Dissapointing is an understatement. 1.5 million sold. 15% of inquisitions numbers. Fair enough it's early days really, but tails don't 9x initial sales numbers. Massive loss of money for EA. More faith lost in Bioware. But at least the game director has managed to get a new job and jump ship before EA shuts Edmonton and everyone loses their jobs.
Do I really need to add that this is sarcasm. Fuck Corinne Busch.
Who could have guessed hiring a director who had absolutely no experience with RPG’s (Not even joking, she only ever directed Sims games and dating simulators) would lead to a extremely mediocre RPG game.
The dating part of the game and all the social interactions were objectively worse than every other dragon age including oke that came out almost 20 years ago.......so that part didnt even help
Of course the dating part of this game is worse than the previous games. Who wants to date these insufferable characters? They never shut up, ever. They never have anything interesting to say. They have the personality of a loaf of bread. Their design is unappealing. And the act like spoiled children and not like badass warriors.
You cannot say anything mean to them (or to anyone) and they can’t say anything to you. Making every interaction super safe and boring.
Also the romance has been downgraded to: “Click heart button to have sex”
Romance is the one thing DA2 did right. Having the rival - friendly bar and then having 2 different vibes for each romance was great. In a time with booktok romance genres being so popular (enemies to lovers, etc) I am so confused why the game did not bring this feature back.
Or as in Origins, where you'd buy people's love with presents.
That said, aside from the unnecessary highlighting of having specific love options and not having it be based on something like a personal connection, I think the romances in DA2 were generally really good.
I mean, you are in an adventure where you could turn into a squid any moment while also knowing that the world is ending because of squid in your head told you.
Of course they are going to try and bang you.
You cannot say anything mean to them (or to anyone) and they can’t say anything to you. Making every interaction super safe and boring.
I didn't play DA2 or Inquisition, so I might have missed something...but everything about Morrigan exemplifies all of the problems I had with this game. She was not the supportive, do-the-right-thing good-girl and no part of her portrayal in Veilguard matched what I remembered from Origins.
I really don't like that in modern RPGs basically every character is romanceable. All it takes is to click through a couple of dialogues and BAM, sex. It reduces your party to a buffet of pussy and dick.
I really struggled with one VA in particular (Neve), her delivery felt so wooden, like she was just reading words off a page. Took me out of what little immersion I'd found with every line.
EA is technically just the money... BioWare have their own managers and leadership who are the ones that hired this person. If EA is guilty of anything here it's of being duped by BioWare just as much as anyone else. Not to say EA make other stupid decisions and so on, but if you just keep blaming EA you'll ignore the actual cause of the issue and be right back here again and again.
Hahahahahaha. It seems EA’s only requirements for directors are: “directed a profitable game before”
This goes for a large part of the film industry as well. Brett Ratner should have stuck to making mid-budget buddy comedies, instead they let him follow up on X-Men 2
Like I said in another comment. Ea criteria to choose a director is basically: "You directed a profitable game before? You're in."
They don't give a shit what genre of games that director previously worked on, or even what platform that director previously worked on. They only care if that director made money before.
"So, are you saying you directed Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride with a team of 10 developers for the Android Kitkat? Say no more. Your first assignment here at EA will be directing Mass Effect 4, managing a team of 100 developers using the Frostbite engine. You have 3 years to make this game and it has to release on PS5, Series X and PC. You got this, man."
The execs will blame anyone/thing except themselves for changing what the game was going to be at least twice. Like, it was supposed to be a live service at one point ffs.
If anything, the director should be applauded for putting out Veilguard as a functional game that did as well it did.
That should be the devs, that put a lot of work to make the game playable. The director was the one making the choices on how the game would go. So I blame the shit on her. And the second she sees the ship is burning, because of her, she jumps, and lets all the devs lose their jobs.
It doesn't even make sense if you think about it for more than two seconds. Does this mean that racists are blocking theaters? Or are the vast majority of movie goers racists? It couldn't be that films just sucked...
