After ten years, I finally played the next Dragon Age and I had fun, but I’m left feeling like something critical is missing…
Intro: (0:00)
Positives: (0:49)
Art Style: (2:18)
Music: (4:03)
Rook, Companions, General Writing Issues: (5:03)
Factions & Subplots: (30:13)
Deep Lore Reveals: (42:30)
Wrapup & General Thoughts: (47:20)
Outro: (53:27)
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Thank you so much for your review! I was waiting for it! ❤😊 I agree about the soundtrack. Hans Zummer is overstated in my opinion. This SoT is not memorable at all. I still relisten DAI SoT. Trevor Morris wrote an amazing music. I also didn't like the linear approach to opening areas in regions. Some were not accessible till you progress further in the linear narrative. I understand this approach and it used in many games but it doesn't mean it's a good one. I prefer BG3 approach to areas in non-open world. You can go to any direction and do quests in any sequence and it won't change the whole story. DATV felt limited. I also didn't like voices of actors in DATV (. It felt so amateur with exception of few actors that voiced characters from previous DA games and Emmerich's.
Rook felt as MC was a therapist of some sort resolving issues between teens fighting instead of working on a savings the world.
The last thing i didn't like is that a players is forced to hire companions. In all rpgs or at least in major ones you can solo games. You may lose on a story but you can progress without anybody else except MC and get to the end. With DATV you cannot. You are locked from the finishing the game. I agree with all your points and also liked Emmerich. He was my favorite companion too. 😊 Modern language was strange to listen to. Cringy.
Sorry for such a long comment! 😊 Happy New Year! 🎉❤
P.S. I didn't romance anybody. I didn't like any companions to get involved with romantically not as such in previous DA games.
Idk if we should trust Solas' memories. He's a trickster god and I'm hoping there was a gambit there even at the very end (with or without Inquisitor or Mythal's help).
Been waiting since Trespasser for this and felt it under performed. Still, hoping there will be another game exploring an exalted march that is: 1.) orchestrated by the "Executors" and 2.) mainly backed by the dwarves + titans.
You know how what became Inquisition started out as a DLC for DA2? I kinda feel like the story of stopping Solas should almost have been another DLC or a smaller game akin to Dragon Age 2. Veilguard seems like a story that doesn't quite cover the whole game but what has been added into it doesn't feel meaningful or important enough to compete with the urgency of saving the world. As a result, the pacing of this game feels off and the best pacing/writing is at the very end of it at Tearstone Island and Minrathous. Before that the pace is so weird. Like, I feel this extreme urgency to stop Solas but before we can do that we have to sort out our companions issues. Helping the factions feels more appropriate than the companion quests, really. You know, the world is about to end and we're all going to die, but we really should go pick flowers or whatever. For me, the companion quests do not have the same gravitas as the rest of the game. On another note, the writing is very patchy and it's not as compelling as the previous games. I like playing the game and it sort of feels like a Dragon Age game, but it doesn't quite hit the mark. I don't hate the game, either. I'm just very confused as to what BioWare was trying to do and how much of what ended up in Veilguard came directly from the writers and if some things were added because the publisher (EA) insisted.
I see all your points, but I couldn't finish the game. It was too light-hearted. Having one character that way is fine, but all of the? No thank you. What really killed it for me was the death of Varric. That character was the face of the series.
This is genuinely the best review I’ve heard for this game. Thanks for your honesty and thoughtfulness.
Thank you, dude, great review! I feel mostly the same as you. Solas and the Gray Wardens are the best thing about the story and lore of the game. Gameplay is fine but overall, a huge disappointment after 10 years of wait. My favorite Dragon Age remains Origins, sadly, and I also still have some soft spots for DA2 and its second act.
I had the exact same feelings about Lace in that her plotline could have gone to anyone. It's like they perhaps at one point planned for Valta to come back and fill that role, or maybe even Dagna who already has an interest in dwarven Magic, but they saw the fan demand to bring back Lace and decided to pair her with this plotline they really wanted to explore.
Hmmm… mixed feelings here.
I hadn't played DA:V myself, because the initial trailers and impressions made me pause and decide to wait and not buy on release, which in retrospect turned to be a good decision for myself.
While I disagree with some of the more positive takes in your review based of what I've seen of the game, I think your feelings in regards to the DA IP are similar to mine:
The passion I had for it before is gone.
One last comment before I go, while I understand your desire to see Bioware succeed and get "another chance", I believe that success in this case will teach them the wrong lesson, not that they succeeded despite the game's shortcomings, but that they found the holy grail, and will continue to use this… style (for a lack of a better term) for their next products.
Personally I believe that every good thing comes to an end eventually. Bioware of today is simply a name, and almost all the people working there have little connection to the games that made many of us fall in love with that name in the past. These days my interest is aimed at other companies. Bioware surviving or not is at this point an issue of minor interest to me.
I didn't play veilguard. I probably won't play it (for literally no other reasons than I haven't played a Dragon Age game before and don't have the time I used to).
