Some horrible immersion breaking they/them moments. So thx but no thx, that shows me the developers commitment to making a great fantasy rpg game was not there.
If it's not better than Baldur's Gate 3, it's not worth my time, and yes, those are where my expectations are at- so my apologies to all future RPGs that have yet to be created.
I wish my expectations were that low! I can't abide anything using the super hero min-maxing mechanics of any of WotC's editions.
Hehe, okey so when i typed that out i was just trying to convey my complicated feelings about DragonAge and Bioware games (not in the best way) i shouldn't say that a game has to be exactly like BG3 to grab my attention- but i do mean that the quality of a video game needs to at least be at that level; especially now that new AAA games run $70 usd or higher.
I could have said: "If the game isn't even remotely like DA:Origin's in terms of quality, I'm not going to bother buying it" - or i could have used Elden Ring as an example; the meaning would have been the same. I doubt we'd be having these type of critical discussions if EA played the whole 'Demo" game with it's releases, but i don't think they'd ever do that, they aren't *Capcom after all. *Monster Hunter Wild's is amazing.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013 Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005 Fishing in RL since 1992 Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
Saw some examples of the poor dialog yesterday, now obviously this was cherry picked, there could be good dialogue in the game. But what I saw was awful, it reminded me of conversations in my student common room and was as lacking in any relevance to the setting. Very teen, very life positive, very modern, very banal.
Actually thinking about it back in the day we weren't that life positive.
Myself, this leaves me to wait for Steam Reviews. Seems less and less can you trust any reviewers. Game companies are gaming the system. Ubisoft did this with their Star Wars game.
There is too much potential for conflicting interests so reviews free of that influence are preferable to be sure.
Id wager when most of the posters here go play their game of choice today that it didn't score a 9 or 10 but we love it all the same.
Likely so. I don't pay much attention to the scores in reviews but the actual information about the game provided. I don't care what value the reviewer places on those elements so much as what I will once I know about them.
79 on MC PC with curated reviews. Thats 3 points below Dragon Age 2. 6 points below Inquistion 12 points below Origins...
Yellow is almost granted and now I'm not so sure about not seeing it red.
What a disaster. Sales can still be good but damn... I don't think they will be able to get (buy) GOTY (which they desperately have been pushing for) with that level of critic reviews.
Dragon Age Inquisition scored in the 6 range on metacritic from fans yet sold over 12mil copies. It's almost as if most people don't worry about a few hundred/thousand fans on metacritic think.
Is Horizon Zero Dawn suddenly a terrible game, because you could only play as a female character? Should the studio have been character assassinated and put out of business because of it?
Just asking...
You surely are not unaware that very thing happened, right? I just can't believe you missed all the hate levelled against that game and it's protagonist--because she didn't appeal to the incel gaze. It makes me suspicious that all this fuss you're making is simply that you don't like gay people and think that they should stay as far away from your awareness as possible, for reasons.
If I'm inferring something about you that's not there I apologize. But I don't have the patience to put up with bigotry, and you're treading a fine line with your way of casting all of this.
You surely understand the difference between some random incel idiot raging on some game forum or reddit, which they do for pretty much all games (as they are always butt-hurt about something). As opposed to a media outlet like Kotaku targeting singular people at game studios and trying to character assassinate them!
Similar difference between some nobody incel idiot posting something anti-LGBTQ crap on X(twitter) as opposed to a prominent clown like Elon Musk posting horrible anti-LGBTQ crap about his own kid on X(twitter), that is reaching millions of followers!
One just disappears in some black hole, ignored and forgotten, while the other one actually has a huge reach with actual far reaching consequences, like impacting these persons and their families lives and safety (death threats, swatting, etc), impact on business that result in people loosing their jobs and livelihood.
In general, Horizon Zero Dawn received glowing reviews, was actually well received by the gaming community (except for the usual random incels that rage about their hurt masculinity ) and sold really well, resulting in an expansion and a second game.
______________________
Back on topic. The problems with Dragon Age: Veilguard are nothing of that nature. It just suffers from terrible writing with childish dialog, horrible Botox plastic face like facial animations and a less than stellar combat system (to say it nicely).
