General Gaming Dragon Age: The Veilguard (f.k.a Dreadwolf/a.k.a "Dragon Effect" | All Hallow's Eve 2024) - Information Thread, update (09/12): "Hands-On Preview" (IGN First)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 hours ago, Dawnguard2001 said:

Why was that not the first trailer? That one has me really looking forward to this. 

 

You and PC Gamer are on the same wavelength!

 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's latest trailer is the best showing the game's gotten yet—BioWare really should have led with this months ago | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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My cautious optimism is less cautious and more optimistic.

 

[Bacon]

Look, ok, I know I was just gifted a PC, but, anyone wanna gift this to me on Steam?

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Journal #4: PC Features for Dragon Age: The Veilguard

WWW.EA.COM

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A look into the PC Experience in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

 

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Hello everyone,

 

Today, we want to specifically touch on the PC experience for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The Dragon Age franchise started out on PC, and we wanted to make sure PC is a great place to play our game. Many of us at BioWare are PC players ourselves, and when testing, PCs made up 40% of our platform testing effort, with over 200,000 hours of performance and compatibility testing. Getting the PC experience just right was crucial to us and we created a dedicated team to focus on PC. We can’t wait for you to experience it for yourselves!

 

 

[Mr.Vic20]

Place your bets! My bet: 2-4 patches before the ship rights itself? 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

Journal #6: Lethality and Levelling

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An inside look into Rook’s Warrior combat

 

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Hello everyone,

 

Since our summer reveal in June, we’ve been reading all the great excitement for the game and listening closely to what you’d like to see next. Our reveal trailer showed off the prologue and very beginning of the game, and now we want to shift our focus to higher level combat. Today, we’re going to cover our game’s combat system, looking at how Rook and Companions can be built up to meet the perils facing Thedas, using deep RPG systems.

 

This starts with choosing a desired class as there are three main classes to select from when creating Rook: stalwart Warrior, deft Rogue, or spell-slinging Mage. This blog and accompanying videos will focus on the Warrior class, and we’ll have more to share on the other classes before launch.

 

[Bacon]

As an action combat fan, that doesn't look bad.

As a DA:O fan, I am in immense pain.

 

[skillzdadirecta]

14 hours ago, Bacon said:

As an action combat fan, that doesn't look bad.

As a DA:O fan, I am in immense pain.

 

I liked what I saw as both to be honest. They spent a lot more time in the menus issuing orders and setting up combos than I thought they would have to to be honest. In fact, this looks like it’s going to be closer in spirit to DA:O than the other two sequels to me. First time for me in this series where playing as a sword an board warrior looks interesting. I suspect this game is really gonna shine on higher difficulties. 

[legend]

46 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I suspect this game is really gonna shine on higher difficulties. 

 

This is my hope as well. Normal might have a little too much "enemies standing around waiting" to make using the skills feel important, but on higher difficulties with diverse enemies in battle it might come together.

 

Still annoyed that you cannot switch party members though!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

[Bacon]

someone gift me this on steam please

[skillzdadirecta]

Damn this game is two months away right? I'm not gonna have time to replay the other three games before this one drops as is my tradition. I've beaten the first two games multiple times. Only played and beat Inqusition once though.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

Journal #7 - Progression & Companions

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An inside look into Rook & Companions’ progression

 

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Hello everyone,

 

It’s September already! Today, we want to dive deeper into Progression, Items, and Companions with this blog and accompanying videos (minor spoilers in the video). Hopefully after today, players will have a better sense of how to customize Rook and unite the Veilguard. 

 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

This game is REALLY looking good from a gameplay perspective. 

[Dexterryu]

Ooof... this just looks generic to me. Nothing about it that doesn't feel like I've done already in a game 1000 times before.

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, Dexterryu said:

Nothing about it that doesn't feel like I've done already in a game 1000 times before.

Ummm ok. Out of curiosity are there ANY games that don't feel like this?

[Bacon]

4 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Ummm ok. Out of curiosity are there ANY games that don't feel like this?

Dragon Age: Origins

[Brian]

9 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Dragon Age: Origins

RIP OG BioWare

[Best]

27 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Dragon Age: Origins

 

If that game didn't look so fuckin bad I would be playing it right now. 

[Bacon]

Just now, Best said:

 

If that game didn't look so fuckin bad I would be playing it right now. 

it do look like dodo

[Dexterryu]

15 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Ummm ok. Out of curiosity are there ANY games that don't feel like this?

 

I'd say the first part of my post (the genericness) combined with something we've all done to death is the primary difference. It applies to the world design and the combat that I see in the video. The world just feels like a backdrop vs a character unto itself. The same is true of the characters. The gameplay that I saw reminded me of Marvels Avengers and Suicide Squad... both of which where incredibly 'meh'. My prediction is that this game lands and is as about as successful as either of those games.

[Best]

25 minutes ago, Dexterryu said:

 

I'd say the first part of my post (the genericness) combined with something we've all done to death is the primary difference. It applies to the world design and the combat that I see in the video. The world just feels like a backdrop vs a character unto itself. The same is true of the characters. The gameplay that I saw reminded me of Marvels Avengers and Suicide Squad... both of which where incredibly 'meh'. My prediction is that this game lands and is as about as successful as either of those games.

 

I hope you're wrong but you might be on to something. 🤔 

[Bacon]

The action rpg combat is pretty much the only thing I'm looking forward to. BioWare has, sadly, kept going in this direction with DA, and it looks like they finally made something decent, if not good. No companions outside of DA:O have ever been worth a damn, so I don't have any hope for this cast. But no hope will at least let me be surprised if I like a character. Other than the combat, I am interested in seeing where the story goes by the end and any DA:O 'member berries content.

