70 hours in, 68 actual gameplay

Obligatory I’m not an asshole disclaimer, feel free to skip down.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It’s fantastic. I’m also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I’m on media blackout while I play this, so I’m only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking ‘have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?’ My guess is nope.

Spoilers for Dragon Age Veilguard and every other piece of Dragon Age media. (I’m a lore fiend.)

Section 9 is here.

(Note that these reviews aren’t edited. They’re just my off the cuff writing. I don’t have the time, energy or heart to edit them properly.)

I haven’t played yet today. I have to take my immunocompromised ass into a world that doesn’t give a shit about my life to get groceries. How do I know they don’t care? They don’t mask. It’s as simple as that. If you care about immunocompromised people, people like me recovering from almost dying, pregnant people, old people, many children, people with immune affecting issues like long covid, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia… goddess, the list goes on, if you cared? You’d mask. It’s the number one way to help us survive. And no, us masking by ourselves doesn’t work very well. Everyone has to.

Anyway. Yeah. Gotta risk my life for groceries because I can’t afford delivery.

I was just sitting here, and I think I figured out some of the many issues that are bothering me about this game. The great big missing I’ve been trying to figure out.

They didn’t make Veilguard for the adult gamers who have desperately wanted it for so long. They made it for children and teens.

Epler even outright said they’d changed things hoping to draw in a younger section of gamers. (In one of the first q&a sessions after the gameplay reveals.) I wonder if he bothered to do any market studies to see if that demographic would actually be interested?

I can only judge by my two gaming kids because I’m on media blackout while I finish this game. But no matter how much they simplified it for kids, they still have absolutely no interest in Dragon age. They’re far more interested in indie games than anything a triple A studio puts out. Their opinions on Triple A studios are so low it’s honestly ridiculous. They don’t even understand why I love games put out by them.

So, the devs chose to remove things so that parents would be more likely to let their kid play what is still listed as a M level game (ESRB M for mature).

Ooooh, no. We can’t have rogues picking locks and doing all the stuff rogues are supposed to be able to do. Why? Because that means kids will be delinquents doing the same! (The trust in the ability of older kids to understand the difference between a fantasy video game and real life is astounding, I tell you. /s) This is such a boomer thought process I’m shocked to see it, to be completely honest.)

Everyone is just so… nice. Not kind, that’s different. But that sugary, false nice. None of the romanceables have anything tooooo controversial about them.

Blackwall Inquisition was a child murderer and lying about being a Grey Warden. Dorian was a spoiled, enslaving Tevinter rich boy (he did actually have a growth arc in Inquisition). Sera was a thief and a Red Jenny (people who worked against the entitled, rich nobility as needed to protect people without power). Varric (even though you can’t romance him) was a thief, liar, cheater, and someone you wanted at your back in a fight because he fights dirty. Cassandra was bigoted, hide bound, and intolerant of any faiths other than Andrastianism. The Iron Bull was a failed Ben-Hassrath double agent. The ben-hassrath are a combination of spies, saboteurs, and assassins, among other things. Whatever was needed to defend the Qun. Cullen was a drug addict and such a horrible person in the previous two games it actually made me physically ill to try to romance him. Solas was, well, Solas. Who we all know had a lot of bad in his background. They’ve certainly hammered that point home in Veilguard. With a jackhammer. The only romance option in Inquisition that wasn’t dirty was Josey. And if you do Romance her, you find some dirt on her too.

I could say the same for almost every Dragon Age Romanceable in the entire damned series. They’ve mostly been not the greatest of people and when the writers were doing their jobs right, there were growth arcs for them that made them better people during the game. That’s part of the fun of games with Romanceable characters. Picking out which broken bird fits your type of broken to romance. (And we’re mostly all broken in some way.)

But all the romance options in Veilguard are… well, boring. They’re nice, safe, decent people. And since most people have some darkness in them, it’s probably not working for others as epically as it’s not working for me.

If they’re already nice, safe, decent people (even the fucking assassin!) then there’s no room for growth. No room to learn that character and feel like your presence in their lives might give them a light to help them strive to be better people. They’ve truncated any potential for growth arcs for all of them. I’m a Romance author. When you’re designing characters for Romance, they have to have a balance of flaws to good points. Otherwise they’re just poorly designed characters with little potential to get hearts throbbing and knickers in a twist.

