So, I was wrong about Dragon Age the Veilguard

Summary

Highlights

• Legendary Drops grapples with 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' receiving unexpected positive recognition. 😲
• The video sponsor, Private Internet Access, adds a security twist to his gaming review. 🔒
• Highlights the divergence between personal gaming experience and media's portrayal of the game. 🔍
• Calls out the forceful political themes within the game, questioning its impact on player immersion. 🚫
• Comparisons with other games like Baldur's Gate 3 emphasize the disparity in narrative depth. ⚔️

Key Takeaways

• Legendary Drops revisits 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' admitting misjudgments over its audience reception. 🎮
• The game is praised for visually stunning environments, despite Legendary Drops' critique of its narrative. 🏞️
• He scrutinizes the game's preachy dialogues, linking it to divisive player opinions on inclusivity and identity themes. 🗣️
• The critique explores the clash between game media reviews and actual player sentiments around 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard.' 🧐
• Discusses how heavy political messaging overshadows the potential quality of narrative-driven games. 📢

Overview

So, I was wrong about Dragon Age the Veilguard Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 look I can admit when I'm wrong I have humility this is not going to be one of those times I sent out a lot of very heavy-handed criticisms and some wild accusations for Dragon Age The Veil guard but I didn't take the time to think about the fact that there might actually be some people out there genuinely liked it however with this game getting any level of success it's been used for all the wrong reasons it was the exact ammunition that many in games media have been looking for the only thing they haven't real realized is
• 00:30 - 01:00 that it's all blanks look I took the time to play Dragon Age The Veil guard time that I very much wish that I could get back and I have some thoughts to share a lot has happened since this game's release a lot of things have been talked about it is now being heralded as one of the Front Runners for the golden joysticks Game of the Year likely even the game awards as well it's being praised like it's the second coming it's being flung in the face of every single gamer that's out there as proof that their way is the right way
• 01:00 - 01:30 so let's shove it back but before that today sponsor browsing online without protection is like shouting your private information into a crowded room everyone sees it luckily private internet access is here to secure your data with just a t private internet access hides your IP address and encrypts your connection keeping your Digital Life safe from prying eyes whether you're on public Wi-Fi or at home which for me is incredibly important my life my work is all online and I want want to try to
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• 02:30 - 03:00 that I trust your privacy is just as valuable as mine so what are you waiting for use my link Pia vpn.com legendary drops in the pin comment and description below to get 83% off private internet access with 4 months for free thank you private internet access for sponsoring this video now initially I was not going to play Dragon Age The Veil guard I had made my stance pretty clear that this just wasn't a game that I was interested in after watching the trailers however I felt that with with the heavy-handed
• 03:00 - 03:30 judgments that I levied at this game and how confused I was by media's overwhelming positivity towards it that I needed to play this game before I speak on it any further call it journalistic Integrity or what have you I honestly just wanted to see if my thoughts were completely unfounded and lo and behold they weren't well kind of now I'll start off by saying I wasn't expecting this game to run so well I had to fiddle with a couple of settings but that's more of a limitation of my own Hardware not necessarily the game
• 03:30 - 04:00 Fidelity wise this game has to have some of the most breathtaking environments that I have seen this year outside of black myth Wukong the locations that you visit are highly detailed vibrant and genuinely a joy to explore and walk around in now I would have enjoyed these environments more if it didn't feel like I was being railroaded through this game at every given second but I think that's something that just ties back to this franchise losing its identity as an RPG and evolving into an action game quests are in a mission structure you finish a quest it pops you back out at your base
• 04:00 - 04:30 another Quest starts and you go again there is no effort to allow the player to gain any familiarity with this world and its locations I have some odd 500 hours in balers Gate 3 I know it's Maps like the back of my hand I'm familiar with that game not because of how long I've played balers Gate 3 but it's how long balers gate kept you in place how diverse those environments were how they made use of them how many different things there were to do and how memorable the moments were in every
