Why did they make the game a PG-3 Disney Princess simulator?

[Nautica Malone]

It literally suffuses every single line of dialogue in the game, and I am not being hyperbolic. Every single line out of thousands, and every single companion is a Disney princess or Prince Charming, and so is the protagonist. They even managed to ruin Harding.

It's so pervasive that I honestly wouldn't even know where to even begin describing examples, but I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about, from coddling Harding ( I know it's just one outcome ) for a MERE BRUISE when taking down Solas and spending like an hour of dialogue with the "Ohhh big baby, you got hurttt, it's okaaay, we get huuuurt sometimes, I'm sowwy" routine, to Bellara's "OH WOOPIE DOOPIE I'M A CUTSEY DISTRACTED BOOK GIRL, IS THAT ANOTHER DEMON-SPAWNING ANOMALY! yuppeeee let's tackle it with the power of magic and friendship!", to the thieves guild being wholesome about stealing, to people being 'spanked around' or whatever even more than they get killed, even the Qunari occupation seems like a joke.

And of course, worst of all, forcing the MC themselves into the Disney Princess role, with the only dialogue options in any context whatsoever always being either "You villain! You meanie! You so bad! I will defeat you with the power of goodness!" or "I understand you" and only being allowed to ever "Love and respect" every single one of your party members.

Why, just why? Seriously. Why such a departure from all earlier titles? Do they make more money from being able to safely sell to 10-year olds under parental supervision?

I'm one of the people who couldn't care less about any of the game's other 'controversies' or specific characters, but I can't understand why they turned Dragon Age into Pokemon.

[JainaDreamer]

They needed some flowers and happiness to counteract the bloody corpses and demon summoning

[Naamtar]

If you think this game is PG/Disney Princess you need to spend more time watching the cut scenes and look into more of the zones.

[Nautica Malone]

Originally posted by Naamtar:

If you think this game is PG/Disney Princess you need to spend more time watching the cut scenes and look into more of the zones.

I did, it's a bizarre juxtaposition. Some of the environments and consequently situations that we can glean from interactable cues or scenery or scenarios some NPC's find themselves in, albeit still not very often mind you, do remind me of earlier DA games and have eerie or dark natures to them, but the dialogue, and notice I focused on the dialogue, always stands in stark contrast to them.

It's always a very childish dialogue in contrast like "Oooh, spooky place, Wonder what happened!!" or "This must've sucked", etc, and of course as all reviews on the topic noted, interactable dialogue in the form of choices is very tame and you can't really play any sort of 'grimdark' or selfish character or anything resembling it yourself. Even when you find the mayor of the corrupted town, your 'least disney' option is to just leave because you're crying so much tears about how he hurt the poor townsfolk and for no other motive you're allowed to have, and later rationalize it by implying 'he can fend the remaining demons off' or whatever.

This also applies to the main antagonists - Appearance-wise, arguably sufficiently dragon age-y, dialogue wise just sound like a curated version of Gargamel.

The dialogue writers really screwed up all the other artists.

[Naamtar]

Originally posted by Kenji:

Originally posted by Naamtar:

If you think this game is PG/Disney Princess you need to spend more time watching the cut scenes and look into more of the zones.

I did, it's a bizarre juxtaposition. Some of the environments and consequently situations that we can glean from interactable cues or scenery or scenarios some NPC's find themselves in, albeit still not very often mind you, do remind me of earlier DA games and have eerie or dark natures to them, but the dialogue, and notice I focused on the dialogue, always stands in stark contrast to them.

It's always a very childish dialogue in contrast like "Oooh, spooky place" and of course as all reviews on the topic noted, interactable dialogue is very tame and you can't really play any sort of 'grimdark' or selfish character or anything resembling it yourself. Even when you find the mayor of the corrupted town, your 'least disney' option is to just leave because you're crying so much tears about how he hurt the poor townsfolk and for not other motive you're allowed to have, and later rationalize it by implying 'he can fend the remaining demons off' or whatever.

This also applies to the main antagonists - Appearance-wise, arguably sufficiently dragon age-y, dialogue wise just sound like a curated version of Gargamel.

The dialogue writers really screwed up all the other artists.

Yep.

The companion side quests and a lot of the first Act where you're gathering your companions feels like completely different writers from the main story quests and a lot of the other side quests.

