Same as you; I think 7 as average is silly. 7 is a solid and good game. So 5 outta 10, bout what I'd expect I'd give it. This'll be on PS+ Catalogue, I know for sure. 

I agree with Grumms on something for once. Changing languages because they have binary words that don't fit the pronoun polices world view is pretty fucked up. Reminds me of the attempt to call Latins, Latinx. 

That's funny. Now I wonder how the Asian translations are, especially Chinese and Arabic.

I really do question why anyone will still follow grumms when he's a full time grifter...

But secondly, does anyone care that a Fantasy game has a non dictionary spin on a word??? 

It like me getting upset that that Final Fantasy uses the word Eikon istead of Icon. Are we not tired of pretend outrage? 

Imagine people getting mad when the word dragoon was poached from the word dragon back in the 16th century. This is all really benign stuff that simply circles back to the fact that the people in question hate the progressive values of the developers. This really has nothing to do with the quality of the game.

Dragon Age has a much stronger history on PC.
Because of that, I suspect more than half of the total sales, will be PC side.

I doubt, "overall sales numbers will be far more skewed towards consoles".

This is likely going to sell more than 3-4million copies.
Should be enough to recoup investments, and make a tiny bit of profit.




"I have no more or less interest in the game based on sales numbers, but lower sales could entail some sort of lesson learned in the long run, if only by other developers and publishers. User scores are a shitshow, as expected, peppered with comically low and comically high scores with obvious intentions beyond the game itself. It's become a really stupid concept altogether. At the end of the day, aggregate bullshit is still bullshit."

Hollywood never learns.
How often do they take a beloved IP, and then just sh*t all over the source material? Because they think they know better, than the writer of said books?

I doubt game developers will either. These people are stuck in their ways, and if DEI and LBTQA+ isn't what the public want, they wont care.
They will die on that hill, lose their jobs if that happens (a game flops), get a new one, and do-over the same thing. 

Look at Disney for crying out loud. I have serious doubts any of this changes in the future.

I don't follow him, he's shoved into me feed or end up as a quote tweet/reply.

I know that the DA series, historically, has performed better on PC. But by the very nature of Veilguard's design, I think this might change with this installment. If it manages to sell only 3-4 million copies, that would be a disaster. Even at full price for 4 million copies, that would be unlikely to even make a profit, factoring in cuts on digital stores, distribution and PR budget. I'd be surprised if the total cost overall for this project wasn't in the vicinity of 250 million. Not to mention that it would be a mere 1/4 - 1/3 of what Inquisition managed to move across all platforms.

As I mentioned; the fact that neither EA nor Bioware have published any sort of sales figure says a lot. They focus on meaningless metrics, like concurrent players for a Bioware title, when they have virtually no history of releasing games (day one) on Steam at all. Some who defended the figures when compared to BG3 also pointed out that Veilguard stems from an old IP that lacks a presence in the modern gaming scene. Jokes on them though, seeing as BG3 is a sequel to a game from 2000, which sold about 3-3.5 million in total.

You may be correct in the part about developers not learning, there isn't all that much evidence to suggest as much. But if 2024 isn't a wake-up call for the industry, that call is never coming. The amount of flops and the staggering amounts of money lost this year alone should be a massive, blinking, neon-sign of warning to all parties involved. As an aspiring (yes, even at my age) writer myself, I don't take issue with inclusion or diversity as a concept, what I take issue with is the ham-fisted way it's done. It's clearly favored over basic cohesion, and actual quality of writing and narration. A lot of characters, incidents, and dialogue comes off as pure inserts, applied with crowbar and super-glue, lacking any kind of organic anchoring in the setting itself. It's the type of profound writing that high-school students attempt during their most confused and ill-disciplined years. Some of it is so on-the-nose that I half suspect their ancestors knocked the actual one off of the sphinx with their quills.

"Some of it is so on-the-nose that I half suspect their ancestors knocked the actual one off of the sphinx with their quills. "

I love that :)
Also its never too late to follow your dreams.
Take the time to give it a try, if you have the passion for it.
That's how Harry Potter came to be.

She literately quit her job, and spent years (on basic income), figuring out the structure/story and writing the books.
To me that's crazy brave. I would never just jump in like that, even if I believe in a "idea/concept" that strongly.
I'm not saying you have to follow her example, but like on weekends, put some time aside, and just write.

It just shows that the entire pronoun thing and the reasoning behind it is not Universal. For it to be universal it should be easy to translate it into other languages. Making up words while localizing a game just tells how much respect the creators have for that said language. And in extension of that for that culture.

It essentially says: "we are not making games for you, but please buy it anyways."

Thank you! I've been writing on and off since I was around 15 years old, but I only started taking it more seriously these past few years. I'm working on a novel (about 60-70% done now), and my coworker and I are working on a manuscript for a TV show (she has lots of contacts in that space, and a background in film and TV). I set off time whenever I can, but productivity varies a great deal. In the midst of gaming, working one full-time and two part-time jobs, as well as trying to read often, it's a slog at times, but I do try.

Learning about and focusing on the technical aspects of writing is something of a double-edged sword though; I really appreciate good writing now, but I also really can't stand poor writing. There was a video making the rounds, by a guy who criticized the dialogue in Veilguard. He's developed simple games and written a book (I assume he's self-published). While his criticism was mostly fair, he actually missed a lot of contextual relevance, and seemed baffled at the notion of inferred rather than explicit narration and characterization. What really irked me though, was his own writing. He read from his novel, and it's not very good (being kind here), sporting everything from beginner mistakes to downright incoherent nonsense ("like a newborn baby that never had the chance to be born" is a prime example).