unveiling-unguarding

[unveiling-unguarding]

Coming back to my salty side blog to reblog this because this drives me crazy. I cannot stand overdesigned armor in games, yet too many rpgs commit this sin with veilguard being the worst by far.

datv im crushing you with my hands please design one fucknig armor that isn't overloaded with details overdesigned doesn't even begin to cut it this is design gore that the sparkledogs of 2010 could only hope to aspire to

[unveiling-unguarding]

I didn't think this was a real quote when I first read it. Knowing that it is indeed something a dev of an rpg said about the rpg they just made is driving me insane.

i think about "we didn't want to force roleplaying [in our roleplaying game]" at least three times a day

[unveiling-unguarding]

Haha yeah...

happy dragon age day

[unveiling-unguarding]

This is such a cynical fucking way to write a story. Do they ever listen to themselves say this shit??

This is not how you write a story at all. You can't just pull this shit out your ass when you need to foist an emotional moment onto the player. IT HAS TO BE SET UP AND PAID OFF LIKE FICTION HAS DONE FOR CENTURIES NOW. This is just fundamentally misunderstanding why major player choices are impactful. They even had the perfect thematic throughline for Davrin and they decided to just abandon it after Weisshaupt instead of pushing it forward knowing his death was possible here.

Was literally complaining about how the Davrin vs. Harding choice feels so off in terms of how they planned it- specifically about how it felt like they didn't see it as an "equal" sacrifice if just Davrin died- and just had those frustrations CONFIRMED in the interview.

I'm sorry but are you fucking kidding me????

[unveiling-unguarding]

This is the least of Veilguard's issues but naming the assassin Dellamorte and the ice mage Neve is just so cloyingly on the nose. I hate it.

[unveiling-unguarding]

But actually, though. Why are they so smarmy?? Have they always been like this or have they let past accolades go to their heads?

I think if I was trapped in a lift with Epler or Weekes I’d repeatedly ram my head against the wall

[unveiling-unguarding]

It's so disappointing to know that this game has pretty much negated any joy I feel about speculating on the lore and future of Thedas. They didn't have to answer so many major lore questions and they didn't have to do it so tritely. Ugh.

"People hated DA2 and Inquisition when they launched but love them now. The same thing will happen to DA:TV"

Like hell it will. Veilguard gives empty answers to empty questions with empty characters. There is nothing deeper to sustain it.

[unveiling-unguarding]

Amen. Lore for lore's sake means nothing. It has to matter, *deeply*, to the characters in the story.

Overusage of Lore

a lot of people tend to say that bioware put little to no lore into Veilguard, and i might be on a minority on this to me it's way too much and way too shallow

The entire game feels like writers just scream at you "Look at all the magical thing we have!! So we have Titans! And Evanuris! And Illuminati Those Across the See! And-- are you listening? You better listen cuz there are more! We have Shadow Dragons! We have Griffons! We--"

OMG calm down it's not a fucking Warcraft

the best thing in DA was the way it beautifully showed real life issues through the lens of medieval fantasy world.

The dalish weren't so fascinating because they had an entire language made for them and pretty tattoos. They were fascinating because they were enslaved, fought for freedom, then got their land taken away YET STILL continued to fight for survival, for their cultural identity, their children and their children's children, for freedom. Literally combination of native american's and jewish history. Because despite having one goal they all had different approach and opinion about other of their kin: city elves (those disconnected from their culture) and half-elves ("can they be considered elves?" "should they be allowed to be a part of dalish?").

The city elf origin wasn't so memorable because every npc had a backstory with a length of bible. It was memorable because it was the most obvious analogy on racial oppression, segregation, colonialism and fetishism in the entire franchise. Because it had the guts to actually show in details the horrors of these things.

Broodmothers weren't so horrifying because it's a female mixture of jubba hutt and a fucking pudge from dota with a detailed explanation their anatomy. They were horrifying because they were paralleling a very real misogyny, mistreatment, the way how women in some countries are seen as nothing but a walking uteruses, where the only thing they're good for is to give birth

AND bioware doubled it while doing the same thing with Orzammar, cast system & Rica!

The Circles weren't so interesting because we've got dozens of pages in WoT explaining their hierarchy/fraternities. No, they were interesting because it was literally a bunch of medieval GULAGs with a function of a mental hospital, it showed what mistreatments happen there, the abuse, child abduction and enforcement of religion.... And from the side of templars it was a discussion about professional deformation, addictions and the way high ranking people abuse those to control their underlings.