It sucks because there's a good over arching story there and a lot of crazy lore reveals fans of the series have been waiting on for the last 3 games. I thought the game picked up just fine after that first companion gathering phase, but I still found myself mostly uninterested in all of the companion storylines aside from Harding and Emmrich.

The environments around Harding's especially saved the entire quest line for me. That dwarven city and the environment leading up to it, and the mountain top areas were amazing.

The final sequence of the game is super grimdark and grizzly throughout. A lot of the scenes and little bits people paying attention will pick up on are grimdark between Act 2 and that sequence, too. Veilguard isn't as in your face with it, you kind of have to pay attention to the environments and lore entry's to pick up on some of it.

[Nautica Malone]

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Originally posted by Kenji:

I did, it's a bizarre juxtaposition. Some of the environments and consequently situations that we can glean from interactable cues or scenery or scenarios some NPC's find themselves in, albeit still not very often mind you, do remind me of earlier DA games and have eerie or dark natures to them, but the dialogue, and notice I focused on the dialogue, always stands in stark contrast to them.

It's always a very childish dialogue in contrast like "Oooh, spooky place" and of course as all reviews on the topic noted, interactable dialogue is very tame and you can't really play any sort of 'grimdark' or selfish character or anything resembling it yourself. Even when you find the mayor of the corrupted town, your 'least disney' option is to just leave because you're crying so much tears about how he hurt the poor townsfolk and for not other motive you're allowed to have, and later rationalize it by implying 'he can fend the remaining demons off' or whatever.

This also applies to the main antagonists - Appearance-wise, arguably sufficiently dragon age-y, dialogue wise just sound like a curated version of Gargamel.

The dialogue writers really screwed up all the other artists.

Yep.

The companion side quests and a lot of the first Act where you're gathering your companions feels like completely different writers from the main story quests and a lot of the other side quests.

It sucks because there's a good over arching story there and a lot of crazy lore reveals fans of the series have been waiting on for the last 3 games. I thought the game picked up just fine after that first companion gathering phase, but I still found myself mostly uninterested in all of the companion storylines aside from Harding and Emmrich.

The environments around Harding's especially saved the entire quest line for me. That dwarven city and the environment leading up to it, and the mountain top areas were amazing.

The final sequence of the game is super grimdark and grizzly throughout. A lot of the scenes and little bits people paying attention will pick up on are grimdark between Act 2 and that sequence, too. Veilguard isn't as in your face with it, you kind of have to pay attention to the environments and lore entry's to pick up on some of it.

It's too bad about this whole dramatic unexplained theme shift for so many aspects of the game, to the point where I can't maintain the suspense of disbelief that even the design switch of characters into Pixar-like characters, whereupon they are also increasingly behaving like Pixar characters is not intentional.

Like in Inquisition I start out getting interrogated in a torture chamber by one of my companions ( Cassandra ), I can get into such high disapproval with any of my companions that we can practically try killing each other, DA2 is riddled with bitter or cynical or manipulative ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I have to navigate between, and now suddenly everyone around me is just a happy-go-lucky neighborhood friendly Spiderman with... one charming yet nice rogue, I guess

Not to delve into it so much, but even my outfits are much more PG-6 than some of them were in Inquisition or earlier.... and this all feels very strange.

[SunShine:D]

I 100% agree and im also really hate the lore implications overall with regards to the older games areas, as well as characters. It honestly feels like when a book gets a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ movie adaptation, but most people on here are just saying "Well their in the tivinter and its more high fantasy and less archaic" and still dont get why that makes everyone have a giant attitude shift, and then start talking about their feelings in a magic sky castle laughing and having a good time while the world is ending. its just so jarring.

[Naamtar]

Originally posted by Kenji:

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Yep.

The companion side quests and a lot of the first Act where you're gathering your companions feels like completely different writers from the main story quests and a lot of the other side quests.

It sucks because there's a good over arching story there and a lot of crazy lore reveals fans of the series have been waiting on for the last 3 games. I thought the game picked up just fine after that first companion gathering phase, but I still found myself mostly uninterested in all of the companion storylines aside from Harding and Emmrich.

The environments around Harding's especially saved the entire quest line for me. That dwarven city and the environment leading up to it, and the mountain top areas were amazing.

