'If the big companies dictate what games can be created, I don't think that will advance the industry.' -Shihei Yoshida
Dragon Age star Alix Wilton Regan has given her personal response to the backlash faced by last year's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and blamed the "mixed reactions" on people who "wanted to see the game fail, or wanted to see [BioWare] fail".
Blame everyone else...yeah...great stance
Gives off that "if you didn't like it then you are clearly one of those bigoted trolls" vibe
There's not much to talk about, Bioware made a s****y Dragon Age game which was heavily dumbed down compared to their previous games.
Yes its true, some trolls were hating on it because of some silly reasons but the rest of people who actually had constructive criticism were lumped into those very same trolls to silence them.
Make anyone who actually has some valid things to say look like bad people so their criticism and opinions are automatically invalid. It's a PR move that has been going on for years, even Hollywood does it with films, it just causes fans to be at each others throats while the spotlight is taken off the games flaws and it becomes all about toxic fans. The developers then sit back, stir the pot while they get away with whatever they've done with their bad product.
@-Foxtrot hit the nail on the head. For me, and many many others, it had nothing to do with transgender inclusion or whatever.... it was the dumbed down gameplay from previous titles that turned me off! It's cowardly to hide behind the social issue backlash and refuse to accept feedback on the actual game from the rest of us. We simply did not like the new gameplay.
So who's fault is it? Probably happened at the highest level, "let's make a dragon age dumbed down so that a larger audience will enjoy it, which will make us a lot more money!" Except... that backfired. Rpg gamers want deep rpg gameplay.Word got out that it wasn't.
The problem is that we’ve wanted a true successor to DA:Origins for years and never got it. Lorian literally learned from you and now makes your games better than you.
Don’t blame us for the fact that you know exactly what to make and choose not to every single time.
Be happy you sell what you do on name alone. BioWare was my favorite company for so long…
@Joab
“Makes your games better than you?” Really? Last I checked, Bioware hasnt released a crpg since origins, so Larian is not doing anything one to one better than a fundamentally different type of game. Bioware has changed their direction, and fans are so bound to their attachment to the old Bioware, that they are becoming resentful and hateful, and worst of all…blind. Its fng up your perception.
Exactly. People are hiding behind their real reasons bs...everyone knows this game was targeted before it could be properly judged..ie before it was even released people decided to trash it.
You acting as though it's impossible to for anyone to gauge any potential red flags before a game's release, but that's not the case.
-Pre-release footage
-Title name changes
-In-house comparisons to Norse God of War
-An EA-published game that's been in development hell
I don't see the gotcha in your comment. Hell, bringing up MindsEye doesn't do you favors, given how selectively edited its trailers often are. The majority of 'hate' thrown towards MindsEye is justified skepticism.
@coolbean
That's because there is no gotcha in my comment. It's a genuine question.
Using MindsEye as an example is apropos because it's timely and the latest game to be hated.
It hasn't released and the hate I'm referring to is people straight up lying that no gameplay footage was released.
Hating games before they release isn't new. And no one is saying don't be cautious with a new IP. But you knew that already.
People originally hated the color pallette me included but I waited and wanted to look past the color scheme and what I played was solid. The characters aren't everyone's cup of tea ok I understand, but certain characters had a depth like identity struggle and navigating the world as their true self. Ok I like that character dynamic personally. I can go on but about what I liked in detail but anyway. People chose one thing to hate and ran with it and justified the reason each time leading up to release. DEI! Oh like mass effect dei same sex marriage? Where's the outrage for that all those years ago? Unwarranted amount of hate for stupid contradictory reasons. If you don't like for honest reasons ok cool respects but if it's bad faith then yeah not cool.