..... And you know, if we were back in origins, griffons, for example, would've probably been used as a parallel on irl eco terrorism. it might've been about how Wardens despite their good nature unintentionally bonded the general association of the entire animal species to their order and abused this connection to the point when the species was beyond preservation!

and btw, then that decision in davrin's quest would actually had any meaning, instead of throwing wardens into mud (again) and turning isseya into a villain for no fkn reason.

lore is only good as long as it's used for purpose, when it has things to discuss, not just exist

i don't fucking care about titans/evanuris/and other shit because they're just a 30 pages long article in codex and WoT trying to explain magic and write DA timeline almost to a fucking mesozoic era. it's BORING. Get me emotionally invested, then i'll care

[unveiling-unguarding]

It's becoming exceedingly clear to me that the structure of Veilguard was compromised by the pivot away from live service. And I do empathize with the devs for trying to salvage what they could. In that vein, for all the problems I have with their writing and presentation, the companions, by and large, I found charming. I commend them for this.

And yet, nobody made them treat every conversation in act one as hardly anything more than a vehicle for exposition. Nobody made them write Bellara explaining what a damn dock is when you rock up to D'Meta's Crossing. Nobody made them introduce the Veil Jumpers, a supposedly major faction, in the most amateur way I've ever seen from a AAA rpg.

The things that disappoint me the most in this game are 100% self-inflicted. I've seen speculation that the turbulent dev cycle left little time for them to write anything but a 1st draft. It troubles me to think that any writer who does so for a living would even include such omnipresent, dry, and character agnostic exposition in even a rough draft. It drives me insane (the proof is that I created this blog, surely the greatest crime to come as a consequence of Dragon Age: The Veilguard).

[unveiling-unguarding]

Ok. I am all for giving Veilgaurd the space to be it's own game and appreciate it for what it is, but every time I see a person who openly talks about only getting in to dragon age this year or some other nonsense go off about how long term fans hate the game cause they cant handle change I see red.

I mean, to be a Dragon Age fan, you have to be able to accept change. Change is at the core of the experience. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is a different question. But if you're a long-term fan of the series, you've succeeded in the task of accepting change.

The criticisms of Veilgaurd are, in my opinion, a little unique to the franchise. For all Inquisition tweaked certain lore and it irritated a lot of people- it did so with self-awareness and intention. I am thinking about how it did the Dalish dirty in many respects. For all I do not agree with that writing direction, the game itself atleast acknowledges it is 1. New information. 2. Dependent on the clan. 3. Gives you the room to roleplay your character according to previously established lore. This is just one example, of course.

Veilgaurd is unique in the fact it ignores much of the series pre-established lore and in no way owns up to it.

I have seen a lot of hateful comments about how Origins hasn't been the framework of the series since 2009. And yeah, sure to a degree that is true. The gameplay certainly got tossed out. But in many ways, Dragon Age 2 is a direct continuation of that world and setting. DA2 and Origins and the lore they established are solid and share a vision. Play as a Mahariel and engage with Merril's clan. It's the same world. The same npc's. Inquisition does not deviate that far from that vision when you look past the companions all playing devil's advocate.

I really don't think everyone disappointed with this game or finding it lacking are "blinded by nostalgia." Most Dragon Age fans will be the first ones to tell you the franchise is a mess. But acting like the games that established it as beloved to it's fans are no longer relevant is so nasty to me. You as a newer fan would not be able to play Veilgaurd if the older fans had not made the previous titles financial successes. If they had not kept the love for the series alive, this new game would never have made it out of development.

The game is good. It's enjoyable to play. It's not without its charms. It should be given room to shine for what it is. It's a miracle we have it given the development journey it went on.

But it's also a massive smack in the face to many people who loved all three previous titles. And that's a bad thing. And I hope future titles remember the lore and tone of the series better.

These two things can both be true.

[unveiling-unguarding]

Veilguard pulls so many punches, but perhaps the worst punch to pull is not allowing the player to properly contend with the fact that Rook, for all their good intentions, unleashed a double blight on Thedas. There are what, maybe two or three dialogue options in the entire game you can choose for Rook expressing any emotion about it? And each of them is glossed over faster than it takes for the VA to even deliver the lines.

