Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty"
Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty"
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Can someone explain to me why people think DA:V is bad? I’m thoroughly enjoying the game, I picked it up this last month, and haven’t seen any issue with it. The only thing I can think of is the vocal minority neckbeard gamers complaining about LGBTQ+ narratives… that their character relationship decisions directly influenced their exposure to.
Have you played much of the rest of the series? DA:V is a perfectly adequate game with incredibly lukewarm themes in a series of pretty good games with dark and interesting themes. I think a lot of people, myself included, were hoping that after the success of Baldur's Gate 3, EA would turn to the studio that made Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and say "I want that, make me a game like that." Instead, we got a serviceable fantasy RPG. Fine if you really like that kinda thing, but I've only so much time for those games, and it's much better spent on Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
I’m definitely not one of those GamerGate dorks. DA:V was a 100% day one but for me, as someone who enjoyed DA:I. However, after seeing some gameplay and dialogue, I lost interest. It looks and sounds like a Disney game. I understand if EA was moving toward capturing a segment of younger gamers with this entry in the series, but it didn’t seem like it was for me. I still plan to try it, but only once it’s on sale for significantly less than retail price.
Yeah unfortunately it seems like EA is still operating under the directive of "We want the Call of Duty/Fortnite audience," and DA:V is a game made to appeal to that audience. I'll never understand why they spend so much time and money to acquire incredible studios like Bioware and Visceral just to tell them "Actually those incredibly good games you made were stupid, you should make games like this."
but review bombing a perfectly good game because you wanted or expected something else seems a little much.
You're not wrong. And DA:V not "being the same as prior iterations" is actually kinda the norm for the DA series anyways. It really wouldn't be "Dragon Age" if fans of previous titles didn't complain about it being different.
That being said, expectations play a huge role in enjoyment. So if the publisher wants to pull out an old franchise to play off expectations to generate hype and drive sales, then they should expect the backlash when they deliver something that fails to meet those expectations. It's a double edged sword.
That doesn't mean it's a bad game, or that people shouldn't enjoy it. But it's also fair for fans of the old games to review it from their point of view. That's not review bombing, that's just how opinions work.
I think Baldur’s Gate 3 raised the bar for storytelling in RPG games. The previous Dragon Age games also had fantastic world building and storytelling. Vanguard fell a bit short and suffers from “Marvel Dialogue” where they undercut every emotional moment with a quip.
Skill Up’s review perfectly summarised all the criticisms. One of the most damning indictments was the feeling that HR was always in the room. He brings receipts for all his complaints. Some of the most unbelievably stupid, juvenile, and ham-fisted writing I’ve ever seen in any video game. This would be a failure if it came from any other studio, but to see BioWare fall this far is really difficult to see.
Bad RPG elements: there's a lot of dialogue choices that's is "Yes" but worded differently, kills off-screen previous relevant characters of the franchise, butcher some characters(Morrigan), disregard previous choices of the older games(the main selling point of DA for a lot of people), change tone, art direction and combat mechanics(is more action oriented instead of tactical). Basically a lot of DA players doesn't like the changes.
Mediocre combat, shits on old lore and polarizing characters. There's the culture war bs but it really isn't the main factor on how it is performing.
The art direction and the combat mechanics. But I can’t be sure.
I didn't think it was bad, I honestly enjoyed it. I think people are too polarized, it's either baulders gate or it's trash. I disagree. It wasn't top tier, but that doesn't mean it was bad either. It's okay to have a mid game.
Combat changes put me off initially but honestly, enjoyed it far more than inquisition, combat is far closer to me:a and that's a good thing, me:a is easily the best mass effect game mechanically (and that's coming from someone who still loves me1), skill tree is massive and you can respec whenever to try different things, as an RPG I personally felt it's quite strong. Also, felt da:v was more focused wrt maps, da:i has really large, empty maps that I originally tried to do everything in, by the hissing wastes unless it was shards or an interesting side quest I ignored it.
Felt them making companions invulnerable was a good idea too, da:i on nightmare they usually died almost immediately against things like dragons or dlc bosses unless you micromanaged the hell out of them.
Story wise, it's me:2; you collect a bunch of experts for an impossible task. Personally, I like bioware RPGs, they've always been cheesy. Shepard has lots of one liners that are sarcastic quips, "it's a big stupid jellyfish" comes to mind immediately, half the dialogue between Shepard and Garus in the later games (especially me:3). One criticism is probably shared with me:a, we had time to experience the me characters over the course of the games, they weren't immediately like that, but honestly it never really bothered me, jade empire has really cheesy dialogue and is up there for me flaws and all.
IMO one thing bioware has always done well is world building and veilguard isn't an exception to that for me, I like that the set the game in a region only really mentioned in previous games.
is it the best game I've ever played? No but definitely an enjoyable one, I personally feel we'll see retrospectives in a handful of years like I've seen with me:a recently (another game that was actually solid and had some interesting ideas and concepts)
