Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024)

The graphics in motion are actually quite nice. It looks and plays really good. I feel like DA:I was the Mass Effect-tication of the series and this is just an evolution of that. From the hub and spoke maps, to the movement, the home ship... i mean, lighthouse, the way you command your party, etc.... but I like that!

The story is interesting and there is even a ME1 loading elevator!

This game is too long. Gameplay is not engaging or deep enough to carry thar much bullshit filler. Each companion story has multiple subquests, some of which involve just conversations and some of them are just long stretches of walking with token and meaningless combat. Areas are reused constantly like they were in DA2 with new items appearing and doors being open randoml, gaslighting me into thinking I hadn't explored them 10 times before.

So many nonsense quests that do absolutely nothing with the story too. Like one about rescuing buskers, which was so bland and joyless that felt AI-generated (and used the world "buskers" so much that it lost all meaning).

It is going to be sad of this is the first Dragon Age that I don't play to the end.

"Have you ever ridden home in a wagon and felt the streets go from paved to dirt beneath the wheels? The horses slow, and everything grows quiet as you near home. What do you call that feeling?"

"I don't really have a word for it."

"No, you do not. Elgar'nan destroyed that emotion. He burned it from the mind of every living being."

I loved this dialogue. The image is so vivid and specific, but also real. It would be a wonderful entry in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. And the idea of being able to destroy specific emotions from the world is intriguing and fits perfectly with Dragon Age's worldbuilding.

Fuck, I hate it how this game has these pieces of excellent writing that are buried beneath so much unnecessary filler. It speaks to the potential of it being so much greater.

I wonder if the game could be improved by mods only be removing stuff. Remove the more idiotic quests, remove some of the unnecessary dialogue. It probably won't fix all the foundational issues, but it might help people get to the actual good stuff.

Ok, Tash is cool and all, but with her and Emmrich's introductions I feel that the game is lacking in bite. The Lord of Fortune are incredibly respectful treasure hunters, employing scholars as cultural consultants to avoid selling priceless artefacts. So any potential clash between her and Bellara is out the window; zero tension, zero moral ambiguity. Then Emmrich is a necromancer but no one seems to be that bothered about him resurrecting and enslaving the dead.

I need some more conflict. My companions are all too perfect and get along too well. Even after one Big Choice, the offended party is just somewhat miffed with my decision.

"They call me the Dread Wolf. And you? What are they going to call you once this is over?"

"I don't care what they call me. If they're calling me anything it means they're still alive. That's what matters."

Ok, game, you won me over again... Fuck, what a good line.

Also, I'm very much enjoying Bellara's and Hardin's conversation about the elven lullaby. It's a bit contrived, but still a very intriguing discussion about language that integrates well with the side mystery of Hardin's new powers.

I think I've had it with this game. I like the characters and some of the dialogue, but the gameplay is just... bad. Enemies are easy to dodge or parry but get incredibly tanky and the main difficulty slider in the game is just throwing more and more enemies at you, sometimes even infinitely respawning enemies.

The final straw was this fucking boss Felassan. I could dodge everything he threw at me but I was just doing almost no damage. So it was just an incredibly tedious fight of chipping away at it, waiting for cooldowns. Until the fucker started not only healing, but also summoning minions. Suddenly between his and his minions attacks I had no attack window whatsoever. Just dodge-dodge-dodge-doge all the time because every second there was something attacking me. And since every one of them had ranged attacks with infinite range, and since enemies barely even try to attack companions, I couldn't fall back to regroup or do something.

After 20 minutes (I looked at the steam recording) the guy was barely at half health and a barrage of ranged AoE attacks got me caught in the geometry and that was it.

Maybe I was underlevelled, but then why let me be there at all? The game is full of artificial roadblocks in the form of white barriers that lift up arbitrarily at particular moments in the story. Or even better, make the boss actually able to hit me so I die quickly and I quickly decide to leave and come back later. Or even even better, let me win the fucking fight if I'm playing well enough to not take damage even if I'm underlevelled.

I think I might be able to like this game if I reprogram my brain to not compare with the other entries on the series and try to forget that my character is supposed to be a mage. Like when I visited Boulder and had to think of their coffee as some different black liquid just to tolerate it.

The main plot seems very generic, but I'm mostly liking my companions. The writing is all over the place. Characters either spout the most trite and overdone lines (I never want to hear "it's quiet.. to quiet' in my life) or have deeply interesting reflections and interactions.