#like i guess its something to do with da2s general narrative. i feel like its the one where you have the least power over your choices

[rivaiin]

speedran through both da2 dlc and im almost almost done with act 3. as much as i like this game and as much as ive been enjoying going through it again i really really wanna get it over already. cause afterwards it its emil time

[icharchivist]

I remember hearing that Veilguard was originally supposed to be a completely different genre of game, like online multiplayer or something, that was later retooled into a single player one

yeah that's true, sortof

the game has been rebooted twice. Originally it was a single player taking right after DAI: Trespasser that focused on Solas' elven rebellion. Then they drifted to another version of the game that still had that in focus but more detached from DAI. Eventually this version was forced into a Multiplayer mode which had to completely rewrite the genre of the game. Then finally we could get to the current version of the game.

Out of the 10 years of development this game was stuck in, we only have the last 3 years of development into Veilguard. I have the artbook, i know just how drastically stuff were cutdown. It was a completely different game at the start.

The Multiplayer mode is where i can see a lot of the flaws coming from. Mainly the hyper-sanitization of the setting and of the factions the protagonist can be a part of. I can sense the marketting aspect of "you need to remove the slavery inherent to the Crows because else people won't want to get into this faction and we need all of them to be balanced :(" It also feels with how unbalanced the content is for each faction, since they started out as more neutral group players would evenly spread themselves through, but once a real plot was established, some factions just had very little to do with the overaching plot (rip Lords of Fortune i guess)

Besides multiplayer means liveservice which probably means even the plot didn't have a lot of room to be and that updates were expected to flesh out the start out world.

so yeah, this truly hurt Veilguard then. And like if you leave it to me i can even ramble about why it happened, how EA kept forcing Bioware to chase trends and that the failures of Anthem (the live service multiplayer game Bioware did not want to make but had to halt all development in others games to make) and ME: Andromeda (that was poorly received by fans of the licence and therefore put doubt on the Bioware formula despite the fact DAI itself has been so well welcomed it was game of the year 2014))

Bioware is doomed by horrible management especially from EA and there is still so much of that that shines through the game.

And honestly even a lot of things i think are more ambiguously because of the writing, are probably hypercorrecting because EA told them to tone down some thing.

But there is also problems with the games i think it would be generous to say are fully because of EA.

This is just a game that suffered a lot from its 10 years development crisis.

So many veteran left the development, starting by Gaider who was the lead narrative developper at the point, and he was vocal about how he left bc EA actively hated their writers. Others veterans like Mary Kirby were laid off one year before the end of the project. Hell even now another veteran just announced last month they're leaving Bioware.

I think that evidently this game came with a real troubled production that had people jump ship and a lot of people being so worn out by the development cycle they did whatever they could to get it done with and i think this also shows in the project.

I do feel for the studio and the devs, truly.

But it doesn't make Veilguard a game i can give a pass to. DA2 also famously had a troubled development but at least its story was fire. Did it deserve at least one rewrite? I think so! are the gameplay problems still problems? yeah sure. But at least da2 is still a game i love to think about and am not frustrated about.

I can't be as generous with Veilguard.

But yeah. It's a tragedy in development that translated to just a mess of a game. Doesn't make any of it easier to swallow tho.

[a-friend-of-red-jenny]

i think an indication of the light (i.e. the talented writers.......) leaving the da series is that like origins is, in a lot of ways, a type of game i’m not usually into. i hate the way everything looks, i hate a lot of the mechanics, i have adhd and the idea of reading all that warden dialogue makes me want to take a nap and usually would really break illusion for me but i loved the game and i got so attached to my surana...i played through it twice with her to explore different options and romance leliana and zevran, and then when i got it on pc i made the same character, because i couldn’t think of playing it without her tbh, and modded the game to romance morrigan like i’d always dreamed of lmao. bioware made me create and live through this character and go through an expirience that for me, always culminated in a dramatic, fitting, emotional sacrifice. i am still touched by the story of my surana, who finally went out into the world and really got to know it and make friends in it for a short time, and then ultimately made the decision to die protecting it. nowadays i dont remember like..anything abt it except for the characters, but thats msotly because it got way overshadowed in my heart by 2

dragon age 2 is a rushed and broken piece of shti with half its story missing. i’ve probably played it all the way through about 9 or 10 times?? i made a bunch of different characters this time because i wanted to explore all the options (in a game where you explore the same caves 800 times and have the same argument through the entire storyline lol). i cared more about that game than i maybe ever have about a game? it made me love the series, somehow, even though i hated so much stuff about the da world bc its boring as hell tbh, because of the life in the characters. i romanced them all at least twice. i did everything i could other than side with the templars, and i like tried, multiple times, but i couldnt. the game made me feel strongly enough about it that i couldn’t bring myself to /pretend/ to agree with a socio-political stance in the game world because it went too strongly against my morals. a lot of the ‘choices’ you make in biowares are illusions of choice that mean nothing, but in da2 i feel like they were the best at both 1)hiding that, and 2)making some choices matter if only because YOU know what YOU did, even if it doesn’t effect anything.