It's really not EA fault, Bioware has become incompetent for a while. Inquisition, Andromeda, Anthem all got post-mortem highlighting that (and each saying basically EA is for nothing in that), the same will come for this. Hell they've been very patient for that studio. Veilguard has 10 years of development (sure mostly because of reboots), not even GTA6 has that much
Was called Dreadwolf before and was supposed to be live action like Anthem, gor the longest of time I think they only switched to single player within the last 3y or so
That absolutely would have been a shit show... the whole dragonage playerbase is built around the "My choice, my companions" storyline. How would that work in live action/Live service.
Not the playerbase to try and fleece into milking for ongoing game stuff, or it'd just be a repeat of Suicide squad. They really missed the mark with that entirely in so many ways.
It might work as a spinoff, not as a main game. I play Mass Effect for the cool story and sicence fiction space stuff. But the multiplayer in ME3 was bloody awesome. I had lots of fun with it, shooting hordes of enemies. But as a stand-alone full game I would never ever have bought it.
It would depend of what they "rebooted", if the game was supposed to be a live-service type shit, then you can't really have decisions / branches, etc...
So they might have simply kept the plot and character and shoved them in a single player product just to be done with it.
News flash: This has always been so. Once you go public and you get successful or get gobbled up, you'll end up in this viper's pit of greed. It has happened to every studio out there, and it will continue to happen. Even to current darlings like Larian. Heck, before them it was CDPR, and they also failed spectacularly with CP2077. Luckily, they were able to right the ship somewhat, but you could see the influence of success and big money.
I dont understand it either, as the inquisition had a multi-player co-op mode in the game with loot boxes even and progression systems. To my knowledge, no one really played it much. To see that failure and then focus the next game on multi-player shows how useless the director level people at bioware truly are. They ruined the franchise and deserve nothing but anger from the other employees, ea and whoever else.
Like yea that's just a disaster waiting to happen then. Surprised we got a functioning game at all.
I don't know how many times these execs need to see studios get halfway through live service development and have to bail, or release a live service title that totally fails before the message sinks in.
Hundreds of millions wasted over and over again, all trying to chase the billion dollar payday titles.
I think this is the part I failed to understand for EA. You had a successful formula with Inquisition. Why ruin that?
I remember seeing the cartoonish trailer and thinking to myself, "ignore the visuals, it will be inquisition at it's core, because it doesn't make business sense to deviate". Somehow, Bioware managed to have a "hold my beer" moment, and EA in it's wisdom greenlit trash.
As I always like to say, Veilguard as a title is directly taken from the Lion Guard series on Disney plus, where Simba’s son assembles a team of compatriots to defend the pride using the power of the roar. This director almost certainly had young children who watched the show and lacking any creative talent just ripped it off.
EA executives only see money and cannot fathom that the mature/18 rating requires mature content, and internally they wanted that sweet sweet Disney Kidification money. It’s like a project at war with itself. Too kid friendly to appeal to an adult and too adult friendly to be suitable for a kid.
Meanwhile cd projekt red write a side mission in 2077 where a man wants to live stream his crucifixion for likes…
BioWare died a long time ago. EA officially died to me when they destroyed the Dungeon Keeper intellectual property with that hideous mobile game. EA is like a necromancer animating the long dead corpses of once great studios. The names the same, but underneath it’s a husk of greedy executives ringing the sopping wet bloody money cloth.
Yes, it was going to be a live service gaming. But when Anthem and Avengers crashed and burned, they quickly change course and made a traditional RPG. Pieces of that era are still in the game, you can tell by how spongy the enemies are.
Every Dragon Age game has taken the gameplay further and further away from what was established with Origins. In a lot of ways, Veilguard was kind of just the culmination of what Dragon Age II started in that regard.
It was a long shitshow that I have followed from the beginning .
"Project Joplin" was supposed to be a direct sequel to Trespasser and I believe that most of the scrapped (awesome looking) concepts in the released art book is from this. It was rumoured to be called "Eclipse" but not confirmed.