It's what happens, when all senior writers are gone and the HR department takes over as supervisors over the writing team.
No idea what happened to their animation team, but seems to have suffered the same fate, When Dragon Age:Inquisition (that launched 9 years ago) looked superior (at least facial animation wise).
With Dragon Age: Veilguard they went from the original dark and gritty atmosphere to a Pixar kiddie animation looking game. /Shrug
Back on topic. The problems with Dragon Age: Veilguard are nothing of that nature. It just suffers from terrible writing with childish dialog, horrible Botox plastic face like facial animations and a less than stellar combat system (to say it nicely).
It's what happens, when all senior writers are gone and the HR department takes over as supervisors over the writing team.
No idea what happened to their animation team, but seems to have suffered the same fate, When Dragon Age:Inquisition (that launched 9 years ago) looked superior (at least facial animation wise).
With Dragon Age: Veilguard they went from the original dark and gritty atmosphere to a Pixar kiddie animation looking game. /Shrug
Thanks, but no thanks. I pass.
That’s all subjective.
The look and I imagine subsequent animations are most likely an attempt to make the game more attractive to a wider audience.
While not my taste it all looks fine. Just a different interpretation on the “Dragon Age art design.
haven’t listened to extensive dialogue but the dialogue in the trailer seemed fine.
The combat system is an improvement to my tastes. Though I did enjoy the first game’s combat I prefer this direction.
Essentially they wanted to appeal to a wider audience. That’s a shame as far as I’m concerned but it is what it is.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
79 on MC PC with curated reviews. Thats 3 points below Dragon Age 2. 6 points below Inquistion 12 points below Origins...
Yellow is almost granted and now I'm not so sure about not seeing it red.
What a disaster. Sales can still be good but damn... I don't think they will be able to get (buy) GOTY (which they desperately have been pushing for) with that level of critic reviews.
I wouldn't like to work at Bioware right now.
They also probably don't deserve GotY when we have genre-defining games like Metaphor Re Fantazio, Unicorn Overlord, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Back on topic. The problems with Dragon Age: Veilguard are nothing of that nature. It just suffers from terrible writing with childish dialog, horrible Botox plastic face like facial animations and a less than stellar combat system (to say it nicely).
It's what happens, when all senior writers are gone and the HR department takes over as supervisors over the writing team.
No idea what happened to their animation team, but seems to have suffered the same fate, When Dragon Age:Inquisition (that launched 9 years ago) looked superior (at least facial animation wise).
With Dragon Age: Veilguard they went from the original dark and gritty atmosphere to a Pixar kiddie animation looking game. /Shrug
Thanks, but no thanks. I pass.
That’s all subjective.
Have you seen the Skill Up video? The character faces and animations are so bad you can literally not see the difference between them laughing or being angry other than the voice over. Just like the average Hollywood celebrity who has taken one too many Botox injections.
I find that very off-putting and killing immersion. Same with the overly childish and restrictive dialog.
It seems clear to me, that next to losing all Senior writers over the years, they have lost their animators as well. It's like they just bought some cheap generic off the shelf animation packs.
You surely understand the difference between some random incel idiot raging on some game forum or reddit, which they do for pretty much all games (as they are always butt-hurt about something). As opposed to a media outlet like Kotaku targeting singular people at game studios and trying to character assassinate them!
Respectfully, I think that you're overestimating the influence of Kotaku and underestimating the reach of deranged individuals (gamergate being an extreme example). I actually kinda forgot Kotaku even existed until you mentioned it in this thread. Moreover, there's plenty of anti-diversity press that, while generally not games media but nonetheless tangentially interested, is active in producing the type of bad behaviour you're concerned about. And that press by comparison makes Kotaku look like a single drop of water in an ocean.
One just disappears in some black hole, ignored and forgotten, while the other one actually has a huge reach with actual far reaching consequences, like impacting these persons and their families lives and safety (death threats, swatting, etc), impact on business that result in people loosing their jobs and livelihood.
Death threats and the like, especially against family members, is reprehensible and I can't imagine how it can be justified. That being said, you cannot convince me that the bulk of this type of behaviour isn't being done in the name of anti-diversity.
