For me, I don't mind the more divisive topics being explored, but I do mind the way they were written into the game. They are oftentimes, although they are VERY infrequent, feeling like lectures given by someone who thinks themselves the moral superior that can demand how everyone else should think and feel. They can be outright demeaning and insulting at times like the now much talked about barve scene. It made me groan to hear a character say in response to the question "But what if they are genuinely sorry", that that is that person making it all about themselves and they should instead get down on the ground in front of the person they offended to bow in the dirt (that's what doing pushups in front of them basically would be like). It lacks so much self-reflection and clearly is written by someone who can't see that they are doing the very same thing in that situation, making it all about themselves, and clearly someone who gets off on the idea of having that kind of power over others to make them bow down before them. It's equivalent to coming across a response someone made to someone they disagreed with here on UA-cam, where they start with or simply post "Nobody asked" as if someone asked them to make their response comment where they share their opinion. It's comes across as obnoxious and unintelligent. I think the graphics are beautiful, but I am in the group of people that don't like the look they went for. I don't like this DreamWorks/Pixar looking character design, as I feel it's an ill fit for what was advertised as a dark fantasy RPG. It's too childish for me. I don't like the character designs in general either; Neve's hat makes me unable to take her seriously. Not a fan of Isabela's new hat either whilst on the topic of hats. Everyone feels rather colorful and happy. It doesn't exactly feel like dark fantasy to watch a bunch of people dressed as parrots run around. And I feel like nobody is afforded to be outstanding in terms of beauty for some reason. Everyone is sort of "basic". Not ugly by any standards, but nobody stands out as a beauty either. A lot of them feel like they could be Disneyfied charicatures of angry upset Twitter users with dyed hair that looks for things to be upset about and to lecture those around them. On the topic of being too childish for me, I am not a fan of how absolutely ridiculously simplistic the "puzzles" are either. It's like puzzles designed for kids, in a game dealing with mature themes. These are puzzles for a 4 year old. Pick up an object at a visible few steps away from the location you drop it to create a bridge. Use ranged attacks to destroy three crystals all in view. And these overly simplistic puzzles are repeated so many times, while your companions and the UI does its best to spoil it entirely for you by spelling it out for you at every opportunity. That same sort of babying carries over in dialogue which is overall always to be the nice guy. You can't be mean. You can't insult someone. And most dialogue wheels are simply an illusion of choices, to say one thing, say that same thing a bit differently, or to say the very same thing again but maybe a bit more sternly. It's so safe, so PG, so childish. That comment that has been going around, that it feels like it was written with HR over the shoulder, is pretty accurate. There's no real conflicts that you can have. Even though I normally do that kind of a playthrough, the righteous kind hero, I hate that there is no choice given to the player here. Also the writing in several places are so cringe. When you meet one of the more "controversial" characters, she's outright unlikeable, and I physically felt like hopping off my balcony when I heard her utter the words "They go hard." A modern day slang sentence, injected into this long-running fantasy franchise. It felt so out of place. Which again, is pretty much my biggest gripe with how it tackles the "woke" content. It's poor writing that breaks immersion and feels very forced. Also these "Marvel quips" are painful to listen to. As an RPG, the writing is not up to any acceptable standard for me, and that is by far the most important thing for me in a RPG game. Combat looks nice, it's a bit basic, but flashy and fun. The enemy variety isn't exactly the greatest though. You see the same enemy basically with a different 3D model, over and over. So I can understand what people are saying when they say it's fun at first, but eventually gets boring and repetitive. World looks gorgeous at times, but I really hate how it's this corridor shooter feeling of going from A to B design, far too frequently. There are exceptions and certain areas later on feels much more open, but it's definitely a negative for me that it has all these on the rails moments when "exploring". The UI, I hate it. It's so glowy, it's so much clutter. It's like it was designed by someone who has never had to deal with how to drive attention with good UX design. Everything glows, everything is flashing, there's multiple icons on the screen, then a popup appears, all flashy, that opens another popup with its own flashy element. Items you can interact with in the game has the golden particle effect commonly seen in games, but also a line pointing down to it, with an icon for the item and the text Collect. They sure got to make sure you understand that you can collect this thing. It's so overbearing and annoying and handholding, and.. childish. And I hate how nothing is designed to catch your attention, because everything is designed to catch your attention. I think the game is absolutely not a bad game. I think it's in bad faith to say it's all bad. I think it's an okay game. A 6/10 game. An pretty bad RPG where you are only afforded to play as the character someone else decided to play as, the atypical nice guy hero, but it's an okay action-combat game with a story that's interesting enough to where I want to see where it ends, even with the bad writing. That said, I personally do not think it's worthy of the Dragon Age franchise's name and would not recommend a purchase. There are too many better games to go get. Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age: Origins, two of my Top 5 favorite games of all time, comes to mind.
