Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
I mean those are examples of bad writing. Showing that the factions are very shallow in terms of their ideology and that the characters don't have much in the way of depth.
For example in the game Neve says something along the lines of 'the docks used to be full of people.' It's a piece of dialogue relaying information in a very straight forward way. It works, but it's not good. Better would have been "I used to come to the docks as a kid, they were so full of life back then". Same information but now has depth and a bit of world building to it. And the game is full of the former. It provides information but in a very monotone, and often repetitive, way.
To use a earlier example you had. It's like comparing one of Brandon Sanderson's books to something like Twilight. Most people agree that Sanderson's books are very well written and thought out. Twilight, even the people who like it, tend to agree it's not a great written book but it's a guilty pleasure read.
Neve is all about duty and action, so it's in her character to keep things on point.
Garrus is about duty and action and he provides way more detail in his little quips as you explore the map. It's not an excuse to be one dimensional which is what almost all the characters from DAtV suffer from. One of their personality traits become everything that they are.
And games aren't real life, dialogue is meant to give information and expand the world building as that's one of the easiest ways to do so and that there are numerous times that this happens with all the characters and not just Neve is an example of poor writing.
Basically the writing is fine but a little clunky in spots during the first half. There is a lot of dialogue around identity and the options are very flexible. Overall a really enjoyable DA with probably the best ending of any DA game.
I 100% it. It's an 8/10 experience, maybe the weakest Dragon Age imo, but a decently good game experience. The combat is really fun, I think the characters are mostly good (if not the flattest in the series), but I still like everyone. It definitely feels like a reboot and a direct sequel to Inquisition. DA:I was my favorite for a lot of reason, but I also adore Origins and 2 (having had both on console even before PC and replaying all of them many times). The writing in Veilguard is fine, a bit eh at first, but it gets a LOT better. I do not think it has as much grey and impact as any of the previous games, and the series was generally sanitized, scared to talk about issues that have existed in Thedas, but I still think it was an enjoyable time. It kind of feels like the DEVs had things set up that they wanted to do but....didn't get to or couldn't do, if that makes sense.
I think the people that have been saying your choices do not have an impact are wrong, because they do, but not as much as I would like--but that's been every game. I really thought the Inquisition choices would be more important but they are just...not. They do not invalidate any, but it kind of sucks. The lack of the Dragon Age Keep this time was felt.
I think Dragon Age 2 is also a very good game with not a lot of development time, but the characters and story are worth it and make replaying fun. I think no game will touch me like Dragon Age: Inquisition. I think no game will ever erase how important Origins was for everyone, and I think Veilguard isn't that bad of a game, and neither is Dragon Age 2, but I also feel like it has its highs and lows, and you can't know how you feel until you do play it. It honestly feels close structurally to Mass Effect 2, with the heavy companion missions and having a lot of consequences to that, but with the lore writing of Mass Effect 3--where they wanted to tie up loose ends in a neat little package.
There are moments of the game that I will never forget, in a good way.
I've watched reviews and disagreed with those people, and others that I agreed with. There's a lot of reviews happening of people who have not played it, unfortunately. If I had to recommend something, I'd revisit Dragon Age 2, and maybe buy this on sale, if the price seems to iffy to you.
But yeah, it's maybe the weakest Dragon Age, but it's still a Dragon Age, and it has a lot of really fantastic high points, and some average points. I think if you like action combat, you'll enjoy your time. I did, even though I yearn for the older games forever.
I don't think this game is as bad as some people say it is but it's also not amazing game of the year quality either. I liked it but I also liked DA2. (Never even knew people hated the game til after I'd finished it. LOL)
I also didn't actually finish DAO mostly because of the combat and I'd gone backwards through the franchise from DAI so that's probably why I didn't gel with it very well.
But yeah, it's a decent game but if DAO is your fave, then probably wait for a sale. ^_^b
Ok, let's dive deeper, you got my interest.
The point your making here is that a single line of dialogue within the game which remarks on the lack of people at the docks epitomises the entire game - that this single line acts as a kind of template for the whole Veilguard experience, in that it simply states a simple fact without expanding upon the topic or adding additional details or flavour.
You mentioned Mass Effect - so let me single out Kaiden's comment upon reaching the Citadel in Mass Effect 1
"Big place"
Kaiden does not say: "The Citadel is huge, far bigger than I expected it to be. It brings back a lot of memories. I remember docking here briefly after leaving Jump Zero, it was busy then too - the Wards alone contained..... etc. etc. etc. etc. etc."
So if I were to use the same logic, cherry picking a single line of dialogue (I say single line, but there's plenty more examples) and using it to 'prove' that the entirety of Mass Effect's writing sucks how convincing would I be?
Honestly I could probably pull this trick with any videogame. I've only ran through Veilguard once so far, so I don't have any super-specific memories of the dialogue, but I didn't notice too many incidents of horribly-written dialogue. Some of it was lacklustre, some of it wasn't - I could say exactly the same about Inquisition.
This is more similar to DA2 in terms of gameplay and combat. It is a good game in general. If you can wait for a sale, wait for a sale. However I jumped in last week and did not regret buying it full price.
