The thing is, this happened before, with DA:I and before that with the final ME game. EA presents you 2 franchises where choices matter, but then they later on walk back on those choices, or simply take them away from the player, making them not canon or non applicible, which takes away from that aspect of those two IP's that EA marketed towards the players for years. 

Honestly if they couldn't be arsed to connect all the dots down the road with newer games in the franchise, they should have canned the "choices connected to new games" focus from the start, but instead they've done this twice now with two different IP's, and both just end up with the same result, your choices later on did not matter.

Yeah, I've also seen some compare it to GoW, which can be nice for some, but there are others like my Partner, who grew up with the original DA and liked it's combat style, but saw the combat previews for the latest one, and got put off by that alone (nothing to do with the Irl politics being injected, they tend to avoid that, like they avoid it on social media). There's nothing wrong with imitation for sure. We've seen it happen with games like Cult of the lamb taking after Issac, and GoW style combat in games like Kingdoms of Amalur (one of my semi fave action RPG's, especially for it's GoW kill finisher move-sets).

I do think this game is going to be more divisive than the last, but I feel it would be disingenuous for those that will like the game to label those who don't as "chuds/bigots/children/haters", because that itself does not paint those who like it and lash out, in a good light of any sort. 

Wow. This place done what ERA done with "the  wizard game". I would never have guessed, mods seem cool on stuff like that. Especially something as ridiculous as guilt by association. 

The Witcher 3 made the blueprint for how to handle choices in a sequel yet not very many use it or can't. 

That's what I dislike the most by that certain leaning side. That mentality is a radical mindset that should not be tolerated. The fact it was enforced on everyone on that site who wanted to merely talk about the game was insane to watch unfold. 

The guilty by association mantra is a demonising conclusion, one that isn't thought out well, and contains it's own level of bias. I remember seeing what people did to Henya (Vtuber) when she wanted to try streaming that game, and the hate she got thrown her way was in no way warranted, and downright despicable.

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.

That's the thing with these games and all the DEI and aiming for "modern audiences"....  Alot of them miss.
And honestly the % of the population that cares about pronouns stuff, that are also gamers and support said games.... are a very small group.
Otherwise, you wouldn't see the black lash, and games sales dropping when that stuff is pointed out.

I bet not 1 game, Sweet baby Inc, consulted on, has benefited in terms of sales from them doing so.
If you have a popular IP, you should cherish it, and try not to alienate the fan base of said IP, instead of chasing new fans
(often times at the cost of your current fanbase).

Yeah, it so damn weird. It's not any one particular person that causes this, they have to have common sense individually but it's the collective group that creates things like this to happen and people then become afraid to talk sense or be labeled a bigot and shunned out of the group. It's so very primitive cave man like stuff. I don't want anything to do with the radicals on either side but that side is especially strange and hard to understand and a real head fuck to deal with, at least the other side is transparent, honest and upfront with their edginess and hatefullness. 

Their main problem is that the fabled "modern audience" doesn't exist, well not in any capacity that outnumbers the current and older audiences that actively play games anyway.

Whenever these games fail, barely any of them take any amount of time to self reflect as to why their games failed, but instead choose to waste all the time they have in the world to flip their tables and blame their lack of positive receptions/sales on their customers and those who generally didn't buy into their games. A good chunk of Journalists do this as well, that makes it all come off as childish backlash that wasn't logically thought out.

You cannot blame anyone for not liking or buying your game, that's just completely irrational and wholly childish. The fact we're seeing devs/studios/publishers and some journos doing this is abhorrent to look at. We have someone in this very thread citing anyone in the thread that did not agree with them as a "cesspit", which follows the ideology of the ones who buy into DEI/Radicalisation. 

I find it absolutely crazy that we're reaching a that point in gaming where you have to think and act like someone with what they perceive as the "right way" to think, or you're a chud/bigot. Not buying a game or not liking it makes you bad/a hater, and that is not normal behaviour. I know for a fact there are people out there who prefer X4 strategy games over C&C and I'm totally fine with that, I'm not going to demonise them.

I know there's people that love TLOU 2, and again, I'm not going to demonise them for it, because that just makes no sense. I don't like Abby, but I'm also not a "hater". I don't like Neil Druckman as a person, but that doesn't mean I hate TLOU, there's a difference, and people are losing sight of that and mixing up shit to suit their personal ideologies to persecute others.

Like I mentioned before, Henya, a Japanese streamer just wanted to play that Harry Potter game, and she got unwarranted hate thrown her way. She's possibly one of the most honest Vtube Streamers out there who isn't talking about irl politics or the like. She just wanted to play one game, to entertain her audience, and those who didn't even know who she was just came to her and threw shade for no good reason. 

Yeah I don't agree with this at all. The could have crafted a story in Thedas that kept factors from the previous game out to avoid conflicts with choice, but they didn't. They chose to do a direct follow up to Inquisition that ignores the bulk of the choices you make in Inquisition. More over, when Inquisition was in the works, it was facing the exact same issue. There were concerns with how players, console owners that played Origins on 360/PS3 in particular, were going to be able to carry over their choices. They came up with Dragon Age Keep. Which allowed players, if they so choose, to make a world state that took all their choices into account. People that just started the franchise could avoid Dragon Age Keep entirely.

The Bioware of that era respected their existing fans while crafting a game that appealed to a new audience. Dragon Age Keep is still up now. So not updating it for Veilguard was willful disregard for their fanbase. Inquistion sold 12 million copies, you'd think they would try to get as many of those players invested as they can. It's been ten years, the Dragon Age franchise is basically an unknown to the latest generation of gamers. Tapping the existing fanbase as safety net would have been a smart play from a business standpoint. 

Besides the DEI topic (there appears to be more than a bit of shoe-horning going on though), the game itself is just a series of nonsensical choices from beginning to end, and it lacks any kind of depth or complexity. Bioware spawned entire genres single-handedly and were known for stellar writing, complex characters, and deep, challenging combat. When so much time and energy was spent on bragging about the character creator and the luster of character hair, I knew for sure that this would be puddle-deep at best. After having watched a couple of more in-depth reviews, I'm even more appalled by the general direction this took, puzzles and combat are a joke at best. There is also a complete lack of cohesion and proper presence in the companion and dialogue system (none of the famed dialogue and choice synergies from previous Bioware titles is present here, where contextual triggers would arise based on party composition, past decisions, relationships/romances, faction relations etc.). It's an absolute head-scratcher how any serious publication could warrant 9s or 10s for this amount of effort and show of talent from what used to be one of the world's best game studios.

Bioware used to be trends; now they just follow them. Poorly at that. Bioware, Blizzard, Bethesda - the three B's, hurtling into the abyss together. It makes me a bit sad, but on the other hand; I gave up on them a long time ago. Developers have their apex, without fail, Bioware is no different. Others will come along and dazzle me once again, for sure.