at 12:30, you stated Baldur's Gate 3 was in it's own league. The sad part is, Dragon Age Origins has basically the same level of decision making with actual impact as Baldur's Gate 3, and came out 15 years prior. A company like EA could have easily put that same level of love and care into Veilguard, but they didn't. The dumbed everything down, made it cartoony, took away practically EVERY mean option in favor of inclusivity, and as a result, the game has no soul. It doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game. If this game didn't have "Dragon Age" in the name, it probably wouldn't be hated so much. But when you're going to carry the Dragon Age moniker, you need to deliver, and this game simply did not do that. It's not a bad game, but it's not what you expect from a Dragon Age game. Veilguard feels like a generic action JRPG where your choices don't have real impact on the game. In BG3, every choice you make changes your outcome, so much so that the game is quoted to have around 14,000 different endings, all based on choices you make in the game. That's real love and passion. Meanwhile, the Veilguard makes it impossible for you to have a curvy woman because sexy women are a no no for these people. From a technical standpoint, I realized they used male skulls for all of the base female features. This is what caused people to say "why does everyone have such big heads?" That's because male skulls are bigger than female skulls. Female skulls are smaller, with thinner jaw lines and smaller chins, but they also used male skeletons for females too. this causes the females to look buffer and broader than they should be. Female bodies are thinner, more slender, and curvier around the waste due to their enlarged pelvis for child birth. These design choices are quite odd and I can't help but feel it was completely intentional. This is one reason why so many people struggle to make conventionally attractive characters (females anyways). I'm about 20 hours into the game and the writing is so bad that I skip half the dialogue. The voice acting is great, but the writing and the direction is far beyond cringe. People talk like modern day California, everything has to be said out loud, there's no nuance or depth, and the most frustrating thing is the dialogue option you choose IS NOT WHAT THE CHARACTER SAYS. That's really dumb. You pick a mean option, and the character says something that's not even remotely offensive. Why have the dialogue option if that's not what the character is going to say? This just isn't a Dragon Age game made for the fans. They tried to appeal to a large audience by making everything sanitized, and that not only didn't work, but it turned off the fans who waited 10 years for this game. The game is just average, it's not above average, it's fine, but fine isn't good enough for Dragon Age. 5/10, wait for the game to go on sale.
nope, BG3 has so meny extra levels and details you dont find anywhere else. DAO is a great game but to say the they are at the same league is not true. You can playthru DAO 4-5 times but after that things get more difficult to have solve things the same way. The paths is more or less the same, BG3 if you want ochange things have like 17 million paths to play thru. I am doing a playthru where i knocked out the brothers in Act 1 of BG3 to see if they reunite with their sister in act 3 as an example.
Honestly I love it too. But Harding and Bellara’s delivery is so grating and Disney channel. Everything sounds so exasperated even when not needed. That’s my only major gripe.
It's just so sad how people spend time hating on games online intead of spending time on the things that they DO like. And it makes me think... do they even like games anymore? Is it envy because they don't have the hardware to play these games because they're still on PS4 or something? Like, is it that: The fox can't reach the fruit so it proclaims "It's probably sour anyway"- thing? I'm not exactly a fan of the wukong devs myself, with their weird censorship rules about "no talk about china politics, covid or feminist propaganda" to streamers (which somehow the free speech absolutist right wing nuts are completely okay with) but I'm not scouring youtube for videos about wukong to write negativity in the comments, nor am I going to review bomb it. I'm just... ignoring it. These people seem so... unhappy.
This mentality is exactly how we ended up in this position. Politics have infected gaming, and now people are sick of it. The only way to stop it is to make these people (developers) know that it's not wanted. That requires people to speak out against what they are doing, and more importantly, voting with their wallet. The fact that you see this many videos about it is proving that it's gotten way out of hand.
@@Kenshin6321 Warning, super long comment incomming. But maybe you'd actually like to find about why I have this "mentality". We're talking about people losing their mind because there's a "they/them" option in the character creator. In my mind that's not "infecting gaming". That's just giving more options to people to express themselves in the game they play. We're also talking about too many people acting like games have recently become "political". Games absolutely classify as art, just likes books and movies, and have always been "political". Dirty Dancing was "political" in the 80s, because it discussed abortion. If that movie came out today so many people would lose cry about how woke and gay it is and how modern movies suck etc. The reality of the situation is, that times and morals are always changing. Let's take a completely clean-washed movie franchise like Fast & Furious. These movies are mostly scrubbed of anything that could spark controversy (just keep talking about "family"), so they can do well in the chinese market. But if you traveled back in time and showed those movies to a person from 1920, they'd be shocked at women wearing trousers and getting into fist fights and real black actors having speaking roles. It would be "political". It may offend you, but I'll just say it: You're stuck in the 90s if you can't accept that trans people exist and aren't some mortal danger to women in bathrooms or that they get to appear in art. You're stuck in the 50s if black actors and/or female actors get to be the main character in anything is "too improbably diverse" for you. The other thing is: You're not this huge majority of likeminded people who don't like woke things, that you think there are, not even in gaming. Yeah there's a lot of conservatives in the world but you're far from the only people, especially in the western hemisphere. This whole "go woke, go broke" narrative is falling apart, the moment you take a look at Baldur's Gate 3 or Spider-Man 2 or Last of Us Part 2. And similarily, people ARE actually buying and enjoying Dragon Age Veilguard. The game sits at "mostly positive". And it's not like that game is perfect. People can dislike it for any other reasons besides wokeness -> see Skillup's review for that. Just because he reviewed the game badly, doesn't mean he hates diversity in games. A ton of games fail because CEOs are out of touch and being cynical at the same time (e.g. bpbby kotick and his final f-you to gamers with MW3. That game's problem wasn't that it was "woke", was it now?). Sometimes gams also just fail because they're bad and the people behind it lack vision or understanding. But now whenever a game fails, if it has a hint of "woke" then THAT must be the reason, as if there were no flops in gaming before the last 10 years. It's like people have no memory of the past or can't even just use google. (e.g. Daikatana, Enter the matrix, Aliens: Colonial Marines) Nothing changed. You did. 15 years ago, Nick Fury was portraiyed for the first time by Samual Jackson. In the comics he was white. Almost NOBODY cared and everybody thought Sam Jackson is awesome. But today, half of all U.S. lose their mind over the wokeness, if a similar choice was made today. And just like I said earlier, you're free to not buy anything you don't like and you're free to endlessly complain about it instead of actually spending time on things you enjoy. But I just don't have any empathy left for people who get offended at "body type" in character creation or Yasuke being a Character in AC: Shadows. Suddenly, it's important that an AC-game maintains "historical accuracy" despite japanese media having already depicted yasuke as a samurai in manga and anime AND not a single AC game until now even having a protagonist that actually existed. It's just all so transparent. Like there's some dark agenda behind it. Yeah, there's an agenda, but it's really just "let's be kind to each other and understand that some people are different." Seriously: do something better with your life than convincing yourself that "wokeness is ruining gaming." You're merely ruining it for yourself.
