Dragon Age 4: Dreadwolf - 2024

[Obsidian]

"Deeply flawed" is being pretty dramatic on both fronts. I'm not really interested in relitigating Andromeda, but Veilguard is a perfectly fine game whose release got completely derailed by DEI anti-woke nonsense. Unfortunately for the game, people were so skeptical of it before it even released because of all the development reboots that any kind of distraction was always going to put people off the game because BioWare has no good will left to cash in on. It needed a flawless launch with stellar reviews to have any chance of commercial success.

[Andalusian girls]

incredibly flawed

[Obsidian]

You haven't actually played it have you.

[Andalusian girls]

the most flawed games in existence

[Lucavi]

Woulda sold better if it was still called Dreadwolf. That name is baller.

[Anoat]

Now on sale new for $25 at GameStop so I think I will give it a chance at that price.

[Lucavi]

Looks like the entire staff got gutted or canned as Bioware is full speed ahead on the new Mass Effect.

I hope the in-game ending was satisfying and doesn't rely on DLC, because it looks like that dream is dead.

[Krandor]

It had a post credit teaser setting up a potential 5th game, but it otherwise pretty succinctly wrapped all the lingering storylines in the franchise.

[Lucavi]

That actually makes me happy. Getting tired of games from big publishers leaving shit unresolved because a future game - that gets scrapped because CEOs suck - never happens. Wrap your shit up, people! Self-contained games!

[Anoat]

Pretty much the entire writing staff behind Veilguard has been laid off

[Andalusian girls]

yeah the franchise is dead dead, 10 years from Inquisition to get here and met with a total sales failure. half what EA expected and $45 off within 3 months and the non-Mass Effect parts of the studio annihilated.

especially rough considering the series veered hard away from its adult CRPG roots into Marvely dialogue + characters mixed with God of Wary action-RPG gameplay while a traditional turn-based isometric gal in BG3 crushed 15-20 million sales. lost your way dear Dragon Age.

ah well here's to a 2030-something revival

[Andalusian girls]

Pretty much the entire writing staff behind Veilguard has been laid off

apparently significantly worse than this, Jason Schreier over at Bloomberg reports Bioware staff has been slashed by over half, from 200+ during Veilguard development to fewer than 100 now. one-game studio clearly from hereon, hope Mass Effect development ain't impacted.

[Anoat]

Aight so ya boy is now playing Veilguard and I made my Rook a beeeeyeautiful tanned redhead rogue lesbian (I mean so far she is just flirting with Neve and Harding but she will slay them all eventually). Hair animations are indeed absolutely gorgeous. Environments look great. Combat is very fun but I’m still not early enough in that I’m occasionally getting tutorials thrown my way. I think about five hours in or so.

Now I might be paranoid here, but I’ve got a sinking suspicion. A theory about a plot point. I don’t want anyone to confirm or deny this but I just want to put it here for posterity and when I finish the game I’ll come back and either be like AHA I KNEW IT or MAN I WAS SILLY

I think that

Spoiler: show

Varric is actually dead dead and Rook is talking to a ghost or in his head or something. Just because I haven’t seen *any* character other than Rook speak to Varric since the intro, and both Neve and Harding reference “what happened to Varric” and “What happened to Varric was my fault” and the dialogue is structured perfectly to keep that conversation going without outright saying “yeah he lived but he’s recovering he’ll be back on his feet soon” or conversely “Man I can’t believe Solas killed Varric”.

So anyways let’s revisit this post in a few days.

[Anoat]

Progress report, if I had to guess I am maybe about halfway thru? My Rook feels very over leveled for story elements at level 42 now. I brute forced my way thru the optional stuff in the Crossroads, including the boss fight that I assume is meant to be an end game level challenge because it was level 50 and had a huge red skull on the name plate. I beat it around level 37. The story boss battles have been incredibly tame by comparison.

Still no confirmation or outright rebuttal on my theory in the previous post.

I flirted with all the ladies but locked in a romance with Neve, even though I kinda like Harding more. Kinda biased to Ali Hillis, can’t help it.

The game feels EXTREMELY similar to the Mass Effect 2 formula. Recruit characters, BIG THINGS HAPPEN, recruit more characters, BIG THINGS HAPPEN, oh noes our team must be focused if we have any hope of winning so let’s do all the personal quests (loyalty missions), sprinkle in more BIG THINGS HAPPENING in between, repeat

I don’t know when it happened but I learned I could basically spam heavy attacks over and over to stagger/take down and beat pretty much everything. Seriously, light attacks are completely useless. Bosses occasionally require a dodge roll. I’m definitely gonna have to do an Insanity run to get everything out of this.

