
So what you're saying is, the mentally ill people who weren't hired on merit don't know what they are doing? CRAZY! On a side note, Taash would never have been "non binary" in Dragon Age at all. Non-binary is a completely modern idea that has never existed anywhere else in human history, let alone the FANTASY world of Thedas. I challenge any Dragon Age fan to show me an example in the lore prior to Veilguard where that word has ever been used a single time. It's being used to virtue signal, not make the story better, and that's everything wrong with modern writing in the west. Activists are being hired to make games instead of gamers and until this changes, nothing will.
Not to mention lore wise Quanari do not have relationships with their mothers. They are brought up by teachers in group homes essentially to prepare them for their future very rigid roles within the qun. Taash's whole storyline retcons a ton of very interesting and dark details about quanari culture which include forced eugenics and gender roles. No doubt this was done away with because the lore was too problematic for their kiddie Disney DA vision
@@moony2shoes It's so weird, because it'd be so easy to make lore-compliant, namely, Taash's mother getting pregnant outside the breeding program for whatever reason, and wanting to keep the baby, rather than give it up to the collective teachers, and thus abandoning the Qun while pregnant. There, it's lore-compliant now. But yes, the writers don't want to touch Qun as was written before, for many reasons. Marshmallow, soft, friendly worldbuilding for one, and also some activists on Twitter are making massive reaches calling Qunari lore islamophobic, somehow 🤣
To me the funniest part is when Taash gets triggered for not being called they/them, but insists on calling that necromancer character a "death mage" after his repeated requests to not do that. Like she expects everyone to respect her identity but has no respect at all for the identity of others. Imagine someone telling her "but you are a woman".
Why are we even having a sit down formal dinner with someone's mother to discuss such things in a game where the world is in danger of ending? If the nukes come down, I am not going to sit down with anyone's mother to discuss pronouns. Fucking game.
I verbally said “shut uuup” out loud during Taash’s recruitment question and I’ve never done that to any game ever. And THEN the tokenism started. I didn’t even take her out on quests unless she was required so seeing some of the banter in this video was painful
Disneyfied romantasy sums it up quite nicely. The issue, really, as with many games these days, is that the devs completely misjudge the target audience. If you were 18 when you played Origins fifteen years ago, you're now thirty-two while I'd say most are probably closer to their forties. And yet they made a game that might, on a good day, appeal to a section of fourteen year-olds.
There is a population of late teens-early 20s tumblr kids who want their character to be an exact Mary Sue-ified version of them and legitimately think the romances should take precedence over the whole “world in danger” plot, and rant and rave at the devs if anything gets in the way of their precious romance fanfic. I suspect BioWare listens to those people far, far too much.
I was 13 when Origins came out, and am playing Veilguard on what might legitimately be on my only DNF playthrough in the entire series at 28. Multiple times did I have to go and double check that this was a rated M game because even as what I suspect is a younger member of the median audience, I feel absolutely fucking *baffled* that this is what we waited a decade for. There's no grit, no respect for the player or the setting, and it's jarringly modern. Rook and co being full of quippy, snarky one-liners and comic relief gets grating after a few hours because almost none of the game actually warrants the levity everyone seems to have. Like fuck, BioWare, is the entire southern continent blighted and falling into chaos or is it safe enough to have a picnic? Are there two archdemons wreaking havoc or do my companions have time to start a book club and go grocery shopping? The tone is wildly inconsistent and multiple times I've just sat there, staring at my screen, wondering why I'm even playing since I'm not having fun.
Damn, you just made me realise that this game is written by people who think liking coffee is a personality trait.
No, it's more than just that, it's something to base an entire character around. It's so shallow.
I doubt the writers have any life experience or have read any good fiction in their entire lives.
One of the writers was Laura Kate "Smash Bros. Has a Disability Slur Because I Don't Understand How Accents Work" Dale. So, yeah.
@@shemhazaithewhisperer2061 reminds me of the Alanah Pierce and the whole "situational disability" bullshit
@@shemhazaithewhisperer2061 She wasn't a writer. She's a consultant for the devs.