@@paulszki You weren't joking when you said long comment lol. Please allow me to address your points in kind ^_^. You stated: "That's just giving more options to people to express themselves in the game they play." Normally, I would agree with you. However, it is nearly impossible to make a very feminine looking female in Veilguard. Why is that? I can have a butch looking female, but I can't have a curvy female? If companies really wanted you to be able to express yourself, then allow me to make a sexy female. But no, it's capped to intentionally make it IMPOSSIBLE to have a sexy female. You know what character creator does this correctly besides Baldur's Gate 3? Street Fighter 6. You can have a fat, skinny, sexy, curvy, goofy looking, abomination, you can have a guy that looks like a girl, a girl that looks like a guy, it's entirely up to you. Veilguard intentionally removed sexy characters to push their agenda. You stated: This whole "go woke, go broke" narrative is falling apart, the moment you take a look at Baldur's Gate 3 or Spider-Man 2 or Last of Us Part 2." For starters, Baldur's Gate 3 is not woke. The game allows you to play HOWEVER YOU WANT. That's the very definition of freedom. Meanwhile, Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 got lambasted for horrible writing, horrible pacing, and terrible story. They only sold well because they were piggybacking off the success of the first games that did not have identity politics in them. There was no reason to kill Joel the way they did. There is no reason in a Spiderman game to be playing as a deaf girl, or helping two gay dudes ask each other out for prom. You stated: "Nothing changed. You did." Incorrect. A lot has changed. You have a common misconception that conservatives are against gay and trans people. We ARE NOT. Never have been, never will be. People can live their lives however they want. Mrs. Doubtfire, White Girls, Shaneyney from Martin, these are all characters from TV shows and movies we love. The problem is companies are literally changing past franchises to suit today's agenda. Saga in Allen Wake 2 was changed to a black woman for some reason. God of War Ragnarok race swapped one of the Gods. All the bad guys in Dragon Age Veilguard just happen to be white men. This is not a coincidence. To say that nothing has changed either means you refuse to look at the truth in front of your eyes, or you're gaslighting. BTW: People did call out Baldur's Gate 3 for their "Body Type" stuff. However, it does not take away from the overall experience. Unlike in the Veilguard where all the women look like they have a man's chest, or really young faces with very saggy old lady boobs like Bellara. You brought up Assassin's Creed Shadows to make an argument for Yasuke. Did you know Yasuke was in several video games already? Portrayed as a Black fighter? Play Samurai Warriors 5. Why no outrage about that? Because In Assassin's Creed Shadows, they are making Yasuke as if he was integral to the fall of Nobunaga, when in fact, Yasuke played a very minor role in Japanese history. When actual Japanese people pointed this out to Ubisoft, they essentially brushed them to the side. You don't get the luxury of changing another culture's history, then try to tell them they are wrong when they try to correct you. Actual gaslighting, but the Japanese aren't falling for it. I play video games as my favorite pass time. For you to tell me to do something better because I don't like what's happening to games is like me telling you to change your hobby because I don't like what's happening in your hobby. The only way to stop this is to remind game developers that VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT REAL LIFE. Stop making everything as if it's supposed to represent the real world. It's ok to make Men in video games super hot, chiseled, strong and masculine. It's ok to make women in video games feminine, beautiful and articulate. We don't need politics in a fantasy game. We don't need pronouns in freaking space! And people are finally voting with their wallets. Last of Us 2 sold millions of copies less than the first one. Veilguard barely looks like it's going to hit 1 million copies sold, which would be a huge loss for Bioware because that's not even half of what it costs to make the game. Companies like Victoria's secret threw away their fat models and brought back the Angels because they lost over 30% of their companies value by embracing wokeness. You already know what happened to Bud Light. Meanwhile, companies that don't put politics in their game, like Black Myth Wukong, go on to sell over 20 million copies. And games that do diversity right, like Warhammer 40K Space Marines 2, go on to sell tens of millions of copies. When you stop making everything political and give people what they want, you make money, who would have thought?
