Dragon Age: The Veilguard released on Oct. 31 and after a weekend and some change with the game, players are beginning to level heavy criticism on the writing and narrative elements of the game. Namely that the game’s more progressive elements are handled sloppily and without tact. But the biggest shock for myself isn’t that the writing is stilted or awkward… it’s that anyone would expect anything else?
While posts have permeated social media, perhaps the loudest voice comes from an article in Forbes, entitled “Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Clumsy, Preachy Political Messaging Does More Harm Than Good.” Erik Kain’s great piece points out a lot of the issues with the game, and the harm its tone does.
These sentiments were in-turn echoed on a thread about the article the PC Gaming subreddit, where players cosigned the feeling that poor writing and a preachy attitude was harming the game. Their criticism pointed to a notorious “push-up” scene, Marvel-movie quality dialogue, and accusations that the game infantilizes players.
Image Credit: Bioware
A lot of the criticism also circles around calling out more ‘woke’ elements of the game. I don’t think it’s valid to level any critique on a game due to content that supports LGBTQ+ people, especially when fantasy as a genre usually exists to tackle social and political ills in a more manageable way. But the core issues appear to be centered on the quality of the portrayals, rather than the portrayal itself.
But unfortunately, narrative quality overall feels like a bizarre angle to critique, as while the Bioware games (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc.) are celebrated, I never saw them more than just decent cover shooters and RPGs with a dating simulator tacked on (and at least Dragon Age: The Veilguard continues that with its romance options). Expecting excellence from them is like picking up random fantasy novels from the book store and expecting something on par with The Lord of The Rings trilogy. They’re some of the best RPGs out there… but narratively they’re still nothing to write home about.
Especially when a more valid criticism would be the dubious scores the game is getting from outlets. One thing that doesn’t sit right is the Creative Director, John Epler saying in a notable tweet that “I want to see the phrase ‘a triumphant return to form for bioware’ in at least one review” and then dozens of reviews saying just that. Even if it’s an honest review, the fact the creative director is issuing edicts about what he wants in the reviews should mean any reputable outlet should avoid that descriptor to diffuse any doubt about their integrity.
Still, the stilted dialog, the bizarre cutscenes, the weird writing (that should have at least warranted a lower score than an 8 aggregate score for Dragon Age: The Veilguard), seems like an odd complaint point.
Image Credit: Bioware
Perhaps the issue is that while many gamers have matured (at least in the physical sense), the narratives in gaming really haven’t. This is a problem throughout gaming, where the technical leaps and bounds that have seen the medium regularly create sprawling AAA titles that are, narratively, not any more developed or nuanced than what came before it. While there are exceptions (something like Disco Elysium springs to mind), the vast majority of video games just aren’t very narratively complex or high quality.
Compare this to other entertainment mediums – literature, cinema, comics, television – where we’ve had hundreds of years, or at least decades of development of narrative quality. It took over 100 years for film to develop the modern blockbuster. Games, which often borrow heavily from film in their narrative endeavors, have had a comparatively tiny amount of time to develop anything resembling a coherent story-telling language.
This is perhaps not helped by the unfortunate tropes and methods that gaming has developed to tell its stories. Quick-time events and cutscenes are seen as the default… but are in-fact as limited and potentially obsolete as a narrative device as something like a soliloquy in theater or the full-page spread in comics.
Which is all to say that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has ended up falling into all the pitfalls and traps of the modern RPG video game writing: Overly ambitious and thinking it’s a more important piece of media, only to clumsily swipe at social issues without much nuance or grace. Gaming as a whole just hasn’t reached the point where it can handle these topics well. Sometimes a game just needs to present itself and allow its players, as a media savvy and mature audience, to come to their own conclusions. Just put the elves in the game buddy, we can figure it out on our own.
LOL
CS2
Dota 2
Valorant
Fortnite
Call of Duty
Mobile Games
Gaming
I’ve not tried this game yet. I am still researching.
I remember Baldur’s Gate II. A really great game made mediocre by adding the ability to romance characters into the game. Unless you played an evil character, you did not necessarily see where the game was going. It did not smack you in the face. The writing was not aimed at 4 year olds or even 12 year olds. Some of the twists it took were fantastic. After the first play-through, I reveled in killing that wingless elf, letting Jahira get killed, dumping Imo-whine or letting her die asap, and making it clear to Viconia that I had no interest at all, ever. That shut-up those whiny wenches, who did nothing but dance on my nerves in the guise of “romance”.
You have lumped an incredible variety of people into one group: Gamers. Do you mean PnP (Pen and Paper – Table Top) gamers? Those of us who played a variety of games before the consoles and PCs had games? We are the true role-play gamers. I started in 1977 with DnD.
Do you mean X-Box gamers? Nintendo? Power-gamers? Simulation gamers? Survival gamers? MMOnline-cluster-f*** gamers? First person shooter gamers?
The sad thing about the so-called RPGs is that they were hijacked by power-gamers long ago. Companies began catering to them, because true role-play gamers are few and far between. Power-gamers are morons, who do not expect much in the way of a story.
Let’s talk about character development in NPCs. NeverWinter Nights. Aribeth. I loved that twist!!!
Interesting stories? Planescape: Torment.
Horribly linear games? IceWind Dale. Lovely art. Power-gamer fest. Poorly balanced game-play, like nearly every game available today on the market. Only one of these three involved BioWare.
BioWare was involved in the industry-changing Baldur’s Gate I game. It really did redefine PC-based RPGs. They were also involved in deveoping BGII. Another classic in the industry. They were also involved in developing NWN. None of these games were perfect, but I feel the stories were subtle and had some nice plot-twists. Especially BGII. Play that as an evil character sometime. Best gaming experience I have ever had, other than playing AD&D with a great group. All of these games were limited by the available technology.
BGIII, on the other had, is the suckiest RPG ever. It had the technology to develop advanced algorithms to better handle alignment, but simply removed alignment. After over 7 years of development, 4 of which they used players as untrained and unpaid beta-testers (which is now the norm in the gaming industry), they finally released it, and I played an evil character: Priestess of Talos. The experience was wretched. Forced dialogue choices that were the opposite of appropriate for my characer in too many cases. all-roads-lead-to-rome dialogue choices in too many cases, Idiotic text at the ending of chapters, saying how sad my gal was for failing to lift the Shadow Curse, which she left in-place to make people continue to suffer. The romances in that are pathetic. Not sure why we need romances in these games anyhow.
Before you hack at BioWare, you might take a look around at the plethora of sub-standard companies producing bug-infested games with piss-poor design choices. BioWare is no better or worse that the rest, at this stage in the game. With Black Isle Studios, they used to do terrific work. I guess the question is, was that because of Black Isle? I don’t play most of the rest of the games BioWare has produced. Not my bag. Jade Empire was so horrible that I quit looking for their games. It’s a matter of taste. I bought it and was so excited. It was trash in comparison to the others I had played. Power-gamer fest.
You are sadly prejudiced against groups of people that you lump together and call “gamers”. If you were one, you would be cognizant of the fact that they are not a single group. A gamer is anyone, who plays games. Instead of slinging manure at the people based on your own inherent ignorance and prejudice, you should have just stuck to a review of the game. I was trying to find out of the game was written by AI. Writing to your audience as if they are 4 years old, or even 10, is not justified by your blind-dislike of the people who play games.