No wonder the romanceables aren’t working for me. None of them have flaws big enough to make them well-rounded characters.

Moving on.

Have you noticed there’s no blood splatter? You’ll get a slowly creeping puddle around enemies, but somehow it never gets on the characters. I’ll check if I have the energy to play after risking my life to get food. But I don’t recall seeing a toggle for blood splatter in Veilguard. Like it or hate it, the blood splatter is very much a thing in games like these. They usually have an option to turn it off, but it’s usually there. Especially in Dragon Age, blood splatter was a thing. A big thing. Hells, their logo was a blood splatter dragon for at least two games FFS. Edit. Confirmed there is no option anywhere I can find that lets us have blood splatter.

And honestly, having my characters coming out of hard fights looking like they’ve been through a meat grinder is part of the reason I enjoy games like these.

The choices for dialogue are also usually pretty ‘nice’. The ‘sarcastic’ option usually isn’t. The angry/strong one isn’t either. It’s all just… boring. And I’m into Act three now, so I’m thinking my hope of ‘maybe the dialogue will get better’ is probably an impossibility at this point.

The simplified plot points, the puerile storylines, the lack of dirt on the romanceables, the lack of growth arcs, the completely ridiculous cutting of 90% of the dark horror elements that made these games so good… we’ve lost all of that because they made this game for kids. And I highly doubt kids will be interested. So they’ve fucked over, and at least in my case, utterly pissed off the older gamers who have loved Dragon Age for so long, and very likely failed to attract younger gamers, too.

The problem with trying that, which I really think should’ve been obvious to somebody. Is that Dragon Age has never been a game designed for kids. It’s always been bloody, often harsh, horrific, dark fantasy made for adults.

Games for younger people need to be designed for younger people from the first moment of creation. Or it just doesn’t work. You technically can transfer some concepts from adult games into things for kids, but the result is invariably something as awful as Veilguard. And something bound to satisfy few people. The condescension toward younger folks in Veilguard is pretty bloody obvious. Something I’ve noticed kids hate? Being condescended to.

Congratulations on learning the lesson of knowing who your fucking market is.

It’s crucial in any kind of content creation to know who you’re making the thing for, and to not deviate from those genre expectations toooo much. Otherwise, you just have a mess of a disaster like Veilguard. They shot for two wildly dissimilar markets and failed both. Even the cartoony look of the art style is much more like a game for kids than anything like a dark fantasy game for adults.

And like… it’s still listed as a mature rated game. So what, exactly, was the point of ruining Dragon Age like this? Many parents won’t let their kids play M rated games regardless.

It’s just so depressing. If they’d actually made this game for the people who had been praying for it for so long? It probably would have been phenomenal. As it stands, I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t sink Bioware. And if it doesn’t, I’d think it because of bribery more than game quality.

I do have to say that you can decorate more than I thought. But you have to buy almost everything. And they’re themes, so there’s no intermixing possible. Like you could have Elven windows with Alamarri rugs and a Ferelden throne in Skyhold? All gifts from either people or cultures you’d helped, which tied it all together and connected it to the world… you can just change themes for the Lighthouse. It changes everything, and again, you have to buy almost everything. That really removes a lot of depth from the game.

People call all the collectibles and gifts etc. from the previous games ‘filler’. But, frankly, that’s a very uneducated opinion of what that ‘filler’ is supposed to do in fiction. The ‘filler’ (which is an actual technical term in writing fiction, and those things aren’t filler) collectibles and quests gave depth to the games. It tied the world of THEDAS into the world of the player character. It’s called world building in writing circles. And what confuses me is that I don’t recall anyone having to do any of that. If all you wanted out of the previous games (especially Inquisition) was a fighting game, you could do that. None of the world building collection parts locked you out of any quests that I can recall. If you did enjoy deeper world building and collecting things, you could collect to your heart’s content. There’s none of that delicately intertwined, beautiful worldbuilding in Veilguard. It’s stripped down to the very bare bones of mediocrity.

