I think the criticisms of DAV are overblown.

[Rain]

At least in some respects. If you ignore the "woke" stuff and also do not have the expectations that come with waiting 10 years for another DA game then this game is more well designed that people might credit it.

This, essentially, is the Dragon Age version of Cyberpunk hype. People were seriously going to have high expectations and they were let down because of it. I didn't have these even though I love the DA franchise.

So lets review some of the other complaints;

1. Linearity. This game is no more linear than DAO and DA2 was. The only difference is that DAO had a moving camp for a base of operations that gave a feeling of cohesion in the game world. It was also an illusion. You were moving from one map to another.

Brecillian Forest. Deep Roads, Mage Tower. They were all linear experiences and they had their nooks and crannies to explore. Veilguard is no different. It has more to explore and many maps to do so and they are quite large once you start unlocking things.

2. Combat. Whether or not you like the combat is seriously, I think, based upon your previous experience in video game presentations of said combat. If you were to judge this strictly by going from DAO to Veilguard then this combat is more a mix between DA2 and Inquisition with a little bit more leaning to the "action" of DA2 specifically.

I play on Nightmare. I turn all combat indicators off and I find myself sufficiently challenged and engaged with the combat. It's flashy, sounds good and it fits the art presentation. It also makes it feel epic to me. This, to me, feels like a more refined DA2/Inquisition combat system.

3. Dialogue. There are some "roll-your-eyes" conversations in this game, yes, but I think the heavy criticism in this regard is mostly for the prologue. It does get better and does have it's moments. Again, expectations. It feels more... "casual" than you would expect, but also takes itself seriously when it needs to. It performs well enough, but don't expect top of the line.

4. Characters. I have unlocked half of the roster at this point and despite initial impressions of Bellara being an idiot -- after I had played for a while and spoken to the characters in-game most, if not all, of them have pleasantly surprised me. It is an issue of empathizing and caring about them and seeing them grow.

I hated Bellara in the beginning, but once I did the first companion quest for her my opinion changed. That is saying something for me.

That is really all I got. Just my two cents, anyways.

[[SiN]Rabbit]

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

Taash also has some "notes" and they are literally all in modern identity language, but she still explains them there with "simple" terms. So why did she not do that with her mother?

Because people are complex and flawed and don't explain themselves perfectly at all time. That's what makes a character well-written, instead of garbage.

That's the point I'm getting at, here. A character being insufferable and preachy, about anything, can be a well-written character while also being insufferable.

I highly doubt Taash is intended to be a perfeect sterling example of nonbinary identification. They're intended to be a flawed person who struggles with their identification, and with expressing it to those closest to them... That's a normal queer experience.

And you don't have to engage with it at all.

[76561199799860408]

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Dacelith tarafından gönderildi:

DAtV combats have a deeply different DNA. I would say that DAtV is the result of a genetic experience mixing Assassin Creed Odyssey/Valhalla + The Witcher 1&3 + Mass Effect First Trilogy + DA first trilogy. And then my comment is combats as a warrior.

I think you misspelled God of War with limited Mass Effect combat

ME DNA in DAtV is definitely:
- the 2 companions,
- the UI to manage them,
- how positions and moves are ignored when you ask them do a spell, they do even if 1km away,
- the amount of skills,
- and some more designs.

And nothing of that is coming from DA series (it's different elements that come from DA).

Warn me when so GoW have that, facepalm.

And yeah I know companions haven't HP, it's still major assets in combats.

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak Dacelith tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

I think you misspelled God of War with limited Mass Effect combat

ME DNA in DAtV is definitely:
- the 2 companions,
- the UI to manage them,
- how positions and moves are ignored when you ask them do a spell, they do even if 1km away,
- the amount of skills,
- and some more designs.

And nothing of that is coming from DA series (it's different elements that come from DA).

Warn me when so GoW have that, facepalm.

And yeah I know companions haven't HP, it's still major assets in combats.

I literally said "God of War with limited Mass Effect combat". I agree with what you said is there from Mass Effect. The player combat itself however is just God of War 2018 lookalike.

You control Rook mostly the same way you do Kratos in God of War. And you get similar control over your companions as you do in Mass Effect but more limited. Most specifically I'd say the system is close to Mass Effect 3, because while your tactical menu skills could miss there, companions could not, as is the case here. I say limited because there are some major differences, such as your companions WILL NOT use the skills on their own EVER unless they have a specific passive that gives them a personal cooldown that is not shared with you manual uses. In some of the Mass Effect games, they would default to using 1 skill if you didn't use anything with them, to make themselves useful. Here they'll just autoattack if that's the case.