Now Minds Eye. I had to do some investigating. The studios biggest marketing promotion is from the creator of GTA Leslie Benzie already set themselves up for very high expectations. I know it's a way to get eyes on the game. You also have to deliver a experience that's at least on par maybe better with past GTA games. The pre orders went out with out gameplay or no real incentive to pre-order. So get your money now up front before we show anything. The "leak" and streamer showing "excitement" for the game. While comments are saying the game looks mid or at very least middling or skeptical comments. No deep dive gameplay just over a week away from Launch. They're already making road maps and promises already before the game even releases which also not a good sign. I dont hate for no reason if I see a game that looks weird I say something or I could be all wrong and the game could get a 80 meta after all. though I think it's gonna get a 57 meta personally.
There is literally dialogue of a character explaining how they need to pay reparations to another character in the form of doing push ups because they “misgendered” them. The dialogue in the game is hyper tolerant woke BS
It’s not the same as mass effect, not even close
@PanicMechanic Not how the scene played out. Isabela establishes that she made her crew do push ups if they fucked up, ( jobs, missions, anything,etc...) She misgenedered Taash and starts doing them on her own, Taash is confused until she explains it.
Now is Taash still badly written? Yes
It’s honestly frustrating to see what happened with Dragon Age: Veilguard. This is an established IP—fans knew what they wanted: a true sequel in spirit and tone to Dragon Age: Origins. Instead, Bioware overhauled the identity of the series so much that it barely resembles what made the earlier games great. Characters changing drastically, tone and gameplay shifting too far from the original formula—it just doesn’t land, and frankly, I’d argue Veilguard doesn’t even surpass Dragon Age 2.
If this had launched as a new IP, maybe expectations would’ve been different. But slapping the Dragon Age name on something that feels so disconnected only makes things worse. And once a game gets hit with that "agenda-driven" label—fairly or unfairly—it’s incredibly difficult to shake the stigma.
What makes it more frustrating is the tone from some developers. Telling fans, “This might not be for you” or “Don’t buy it if you don’t like it,” then turning around and painting criticism as toxic or bigoted when people don’t buy it—it’s not a good look. Open, respectful dialogue with the community is how the industry moves forward, not deflection or gaslighting.
Look at Black Myth: Wukong, or the excitement around Expedition 33. These games are succeeding on the merits of gameplay, world-building, and focus—not by leaning into polarizing narratives or identity marketing. Players just want well-made, fun, immersive games. It’s not that deep
This is what people do in general, especially gamers. Gamers look at things as if the devs failed them, and never ask if they themselves are the cause of the dislike for the game.
@Foxtrot again
You calling it a s****y game is constructive huh? That is demolition, not construction. Lol
They never wanted to see it fail or the game fail, they wanted to see a good game with a good story that was in line with the original. They knew we weren't going to get this so they openly criticised everything about it. AND they were proven correct. The game sucked and failed in every way. Maybe you should have listened to the fans in the first place.
Perhaps people just wanted a proper Dragon Age game, not a Disney inspired Dragon Age, with awful writing.
This game was changed from a live service to a single player game quite late in the development, I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did. The writing and the direction was screwed by EA marketing teams.
Then you had all the anti-woke psychos set loose by heavily politicised streamer grifters. How people take their directions from those nutters I will never know.
how are they grifters? are you just parroting what other people say or do you have proof
Do you have proof that they're not?
I mean just look at Rumble who are funded by people like Peter Thiel and JD Vance or Turning Point USA training right-wing influencers and and paying troll farms to brigade and mass comment right-wing talking points on social media and streaming platforms and then you have the management group Today Is America that manage over 200 influencers and creators to spread right-wing sentiment to their young audience.
Like I said, grifters.
Please feel free to look up anything I've stated.
"do you have proof that they're not"
that's not how things work bro
do you have any proof you didn't commit horrible crimes in secret?
You forgot to read the rest of the comment kid.
Like I said feel free to disprove anything I've stated.
https://www.splcenter.org/r...
https://nupoliticalreview.o...
wrong. it isn't a good dragon age game. as someone who's never played a dragon age game. I like it with no previous bias/ history. but I understand those who don't like the turn. But it's not a bad game (cheesy lines aside), it's fun to play
Plus: how Kepler plans to be the A24 for games, and why a follow-up to Clair Obscur won't involve a big studio expansion
Vapourware can end up being the stuff of legend, like Rockstar's Agent, Star Wars 1313, or StarCraft: Ghost. Without ever seeing the light of day, these games never risked the possibility of being played and forgotten, and instead live on forever as the subjects of lengthy YouTube essays.