[Bacon]

My biggest hope is that Rook is a good character. I didn't hate Hawke, but I thought the Inquisitor was pretty lame. No matter the kind of Inquisitor, they are kind of a bitch. Ryder from ME:A had the same problem as the Inquisitor.

[Dexterryu]

15 minutes ago, Bacon said:

My biggest hope is that Rook is a good character. I didn't hate Hawke, but I thought the Inquisitor was pretty lame. No matter the kind of Inquisitor, they are kind of a bitch. Ryder from ME:A had the same problem as the Inquisitor.

Good characters and story can make a difference for sure. That was the main difference in Guardians of the Galaxy where the combat was passible at best. Looking back to DA:O, I still remember Morrigan, Liliana, Alistair, and Oghren from DA:O. I've forgotten all of the characters since then because they were basically caricatures vs actual characters. 100% true of MA:A vs the Mass Effect Trilogy where I could name every companion character. 

That being said, Bioware hasn't delivered on that front in over a decade.

[Spork3245]

Bioware should just use the Anthem mechanics to make a Iron Man game.

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Spork3245 said:

Bioware should just use the Anthem mechanics to make a Iron Man game.

You know, I have found flying to generally be boring in games where flying is your "mount". Like, at the end of the day, I'd rather not waste time flying and just fast travel. It's like using tcl in skyrim.

[Spork3245]

Just now, Bacon said:

You know, I have found flying to generally be boring in games where flying is your "mount". Like, at the end of the day, I'd rather not waste time flying and just fast travel. It's like using tcl in skyrim.

 

Flying in Anthem was actually fun and "felt" right, I can't think of any other game where this is the case.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Dexterryu said:

Good characters and story can make a difference for sure. That was the main difference in Guardians of the Galaxy where the combat was passible at best. Looking back to DA:O, I still remember Morrigan, Liliana, Alistair, and Oghren from DA:O. I've forgotten all of the characters since then because they were basically caricatures vs actual characters. 100% true of MA:A vs the Mass Effect Trilogy where I could name every companion character. 

That being said, Bioware hasn't delivered on that front in over a decade.

Dragon Age 2, despite its flaws, had a couple of memorable characters that the Dragon Age fandom have embraced. People LOVE Isabel, Anders and Aveline. For some reason Bioware has latched on to Varrick, a character I'm not that big a fan of and never have been. Some characters from Inquisition have even resonated with fandom as well despite those characters being the most forgetable for me personally so i think it's a bit of a stretch to say they haven't made memorable characters. Go to any Dragon Age specific fansite or forum and you will see the enthuisasm for characters outside of Origins. That said Origins DOES have the best cast of companion characters. 

 

As far as the game itself, I don;t see the comparisons to Avengers or Suicide Squad at all (both games I personally enjoyed btw) If anything it looked closer to Final Fantasy XV from a gameplay standpoint, except you can actually issue commands to your companions. Watching that gameplay walkthrough, I saw a decent combination of action and tactics in using the different companions to their best ability and I think that's really going to shine on harder difficulties where resistances and vulnerabilties come into play more. Like all of Bioware's previous games. Bioware has been moving Dragon Age in a more action direction since the first game and it's just been "passable" for the most part... I enjoyed Inquisition, but never bothered to replay it like I've done the other games because I just didn't enjoy it as much. This game looks like they've at LEAST finally nailed the action game part. Could the game flop hard? Sure. Anything is possible... but I think the game is shaping up pretty well. It's the only other game I plan on buying Day One this year besides Space Marine 2 and Ass. Creed Shadows.

 

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

My biggest hope is that Rook is a good character. I didn't hate Hawke, but I thought the Inquisitor was pretty lame. No matter the kind of Inquisitor, they are kind of a bitch. Ryder from ME:A had the same problem as the Inquisitor.

Yeah the Inquisitor was pretty fucking bland... another reason why I never bothered to replay Inquisiton. Or Andromeda for that matter. It's ironic because Andromeda has the best moment to moment shooter Gameplay of ALL of the Mass Effect games but I've never felt a reason to revisit it. I don't really recall any "Choices" in the game that I would want to resolve differently. Weird.

[Mr.Vic20]

I thought DA 2 has some very good story telling and world building, just a shame it clearly carried the birthing scares of a more limited budget and scope. It would have been great as a "gaiden" style offering, but instead carried the burden of being presented to the public as a mainline entry. The game's scope flew in the face of the previous entries depth of customization and so many panned it for what it wasn't rather than what it was. I was one of those that panned it. I can now see retrospectively that it was a good game for what it was. I'm still disappointed at the direction they took the series.  

[Bacon]

I never hated DA2. Yeah it only had 3 maps, but I really didn't care.

[Mr.Vic20]

7 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I never hated DA2. Yeah it only had 3 maps, but I really didn't care.

for me, Its sin was how shallow its equipment system was, especially for party members. 

[skillzdadirecta]

I didn't hate DA2 either.

3 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

for me, Its sin was how shallow its equipment system was, especially for party members. 

This was my issue as well.

[Bacon]

7 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

for me, Its sin was how shallow its equipment system was, especially for party members. 

I guess for me, it's just numbers so that doesn't really bother me. I'm more interested in special armor effects.

 

Like in DA:O almost everyone ends up in some kind of Dragon armor. That's boring.

[legend]

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Flying in Anthem was actually fun and "felt" right, I can't think of any other game where this is the case.

 

Spider-man, especially Spider-man 2, did "almost" flying extremely well. I never fast traveled in that game.

 

Flying becomes boring when it's completely unconstrained "point in a direction" because there is no skill and fun to the control.