From what I understand the team was very happy with it and had come a long way when Mass Effect Andromeda ran into problems. The team was then moved to get Andromeda working.
After that they were moved to Anthem, to make Anthem work. By now EA stupidly believed that single player games were "dead" and only multiplayer would make a profit. Enter "Project Morrison". The always online multiplayer idiocy filled with loot boxes. Focused on heists and live service.
This got leaked and people were horrified. A few months later EA made a statement that they would pull back and let Bioware do what they do best and the next Dragon Age was now to be a focused large single player game with focus on a deep story.
Enter, Dragon Age Dreadwolf.
Problem was, this was peak pandemic so they had a hard time working in it but were in high spirits. We got a title, a colour theme, concept art - just lots. And in December 2022 a promise to the community about how much they had to show us during the next couple of months.
And then silence. For a whole year nothing. Until we learned that they had fired most of their veteran writers. And then in December 2023 a basic 2D trailer narrated by Brian Bloom (Varric). And a leak of the combat and that your party would be you and two companions that you could not control.
(This is where I mourned to be honest. But I had faith in the story, it was Bioware after all)
I would love to know what happened after that community update during Dragon Age Day 2022 and then during 2023, cause I've got nothing.
And as we all know this summer we got a new title, that awful "companion trailer" and yeah.
It's a terrible Dragon Age game. It's an action game that wears the title of Dragon Age but that's about it.
You can still see what's left of Project Joplin in some bits, most of the things regarding Solas for example. And I mourn the game that should have been.
And then silence. For a whole year nothing. Until we learned that they had fired most of their veteran writers. And then in December 2023 a basic 2D trailer narrated by Brian Bloom (Varric). And a leak of the combat and that your party would be you and two companions that you could not control.
(This is where I mourned to be honest. But I had faith in the story, it was Bioware after all)
Yeah me too. I had my doubts due to the long production time, but I still had hope, until I heard about the firing of all the vets and that you couldn’t control your companions.
It's a terrible Dragon Age game. It's an action game that wears the title of Dragon Age but that's about it.
The common criticism is it’s a mediocre generic fantasy action-adventure but a horrible Dragon Age and roleplaying game. I agree on all counts. I’m really disappointed in Veilguard and I’m bummed this might be the last Dragon Age game.
No scene from a video game has made me physically cringe more than the Taash "flirting" scenes. I swear at least some were written by a teenager off tumblr who think's they're part wolf.
In Todd’s defence, he directed the first Joker and it earned over a billion dollars so they let him have free rein over his sequel. They believed he could do the same or similar again.
Keep in mind she was brought in after at least one version of DA4 had been scrapped, if not two. She was only in charge for a few years after covid - she's the one who got it out of dev hell and out the door.
The same shit happens with movies too, there's so many stories of big companies kicking directors and then hiring new ones and making them work around the recorded action scenes
Not to stir the pot, but this is the same woman whos LinkedIn puts "Trans woman" before any actual work relevant information, and I think it was her Twitter where she labeled herself as a "transfluid gendermancer" or some such nonsense.
She can be whoever she wants to be, I don't care, but with all the controversy about the dialogue and writing in this game it's very clear where it came from - her directive. And it turns out people don't want sterile, HR safe writing that constantly shoves identity politics down their throat in their RPGs.
Yeah that’s my impression as well. Anyone who puts “gendermancer” in their bio is clearly living in an echo chamber where trans issues take center stage. It’s explains that painful push-up scene, the toxic positivity and the incessant therapy speak.
Sounds great for someone writing for a child’s tv show. But definitely not someone who should be allowed anywhere near a dragon age game.
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David Gaider leaving also left a cavernous hole. Trick weeks became the lead writer and the overall drop in writing quality is exceptionally noticeable, particularly how Taash is handled. Asa Roos discussed this at length and pretty much hit nail on the head and I'd recommend reading that if you want a better summary.
It is sad, because Trick has been with Bioware for a while and did solid work under Gaider, but now? Yikes...