Still, Molyneux's most notable lost game (or tech demo, depending on who you asked at the time) was arguably Project Milo.
I can see the potential of the kinect hardware... its rather impressive tech, but it was just not meant to be for gaming. If anything, MS had a huge missed opportunity to have used it for the AR/VR projects.
You can use the Kinect as an SLS camera for paranormal investigations. So it wasn’t a complete failure.
Remember Star Wars Kinect announcement? Biggest laughable acting seen
"Unfortunately, as we were developing Milo, so the Kinect device was being developed. And they realised that the device that Alex Kipman first showed off would cost $5,000 for consumers to buy.
"So they cost-reduced that device down to such a point, where the field-of-view...I think it was a minuscule field-of-view. In other words, it could only just see what's straight in front of you."
Hmm, exactly what tech was in it, that was cut, affected the development? It was only ever interpreting visual and audio inputs right? The xbox was processing those inputs.
Nor do I see how the field of view thing is relevant to the discussion.
Exactly! Tf kinda BS statement was that? i don't really see how fov is relevant at all, since when do you move all around a room while talking/interacting to someone?
This is entirely untrue. There was never a 5000 dollar Kinect prototype that could somehow use a wider field of view to scan and import generated in-game items and advance AI by over a decade. Anybody that fell for this was a stupid moron child, myself included. Anybody that falls for this lie now is a stupid moron child who doesn't realize that these people *only* know how to lie.
🙄 same guy who said 80$ is a steal lol and according to him M$ shouldnt put good on a services🤣 wtf
I can agree with that on some level
Subscription services have f***ed the movie industry and it's work force, caused massive studio buyups by companies like Disney consolidating huge parts of the industry under one roof and have creatively sterilised the IP's they've gobbled up. The same thing is happening to gaming, MS being the main greedy piggy.
I get what he's saying, but I don’t think we need subscription services to see a lot of the problems he's pointing out. All we really have to do is look at the gaming industry over the last two console generations. Even without subscriptions, the big AAA publishers have already been moving in a direction where almost every game feels like it's built from the same template. It’s all about streamlined, safe design choices that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. At this point, you could probably ask an AI to make a AAA game from a certain publisher and it would spit out something pretty close to what they’re actually making.
Now, about the whole “walled garden” thing... that’s not some future problem, it’s already here. Consoles have always worked like that. Their entire business model is based on controlling what gets released on their platforms. Sure, maybe they’re not as locked down as the extreme examples people bring up, but the end result is similar. If you’re not making the kind of game the platform holder wants, you’re probably not getting through the door. We’ve seen it with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, even Valve does this in its own way with Steam. So yeah, the issue isn’t new or exclusive to subscription services.
Would a subscription-only future make that problem worse? Sure, it definitely could. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction anytime soon. Unless physical hardware truly becomes a thing of the past and everyone switches to streaming games, I just don’t see subscriptions becoming the dominant model. They’ll stick around as an option, but I doubt they’ll take over completely.
Now, what will take over completely is digital media, and that’s a whole different issue that’s going to hit us a lot sooner. PC and mobile are already basically 100% digital, and that makes up around 70% of the gaming market. The remaining 30% is consoles, and even there we’re seeing the shift. Sony’s removing the disc drive from boxed consoles, Nintendo is releasing just one super expensive 64GB cartridge for their new system, which means almost all third-party publishers will end up going digital and Microsoft is mostly digital already. You either get a digital-only or a physical box with disc that only acts as a activation key. So yeah, that future’s already knocking on the door and the damage will be enormous.
Right, because then you can’t sell individual games at $80, which is an incredible value for the consumer!