and the kicker is like, this is dorky as hell lol but in my mind’s eye i picture my surana in a relationship with zevran, leliana, and morrigan, because they were all characters i got invested in and stuck with me and i feel they made an impression on the character i created and put into the story to an extent that it would feel wrong picturing that character without any of them. she’s best friends with sten. she wishes her and wynne could get along better, as fellow mages. she...wishes the best for alistair. hawke is the same deal; the four og romances were each affecting and important enough to me that i end up deciding ‘my hawke’ is just dating everyone lol. i like all the characters too much to choose. i’ve thought so so so much about the hawke i finally settled on. about her relationships with her family and their past, things she feels guilty about, how she handles and expresses that guilt, how she feels deep down about every important character and plot point.

when i first got inquisition it was the most hyped i’d ever gotten about something. i would gush at my brother about the lore of the world for literal actual hours at a time in the months before the game came out. i borrowed money to buy it the second it came out. I played through the whole thing, like, 99% completion, the only achievements i was missing were ones that required a second play through or specific story choices i didn’t know about. I freaked out at my friends not to spoil anything because they’d finished the game before I’d gotten to the winter palace. I never finished a second playthrough. I started several other characters but I know on a few of them i never even got to the fight at haven (or past the pride demon, but that was as a mage on expert mode which i’m pretty sure is actually just not possible so rip i guess) I don’t really have a ‘canon’ inquisitor? I don’t really feel anything about the one I finished the game with. Even as excited as I was I spent the whole game annoyed that the inquisitor didn’t seem to have personality at all, let alone the choice of a personality that you could make with your warden or with hawke. I romanced sera.....and I actually felt bad about myself because of how they wrote everyone else to treat her. It actually made me feel unwanted and wrong as a young lesbian. I cried when sera was confirmed pre-release as a for sure, specifically Lesbian love interest. I loved her before the game even came out. It made me feel accepted in a time and place where I very actively was not, and when I was struggling, within finding myself as a Gay Youth in general, with the idea that being a lesbian, specifically, was a bad thing that I should choose not to be in lieu of a better, more progressive form of Gay. Cue a proud and unapologetic lesbian character, the first in the series, that everyone fucking hates and that you can kick out of the game at any time with little consequence. With a romantic story line that seemed like an afterthought, and to have less care and attention put into it than two straight options that actually WERE afterthoughts, because they weren’t even going to be in the game until mid-development. A lesbian with an opening quest for her romance arc that is basically just you running around to every other companion and listening to them list everything they hate about her, at worst telling you you’re making a mistake in associating with her bc shes stupid and disgusting and at best giving an obvious “well....whatever you think is best....hope that works out for you..........OUO;;;.....” That quest, if you keep romancing her, culminates in what is supposed to be both of you deciding “fuck what all of society thinks, we’re all we need” because, lesbians, right? thats the lesbian narrative? except homophobia doesnt exist in this world so we had to make everyone hate sera Herself in order to fit it in and that doesnt have any implications at all. and then you have sex; sera’s very sexual, because,,,,,,,,,,not because men think lesbians are hot umm........its because........uhhh........its empowerment!!! but i digress like i love sera despite bioware lol. and i tried to spend time daydreaming and fleshing out my inquisitor and her and their relationship and lives with each other and shit but all the thinking i did on it was forced. unlike my surana and my hawke, my inquisitor isn’t poly w/ everyone because i couldn’t bare to choose between characters i loved. i didn’t even romance most of them. i don’t even have a specific character in mind as ‘my’ inquisitor. the characters i liked the most, that felt the most well-written and fleshed out, were established characters from pre-existing da content. and the game even fucked up my hawke that i cared about and loved because they wanted to capitalize on how much people love hawke, and love Their hawke, but put in a weird hawke-puppet that had none of Any of the personalities you could give them, and that just said dull bullshit about how theyve seen what the corruption of blood magic can do, etc. etc. etc. like.....................................the magic is gone and their left with good characters they don’t know how to write and i mostly boring world with some interesting aspects they decide never to touch on.