At heart, Veilguard is not a role-playing game. It’s a fighting game. And not even a very well designed one. My not-a-fucking-rogue should never have aggro. That’s not how this is supposed to work.

Why they felt going from a successful history of role-playing games to a stripped-down, poorly world built fighting game a good idea is just beyond me? Whoever made that decision honestly needs to be fired. And you will almost never see me say that. Jobs are too hard to find. But I will say it about Veilguard. The decisions made have ruined Veilguard in my honest, incredibly disappointed viewpoint.

They marketed this as a role-playing game. The expectation was for a role-playing game set in a richly detailed, deeply world built environment. Like most of the Dragon Age games have been. Especially Inquisition.

And we got a fighting game so stripped of world building that it’s sad and just… boring.

Oh, heads up if you’re disabled with any sort of disability that affects your hand eye coordination or ability to move your fingers quickly on a keyboard or controller. Don’t buy this game. Even on the lowest setting with no death clicked on, you need a great deal of manual dexterity to use this crappy new fighting set up they’ve come up with. They definitely didn’t think of physically disabled gamers at all in developing this. I’m just lucky my particular physical disabilities don’t affect me that way. Though my hands are in agony from keeping my not-a-rogue out of the dragon on one side, stone wall on the other situation the fucked up aggro set up always puts me in.

They did bring gifts for companions back, which would thrill me if I actually had any desire to romance any of them. Which I honestly don’t. And in games like these? It’s often hard for me to pick which one. I often have to install a polyam mod so I can see the other romances because I’m usually so hot and bothered and just captivated by a Romanceable character or three that I won’t be able to not romance them. Meaning I need the mod if I’m going to see the other romances.

I’m physically and mentally incapable of not romancing Astarion BG3. (I’ve tried!) Halsin gets me every time, too. Those are markers of excellent character development.

There’s none of that in Veilguard.

Emmerich, and (as much as I hated his intro story, The Wigmaker,) Lucanis are the only slightly interesting characters to me.

Bellara is sweet and awkward, but they reduced her neurodivergent qualities so much it feels… off, to my neurodivergent ass. In the autistic people on tv way of off. (To date, there hasn’t been much, if any, good rep of us on TV. It’s all inspiration porn.) I don’t feel seen in her. And I have quite a few traits she expresses. Whoever wrote her has my version of ADHD. But the way she’s written, where she’s constantly telling herself she’s stupid or foolish or shouldn’t do things? Those are markers of traumatized neurodivergence, not the ADHD itself they’re highlighting. What that says is that, in her world, people have come down on her so hard for her differences, so often, that now she’s mean to herself. ADHD kids aren’t born like that. People make us like that. It’s a sad representation of ADHD, not a celebratory or accepting one. It makes me feel like she, and me by extension, is to be pitied. Like someone like me, or Bellara, aren’t worthy of respect, love, and trust. It’s not a good feeling.

Neve is so suspicious and bitchy that I have no desire to even try to romance her. I want to shove Harding off a cliff.

Davrin is really suspiciously similar to Halsin BG3. Big, more blocky than usual for an elf, wants to do good, carves wood… but where Halsin really works (because of his deep character development and darkness) Davrin, while definitely hot and with an amazing voice… just falls flat.

Emmerich is a doll of prince charming manners and adorable fussiness. He’s probably the character next to Lucanis who actually has the most darkness to him.

I really wanted to love Taash. And I like them a lot, but their ‘you must choose only one’ thing showed up really fucking early in the game. I didn’t feel like I knew them yet, so they’re just never going to work for my demisexual ass unless I actually replay this (unlikely?) with a polyam mod and basically plug my nose and close my eyes and leap into a relationship with them far earlier than I’m really comfy with.

So, there’s some clarity for me on what’s missing and why.

Genshin Impact has more draw for me as an adult gamer than Veilguard does. And that is absolutely a game targeted at teens and early twenties folks. It’s also an incredibly well designed game with good world building, balanced fighting, and devs who know who their market is.

It’s an old saw in content creation. But Know Your Market is a saw for a reason.

Section 10.2 here.