• 04:30 - 05:00 location and interaction I think this is an important part of any narrative driven game or RPG and it's ultimately what makes me hate Dragon AG the veil guard you're meant to feel like you are stepping into another world and building relationships with its characters the game's main goal is to get you invested in the places that you visit and the characters you're with otherwise why would you care about what's going on in the story The only way that a game can hold your attention without getting you invested in its world is if the Story gameplay and characters are so compelling in that it doesn't matter and
• 05:00 - 05:30 that's definitely not the case for Dragon Age The Veil guard this has to be the most vapid shallow and eye roll inducing narratives I have ever had the displeasure of playing through the premise holds promise stepping up to face soless and old Ally gone Rogue a setting that could be rich with tension and betrayal but just as quickly the potential is then snatched away and replaced for a couple cookie cutter villains who exist solely just to embody evil why are they evil because they crave power and if that's not enough for you they're tainted by the blight so
• 05:30 - 06:00 they're even more evil this time it's just so Hollow for a game almost 10 years in development from a beloved franchise that has such Rich history and lore and the dialogue only digs a deeper grave nearly every interaction feels painfully forced all quips and awkward silences some characters like veric and Nev manag to deliver an occasional conversation that's worth savoring but those moments are rare for the most part the script feels like it was written by a committee of socially anxious Millennials every character fumbling for
• 06:00 - 06:30 some kind of identity without actually becoming a person it's like I've said before so many people today are focused on identities and they forget that they're writing characters and that's really the problem with Veil guard is that it just doesn't have any identity past its combat and just general gameplay Loops the world the characters none of it makes sense to me it doesn't feel like it fits it's crazy to look around and see that there's so many people that are talking about how this game isn't afraid to be what it is I'm still asking what it is it's a game that
• 06:30 - 07:00 thinks it can win you over with flashy battles and shallow quips sure the combat had me engaged for a while it wasn't too bad the general flow is entertaining enough but once I'm just running through the same routine over and over fighting the same enemies over and over with without any sense of purpose or connection to this world it becomes exhausting about 8 hours in I realized that I was just mindlessly repeating the same combos the same abilities for the exact same predictable results I got to the point where I kept dying not because I was being challenged
• 07:00 - 07:30 but because my mind had already checked out by the 10th hour I just shut the game off completely not out of frustration but sheer apathy Veil guard never gave me a reason to keep playing after talking to a few others who actually liked the game I came to the realization that it's just a difference of taste and expectations balers Gate 3 set the bar for me they made believable characters that made sense in their setting every piece of music was memorable every character story relationship and interaction had a purpose the party Dynamics in combat the combination of skills and equipment and
• 07:30 - 08:00 the whole game tied everything together just so perfectly Dragon Age has none of that and while I didn't expect it to be the same Dragon Age and BioWare are the ones that inspired some of the greatest games in this genre and I would expect they would at least reach for it from my perspective this game is exactly what I expected it to be an indifferent video game experience nothing memorable highly consumable it is if this is Dragon Age The Veil guard brought to you by the CW that's where I got it wrong I didn't
• 08:00 - 08:30 think that people would enjoy this game I didn't think people would I didn't think the game would find an audience and then I come to realize that sometimes people just don't really care about games that have in-depth complex narratives or have these well-written characters sometimes they want to play something that's relatively shallow and that's not a strike against the people that enjoy the game sometimes that's fun I mean I had a girlfriend that forced me to watch Gossip Girl to my friends I acted like I had a gun to my head but in all reality was rooting for Blair and
• 08:30 - 09:00 Chuck I figured that this game would have mixed receptions that's another thing that I got wrong but what I didn't realiz is that this game is so divisive that the people who saw and like what they saw got it and the people that didn't didn't it's kind of like a vegan restaurant like people that eat meat typically aren't going to go there it's filtering reviews by itself so that's one of the reasons why we're not really seeing a really divided opinion on this game in reviews well I mean met critic sites we'll get to that