In general, Horizon Zero Dawn received glowing reviews, was actually well received by the gaming community (except for the usual random incels that rage about their hurt masculinity ) and sold really well, resulting in an expansion and a second game.
Space Marine 2 generally has good reviews also. For what it's worth, I think GW should leave their lore as is, regardless of criticism. I love the IP. Doesn't mean that I can't understand where the animus is coming from. And again, many of the people seemingly going overboard in their criticism feel like their existence and/or well-being is at stake in these issues--and I'm personally persuaded to believe that they're often right.
Skillup's review was one of the best reviews of a game I have ever seen.
A lot of people will defend reviews as being just subjective "opinion," but a quality review will infuse its opinion with objectivity, raising it above being merely a statement on what flavor of ice-cream the writer thinks is best. In this regard, every minute of Skillup's review is useful and brilliant.
He brings the receipts for every one of his "opinions" on the game, showing in game footage to prove his point. For example, his criticism includes, but is not limited to: the writing is juvenile, the story is bland, the characters are boring, the puzzles are insultingly easy, the combat is mindnumbing, the player has no agency. He then proceeds to show actual examples of just how bad each of these aspects of the game are with relevant footage from the game.
MNrMattyPlays also gave an interesting review, not as objective as Skillups but still insightful and worth a watch:
I've actually blocked Matty's channel and won't be turning to him for further reviews. His review outed himself as the person who broke NDA and leaked footage to the chuds. Grossly unprofessional. And no, I don't care whether it was him or "his editor" who did it.
First, I feel like I may have misjudged you, JeroKane, so I apologize for that.
Space Marine 2 generally has good reviews also. For what it's worth, I think GW should leave their lore as is, regardless of criticism. I love the IP. Doesn't mean that I can't understand where the animus is coming from. And again, many of the people seemingly going overboard in their criticism feel like their existence and/or well-being is at stake in these issues--and I'm personally persuaded to believe that they're often right.
No need to apologize. Everyone has different opinions and is allowed to disagree with one other.
Sites like Kotaku... I can't wait till they are gone and disappear into irrelevance. They are doing so much damage, all for the almighty clicks and desperation to stay relevant.
When it comes to Space Marine 2, the Steam forums quickly turned into a cesspool of trolling with endless barrage of posts with we "We want female space marines in the game", "Devs are homophobic, anti-LGBTQ", etc, etc. Fueled by sites like Kotaku and trying to review bomb the game. It has recovered and finally settled a bit now though.
The main critique should have been focused on what was relevant to the game. In that it had way too little content at launch for the price. It's an amazing game, true to Warhammer Lore, but too little content.
I love the Warhammer IP too. I have read almost every Horus Heresy book, many 40k books and all the books written by Chris Wraight. Which is by far my favorite Black Library author. I don't like playing the game itself, just love the Lore and the Miniatures and painting them.
The problem is and what you now see happening behind the scenes at Amazon Studios, is that they, yet again, show to the world why they should not get hold of major IP's, in this latest example, Warhammer.
Their writers are so caught up in their agendas and are unwilling to understand the Warhammer Lore. They forced Games Workshop to suddenly drop an announcement that there suddenly were always female Custodes (basically retconning 30+ years lore and books millions of people love)... which immediately caused a huge backlash and rightfully so. They now also go further and keep pushing Games Workshop to also allow Female Space Marines (which probably added extra fuel to the hate against the Space Marine 2 game). Again, completely ignoring that would upset 30+ years of established lore and 100+ Black Library books. They don't care, they just want to push for a female Space Marine lead in their TV show/movie, as that is the writers agenda.
Henry Cavil is supposed to be furious behind the scenes about this and threatening to leave the project (seeing a repeat of The Witcher debacle at Netflix), if they keep pushing GW with this idiocy. Apparently telling them, that if they so desperately want a female lead in a show, there are plenty awesome factions in the Warhammer Lore like the Silent Sisters (who work 1 on 1 with the Custodes no less). They are actually one of my favorite factions in Warhammer and Chris Wright has written an amazing book series about them and the Custodes. Hence, why I like him as a writer. He is excellent in character building. Aleya is an amazing character in the Watchers of the Throne series (Silent Sisterhood and Custodes). He does the same again, with a strong female lead (Spinoza) in the Vault of Terra series (inquisition and Custodes). I highly recommend these book series.