@@CyrusLagom Silly me, I should have known Dale can't even write on the level of Veilguard.
If you think Bioware is dying, remember they made Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect in their prime. What were you people expecting? Didn't Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem give you ample amounts of red flags?
And origins...
The SWTOR storyline was amazing as well. The first game that is.
The signs were there even in Dragon Age 3.
@@NopeNaw u mean dragon age 2
Andromeda is actually more enjoyable than Veilguard by far
May this goddamn review bring us together
Ayyy, good to see you here, man!
It won't cos sn does not accept the t ruins everything. And the enby character was spot on 😂
It's really refreshing to see a review from a trans person who is calling out the game for It's glaring flaws and not just singing It's praises for pushing a message in an awkward and poorly written way.
The game is simply bad, and I don't want to be labelled a bigot for it.
I have dated a fully transitioned trans woman. I knew she was born male, so did she. Neither of us were delusional and dishonest about it, so we would discuss it as adults, but then move on with the relationship. I never had to pander to her, but she didn't want that. I know who she WAS, but can accept her for who she IS now.
Two rational adults in a relationship.
The relationship didn't work out, but nothing to do with gender, we started arguing about money. Sometimes things just don't work out, and we're still friends.
Edit: subbed.
@@Northern_Silverbird The average trans person just wants to live a regular boring life in peace. They even say that trans people come out of the closet just so that they could go into a different closet, and it's not too inaccurate. Of course it's not really an option when you end up lesbian or gay, but even then advertising your transness irl is by far not the norm. It's quite simply a lot safer to keep it to yourself as much as possible.
It's easy to see how people came to the conclusion that Taash is a self insert for the self proclaimed "Queerosexual Gendermancer" game directer because
1. You cannot disagree with Taash, you _have_ to support all of Taash's character flaws. This is probably because the director has these same flaws, but is veryd efensive about it and needed validation.
2. Qunari are the most unique and non-human design. People who are so flashy and showoffish about themselves, tend to heavily gravitate toward these type of characters in games, Qunari, Teifling, those creepy little guy from final fantasy online, whichever character race is the most special and unique.
3. Taash has a very modern temperment and vernacular, probably speaks and treats people pretty similar to how the director does.
Taash is so out of place and just screams of a modern young person desperately trying to stand out and seek validation for their shortcomings.
Lack of negative interaction options with Taash is the game equivalent of disabled replies on an obnoxious tweet, with only the option to leave likes.
She's the dollar tree version of Karlach, with 0% of the energy.
Even to make such a comparison pains me greatly.
Or Charm. Or Tragedy... Worse in just about every way.
@@Kylesico912x Yea compare identity crisis Trash to Karlach who was sold into slavery to fight for demons in hell only to somehow get out back to her old world - and that is before you even meet her...
I remember the pre-release cope. they actually thought taash could compare to karlach
Don’t compare our golden retriever vibes soldier girl with the hypocritical dumbsterfire disrespectful of everyone and anyone in her life while demanding pronouns
Damn. That whole section on Modernism needs to be clipped and shared across social media. It perfectly sums up the issue of Representation in media these days. There's so much of it that feels ham-fisted and performative that it ends up making the whole idea of diversity into something toxic. Not to mention it has now caused the public to just lambast anything that features non-white or non-hetero characters as being DEI trash or SBI garbage to where even positive examples (as few and far between as they are) are lumped in with awful propaganda like this game.
Breaks my heart to know that characters like Dion from FFXVI are lumped in with shit-tier characters like T(r)aash
Only the Extremist, I think regular gamers can separate a guy who happens to be gay versus someone who’s just there to be gay, problem with that extremist faction is that everyone who disagrees with this kind of thing get lumped in with them and the more they’re proven right the more people join it’ll take a while before we can go back to how it was before a this bs
@@jellybeans2707you have far more faith in gamers as a whole than I do. I sometimes feel like a crazy person because I'm pro-Trump and anti-DEI but I seem to be one of the minority in that grouping that understands the nuances you, me, and folks like Sophia have highlighted.
