Video Games Video Game • Page 760

Not even close

 

I played wow non stop vanilla through cataclysm and then became more few months on few months off until shadowlands when I completely tapped out, same with the brief period I tried dragonflight, I’ve spent a little bit of time with the new expansion and it’s good but I’m just not an MMO guy anymore at all. Much prefer my single player experiences now and I know MMOs are solo friendly these days but they still pale in comparison to actual single player games in that regard

 

They’re our family by choice, so I think it can even be worse sometimes.

 

It's obviously Rainbow Six Vegas 2 because it was the last great R6 game we got

 

I feel like it was a lot more enjoyable to play MMOs when we didn't realize just HOW many great games were coming out every week and the fact that to get a good experience from a MMO you have to pay a sub during the times you're also wanting to buy these games and even if you take the solo route, you're still paying for it so frequently that it doesn't feel worth it in comparison

 

A big thing for me (which makes me a hypocrite bc I’m guilty of it) is WoW was more fun when everything wasn’t solved instantly. At some point it became so min max (also guilty) that it definitely lost some charm for me. Obviously players are better now but I’m 32. And I can’t be bothered to switch the class I’m playing every other patch to find groups to fit whatever meta is current.

 

A lot of WoW design kinda requires the min max too so it's not like you can just be like "eh whatever", it's nearly griefing

In FFXIV it isn't that way but the content is often so easy and also often not needed (because what do you even need gear for in FFXIV, there's no variety) that it's a similar premise of it being solved instantly and if you're not raiding day 1 you better expect to study pastebins and have no fun

 

Oh yeah. It’s gotten better now but there was a period of time where a dozen specs in the game didn’t have a raid buff. If you don’t bring a raid buff, you aren’t getting in a raid. Why would you? Every class has access to buffs now but then there’s 3-4 specs for every class. And some of those specs have been terrible for 5+ years now.

My brain doesn’t allow me to log in to collect mounts and shit. I wish it did. I log in and I have to queue up for the hardest content possible. But that’s on me

 

Hamauzu the goat

 

finished veilguard

 

Sorry to hear this.

 

im going to type this a little off the cuff and since i just finished im still sort of organizing some thoughts i have but, overall, here is my impression of dragon age: the veilguard after 50 hours played, completing every companion quest and most faction quests.

8.5/10, not far from a 9 but not quite in that range.


its really hard to divorce my own thoughts on this game with the "discourse" surrounding it, especially when it has bombarded my feeds for months and months coming to a fever pitch the week the review embargo lifted. im of a two minds here: some of the negativity probably caused me to see some things more critically than i would have other wise, and it also caused me to be more defensive of some shortcomings than i would've been other wise. this is why "this discourse" sucks for actual criticism, its hard on a read on someone's real, genuine feelings when emotions are running rampant.

anyway, im a big fan of the series, of course, but i did start with inquisition and then played origins and 2 a couple years later, and i didnt play mass effect really until the legendary edition which allowed me to play all 3. outside of a good few hours spent in KOTOR, thats my experience with bioware.

at the end of the day, this is definitely a bioware game, the studio's DNA is undeniable but as i said earlier this is a new, rebooted bioware, not the one that existed around a decade ago. this is a good thing, first of all because we have trans and non binary people working on AAA video games in a visible way and that's fantastic, but also im seeing people on twitter saying they contributed and im like damn this artist is 25 years old or whatever. they've got some young blood at the studio now, and i think that's an amazing thing.

what ive played here gives me a good amount of hope for the future. i can sort of take it point by point here and sort of push against some of the things ive seen people drag on and also offer my own criticism. so lets start with performance. game ran mostly great on my 1660 ti and amd ryzen 5 3600x with 32 gigs of ram, game did not run great at all on my steam deck and i think the bar for verified status is way too low. no matter, i played on my PC for 90% of my playthrough.

the graphics are insane, this game is gorgeous through and through. the "new" aesthetic is not really as new as people make it out to be though, i think a lot of inquisition's art style made it over here just with a bit of a twist. no, it doesnt look like pixar or dream works, and i dont think its uncanny valley territory at all. its just good stylized graphics with a clear art direction. you gel with it or you dont.

gameplay wise this is mostly a very good game with some caveats. enemies can get spongy, i recommend playing on normal with the enemy health setting taken down one notch. i think its great the game offers so many ways to tailor your experience with options like this and you should def take advantage of it if it doesnt feel as good as you think it should. the overall combat system is executed very well, i played a duelist rogue the entire playthrough and after level 20 i stuck to the same abilities for the rest of my playthourhg. i do wish we had access to one or two more abilities though, only 3 plus a rune makes it feel a little repetitive by the time you get to the end. furthermore, i dont mind that we cant control characters outright but i do think the mass effect style command prompt leaves something to be desired. theres a great beginnings of a system with the applications and detonations you do with status effects but its so paper rock scissor that it becomes more of a chore to trigger than something you're really engaging with.

gearing is pretty good i think, i like how sometimes you are rewarded with upgrading the rarity of an item you already have instead of getting a new item and i was confused at first why you cant sell gear but this made it make sense and i think its great. i found it much easier to keep track of my teams gear and stats which made me more likely to switch up who im taking out to battle. inquisition had this problem where it was a pain to keep everyone min maxed on gear and builds so i stuck to the same party members the entire game. not a problem here at al.