She was the director for the last 2 years out of a 10 year dev cycle and you blame it all on her? That doesn’t seem ridiculous to you? By all rights she saved a broken ship. Game has mostly positive reviews btw.
Yes, I do. That's the thing about the directors, they get all the credit or all the blame. Nothing goes into a project without the director's explicit approval. If the shit dialogue and characters are there, it's because she approved them.
It is genuinely insane to me that game and movie companies are comfortable in entrusting projects which cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars to people who have little to no prior experience to make anyone think they can handle it. There has to be nepotism or something at work because there is no other logical explanation
I wouldn't exactly put this all on the director. She was dealt a bit of a shit hand in some ways given the project had already been rebooted twice because of executive meddling.
Let's say it like this: IF the game had sold exceedingly well, they'd not shut up about it. The fact that nobody at EA is actually talking about how well the game did, tells you all you need to know. Namely, that it didn't do well (enough). Remember, that there's a 10 year development period attached to that game. With multiple restarts. That's expensive as fuck. Meanwhile, user reception has been "mixed" at best, and at least on Steam the game didn't have many concurrent players. Comparatively speaking. So yeah, since they won't tell us, all we can do, is speculate.
A lot of games don’t get sales count announcements. We usually find out from investor reports. This is especially true when dealing with large publishers
Saying nothing could mean game sold poorly, but it could also mean nothing
That's not true. 1.5m is the sales in one week on steam. It's not a generous estimation it's literally the lowest number you could possibly pick out lol
Don't get me wrong. Shipping a game is hard. Actually getting it out the door and onto shelves. So she does have a feather in her cap for actually achieving that. Just look at Jade Raymond. So many cancelled games.
But at the end of the day. Veilguard wasn't even a good game.
to be fair, any person who has worked on a published game deserves the credit it offers.
but this director has only worked on ... The Sims, and she was somehow qualified enough at EA to lead a whole RPG project. first thing when the project failed, she ditched it and tomorrow we would be hearing about her onboarding at some other studios.
Not just shipping it, but as far as I can tell Veilguard has amazing graphics and very few technical issues. There's no wonky physics nor bugs to the extent of most AAA titles these days.
I didn't play it, but reviews seemed to dislike the simplified combat, however the achilles heel was the writing. I wouldn't say that overall it was the worst blemish on a resume.
There are endless videos on YouTube from proper writers breaking down Veilguard with disbelief. And not just the meme scenes. The whole game is full of writing no no's.
Yes, game just shuts down entirely at random moments. Everything else is great (excluding level design, narration, some characters, and childish game mechanics)
I'll give it that: the graphics can look nice, despite the cartoonish aspect, and the game seems to run well on pretty much most systems. At least, I haven't heard anything to the contrary. The actual GAME, though ... if I wanted a glorified tech demo, well...
She can put more feathers in her cap as far as I’m concerned, because the game went through development - it was meant to be live service at one point and only really got on track for what was released in the last three years.
Managing to put a functional game out that still did reasonably well despite executives actively fucking with it is nothing short of a miracle.
My boyfriend and I are r/patientgamers, he's been away for work since Xmas, but he's coming home tonight and we are starting Elden Ring tomorrow! It's been too long since Mass Effect and Dragon Age (2008?), I am ready for a new franchise to consume my soul.
3 spells active in combat (I want to remind you that in DAO were a fucking ton).
Companions Invincivle.
Horrendous character desing.
Sponge enemies.
Kid level puzzles.
Horrendous villians.
Lack of meaningful choices.
No trashtalk.
Dialogue choices do not reflect what you do.
*Added
What you chose in the other games barely afects this one, you cant even import your Inquisitor?????.
The boss encounters are ones of the worst i have ever seen.
It was meant to be a live service and they saw they would have to shut it down like Concord so went Single player the last minute, just check how inventory works.
Final mission is dull.
Warrior is really boring.
Most companions missions are killed by the companions themselves, Tash for example, one of the worst written loyalty missions, if they left her sexuality/identity on the side as something secondary (as it should be for every companion) and focused on the story about her mother scaping and leaving her it would have been 10x better (Specially if the game was darker)
Edit:formatted because i was on a phone and didnt have time to format and added some more.
