Malf on 4/11/2024 at 12:12

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I'm still really enjoying this.

I've just recruited the last companion, the Qunari Taash, and from what little I know of her so far, she's pretty cool and intriguing.
In fact, this game has served as a great reminder that when they're on form, Bioware can still make some of the best companion characters in gaming. Even in a post-BG3 world, some of these characters are still fantastic, and on a par with Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, Lae'Zel, Wyll and Karlach.

If I were to pick the weakest so far, it would be the one everyone else seems to like, Neve Gallus, the private detective. Admittedly, she has an interesting back-story; but the actor playing her is obviously not as experienced as the rest of the cast, and just kinda lets the side down with poor, monotone delivery.

I think my favourites so far, purely because of how they banter with eachother, are the Grey Warden Davrin and the Necromancer Emmrich Volkarin. There's a lot of bickering, as they are two sides of the same game mechanic idea, that of a pet class, and they play wonderfully off of eachother. Davrin is responsible for a juvenile griffon, and is raising it to be an effective fighter, while Emmrich is accompanied to the Lighthouse by his skeletal butler, Manfred, and is loath to expose Manfred to anything that might endager it. Davrin's a rough & ready warrior type, Emmrich's the distinguished, elderly gentleman. Sure, a bit of a trope, but delivered delightfully.
I was especially surprised at how much I like Davrin, as I was expecting him to be painfully generic, but he's been a lot of fun so far.

For all those reports of there being no choice and consequence, well that's just bullshit.

I have already experienced two major choices that have had drastic effects on characters, and in one case, the world. And even at this relatively early stage of the game, that second choice was a hard one to make thanks to how well Bioware had established companions, factions and my Rook's relationships with them.

Speaking of Rook, I think this is one of the most impressive parts of the game. The Bioware convo wheel is still present, but they seem to have nailed it this time, with the character always saying what I am thinking.
And the acting and expressions are fantastic, even more so when you consider how many possible combinations of character you can make with the character creator. Seriously, my character, despite looking absolutely different to anyone else's, is astonishingly well animated.
That doesn't sound like much, but it's incredibly impressive. There's absolutely no odd clipping or other such issues you'd usually expect with a custom character, so much so that it feels like your creation is the official one.

So yes, while you can't play an utterly evil bastard, and options in conversations can feel a little constrained, this has allowed Bioware to deliver a fantastic experience if you choose to inhabit the role.
Where conversational options may feel limited, they strongly reflect and are influenced by the choices you made during character creation, which in turn serves to feed back into the loop and influence any of these major choices you find yourself making.

I know that for the one mentioned above, my decision was influenced by my character's choice of faction during character creation. I could have gone with the other, but the writing had done enough to make me feel there was a connection there, and that it was the choice my character should make in that scenario.
Of course, now I'm intrigued to see how people would react if you chose to not support your faction, and given my experience so far, I'm pretty sure Bioware will have written some excellent dialogue for that scenario.

Of course, the big thing that a lot of people seem to play Bioware games for is romance options, so being the bloody-minded contrarian I am, I have so far not chosen to romance a single character, and I'm taking that approach for the rest of the game.
Needless to say, the romance options are clearly labelled, and appear frequently; again, post-BG3, I'd be intrigued to see how the game handles polyamory.
But for this playthrough, my Rook is going to be chaste.

Regarding combat, I'm not yet convinced. I mean, yes, it feels more engaging than Inquisition's, but there's still that feeling that some systems aren't quite finished and could have done with some more time in the oven.

For example, I'm playing a Mage, and their heavy running staff attack sees you thrust your staff into the ground to do a kind of pole-vault, that explodes in an area of effect.
Fun enough.
But in these modern times where movement is often as important to combat feel as the act of attacking, it seems odd that this pole-vault can't be used in movement scenarios you'd expect it to work in.
You can't use the attack as a means of propelling yourself higher or further, which ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.

There's also traits you can unlock that say you do more damage if you release a charged attack just before it's fully charged. Yet there is no indicator telling you when you should release, nor any indication that you've successfully pulled it off. And there's plenty of mechanics that are emboldened in item descriptions, yet never described.
One particularly egregious one is when enchanting a ring, I got an option for +25% Mana Generation, and another for +25% Mana Regeneration, but nothing in the details explaiining the difference.
Or a whole line of traits affecting "Duration" abilities, yet nothing telling you what a "Duration" ability is.

These little niggles all serve to prove that Bioware have still got a long way to go when it comes to combat design.