The final sequence of the game is super grimdark and grizzly throughout. A lot of the scenes and little bits people paying attention will pick up on are grimdark between Act 2 and that sequence, too. Veilguard isn't as in your face with it, you kind of have to pay attention to the environments and lore entry's to pick up on some of it.

It's too bad about this whole dramatic unexplained theme shift for so many aspects of the game, to the point where I can't maintain the suspense of disbelief that even the design switch of characters into Pixar-like characters, whereupon they are also increasingly behaving like Pixar characters is not intentional.

Like in Inquisition I start out getting interrogated in a torture chamber by one of my companions ( Cassandra ), I can get into such high disapproval with any of my companions that we can practically try killing each other, DA2 is riddled with bitter or cynical or manipulative ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I have to navigate between, and now suddenly everyone around me is just a happy-go-lucky neighborhood friendly Spiderman with... one charming yet nice rogue, I guess

Not to delve into it so much, but even my outfits are much more PG-6 than some of them were in Inquisition or earlier.... and this all feels very strange.

Yeah it's my understanding this was originally slated to be an MMO. Which would make more sense for the stylized graphics as it's a smart move to try and be a little more timeless in art direction with MMOs.

For me the graphics weren't as bad as I thought they'd be based on the trailers, but I much prefer old school DnD grimdark art styles that we're seeing less and less of.

As far as the writing itself. I have no idea what's going on there. This game seems to have gone through a lot of different changes in development so it sounds like the suits and ties trying to exert influence over the direction of the game.

[Vanu]

This isn't even remotely true. There are real issues with the game. But you'd have us instead get distracted.

[Яeplicant]

Originally posted by Damedius:

Originally posted by Kenji:

They even managed to ruin Harding.

"I could kiss you right now....., I'm going to kiss your right now."

They also had to give her magic because Dwarves not being able to use magic is Racist.

Never played the Descent DLC, eh?

Besides that, I see ragebait engagers are still dealing exclusively in hyperbole. That's what I call commitment, or wasting precious time that could've been spend more productively. Depends on the quality of the bait, though.

[Nautica Malone]

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Originally posted by Kenji:

It's too bad about this whole dramatic unexplained theme shift for so many aspects of the game, to the point where I can't maintain the suspense of disbelief that even the design switch of characters into Pixar-like characters, whereupon they are also increasingly behaving like Pixar characters is not intentional.

Like in Inquisition I start out getting interrogated in a torture chamber by one of my companions ( Cassandra ), I can get into such high disapproval with any of my companions that we can practically try killing each other, DA2 is riddled with bitter or cynical or manipulative ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I have to navigate between, and now suddenly everyone around me is just a happy-go-lucky neighborhood friendly Spiderman with... one charming yet nice rogue, I guess

Not to delve into it so much, but even my outfits are much more PG-6 than some of them were in Inquisition or earlier.... and this all feels very strange.

Yeah it's my understanding this was originally slated to be an MMO. Which would make more sense for the stylized graphics as it's a smart move to try and be a little more timeless in art direction with MMOs.

For me the graphics weren't as bad as I thought they'd be based on the trailers, but I much prefer old school DnD grimdark art styles that we're seeing less and less of.

As far as the writing itself. I have no idea what's going on there. This game seems to have gone through a lot of different changes in development so it sounds like the suits and ties trying to exert influence over the direction of the game.

Also, I haven't finished the game just yet, but since you mentioned the lore and the main storyline with the potential of becoming somewhat more authentic toward the end, as a huge fan of the lore it unfortunately also didn't make such a great first impression on me either, to the point where I could guess where the budget cuts and cut content might've been.

So first of all, after the huge cliffhanger about Finding, locating, helping or fighting Solas which was insaneeeeeeely dramatic at the end of the Inquisiton, let me just say.. the thought that we just 'skip ahead' to casually walking up to Solas in some random ruin, ending that whole arc as a prologue and then having him as kind of a background character was...... really not what we were expecting. And not particularly exciting.

Then like dogs in a pen two of the Evanuris get release and they're basically just powerful monstrous big bads... The Evanuris lore was so rich that one must ask what happened to the rest of the Evanuris that we all wanted to see? Probably there is some excuse in the game about Elgar' and Ghilana' eating them in prison or something or being the only ones strong enough to emerge, but that doesn't reduce the disappointment, so what's the reality - Were all the Evanuris originally MMO dungeon bosses which had to be cut to two fleshed out character in order to make the release date?