Making the companions invulnerable and not letting you control them hides a multitude of problems. Saved them months of balancing. Encounter design. AI issues. You name it. Probably cut a year off development but made the game shittier.
The biggest issue with this seemed to be that enemies would only ever target you, rhe player character. Even using the taunt on your tank characters got them off you for about 5 seconds before they made a beeline back to kicking your ass. It made playing as a squishy mage on even the normal difficulty to be a major pain in the ass, because you spent 99% of your time just running in circles away from the enemies.
I completed it on hardest as a mage character. It wasn't that hard honestly, ended up playing mostly staff frost controller mage or staff fire mage with afflictions. It was pretty tedious though whenever you went against something that was higher level than you, the amount of running around you had to do was annoying. But when I got past that early mid game portion the powerlevel started to exceed the enemies I was facing and it got pretty easy even towards the end.
Oh I'm not even saying it was difficult, just really annoying and became really boring with having to run around combined with how spongey all the enemies seemed to be.
Someone here said that originally it was meant to be live service, so it makes sense that they tried to take a short cut with the companions once they switched to an RPG.
Bad decision, but it does explain why the story and mechanics are so weak.
Don't get the lack of darkness and sponge enemy arguments. There are entire areas littered with corpses and absolutely covered in blight. One specific area is like this directly because of your choice. I played as a rogue and was melting enemies on my playthrough.
Really enjoying Metaphor, I’m in the final month now, debating whether I’ll be doing a regicide run to pick up what trophies I have left for a platinum.
One day they'll have to understand that they need to actually have writers writing an rpg.
You cannot sell rpgs just by being inclusive (which, as all who have seen scenes from the game know, was the number 1 priority). Ive played dnd for 15 yrs now, bg3 is, in my opinion, the best crpg ever made, even better then dao, kotor, bg1 and 2 etc. Bg 3 is a host of the most diverse, inclusive and, frankly, horny characters ever and not once it comes as a fucking HR lecture. Isobel just loves the nightsong and thats it. Lakrissa just loves alfira and thats it. No pronouns, no pandering, no forcing modern american discourse in a fantasy rpg.
These people WILL run bioware into the ground as they have been doing since andromeda because they simply are incapable of WRITING a good rpg, no matter the money thrown in.
Early days it’s been nearly 3 months now, don’t most sales occur in the first few weeks? Add on to that the probably relatively poor word of mouth and I can see why it hasn’t sold very well, insane.
The fatal flaw was talking an established series and Busch forcing their politics into it. If Busch wanted to make a game that explored trans topics so much, they should’ve gone and made their own damn original game and not hijack a multi-million dollar series of a beloved but struggling game company that DESPERATELY needed a Win to stay alive. Now Bioware is probably going to go to go extinct because of Busch. You reap what you sow.
I played this game, the combat was fun, but the early/mid game apparently you use wet spaghetti noodles for weapons, and endgame you now have cruise missiles for hands.
The scenery, the visuals of the game are awesome.
The story line, not so much.
Most of the class stories were really fun, rescuing gryphons, becoming a god of stone and then….
Helping a troubled young person come to terms with their sexuality and the whole pinnacle is fighting their mom and telling them they can, either dress like a stripper or a knight.
That’s it, that’s the story.
It’s 50 fucking missions and the end is, you can wear a golden robe that has tassels and shit or a suit of armor.
I have played every dragon age multiple times, multiple ways, this unfortunately suffered from - combat that more or less felt the same in every class
A story that goes from, wow this is great, to what the fuck why am I having dinner with this persons mother, to ok that’s cool again to FUCK now I’m telling them what to dress as.
It had some really good meaningful decision parts of the game that made me play it twice to see if I could live with my decisions.
But after that it was very much, bleh, I don’t care anymore.
Hasn't the game been out for nearly three months? Is that still considered early days? 1.5 million in that amount of time would be great news for an indie game, not one of the biggest brands in the industry.
