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Dragon Age: Veilguard releases with over 70k concurrent players on Steam and 'Mixed Reviews'

Been thinking about this and this is totally food for thought.

Since the release of the game, EA and Bioware immediately, like not even a week out, put out two statements:

1. There is no DLC (in a series know for expanded post story Segments, multiple of them) citing all of Bioware is pivoting directly to the next Mass Effect game.
2. It was stated plainly Mass Effect will have the same tone as the others and not whimsy. That game will be more mature writing the series is known for.

That is such a hard pivot right at release which means they were not liking the presales/internals. They knew what they had and wanted to pinch this loaf asap while reassuring people about the next ME.

Edit: Realized I made a huge typo (dropped a word) bolded above. They weren't liking the numbers for presales/internals
 
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Hypereides

Gold Member
Did he delete these ones too? Jason Schreier has gone unhinged. I think Concord, Outlaws, and Dragon Age has broken him down to lashing out to defend his ideological aligned buddies in the business.

vLgUf5t.jpeg
JYyZS02.jpeg

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I swear man. I really don't get how this guy became the "pinnacle" of gaming journalism. The guy is displaying some weird suppressed anger towards the gaming community.

Chuds? Guy needs to get a grip.
 
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Mayar

Member
Been thinking about this and this is totally food for thought.

Since the release of the game, EA and Bioware immediately, like not even a week out, put out two statements:

1. There is no DLC (in a series know for expanded post story Segments, multiple of them) citing all of Bioware is pivoting directly to the next Mass Effect game.
2. It was stated plainly Mass Effect will have the same tone as the others and not whimsy. That game will be more mature writing the series is known for.

That is such a hard pivot right at release which means they were liking the presales/internals. They knew what they had and wanted to pinch this loaf asap while reassuring people about the next ME.
There is exactly one small problem in their plan, a really insignificant, tiny one... Who the hell will believe them now after Mass Effect: Andromedа, Anthem and now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Their games will now be looked at under a microscope, the credit of trust has fallen to an absolute minimum. Therefore, it is absolutely unimportant what they write about the new Mass Effect, especially considering the fact that almost everyone who worked on the main trilogy has left BioWare.
 
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TransTrender

Gold Member
The Thieves Guild don't steal things because that would disrespect other cultures



Oh believe me, that's only half the trouble, there are a ton of such moments. Let's say there is a faction of Antivan Crows in the game, actually a faction of hired killers, at the mention of which people in the world of DA simply start to panic and they run away in horror. In fact, a faction of ruthless killers for whom human life is worth nothing at all, and if you sign a contract with them for a person, he is dead without options.

Not only is this faction now unable to protect its leader (Top Secret Organization), but now we have another party member from this organization, Lucanis Dellamorte. There will be a plot spoiler below, I will hide it, but if you go through his plot -
I'll try without big spoilers just in case, he has a demon sealed inside him, we help him (His relative will be to blame... what a surprise... Who has been spying for a long time and dumping information to enemies) and the player will have a choice - attention... let him go (he is a relative, you can't kill him...), or put him in prison... A truly bloody order of assassins, who have killed thousands of people on order before, including people of the first magnitude in the kingdom, will either let the person go or put him in prison... If you make one decision in the dialogue before this, you will not be able to let him go, you can only put him in prison.

I'm just honestly shocked by how the story and dialogues are written in this game, and oh my god how many inaccuracies and blunders there are in it regarding the lore of the game...

That's soo pathetic.
Bioware is completely soy infused and there is no hope for Mass Effect.
They are done.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I swear man. I really don't get how this guy became the "pinnacle" of gaming journalism. The guy is displaying some weird suppressed anger towards the gaming community.

Chuds? Guy needs to get a grip.
He wrote a really in depth article back in 2019 about how much of a clusterfuck BioWare was. The guy definitely has some connections.

Which makes me think that when he deleted that post about Veilguard’s sales, it was probably due to some info he got from an inside source.


It’s honestly a fascinating article and worth a read if you’re interested.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
So are all the awards TLOU2 won woke media awards now? Maybe its just a good game. Metacritic score is also 93 and it sold a lot.

That's opening a can of worms because TLOU 2 has been controversial for a while, but all I'll say is that the "woke" elements in TLOU 2 were handled vastly better in TLOU 2 than in Veilguard. Not even remotely comparable,imo.
 
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Bernardougf

Member
So are all the awards TLOU2 won woke media awards now? Maybe its just a good game. Metacritic score is also 93 and it sold a lot.

Well I have an universal policy of dont believing in absolutely any awards or grades given by the modern press from quite some time .... and different from a lot of gafers I dont flip flop with this policy based on my favorite game of the month being out.

Having said that, yes I believe the universal appraisal for the game and a lot of the grades/awards were inflated by the progressive elements of the game, given the very divisive nature of the game among its fans it should be expected something similar or some division from the media also, but nop, universal appraisal. I wonder why... so stunning and brave though.

GoT was my personal goty that year.. something tells me in a trully impartial media or at least with some impartiality, this game would have received more accolades.

But lets wait and see how many "real" GOTY DA:V will swap ... I would love being proved wrong ... but the awards are coming .. and I bet will not be just a few.
 
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Well I have an universal policy of dont believing in absolutely any awards or grades given by the modern press from quite some time .... and different from a lot of gafers I dont flip flop with this policy based on my favorite game of the month being out.

Having said that, yes I believe the universal appraisal for the game and a lot of the grades/awards were inflated by the progressive elements of the game, given the very divisive nature of the game among its fans it should be expected something similar or some division from the media also, but nop, universal appraisal. I wonder why... so stunning and brave though.

GoT was my personal goty that year.. something tells me in a trully impartial media or at least with some impartiality, this game would have received more accolades.

But lets wait and see how many "real" GOTY DA:V will swap ... I would love being proved wrong ... but the awards are coming .. and I bet will not be just a few.
Most polls back in 2020 on gamefaqs and others have FFVII Remake followed by GoT being the two most fan picked goty by far. So I definitely don't trust whatever the hell the award show picks as their goty.
 

Human 2.0

Neo Member
Been thinking about this and this is totally food for thought.

Since the release of the game, EA and Bioware immediately, like not even a week out, put out two statements:

1. There is no DLC (in a series know for expanded post story Segments, multiple of them) citing all of Bioware is pivoting directly to the next Mass Effect game.
2. It was stated plainly Mass Effect will have the same tone as the others and not whimsy. That game will be more mature writing the series is known for.

That is such a hard pivot right at release which means they were liking the presales/internals. They knew what they had and wanted to pinch this loaf asap while reassuring people about the next ME.

I bet they'll still manage to shoehorn MODERN DAY into Mass Effect and turn it into a tedious lecture.

Non binary gender queer Shep incoming.
 
I bet they'll still manage to shoehorn MODERN DAY into Mass Effect and turn it into a tedious lecture.

Non binary gender queer Shep incoming.

Oh I am not running defense for the next Mass Effect. It's more than likely it'll be hot garbage at the current trajectory. They will definitely add in bullshit with their current devs.

I am commenting that EA and bioware, through their immediate action, know that DA:V is a lost cause and will actively damage expectations for their content moving forward unless they disavow the whismy/not serious tone asap.
 
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Mayar

Member
I bet they'll still manage to shoehorn MODERN DAY into Mass Effect and turn it into a tedious lecture.

Non binary gender queer Shep incoming.

Unfortunately, too much attention is paid to DEI, if this was the only and biggest problem of the game, it could still be understood, but to put it mildly, it is not the biggest problem. Yes, they made DEI in the game and were not able to integrate it into the game normally and present it to the player well as in other games, examples have already been given.

But the main thing is that they have forgotten how to make RPGs, or simply could not make an RPG - it is just an action-adventure linear game, they have huge problems with writing a plot and making it logical, they have problems with writing characters and companions (Although in the days of DA1-2 and Mass Effect 1-2-3, they had some of the best companions in the industry). They could not write normal dialogues between characters so that they would fit the time and setting of the game. Their games have been criticized a bit before and called Light RPG for simplifying the combat system, but what is done in this game is just a thoughtless copy of God of War. Well, and perhaps the main thing is that this game is absolutely out of the world of DA, as if they did not want to continue DA but wanted to reboot the series from scratch, but at some point they decided that they needed to continue the DAI plot. And as I already wrote, if the game did not belong to the DA setting and had a different name 6.5-7.0, I think they would have received it easily, and there would have been no fuss, this is an ordinary light linear fairy tale adventure game with action for one week.

You can simply remove all DEI from the game, but this will absolutely not affect the overall quality of the game as a whole, all the other problems will remain in place.That's why I try to move away from the DEI topic as much as possible in my posts, or not write about it, because the problems are much more fundamental. And these problems can lead to the fact that yes, it's really scary for Mass Effect, because we can again get a maximally simplified linear action - adventure game without depth, with poorly written dialogues and history.
 
Smash JT confirming through a separate source (this one at Bioware, he says) Endymion's earlier report about a high level of returns. Also, both sources estimate that the game has sold about 500K. Take it fwiw. It's still unconfirmed rumor, but there are two sources now.


LMAO 500k would be an absolute disaster for a game of this (presumed) budget

I love it when the chuds and incels do nothing and just keep winning
 
Gamers now get more entertainment from watching the Western AAA industry collapse than playing its games
I've been playing the 6 years old Monster Hunter World, yeah this is some deep backlog shit, and it's literally a game from another epoch. Games used to be so good before the year 2020-ish when woke infected everything like a cancer
 

Humdinger

Gold Member
LMAO 500k would be an absolute disaster for a game of this (presumed) budget.

Yeah, it would. I'm not sure I trust the estimates, though. They said the game had 200K preorders. Would a game with 200K preorders only have an additional 300K people buy it at launch? That seems strange to me. I haven't preordered a game in ages. Plus, the info would be out of date by the time of reporting, because it would have to travel through multiple channels. And it's coming from anonymous sources who probably have a vested interest in reporting negative information. So ... I don't know how much to trust it.

Otoh, I have to think that if the game sold well, Bioware would be yelling from the rooftops about it. They know the game has gotten a lot of flak. They would want to grab any evidence they could to say, "See, the game is a success!"
 
I've been playing the 6 years old Monster Hunter World, yeah this is some deep backlog shit, and it's literally a game from another epoch. Games used to be so good before the year 2020-ish when woke infected everything like a cancer

Yeah I find myself playing a lot of old games too especially modded Bethesda games that were released before Starfield. Although there is still a good amount of good games without the woke shit even today like Space Marine 2, Stellar Blade, Rebirth, and Resident Evil games etc.
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Sophia Narwitz does a truly excellent job laying out all the various reasons why Veilguard fails. 50 minutes but it was worth viewing. First two minutes accompanied by a children's song perfectly shows how immature the characters behave. The content rating suggests it's a game for a mature/adult audience, but in reality it is a bland Marvelized fantasy story where all the grit has been sandpapered away, a game tailor made for teen girls who read nothing but romantacy novels and are obsessed with gender and sexuality.

 

lmimmfn

Member
There is exactly one small problem in their plan, a really insignificant, tiny one... Who the hell will believe them now after Mass Effect: Andromedа, Anthem and now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Their games will now be looked at under a microscope, the credit of trust has fallen to an absolute minimum. Therefore, it is absolutely unimportant what they write about the new Mass Effect, especially considering the fact that almost everyone who worked on the main trilogy has left BioWare.
They started by calling us racists/bigots, then once every normie was branded with this, the "insults" lost all meaning and no-one cares what theyre called anymore by these mentally ill people, so now all they are left with is to call us 'chuds' lol, shaking in my boots at being called that or anything else.
Scared Horror GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants
 

Bernardougf

Member
Unfortunately, too much attention is paid to DEI, if this was the only and biggest problem of the game, it could still be understood, but to put it mildly, it is not the biggest problem. Yes, they made DEI in the game and were not able to integrate it into the game normally and present it to the player well as in other games, examples have already been given.

But the main thing is that they have forgotten how to make RPGs, or simply could not make an RPG - it is just an action-adventure linear game, they have huge problems with writing a plot and making it logical, they have problems with writing characters and companions (Although in the days of DA1-2 and Mass Effect 1-2-3, they had some of the best companions in the industry). They could not write normal dialogues between characters so that they would fit the time and setting of the game. Their games have been criticized a bit before and called Light RPG for simplifying the combat system, but what is done in this game is just a thoughtless copy of God of War. Well, and perhaps the main thing is that this game is absolutely out of the world of DA, as if they did not want to continue DA but wanted to reboot the series from scratch, but at some point they decided that they needed to continue the DAI plot. And as I already wrote, if the game did not belong to the DA setting and had a different name 6.5-7.0, I think they would have received it easily, and there would have been no fuss, this is an ordinary light linear fairy tale adventure game with action for one week.

You can simply remove all DEI from the game, but this will absolutely not affect the overall quality of the game as a whole, all the other problems will remain in place.That's why I try to move away from the DEI topic as much as possible in my posts, or not write about it, because the problems are much more fundamental. And these problems can lead to the fact that yes, it's really scary for Mass Effect, because we can again get a maximally simplified linear action - adventure game without depth, with poorly written dialogues and history.

The problem is thinking that the DEI affects just some lines of dialogues or some few characters....this already hve been discussed here.. but DEI affects everything from inception through development.. that stupid lines/characters are just a way to shove it in your face.. but all that you described are consequences of incompetent hiring, leadership and fucked up priorities.. and in all of those the forced and badly implemented DEI practices have a huge effect.

This modern western devs just cant be creative anymore or deliver good products.. the ambient for this simply dosent exist ... it must be a constant walking in egg shells, safe spaces and toxic positivy... the echochambers and safe bubbles that block different ideas and creativity with toxic positivity are the result of what the industy has become.

Go check resetera and the threads post trump election .. those looneys are creating games ... dominating key positions on western studios.. theres no fucking way that kind of people can make anything remotely good.
 
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Otoh, I have to think that if the game sold well, Bioware would be yelling from the rooftops about it. They know the game has gotten a lot of flak. They would want to grab any evidence they could to say, "See, the game is a success!"

If they had anything positive to report, they would to signal their investors and their contacts in the media would shout it from the rooftops. It would have had it's own article on the sales report and it would be reshared and sourced ad nauseam.

Jason wouldn't have deleted his tweet if he had anything he could angle to validate his "top of the charts" spin.

Edit: This is playing out on a similar trajectory as SW Outlaws. The key difference is the lack of technical issues with the game.
 
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Mayar

Member
The problem is thinking that the DEI affects just some lines of dialogues or some few characters....this already hve been discussed here.. but DEI affects everything from inception through development.. that stupid lines/characters are just a way to shove it in your face.. but all that you described are consequences of incompetent hiring, leadership and fucked up priorities.. and in all of those the forced and badly implemented DEI practices have a huge effect.

This modern western devs just cant be creative anymore or deliver good products.. the ambient for this simply dosent exist ... it must be a constant walking in egg shells, safe spaces and toxic positivy... the echochambers and safe bubbles that block different ideas and creativity with toxic positivity are the result of what the industy has become.

Go check resetera and the threads post trump election .. those looneys are creating games ... dominating key positions on western studios.. theres no fucking way that kind of people can make anything remotely good.
This is actually what I wrote. The problems are simply much deeper than DEI, and to my great regret, as I already wrote, I am not sure that even if they completely remove DEI from the game, it will somehow affect the quality of their games. Because it is clearly visible that the problems in BioWare have already gone much deeper, and the company clearly has problems with employees.
 
Sophia Narwitz does a truly excellent job laying out all the various reasons why Veilguard fails. 50 minutes but it was worth viewing. First two minutes accompanied by a children's song perfectly shows how immature the characters behave. The content rating suggests it's a game for a mature/adult audience, but in reality it is a bland Marvelized fantasy story where all the grit has been sandpapered away, a game tailor made for teen girls who read nothing but romantacy novels and are obsessed with gender and sexuality.


Wow this chick is great, what's her deal

Edit: oh she trans lol, I was gonna say there's no way a chick is this good at games
 
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Mayar

Member
Wow this chick is great, what's her deal

Edit: oh she trans lol, I was gonna say there's no way a chick is this good at games
Yes, she approached the review with a spark. Everything that I tried to describe as correctly and calmly as possible, she said in plain text without censorship and any restraint. But overall, yes, another victory for Bioware, to irritate a fan of the series like that, and a non-traditional one at that, I consider this a success. Of course, everything is not calm inside me either, but I try to somehow filter the information that comes out =)))
 
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This is actually what I wrote. The problems are simply much deeper than DEI, and to my great regret, as I already wrote, I am not sure that even if they completely remove DEI from the game, it will somehow affect the quality of their games. Because it is clearly visible that the problems in BioWare have already gone much deeper, and the company clearly has problems with employees.


DEI is the sole reason why those incompetent employees have key roles in the studio. To remove DEI, you first have to remove they/them.
 
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Humdinger

Gold Member
Wow this chick is great, what's her deal

Edit: oh she trans lol, I was gonna say there's no way a chick is this good at games

I heard she's a member here.

p.s. Excellent video. I love the comparison to Booktok and YA fantasy romance writing. The section on modernity is excellent, too.
 
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Mayar

Member
DEI is the sole reason why those incompetent employees have key roles in the studio. To remove DEI, you first have to remove they/them.
Unfortunately, this will not happen, all those who left the company will definitely not return. Also, there is an acute shortage of employees with experience in AAA projects on the market, especially big ones. Therefore, the maximum that we can expect is that EA will force them to retrain to make games. Or, a fantasy option: EA will open its huge bottomless purse and, for a lot of money, will return the people who worked on DA - ME.
 
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Unfortunately, this will not happen, all those who left the company will definitely not return. Also, there is an acute shortage of employees with experience in AAA projects on the market, especially big ones. Therefore, the maximum that we can expect is that EA will force them to retrain to make games. Or, a fantasy option: EA will open its huge bottomless purse and, for a lot of money, will return the people who worked on DA - ME.
Yeah. Major American companies have spent the last seven or so years monomaniacally focused on DEI hiring and the entire talent pipeline is now compromised by it. Even assuming they recognize the problem, and some of them surely do, it's going to be very difficult for them to fix it because everyone has been trained to present themselves as believing in it and the ones who genuinely don't have been weeded out.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Sophia Narwitz does a truly excellent job laying out all the various reasons why Veilguard fails. 50 minutes but it was worth viewing. First two minutes accompanied by a children's song perfectly shows how immature the characters behave. The content rating suggests it's a game for a mature/adult audience, but in reality it is a bland Marvelized fantasy story where all the grit has been sandpapered away, a game tailor made for teen girls who read nothing but romantacy novels and are obsessed with gender and sexuality.


Great video, I watched this last night. Nice to hear a trans person’s perspective on it. I always find myself thinking “give me a break, is this really how trans/nonbinary people want to be portrayed in fiction? As some token immersion-breaking self insert character?” Seems like that’s a resounding NO

(It goes into a lot of other stuff besides that as well. Worth a watch)
 
Yeah. Major American companies have spent the last seven or so years monomaniacally focused on DEI hiring and the entire talent pipeline is now compromised by it. Even assuming they recognize the problem, and some of them surely do, it's going to be very difficult for them to fix it because everyone has been trained to present themselves as believing in it and the ones who genuinely don't have been weeded out.


They can't fix it because they lack the talent to do so. They weren't hired on their skills or creative talent, which is nonexistent. So, the only solution is to replace them by actual creators, the ones whose positions these pretenders were given.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
He truly is pathetic when it comes to this sort of thing. Folks should keep this in mind when reading anything from him that isn't directly about video games because he is promoting his own personal political agenda. In that regard, I don't see him any differently than that Endymion youtube guy who is on the opposite side of the spectrum.
And that’s a damn shame because he used to write quite well, better than 99% of journalists about subject of gaming. And his books were pretty good as well.

And then he spiraled down the road of political agenda and everything f and anything from him must be taken with a grain of salt.
 

paolo11

Member
He truly is pathetic when it comes to this sort of thing. Folks should keep this in mind when reading anything from him that isn't directly about video games because he is promoting his own personal political agenda. In that regard, I don't see him any differently than that Endymion youtube guy who is on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Isn’t he biased and woke ? I don’t trust that person
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Great video, I watched this last night. Nice to hear a trans person’s perspective on it. I always find myself thinking “give me a break, is this really how trans/nonbinary people want to be portrayed in fiction? As some token immersion-breaking self insert character?” Seems like that’s a resounding NO

(It goes into a lot of other stuff besides that as well. Worth a watch)
Yes, it is how they want to be portrayed, because there were plenty of them on the staff in this game including the lead.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Yes, it is how they want to be portrayed, because there were plenty of them on the staff in this game including the lead.
The game clearly came out of an echo chamber filled with far left activists, toxic positivity, and incompetent amateurish writers. So no I don’t think this is how most trans/nonbinary people want to be portrayed.

And BTW I strongly suspect this shit was being cheered on by all the straight white folks inside the company as well, who felt like they were being “allies” and “staying in their lane” by withholding any constructive criticism
 

EN250

Member
Most polls back in 2020 on gamefaqs and others have FFVII Remake followed by GoT being the two most fan picked goty by far. So I definitely don't trust whatever the hell the award show picks as their goty.
Wasn't Doritos Pope's own award show that gave the GOTY by people (not "professional reviewers") to Ghost of Tsushima?

The only thing woke about TLOU2 is gay Ellie not accepting an apology from the drunken arsehole who in the end actually realizes he was in the wrong, but for the writers, Ellie couldn't accept it and forgive the man, to show some growth and how a character can try to "redeem" himself, no, he'll be an arsehole forever

And the other woke thing is the side story with the girl who used to f#ck the Asian guy

Everything else is just a bad told story and gamers in general for some reason decided bad story = woke 🙄
 
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Fake

Member
Sophia Narwitz does a truly excellent job laying out all the various reasons why Veilguard fails. 50 minutes but it was worth viewing. First two minutes accompanied by a children's song perfectly shows how immature the characters behave. The content rating suggests it's a game for a mature/adult audience, but in reality it is a bland Marvelized fantasy story where all the grit has been sandpapered away, a game tailor made for teen girls who read nothing but romantacy novels and are obsessed with gender and sexuality.



That part showing GoW in dev conference is nuts.
 
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