#ea critical

[anneapocalypse]

For the record I feel like saying "Dreadwolf is going to suck because they laid off Mary Kirby" is like... really dramatically missing the point of what's going on here.

The next game has been in alpha for nearly a year now. Kirby's work on the game as a writer was probably mostly finished. Which does not make this better. If anything, it makes it worse.

The layoffs aren't terrible news because a game we're looking forward to might be worse because of them. They're terrible news because people who have devoted years of blood, sweat, and tears to making the game good (including the person who wrote one of the two characters on which they've been hanging the entire marketing campaign for said game thus far) have been axed now that the company has decided it can probably get by without them.

The quality of the game when it finally comes out is irrelevant here. If it's amazing, it won't make this any better, and if it's awful, it won't make it any worse. What matters is the people whose labor made it exist at all are profoundly undervalued, the industry as a whole is broken and frankly abusive, and I wish everyone in it some good labor organizing.

[rookinthecrownest]

I think the thing that Gets Me about Veilguard is just how much of an impossible task it had heaped on it from EA from the start of its inception.

It’s arguably supposed to be a soft reboot for the series while ALSO being a follow up to Inquisition. These are two fundamentally incompatible goals in my opinion. This game had to walk the most insane line of any video game in recent memory. I guess EA wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

And the more I think about it the sadder I become for the original team who worked on Joplin. From what I’ve seen of the art book, Joplin was going to be about as firm a sequel to DAI as you could get - with references to rescuing whoever was left in the Fade, having Calpernia and Imshael as companions, having to fight Solas’ agents, etc.

Then EA makes them scrap it for live service. Fine. But wait - now we’re scrapping it again. Back to single person RPG but you also kind of need to distance yourself from the previous games as much as possible while still somehow being a follow up to the previous game.

New setting, few returning companions, and new Big Bads in the form of Elgarnan and Ghilanain to get a clean slate. Any mention of what’s happening in the South (where we spent 3 whole games!) needs to be relegated to letters and codex. ** I dont have the art book yet, so I dont know if these two were supposed to appear in Joplin beside Solas - or if Solas was supposed to be the sole antagonist in that iteration of the game.

But.. I hope you see what I mean when I say this game had a monumentally, borderline impossible task ahead of it. And when I think of it that way, I think it did as good a job as it possibly could. Especially since the actual development time was closer to 3ish yrs to get what we know of as datv today even though it’s been 10 whole years since DAI.

I hope it’s successful enough to get DA5, but who know’s what’ll happen.

I wish everyone except the EA execs who meddled with this game’s development and are seemingly trying to kill dragon age a pleasant day. I have a cynical detective I need to romance 😔

[insufferablewarden]

I want to talk about this take from my main blog because I want to double down on it.

I truly think that Veilguard is a bad Dragon Age game.

I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but I really hate that people feel like this is a good Dragon Age game. I hate that people use the excuse that Dragon Age reinvents itself every game in its defense. I hate that people think that this is what a Dragon Age game is. And I’ve been hearing that this is “still a Dragon Age game” even from some critical reviews.

My rebuttal, if I was being flippant, is that the vibe is simply off. It doesn’t feel right.

If I have to put my disappointment and anger into words, I would say:

No, the heart of the games has never changed. The idea that your worldview is shaped by your past and that you can be a hero or a villain depending on who tells the story has never changed. Navigating complex and sometimes race/class-based politics has never changed. The ability for you to earn approval and disapproval based on personality-defining dialogue choices and/or meaningful choices hadn’t changed. Being able to go up and talk to characters (companions most of all) to learn about who they are and how Thedas has shaped them has never changed. Companions not solely based on tropes and nebulous ideas of what makes a cute relationship used to exist. Lore reveals were handled with care and sprinkled throughout the game rather than thrown at you one after the other. Gameplay never used to insult your intelligence by handing you an explanation to everything within seconds of being presented with a problem. This series of roleplaying games used to let you roleplay even if it was just respecting what tone you wanted to use.

Or, something like that.

