a few questions regarding roleplay before i buy this

[Senpai so Ecchi]

i played all dragon age games (still have the phsyical copies), but this is the first title where i held off on buying it at release because of all the controversy about lgbtq and the witing in the game.

so can somebody who actually played the game answer a few questions here?

#1: i heard the game is heavily influenced by gender and identity stuff, WAY more then previous titles (dorian from inquisition was gay, but he didnt shove it in your face all the time, so that was fine).
how many characters that you meet are actually "different", i guess you can call it, and how often do they remind you of exactly that?
tldr: is this gender stuff optional and only appears when you choose the dialogue to talk about it or are you forced into those cutscenes?

#2: how much roleplay can you do regarding your decisions as rook?
does this work like mass effect where you basically only get renegade and paragon options. (renegade was always more fun for me :D)

#3: can you actually disagree as rook with the whole gender/identity thing?
like, do you get the option in dialogue to disagree?
for example: one of your companions goes on and on about why they want a different pronoun now (the qunari lady does this i believe?), do i get the roleplay option to tell them "i dont care, leave me alone" or "why the heck are we arguing about something so stupid, the world is ending out there"

#4: is the writing for the story really as bad as people claim it to be?

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to be honest, the reviews i've seen/read till now have not been great, but i wanted the opionions of people who actually bought the game and have on hands knowledge, before i make the decision to buy this.

[Shard of Manus]

1. It comes up a couple of times, but people are over-exaggerating it. There's one character whose arc follows her struggle with gender identity, and it is pretty much the focus for that one character. Ultimately it's a very small part of the game.

Doesn't detract from the overall bad writing of the game.

2. None. Literally none. The protagonist has no personality, the voice acting is bland, you have absolutely no agency at all and are completely railroaded in every single aspect of the game.

You cannot roleplay. You can't even pretend to roleplay because the game creates a backstory for your character and all the NPCs seem to know your character better than even you do. You have no meaningful choices and all the dialogue options are just flavours of the same thing - three different ways of saying yes.

Absolutely tragic writing to top it off. Veilguard is 100% a linear action game. This is not an RPG.

3. No.

4. Yes.

[Elvi]

1. It's not influenced more. It's completely different. Could be a good thing, depending on your point of view. But it's very heavy with gender politics, and more importantly, preaching about it. Getting a lecture here and there is baked into the narrative of the game. Is it insufferanble? No. Can you just ignore it and move on? No.

2. Limited to none. The writers had very clear character in mind and you are playing that. Period. You are a good hero, and everyone likes you, because you are nice to literally everyone, except for one older white guy with a moustache. You can decide between being supportive and nice and being supportive and nice with totally super funny joke at the end.

3. Flat no, Yes, really. You are always very supportive. No matter what you pick.

4. Worse. The line to line dialogue is beyond anything I've ever seen (not in a good way). Overall story is okay.

[Seaspite]

Originally posted by Shard of Manus:

1. It comes up a couple of times, but people are over-exaggerating it. There's one character whose arc follows her struggle with gender identity, and it is pretty much the focus for that one character. Ultimately it's a very small part of the game.

Doesn't detract from the overall bad writing of the game.

2. None. Literally none. The protagonist has no personality, the voice acting is bland, you have absolutely no agency at all and are completely railroaded in every single aspect of the game.

You cannot roleplay. You can't even pretend to roleplay because the game creates a backstory for your character and all the NPCs seem to know your character better than even you do. You have no meaningful choices and all the dialogue options are just flavours of the same thing - three different ways of saying yes.

Absolutely tragic writing to top it off. Veilguard is 100% a linear action game. This is not an RPG.

3. No.

4. Yes.

I agree with this assessment. I'm having fun with the game and it runs well. Without a doubt, not the Dragonage game I was hoping for but it is fun to play. I also agree the tone of the game is overly silly and light-hearted which is a real departure from the original games in the series and likely my biggest gripe with the game overall.

[76561199799860408]

Originally posted by Shard of Manus:

you have absolutely no agency at all and are completely railroaded in every single aspect of the game.
....
Absolutely tragic writing to top it off. Veilguard is 100% a linear action game. This is not an RPG.

That's deeply false.

There are choices with heavy consequences. There are choices with less heavy long term consequences. There are choices related to relationship with factions and more with companions.

Plenty parts aren't linear at all, the two big towns are deeply non linear with many complex exploration on 3 floors, just one example to quote how this comment is a total derail.

The writing is nothing tragic lol.

[max]

1. It's complicated. On micro level there's only one trans character who is crucial for the main plot and their arc is all about that. And you have to do it. The good thing - you get this companion as one of the last two, so closer to the end game.

BUT and it's a YUGE butt as NOT seen in this game's CC:
All dialogues are SOFT, complete opposite from what you could've remembered from DAO. Kid stuff. Soft gloves on. Everyone is mostly smiling, even when talking about DEATH AND DESTRUCTION THAT JUST HAPPENED.
All characters are toxically positive. Even their bickering ends in 5 seconds when they agree to not bicker again.

In DAO you could disagree with a character and they would disapprove and like you less. In this game - you just can't. The only things they disapprove is when you make one of the meaningless decisions in this game that they didn't proposed. It always happens like this:

Character A proposes a plan
Character B proposes alternative plan
Player decides which plan to accept
Player picks A, Character B disapproves but it's ok and cool and stuff, not a big deal.

The decision itself is just who you take with you or where you go first.

There's only like one major decision in this game besides the endgame stuff. And it's just a choice of what part of the world will take a heavier hit (I'm avoiding spoilers). It's a choice between two of them. The choice itself is not hard because you have enough people to split and go both directions. it's just The Rook can only go to one, and the one they go to - wins the day, the other - loses, and then they try to pin it on you, and Rook is forced to agree and feel sorry for it (yes, you can't GFY them) and then it's NOT A BIG DEAL ANYWAY, business as usual.

2. From p.1 it should be clear by now that there is only ONE role to play in this game, your background doesn't matter - it's just flavour, you do what Rook was written to do. When you start the game you don't even know who Rook is. It's not you. The very first fight you have - is a cutscene. Showing how cool Rook is. Not you. Rook.

3. No. You can only agree in a different way. Like in that Trans character quest line, when they have the fight with their mother - your only options are to Agree with the character and diss the mom.

4. If you are interested in DA Lore - that's great. The main story is fine it just takes a lot of time to get to it, and there's a twist that surprised me.

But it's artificially gated behind side content, and side content is gated behind main content. So you get these chunks of content that you have to do to learn everything.

The game is like ME2 in its structure. Hire companions that come in predefined chunks, do missions (quests) with them to get them to best form (loyalty missions) and then to the great finale.

Dialogues are suffering from what is described in p.1. Side content and puzzles are simple to the point of annoyance, and your companions will be trying their best to explain how they work as if you were a 5yo with development issues. And they generally don't make any sense from the world building point of view. Locked doors for no reason, that can be easily unlocked - I always was wondering why the Ancient Elves even have these over-complicated locking mechanisms that can be so easily unlocked by anyone with enough time to spare for all the running around.

You have to recruit everyone (unlike ME2), you cannot fire/kill any of companions. Some puzzles and areas are locked behind companions, and you don't control them in combat. They can't even take damage from what I have seen. All the damage is for YOU, the player. So get ready for those Boss fights who only target you.

You will have to do DA2 all over again, running around the same locales doing different but similar things.