#ps ive seen some people saying this game was in development for 10 years and im not confident thats true.

[jennyforeigner]

More thoughts on veilguard: I see the new art direction is getting a lot of hate and being compared to 1) Borderlands and 2) Fortnite.

Yes, the artstyle is more, I guess cartoony for lack of a better word, but I dont think it's pushes as hard as either of its comparisons.

Second, borderlands was good. We liked borderlands, or at least I did, and I see the criticism that it is tonally different to da and fair enough, but also again, VG's new look is not half so pronounced as BL's.

Third, this is not a new art style. This is much closer to da2's art style. If you will recall, dai had the new art style and it sucked shit. Everything looked wet at all times, no one's face looked remotely appealing, and the actual designs of characters were sloppy to say the least. DAI was a bad game that looked bad and felt bad to play. Is it really so wrong if we reject its aesthetics and return to da2 era stylization?

Also, 3.5, but I think aesthetically all 3 games are pretty different. I'm not sure da has a signature aesthetic to which it must be true. Its...a lot of things to a lot of people. There was no chance of any appearance satisfying everyone, and given how burned out we all are on ea jerking us around, I feel we were maybe all primed to be mad no matter what it looked like.

And d, and this is I think the grievance with the most merit. I've seen a lot of people express disappointment at the lack of aro/ace companions. I am not aroace, so I'm not going to sit here and say they are wrong to feel let down that once again they are not represented in a major franchise. That is, I think, fair enough. But, I've been in fandom for minute, and I see a lot of otherwise very good media get eviscerated for not being everything to everyone. The companions this time feature poc and disabled rep, things that were also missing from past games. There is at least an effort being made. These are queer characters by queer authors (former leaders writer David Gaider is a gay man. I rember reading that the new lead writer is a queer woman. I've no doubt there are other queer people on the writing team). There are no signs of aroace characters at this time, and that is fair. That is disappointing. But there are other cool things happening here that I think deserve, if not celebration, at least recognition.

And lastly, do not buy this game on day 1. This is still ea. I may be excited by the trailer but so long as ea has their grubby fingers in the pie, something will go horribly wrong. Call out bioware when they do things wrong. Don't let them skate by on past nostalgia. Make them earn our dollars by shipping a game that is playable for once.