• 09:00 - 09:30 later but none of this means that I don't still hold the exact same criticisms and beliefs that I had when I made my first video on this because the thing is is that I believe that reviewers professional reviewers have a responsibility to critically review games and with the way that this game got the red carpet treatment how it's been taught it how it's been lauded especially on Twitter how it's now all of a sudden a game of the year candidate none of that feels right this isn't that
• 09:30 - 10:00 game but damn do they want it to be with years of controversies Force messaging and colossal failures in AAA came the rise of angry Gamers journalists reviewers and Legacy Media Outlets have been ignoring the elephant in the room and opting to either disregard or minimize any of the discussions about how games are being co-opted into identity politics and how players don't want to have anything to do with it all of this has led to a massive decline in media credibility I've spoke on this subject in the past and I believe that
• 10:00 - 10:30 there are some in game development as well as games media that now view players or specific factions of players as the opposition as such it's now created this feedback loop in Echo chamber where developers feel Vindicated in releasing games that players are critical of and the media either fully validates their poor decisions or gently Pats them with a seven out of 10 players have often used sales or the success of a game to shove in the face of both developers and journalists we've seen it with balers Gate 3 hell divers 2 po World black myth Wukong and more simply showing that these are the things that
• 10:30 - 11:00 players care about balers Gate 3 was treated like it was an anomaly impossible to recreate hell divers to left them speechless poor was nothing but cope and seee over the confusion as to why players ignored them calling it a ripoff and played It Anyway black myth Wukong well that was just Chinese players and apparently they don't count and the excuses continue to pile up while some players have used these games as a battle one in a culture War many if not most view these as victories of games that were just good games not
• 11:00 - 11:30 affirming some social or political belief simply fun games with the absence of identity politics I just don't think these people have come to the realization that in a lot of cases they aren't fighting against the opposition they're fighting against supporters who just are sick and tired of seeing the same social political messaging everywhere they go and the last thing that they want to do is buy a product thinking it's a game only to find out it's a soapbox in Disguise either way whether it's the exhausted cons consumers are genuine opposition many in
• 11:30 - 12:00 games media and game development are tired of taking losses so it's all too predictable for them to put up a game on a pedestal when that game is viewed as an ally to their social causes the Fallout of Dragon Age The Veil guard has done nothing but validate my concerns that the industry's coverage of this game is not genuine well sure some may have enjoyed it it's getting more favorable treatment than it normally would because it's their sword in a culture war look at how they responded industry analysts rolling around in the
• 12:00 - 12:30 mud asking what's the response of the gamers now seeing that the game reached an all-time concurrent player count of almost 90k on Steam antagonizing and using percentage inflation to make it seem as though the game is more popular than it actually is now I'm not saying that 90k concurrent players on Steam isn't a strong start however with that said for people to be out there waving it around and treating it like a massive success when we've seen other games over the years do the exact same thing or better makes it look like a drop in the
• 12:30 - 13:00 bucket heck we've had indie games like enshrouded and last Epoch drop to higher concurrent player counts with little to know marketing other than word of mouth so what does that say about Dragon Age The Veil guard and even with Veil guard's respectable start seeing how much money AAA game studios and Publishers have been spending on making games especially Veil guard being an almost 10y yearlong project I'm not confident that this game is a financial success all right let's do some quick math keep in mind that the ke concurrent player count is just a fraction of what
• 13:00 - 13:30 the game sales are that's just the amount of players that we're seeing that were playing the game at the exact same time power world for an example broke over 2 million concurrent players but reported 25 million players in one month giving it a rough multiplier of 12.5 times what it was at its peak black myth Wukong showed similar numbers with over 20 million in sales and Hell iers 2 hit over 450 concurrent players with 12 million in sales giving it a multiplier that's closer to like 26 .7 but based on