@@Kenshin6321 thanks for taking the time! I carefully read what you wrote. For brevity (and my own sanity) I'll try to keep this one way shorter. I can absolutely appreciate your perspective a bit better now, I just disagree with some of your conclusions. Wukong sold well for two reasons: It's a pretty good game. And it also targets the chinese market. A bit less than 90% of the players are chinese. At 20 million sold copies it's still a huge success if it sold 2 million copies elsewhere in the world. But lets not completely overstate the success of this game in the western world. And it's similar with other games. I mean, in the end, does "being woke" affect sales? Well, obviously, because a large number of gamers are still male and a large number of males get's offended (or shall I say "triggered") by what they percieve as woke. So obviously it'll hurt sales a bit, if the narrative about a game shifts to "this game is woke!". E.g. people complaining about Alloy not being sexy enough for the post-apokalypse. But what strikes me about your personal perspective, as you described it, is that you seem awfully... moderate and the way YOU represented your views is actually very different from all usual the anti-woke slob commentary I get to witness normally. A lot (most really) of anti-woke comments ARE specifically salty about baldur's gate 3 or body type in Starfield. Also, the narrative always shifts a bit, when a game turns out to be successful and popular. "The game isn't THAT woke so it's allright" Cognitive dissonance and all. Some people cried over 40k having an indian woman being a captain or whatever. But the game turned out to be popular so it's not an issue anymore...? -> Forspoken didn't fail because it had a black femalde lead. It failed because it had cringe dialogue and just wasn't a good game. But of course it failed because it's woke! Final note about Assassin's Creed. Not once in the history of the game was it important to be historically correct. AC was always just a bit of tourism with fictional characters meeeting some famous historic figures. Here's what you wrote: "...when in fact, Yasuke played a very minor role in Japanese history" Why is historical accuracy suddenly so important to you? Not a single AC game had historically correct protagonists. And when you met famous people (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci) were THOSE historically accurate in their depiction? Don't think so. Like my MAN, that is sucha double standard out of nowhere. And you know exactly why. Nobody cared about Tom Cruise being "the last Samurai" but Yasuke, "oh no my historical accuracy!". If it's a white dude completely massacring historical accuracy, nobody bats an eye. But in the end - I get some of what you say. Sometimes a dev-team or publisher will be overzealous in their attempt to be inclusive and you get feminist ghostbusters level of cringe. There's no secret agenda. It's the very publich agenda of "making money". The issue is, a lot of creators are left-wing/progressive while a lot of gamers are right-wing/conservative. That's all there is to it. No conspiracy to emasculate all men. It's just that there's more left-leaning creators. Also I'm very sorry that this got long again...
@@paulszki Please don't apologize for your lengthy reply. They are not only well informed, but well presented. I agree with a few things you said, and to be honest, I never realized I was moderate. No one has ever called me that, but since you brought it to light, I suppose I am rather moderate. I agree with a lot about what you said. I also believe you simplified a complex argument to something very digestible. You said: "There's no secret agenda. It's the very publich agenda of "making money". The issue is, a lot of creators are left-wing/progressive while a lot of gamers are right-wing/conservative." This much is 100% true, without a doubt. I personally believe that our society has become too polarized. I've seen those content creators that call anything with a black person in it "woke" or "DEI" without even giving it a chance or waiting for more information. On the flip side, we have Developers making games like Dustborn and expecting to be taken seriously . There's way more to get into, but we should call it day lol. Thank you for your replies, and although we disagree on many things, I got nothing but respect for you.
You are sooo right. I can't compare this to BG3, or expect an RPG, because I'll just be mad. I'm really just watching for Solas's story wrap up. I am wanting a conclusion of the stories it's been telling since Origins, but the more I want that out of the DA series, the less you get. You just get a cool action game, and it's so annoying. EA SUCKS. They really KILL any good story they get a hold of and just want to charge an arm and a leg for something that looks cool.
I've been playing the game and I think its pretty good. It is pretty "woke" but honestly everything is these days. And to be honest it doesn't bother me. If I don't want my character to be trans I don't make them trans. If I don't want them to be gay, they wont be. Its only as "woke" as you make it. It feels the same way Inquisition felt (to me). I'm glad you are not jumping on the band wagon with everyone dissing the game. And I'm also glad you gave an honest review with positives and the areas of opportunities.
I am LGBTQ but I am not playing it. The dialogue just puts me off, and I am not talking about the "woke" stuff. I'm a big Dragon Age fan, even Inquisition. But this doesn't feel like Dragon Age to me.
@LalaDepala_00 meh to each their own. Im not playing games for extraordinary writing. Im playing them to have fun. If I want a good story I'll watch a movie or read a book. And as far as it feeling different, eventually everything changes. Look at Tomb Raider, Saints Row, Mortal Kombat. The ppl who made these games initially are all old, retired or have very little input in the games now. The changes made are based off of the times we live in. You will be mostly unhappy if you can't adjust to the inevitable changes these games go through.
@Jehuty256 better than being butthurt every time a new game comes out. I mean that's YOUR choice. You can literally "stay mad" or move on. It's video games. It's not that serious.
its just not a good game.Bad dialogue ,Boring companions,just feels like im being read a lecture whenever im mid comversation and i can understand that they tried to appeal to a younger more family frienly crowd but this is not it.Taash is cool tho,Modern stuff aside.
This is my ever BioWare game and I respect your opinions and criticisms. It’s my game of the year easy, 10/10. I was not expecting much if I’m honest, and being a lesbian woman, I had some reserves, but I’m not bothered by the stuff. Made my goth mommy super cute
You saved me $80 thanks bro really appreciated it puting that money towards kingdom comes deliverance 2
For me, I don't mind the more divisive topics being explored, but I do mind the way they were written into the game. They are oftentimes, although they are VERY infrequent, feeling like lectures given by someone who thinks themselves the moral superior that can demand how everyone else should think and feel. They can be outright demeaning and insulting at times like the now much talked about barve scene. It made me groan to hear a character say in response to the question "But what if they are genuinely sorry", that that is that person making it all about themselves and they should instead get down on the ground in front of the person they offended to bow in the dirt (that's what doing pushups in front of them basically would be like). It lacks so much self-reflection and clearly is written by someone who can't see that they are doing the very same thing in that situation, making it all about themselves, and clearly someone who gets off on the idea of having that kind of power over others to make them bow down before them. It's equivalent to coming across a response someone made to someone they disagreed with here on UA-cam, where they start with or simply post "Nobody asked" as if someone asked them to make their response comment where they share their opinion. It's comes across as obnoxious and unintelligent.