It alwo doesn't help that there's a bunch of shills, sell-outs and "fans" who will praise blindly praise woke media before its release and then will scream "it only failed because of >insert buzzword here
@@lordkrauser That's what I hate about a lot of the modern discourse. The complete lack of nuance on some subjects that REALLY require nuance.
There absolutely needs to be nuance @@jellybeans2707
There's a lesbian NPC in hogwarts legacy.
Most of the origin characters in BG3 would probably come under the LGBT umbrella, as they can be romanced no matter what form your Tav is in. And Halsin is just... Halsin.
There's gay and lesbian NPCs too.
And none of that felt hamfisted because sometimes it was just an offhand comment about having a spouse referred to as her/him and you can out the rest together yourself. Much more natural language and the relevant bits come up in conversation.
I'd say I'm more left wing but there's a way to do DEI properly - naturally and without shoving it into people's faces.
If a woman NPC has some quest for you and happens to have a wife - cool if her wife comes up into conversation. But otherwise it's not relevant.
Arguably it's much much easier to portray gay or lesbian relationships in a game naturally.
But surely if they really wanted a trans character... Maybe a natural way to do it wouldn't be all these conversations about it. Maybe just a questline with and NPC who happens to be trans. And maaaaybe after each visit with them checking in between missions in that quest line, maybe their appearance or dress changes or maybe their style stays the same but they're trying to modulate their voice a little bit. But it doesn't necessarily have to come up in conversation until your own character asks as the whole point of the interactions would be ... The questline. Traits like these are cool for adding backstory and personality. But they don't define characterisation.
This even applies to Halsin.
Anyone telling you to respect their ways but doesn't respect yours, deserves no respect at all.
The irony of Traash saying, "You are a death mage."
I would have loved Emrick if he gave a comeback like, "And you are a woman." 🤣
But no no, everyone gotta coddle Traash. Worst character in Dragon Age history.
That was really funny. She can "bully" others because of who they are. You have to do push-ups if you use the wrong pronouns for her though
I might be wrong but I think they were trying to make some commentary on if the roles were reversed and the misgendering/misrepresentation was from the other side, lol😂😂😂
Taash's real life equivalents are the reason why social views of her types have gone back by a century.
Exactly. The absolute entitlement/irony of it all. "Respect my pronouns but I don't have to respect your wishes to be called something else".
I would love for her to meet Sten and for him to correct their behavior.
Absurd how a game so obsessed with representation only manages to make the characters extreme stereotypes.
Rook is just random friendly hero.
Harding is a whimsical gnome dwarf
Assassin Spaniard Guy is obsessed with coffee
Tash is emotionally stunted and self absorbed
Ballara is an overly apologetic asian woman
The necromancer is a college professor style intellectual
And I guess Davrin is the one black guy with a cute pet most people don't care about.
coffee lovers, emotionally stunted narcissists, overly apologetic service industry types, college professors, lolsorandom whimsical quirky people...
these are the only kinds of people that progressive writers have experience interacting with.
Krem is a great example of how to write a trans/non-binary character without ruining the worldbuilding in your FANTASY world. Traash is how you do the opposite.
I hope that the grievance-mongers are happy now, because using modern terminology in a fantasy game is exactly what right-wingers will point to when they say that they don't want politics in their video games. The writing in general is relentlessly performative, preachy ass bullshit. And when it isn't being preachy, it is the worst example of the same goofy quip-laden millennial writing that doomed Forspoken. I'm starting to understand why every veteran at Bioware left.
Here lies Dragon Age: Veilguard, it was so stunning and brave. I'll keep my shovel on hand to bury Mass Effect next to it.
Veilguard isn't a return to form when it is a repeat, Veilguard is to Bioware what Saints Row Reboot was to Volition.
ah fuck now I'm even more depressed. I completely forgot the reboot existed...
It’s a poor god of war 2018 dupe with the dragon age name slapped on it
@@aerisdrake I saw a youtuber claiming its basically Elden Ring. Some guys are coping hard.
