Dragon Age: The Veilguard

[Maryokutai]

Randomly decided to fire this up yesterday, maybe finally a topic other people will join in at some point.

 

Anyway, after a solid 40 minutes in the character creator, which is simultaneously very good but also oddly lacking in some areas, I went through the tutorial area they showed in that gameplay clip a few months ago and then did the first proper mission afterwards. Decided to play an elven mage which resulted in a couple of not-important lines during dialogue so far, so I guess the times during which elves were this universe's slaves are over. Combat wise the mage can choose between flinging ranged attacks from a staff or using a magically infused short sword in close combat, in addition to your usual skills you unlock via (a very convoluted) skill tree. My mana pool is very low at the moment so I can barely use those right now, so I hope that changes, because the basic stuff feels a bit dull I think. Not bad, but ... pedestrian? But then again I've barely started and haven't really used the command wheel for my party members either, so I'm not going to judge it on that front yet.

 

Visually this is probably the most impressive game I've played all year and a far cry from BioWare's usual output and an excellent showcase for Frostbite. I'm playing performance mode and it's basically a flawless visual experience, really smooth, really clear, barely any noticeable pop-ins or other distracting graphical scratches and such, while also maintaining all the visual flourishes you'd expect from a current-gen AAA product. I only very briefly switched over to quality but didn't see any noteworthy improvements that would warrant the more sluggish framerate. Annoyingly, while there are a ton of accessibility options, you can't turn of the quest marker for the main quest, so you permanently have some weird snowflake on the screen. Hopefully they patch that out before I'm done with it. The only other gripe I have with its visual presentation is the artstyle, or rather character proportions, as everyone's head is simply too big. We're used to this for dwarven races, but it looks really weird on slim builds like elven characters. 

 

But I do enjoy the overall experience so far. Feels good to play a high-end RPG again, even if this falls into a very streamlined action RPG territory that's very far removed from its Origins, eh, origins. Very linear so far, more reminiscent of the earlier games than Inquisition in that sense. So far I like that aspect but that might shift after a couple of hours.

 

 

[Maryokutai]

Played a bit more so I can add a bit of info about the structure. After recruiting your fourth party member the game sort of opens up and allows you to go back to areas which you previously visited for story reasons and funnelled you along a linear path, but now you can explore all the side passages and stuff. In an odd twist, at least for this genre, every party member seems to bring a certain exploration skill with them, like moving rocks or conjuring platforms from the Fade, which makes progression feel almost Metroid-esque. It's not bad, it's just unusual, and kind of forces you, in addition to high level enemies, to not 100% an area the moment you visit it, never to return. There's also some light puzzles, a couple of quests, a truckload of treasure chests but few of them spit out cool things.

 

What I don't quite like is how artificial these areas feel. Even running around you get the impression you're walking on paths laid out by a level designer and then decorated by an artist, instead of a forest with ruins where people and animals would live. It's a similarly lifeless impression than that evoked by Inquisition, though for completely different reasons. The city you visit later handles this a bit better, but you can't talk to NPCs other than your party members, and to those only in your headquarters, so even there it's more of a backdrop than a place. I wonder if that's by design or if it's simply financially impossible to build a game this big, in this fidelity, with all the little RPG intricacies you'd expect from a title like this 15 years ago.

 

What adds to the feeling of detachment is the way you get to these places, which isn't through a map or by walking, but via a hub world with portals, like a high fantasy version of the Mario 64 castle. Granted it's a cool setup and I actually like exploring that part and teleporting around (loading times are a few seconds at most) but I've yet to get a sense of coherence that makes me feel like being part of the world. 

 

Combat hasn't evolved much but with two party members I can now use combo skills which do massive damage. Enemies can also be staggered, FF-style, which prompts a high damage attack/finisher and fighting for a while charges up your 'Ultimate', which in the Mage's case is a big beam. There's a ton of status effects you can inflict and bonuses/follow-ups linked to them, but right now it's just a bunch of text for me because I have so little skills at my disposal. It's fine and enjoyable, but your party members either don't or just barely draw aggro, meaning my character is public enemy n°1 and is always getting rushed down. I fight most encounters with the magic sword now because that thing at least has a parry.

 

And while all of this sounds like I'm rather lukewarm about I do enjoy it. Outside of two crashes (thankfully it autosaves all the time) it's a very polished, enjoyable experience. Not quite the classic RPG you'd expect either from the studio or the DA IP though, so one has to go in with the right expectations. There's been a lot of talk about the writing but I think that was overblown, the only thing bothering me is how modern some phrases sound. I do like the Codex entries though, and there's a ton of them.