I literally didn't attack your claim, I merely gave a more accurate and more concise comparison to what you used to describe the combat.

[Ignis Imperia]

Also personally I don't even mind the companions being invulnerable because it was highly annoying to constantly drag companions around in Mass Effect everytime Garrus decided to faceplant a krogan with a sniper rifle in hand 3 times in a row.

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

So why do I get stripped of any option to disagree with Taash on this topic? Even if I followed your logic to this point, I still must come to the conclusion that it is bad writing and intentional framing of the scene.

This could be just stated as my most hated thing about the game. I love the game overall so far, but the fact the conversations feel more like fluff than actual conversations, because more or less nothing I choose will change what happens, and game already decided ahead of me whether I'll agree or not, at most letting me agree in an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way to piss the companion off too is just lame. Pains me that it is so because the game is incredibly engaging in my experience but everytime this happens I'm just like "If my choices don't mean anything, just play a cutscene and don't ask me to make them..."

[Johnnyan]

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

Also personally I don't even mind the companions being invulnerable because it was highly annoying to constantly drag companions around in Mass Effect everytime Garrus decided to faceplant a krogan with a sniper rifle in hand 3 times in a row.

Then why have them in the first place, what's the point ?

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak Johnnyan tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

Also personally I don't even mind the companions being invulnerable because it was highly annoying to constantly drag companions around in Mass Effect everytime Garrus decided to faceplant a krogan with a sniper rifle in hand 3 times in a row.

Then why have them in the first place, what's the point ?

Personality, stories, banter, combos, synergies, anti-synergies, crowd control... should I go on? I'm not saying immersively it's perfect to have them straight up invulnverable but it was also not very entertaining to have to babysit them through everything in Mass Effect while solo carrying the entire missions. At least now they can be useful. Just wish they gave us some actual anti-synergies because mostly they just work well together and there are no wrong choices in the game

[[SiN]Rabbit]

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

So why do I get stripped of any option to disagree with Taash on this topic? Even if I followed your logic to this point, I still must come to the conclusion that it is bad writing and intentional framing of the scene.

This could be just stated as my most hated thing about the game. I love the game overall so far, but the fact the conversations feel more like fluff than actual conversations, because more or less nothing I choose will change what happens, and game already decided ahead of me whether I'll agree or not, at most letting me agree in an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way to piss the companion off too is just lame. Pains me that it is so because the game is incredibly engaging in my experience but everytime this happens I'm just like "If my choices don't mean anything, just play a cutscene and don't ask me to make them..."

The writing is railroaded, yes I can agree with that, I just don't think the characters themselves are badly written. It's more of an issue of game-direction than of the writing by itself.

This is a very railroaded game. I don't much care about that, since I'm here for the gameplay, and that gameplay feels great, but you're right that in general, a cutscene would fit better.

Something I noticed though, is that the characters are just overall... nice to each other. Like to the point of seemingly trying to avoid conflict. Honestly? Probably a bit too nice, really, but it's an aggressive kind of kindness that may be a bulwark against the horrible situation. I've seen people who respond to difficulty with abject kindness.

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak SiNRabbit tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ignis Imperia tarafından gönderildi:

This could be just stated as my most hated thing about the game. I love the game overall so far, but the fact the conversations feel more like fluff than actual conversations, because more or less nothing I choose will change what happens, and game already decided ahead of me whether I'll agree or not, at most letting me agree in an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way to piss the companion off too is just lame. Pains me that it is so because the game is incredibly engaging in my experience but everytime this happens I'm just like "If my choices don't mean anything, just play a cutscene and don't ask me to make them..."

The writing is railroaded, yes I can agree with that, I just don't think the characters themselves are badly written. It's more of an issue of game-direction than of the writing by itself.

This is a very railroaded game. I don't much care about that, since I'm here for the gameplay, and that gameplay feels great, but you're right that in general, a cutscene would fit better.

Something I noticed though, is that the characters are just overall... nice to each other. Like to the point of seemingly trying to avoid conflict. Honestly? Probably a bit too nice, really, but it's an aggressive kind of kindness that may be a bulwark against the horrible situation. I've seen people who respond to difficulty with abject kindness.

Yes I noticed that too, the overly friendly interactions remind me in terms of being completely different of Baldur's Gate 3, where originally more or less none of the companions particularly like each other, even if some are more accepting or pretend to be, eventually their relations escalate and if you don't step in, will erupt into tragic consequences. Here it feels like they completely skipped over that part and went straight into act 3 "We all friends already"

It's even more puzzling as some of them even comment on it during banter. Like Neve and Lucanis's banter. They should absolutely NOT get along, they are aware they should NOT get along, but they do, perfectly. Or Taash. She shouldn't get along with anyone given how arrogant and self-absorbed she is, but gets along with everyone. Even when there is a certain choice that heavily impacts one of the companions, they blame you, not anyone else, only one they can ever dislike is you.