It's especially egregious given that they're so very clearly trying to create parallels between Rook and Solas. But for what? All of the conversations have been written without taking into account anything the player might be interested in exploring further. Your options are so railroaded they might as well not exist. It's always in a rush to get to the next moment.

I can't help but compare this to how regret and trauma are treated in KotOR II. Now, granted there's a big difference there, with kotor being years after the fact and veilguard being in the midst of it all (not that the plot structure or companion quests ever really give you that impression). But in KotOR II you are given multiple opportunities to rebuke or justify the Jedi Exile's actions that led to the near destruction of the Mandalorians and the Jedi and even the Republic as well. Cataclysmic consequences for actions your character felt were necessary to save the world. And the entire game is about you either succumbing or moving past the regrets and trauma that resulted by perpetrating more selfish harm or helping communities heal.

Like, you can't just state that regret is a theme in the game and give the player no meaningful ways to reckon (or not) with regret over their character's actions. You can't assert there's a theme there you didn't bother to actually write. I'm certain they absolutely had it in mind as a theme when writing, but you as the player do not interact meaningfully with it until the Big Emotional Set Piece about Regret™. Until that point it's kind of like a light sprinkling of seasoning on the bland companion characterizations.

It's so frustrating to think back on this game, to try to meet it halfway, only for all the creative decisions to shrink away before you've even started to pry into it.

[unveiling-unguarding]

"People hated DA2 and Inquisition when they launched but love them now. The same thing will happen to DA:TV"

Like hell it will. Veilguard gives empty answers to empty questions with empty characters. There is nothing deeper to sustain it.

[unveiling-unguarding]

i find it really frustrating when people dismiss the criticism of veilguard (from other fans, not grifters) by pointing out how people have always complained about each dragon age release for the same reasons while enjoying them in retrospect because. maybe its not just that people like to complain. maybe its because this game is a symptom of a greater issue across all media genres of late stage capitalism suffocating creativity and gradually reducing all types of media to shallow, shiny, easily-digestible shadows of their former iterations in favor of maximizing profit. and maybe you can see that decline especially clearly in a series like dragon age where you can track its creative manifestation over the last 15 years. and maybe you can see this across the entire gaming industry and film industry and book publishing and television and literally everywhere.

and maybe people have drawn comparisons between veilguard and disney, a comparison that would’ve been unthinkable 10 years ago, not because they are actually similar in content but in their similar loss of the passion, sincerity and humanity behind their creation in favor of meaningless cash grabs that people can FEEL when they experience them. and maybe we also have clear proof of this in the way that the fourth dragon age installment was scrapped, forced into being multiplayer, and ONLY allowed to revert back to single player following the massive monetary success of Jedi: Fallen Order that demonstrated the financial value of single player games to the millionaire executives at EA. but whatever i guess people just love to complain

[unveiling-unguarding]

Feeling retroactively insulted that I did not see a single pile of bones in the so-called "Ossuary". Ossuary who? THERE ARE NO BONES.

[unveiling-unguarding]

I gotta be real with you all, I don't think my updates for this blog are going to last much longer. Raging is cathartic and sometimes necessary but staying outraged for long is a cancer. I'm so heartbroken by how the game ended up that I'm kind of just ready to move on instead.

[unveiling-unguarding]

Mass Effect 2 after learning the team will need to go through the Omega 4 relay

-One line from Jacob about the squad getting personal affairs in order.

Dragon Age the Veilguard at two separate points after Weisshaupt

-Hey we're all distracted. We need to figure out our personal problems if we're going to kill gods. Also, did you know, Rook, that if we are distracted by the personal problems we all have, we won't succeed at killing the gods.

[unveiling-unguarding]

Maybe this is me being really uncharitable, but I cannot STAND to listen to bioware writers talk about their writing. Like, even before Veilguard eroded my trust in their ability to tell a story competently.

But what's really set me off is Epler "clarifying" what he meant to imply with the secret ending. "The word choice is VERY DELIBERATE"?? No shit, John. That's how writing works. You choose which words to put and in which order. Just because you can discount the implications of those words doesn't mean the rest of us can.

I really don't like being this ornery, especially since the absolute deluge of criticism that can happen online is not fun to be the subject of. But every time I hear something new from them in the context of the Exposition Palooza that was Veilguard, I can't help but feel like they must think I'm an idiot.