• 13:30 - 14:00 these patterns we can estimate the Dragon Age The Veil guard at its peak of 90k concurrent players may have sold between 1.1 or 2.4 million copies average that around at about 2 million I guess I have zero doubt the Dragon Age The Veil guard cost $200 million or more to make seeing that it took 10 years to develop they are still quite a bit shy of what they need to be able to break even and 90% of those sales are coming from the first week of launch that's pretty much the same for most games
• 14:00 - 14:30 while the media may think it's a Smash Hit I'm not sure that EA's investors will think the exact same thing and if the game simply turns a small profit that's not enough in the end the industry's persistent disregard for genuine player sentiment is becoming impossible to ignore these numbers speak for themselves 90k concurrent players is great but it's nothing compared to what we've seen from other games players are gravitating towards games that prioritize quality entertainment and escapism over ideological messaging yet
• 14:30 - 15:00 with Dragon Age The Veil guard the media's inflated response and its praise seems less about the game's actual merits and more about positioning it as a cultural symbol more than anything else this approach might satisfy certain narratives But ultimately it's a hollow Victory and that's the thing when I'm talking about these games breaking smashing through sales records and concurrent player numbers it's about how these games can be financially successful because that's important that leads to these developers holding on to their job and also creating a better
• 15:00 - 15:30 image of the intended audience that these games are for it's not about social messaging it's about the lack thereof being a factor in it and Dragon Age yeah it can reach a respectable player count likely held up by the fact that it's a long-standing franchise but when you make a divisive game you're going to divide your audience crazy concept I know but that's how this works and I don't really think that this game is going to be financially viable enough for EA to see it as a worthwhile investment even if make their money back
• 15:30 - 16:00 and then a little bit it's probably still not going to be enough for them to say yeah we need to make another one of these we'll see I could be wrong but I think that's the case and we have this Echo chamber where we have games media journalists reviewers that are handing out these participation trophies in an otherwise Hollow Victory and they don't realize the harm that they're doing to the industry or to these Studios you wonder why studios are closing you wonder why there are all these different layoffs you know creative freedom is
• 16:00 - 16:30 something that you have to earn in video game development you can't just have it straight from the start you have to keep in mind that if you want to stay in business you're still selling a product so you have to earn the right to be able to be creatively free I guess and that's where this discussion kind of gets mudded for me I've already seen a lot of people that have thrown off some pretty colorful language about me calling me a grifter because of the fact that I used to cover balers Gate 3 and how much I love that you know that game and now
• 16:30 - 17:00 here I am talking [ __ ] about Dragon Age The Veil guard and I'm offended not for me for balers Gate 3 because it doesn't belong anywhere in this discussion because it's a game that took a you know liberally social perspective on their game and integrated it without sacrificing quality without treating the players like their children without making a game that is preaching to its audience and luckily enough there's actually some in games media that agree
• 17:00 - 17:30 with me erican of Forbes wrote an article titled Dragon Age The Veil guards clumsy preachy political messaging does more harm than good Eric writes the best way to convince someone of your point of view is generally not to bash them over the head with a cudel so that seems to be the preferred approach in modern political discourse and alas in entertainment the culture being what it is has lost all sense of subtlety in far too many films television shows and video games we see heavy-handed down approaches to the
• 17:30 - 18:00 issues of the day it's a real shame that the developers at BioWare decided to go this route with Dragon Age The Veil guard I've already posted my Impressions piece about the game which I was pleasantly surprised with so far I was worried going in but Veil guard has been a lot more fun and a lot more engaging than I expected even if I'm still annoyed with its overly saturated overly cartoonish art style among other things in my piece I noted so far at least I hadn't encountered anything overtly preachy or one might describe as G bearishly political or overly woke the
• 18:00 - 18:30 game is diverse and it gives you options to play as male female or trans but in my time with it this felt more like it was giving players more choice and freedom and I'm all for that especially in an RPG other big games in recent years have done the same but I had not yet arrived at a certain section of the game that has now been making the rounds on social media being roundly and rightfully mocked unfortunately this scene in question will play directly into the narrative that this game is woke feeding into a cycle of online discourse that goes nowhere but earns a
