Brother, if you're thinking thatif EA wasn't meddling in their affair and that game will be good, I respectfully disagree. They are the one who botched a Dragon Age: Dreadwolf into whatever monstrosity that came out.
I disagree actually. The gameplay was pretty darn good for Veilguard. If it had one creative vision start to finish we’d be talking about it totally differently.
If the story and characters weren’t a mess… Too many cooks and changing priorities from boardroom nonsense.
And as we now know from multiple interviews, thats something the BioWare heads couldn't wrap their heads around and quietly grew to resent, which ultimately caused them to become hostile to their own writers and drive off some of the foundational members to what made BioWare storytelling great.
All because they wanted to be the next CoD makers.
Mass Effect 3's combat was fantastic, and I absolutely would have bought a standalone version of the multiplayer. Hell, the servers are still active til this day.
And while I was disappointed with the story/writing during the first big chunk of the game... the second half and especially the last 1/4th of the game (including the ending) surprised and genuinely impressed me. It gave me ME2 suicide mission vibes, the climax was truly amazing old school Bioware. The game only got better and better the further you got into it. Unfortunately, most people never even gave it a proper chance because of all the negative online commentary (and anti-woke outrage from the usual suspects)
It's the opposite for me and I recently finished it. It starts like a Disney movie. Then the gameplay and some character's growth fool you into believing this can be good. Then Taash breaks everything. And if you manage to push past that wreckage of a teenage writing and reach the end you find yourself thinking of what might have been and lost potential.
The rebellious teen character is written like a rebellious teen, what did you expect? Taash wasn't my favorite but it's just your typical coming-of-age story and it ends strong. One companion falling flat is not a big deal when there's plenty of other companions that are better. All of the parts involving Solas, and all the bigger moments in the last half of the game, especially the "twist" and the climax, made up for a lot of the flaws
If Taash is a teenager then we have bigger problems with them being romanceable. If Taash is not a teenager they shouldn't act like one.
Their age is never mentioned but for the better result (still a bad result) we must pretend they're an adult that acts like a child being thrown into the fight of all fights and still acting like a kid. It stills breaks the immersion of being in slavery land fighting the apocalypse with a mental children, but at least you (or Harding, who also acts incredibly naive) are not a pedo.
Teenagers can be adults, I was thinking late teens but apparently after looking it up the actual age is 20-22. Either way, my point is that they act young and immature because they ARE young and immature. A physically skilled dragon hunter, but with low emotional intelligence and still figuring out their identity... stuck between two worlds, both gender-wise and culture-wise. The gender stuff even makes sense for a Qunari considering the unusually intense gender roles they've got. My only critique is that parts of the dialogue can feel too "modern" for a fantasy game, but that's one of my overall criticisms of the whole game which feels like God of War with how the characters speak in an unusually modern way sometimes. A lot of other aspects of this game feel very inspired by God of War reboot, too, from the combat to the level design, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about that game
There's a qunari woman that even mentions a word in qunari culture to describe Taash. You know, to avoid what you mention of being "modern"...
Taash just acts up when that's mentioned and storms off like a child having a tantrum. And the qunari woman that was talking to them doesn't misgender them. Even within a scene that's trying to portray the difficulties between the qun culture and being non binary, the world acomodeted the qun representative to Taash.
That scene might have been treated in so many different forms. For example, the qunari explaining how there a word for nonbinary people in the qun and the game adapting to that fantasy while mirroring real world and not breaking the world building around the qun. Taash finding more ties to her qunari culture. They did this with Krem in Inquisition.
Or having the qunari woman misgender Taash and create conflict that also mirrors the real world's struggles while maintaining the vision of strict gender roles of the qun. Creating conflict that could actually explain Taash's attitude. They did this with Dorian in inquisition.
Both different ways of portraying it, both the in-world culture and mirroring the real world without messing them around. But instead the scene has all the highlights on Taash being moody and storming off for you to chase them and be their therapist (the same thing every other comanion has you doing).
Not even giving you a good reason to be that, since the qunari representative was pretty much a nice woman and told Taash that there's no real struggle to be mad about... And also backtracking from when her mother couldn't understand them... If there's nonbinary people in the qun according to that one woman why was their mom confused?
How so? Can you elaborate on how Taash breaks everything to the point where it makes you dislike the entire game, when they are one of half a dozen companions whose side quests are entirely optional?
It's not Taash it's everything around them that breaks everything. All the things you could let pass become unbearable when you have Isabela looking directly at camera and speaking the most aberrant speech in the entire Biowere history.
Taash doesn't even say anything wrong in that scene but they morph the world and the writing around them in a way that can't be ignored.
Suddenly you realize no matter what, Rook will never be in your control, characters with years of development can act so bizarre that you get thrown out of the immersion, villains are so plain and disneyfied they wouldn't even misgender their enemies, let alone do terrible acts like slavery, entire species and groups within the universe change to acomodete ONE character and the writers wishes of how the real world should be.
By themselves, Taash is just a badly written annoying characters and none of that has to do with their gender. But is how they accomodated all of Thedas to them that breaks the entire thing.
This... Is absolute nonsense lmao. You're talking about an optional side quest that has functionally no bearing on anything outside it! The world doesn't 'morph' around Taash lmao - what are you talking about 'villains wouldn't even misgender their enemies'? Literally what are you even talking about?
I don't know how and have no wish to try and make it clearer. I think everything I said is clear enough to understand to anyone with the real intention of understanding for a genuine debate and not just seeking confrontation.
I mean, creative vision didn't produce the atrocious writing. There are full live service games that are leagues above what Veilguard was, so the switch to and back shouldn't have affected writing to that degree. Inquisition had just as much of a development hell, shit Andromeda did as well. Veilguard is hands down the worst showing of writing and story that Bioware has ever shown in any of their games, and the good parts are almost direct copies of Mass Effect 2.
It’s an upgrade, and this sentiment is not cohesive with what all these comments are saying which is that you don’t play a DA game for the gameplay but for the story
It's not an upgrade if you liked the first game. It's a strategy game and they stripped it down to an action game. Inquisition at least somewhat kept some of the strategy elements that made it interesting. Veilguard was a sub par action game. The writing was good up until Veilguard as well
Look man, we can talk about hypothetical what ifs this or what ifs that. No one knows for sure. But if you look at Veilguard and telling me that theyare trying with their own core principal back in dragon age origins? Then you're lying to yourself.
I love Bioware man, I played all their games, even Andromeda. But don't tell me people play origins or kotor because of the gameplay. It's becuse of the story, and veilguard doesn't feel like it was a bioware game.
Sure EA have some to blame, but majority of the fault came frok Bioware itself. AFAIk, EA never really care about the stories of the game, look at Dices Cal Kestis series or even the most recent Zero Company. All publishes by EA and none of their story particulary bad.
You're objectively wrong then. The literal director of those games has his own YouTube channel and has been releasing multiple videos talking about the failures of Anthem, Dragon Age, and more.
He talks extensively of how hands-off EA was with them, and how Bioware was given WAY more leniency than they really deserved. Check out his channel Mark Darrah on Games, and trying to place the onus on EA for Bioware's disasters is just not factual at all.
People want to conveniently ignore dragon age veilguard was meant to be an MMO. People clearly don’t understand timelines, budget, deadlines. But no it’s ALL BioWares fault. /S
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u/hellothisismadlad 8h ago
Veilguard was their hail mary and it's totally on them and only them