 

And I agree with Alex from DF, the curly hair looks absolutely amazing (every other hairstyle looks like there's an instagram filter smeared over it though):

 

[Maryokutai]

Slowly moving along with this, passed the 30 hour mark over the holidays. I don't have much to add to the last posts, it's a solid game, but it lacks in certain classic RPG systems to make it really stand out. So far I've only had two impactful decisions to make, one involved an A or B outcome that pissed off the other group, so the decision was a coinflip, the other one only impacted my relationship to an NPC who died 30 minutes later. The narrative feels very stringent in that sense, though I do like how my character's background does give her some unique dialogue lines in some scenarios (nothing new for this IP or RPGs in general, but happy that they kept it). The pacing is similar to Inquisition, in the sense that you do a lot of tiny things and once in a while a major setpiece and narrative shift happens – thankfully the in-between isn't a slog as in Inquisition, though I don't recommend running around in the same area for too long regardless.

 

One thing that puts certain social media outrages into perspective is that 30 hours in I have yet to see any of the content that got shared around in an effort to make the writing look horrible. In fact the way up to that point so far seems to be rather subtle, the party member in question being faced with a throwaway line of her mother that 'she behaves like a man' which leads to her pondering said remark and whether or not there's truth in it. So it's really not a case of throwing a preachy non-binary* character in your face but rather accompanying them on the way. I admit from the clip it looked and sounded awful but now that I've seen the start of the character arc I'm actually rather intrigued by how they pull it off. Turns out context is important, who would have thought.

*Though regarding this a little linguistic side note that might not be of much interest here but I'll just post it anyway.

Spoiler

I usually play games with a strong focus on voice over work in the language they were written in, so in this case English. I did, however, check out the German version for a bit because I heard some horrible things about it and it is, indeed, pretty awful to the point where I kept thinking it was full of typos. The reason for this being that, unlike English, a lot of languages don't have an easy go-to pronoun for neutral/non-binary people. For example, German uses the same word for plurals as they use for 'she' (French, meanwhile, even has gender-specific plurals). At the moment there are multiple movements around neo-pronouns but none of them are officially sanctioned as part of the German language, so writers either ignore them or adapt those they feel most comfortable with. But the end result is that there's no common tongue you can get used to, and Veilguard/EA picked one I find just extremely odd in the way they chose to alphabetise it, so reading it feels really cumbersome – as does listening to it for that matter, because voice actors, too, have no experience incorporating it into their daily work and just go with the lines as written.

 

This is, of course, not a DA problem but a significantly deeper issue. It's hard enough to get an English native to use 'they', but at least that's a pronoun that exists in their vocabulary. Imagine how much more complex it becomes when you need to invent new words for it. I switched back to English rather quickly.

 

[Maf]

I'm almost 6 hours in. Just finished the Shadow Dragon dock mission. I accidentally pushed the mission's boss off the edge in to water while he was at 50% health and he died lol. I like it when games allow that

 

This game is fine, I guess. Not necessarily a negative but this game is kind of mushy. You just hit the buttons and things happen and nothing matters. I feel my brain turning soft as I play it. I just auto equip anything I find, I just pick whatever dialogue choice sounds the most fun (although as with modern games sometimes the dialogue choice isn't what I think it is), and I just run forward and kill whatever is in front of me

 

However, when playing it's hard to stop. It is fun and I quite like the fighting, but it's just a very soft, mushy game and it's easy to play but hard to stay concentrated. I'm not even sure what's happening most of the time.

 

Which leads to my biggest complaint is the narrative stuff. Unlike above, I do think the writing is kind of bad. I remember when this game came out and people complained it sounded very MCU/Stars Wars, which people then challenged that with Bioware games have always had that kind of snark and humour to them, prior to Marvel, which is correct

 

However, I think in previous games they blended snarky humour with grown up characters. In this everyone sounds like they fell out of a YA novel, and the writing sounds of that level. It has that same Bioware tone in it's humour, but it doesn't have that Bioware maturity. Everyone talks like they're 15 and in a movie.

 

Like, Mass Effect is a game that has pretty broad characters, but it never sounded like the characters were talking nonsense or were childish. Where as here it does quite a lot. 

 

I'm struggling to care about the story as well. Maybe that's because I skipped Dragon Age 3, although the game seems to recap the need-to-know part about Solas. Which sounds like it come pretty far out of left-field to me. Maybe that's why playing the previous game is recommended. I understand, but it's like what?

 

Spoiler

Last time I played a Dragon Age game Solas was some nerdy, bald guy that followed you around and fired spells on command. Now it turns out he's ancient god and Dreadwolf and imprisoned old gods and the most powerful guy in the universe and all this. Ok, that's not what I remember him being like but ok.  

 

I definitely will play more, this post sounds like I dislike the game. I'm actually having fun and do like it, but as I keep saying it's just a really soft game. I'm just hitting the buttons and doing the stuff. 