• 18:30 - 19:00 lot of clicks it will undoubtedly turn many gamers off entirely not necessarily because they're unsympathetic to trans rights but because they're tired of being preached at in the scene in question one character misgenders another to atone for this sin she does a set of push-ups and then lectures the other characters on how to apologize properly the term non-binary is thrown around despite it being a word that very few have even heard of when Dragon Age Inquisition came out a decade ago let alone in a fantasy setting divorced
• 19:00 - 19:30 entirely from The Real World this is immersion breaking frankly it is written so poorly that it comes across is self- parody the character's performative apology is shallow and empty as all performative apologies are in my experience a simple and genuine sorry is better than making a Big Show and bragging about how much better your apology is the whole scene feels freshly cut from some conversation in an undergrad gender studies class in the year 2024 the kind of conversation said undergrads will someday look back on and
• 19:30 - 20:00 cringe over again my problem with this scene is not the inclusion of trans or non-binary characters in Dragon Age but the hamfisted way this issue is framed the writer then goes on to explain that they had read a book that was called the bright sword that included a female character that never felt like a woman and later became a knight of the Round Table the book was never heavy-handed in its approach the story focused on the character rather than the identity and their struggles as a person later the writer continues to go on to say alas this will undoubtedly dominate the
• 20:00 - 20:30 conversation around the veil guard and to what end will anyone who plays this game learn something useful because of this scene will people that are hostile towards social justice politics become convinced otherwise that's the problem with preaching to the choir someone not normally inclined to be sympathetic towards trans people might read the bright sword and actually walk away with complicated feelings nobody playing the veil guard will instead they'll be rightfully annoyed at having this type of 21st century dialogue hamfisted even for the modern era hoisted upon them
• 20:30 - 21:00 Midway through a fantasy RPG I'll be honest I have to applaud Eric Kane here I got to give credit where credit is due I've been critical of his articles in the past but he really stepped out on a limb here and said what everyone's been thinking for many it's not the inclusion of these themes it's the matter in which they are used and how they are forced upon the player this preachy approach that Dragon Age The Veil guard takes with inclusivity and gender identity in many ways only helps to reinforce negative stereotypes more than anything else there is a scene in Dragon Age The
• 21:00 - 21:30 Veil guard where TSH comes out as non-binary everyone has seen this clip by now in it TSH is irrationally angry when met with confusion lashing out at someone who genuinely cares for them but just doesn't understand what is the message with that exactly don't ask questions don't try to understand don't think at all just accept and oh if you make a mistake drop down and give me 20 I mentioned this when I streamed the game but it feels like a lot of the dialogue was written from the perspective of a 14-year-old that imagining how they would tell off their
• 21:30 - 22:00 bullies and parents while everyone including their Crush cheers them on in the background this is the exact kind of dialogue and representation that the media and their supporters should be pushing back against not praising this does far more to hurt your cause than help and do we get that no instead you have games media that's pushing back against players and also doing their damnest to silence critics among their peers Jason shrier goes after dual Shockers for rightfully calling out how the game has heavy-handed treatment
• 22:00 - 22:30 similar to Sweet Baby Incorporated aftermath calls out YouTubers and players for poisoning the well around Dragon Age The Veil guard for sharing clips and discussing the game's bludgeoning use of inclusivity rather than using any type of holistic representation Paul tossi from Forbes who was completely fine with players review bombing hell divers 2 now calls for Metacritic to moderate review scores around mentioning things like woke or Dei with the review bombing that they've seen for for Dragon Age The Veil guard
• 22:30 - 23:00 silence and criticism in the gaming industry does nothing to Foster healthier dialogue or help players get better games when developers and Publishers are dismissing feedback from the players and also the journalists as well especially regarding how inclusivity is represented and presented in some of these games they miss the opportunity to learn and grow players are not inherently against inclusivity rather they are just resistant to the weaponized version that we've seen in many games on these important topics especially when they're commoditized for