There are also the Adepta Sororitas or Battle Sisters, who I think are a more bad-ass faction than the Space Marines, since they wear the same Power armor and fight the same dangerous foes, but without Genetic/surgical enhancements and do it pure on conviction and fate in the Emperor of Mankind. Which is way more interesting story-wise than the endless Plot armor of the Space Marines lol. Here too, Believe it or not, Chris Wraight wrote an excellent trilogy about the Space Wolves, in which they work together with Battle Sisters.
But the Amazon writers are not interested in that, because they think the Silent Sisters are boring as they don't speak and the Battle sisters are too religious!
Which is hilarious and just, again, shows these writers complete contempt for the Warhammer Lore (just like the Netflix writers had contempt of the Witcher Author and openly mocked him). The whole Imperium in Warhammer 40k universe is run by Religious fanatics, preaching the Imperial Fate. The Imperial Inquisition has the highest authority and goes after the Xenos and the Heretic. Sound familiar and see the resemblance of real world Medieval times (dark ages)? The Imperial Fate is also based on a book written by the Primarch Lorgar back in the 30th millennium during the Great Crusade, which kickstarted the whole Horus Heresy.
But whatever, rumor has it that Amazon has till end this year to come up with roadmap or GW will pull the plug. In my opinion, I hope they pull the plug, instead of pampering to Amazon Studios and screw over their entire customer base and destroy the Lore they so carefully build over 30 years, which so many people around the world enjoy today. /sigh
PS. Just a side note. One of the most bad-ass characters in the Warhammer Universe is Lotara Sarrin. The female Captain of Angron’s flagship during the Horus Heresy. In my opinion.
Back on topic. The problems with Dragon Age: Veilguard are nothing of that nature. It just suffers from terrible writing with childish dialog, horrible Botox plastic face like facial animations and a less than stellar combat system (to say it nicely).
It's what happens, when all senior writers are gone and the HR department takes over as supervisors over the writing team.
No idea what happened to their animation team, but seems to have suffered the same fate, When Dragon Age:Inquisition (that launched 9 years ago) looked superior (at least facial animation wise).
With Dragon Age: Veilguard they went from the original dark and gritty atmosphere to a Pixar kiddie animation looking game. /Shrug
Thanks, but no thanks. I pass.
That’s all subjective.
Have you seen the Skill Up video? The character faces and animations are so bad you can literally not see the difference between them laughing or being angry other than the voice over. Just like the average Hollywood celebrity who has taken one too many Botox injections.
I find that very off-putting and killing immersion. Same with the overly childish and restrictive dialog.
It seems clear to me, that next to losing all Senior writers over the years, they have lost their animators as well. It's like they just bought some cheap generic off the shelf animation packs.
I’ll watch it and would be interested to see what it says.
Having said that I have been playing video games since they were a small block skittering across the screen. Since characters were just pixels. I suspect it won’t really matter.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Dragon Age as a series has always been all over the place, quality and tone wise. I wouldn’t even call it a good series, the first game was great but the rest? Funnily enough every next game was seen as ‘worse then the previous one,’ just like this one. The last one before Vanguard did sell the most though so it is only logical they focus on that when making the new one, I am playing Inquisition right now and all the happy bright colors are right there. Not that I care since I am happy western gaming isn’t being held hostage by dull browns, greens and greys anymore.
As for the disease that is the closet racist anti woke/diversity crowd:
“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You are the problem, not the victim. A shame to see it infect this community too to a degree, it is one of the reasons I visit here a lot less. Also cherry picking reviews to align with ones’ own views and slandering ones that don’t, sighhh.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Dragon Age as a series has always been all over the place, quality and tone wise. I wouldn’t even call it a good series, the first game was great but the rest? Funnily enough every next game was seen as ‘worse then the previous one,’ just like this one. The last one before Vanguard did sell the most though so it is only logical they focus on that when making the new one, I am playing Inquisition right now and all the happy bright colors are right there. Not that I care since I am happy western gaming isn’t being held hostage by dull browns, greens and greys anymore.
True, I mainly only liked the first game. Dragon Age:Origins.