I think the graphics are beautiful, but I am in the group of people that don't like the look they went for. I don't like this DreamWorks/Pixar looking character design, as I feel it's an ill fit for what was advertised as a dark fantasy RPG. It's too childish for me. I don't like the character designs in general either; Neve's hat makes me unable to take her seriously. Not a fan of Isabela's new hat either whilst on the topic of hats. Everyone feels rather colorful and happy. It doesn't exactly feel like dark fantasy to watch a bunch of people dressed as parrots run around. And I feel like nobody is afforded to be outstanding in terms of beauty for some reason. Everyone is sort of "basic". Not ugly by any standards, but nobody stands out as a beauty either. A lot of them feel like they could be Disneyfied charicatures of angry upset Twitter users with dyed hair that looks for things to be upset about and to lecture those around them.
On the topic of being too childish for me, I am not a fan of how absolutely ridiculously simplistic the "puzzles" are either. It's like puzzles designed for kids, in a game dealing with mature themes. These are puzzles for a 4 year old. Pick up an object at a visible few steps away from the location you drop it to create a bridge. Use ranged attacks to destroy three crystals all in view. And these overly simplistic puzzles are repeated so many times, while your companions and the UI does its best to spoil it entirely for you by spelling it out for you at every opportunity.
That same sort of babying carries over in dialogue which is overall always to be the nice guy. You can't be mean. You can't insult someone. And most dialogue wheels are simply an illusion of choices, to say one thing, say that same thing a bit differently, or to say the very same thing again but maybe a bit more sternly. It's so safe, so PG, so childish. That comment that has been going around, that it feels like it was written with HR over the shoulder, is pretty accurate. There's no real conflicts that you can have. Even though I normally do that kind of a playthrough, the righteous kind hero, I hate that there is no choice given to the player here. Also the writing in several places are so cringe. When you meet one of the more "controversial" characters, she's outright unlikeable, and I physically felt like hopping off my balcony when I heard her utter the words "They go hard." A modern day slang sentence, injected into this long-running fantasy franchise. It felt so out of place. Which again, is pretty much my biggest gripe with how it tackles the "woke" content. It's poor writing that breaks immersion and feels very forced. Also these "Marvel quips" are painful to listen to. As an RPG, the writing is not up to any acceptable standard for me, and that is by far the most important thing for me in a RPG game.
Combat looks nice, it's a bit basic, but flashy and fun. The enemy variety isn't exactly the greatest though. You see the same enemy basically with a different 3D model, over and over. So I can understand what people are saying when they say it's fun at first, but eventually gets boring and repetitive.
World looks gorgeous at times, but I really hate how it's this corridor shooter feeling of going from A to B design, far too frequently. There are exceptions and certain areas later on feels much more open, but it's definitely a negative for me that it has all these on the rails moments when "exploring".
The UI, I hate it. It's so glowy, it's so much clutter. It's like it was designed by someone who has never had to deal with how to drive attention with good UX design. Everything glows, everything is flashing, there's multiple icons on the screen, then a popup appears, all flashy, that opens another popup with its own flashy element. Items you can interact with in the game has the golden particle effect commonly seen in games, but also a line pointing down to it, with an icon for the item and the text Collect. They sure got to make sure you understand that you can collect this thing. It's so overbearing and annoying and handholding, and.. childish. And I hate how nothing is designed to catch your attention, because everything is designed to catch your attention.
I think the game is absolutely not a bad game. I think it's in bad faith to say it's all bad. I think it's an okay game. A 6/10 game. An pretty bad RPG where you are only afforded to play as the character someone else decided to play as, the atypical nice guy hero, but it's an okay action-combat game with a story that's interesting enough to where I want to see where it ends, even with the bad writing. That said, I personally do not think it's worthy of the Dragon Age franchise's name and would not recommend a purchase. There are too many better games to go get. Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age: Origins, two of my Top 5 favorite games of all time, comes to mind.
Baldur's gate did it perfectly. organic and subtle inclusivity. they should take notes.
at 12:30, you stated Baldur's Gate 3 was in it's own league. The sad part is, Dragon Age Origins has basically the same level of decision making with actual impact as Baldur's Gate 3, and came out 15 years prior. A company like EA could have easily put that same level of love and care into Veilguard, but they didn't. The dumbed everything down, made it cartoony, took away practically EVERY mean option in favor of inclusivity, and as a result, the game has no soul. It doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game. If this game didn't have "Dragon Age" in the name, it probably wouldn't be hated so much. But when you're going to carry the Dragon Age moniker, you need to deliver, and this game simply did not do that. It's not a bad game, but it's not what you expect from a Dragon Age game. Veilguard feels like a generic action JRPG where your choices don't have real impact on the game. In BG3, every choice you make changes your outcome, so much so that the game is quoted to have around 14,000 different endings, all based on choices you make in the game. That's real love and passion. Meanwhile, the Veilguard makes it impossible for you to have a curvy woman because sexy women are a no no for these people. From a technical standpoint, I realized they used male skulls for all of the base female features. This is what caused people to say "why does everyone have such big heads?" That's because male skulls are bigger than female skulls. Female skulls are smaller, with thinner jaw lines and smaller chins, but they also used male skeletons for females too. this causes the females to look buffer and broader than they should be. Female bodies are thinner, more slender, and curvier around the waste due to their enlarged pelvis for child birth. These design choices are quite odd and I can't help but feel it was completely intentional. This is one reason why so many people struggle to make conventionally attractive characters (females anyways).