• 23:00 - 23:30 profit and then thrust Upon Us in a preachy manner inclusivity should feel organic within the narrative and the gameplay experience not forced or performative the industry's focus should be on genuine representation depicting characters as multifaceted individuals rather than just embodiments of their identities good representation in games looks like well-developed characters whose identities are seamlessly woven into their stories it's about crafting narratives that reflect the complexities of The Human Experience players want to connect with characters on a personal
• 23:30 - 24:00 level they want to connect with these games on a personal level appreciating the struggles and triumphs that are integral to the larger parts of the story and the game's experience instead what we are getting are people that are obsessed with identity it's all they can think about it's all they can talk about they have nothing without it they don't care whether the players want it or not and they don't even recognize how exhausted people are from it they will force it down your throat regardless of how much harm it causes when will people real realize that players consumers
• 24:00 - 24:30 anybody wants to be spoken to not at and that's just what it feels like anymore this whole dynamic that we have that's going on where it's US versus them where it's these industry heads as well as folks in games journalism that are gaslighting players into buying products that they otherwise would avoid that's not working out very well for us and they can say what they want but when you pick up a game and you get 20 30 hours into it and all of a sudden it starts trying to bash you over the head with whatever they you know ideological beliefs are well you can't get your
• 24:30 - 25:00 money back from that but you don't want to talk about that because you don't care whether or not it's something that people are interested in they need to see it regardless that's what your point of view is and I think that's [ __ ] personally especially if it's something that I'm buying you know one of the reasons why I say that this game I believe got more favorable coverage than it deserves is because as a purely playable product I think it's fine the game was somewhat entertaining I had some fun with it for a little bit but
• 25:00 - 25:30 the thing is is that 70% of this game is narrative driven and the narrative for this game it's writing character writing dialogue that's most of the game and it's trash it is God awful garbage and this game got eights nines and tens how do you what are the mental gymnastics that you have to go through to give a game that kind of score and by the way these are the same people that also scored metaphor how do do you play metaphor and give it an 8 n and 10 and
• 25:30 - 26:00 then you go and play Dragon Age The Veil guard and say yeah it's about the same thing what what am I the crazy one here like I I I just don't understand like make it make sense because it doesn't make any sense to me these are two completely different things and when you could play both of those games when you did play both of those games sorry back to back and that's what you came
• 26:00 - 26:30 out with I don't even I don't even know how you get there I don't the quality difference in writing and everything is just so vastly different and now this game is going to be a game of the year candidate it's already in for the golden joysticks you better bet it'll be in for the Game of the Year Awards as well it's likely going to win more Awards than it ever should and it's teaching people in the industry all the wrong lessons and it's also going to end up leading to customers by buying a game that they otherwise wouldn't have bought and then
• 26:30 - 27:00 most likely regretting that purchase later that's what you're going to end up seeing you know it'll take time to see whether this is actually truly a victory for them or not but you know the funny thing is is that during all of the controversies and drama that we've had with past games and big successful games you know they used to always say concurrent player counts don't mean [ __ ] it's funny how all of a sudden now that doesn't mean the same thing once it's a game that they want want to be successful isn't that interesting how
• 27:00 - 27:30 that works anyway I need to get back to playing more metaphor I've been really enjoying that game and it's kind of starting to sound like a bit of a wakeup call anyway thank you guys for watching the video you guys enjoyed it like the video share the video with your friends subscribe to the channel you guys can catch me live on Twitch link is down in the description below and uh yeah thank you guys for watching stay cool stay righteous stay safe I'll catch you guys
• 27:30 - 28:00 in the next one peace family family family family use my link Pia vpn.com legendary drops in the pin comment and description below to get 83% off private internet access with four months for free thank you private internet access for sponsoring this video