I love how the devs actually had the balls to say that the reduction from 6 skills in Inquisition to just 3 was to give us MORE choice.

Even Baldur's Gate 3 looks more like Dragon Age than Dragon Age. How embarassing.

Did we really needed a detective and an army scout to find the giant green glowing fortress?

Dragon Age died the second David Gaider left Bioware. How are you going to be true to a franchise known for gray morality and complicated characters when the people in charge of making the game share the same black-and-white, "everyone who disagrees with me is evil" attitude to the world? Dragon Age is my soul-game. I've bought the merch, I've read the books, I know the lore by heart. Just thinking about the fate of this once incredible franchise is so depressing I can't even put it into words.

I'm so sick of this "Joss Whedon's Avengers" meets "Guardians of the Galaxy" meets "Fortnite" meets "All the colors of the rainbow" stuff... Are our attention indicators so shot that we need a splash of neon on everything? And dialogue trying to relate to the audience... Instead of relating to the characters or the world.

I've always said something about fans. "People don't always know what they want *but* they always know what they don't want."

In regards to there being a cast of varying sexualities in these games: I think it’s incredibly telling how unqualified the new developers at BioWare are to make RPGs by how mind blown they seem at the concept of a ROLE PLAYING game giving you options to role play

Robert Conquest said: "To understand the behavior of any bureaucratic organization, assume it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." It also explains the last five years of game development.

This is what happens when all of your creatives never actually had to learn or grow themselves and basically just googled their way through life.

They had to do a quick update after the gameplay reveal that the game isn't just an on rail shooter due to negative feedback. However they've now created the need for players to wait for reviewers to prove that the exploration is interesting/meaningful

Me: I don't want Comic Characters. BioWare: Comic Charaters, check! Me: I don't want ME3 1st person Combat. BioWare: 1st person Combat, check! Me: I don't want cringe comments from companions. BioWare: cringe comments, check! Me: And also BG3 exists. BioWare : Who? Me: After 10 years in development I want a really good RPG! BioWare - Gone

I remember when Dragon Age was a morally dark fantasy where the source of the Blight and how it affected everyone was the thing. Remember Blights? Are Grey Wardens even a thing anymore?

The theory about the "modern audience" will ruin many companies. Yes "The customer is always right" was bad in many senses, but this new "kick the customer in the crotch" because "they will buy your product no matter what, because they are loyal" doesnt't work either. Fans aren't idiots, and not because you call your videogame Dragon age, it means it's a dragon age. I hope elder scrolls 6 that will come out like in 2040 doesn't look like that XP

It feels like Ubisoft has been having a mid-life crisis for a decade

The new Fable looks a little better. Wait, what? That's Dragon Age? Lord, end it all now.

Nothing will match the magic, dark edge and replay-ability that DA:Origins instilled.

How can you go from fascinating character like Morrigan to this

I have always wondered where these companies get their data that tells them they can attract a new audience. Business logic is that is always cheaper to keep a customer then it is to bring in a new customer. Is it some marketing company that has supplied a line of BS that they can bring in all these new people who don't currently play games if they just change direction?

glad I wasn't the only one ticked off by the "gay woman identified with quiet character so quiet character is gay now" thing

I’m sticking with the idea that our education system has now made 3 generations of idiots with the first and second now running companies into the ground. The modern audiences trope is idiotic. Narrative preferences haven’t changed almost at all in the last 100+ years. Old stories like Lord of the Rings (published in 1954!) have stood the test of time and are considered the gold standard.

Dragon Age already was the Game of Thrones for video games, and we would love it if the series went back to that

Another symptom of this removal of the serious dark fantasy elements (moral complexity) can be seen in the origins you can choose. I was looking forward to possibly starting the game as maybe a darker character like a Tevinter magister or maybe even a member of the Qun. Instead, the only Tevinter origin you can choose is a freedom fighter group that has only ever been mentioned in tertiary material. Can you say boring.

I disagree about Bioware "fixing" the Mass Effect 3 ending. They updated it to make the endings slightly different, but it doesn't change that all 3 endings were still crap.

'certain people represented respectfully' Translation: We're going to virtue signal and not write real characters since we're not willing to make them interesting or give them character flaws.