level design is fantastic, the levels are varied and interesting to explore, not to mention very rewarding. think of every map like a giant kirkwall from DA2 the side quests filling out each zone flesh out the world and story competently with some notable exceptions that go a step further and rival some of the main quests in quality. i feel like quest design was varied just enough but probably could've gone further. enemy design is a little lacking, you have a lot of different enemy types but move sets are reused a bit too much for my liking. on the topic of side quests and zones i think the faction stuff is also one of those things thats fine, they did enough to make it worthwhile, but could've done a bit more there as well.

lets move to companions. i think almost all of these companions are some of the best in the series. there is one companion i do not care for and i think this companion's entire aesthetic and story are the only things in the game that give credence to the "disney dragon age" thing im seeing. everybody else shows a wealth of emotional depth, character growth, and they take you on a journey that'll get you invested to the end. thats a success in my opinion. out of 7 companions i think 6 were absolutely knocked out of the park. a few are a slow burn but the pay offs are immense.

more general topic to discuss here is that the game is PLENTY dark. seriously. you can dismiss anybody who says theres nothing dark here. i dont even want to go into the details but right up until the end the most fucked up shit ive seen in the series was happening. the entire zone of Weisshaupt and everything you do there is just grim as shit. but thats not the only place dark shit happens. like if someone says they dont think the game is as dark as the rest of the series just stop listening to them. it is. they're either misremembering how dark the series actually is or downplaying how dark veilguard really is.

the writing here is good. its not great. but its good. the voice acting is really good. but like i said yesterday there is some sort of mismatch in certain conversations when it comes to tone. every choice you pick for rook during conversations mostly comes across the same. i think there are a couple reasons for this. rook is a singular character, we are not really building him to be a certain person, he already is a certain person. some people take issue with this but thats totally fine. i do think they could've differentiated dialogue choices a bit in tone though.

the soundtrack is....fine. it didnt really pop off until the final act imo. kind of disappointing. but the sound design is out of the world. the sound of blight boils popping will make my skin crawl for months. all the little sound effects and auxiliary noise really flesh out the sonic palette and keep you immersed in the world.

player choice i think was handled pretty good and pretty bad in some respects. the lack of previous game choices making any difference isnt a huge deal, we're in tevinter so its not like everything weve done in Thedas would resonate this far north, but i do think the inclusion of the inquisitor and some of those decisions wasn't as fleshed out as they could've made it. you do wind up making some pretty consequential choices in the main story of veilguard, but most choices you make that matter happen in the companion quests toward the end. i actually really like how that was done for each companion.

the main story is a really good story imo, i think it rings true to dragon age as a series while sort of giving a new take we havent seen before in these games. some people have noted you cant be a bad guy and that sucks but this is a hero vs villain story and it wouldnt make any sense for us to be a villain. the companions are all really good people, they arent going to be mean to you or each other. its just how its written. and thats okay, its okay to write about good people doing good things. is it the most interesting thing in the world? not really, but it kept me hooked for 50 hours so that's saying something. act 3 was every bit as good as the suicide mission in mass effect 2, the crowning jewel of bioware's games up to this point in my opinion.

im trying to think if there's anything else important to really touch on here but i'll just wrap it up: this is a very, very good game and i think everybody should give it a shot. your mileage may vary on how much each of these things rings true for you, and how much you enjoy certain creative decisions they've taken here. this is true of any game ever and the fact its become such a controversy is a shameful indictment on the current state of the culture. we should be celebrating such a diverse cast of characters (and developers), we should be celebrating the fact this game was stuck in development hell and clawed its way out in just the last few years and came out in this state. you can tell some of the game is jigsawed together from ideas before they rebooted it, and thats going to happen when you go through a dev cycle like this. i hope EA learns the right lessons here, i hope BioWare learns the right lessons here, and we get a new mass effect game and more DA games in the future because this group of developers have as much talent as any studio in the industry right now.

 

you'll read it and you'll like it

 

I did read it and I did like it but come on that post was screaming for that meme

 

Is there a cliff notes version?

 

yeah man the last paragraph, you'd know if you had read the whole thing

 

I’ll take your word for it!

 

Wait I'm confused, people are playing games in here?

(I read the review as well and thought it was very good)

 

I started Metaphor last night and I'm digging it.

But there's also a Warcraft Direct in 2 days so I'm always a fresh classic server away from putting off my backlog for another 4 years.

 

Speaking of playing games, Doom Eternal is free on PC via Amazon and has the achievements supported.

 

Excited to play Spyro tomorrow via GamePass (the best deal in gaming).

 

I don't play games, I just look at them and paw at their artwork sometimes.

 

XC1 is so good wtf

 

From what I have read from early impressions of Avowed, anyone who wanted to be a bad guy / asshole / have a villain play through in DA, can get their fix there.

Nice thoughts - Still excited to play this, just been so busy. Nothing about what I have seen visually is a concern for me and while I get on a surface level, that it's pixar or disney looking, I don't get what's inherently bad about that. Kind of how I still struggle with people who dismiss animated shows purely on only liking live action.