Exactly.
Yeah, and Volition got shut down. I was expecting Bioware to be shut down after Anthem but it hasn't happened. I wonder if it'll happen now.
Doom 2016 was a return to form
Space Marine 2 was a return to form
DAV is a painfully modern game in every way that's obnoxious and terrible, and T(r)aash is the peak of that.
I agree with the sentiment but sm2 wasn't a return to form for focus interactive, they didn't need to "return" to what they were.
Thank god for the indie scene. Those devs are holding the gaming industry on their shoulders.
@@Gaz4113 At this point, SM2 is a return to what games used to be. Just games, made for fun and for profit to the people that made them. A game that could've come out 2 decades ago and it would've been an above average action game. Now it's a "return to form" for gaming in general.
Hence why I said that....and to take the piss from disingenuous journos.
@@ichigokage Bro, I just learned there is a game called G-Rebels coming out in 2025 which is a spiritual successor to G-police. G-POLICE!!! Indie gaming is SO good right now.
What do you mean sm2 was a return to form? Its the second game in the franchise
There was no form to return to
The most annoying thing is that… I don’t buy that these are warriors in a fantasy world. They talk like 19-year old American liberal arts students. I’m supposed to believe they fight insane monsters?
They owe us a couple of million barvs for that atrocity they created XD
Hey, I bought the deluxe edition. I got a pack of Tampons to shove up my a$$, I new Webster dictionary with all new pronouns, a large black magic marker to draw breast removal scars on my chest and a self help kit to cut off my junk. Very modern day and very inclusive! Don't you think?
Yeah they need to do barvs for years, and let some GOOD devs work on Mass Effect.
"Excuse me, that's Barf." - Lonestar's friend
My God, Veilguard gets worse with every bit of it I see. Part of the issue with Dragon Age as a franchise is that the only one that wanted to be an RPG was Origins. DA2 tried to be ME2, DAI wanted to be Skyrim, and DAV is God of War 2018. It's like Bioware is *ashamed* of Origins somehow.
A lot of it is AAA is expensive and investors aren't willing to go back to the niche that is CRPG games. Investors want to see stock lines go up. So expensive games need to be made safe and cater to the masses.
Writing a complex story and having slow, tactical gameplay like Origins does none of this. Which is ironic as CRPG's is what Made Bioware the company it was. BG1-2, Jade Empire, KOTOR. Hell Origins was a evolution/love letter to Bioware's older games. It was a CRPG which used a third person perspective.
In the capitalistic hellscape we've found ourselves in making a profit isn't good enough. Investors want all the profit. So games (or hell, media in general now) needs to cater to the lowest denominator so everyone can be willing to buy. What we are seeing is pushback to this type of media. Marvel/Disney movies/shows are not doing as well as they hoped lately. Disney type games like Veilguard are facing criticism for the poor writing.
Hopefully this means course correction. But this is being optimistic, I predict AAA games with continue to have basic games released on franchise name only which will do mediocre or bad until the franchise dies. If you want to find good stories I'd recommend looking at Indie titles.
"I'm non-binary" is a phrase that should never be in a fantasy world. Where did "they" learn that word and concept? In the medieval gender studies course THEY took?
And you know what's even worse about Lucien ?
He's actually a racist caricature of an Italian.
He loves pasta, he drinks coffee, he lives in Treviso ( which is an actual city in Italy), which looks exactly like Venice, and has an Italian surname.
He speaks with a Spanish accents cause that's basically the same right??
Now,I'm Italian, born and raised in Italy, and idc, I think it's a bit cringe but whatever I'm not offended.
What really bothers me is that for a game that REALLY shoves it's inclusively down it's throat, they're quite quick to make the Italian inspired character very stereotyped
I'm Italian too, but from North America - I notice these things too xD
Funny how the double-standards work, isn't it?