The Disney filter is incredibly annoying in the game. I like the game a lot but the writing is just so painful. World is amazing though and always drags me into way more adventuring than I originally intend to do. So many times I ended up fighting level 25 boss at level 16 or level 32 boss at level 24 because I just kept chaining adventures, and that makes me really torn between hating how bad RPG the game is and how good it is outside the main thing it's meant to do.

[tom.tarpan]

OP from your description the game sounds like 5/10 maybe 6/10 if you like casual RPGs.

[76561199799860408]

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

I'm glad you enjoy it, but I know my immersion would break through the dialogues and the lack of meaningful choices.

There's some key choices with more impacts than those of DAO. One is even huge, with a big town as none in DA and even BG town in BG1 isn't as big, and one choice deeply affect the whole town, many destruction, many NPC impacted, new faction controlling the town, many relevant new quests, more.

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

I know I would enjoy the combat and the graphics, sure some character designs look dopey and puzzles seem simple, but those things wouldn't have stopped me from buying.

For me to really immerse myself in a world, I want Witcher 3/Baldur's Gate 3 levels of writing and if you can't offer that, you better make my decisions count after enduring the modern language dialogues, but sadly this game doesn't.

I'm glad you enjoy it, but I know my immersion would break through the dialogues and the lack of meaningful choices.

I completely understand your perspective and in many games I would have the same one. This game really does have me torn in half about how I feel about it. I effectively when explaining it to my friends have to first rate it as an RPG and a Dragon Age game, and then as a game in general, because I believe it is absolute travesty of writing and therefore bad RPG and bad Dragon Age game, but at same time even that's not so simple because while the writing is bad, the story itself is not bad, it's pretty average, sometimes even good. But as a game, I somehow found in the game my highlight of the year despite I consider this incredibly good year for games personally, it just draws me in with its gameplay, exploration and for once in my life even visuals.

I do hope you find games this year that you will love also too, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is around the corner in 2025, FF7 I heard was good, so I don't think we'll be hard-pressed about good choices for everyone. :)

[Ignis Imperia]

İlk olarak Termix tarafından gönderildi:

Furthermore, some of the characters in this game existed in this franchise before and I would say you can clearly notice a change in them, which makes this complete kindness among the group even weirder.

Honestly I feel in this particular instance it actually does me a favor that I did not get around to play original trilogy yet, for I feel it gets a lot more painful to see how changed the characters feel in Veilguard for people who did.

[MASTERCHIEF]

DAO is not that linear mate .. there are always interesting stuff put in between missions and also there is environmental story telling going on. like how the darkspawn hang people to display their cruelty. and there are interesting side content present here and there .. like helping a tree etc ... even in deep roads which has a lot of monotone combat and is supposed to feel that way .. there are some interesting side stories going one. like how a demon is still residing in one of the lost towns. or how you see the legion of the dead holding a bridge in the deep roads. to be frank most of the missions have multiple path ways - even in deep road there are forks to go past a darkspawn horde and if you use your rogue correctly you can scout out the area and find which way to take the best. where as in dav its get item a - starting scene combat combat immersion breaking puzzle combat cutscene ( if lucky ) then combat and game over.

i have almost 30 hours in the game.. the combat is already becoming stale .. iam thinking to reduce the difficulty already. i keep spamming the same combo and buttons over and over and over again. and i played 2 classes mage and fighter both almost feel the same to play, even though one is melee and other is ranged. its the same dodge, same parry , same calling in ranged spells and combos.

dialogue - what really put me off are not the early companions but later ones . like taash when she says "they hit hard" or something like that and the grey-warden guy, literally the dialogue goes
villein : their blood is mine
hero friend (grey warden) : I will spill mine before that
villein : and I will collect

come on dude WTH is this.

there are some good companions but they are shadowed by not getting into their personalities and roles. like the necromancer (who i really like btw) feels like a kindergarten teacher sometime asking every one if they are concerned that he does necromancy stuff and even as a player i cant take him as a serious necromancer. think of it like this what if had the power to raised dead enemies or summon zombies that would have been cool. and whats with coffee is that a thing in dragon age ?

all in all - i get what you are trying to say op, may be iam just a old dragon age origins fans, having a stupid wish to see this series in its golden state but this game fails even as a action rpg. if it had a different title or no rpg tag it would be fine i guess.

[Yakkob auf Cincy]

you mean underblown!