I'm about 20 hours into the game and the writing is so bad that I skip half the dialogue. The voice acting is great, but the writing and the direction is far beyond cringe. People talk like modern day California, everything has to be said out loud, there's no nuance or depth, and the most frustrating thing is the dialogue option you choose IS NOT WHAT THE CHARACTER SAYS. That's really dumb. You pick a mean option, and the character says something that's not even remotely offensive. Why have the dialogue option if that's not what the character is going to say? This just isn't a Dragon Age game made for the fans. They tried to appeal to a large audience by making everything sanitized, and that not only didn't work, but it turned off the fans who waited 10 years for this game. The game is just average, it's not above average, it's fine, but fine isn't good enough for Dragon Age. 5/10, wait for the game to go on sale.
nope, BG3 has so meny extra levels and details you dont find anywhere else. DAO is a great game but to say the they are at the same league is not true. You can playthru DAO 4-5 times but after that things get more difficult to have solve things the same way. The paths is more or less the same, BG3 if you want ochange things have like 17 million paths to play thru. I am doing a playthru where i knocked out the brothers in Act 1 of BG3 to see if they reunite with their sister in act 3 as an example.
Subbed your honesty is def appreciated and its not like mean its benefit of the doubt and honest!
Honestly I love it too. But Harding and Bellara’s delivery is so grating and Disney channel. Everything sounds so exasperated even when not needed. That’s my only major gripe.
Ur discord link doesnt work!
Been looking for a new game to get and I’ve never heard of this game . After watching your perspective on it I got to get it now . Appreciate it fam
It's just so sad how people spend time hating on games online intead of spending time on the things that they DO like.
And it makes me think... do they even like games anymore? Is it envy because they don't have the hardware to play these games because they're still on PS4 or something? Like, is it that: The fox can't reach the fruit so it proclaims "It's probably sour anyway"- thing?
I'm not exactly a fan of the wukong devs myself, with their weird censorship rules about "no talk about china politics, covid or feminist propaganda" to streamers (which somehow the free speech absolutist right wing nuts are completely okay with) but I'm not scouring youtube for videos about wukong to write negativity in the comments, nor am I going to review bomb it. I'm just... ignoring it.
These people seem so... unhappy.
This mentality is exactly how we ended up in this position. Politics have infected gaming, and now people are sick of it. The only way to stop it is to make these people (developers) know that it's not wanted. That requires people to speak out against what they are doing, and more importantly, voting with their wallet. The fact that you see this many videos about it is proving that it's gotten way out of hand.
@@Kenshin6321
Warning, super long comment incomming. But maybe you'd actually like to find about why I have this "mentality".
We're talking about people losing their mind because there's a "they/them" option in the character creator. In my mind that's not "infecting gaming". That's just giving more options to people to express themselves in the game they play.
We're also talking about too many people acting like games have recently become "political". Games absolutely classify as art, just likes books and movies, and have always been "political".
Dirty Dancing was "political" in the 80s, because it discussed abortion. If that movie came out today so many people would lose cry about how woke and gay it is and how modern movies suck etc.
The reality of the situation is, that times and morals are always changing. Let's take a completely clean-washed movie franchise like Fast & Furious. These movies are mostly scrubbed of anything that could spark controversy (just keep talking about "family"), so they can do well in the chinese market. But if you traveled back in time and showed those movies to a person from 1920, they'd be shocked at women wearing trousers and getting into fist fights and real black actors having speaking roles. It would be "political".
It may offend you, but I'll just say it: You're stuck in the 90s if you can't accept that trans people exist and aren't some mortal danger to women in bathrooms or that they get to appear in art. You're stuck in the 50s if black actors and/or female actors get to be the main character in anything is "too improbably diverse" for you.
The other thing is: You're not this huge majority of likeminded people who don't like woke things, that you think there are, not even in gaming. Yeah there's a lot of conservatives in the world but you're far from the only people, especially in the western hemisphere. This whole "go woke, go broke" narrative is falling apart, the moment you take a look at Baldur's Gate 3 or Spider-Man 2 or Last of Us Part 2. And similarily, people ARE actually buying and enjoying Dragon Age Veilguard. The game sits at "mostly positive". And it's not like that game is perfect. People can dislike it for any other reasons besides wokeness -> see Skillup's review for that. Just because he reviewed the game badly, doesn't mean he hates diversity in games.
A ton of games fail because CEOs are out of touch and being cynical at the same time (e.g. bpbby kotick and his final f-you to gamers with MW3. That game's problem wasn't that it was "woke", was it now?). Sometimes gams also just fail because they're bad and the people behind it lack vision or understanding. But now whenever a game fails, if it has a hint of "woke" then THAT must be the reason, as if there were no flops in gaming before the last 10 years. It's like people have no memory of the past or can't even just use google. (e.g. Daikatana, Enter the matrix, Aliens: Colonial Marines)
Nothing changed. You did. 15 years ago, Nick Fury was portraiyed for the first time by Samual Jackson. In the comics he was white. Almost NOBODY cared and everybody thought Sam Jackson is awesome. But today, half of all U.S. lose their mind over the wokeness, if a similar choice was made today.
And just like I said earlier, you're free to not buy anything you don't like and you're free to endlessly complain about it instead of actually spending time on things you enjoy.
