Lets piss everyone off equally.

[Deroldsen]

Alright, so here is where I am at. I predict this release is not going to go well. I am sure it will sell, probably hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more, copies. That will not be enough to save a studio that spent ten years and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on this.

I do not see being inclusive as a bad thing, and I do not believe that is what will cause it to fail, there is plenty else going wrong with it. The art style looks like something from Warcraft, the gameplay looks overly simplistic and repetitive, and while shiny graphics can help some titles, it is a crutch these days, not a feature. Combined with what I have seen to be an over reliance on garbage cut scenes, bad writing, poor continuity, and a general dumbing down of the franchise, my impression is that many people will want nothing to do with this.

I loved Dragon age, but increasingly half-assed releases did nothing to benefit it. DA2 was cranked out in about 1 year, dumbed down and simplistic, its development overlapping with the development of Origins. This looks like a similar scenario, where development was shuttered and stalled repeatedly, and now EA just wants a return on investment using whichever assets were available. At a certain point the goodwill for the series evaporates.

The game appears to me as a marketing ploy trying to pander to a demographic solely to take your money, and quite frankly I am surprised at how much defense that gets. Is it not condescending to dumb down the game and themes because a developer doesn’t think you can handle it or are simply not worth the effort?

Origins was a bit of a masterpiece, and I would argue, one of the most diverse titles in the series. You have people from a rigid caste system, religious fanatics (several groups), slavery, genocide, politics, drama, LIFE. Mages were volatile and dangerous assets; gameplay was thoughtful and tactical. Reducing everything down to some bad dialogue and cheaply rendered terrain is assuming no one looks behind the facade. You deserve better.

"But the reviews are so great!" I know, this has been a problem for years, most of those reviews are published by the same company. IGN owns the majority (they themselves owned by a larger media company) while a German magazine owns most of the rest. There are not many independent reviewers left, and those I do trust gave this a mediocre rating. Mediocre will not be sufficient for EA to continue justifying development. Studios can get shuttered even when they succeed.

Now, I will probably pick up a copy, if only to review. I have spent plenty of time slogging through crappy releases by multiple studios, but after wasting thousands of dollars and years of my life doing that, I felt it worthwhile to at least mention my observations.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Deroldsen:

The game appears to me as a marketing ploy trying to pander to a demographic solely to take your money, and quite frankly I am surprised at how much defense that gets. Is it not condescending to dumb down the game and themes because a developer doesn’t think you can handle it or are simply not worth the effort?

Originally posted by Deroldsen:

I have spent plenty of time slogging through crappy releases by multiple studios, but after wasting thousands of dollars and years of my life doing that, I felt it worthwhile to at least mention my observations.

I'm surprised that you're surprised at this point.

[EQUINOX]

Where is the TL:DR version of what you wrote?

[whit]

Sorry, I'm not reading all of that. It's a waste of time on a steam forum. There's no real discussions happening here. You'd be better to post this in one of the dragonage subreddits (probably not the veilguard one, but one of the other two). I'll hit up a few things.

Most of the worlds population is dumber than a box of rocks. Regardless of what side of the line they stand on. And on the steam discussions they basically all look like this video clip below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Iy7ZxBvYA

Ziff Davis, Inc. Owns IGN, Eurogamer, gamesindustry, rock paper shotgun, vg247, dicebreaker. They own shares in OUtside xbox, Digital foundry, hookshot, nintendolife, pushsquare, purexbox, time extension...and probably others in both categories. They also own mapgenie, how long to beat, humble bundle, filmforce, rotten tomatoes. The entire gamer network brands. Most of this obtained through a chatbot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziff_Davis#Properties

There are others like GI, and probably more, but I'm not getting paid to research this.

https://gamer.network/brands

There's probably some inaccuracies in the above. As wikipedia is pretty ♥♥♥♥ at actually regulating and checking references. But I'm not going through them all.

The rest of your post, is to much to get into and will just create dumb ass arguments on steam. I agree that even with DA2 the brand was already going down hill.

[Deroldsen]

Originally posted by whit:

Sorry, I'm not reading all of that. It's a waste of time on a steam forum. There's no real discussions happening here. You'd be better to post this in one of the dragonage subreddits (probably not the veilguard one, but one of the other two). I'll hit up a few things.

Most of the worlds population is dumber than a box of rocks. Regardless of what side of the line they stand on. And on the steam discussions they basically all look like this video clip below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Iy7ZxBvYA

Ziff Davis, Inc. Owns IGN, Eurogamer, gamesindustry, rock paper shotgun, vg247, dicebreaker. They own shares in OUtside xbox, Digital foundry, hookshot, nintendolife, pushsquare, purexbox, time extension...and probably others in both categories. They also own mapgenie, how long to beat, humble bundle, filmforce, rotten tomatoes. The entire gamer network brands. Most of this obtained through a chatbot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziff_Davis#Properties

There are others like GI, and probably more, but I'm not getting paid to research this.

https://gamer.network/brands

There's probably some inaccuracies in the above. As wikipedia is pretty ♥♥♥♥ at actually regulating and checking references. But I'm not going through them all.

The rest of your post, is to much to get into and will just create dumb ass arguments on steam. I agree that even with DA2 the brand was already going down hill.

I am aware of all of those points, even agree with most of it, but still. willing to spend 10 minutes on it in between taking my dog out. Didnt know they had humble bundle, i might have to reconsider some things if i verify that.

[leigha12]

To those saying it's a waste of time to post long discussions - why? In a setting where we will spend literally hundreds of hours on a single game, we're simultaneously being told that spending 10 minutes reading a post discussing that game isn't worth it? Sit all the way down and don't tell me what's worth my time or not. That's for me to decide. No one else.

[Deroldsen]

Actually I get this same feedback about every time I post. Trolls prefer shorter engagement, reading is hard.