Dragon Age: Dreadwolf becomes The Veilguard

If people here say it's good I'll have a look come Christmas but the character design is somewhat off-putting.

Hmm based on EG, RPS and PCG I will probably give it a miss until it's on a steam sale or whatnot. Sounds like a very pleasant action adventure game where everyone is quite nice or just the baddy. The PCG and RPS ones both seemed to give the impression the writing lacked complexity or moral greyness.

I don't play that many action games basically. Still not got Spiderman. Though I'll probably just try and Iron Man BG3.

Yeah it's an interesting one, I mean I get opinions are subjective but he came with receipts and it honestly came across as an embarrassing level of writing. From all the footage he put in that video I was really struggling to see how this would be "best bioware game ever".

I quite like zany sitcoms, but for a series like Dragon Age which has some proper dark stuff it's a bit weird that it's gone all, well, Disneyfied.

I think Veilguard will be this year's Final Fantasy XVI - in terms of being a divisive entry in a long-standing fantasy RPG series, that seems to leave (some) old fans behind as it seeks to attract new ones - and it's kind of noteworthy that while FF16 was pretty po-faced and dour, Veilguard appears to have gone down the opposite route and strayed into Whedon/Pixar territory instead.

So yesterday Mrs Nano and I watched the first episode of this US TV series called Evil, about a psychologist investigating demonic possession and related phenomena, and it had a really bizarre feel to it (this is going somewhere, I promise). The source material and themes were dark as fuck, with a serial killer, gruesome murder images and a woman basically being sexually assaulted by a demon while under sleep paralysis. Horrific stuff. But the show was shot in a well-lit, flat way like a romantic comedy, and the characters seemed totally unfazed by any of the events. The main character even grinned directly at the camera at one point, Fleabag style. Now mixing genres is fine and can be really interesting, but this just did not work, at all. The very look and feel of the show felt completely incongruous to its genre and themes, and it just made the whole thing seem so... off.

Anyway, having watched a few reviews I get exactly the same vibes from this game. The art style and character design just seem so badly suited to this genre. Then there's the quippy MCU-style dialogue (something which absolutely needs to die), with none of the characters ever seeming to take anything seriously, so it never feels like there's any genuine peril or anything is at stake. It looks like a committee has smoothed all of the edges off to deliver a Generic Entertainment Product.

EDIT: Basically, what Derbs and Jambo said.

ACG didn't get a code, he isn't reviewing it. Said he will share some thoughts on it when he has played it

That is quite interesting! To me at least. I find his reviews fairly balanced.

No one is entitled to a review code but there was a thing where anyone that didn't give a glowing preview didn't get a review code.

The bloke over at Metro (yes, I know it's DMG. No I don't fucking care. Their reviews are normally about right for me except their love of bullet hell shoomps) really liked it and gave it 9/10. Summary here:
In Short: A triumphant return for BioWare, with a massive, action-intensive fantasy role-player, that combines a complex and intuitive fighting system with a great script and a glorious looking world to explore.

Pros: An excellent new fighting system, that intuitively combines physical attacks with special moves.
Stunning to look at, with well written characters and first rate voice acting.

Cons: For those with a family and a job this could take months to complete. Side quest dialogue eventually become repetitive, and all that trigger action makes boss fights a real pain, literally.

I think I'll get it. The only negative seems to be its a bit 'on rails' compared to Larian stuff and the side quest dialogue..

I doubt PR or HR were involved. From what we know of Bioware of all the old writing staff having left. It just sounds like they got a bunch of enthusiastic young Americans to write it.

They have a penchant for being unbearably positive and unchallenging.

Well I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to shit on the game for the next few pages, with zero intention of buying the game.



I'm joking of course

I can see why they were selective when it comes to ‘influences’ reviews. You only have to type Dragon Age into YouTube once to have multiple videos slamming the game for being ‘dei’ to be recommended to you.

It seems Dualschockers outright used gamergate terminology in their review (‘sweet baby inc) and MrMattyPlays is currently embroiled in a situation where a lot of the social media outrage over the game before the reviews hit were using screenshots from his playthrough.

With the amount of noise around the game regarding being ‘woke’ I can see why BioWare/EA would maybe want to control that to some degree. It’s not like the spread of reviews are just 90+, think most people have an idea of what the game is like and whether it is for them or not.

I understand being selective but Luke stephens isn't one of those people and MrMattyPlays got a review code and just watching his review this morning and gave it glowing preview