When people tell me that this is a good Dragon Age game, it feels like they’re comparing this legacy of games to one of those Marvel movies or remakes that doesn’t need to exist, but does because it has a built in audience and will make them money. It feels devoid of what made the old games special to me. I know that the other games aren’t perfect. Not even in all of the respects I mentioned earlier, but I felt like BioWare gave a shit? Even Dragon Age: II with all of its flaws has this beautiful cast of characters and (narratively) fleshed out city and Dragon Age: Inquisition with all of its fetch quests had some of the most complex characters, interesting quest mechanics, and this highly ambitious (if flawed) setting design. This game is so half-baked that I barely understand what it’s about or who it’s really for.

In fact, after I finished the game, it took me a few days to get over feeling negatively about the entire series. I was terrified that Veilguard had ruined this series that I’d loved for half my life for me. I felt stupid. I hate that I care so much when I’m not certain that they do. Or, being more charitable, I’m not certain that BioWare is capable of making a product with care under EA.

I don’t know. Maybe this is a Dragon Age game, but if it is, I’m not sure I want another one.

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

"How does it feel?" I say to John Epler, sadly staring at more cursed quotes he dropped quicker than the DA Keep. "Are you blissfully unaware? Or deep inside, is some part of you banging on the wall, screaming?"

"Lol cool line, did you just make that up?" He says, pulling out his phone to tweet that actually Loghain was a trapeeze artist in his free time and the only true lore being carried into the next came is that everyone remembers the Viscount of Kirkwall as being a total hottie.

[housederiva]

It’s still crazy to me that BioWare was not planning on letting people know before release that none of the previous games’ options mattered and that the only reason they brought it up is because they were doing damage control after a beta tester (accidentally?) leaked the 3 options - 2 of which and the majority of variations of the other don’t impact much more beyond a codex entry

Like they weren’t gonna let us know that they wiped the core of what made dragon age dragon age until the last possible second….

[unohdukseen]

BioWare uses AI in Dragon Age: The Veilguard codex cards

And I think it's not only there - most of the armor looks like the use AI for references.

But about the codex: this applies to the Grey Warden cards. First, a general view:

All cards in different styles made by different artists. But my eyes caught on this:

It's the same art that was run through AI-editor. And these cards are nearby, in the same game! Maximum disrespect for the work of the artist who made the original art (for DAI btw). The codex contains a few cards with this style, let's see the details:

They all was AI generated. I thought I couldn't be more disappointed in BioWare, but it turns out there is.

[a-tear-in-the-veil]

The Dragon Age Q+A pissed me off so much. God. I am so disappointed in the dancing around questions and the cherry picking of what they answer regardless of the amount of upvotes. It feels like they admitted to destroying Southern Thedas (wiping world states) so that they could have a fresh start moving forward. The fact that they're not even entertaining the idea to fix the blatant holes in story content, and/or balance the content for the romances between the companions is so aggravating. Total sanitized corporate bullshit. I'm so mad.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

The revelations given to us by the writers in the Reddit AMA are my 14th - 19th reasons why. It has single-handedly squashed any naive hopes that Bioware is still the storytelling powerhouse it used to be. Every single answer John Epler gave in the AMA is like an individual Game of Thrones S8 nuke. The contempt and disregard he has for the Dragon Age setting is palpable enough to taste.

I can only speculate: Were these the original sentiments and the intentions of the writers dating back to the game’s first round of development (dear God I hope not doubtful)? Is John Epler a Solas/Dragon Age hater that had been kept in check by a team of somewhat competent creative minds until the ill-fated exodus of much of the remaining core Bioware team? Is this simply a matter of retroactively adopting this worse storyline as the canon and running defense for a game that they know deep in their hearts is shittily written but must rationalize for the sake of keeping sweet with their EA overlords? Or, the absolute worst thing imaginable: Do these employed writers, in their absolute heart of hearts—no bullshit, no self-delusion, no fake-smiling at the camera to keep their job safe—think that they’ve written a decent story?