So so far, not perfect, but with the kind of adept story-telling I expect from Bioware at their best.

And again, as previously noted, the choice of graphical style means that this game is going to age incredibly well.

I'm a little bummed that Bioware have announced they won't be working on any DLC for the game, but at the same time, I've not finished it yet, so the story migh feel complete as it is.
And to be honest, it's refreshing to buy a game these days and know you've got the complete experience.

Malf on 17/11/2024 at 11:15

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I finished the game and got 100% of the achievements, which is something I haven't done for a while.

Overall, I loved it.

As predicted, towards the end, my character became massively overpowered, and I was wiping most encounters without even activating companion abilities or combos. But unlike a lot of games recently where that can end up making them feel inconsequential, here I felt I'd earned it. I stuck with being an Evoker mage throughout the game, which meant I was focussed on staff attacks and ice magic. And making everything shatter into icy, bloody chunks was incredibly satisfying.

Yes, the combat remains merely passable throughout, but the sense of gradually increasing power and the associated payoffs elevate it.

It's also great at expanding the world and lore of the Dragon Age series. The revelations regarding elves are particularly interesting, and I highly recommend playing as one.
With the "True" ending, it also raises interesting questions about the Blight and by association, the future of the Grey Wardens.

While I can see why people think there's not much choice and consequence in the game, in reality, there's a lot more than people are reporting. But I can understand if they miss it.
In one of the biggest, subtlest flexes I have seen in recent times, Bioware take advantage of the constrained world of Veilguard by deftly and gently changing small details that end up snowballing. Let alone in the Lighthouse, there are gradual, light changes to each of the maps you revisit over time, reflecting the impact your questing has had. This all serves to imbue a sense of a living, breathing world that changes based on your actions.
By the time you get to the last act and are locked in to the final quests, you consequently feel deeply attached to this world and invested in its characters.

And yes, that final act is basically exactly the same idea as the suicide mission from ME2, but you know what? It was fucking awesome in that game, and it's just as awesome in Veilguard.

If they continue the Dragon Age series in this vein, I certainly wouldn't complain.
Having replayed Origins a couple of years ago, I can safely say that it didn't achieve the stated goal it set out to, of reviving classic CRPGs; that honour instead lies with Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity, inXile's Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin.

But Veilguard is the final manifestation of what I think they should have done at the time with Origins, and what I think they're best at: talking, exploring and fighting.
I think if we as gamers are honest with ourselves, Bioware haven't made a classic RPG since BG2 (even NWN reduced the party down to you and one other), and I don't think that's where their expertise lies anyway.

And to all you dumbasses complaining about the game being "woke":
It's a fucking BIOWARE game.
What the fuck did you expect?

Any self-proclaimed Bioware "fan" choosing to ignore this because it features a couple of characters talking about things they're not comfortable with is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
It's a good game, and one of the best I've played this year.
And it's probably the best game I've played in the series, although I am aware that having just finished it, I am still biased towards it, so that opinion may dull over time.

Thirith on 17/11/2024 at 18:12

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Though some of the big four RPGs you mention were already very different from one another (Ultima had fewer and fewer of the conventional RPG elements as the series went on, for instance), and romance and character storylines in RPGs were arguably not mainstream but were made so by developers such as Bioware.

WingedKagouti on 17/11/2024 at 18:38

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Some reasons I've seen used for games being called "woke":

* The player character is female.
* You can select your gender at character creation.
* Female characters (player and/or NPC) don't look like porn models.
* Female characters don't move like strip club dancers.
* Female characters aren't dressed to constantly display T&A.
* Female NPCs don't immediately want to have sex with your character.

Sulphur on 18/11/2024 at 05:15

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That's a pretty broad assertion, but the part that is true is Bioware's always been a mainstream studio - their first game was Shattered Steel, which few people remember, and their third game was MDK 2, with Baldur's Gate sandwiched in between.

BG1 was released in 1998, at which point we'd already had Ultima move from its classic dungeon crawling roots to story-led and character-forward narrative over the previous ten years except for the weird heel turn that was Ultima 8, and RPGs in general were moving in that direction (with some influence from Japanese RPGs, probably, which is a nice bit of reflexive inspiration given Final Fantasy and DQ were first inspired by Wizardry and Ultima). Betrayal at Krondor was 1993; Fallout 1 was released in 1997, and so was Betrayal in Antara, and they all pointed in the same direction that BG1 ended up going towards.