I hated Dragon Age 2 and never played it beyond the first couple hours. Just couldn't stand it.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was actually quite amazing the first couple hours until you get your Castle. After that it became very repetitive where the story progression gating started to press on me and as such never managed to finish the game. Though, some areas had some amazing side story questlines though. I absolutely loved that zone with that big lake you had to drain (forgot the name of the zone). For example.
Either way, all three games had a dark and gritty atmosphere and generally good story telling and character interactions.
Veilguard however, it's just plain unrecognizable as a Dragon Age game. It's like looking at a Kiddie animation show, with some of the worst dialog I have seen in a long time. And the combat...... what's up with that.... ugh.
Well the game is dumbed down what a surprise, the reason gamers are noticing this is the time gap between the last game in the franchise and this one. In a franchise that has more regular instalments players just don't see the more moderate amount of dumbing down that has occurred.
I was quite happy with all the previous DA titles, I think we can be too picky, were some better than others, yes but you cannot expect such a consistent output at top level.
This game though does not seem to be from the same franchise, you make up a ton of new lore, you change the graphics to cartoon, you use writers that seem to have also been the "tea boy". That term comes from an article by a game writer on here about ten years ago lamenting that MMO quest writing now seemed to be being done by 'everyone and the tea boy'.
So far I have not seen anything that makes me want to buy it, but maybe you do, if so when you play it I would be keen to hear what you think.
As for the disease that is the closet racist anti woke/diversity crowd:
“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You are the problem, not the victim. A shame to see it infect this community too to a degree, it is one of the reasons I visit here a lot less. Also cherry picking reviews to align with ones’ own views and slandering ones that don’t, sighhh.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I just needed to react on this as well, as this is just bullocks! We already discussed earlier that Bioware has always pioneered in having "inclusion/equality/LGBTQ" in their games since their early days.
So that implied "issue" has nothing to do with the actual reported problems and critique the game is getting right now.
The cherry picking reviews.... it's already been done for us, by EA/Bioware! lol! Only people that were overly positive during the preview event got review codes. They just messed up a little with giving Skill Up a code (Maybe they bait&switched EA lol and you can bet they won't be getting any anymore in the future).
Have you checked Michael Gamble's X(Twitter) feed the last 24 hours? You know... the director of the upcoming Mass Effect 5?
He has gone out now to assure fans that Mass Effect will stay Mass Effect and keep its mature tone. That even though, both games are made by the same studio, they are different teams. That Mass Effect will keep its realistic cinematic graphics approach as opposed to the "stylized" direction the other team took with Dragon Age : Veilguard.
That's pretty damning to me. Coming from a director at the same studio.
As for the disease that is the closet racist anti woke/diversity crowd:
“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You are the problem, not the victim. A shame to see it infect this community too to a degree, it is one of the reasons I visit here a lot less. Also cherry picking reviews to align with ones’ own views and slandering ones that don’t, sighhh.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I just needed to react on this as well, as this is just bullocks! We already discussed earlier that Bioware has always pioneered in having "inclusion/equality/LGBTQ" in their games since their early days.
So that implied "issue" has nothing to do with the actual reported problems and critique the game is getting right now.
The cherry picking reviews.... it's already been done for us, by EA/Bioware! lol! Only people that were overly positive during the preview event got review codes. They just messed up a little with giving Skill Up a code (Maybe they bait&switched EA lol and you can bet they won't be getting any anymore in the future).
Have you checked Michael Gamble's Twitter feed the last 24 hours? You know... the director of the upcoming Mass Effect 5?
He has gone out now to assure fans that Mass Effect will stay Mass Effect and keep its mature tone. That even though, both games are made by the same studio, they are different teams. That Mass Effect will keep its realistic cinematic graphics approach as opposed to the "stylized" direction the other team took with Dragon Age : Veilguard.
That's pretty damning to me. Coming from a director at the same studio.
You mean the same Skill Up that was immediately labeled Shill Up by a part of the gaming community after giving Ubi’s Outlaws a good review? That Skill Up? A large number of gamers will, without a second thought, betray any and everything that doesn’t align with their own views.