Because whether you like Veilguard or not, Epler’s answers show a callous, vindictive, spiteful disregard for the Dragon Age IP. Every magical, creative, cerebral, thoughtful, engaging thread, every distinct, unique, ambiguous, promising plot beat laid with earnest (even if messy) care, ultimately amounted to nothing but unremarkable, unimaginative, lethally disappointing shibboleth.

This AMA to me proves that the love for Dragon Age is dead. Writers may love it, Weekes may love it, but there is no love left in that building. A good Dragon Age game died when EA killed the initial dev cycle. They killed it again when nearly all the writers were laid off/left Bioware in the 2015-2017 window. There was no hope. The story you love, the Dragon Age you love, effectively ended at the conclusion of Trespasser.

Veilguard is not a game that was grown with love, but rather with scarcity, desperation, instability, confusion, corporate and in-studio mismanagement, and resentment.

That is not the game the fans deserve. That is not the game those who birthed the Dragon Age IP deserved to have inflicted on their brainchild. That is not the game that anyone deserves to have worked on—a Frankenstein of failed resurrections cobbled together to form a mediocre milquetoast abomination that fulfills no one but dilettantes and tourists.

It’s been a whole month since the game dropped. I’ve gone from hope to unease to bewilderment to disappointment to annoyance to frustration to sadness to scorn to contempt to grudging sympathy to cold antipathy.

I watched Angry Joe’s Angry Review of Veilguard and he said he was afraid that he now likes the IP less after having played Veilguard (he very much enjoyed Inquisition for all its flaws), and I’m afraid if I’m in the same boat.

In the end this is all fiction. It’s a video game franchise. It’s just a video game. It’s just entertainment. But damn it, hours were invested into this. Hours and sappy tears I will never get back. Emotional investment that will never be repaid. I feel like I’ve been swindled, like my creativity and imagination and energies that I devoted years into cultivating have amounted to absolutely nothing.

[seeker-ophelia]

HAPPY DRAGON AGE DAY

Conniving Crows, Wicked Watchers, Lustful Lords, Vivacious Veil Jumpers, Wild Wardens, and Shrewd Shadow Dragons!

Me: THANK YOU SO MUCH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FOR FILLING OUT MY SURVEY! You: Lady, what are you talking about? Me: A couple weeks ago you filled out my survey! You: Oh yeah, whatever happened with that?

Well, let me tell you, good internet people!

Dragon Age: The Veilguard in “One Word”:

If I had a nickel for every "Fun, but..." or "Pretty, but..." responses, I would have a lot of nickels. "Fun but not Dragon Age" was my personal favorite.

If you don't see your verbatim response here, that's because there was 650 of you. And I had to take some liberties with verbiage here.

What were your Overall Impressions of Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

What did you like the MOST about Veilguard?

What did you HATE about Veilguard?

Ho, nelly, you guys.

186 (>28%!) of you used the “Other” box to expand on your ideas (which is part of why this graph is so uhgly) but I appreciate every single one of you sharing your thoughts with me.

19 (2.9%) of you said something pertaining to “The Writing” even though that wasn’t an option

112 (17%!) of you mentioned (at least one of) the words: shallow, pale, child-locked, darkness, nuance, choice, conflict, empty, sanitized, or (my personal favourite) toothless.  

Some “Hated” Honorable Mentions:

“Neve’s Hat”

Fuck off her fascinator is fascinating

“Not Being able to Swim”

I read it before and I still laughed; this one is the real MVP

The Death of Varric

☹

The one person who said “Harding”

I will fight you

The TWO People who said “Too many puzzles”

Bitch is this Taash? How did you get access to this???

**Shout out to the people who pointed out I spelled DIALOGE wrong, yeah I know sorry I’m an idiot

If Veilguard were to have a DLC, which Companion Characters would you want to see return the most?

I find it SO interesting that I asked for 5, and there were 5 VERY CLEAR winners...

(Cole, Dorian, Fenris, Merrill, Zevran, by a veritable landslide; there’s over 100 votes between the lowest – Merrill (284), and the next highest – Cassandra (177))  

To those of you who can’t read: the HoF, Hawke, and the Inquisitor are NOT Companion Characters.

Also, to the one person who responded: “No one deserves to be dragged through that” I see you.