But I just don't have any empathy left for people who get offended at "body type" in character creation or Yasuke being a Character in AC: Shadows. Suddenly, it's important that an AC-game maintains "historical accuracy" despite japanese media having already depicted yasuke as a samurai in manga and anime AND not a single AC game until now even having a protagonist that actually existed. It's just all so transparent.
Like there's some dark agenda behind it. Yeah, there's an agenda, but it's really just "let's be kind to each other and understand that some people are different."
Seriously: do something better with your life than convincing yourself that "wokeness is ruining gaming." You're merely ruining it for yourself.
@@paulszki You weren't joking when you said long comment lol. Please allow me to address your points in kind ^_^.
You stated: "That's just giving more options to people to express themselves in the game they play." Normally, I would agree with you. However, it is nearly impossible to make a very feminine looking female in Veilguard. Why is that? I can have a butch looking female, but I can't have a curvy female? If companies really wanted you to be able to express yourself, then allow me to make a sexy female. But no, it's capped to intentionally make it IMPOSSIBLE to have a sexy female. You know what character creator does this correctly besides Baldur's Gate 3? Street Fighter 6. You can have a fat, skinny, sexy, curvy, goofy looking, abomination, you can have a guy that looks like a girl, a girl that looks like a guy, it's entirely up to you. Veilguard intentionally removed sexy characters to push their agenda.
You stated: This whole "go woke, go broke" narrative is falling apart, the moment you take a look at Baldur's Gate 3 or Spider-Man 2 or Last of Us Part 2." For starters, Baldur's Gate 3 is not woke. The game allows you to play HOWEVER YOU WANT. That's the very definition of freedom. Meanwhile, Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 got lambasted for horrible writing, horrible pacing, and terrible story. They only sold well because they were piggybacking off the success of the first games that did not have identity politics in them. There was no reason to kill Joel the way they did. There is no reason in a Spiderman game to be playing as a deaf girl, or helping two gay dudes ask each other out for prom.
You stated: "Nothing changed. You did." Incorrect. A lot has changed. You have a common misconception that conservatives are against gay and trans people. We ARE NOT. Never have been, never will be. People can live their lives however they want. Mrs. Doubtfire, White Girls, Shaneyney from Martin, these are all characters from TV shows and movies we love. The problem is companies are literally changing past franchises to suit today's agenda. Saga in Allen Wake 2 was changed to a black woman for some reason. God of War Ragnarok race swapped one of the Gods. All the bad guys in Dragon Age Veilguard just happen to be white men. This is not a coincidence. To say that nothing has changed either means you refuse to look at the truth in front of your eyes, or you're gaslighting.
BTW: People did call out Baldur's Gate 3 for their "Body Type" stuff. However, it does not take away from the overall experience. Unlike in the Veilguard where all the women look like they have a man's chest, or really young faces with very saggy old lady boobs like Bellara.
You brought up Assassin's Creed Shadows to make an argument for Yasuke. Did you know Yasuke was in several video games already? Portrayed as a Black fighter? Play Samurai Warriors 5. Why no outrage about that? Because In Assassin's Creed Shadows, they are making Yasuke as if he was integral to the fall of Nobunaga, when in fact, Yasuke played a very minor role in Japanese history. When actual Japanese people pointed this out to Ubisoft, they essentially brushed them to the side. You don't get the luxury of changing another culture's history, then try to tell them they are wrong when they try to correct you. Actual gaslighting, but the Japanese aren't falling for it.
I play video games as my favorite pass time. For you to tell me to do something better because I don't like what's happening to games is like me telling you to change your hobby because I don't like what's happening in your hobby. The only way to stop this is to remind game developers that VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT REAL LIFE. Stop making everything as if it's supposed to represent the real world. It's ok to make Men in video games super hot, chiseled, strong and masculine. It's ok to make women in video games feminine, beautiful and articulate. We don't need politics in a fantasy game. We don't need pronouns in freaking space! And people are finally voting with their wallets. Last of Us 2 sold millions of copies less than the first one. Veilguard barely looks like it's going to hit 1 million copies sold, which would be a huge loss for Bioware because that's not even half of what it costs to make the game. Companies like Victoria's secret threw away their fat models and brought back the Angels because they lost over 30% of their companies value by embracing wokeness. You already know what happened to Bud Light. Meanwhile, companies that don't put politics in their game, like Black Myth Wukong, go on to sell over 20 million copies. And games that do diversity right, like Warhammer 40K Space Marines 2, go on to sell tens of millions of copies. When you stop making everything political and give people what they want, you make money, who would have thought?
@@Kenshin6321 thanks for taking the time! I carefully read what you wrote. For brevity (and my own sanity) I'll try to keep this one way shorter. I can absolutely appreciate your perspective a bit better now, I just disagree with some of your conclusions.
Wukong sold well for two reasons: It's a pretty good game. And it also targets the chinese market. A bit less than 90% of the players are chinese. At 20 million sold copies it's still a huge success if it sold 2 million copies elsewhere in the world. But lets not completely overstate the success of this game in the western world.
And it's similar with other games. I mean, in the end, does "being woke" affect sales? Well, obviously, because a large number of gamers are still male and a large number of males get's offended (or shall I say "triggered") by what they percieve as woke. So obviously it'll hurt sales a bit, if the narrative about a game shifts to "this game is woke!". E.g. people complaining about Alloy not being sexy enough for the post-apokalypse.
But what strikes me about your personal perspective, as you described it, is that you seem awfully... moderate and the way YOU represented your views is actually very different from all usual the anti-woke slob commentary I get to witness normally. A lot (most really) of anti-woke comments ARE specifically salty about baldur's gate 3 or body type in Starfield.