Also, we used to have 10,000 threads theorizing about Elgar'nan specifically and all the lore behind him, who 'his father, the sun' was in the mythology ( If perhaps it was actually the Maker behind rebelled against by the Firstborn ), what do the Evanuris remember about their own creation or the planet's creation since they are immortal, the origin of all things, parallels with the Chantry, etc.

Is Elgar'nan just some sadistic beastie-boy now without that much significance? Do we at least learn about which war he presided over as a 'General' before being worshipped as a God? I sure hope so.

[Nautica Malone]

Originally posted by Яeplicant:

Originally posted by Damedius:

"I could kiss you right now....., I'm going to kiss your right now."

They also had to give her magic because Dwarves not being able to use magic is Racist.

Never played the Descent DLC, eh?

Besides that, I see ragebait engagers are still dealing exclusively in hyperbole. That's what I call commitment, or wasting precious time that could've been spend more productively. Depends on the quality of the bait, though.

Are you referring to me with the besides? I did play Descent and every single DA game, no complains about Harding's magic, probably one of the more interesting out of all the story arcs, Titan connection, and so on.

But if you actually played Inquisition or DA2, and you remember what sort of companion personalities or behaviors we had in those games, and you remember what sort of attitudes and choices we could take in our dealings with them, not to mention other NPC's like the people you judge from the Inquisition throne, and the sort of alignment you were allowed to have in those games, and you think Veilguard being Disneyified is hyperbole, well, more power to you.

[Naamtar]

Originally posted by Kenji:

Originally posted by Naamtar:

Yeah it's my understanding this was originally slated to be an MMO. Which would make more sense for the stylized graphics as it's a smart move to try and be a little more timeless in art direction with MMOs.

For me the graphics weren't as bad as I thought they'd be based on the trailers, but I much prefer old school DnD grimdark art styles that we're seeing less and less of.

As far as the writing itself. I have no idea what's going on there. This game seems to have gone through a lot of different changes in development so it sounds like the suits and ties trying to exert influence over the direction of the game.

Also, I haven't finished the game just yet, but since you mentioned the lore and the main storyline with the potential of becoming somewhat more authentic toward the end, as a huge fan of the lore it unfortunately also didn't make such a great first impression on me either, to the point where I could guess where the budget cuts and cut content might've been.

So first of all, after the huge cliffhanger about Finding, locating, helping or fighting Solas which was insaneeeeeeely dramatic at the end of the Inquisiton, let me just say.. the thought that we just 'skip ahead' to casually walking up to Solas in some random ruin, ending that whole arc as a prologue and then having him as kind of a background character was...... really not what we were expecting. And not particularly exciting.

Then like dogs in a pen two of the Evanuris get release and they're basically just powerful monstrous big bads... The Evanuris lore was so rich that one must ask what happened to the rest of the Evanuris that we all wanted to see? Probably there is some excuse in the game about Elgar' and Ghilana' eating them in prison or something or being the only ones strong enough to emerge, but that doesn't reduce the disappointment, so what's the reality - Were all the Evanuris originally MMO dungeon bosses which had to be cut to two fleshed out character in order to make the release date?

Also, we used to have 10,000 threads theorizing about Elgar'nan specifically and all the lore behind him, who 'his father, the sun' was in the mythology ( If perhaps it was actually the Maker behind rebelled against by the Firstborn ), what do the Evanuris remember about their own creation or the planet's creation since they are immortal, the origin of all things, parallels with the Chantry, etc.

Is Elgar'nan just some sadistic beastie-boy now without that much significance? Do we at least learn about which war he presided over as a 'General' before being worshipped as a God? I sure hope so.

So the reveals in this game are pretty big ones, and from what I know they're in line with what was intended as Gaider is on the record saying he handed over the plans to Weekes when he left.

The delivery is pretty bad, and a lot of the bits and pieces from previous games hinting at the reveals is never mentioned. You kind of have to already know your stuff or it's going to fall flat.

There is some interesting stuff in there, though, I don't want to spoil it. Some of it's delivered properly, a lot of it is just expositions like how they explained the Darkspawn being the older Darkspawn we saw in Awakening for a bit.

The codex is pretty robust, but not many people like to read through them.