*I did not have time to collate the data supplied in “Other” but I think there’s a pretty obvious winner here

And now, if a “Keep” DLC were to be made, which choices do YOU think are the most important to have?

Before we jump into that, I would just like to say how little these answers differ; despite my open ended question a LOT of people wrote the same things.

Some of you, bless your little hearts, explained your choices like im a dumb bitch who hasn’t been living in the wiki and played each game 2/3/5 times. Like I would be doing this and not know what Orzammar or the Architect is.  Bless your little worm spirits you’re so adorable.

Every person who said “Inquisitors Class” followed it up with (weird I know sorry uwu im so weird im sorry) like… guys. You know…. You are ALLOWED to have OPINIONS. And you’re not weird there was like 6 of you. You're not alone.

To the EVERYTHING/ALL OF IT people; I see you.

Four people were brave enough to admit they couldn’t remember anything, and 55 people didn’t write ANYTHING.

Behold, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat:

Circle Fate: Fate of the Chantry Circles after DAI

DAI Wardens: Wardens exiled/accepted in DAI

Divine: Who you chose for the Divine (DAI)

Fade Fate: The Fate of the person you left in the fade in DAI

Mage/Templar: The outcome of the Mage/Templar conflict (not differentiated between Inquisition/2)

Southern Rulers: All three Rulers of Southern Thedas; Ferelden, Orlais, & Orzammar

The Well: Who Drank Mythal's Bathwater (dont kink shame me)

Any answer with less than 5 responses got taken out for brevity and are listed below:

(2) Nothing Cuz they destroyed the South, (1) ANYTHING!!!!!, (1) fuck you (bioware) for disregarding the entire lore of the first few games, (1) I think the most interesting things are the smaller stuff you don't expect to carry over.

(2) Andraste's Urn, (2) Avernus (research), (1) Awakening companions fates, (2) Calpernia's Fate, (3) Cass/Tranquility, (2) Clan Lavellan Status, (1) Cullen/Lyrium, (2) DA:O Dalish Clan, (1) DA2 Isabela, (2) DA2 Qunari Plot outcome, (1) Dagna (Magic School), (1) Danarius, (1) Disband/Keep Inquisition, (2) Faded for Her Result, (3) Hawke Siblings Fate, (2) Inquisition disbanded actual consequences, (1) Inquisition Support of Nevarra or Tevintrer (josephine war table quest), (4) Inquisitors Class, (1) Iron Bull, (1) Isabela, (1) Paragon of her Kind (Golems), (1) Prisoner at Ostagar, (1) Rule of 3, (1) Save/Stop Solas, (1) Sha-Brytol dwarves, (1) Shale, (4) Solas/Inky Approval, (1) Solassan Implications, (1) Solavellan Vallaslin, (1) Soldier's Peak, (2) Sten, (2) Zevran/Darker Crows.

To the one person, who commented: “I think the most interesting things are the smaller stuff you don't expect to carry over.” I see you. And I am percolating.

If the Devs/Anyone at BioWare happens to see this, the last question I asked was this:

If you could ask the Devs/Writers of Veliguard one thing, what would it be?

A lot of responses are focused on the lore. More are questioning the narrative & lore decisions & implications of VG. Some are begging for DLC. Some are flat out rude. One is a proposition. But there are a fair amount of people who want to ask you;

‘hope you're okay’

‘How are you holding up?’

‘I hope despite everything you know that your creation is loved and adored.’

‘THANK YOU!!!’

Intelligent fans know the development Hell VG went through to be born. They know corporate culture. They understand there's often more than meets the eye. Fans of Dragon Age know what heavenly good delicious golden content BioWare can make. And they're hungry for it. Take some well deserved rest, and then come back to the table with us, because we cannot wait for more.

A Sappy Little Note:

I have Zero online presence and really expected to get about 100 responses total, and I got 650 (*mind blown emoji*), I wasn’t even able to share it to reddit main (bc of the fvbjvks mods). Most of these responses are from YOU GUYS on good ol’ tumblr.com and Im so weepy about how you all got involved and shared your thoughts with me Thank You SO MUCH.