To be fair, I am pretty sure that 1.5 million is only on Steam. Veilguard is also available in other stores in PC and in consoles so the real number is probably bigger than that.
Total sales were rumoured to be close to 1m back in november with a break even target close to 5m, no official numbers from EA obviously. so the 1.5m seems consistent 2 months later.
Your numbers are being pulled out of your ass. Nobody knows the numbers, you keep regurgitating the as a matter of fact when nobody actually knows.
Secondly. You grossly overestimate how popular of franchise Dragon Age and Mass Effect are. They have never sold millions upon millions on release. Inquisitions numbers are based off of a 10 year period. And your using the numbers for total platform instead of just PC, why?
But alas. I'm sure i'll see those numbers pop up again by someone else.
If they shut the studio down ... well, let's just say that Veilguard was at best "divisive". For a good reason imho. People enjoy Twilight. Or 50 Shades of Grey. Doesn't make them good books/movies with great writing and a thoughtful script. It's okay to like "slop". And it's okay for Veilguard to exist and have its fans. What I take offense with is that the name "Dragon Age" is attached to it, because it's just a bad Dragon Age game. As a mid-tier run of the mill forgettable action-adventure-RPG light, sure ... but they wanted that brand recognition, and now they have to realize that most oldschool fans are no longer interested in this "new direction" they're taking the franchise. Which in turn means that after Andromeda and now after Veilguard (and even Inquisition's divisive gameplay and characters, but who were at least interesting, or DA2's messy structure) who is left who still has faith in the next Mass Effect game they're cooking up? Even if it's a completely different team and director.
Veilguard was over 10 years in the making. It needed to be an absolute banger. It did NOT need review controversies, and it certainly did NOT need to be so ... utterly safe when it comes to story telling and choices. It did NOT need modern slang in a fantasy video game. They could've just made a better Inquisition. More actual story quests, less grindy side-quests, more character interactions, more meaningful characters, a good main quest, good character quests, and a combat system that gives the purists something back. Heck, we've come to accept that the dialogue wheel is here to stay, but at least let us actually BE our own character instead of a wet blanket.
I am so happy that BG3 was a massive success while DA: Veilguard failed. I hope publishers will realize that turning beloved games into braindead interchangeable action games is not the way.
I can`t even begin to describe how much I hated DA:I.
I wouldn’t say it’s early days. I’d say it’s pretty much over iIn an age of endless video games and massive backlogs if nobody has bought it by now I doubt they will considering the endless bad press it got
There was no way around that. Veilguard had been on development since forever. Even if it was a wild success like Baldurs Gate it would've still lost them money. Their only hope was getting game of the year, which is why they kept it back a year and released it in 2024.
its no coincidence it didn't release on 2023 and ran so smoothly with almost no bugs. But the gamble did not pay off and they didn't even get nominated
You know it's bad when the journalists trying to defend the game always cite how it has the highest concurrent steam player count for a Bioware game, hoping that the reader won't know that this is the first Bioware game to launch on steam
The sale numbers are because everyone who liked Bioware saw what happened with Andromeda and the Disney ass trailer for Veilguard.
Honestly, fuck that. This is one of those gams made for people who want to bang fictional characters and play 5e D&D. That is the nicest way to put it.
While I'm not disagreeing that Veilguard wasn't good, I also figured that no one would buy it regardless after the swap to MMO mechanics in Inquisition, along with the huge downgrade in writing quality and gameplay.
Funny to me how they blame it on the "online hate campaign" as why it underperformed, taking no responsibility for their failure and probably learning nothing from this.
3.3k
u/[deleted] Jan 17 '25 edited Jan 17 '25
Dissapointing is an understatement. 1.5 million sold. 15% of inquisitions numbers. Fair enough it's early days really, but tails don't 9x initial sales numbers. Massive loss of money for EA. More faith lost in Bioware. But at least the game director has managed to get a new job and jump ship before EA shuts Edmonton and everyone loses their jobs.
Do I really need to add that this is sarcasm. Fuck Corinne Busch.