And I agree, it is shocking to see a director bending the knee to please a vocal minority of people, they can do whatever the hell they want with a franchise (and face good or bad sales as a consequence since that is the only metric that counts). I understand them mentioning ME as it has a much more coherent art direction then the DA series, departure from that would actually be shocking. I also find it shocking to see that the status quo apparently is that professional reviews can’t be trusted, as if independent reviewers aren’t 100% trying to generate as much traffic as possible and outrage/offense/critique is the easiest way to achieve that. I won’t even get into the absolute cesspool that is player reviews these days. Just pick your poison really.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Comments
Hehe, okey so when i typed that out i was just trying to convey my complicated feelings about DragonAge and Bioware games (not in the best way) i shouldn't say that a game has to be exactly like BG3 to grab my attention- but i do mean that the quality of a video game needs to at least be at that level; especially now that new AAA games run $70 usd or higher.
I could have said: "If the game isn't even remotely like DA:Origin's in terms of quality, I'm not going to bother buying it" - or i could have used Elden Ring as an example; the meaning would have been the same.
I doubt we'd be having these type of critical discussions if EA played the whole 'Demo" game with it's releases, but i don't think they'd ever do that, they aren't *Capcom after all.
*Monster Hunter Wild's is amazing.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
If so, it is time for another.
Actually thinking about it back in the day we weren't that life positive.
There is too much potential for conflicting interests so reviews free of that influence are preferable to be sure.
Likely so. I don't pay much attention to the scores in reviews but the actual information about the game provided. I don't care what value the reviewer places on those elements so much as what I will once I know about them.
You surely understand the difference between some random incel idiot raging on some game forum or reddit, which they do for pretty much all games (as they are always butt-hurt about something). As opposed to a media outlet like Kotaku targeting singular people at game studios and trying to character assassinate them!
Similar difference between some nobody incel idiot posting something anti-LGBTQ crap on X(twitter) as opposed to a prominent clown like Elon Musk posting horrible anti-LGBTQ crap about his own kid on X(twitter), that is reaching millions of followers!
One just disappears in some black hole, ignored and forgotten, while the other one actually has a huge reach with actual far reaching consequences, like impacting these persons and their families lives and safety (death threats, swatting, etc), impact on business that result in people loosing their jobs and livelihood.
In general, Horizon Zero Dawn received glowing reviews, was actually well received by the gaming community (except for the usual random incels that rage about their hurt masculinity ) and sold really well, resulting in an expansion and a second game.
______________________
Back on topic. The problems with Dragon Age: Veilguard are nothing of that nature. It just suffers from terrible writing with childish dialog, horrible Botox plastic face like facial animations and a less than stellar combat system (to say it nicely).
It's what happens, when all senior writers are gone and the HR department takes over as supervisors over the writing team.
No idea what happened to their animation team, but seems to have suffered the same fate, When Dragon Age:Inquisition (that launched 9 years ago) looked superior (at least facial animation wise).
With Dragon Age: Veilguard they went from the original dark and gritty atmosphere to a Pixar kiddie animation looking game. /Shrug
Thanks, but no thanks. I pass.
The look and I imagine subsequent animations are most likely an attempt to make the game more attractive to a wider audience.
While not my taste it all looks fine. Just a different interpretation on the “Dragon Age art design.
haven’t listened to extensive dialogue but the dialogue in the trailer seemed fine.
The combat system is an improvement to my tastes. Though I did enjoy the first game’s combat I prefer this direction.
Essentially they wanted to appeal to a wider audience. That’s a shame as far as I’m concerned but it is what it is.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I find that very off-putting and killing immersion. Same with the overly childish and restrictive dialog.
It seems clear to me, that next to losing all Senior writers over the years, they have lost their animators as well. It's like they just bought some cheap generic off the shelf animation packs.
Respectfully, I think that you're overestimating the influence of Kotaku and underestimating the reach of deranged individuals (gamergate being an extreme example). I actually kinda forgot Kotaku even existed until you mentioned it in this thread. Moreover, there's plenty of anti-diversity press that, while generally not games media but nonetheless tangentially interested, is active in producing the type of bad behaviour you're concerned about. And that press by comparison makes Kotaku look like a single drop of water in an ocean.