For those of you who messaged me about the DLC, you are not forgotten. Believe it or not, I have a plan. Watch your inboxes over the next couple days, because I’m going to be prickling your creative brains over the Holidays.

Once more, Thank You All, so so so much for participating. Bare your blade, remain vigilant, and keep an Eye out for The Agents.

[citrusai]

i don't wanna knock on bioware's crew or w/e but damn maybe you guys shouldn't have fired half your fucking production team and left the game partially unfinished just to beat an arbitrary deadline thinking you can compete with larian cause you got mad fans were showering bg3 with love. but whateveerrrrr

[mother-giselles-hat]

The Marvel Allegations are never leaving, I fear

*hail hydra*

[luna-drinker]

A lot of people on here are vocally anti-capitalist but will lick the boots of companies that engage in anti-consumer practices

[rookinthecrownest]

Got about 1/3rd of the way thru the art book before I had to put it down because oh my god the Joplin team was cooking.

EA YOU COWARDS. I’ll never forgive u for scrapping this game TWICE.

[pondering-gales-left-orb]

I have said it many times with the sims and i'll sayit once again with DATV (it really seems like an EA thing now to force thier devs and writers to do thier own game advertising by themselves) , the devs need to stop being at the forntline of interacting with the public and fans, because of 2 reasons

1- they are not prepared in any shape way or form to interact with fans at all, they dont know how to word things professionally, they dont know how to set boundries, they dont know how to seprate thier personal views from thier fan facing persona, they dont know how to take criticism correctly (think how actors do it) and they come at this from a very biased pov because its thier work that they spent alot of time and n effort on, plus they have to advertise positivity or the company will come down on them so they do not take well to any criticism and start to only respond to Scripted postive interactions, while turning on the online equivalent of a pitty party, they end up cornering themselves into this echo chamber with a bunch of yes men they pretend are the entire fandom (bonus point if that group ends up being the most racist bitches out there lol)

2- 99% of them cannot keep thier own personal politics and opinions from seeping through and frankly most of them are a flavour of racist and unpleasant which then ends up souring anything they comment on, and without fail every single time i read anything that they say i think to myself "i wish they would just shut up and stop making it worse somehow"

like i appreciate thier input on the technical side of things sure thats awesome tell me how you made things show me the thought process your sketches your work flow thats insanely interesting!

but once they get into answering fans or fan service or whatever it just gets so bad they somehow always end up alienating a massive amount of fans and kiss ass to a specific group (see point 1)

I dont keep up with other games to know if this is a consistent thing all game Studios put thier devs through

i know sdv is a one man show so the dev kinda has to talk to the fans but even then Eric( the dev) doesn't even talk much or interact that much at all just answers the occasional troubleshooting question but sdv is not the same as DATV scale wise so the comparison is not fair

The one other non EA game i know is BG3 and i know they had the actors do the talking which is the CORRECT way to go about this as they are fucking trained for this they are very charismatic and are very aware of the impact thier words have they dont just say shit out of thier ass and can command a room they know boundaries and not to create a false echo chamber and generally avoid creating a parasocial relationships atleast...

I think EA's strategy of just making the deves do the advertising themselves with no help fucking sucks and its really really reflecting negatively on decade long franchises that are genuinely now dying at the speed of light because of this specific move to strip the team down and unrealistically put everything on the devs and just make the success of thier game thier sole responsibility with no help from other departments as they dont exsist anymore (late stage capitalism yay!) And no training or preparation with insane expectations for devs to know every single peice of information they need to pull at any given moment and just....

Yeah YEAH if you play alot of EA games i think you will notice a pattern as to how they oprate behind the scenes and how actually uncaring and greedy they are yeah

[teenage-dreams18]

Usted se fue y la dejo en un rincón llorando.

[housederiva]

Sven’s speech before announcing Astrobot as the Game of the Year was the most concise way I’ve seen all the flaws with Dragon Age listed and it was done beautifully

Like yes!!! Your game means nothing if the people making it aren’t being treated fairly and enjoy what they’re working on for the sake of art and not money!!!!