You were asking for an example of bad writing and I decided to give one that isn't quoted nearly as much as some. I could have gone with almost any conversation with Taash and several from Neve but those have been shown so many times at this point that it's just low hanging fruit. But that goes back to what I said before that the character's are one dimensional in the game.
I will admit some fault that I could have chosen a better quote than a single line as, yes, every game will have a bad line or several. But, the amount of bad lines in DAtV is just, at this point, funny to me. You could probably go onto a stream, listen for 10 or 15 minutes and get several more examples of bad/bland overworld conversations. I can even forgive some of the cheesier ones like the 'it's quiet, too quiet' line as you can attribute it to a nod to other media tropes. But then you also have lazy writing like the entire final act of the game where it's nearly identical to the Mass Effect 2 Suicide Mission including Rook's speech. And hey, I'll grant it they copied it decently as that was the best part of the game according to most people, but that doesn't mean it wasn't lazy writing.
But what about a example of good dialog? Other than the final speech I really haven't really found any that caught my attention. And, like I said, that dialog follows Shepherd's pretty closely.
Edit: I will also admit that Kaiden is, imo, the worst written character in the Mass Effect series and didn't like a lot of his dialog either and honestly forgot he existed lol
But when I do I'll be paying particular attention to the dialogue and companion interactions. All I can say at this stage is that, in the main part, it seemed decent enough when I ran through it the first time. Not a masterpiece, not as good as Origins, or Mass Effect, or KotOR or even Cyberpunk... but decent enough for an action-RPG, probably on par with Inquisition which really only sparkled and came alive when strong characters like Dorian, Vivienne and Solas were in the room.
I pay no attention to streamers on Youtube whatsoever, many of them are extremely selective in what they show.
While its not as bad as people say, its also nowhere near as good as people say. Its maybe 4/10, when you are drunk and skip cut scenes. If you actually watch the cut scenes, its rough. Most of the character lines seem to be written by a 5 year old.
The story from the previous dragon age games? Yeh, that's gone. Almost seems like they tried to reboot and re-imagine the franchise with this game, all the while dumbing it down so its easier for newer players. Gone are the days of telling your party members how they will fight and what spells they can or can't cast. It's been over simplified and now party members come with pre-selected classes that you can't alter in any way and skills that that are not available to the player that you have to unlock with skill points.
The enemy and the race designs are bad. The fights are kinda fun tho, just don't do anything higher than hard difficulty. The enemies become damage sponges and fights tend to drag on.
Other than that, its not too horribly bad. You know that joke about how the previous games are dragon age and how veilguard identifies as dragon age? It's that.
I make sure to watch VoD's so I get the whole picture as I only played a 4 or 5 hours of the game to try it out since my friend lent me his copy, but I understand what you mean. And yea, I agree that it's a decent ARPG and I also agree that DA:I relied on those characters to carry the show. The issue for DAtV, for me, is that it didn't have those strong characters, at least not nearly as much though when they were there it had some of it's stronger dialog moments. But Dorian, the only one constantly there, felt watered down from what he was in DA:I. Going to steal someone else's quote that I heard as I think it sums up DAtV perfectly for me: DAtV is a decent ARPG, but it isn't a good Dragon Age game.
The combat carries the game for a lot of people and that's fine. It wasn't up my ally as I said in my initial response to OP that it can feel repetitive at higher difficulty and that was my impression of it. But I think we can both agree that out of most BioWare games DAtV has some of the weakest dialog and that's alright for some people but I think that was where Dragon Age shined was it's moral ambiguity and how the dialog/story was written and without it, to me, it just didn't feel like a DA game. If it was a new IP people wouldn't have had nearly the reaction that they are.
Since you're playing through the games again, just something fun to keep an eye in addition to the dialog on as it helps explain why Dragon Age, as a series, had a lot of ups and downs in terms of reception: Dragon Age never had a core gameplay identity. Mass Effect you had a 3rd person sci-fi shooter as it's core gameplay and in 2, 3, and Andromeda you had that gameplay tightened and improved. Dragon Age went from a combat similarish to Neverwinter Nights with being able to pause and plan your attacks, then to a more action combat of DA2, then to a combo of the two in DA:I, and then back to a more heavily action combat in DAtV.
On the other hand, Veilguard is less successful at establishing a consistent sense of world and a consistent narrative voice; I feel like Inquisition felt fairly consistent in that regard. This feels more like a collection of writers who didn't really talk to each other about how they were approaching the writing, or think much about how fantasy writing can benefit from worldbuilding. There are fantastic moments and face-palmingly cringe moments, but most of it is somewhere in the muddy middle between kinda awkward and pretty good.
I do think the "narrative" suffers a lot from poor use of voice talent. Some of it seems to be bad direction (people saying lines in ways that don't match other lines or the context), some of it is actors who don't seem to be able to speak with emotion, and a lot of it is that they just completely disregarded accent consistency, which makes the world feel like it's filled with generic characters instead of people who come from specific backgrounds and cultures. A lot of the "cringe" dialog people complain about is as much if not more due to misplaced American accents than it is actual script writing.
Overall I think I feel like I enjoyed it about as much as Inquisition, but for quite different reasons; and I have a fair number of complaints about both.