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Dragon Age: The Veilguard


radiofloyd

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Bit of a mixed bag I think. I still don't like the look with those colour accents, it's a personal preference thing but it reminds me too much of those more cartoonish takes on the western RPG from Blizzard or Riot. Inquisition had a lot of intense green hues but it kind of worked from a visual standpoint. Here they mix it up with every other colour on the planet and drown the UI in purple and it's just not an appealing look IMO. I don't need the greyish brown from DA1 and DA2 but this is too far in the other direction. I also think these soft character models look worse than those from Inquisition, it's like everyone has an instagram filter over their faces.

 

Combat looks okay I guess, I think anyone expecting this to go all the way back to Origins' tactical approach was a bit too nostalgically optimistic. This is basically an evolution of DA2 with a bit of Batman flipping around on top (at least if you play as a rogue). It's hard to gauge how complex or simple it will be considering this is very early game stuff. It's not putting me off but it's also not doing anything new or impressive.

 

The more interesting questions aren't being answered by this presentation though. This is a very linear, story-driven, curated thing and IIRC Inquisition started roughly in the same way. But that game then turned into a dreadful slog through lifeless HUB areas filled with tedious copy-paste tasks. I can't really see them doing that here again, the graphical fidelity would make that an unreasonably big and expensive game. I almost wonder if it'll go back to the Origins template of sending you to different closed-off areas you can then freely explore. I'd be okay with that.

 

One positive thing I want to say is that, whatever you think of how it presents itself, it at least looks polished. That was a big issue with both Andromeda and Anthem so if nothing else this seems to have gotten the time it needed.

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I think some of these are DA2 characters?

 

Honestly it looks good to me. It just doesn’t look anything like DA1. This scene in particular almost seems sc-fi prison esq with the big surveillance ring in the sky and the search lights.

 

This game has obviously been in development for a long time. This whole Uncharted vibe with Batman combat feels like a whole era of games ago. They probably developed it with trends from 5-6 years ago in mind and to escape the more hardcore D&D style, then Baldur’s Gate 3 happened. I wonder how they feel about that

 

Regardless, based on the merits of the demo and the demo alone it looks all right. I think at some point I’ll re-install DA3 and see if I can get in to it. I would like to enjoy this series, I’m just a bit bitter about the whole thing 

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Varrik (he-dwarf) is from DA2, and Solas (bald elf) and Harding (she-dwarf) are from Inquisition.

 

I tried replaying Inquisition last year after watching the Netflix show but as soon as I saw the immeasurable amount of busywork nonsense you have to do in that game to progress in the story I immediately checked out again. It almost feels like a singleplayer Battle Pass you have to complete before unlocking the next cutscene. IT's really annoying, too, because every five or ten hours there's a good moment, but you really have to waddle through a pile of poop to get there.

 

In that context I find it odd that this is a direct sequel. Not only is Inquisition ten years old (...) but it's also not very fondly remembered. Maybe there are some people who never played an RPG before and have some good memories around it, but I think overall it's become a strongly disliked entry in the series that even retroactively redeemed DAII (which was always good, but people were quick to jump on the hate-bandwagen then). I think there was even a piece of DLC that's integral to the storyline that's being continued here and I certainly feel completely lost as to what's going on because I gave up on Inquisition after 30-ish hours.

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  • 2 months later...

Release date trailer

 


Sometimes the lighting on the character’s faces make them look like AI images and I really dislike it

 

The game itself looks cool, though. I’m not sure I’ll get this on release but I like it, it’s good.

 

Return of Morrigan is interesting to me. She was the big cliff hanger from DA:O and the expansion. 
 

The way they’re bringing every body back to team up and all the superhero cinematic action makes it feel like Dragon Age: Avengers 

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It sadly seems that they've stripped back all the real time with pause strategic combat from DA and gone full on action hero.

 

In movie terms, if DA was D&D Honor Among Thieves , then Veilguard is the D&D Wrath of the Dragon God movie......

 

But...... you know I'll still be playing it....

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There's still one of those circular menus à la Mass Effect you can pull up to issue commands and use skills while the action pauses. It's nothing like Origins of course but to be fair, neither were 2 and Inquisition.

 

I think this looks good enough for me to give it a shot when it comes out, though that might also be in part of classic big western RPGs not showing up frequently anymore. I do find it hard to care about the characters too much because it's been an eternity since I've played a game in this series and even longer since I enjoyed one (considering how disappointing Inquisition was – Morrigan was in that game, too, by the way). Like maf I also don't like the instagram filter on top of the faces and they couldn't have picked a dumber-looking default protagonist for their marketing, but at least that part can be fixed ingame. Environments and enemies look pretty neat though.

 

I'll say though I like that EA seemingly gave BioWare a proper chance with this. This looks like a big, expensive project a lot of other publishers would not have greenlit after Anthem and Andromeda, so kudos to them. (Laying off a bunch of the team a couple of months ago was still pretty shitty of course.)

 

Edit: fun coincidence, just found this in my letterbox.

 

wff3g9m.jpeg

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  • 1 month later...

This preview on Eurogamer sounds pretty positive:

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/after-playing-it-all-day-dragon-age-the-veilguard-feels-like-the-series-mass-effect-2-moment

 

Does sound like they've gone more towards an ARPG though....

 

"The Veilguard actually plays more like a single-player action game in combat than a traditional RPG, and the Dragon Age games before it."

 

Maybe actually a bit more Dragons Dogma style:

 

"You also don't have direct control over what your companions do this time, so you don't tab between them to play as them any more. They will happily unleash their own barrage of standard attacks without any input. You do, however, have some control over their special abilities, which you can deploy tactically to trigger devastating combination attacks.".

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  • 4 weeks later...

Wonder what it is that's pushing them to recommend a 16 core CPU for 'ultra RT'. Up to now the 7800X3D has been considered the best gaming CPU, with 8 cores.

 

Given the performance it's pulling on a 4080 I'm going to assume it's a future proofed setting and not one that's meant to be practical for current generation hardware, like the 'Unobtonium' setting on Avatar

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  • 2 weeks later...

Scores seem decent, now here's hoping EA doesn't have some unreasonable sales expectations due to Inquisition being such a success (commercially).

 

I'm not sure how I feel about it being streamlined so much though. From skimming through impressions it seems this has basically left the RPG landscape and entered action-adventure territory with some skill trees sprinkled on top, not unlike stuff like God of War or Guardians of the Galaxy. Kind of the inverse of what Spiders is doing with Greedfall 2.

 

I'll still check it out, for old time's sake. Not sure when I get around to though.

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