u/Darazelly

Aaaah, yeah, gotcha, yea I can see that, even if I don't immediately feel it myself? But then I've burnt out a little and is fine with just popping in for the story mission and bouncing back out to whatever single player game I'm currently enjoying.

So my headspace for the story is probably more somewhere in the ballpark of "Ok, that was a neat snack" rather than the full five course narrative meal I expect from something like Blood of Dawnwalker, Rogue Trader or Control.

My expectations for live service narratives is never particularly high. Thanks Blizzard. ... FFXIV is the exception.

As far as I know, games do currencies because in the case of you being able to claim a valid refund for whatever reason, they just need to give you back the in-game currency - not the actual real life money you paid for it.

And because it obfuscates how much something actually cost, and they can do fun stuff like pricing things at 350 but only sell currencies in packs of 300 or 500, etc. Ah, predatory monetization, you suck.

Not sure what you mean with that first bit? A mid-story climax isn't that uncommon in a longer story? Like Helm's Deep in LotR or "oh you thought that was the final boss, think again~" reveals in games where the third act just comes out of nowhere. IMO the yank in Amphoreus came from like, getting the truth of what Amphoerus is and realising the fucked up cycles Phainon have been going through, only for it to grind to a halt for two patches because this is a gacha game where the primary monetization is selling characters, and that later half of Amphoreus was hella poorly planned out. Making the x.5 characters SPs now in Planarcadia who don't need a introduction and can just have a Continuance story instead, works waaaaay better. Nihilux have also been around all of Planarcadia, so it's not a Cyrene situation where they need to cram 80% of her actual story relevance into just 4.7.

I don't mind Fulwish being the warmup boss, only for the reveal that Asat is the actual antagonist. She was a little undercooked, but interesting in her own way, that rolled nicely into Asat's stuff. Like, we're still dealing with the fallout of what he did, and the dice head is still around. The whole bit with the voracity was there from the start, so it wasn't like that was a sudden change.

Edit: Typo

I mean, honestly, I'll take these last couple of patches that's a little bit waffly and short but still nudge to overall narrative forward, than the entire plot screeching to a halt because they need to introduce two whole new characters in one patch (3.5), and then rush to a conclusion on a SP justification plot (3.6), before throwing together a finale that ends up being a lot of monologuing over still art.

Both Penacony and Amphoreus had weird pacing issues, but to Planarcadia's credit it's the one thing it has nailed down.

A much, much better paced story that's relatively interesting (I give them some grace due to the political bs that forced them to change things). Asat Pramad is a great antagonist.

Absolutely horrendous powercreep and shilling tho, that and the lacklustre "this could have been a email" nothingburger events really bring the game down. Also, Elation's effects are a visual overload that I don't care for. Waventurine is the only Elation character I've pulled for.

Yeah, it would've been cool.

Might've been a resource thing. From what I've heard the ending segment isn't copy-pasted across the three ending paths?

Execs are really good at telling people "You're doing fine with this, you can do fine with less!" when it's time to make the next quarterly report to look good.

They don't think longterm, or we wouldn't see as much enshittification as we do.

Legit, I miss scruffy HW Thancred partially because it was his look, not AF gear.

I've seen the Urianger smut, I don't think that part of the community can handle HD Urianger fingers, or there won't be enough snow in all of Ishgard to slake their thirsts.

Thancred and Urianger in fancy new outfits that don't look so horrendously low res and outdated.

No don't @ me, I'm coping. Let a girl have her futile dreams. 😂

Def his, it's missing the same leg portion that gets cut off in the intro.

It hasn't been in development for six years, it was announced, but then the team was pulled over to help at Veilguard, and I believe Mark Darrah said last year after everyone but a skeleton crew was laid off from Bioware, that to his knowledge the new ME game was in a pre-production stage where it wasn't even greenlit as a project.

The trailer that leaked was for internal use only, the game itself was still years away.

Thank you for the reminder to pick that one up before it goes out of print.

As a freelance artist, the groan when I got to the budget.

People want the sun and the moon and half a galaxy, but want to pay you in peanuts.

Sure, it was a offhand example. But generally the writing in Veilguard has a odd distance between Rook and the companion where it's often very... they talk AT Rook, but rarely feels like they talk WITH Rook.

Like, standout moment for me was when I was startled by Emmrich actually asking Rook about themselves. I shouldn't be surprised about that in a RPG, dialogue with NPCs is when you can RP and define your character. (Smashcut to my mage qunari telling Taash, without my input, that she was a galley slave)

Yeah, but the execution still allowed you to ask questions and get to know them. Especially with the check-in quests.

In Veilguard it's like "Rook I have this thing that I need to do come with me" and then it's mostly just talking about Their Thing. I can ask Fenris about his past with Danarius, but I can't ask Davrin about his childhood, y'know?

If you're really on the fence and unsure about it; just wait until there's a sale. If you're on PC it'll probably be in the bargain bin for the December sale.

Personally, I think it's a perfectly average action adventure game, but it doesn't... feel like a Bioware RPG, much less a actual Dragon Age game. If you just want something lightweight, popcorn entertainment-y with flashy combat and some map exploration, totally, it's perfectly alright. Like, I can't say that I actively hated engaging with the gameplay loop.

If you want a super engaging narrative with deep nuanced characters, it leaves a lot to be desired. You can't talk with your companions outside of when they have a quest for you, so sole way to get to know them is by eavesdropping on the party banter. Rook can feel so sidelined and poorly integrated that I and others have felt a tickle of social anxiety about it as it feels like you're just third-wheeling all the companions lmao.

The time jump itself wasn't unexpected for me, they ran that trailer back during the Summer Games Fest and I recall being confused why the medieval vampire game I'd seen mentions of was rolling out a modern set trailer. But I get that was probably marketing to show that they were confident and that, as they've confirmed since then, that they want to do sequels that follow Coen through the centuries, culminating in the modern time.

But yeah, like others have said, it is a origin story. What struck me immediately upon getting to the epilogue, was that Coen was still in armour and carrying a sword. He's not a farmboy anymore, the last month very much flipped his life upside down and now... he no longer really belongs.

There's dialogue options in the game where Coen can voice frustrations with how his dysfunctional family life where he (and Yanna) have been parentified and his own guilt have kept him from considering a future for himself, and the ending really drove home for me the cruel irony of him being turned. It meant he has to leave, he is no longer human and as one villager (not unkindly) points out, everyone knows that and with time they might come to see him as a poor reminder of their traumas under the vrakhiri.

But Brencis turning Lunka means he's once again had his love for his sibling used against him to guilt him into another set of shackles.

I'm very curious to see where they take this series, the writers did such a good job with how messy and grey human psychology can be.

There's a tumblr post floating around about this anxiety, and service workers on it chimed in how they love seeing regular customers.

For one it's the sort of recurring customer that keeps a food place open, but also it apparently helps with planning for how much ingredients to buy.

Mood, I went to do a backup save, and it wouldn't connect, but thankfully I had a save from last year that's after the intro portion of the game.

Triple backed up.

Solas' VA did a standout job. I'll also lament how undercooked the companions were because Lucanis and Taash's VAs were standouts for me in terms of performance.

I swear, Lucanis' "Mm, tell me more." from the podcast lives rent free in my head years later.

What the game really needs is a musician with a frog mascot who gets the fanciest of fancy skins.

That makes me think it didn't even crack 1 million in actual sales tbh.

Could be a bit of extra "ahahaha, watch this, rebel leader, how about I turn *all* your kids??" needling (teething?) from Brencis tbh.

As a artist, I'll drink to that.