The same people who say racism is wrong are the ones who are the most stereotyping
@@midnightcoffee6463 At least you get a bad Italian accent. Simpsons had a episode with a Finnish Power plant recently and they did not get anyone to do even a bad accent, it is the guy who voices Kent Brockman doing a bad Swedish accent with a hint of German. Which also affects a throwaway joke at the end where they discover there are other Scandinavians playing Finns, because anyone who knows what a Finn sounds like knows the language is completely different and so is the accent.
What's racist about that?
@@gathorall9136 haha most americans can't even get Brit accent remotely correct.. let alone anything else..
It’s hardly a surprise that the people who claim to be the most virtuous are actually the most bigoted.
Krem was my first introduction to how CRAZY the inclusionists are. I loved Krem. I loved that he didn't come at you with a bunch of attitude about being trans. If you didn't spend time talking to him, you'd never have known, but he does open up if you take time with him. But then the inclusivity crowd bitched and moaned BECAUSE he was passing. Nevermind that he was literally the first trans character I've ever seen in a major video game, and he was an interesting character whose past I was genuinely intrigued to learn about. Guess deep characters and compelling writing aren't good enough if you're the kind of person who demands genuflection to your cause.
"I'm an expert assasseeeen...! And anyone who comes after me winds up dead...! AND ALSO I WANT MY CAFFEE...!"
New D&D one shot character voice, thanks.
No problemo. 😅
The "expert assassin" missed. Twice.
Such a shame about DA:TV. I'm not even a hater of modern shit per se, I don't like it, I hate the marshmallow, safe, gelded worlds of modern entertainment, but I'm the first to say 'not everything is for me, and that's okay'. Thing is though, Dragon Age *used to* be for me. Origins was a game of my childhood, and the trend of incredibly irreverent handling of old games, and shitting on people who loved, and still love, the original versions is deeply hurtful to me.
Same story with V:TM Bloodlines 2. The first Bloodlines is so beloved by its fans, they receive community patches 20 years later. But not by the corporate owners of the IP. They only care about - honestly, what do they even care about? They never cared about art, but now I feel like they don't even care about 'the message' anymore, or money, or their shareholders, or literally anything human. Empty ghouls.
they care about HoI4 (unironically)
@@krisradowski well that and space genocides of stellaris.
It is both bizarre and concerning to hear Sophia explaining how players want to be rewarded and feel engaged, because the way she explains it is EXTREMELY similar to the way I heard an instructor explain absolutely BASIC principles of game design in an introductory class I attended over a decade ago, and he was recounting lessons he'd learned decades prior.
Meaning that the people involved in this mess dont even understand the most basic design principles of their industry.
Just... Wild.
20:59 Oh for the love of... God forbid a good writer skill is to use different terms that are context appropriate in a story for better immersion.
How... incompetent do you have to be as a writer to even consider that MODERN words such as "trans" or "non binary" could possibly fit in a fantasy medieval world where such terms are none existent. Why do you think Dorian in Inquisition used "I prefer the company of men" instead of flat out say "I am gay dad! Deal with it!" BECAUSE THE LATTER SOUNDS TOO MODERN FOR THE CONTEXT! IT BREAKS THE IMMERSION!
The main reason you can't have an evil playthrough is because that would require the writers to think of horrible things to do and say to their self-inserts. Can you imagine the writers of this having to sit down and create dialogue that contradicts their beliefs? To understand the view-point of someone who doesn't agree with them? The amount of self-reflection that would require would be too much. And if you create a self-insert then you are going to be emotionally attached to that character, which means writing choices that disagree or insult that character would feel like a personal attack.
honestly.. i bought BG3 recently and it was a choice for me between it and veilgard. id stayed away from media from both of them pretty much because thats just how i am with games i intend to play but dont have $$ at the time to do so. having played through act 2 now, and just having seen a few of these veilgard reviews now im just... shocked at the concept of a fantasy rpg NOT having an evil playthrough. and honest, bg3 will now be my gold star for absolutly heinous shit refereced/contained within a video game. i love it. i love that i have that choice, because sometimes its just fun to be an asshole when you arent one, because there arent consequences in games for doing so. and just... yeah. while things got progressivly less evil in DA, even in inquisiton you could at least be an asshole to your companions. its just... ugh. such a departure from a game i love and tbh having seen these reviews i will never play veilgard. if i wanna find out what happens ill eitehr read a fanfiction or watch someone elses playthrough.