Death threats and the like, especially against family members, is reprehensible and I can't imagine how it can be justified. That being said, you cannot convince me that the bulk of this type of behaviour isn't being done in the name of anti-diversity.
Space Marine 2 generally has good reviews also. For what it's worth, I think GW should leave their lore as is, regardless of criticism. I love the IP. Doesn't mean that I can't understand where the animus is coming from. And again, many of the people seemingly going overboard in their criticism feel like their existence and/or well-being is at stake in these issues--and I'm personally persuaded to believe that they're often right.
A lot of people will defend reviews as being just subjective "opinion," but a quality review will infuse its opinion with objectivity, raising it above being merely a statement on what flavor of ice-cream the writer thinks is best. In this regard, every minute of Skillup's review is useful and brilliant.
He brings the receipts for every one of his "opinions" on the game, showing in game footage to prove his point. For example, his criticism includes, but is not limited to: the writing is juvenile, the story is bland, the characters are boring, the puzzles are insultingly easy, the combat is mindnumbing, the player has no agency. He then proceeds to show actual examples of just how bad each of these aspects of the game are with relevant footage from the game.
MNrMattyPlays also gave an interesting review, not as objective as Skillups but still insightful and worth a watch:
Sites like Kotaku... I can't wait till they are gone and disappear into irrelevance. They are doing so much damage, all for the almighty clicks and desperation to stay relevant.
When it comes to Space Marine 2, the Steam forums quickly turned into a cesspool of trolling with endless barrage of posts with we "We want female space marines in the game", "Devs are homophobic, anti-LGBTQ", etc, etc. Fueled by sites like Kotaku and trying to review bomb the game. It has recovered and finally settled a bit now though.
The main critique should have been focused on what was relevant to the game. In that it had way too little content at launch for the price.
It's an amazing game, true to Warhammer Lore, but too little content.
I love the Warhammer IP too. I have read almost every Horus Heresy book, many 40k books and all the books written by Chris Wraight. Which is by far my favorite Black Library author.
I don't like playing the game itself, just love the Lore and the Miniatures and painting them.
The problem is and what you now see happening behind the scenes at Amazon Studios, is that they, yet again, show to the world why they should not get hold of major IP's, in this latest example, Warhammer.
Their writers are so caught up in their agendas and are unwilling to understand the Warhammer Lore. They forced Games Workshop to suddenly drop an announcement that there suddenly were always female Custodes (basically retconning 30+ years lore and books millions of people love)... which immediately caused a huge backlash and rightfully so.
They now also go further and keep pushing Games Workshop to also allow Female Space Marines (which probably added extra fuel to the hate against the Space Marine 2 game).
Again, completely ignoring that would upset 30+ years of established lore and 100+ Black Library books.
They don't care, they just want to push for a female Space Marine lead in their TV show/movie, as that is the writers agenda.
Henry Cavil is supposed to be furious behind the scenes about this and threatening to leave the project (seeing a repeat of The Witcher debacle at Netflix), if they keep pushing GW with this idiocy.
Apparently telling them, that if they so desperately want a female lead in a show, there are plenty awesome factions in the Warhammer Lore like the Silent Sisters (who work 1 on 1 with the Custodes no less). They are actually one of my favorite factions in Warhammer and Chris Wright has written an amazing book series about them and the Custodes. Hence, why I like him as a writer. He is excellent in character building.
Aleya is an amazing character in the Watchers of the Throne series (Silent Sisterhood and Custodes).
He does the same again, with a strong female lead (Spinoza) in the Vault of Terra series (inquisition and Custodes).
I highly recommend these book series.
There are also the Adepta Sororitas or Battle Sisters, who I think are a more bad-ass faction than the Space Marines, since they wear the same Power armor and fight the same dangerous foes, but without Genetic/surgical enhancements and do it pure on conviction and fate in the Emperor of Mankind. Which is way more interesting story-wise than the endless Plot armor of the Space Marines lol.
Here too, Believe it or not, Chris Wraight wrote an excellent trilogy about the Space Wolves, in which they work together with Battle Sisters.
But the Amazon writers are not interested in that, because they think the Silent Sisters are boring as they don't speak and the Battle sisters are too religious!