Also, the narrative always shifts a bit, when a game turns out to be successful and popular. "The game isn't THAT woke so it's allright" Cognitive dissonance and all. Some people cried over 40k having an indian woman being a captain or whatever. But the game turned out to be popular so it's not an issue anymore...? -> Forspoken didn't fail because it had a black femalde lead. It failed because it had cringe dialogue and just wasn't a good game. But of course it failed because it's woke!
Final note about Assassin's Creed. Not once in the history of the game was it important to be historically correct. AC was always just a bit of tourism with fictional characters meeeting some famous historic figures. Here's what you wrote: "...when in fact, Yasuke played a very minor role in Japanese history" Why is historical accuracy suddenly so important to you? Not a single AC game had historically correct protagonists. And when you met famous people (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci) were THOSE historically accurate in their depiction? Don't think so. Like my MAN, that is sucha double standard out of nowhere. And you know exactly why. Nobody cared about Tom Cruise being "the last Samurai" but Yasuke, "oh no my historical accuracy!". If it's a white dude completely massacring historical accuracy, nobody bats an eye.
But in the end - I get some of what you say. Sometimes a dev-team or publisher will be overzealous in their attempt to be inclusive and you get feminist ghostbusters level of cringe. There's no secret agenda. It's the very publich agenda of "making money". The issue is, a lot of creators are left-wing/progressive while a lot of gamers are right-wing/conservative. That's all there is to it. No conspiracy to emasculate all men. It's just that there's more left-leaning creators.
Also I'm very sorry that this got long again...
@@paulszki Please don't apologize for your lengthy reply. They are not only well informed, but well presented. I agree with a few things you said, and to be honest, I never realized I was moderate. No one has ever called me that, but since you brought it to light, I suppose I am rather moderate. I agree with a lot about what you said. I also believe you simplified a complex argument to something very digestible. You said: "There's no secret agenda. It's the very publich agenda of "making money". The issue is, a lot of creators are left-wing/progressive while a lot of gamers are right-wing/conservative." This much is 100% true, without a doubt. I personally believe that our society has become too polarized. I've seen those content creators that call anything with a black person in it "woke" or "DEI" without even giving it a chance or waiting for more information. On the flip side, we have Developers making games like Dustborn and expecting to be taken seriously . There's way more to get into, but we should call it day lol. Thank you for your replies, and although we disagree on many things, I got nothing but respect for you.
One of the biggest issues I had with Inquisition was the combat style/mechanics. Shit became unplayable at one point, but this one looks promising 🤞🏽
still dropping that save file? discord link expired
Thanks for the info. Ive been thinking about getting this game!
You are sooo right. I can't compare this to BG3, or expect an RPG, because I'll just be mad. I'm really just watching for Solas's story wrap up. I am wanting a conclusion of the stories it's been telling since Origins, but the more I want that out of the DA series, the less you get. You just get a cool action game, and it's so annoying. EA SUCKS. They really KILL any good story they get a hold of and just want to charge an arm and a leg for something that looks cool.
I never understood the swooning everyone did over Harding in DA3. I def hated her then, and I will hate her in DA4.
Everyone's curse is always picking Rogue first its the well balanced of it sll 😂😂
I've been playing the game and I think its pretty good. It is pretty "woke" but honestly everything is these days. And to be honest it doesn't bother me. If I don't want my character to be trans I don't make them trans. If I don't want them to be gay, they wont be. Its only as "woke" as you make it. It feels the same way Inquisition felt (to me). I'm glad you are not jumping on the band wagon with everyone dissing the game. And I'm also glad you gave an honest review with positives and the areas of opportunities.
I am LGBTQ but I am not playing it. The dialogue just puts me off, and I am not talking about the "woke" stuff.
I'm a big Dragon Age fan, even Inquisition. But this doesn't feel like Dragon Age to me.
@LalaDepala_00 meh to each their own. Im not playing games for extraordinary writing. Im playing them to have fun. If I want a good story I'll watch a movie or read a book. And as far as it feeling different, eventually everything changes. Look at Tomb Raider, Saints Row, Mortal Kombat. The ppl who made these games initially are all old, retired or have very little input in the games now. The changes made are based off of the times we live in. You will be mostly unhappy if you can't adjust to the inevitable changes these games go through.
@@D_89 SO we should accept bad writing and repetitive gameplay for the new standard of AAA gaming?
@Jehuty256 better than being butthurt every time a new game comes out. I mean that's YOUR choice. You can literally "stay mad" or move on. It's video games. It's not that serious.
@@D_89So you're saying the gen z game makers are now all woke?
Was waiting for this one!
its just not a good game.Bad dialogue ,Boring companions,just feels like im being read a lecture whenever im mid comversation and i can understand that they tried to appeal to a younger more family frienly crowd but this is not it.Taash is cool tho,Modern stuff aside.
What are you playing I swear if shit was normal it would be getting game of the year hype.
This is my ever BioWare game and I respect your opinions and criticisms. It’s my game of the year easy, 10/10. I was not expecting much if I’m honest, and being a lesbian woman, I had some reserves, but I’m not bothered by the stuff. Made my goth mommy super cute
Taash is my biggest gripe. Her writing feels forced.
Could you do a let’s play on UA-cam
Not for nothing dragon age never been tht game for lived in worlds ever. Its been linear and kinda just for action
I was hesitant to buy it but i definitely will check it out thanks neuworld
first inzoi, then until dawn, now dragon age? subscribed!✌🏾