I come here to listen to you talk about things you're passionate about and this is your comment you asked for at the end of the video
Thank you for your well articulated video. I just finished it the other night. I feel very conflicted about the game because in one way I see it as a masterpiece and in the other I see it as a complete failure. I mourn the game we could have received in the art book but I also mourn that this latest iteration of the series is finished. And yet it's not something I could ever replay. Not in it's entirety at least. I will write my one positive here, the environments were stunning. 10/10 yet somehow they felt emptier than Inquisition. So there you go, a positive and a negative.
A critical review of Veilguard that isn't just "game is woke = bad" Nice. Good job.
After Veilguard, I can definitively state that Inquisition is the best DA ever was and ever will be. Tactical gameplay, great story and characters, gigantic choices, fantastic art. Veilguard is just a cheap imitation of an RPG…
What's missing is a soul, intelligence, maturity and a basic understanding of how to write a story and chatacters.
I don't agree with much of your review but you do a good job of explaining why this game didn't do it for you. It's appreciated. I think you're missing with gender id in Tevinter that the guys you interact with are the rebels and that in some cases (like Dorian who isn't gender queer but is gay in a society obsessed with breeding) is a tip off to the society in general being wrong. The Shadow Dragons are the misfits and they include Maevarius who you mention along their ranks. I actually think Harding's storyline works better for her being a surface dwarf who is having to discover her orginal culture completely cold rather than someone like Volta or Dagna who was raised in Orzammar.
I agree with it could have gone deeper into the lore and explained some of supposed retcons better and honoured prevoius game choices more. Its just a deal breaker for me.
the Roleplaying is missing in this roleplaying game.
What comes to Tash, the way they told that story was abysmally bad, when Emmerich had similar themed story told much better: A person wanting to be something they feel they are meant to be
This is one of the better reviews I've seen, but I can't be as forgiving or enthusiastic about the game or the devs as you. I DO think the studio needs to be shut down. I think any development studio that not only allows but encourages by example their employees to abuse, promote dog piling, and insult their paying customers in dev streams and social media, then brag about it across practically every social media platform, SHOULD be fired. The studio is rotten from the top to the bottom, and when you have lead devs calling people from marginalised communities "fake" and "traitors" and swearing at them, that studio doesn't deserve to exist.
I hope they close down, so studios with better ethics, MUCH better talent, and devs who actually LIKE games and having loyal paying customers, can purchase the DA and ME franchises to do them justice the IP legacy deserves.
All the stress and crunch time and poor management in the world can't excuse what the devs did to this IP OR their paying customers. There are better games made by far more ethical companies, and developed by much nicer people than BioWare now. They don't want my custom, well that's ok. I don't need their sloppy games either. They made sure of that when the enacted a scorched earth scenario on the last three games – in codex entries – and turned the Blight into a 5 second contact DOT. 😔
I dunno. I'm glad some people like it, in the same way I'm glad some people didn't get abused by jumped up talentless hacks with pay checks that exceed their ability to make good games… but I'm not one of them. I can't forgive them trashing this franchise, and I can't forgive them abusing me (and many others like me) on social media for daring to politely voice our concerns. I can forgive bad games (to a point), but I won't forgive repeated bad behaviour, and I definitely won't pay their wages for it.
I didnt play it but I watched enough reviews to have a somewhat patchy picture. Someone said the environment was stunning, and I had to agree. Another thing that was apparently really good
what character movement and fluidity. Since we had many AAA games that released janky and buggy, those things stood out positively.
Personally, I like pretty grafics – but I think, Veilguard went a bit too far.
Best review i have seen. Thank you. I agree with much of your comments. This is the first i've seen to point at EA & call out their interference as part cause. Very much agree with this. One additional annoyance. Why is there a nudity on/off setting when there isn't any?
"There's a point at which Rook can openly describe their group as a family… which, first of all, I don't feel was earned…"
Not "earning" what's being laid claim to is an overarching theme throughout the game. The lead director was plopped in w no RPG, Dragon Age, or even Bioware experience from a non-RPG background- a position of authority not in the least bit earned- and the game's narrative includes wide, sweeping, arbitrary destruction of the gameworld (the city choice, yes, but also the "blighting" of exactly that part of Thedas that the previous games involved)- and the direct sacrifice of the narrative voice of Varric- in an completely unearned way. The clincher becomes the end sequence that essentially overwrites absolutely everything, including Rook, w a new villain- completely unearned. But, yeah, the sense of accomplishment in the game also is unearned, as is the notion that a genuinely meaningful relationship was ever built w the genuinely poorly-written companions.
I wonder if Taash's storyline would have been more "digestable" if they were an elf instead. Their non-binary identity could have been tied to a community of elves that existed during the age of evanuris. The identity and termonology could have been erased after Tevinter enslaved the elves. A very common, very real world reality that occurs in indigenous cultures that were colonized by european imperialism.