 

Actually, I will say it's a dramatically better game that DA3. All the open world nonsense and spamming auto attack is ka-poof! What's taken it's place is exceptionally linear, but enjoyable missions and some basic but meaty combat. I much prefer this, no question. 

EDIT: Oh, actually my biggest complaint is what the characters look like. As in the trailers, all the faces look like gen-AI or got Instagram filters on and the graphics in the game are good, but the faces look kind of shit. I think this soft, glossy filter probably adds to my feeling that the game is kind of soft and made for teenagers 

[Maryokutai]

I actually like the plot twist from Inquisition but I wish that game was good enough so that I had experienced it directly through it, instead of Veilguard's marketing material. But from what I understand it was mostly developed in its Trespasser DLC and there's no timeline in which I would have bought that anyway. I do think it's kind of weird they decided to make a straight follow-up to a ten-year old game, but on the other hand they do help you catch up like you say. Plus they go even a bit beyond that, there's some interesting revelations about the Blight for example and how that came to be, and that's basically a lore thing that has been there since the very beginning with Origins.

 

The writing is hit & miss, there are decent and not so good moments. The thing you mention is what I meant when I said it was too modern, but I don't think that's a quality problem but more of a stylistic one. There are some interesting and unique character setups though, like the Necromancer in your party suffering from necrophobia and such.

[Maf]

I found a unique weapon in the game. Items only 3 points stronger than my best weapon and over 100 points LESS stagger which I started to build my character around. But the perks look pretty good 

[Maf]

Recruited Dr Strange so that's the Avengers complete

 

Between having so many weapons/accessories + now being able to enchant them all the customisation for this game has gone through the roof. Before I just equipped whatever 1) because the game is easy and 2) because everything was just kind of better than what I already had. But now I can customise everything, I have so many weapons, and skill points can get refunded for free so I can change my guy up whenever + all the allies abilities and equipment

 

The customisation has just gone crazy. At first it was so simple I barely looked, now it's so complicated I'm scared to look. I guess if I ever start struggling I'll look at making a real build but for now I'll just stick with what I have

 

One thing I really like about this game and I think is clever is how the game handles loot. If you looked at the menu you might think this game was Destiny or a loot'em up or whatever. Even though I've started to get a lot, 20hrs in it's actually very constrained and none of these items are randomly generated they're all specific. And the clever part is you level them up by buying or finding a duplicate. Meaning no reward is ever completely disposable. You either get a new weapon or it levels one up that's already in the inventory. Even if that weapon is not being used, they all have stats/perks, or unlockable stats/perks that I'm keeping my eye on because certain weapons look like they could be really strong later. 

 

It's a clever way to handle loot and I like it a lot. Although it is also adding to this build paralysis of I dunno what to do now or what I should aim for later. 

 

One thing that I've found which is just OP is Bellara's black hole ability + my whirling hammer attack. Because all abilities are useable at the start of a fight I'm exploding the enemies before they can even do anything. If I use Neve I can add on her time slowing ability at the end of it so gives me even more time to do charged attacks to break armour/build stagger.

 

I find a lot of the allies' direct damage attacks kind of useless. I only have abilities equipped for them which either apply a status, detonate a status, gives a buff or debuffs the enemies. Everything else they do is kind of garbage. 

 

I realised playing today this game is basically Mass Effect 2 style Bioware. It's not as good as that but it's been such a long time since I'ver played one and disliked DA3 so much this is really nice and I'm enjoying it a lot 

[one-armed dwarf]

Dr Strange is in this game too?

 

Also that is a video game UI circa 2024.

[Maf]

 

He is a professor not a doctor and a Necromancer not a Sorcerer but that is muthafucking Dr Strange 

[one-armed dwarf]

No, it's Vincent Price

[Maryokutai]

Duplicates powering up existing identical pieces really is a cool idea. I usually look at the bonus effects on equipment and not as much at the numbers to be honest. Stagger in particular feels a bit underpowered the further you get into the game, normal enemies usually die before you can stagger them and bosses barely take any damage from the bonus attack, so in my case it's mostly just a case of recharging mana (bonus effect of an accessory I have equipped). Burning through armour and magic shields as quickly as possible is more important and equipment that helps you do that more useful I think. Though I am playing a different class, so maybe the warrior approach is different.

 

My entire team composition and build is around just getting enemies off of me, because the aggro thing is super annoying when you play as a mage. Like you say, party members aren't really damage dealers but basically just a total of six additional skills at your disposal. In my case it's a mix of taunting through Taash/Davrin plus whoever synergises with them (or someone who can revive, just in case), while I use ice magic to freeze enemies a bunch. I forgot if the game has difficulty levels (I presume it does), but on whatever standard mode I play I don't think all its depth is particularly important to delve into. I try to have an equipment set that harmonises and focus on specific branches of the skill tree instead of going all over the place, but for the most part this seems to only affect how quickly enemies die and not fundamentally alter your approach. It's a bit like Pokémon almost – yes, you can do the breeding and EV training but it is absolutely not necessary if you just want to get through the game.

