Mummelmann said:
I lost interest in the next Dragon Age game when Anthem released, I knew back then that Bioware's heyday was gone and done.
Veilguard is so many things I dislike about modern games, and has so little DNA from my favorite of the bunch (Origins).
The character and world design is cartoonish, and everything is bathed in a purple tint, it's as if someone found the "Mexico-filter" from Netflix and changed the color settings. They spent a lot of time raving about the hair, and its motion, but very little about dialogue and its impact on the game and story. From what I've seen, the dialogue is overall weak, with limited choices, falling into stereotypes, much like Fallout 4. Also like Fallout 4, the actual answers one chooses doesn't actually correspond all that well with the given category of reply.
Combat is now full-on 3rd person action, and the whole party aspect is simply gone. Your "companions" can't die or take damage, they're quite bad at taking aggro, and their version of gear and itemization is severely limited. You only have minimal, indirect control over them and their actions, kind of like a worse version of FFXIII. The strategic elements from Origins is utterly dead, in favor of "dodge, strike, dodge, strike, dodge, strike" in an endless loop, and waiting for cooldowns while chipping away at massive health bars, it's almost entirely mindless. This is unacceptable in a world where games like Elden Ring, BG3, Ghost of Tsushima etc. exist, doubly so for a former RPG titan of the industry. Even the Horizon games have superior combat with far more depth to them. To add insult to injury, half the encounters appear to be "waves of trash mobs teleport in", making it even more mindless. If someone told me in the early 2000s that Bioware would stoop to this level of complexity and depth in their future games, I'd laugh them in the face. But here we are.
I think sales-wise, this will do rather poorly. A majority of DA fans appear alienated, and the IP itself lacks traction, relevance, and exposure for new audiences. Focusing on action places the games square in the same market as zounds of action titles with similar styles - tacking a half-assed story to it won't do much to alleviate that situation. There's a slew of games either out or coming soon, with very similar combat philosophies. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Final Fantasy 16, Dragon's Dogma 2, Greedfall, God of War and Ragnarok, Mistfall Hunter, Crimson Desert, The First Berserker Khazan, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Visions of Mana, Stellar Blade, Tales of Arise, Nier: Automata, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Phantom Blade Zero (note the very similar bar system on enemies as well), Dragonhold, Lost Soul Aside, Chrono Odyssey, Where Winds Meet, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, Banishers: Ghost of New Eden, Hogwarts Legacy, Ballad of Antara, Archeage II. There are slight variations in the combat, but they have a similar look and feel, and base themselves on similar base concepts and input. This is an over-saturated space as far as combat-style goes. Also note that the vast majority of the examples above are newer productions, or coming in the near future, the sheer amount of games with the same general approach to combat is insane. Standing out is a tall order. It's the "open-world" or "battle royale" of modern combat design and look.
The overall direction taken with the entire project, as well as the ominous name-change and reported full reset/restart of development, tells me something I've known in my gamer's heart for some time now: Bioware have lost their touch, and with it, their understanding of their own potential customer base. I can only imagine Swen Vinke and company shaking their head at Bioware and EAs insistence that the CRPG as we know it is dead. Heck; Owlcat games has grown into a 450+ strong studio on the back of the genre alone. TLDR; I will not be buying or playing this game. |
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