That's why self-insert writing can never be good. A good writer can create characters that are nothing like themself, and put them through hell and even kill them, however beloved they are, for the sake of an interesting story. Hell, a lot of fanfic writers do it better than this trainwreck of a writing team. I bet Chat GPT could do it better.
Edit: typo
Calling this game insufferable is putting it kindly. This is further proof the BioWare we knew and loved is no more. Your review is another nail in the dev's coffin. Expect it to close in the days to come.
Quoting John Travolta in Swordfish, this game also sums up the state of the Triple A gaming industry: "They make shit. Unbelievable, unremarkable shit."
I forget there are gay/trans people in BG3. They are woven into the world so well you hardly notice them. They feel natural and not forced.
The funniest thing I always found about them "fixing" Saint's Row is that the franchise was already progressive in a good way.
The gang was diverse. You could literally sleep with any of them you wanted to. They were all one united whole. But because there was off-color humor, it suddenly turned "problematic" enough to warrant, as you say, disneyfying it.
Saint's Row was super progressive - but in a way that wasn't propagandistic. It wasn't trying to preach to you - but just naturally have diverse characters and not yammer on about it. People don't mind diversity - but they do mind feeling like they're at a political rally or feeling like they've just been shoved into an awkward conversation about sexuality.
iirc Saints Row 2 also let you use every customization option for both genders. Including walk cycles and voices.
Saint's row was once a competitor to GTA. Where GTA went with a bit more realism/grounded in their stories and satire Saints row really turned it up to 100 on its ridiculousness after 2. Not a bad thing, but coming from a game which was about fighting other gangs to fighting aliens as the president idk how the latest one dropped the ball so hard.
18:20 What's interesting is that I've seen a character obsessed with coffee done right. His name is Chesed from Lobotomy Corporation. He's always drinking coffee and uses it for metaphors, which in any other situation would be the most pretentious shtick ever, but then you find out that he drinks so much of it to stop sleeping because he's traumatized from watching all of his coworkers die constantly. He even compares grinding coffee beans to the corporate upperclass grinding the workers in his city. It goes to show that the writing of Veilguard is way below the bar.
that sounds rubbish aswell
@@BlinJe trust me, it isn't. Lobotomy Corporation is far more mature and introspective in its characters. It holds themes of cosmic horror, regret, and suffering. It is a far better game and the characters are far better and deeper.
@@h_chase1974 Alright boss i'll keep an open mind
Tokenism IS the only form of representation BioWare can do because all of this is target market, focus group, marketing department-driven cynicism. The only sincerity in any of it is the disdain, disrespect and loathing for past entries in the franchise because they were written with a heart this shell of a company no longer has.
I saw another video that pointed out this weird conundrum:
Taash is so insistent she be referred to as they/them as she wishes....
But she doesn't understand when Emmerich wants her to call him by his name instead of "death mage" because, according to her, "that's what you are."
🙄
If Taash was created in the same way but with the intention for the character to be hated by the player, they'd give you an option of saying "but you are a woman". But no, the player is expected to like T(r)aash and be sympathetic.
I can't tell whether her writers and people like her irl are either totally lacking self-awareness or are fully self-aware and just deliberately being obnoxious for whatever reason
Imagine if Emmirch responded by sarcastically saying: "Yes ma'am."
You must realize that Taash's attitudes are consistent with most of her types in real life.
I have a hard time telling whether her writers and people like her have no self-awareness or are fully self-aware and just deliberately obnoxious
Thank you in advance for your sacrifice
I've said this multiple times and I will keep saying it: Veilguard is a fanfic and I dont acknowledge it as canon!