Which is hilarious and just, again, shows these writers complete contempt for the Warhammer Lore (just like the Netflix writers had contempt of the Witcher Author and openly mocked him).
The whole Imperium in Warhammer 40k universe is run by Religious fanatics, preaching the Imperial Fate. The Imperial Inquisition has the highest authority and goes after the Xenos and the Heretic. Sound familiar and see the resemblance of real world Medieval times (dark ages)?
The Imperial Fate is also based on a book written by the Primarch Lorgar back in the 30th millennium during the Great Crusade, which kickstarted the whole Horus Heresy.
But whatever, rumor has it that Amazon has till end this year to come up with roadmap or GW will pull the plug. In my opinion, I hope they pull the plug, instead of pampering to Amazon Studios and screw over their entire customer base and destroy the Lore they so carefully build over 30 years, which so many people around the world enjoy today. /sigh
PS. Just a side note. One of the most bad-ass characters in the Warhammer Universe is Lotara Sarrin. The female Captain of Angron’s flagship during the Horus Heresy. In my opinion.
Having said that I have been playing video games since they were a small block skittering across the screen. Since characters were just pixels. I suspect it won’t really matter.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
As for the disease that is the closet racist anti woke/diversity crowd:
“When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You are the problem, not the victim. A shame to see it infect this community too to a degree, it is one of the reasons I visit here a lot less. Also cherry picking reviews to align with ones’ own views and slandering ones that don’t, sighhh.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I hated Dragon Age 2 and never played it beyond the first couple hours. Just couldn't stand it.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was actually quite amazing the first couple hours until you get your Castle.
After that it became very repetitive where the story progression gating started to press on me and as such never managed to finish the game.
Though, some areas had some amazing side story questlines though. I absolutely loved that zone with that big lake you had to drain (forgot the name of the zone). For example.
Either way, all three games had a dark and gritty atmosphere and generally good story telling and character interactions.
Veilguard however, it's just plain unrecognizable as a Dragon Age game. It's like looking at a Kiddie animation show, with some of the worst dialog I have seen in a long time.
And the combat...... what's up with that.... ugh.
I was quite happy with all the previous DA titles, I think we can be too picky, were some better than others, yes but you cannot expect such a consistent output at top level.
This game though does not seem to be from the same franchise, you make up a ton of new lore, you change the graphics to cartoon, you use writers that seem to have also been the "tea boy". That term comes from an article by a game writer on here about ten years ago lamenting that MMO quest writing now seemed to be being done by 'everyone and the tea boy'.
So far I have not seen anything that makes me want to buy it, but maybe you do, if so when you play it I would be keen to hear what you think.
I haven't played it yet.
We already discussed earlier that Bioware has always pioneered in having "inclusion/equality/LGBTQ" in their games since their early days.
So that implied "issue" has nothing to do with the actual reported problems and critique the game is getting right now.
The cherry picking reviews.... it's already been done for us, by EA/Bioware! lol! Only people that were overly positive during the preview event got review codes.
They just messed up a little with giving Skill Up a code (Maybe they bait&switched EA lol and you can bet they won't be getting any anymore in the future).
Have you checked Michael Gamble's X(Twitter) feed the last 24 hours? You know... the director of the upcoming Mass Effect 5?
He has gone out now to assure fans that Mass Effect will stay Mass Effect and keep its mature tone.
That even though, both games are made by the same studio, they are different teams.
That Mass Effect will keep its realistic cinematic graphics approach as opposed to the "stylized" direction the other team took with Dragon Age : Veilguard.
That's pretty damning to me. Coming from a director at the same studio.
And I agree, it is shocking to see a director bending the knee to please a vocal minority of people, they can do whatever the hell they want with a franchise (and face good or bad sales as a consequence since that is the only metric that counts). I understand them mentioning ME as it has a much more coherent art direction then the DA series, departure from that would actually be shocking. I also find it shocking to see that the status quo apparently is that professional reviews can’t be trusted, as if independent reviewers aren’t 100% trying to generate as much traffic as possible and outrage/offense/critique is the easiest way to achieve that. I won’t even get into the absolute cesspool that is player reviews these days. Just pick your poison really.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer