Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024)

@JoeyPajamas' posts reminded me about this game and decided to give it a try.

First impressions:

1. Woah, the hair in this game looks incredible.
2. The character creator is weird. Both very extensive, with options to change body size, gender, pronouns, but also severely limited. Very few colour options, hair can only be one colour, the face UI uses this bizarre system of blending 3 faces that I just could not get a handle on. Also, the booty slider hardly does anything. In the end I'm not super happy about my character, but fortunately you can change appearance in-game, which is nice.
3. The beginning is Mass Efffect 3 beat for beat, huh? Run through linear corridors with loud booming explosions are everywhere.
4. Combat as a mage feels... not great. It's too actiony and simplified for what I expect in Dragon Age. A continued (d)evolution of the series, I guess. Dragon Age 2 moved a bit to the action genre where you performed basic attacks more often than spells, and Inquisition moved the camera even more close to the character. Now I almost forget I even have spells, since the X X X Y combo is so effective. No active pause or controlling the other characters in the party either and I don't think I can chose which enemy to target. It's not that it's bad, but just that it feels too samey; too generic. I'm willing to give it a chance, but I might see if I like it more as a rogue, though.

Jason Schreier’s inevitable DA: The Veilguard post mortem is up. Not a lot of surprises and a lot of confirmation that EA doesn’t know how to manage their studios.

NEW: What went wrong with Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Why was the writing so tonally inconsistent? Why did it feel so shallow? Why were there so few choices?

Really, after ten years of turbulence, it was a miracle that anything came out at all. This is the story.

I gotta give Veilguard props for having really cool starter armor. Usually you start an RPG in rags or plain clothes, or a vault suit, looking for the first piece of neat armor to change into.

I've found a couple pieces of armor already, but the starter armor still looks the coolest. I like the sorta vagabond knight vibe it's got going.

I'll probably find better armor eventually, but so far I'm willing to take the lower stats for a cooler look.

EA Thinks Dragon Age: The Veilguard Would Have Done Better If It Were Live Service

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson...is convinced the reason the long-awaited RPG sold fewer copies than the company wanted is that it wasn’t live-servicey enough.

Wilson’s answer as to “why” the game underperformed conveyed a deep lack of introspection on the effects that a long and difficult development had on Dragon Age. It also seemed altogether disconnected from the video game industry at large.

“In order to break beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” Wilson said. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played; however, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”

We live in a stupid world with stupid CEOs helming AAA studios who constantly want to make stupid decisions.

Finished this up finally! Like all the Dragon Ages, it's an odd game to evaluate holistically since it's so uneven. The characters, sidequests, worldbuilding, and visuals are all fantastic! But a lot of the core components are just okay (combat, character building, dialogue options, main story) or even outright bad (camera, loot system). And the whole game is such a direct retread of Mass Effect 2 that even the good stuff doesn't always feel fresh. Overall I had a swell time though, and it's frankly incredible for a direct sequel to turn out this solid after 10 years away.

Think it'll take me a while to form a firm opinion, but for now here's a provisional, purely subjective, ranking of all the Bioware games I've played:

1. Dragon Age: Inquisition
2. Mass Effect 3
3. Dragon Age: Origins/Mass Effect 1/Dragon Age: Veilguard
4. Mass Effect 2
5. Dragon Age 2
6. Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2