There's a lot of fanfiction significantly better written
Every game that came after Origins is Fan Fiction
And the vielguard team is now working on ME5... And the writer for that game expressed how hard it is going to be to not scream at people publicly over politics (they are on bluesky screaming or at least were) SO that game is DOA too.
The people defending the game are on another level
Forget ME. Lookup The Exodus.
So the leader of the gray wardens doesn't belive an archdemon is around. Did they forget how the wardens can sense those?
1:08 lord. I heard the writing was bad but just those clips from the cold open are painful.
With a few obvious moments, if you read a script of the game, you cannot tell the difference between characters by their words alone.
IGN 9/10.
Possible GOTY.
No conspiracy here folks.
Its not conspiracy its called keeping your job. Games journalist have a vested interest in giving higher reviews and being incredibly lenient with scores because the only way they get review copies is if companies like them.
Also for plenty of them games journalism wasn’t their first pick in their field so they aren’t exactly experts or very demanding. But a jobs a job.
No conspiracy here, just capitalism.
@@hhhenry8488no, you just described a conspiracy.
They give favourable reviews to poor products to keep their job.
That’s the conspiracy.
Love to see dsp taking random stray backshots
its really interesting that we really have hit a point where things are being written by people who have never spoken to another human. i thought tumblr talk ended with tumblr but it just moved to rpg's. im surprised every conversation in this game doesnt end with "and then they all clapped"
God, the animations are so stiff, the dialog so stilted and painful.
I couldn't put it into words any better, thank you.
Veilguard is a perfectly average action adventure game prancing around in the rotting skin of what was once an amazing RPG.
21:47 That is ridiculous, it's akin to an actual lecture. The people putting this in games is doing more harm than good and yes, it's just one big virtue signal to get a pat on the back from their peers, it's not to help trans people, only themselves.
I've seen many reviews on this game but you've highlighted areas I did not know. You've done a fine job. Well done.
Pity Larian didn’t take over Dragon Age and Mass Effect as well…BG3 was a reminder of what BioWare games were supposed to be.
god yes. at this point im going to check out everything else larian have done because bg3 is just good and if their other stuff is half as then itll be worth it.
They got Laura Kate Dale to consult for this game so I blame the dialogue on her. Just another instance of failing upward
Made for "mOdErN AuDiEnCeS"
Yeah all two of them.
EA better put a stop to that nonsense right now or Mass Effect will be an unsellable nightmare as well. The inmates are currently running the asylum.
@@virtualmall5756 and even they didn't like it lol
I'm excited for Mass Effect 4.
I can't wait to find out Shepard is non-binary because of being brought back to life in Mass Effect 2 and then we get a dinner scene where Shepard and Tali sit at a dinner table and he tells her "Soooooooo... I'm non-binary." And then Tali is like "What is that? Back in my homeland, people not assigned to their gender are called Quathilu-pop." And then Shepard gets pissed and goes "WHY CANT YOU BE HAPPY FOR ME TALI?! IVE NEVER FACED A HARDER BATTLE!"
And then the Reapers Mk. 2 blow up the Avenger because they were busy fucking arguing about nonsense.
People thought Mass Effect 3 was bad back in the day. Back then it would have been hard to imagine that things would only get so much worse.
yep. Any time I see the clips where Taasha is cringe about their non-binary identity I fondly remniscence about ME3, in particular, the dialogue where sheppard learns about Steve Cortez's backstory - because it just shows to me, how badly bioware has declined in it's ability to write characters.
@@taln0reich I replayed the whole Mass Effect series 2 years ago (and ME3 for the first time along with it) in order. And Holy *shit* the moment I loaded up 3 I could tell right off the bat that the quality of the writing went right off the edge of a cliff. It was so readily apparent that the writers were hacks and had never had a real conversation with someone before, let alone spoken to someone face to face before the internet came about.
Sorry, I can't do it. I made it to 1:50 and had to stop. I feel so much cringe it's as if I have maggots wriggling under my skin.
As a skyrim modder who has to rebuild every outfit to fit new bodies
No its not hard to make clothes for every body type, its just a layer to be screeched, that's it
they didnt do cause they are idiots