[Celeras]

Saw this thread got bumped and I was sure it was going to be for what I'm about to post.. but glad you're having fun Anoat lol.

In case you weren't sure how big of a flop this was, Veilguard is free on PS+ for the month of March. Gotta be some kind of a record.

[Rulke]

[Lucavi]

Goddammit, lol.

[Anoat]

Aight so ya boy is now playing Veilguard and I made my Rook a beeeeyeautiful tanned redhead rogue lesbian (I mean so far she is just flirting with Neve and Harding but she will slay them all eventually). Hair animations are indeed absolutely gorgeous. Environments look great. Combat is very fun but I’m still not early enough in that I’m occasionally getting tutorials thrown my way. I think about five hours in or so.

Now I might be paranoid here, but I’ve got a sinking suspicion. A theory about a plot point. I don’t want anyone to confirm or deny this but I just want to put it here for posterity and when I finish the game I’ll come back and either be like AHA I KNEW IT or MAN I WAS SILLY

I think that

Spoiler: show

Varric is actually dead dead and Rook is talking to a ghost or in his head or something. Just because I haven’t seen *any* character other than Rook speak to Varric since the intro, and both Neve and Harding reference “what happened to Varric” and “What happened to Varric was my fault” and the dialogue is structured perfectly to keep that conversation going without outright saying “yeah he lived but he’s recovering he’ll be back on his feet soon” or conversely “Man I can’t believe Solas killed Varric”.

So anyways let’s revisit this post in a few days.

Finished. Regarding that spoiler: I KNEW IT.

Anyways, outside of Taash, felt like it was a fine game. Taash’s scenes felt like very modern day HR company sensitivity training and incredibly out of place in high medieval fantasy, but eh, it wasn’t so much to sour the experience for me. If I had to nitpick, I’d say the game got incredibly easy once I set in the proper skills on my skill tree that made every encounter incredibly trivial. The only difficulty or game overs I faced literally came from attempting the level 50 optional mega bosses when I was in my late 30s. And I still beat them, it just took a while. And also the fucking game crashed right as the credits began to roll so I had to reload an earlier save and watch the ending again hoping for a post credit scene and…there wasn’t one? Maybe I missed something. All I got was

Spoiler: show

A black screen with the Veilguard emblem saying “The Veilguard remains vigilant.”

Anyways game was beeeeeauyutiful and the more I reflect on it, that awful first trailer that made this look like a cartoony hero shooter did an absolute disservice to the game and its perception. Felt like I got a satisfying conclusion to Solas’ story that started in Inquisition. Wish they would have pulled more decisions from the earlier games like the fate of the Warden from Origins, Hawke, Alistair, etc but eh can’t have it all I guess.

Not sure I will play it again anytime soon, took me just about 68 hours doing all the sidequests. Might just hit up YouTube to see the consequences of making the other choices and how it branches out for certain characters.

You might expect me to say Assan was best boy but I’m afraid he must take second place. The real best boy was Manfred.

[Anoat]

So reloaded a save just before the *final* choice to see the alternatives and I got some thoughts.

Spoiler: show

My initial ending was the “Trick Solas” ending and it felt very satisfying seeing him get his comeuppance.

Then I did the “Talk Him Down” ending. And I can definitely see how people who played Inquisition with Solas as their love interest might enjoy this ending. But for me, Solas is not redeemable. He killed Varric. He betrayed Rook *repeatedly*. He would kill millions over his regret.

Then I did the “Fight Solas” ending, and I felt a thousand times vindicated in my original decision. Solas utter contempt and true feelings finally come out. He spent a game and a half telling the Inquisitor and Rook that they were NOT gods. But in his moment of defeat his true colors come out and he lashes out saying I AM A GOD. Yeah. Fuck Solas. All my homies hate Solas.

[chazzyphizzle]

i really thought i was going to bounce off of this after the first hour, but once you get to do detonations with both companions it really makes combat pretty interesting. i still wish the combat wasn't so...awkward and floaty at times but it's definitely grown on me. voice acting is fine for the most part, cant say i give a shit about the story though, thats probably more me than the writing