Part of me wishes there was maybe more friction from the game's side to force you to properly engage with its mechanics, but then I think combat encounters and enemy design would have needed additional finetuning as well, because the 'trick' of Darkspawn rushing down the player character would inevitably force you into a specific build and strategy anyway.

 

That's my two cents on the combat. It's fun, which is the important part, but just like the narrative and the choices that derive thereof it doesn't really put much emphasis on the R of RPG.

 

Agree with the ME2 comparison, it very much feels like the fantasy equivalent of that game, made for a younger audience. I have my issues with this 'seven samurai' style setup, but 45 hours in I'm still enjoying it quite a bit and I can see why a developer with a recently very rocky history would go back to look at their critically acclaimed high points and take a page out of those games for their comeback.

[Maf]

Found and beat a really difficult optional boss yesterday. He was level 37 while I was level 29 and he had a big shield so couldn’t be attacked from the front and some bullshit projectile which left a trail of damage behind it so sometimes couldn’t even get behind to do damage. 
 

One thing I learned is for the warrior class 2 handed weapons are better for armour/barrier and single hand weapon better for damage

 

It’s left me unsure how the build is supposed to work because there are specialisations for 2 handed or 1 handed weapons. Maybe the idea is the character can play either a tank or DPS role but given it’s single player and the companions are rubbish at DPS sort of feels like there’s only one way to go

 

It took about 30 minutes to beat the boss because literally chipping away and struggling to get behind him. Also killed me really quick so had to master the fight, which was relatively easy, just high stakes because die so quick.
 

Really good fun. I then ran into another optional boss who was level 42 and was killing me even quicker. I think if it wasn’t 1am and I wanted to bang my head against it I could beat it as well, but decided to leave it for now until a bit stronger  

[Maf]

I think the absolute weakest thing about this game is the story. I’ve started skipping dialogue which isn’t apart of the main story, and even the main story is boring and a slog. It’s starting to affect the gameplay as well. I feel like I’ve seen all the fighting has to offer, which I do really like, but it’s getting a bit repetitive and the lack of good motivation from the story is making this game start to feel quite long

 

On the bright side I did have another epic encounter

 

I was fighting with this health bar for like 10 minutes lol

 

[Maryokutai]

I was fighting that boss just now and my game crashed when he was at about 20% health. Took me roughly 15 minutes to get there, so I'm either not doing it again or when I'm level 90 or something and can one-shot him.

 

I've downplayed the crashes, of which I might have had four in total so far (which isn't that often as I'm around 45 hours) but situations like these are a good example of why we really shouldn't tolerate more than 0 crashes. It's probably something nobody else is experiencing because the Xbox OS has been shit since 2013 but unfortunately mine decided to do it. Maybe I have the wrong dynamic background installed or I need to move my Switch further away.

[Maf]

My game crashed once. I think the problem was Xbox’s quick resume. The game was hitching when loading different areas, which it hadn’t done at all up to that point, and then when I went to a new area there was no music. I was like here we go. I’ve seen a game do this before. About 2 minutes later it crashed

 

I’ve continued to use quick resume and had no other problems, though. But I still think it’s that because I’ve played multiple Xbox games that struggle with that feature. Also to this game’s credit it auto saves very often and very well (having multiple auto-saves slots). But 4 crashes is a lot.

[Maryokutai]

I've actually never used Quick Resume in my life, I always boot games up from scratch. Partly because I don't want to add to the load of features the OS can't handle. Don't even use the standby feature of the console (though that's mostly for energy reasons).

[mfnick]

Mate! Quick resume is so good! Really miss it when using the PS5. I’m not a MP gamer though so don’t have the issues MP users have. Very, very rare it causes  an issue and if it does just restart from scratch like you are anyway. 

[Maf]

When it works it’s a good feature, but I think some games don’t play nice with it
 

I thought that might be the problem here but if Mary hasn’t used it then I guess no 

[Maryokutai]

I actually don't miss it. I like booting up a game, seeing the title screen, hearing the music. Helps me get into the right mood. I can see the appeal but it's not a feature I'd use either way.

[Maryokutai]

Forgot to take a screenshot but I recently found a unique helmet that forces enemies (except bosses) to be permanently considered being at 'low health', no matter how many HP they have. Which prompted me to alter my build around it so that most of my equipment now does extra damage to low health enemies or applies other debuffs. The obvious downside is of course that none of these effects help against bosses until they're at the real low health threshold, but standard enemies fall like flies now.

 

Also found a rune that allows me to immediately reset party member cooldowns, which is probably the most impactful item I've come across in the entire game so far. Before I always had to choose between defense (taunt, heal) or offense, now I can just do all of it.