Despite my love of all the Mass Effect games, (yes Andromeda too) I think Woaz was right back when the Anthem trailer dropped and he said, "EA killed Bioware and is wearing its skin"

Minrathous was disappointing for me, I was expecting Greek Byzantine inspired architecture and culture. The great thing about the Dragon age series was it was almost a dark fantasy version of are own earth Fereldan - England The Free Marches - German States Orlais - France Tevinter - Byzantine Empire It’s a story driven dark fantasy where you’re choices are meant to shape the world around you. Veilguard just looks like Suicide Squad meets Overwatch.

The end of Bioware, really. Shutdown for the best, of a ghost of a studio which is no more.

So the "Pride Demon" is only purple. Shouldn't they also be red, orange, yellow, green, and blue?

I spent thirty hours learning the Origins of the Mage-Templar War in Dragon Age 2 only to have that plotline reduced to an afterthought at the start of Inquisition. I was disappointed to say the least.

BioWare appear to have gone full Disney. Seriously though, Bioware aren't the old BioWare of old, the company that made great games, It's been more than a decade since they've done that. What's bad for them is that there's going to be a direct comparison between what they sh*t out and BG3, because BG3 is more Dragon Age than what this game will be. It'll be a perfect demonstration of what can be achieved when you have qualified adults making a game and whatever the hell is going on at BioWare.

Dragon Age origins was really great, too bad they never made more games in the series, it had potential.

The downfall of bioware started when they sold their company to EA. During ME2 development it was the end of the golden age because they fired most of their last bits of competent staff and replacing them with no skill yes-men and from ME2 onwards its just dreadful and getting worse and worse.

After Dragon Age "God Damn It Anders!" 2 and Mass Effect "Color Coded for Bioware's Convenience" 3, I decided that the Bioware that I loved, and had set the standard for character writing, plot, mechanics....hell, for creative game development, was dead. I never looked back, and entered EA in my Book of Grudges. They would have to make Something Special to draw me back in, and I'm not seeing that. Re: Quips, quipping was part and parcel of DA and ME. Listening to Morrigan and Alaistair tear into each other was like popcorn-eating entertaining. Garrus or Tali was always good for a smile-inducing comment, and Zaeed just had an air of, "yeah, tell me your stories, man!" that my brother got sucked into hardcore. The difference is that the quipping was always done when things were calm, so you could appreciate it. I think the current stack of devs looked at the "What Makes A Bioware Game" checklist, saw "quipping", and said, "OK, we'll put in quips like it's an Avengers movie! That's what the kids like, right?" and as a result, you really can't appreciate the character moments because you're trying to kill a demon or something. But, what do you expect of a pale imitation of the original. edit: Spelling mistake that was bothering me.

You know what I would like? I would like companions that are your friends not a bunch of lecherous losers who think everytime you are sort of nice to them that you want to sex them up. Dragon age 2 was like this as well, so nothing new. You could see the igit mages stupid plan a mile away and no matter how many times you dont do what he could "not do without you" he does it anyway. And then at the end if you choose not to kill him immediately he acts like you love him or somthing whereas I am thinking "you will help clean up this mess and THEN I will kill you or maybe just throw your corrupt criminal self in jail for eternity".

I don't remember where I read it, but there was a comment that said something along the lines of "if you can only imagine being in seeing yourself, than little outside yourself interests you." And self-interested people are boring.

Just like Disney and many other companies, BioWare is not BioWare anymore. The mages that made the BioWare magic are not there anymore. BioWare is BioWare in name only now. They destroyed their institutional memory, look other places.

Love the BioShock reference

The biggest red flag is the fact that there no true leader ship. This is also a sign in the game, during the gameplay, the boss is in the air well doing aoe attacks on the ground, what are you supposed to pay attention to

You know, I'm suddenly seeing a lot of similarity in this and Saint's Row... And we all remember how that turned out.

Look, no one is saying you can’t craft a more personal head-canon for your favourite book, film, game. When we like something we use our imaginations and try to include ourselves; that’s part of being a fan. You love something so much, you want to join in. However, your head-canon is yours. It does not overwrite the original work - the canon. It’s easy to feel a connection to something that moves you emotionally, but that doesn’t make it exclusively yours or “coded” to you. Fandoms are a shared universe. Loads of fans have their head-canon and that’s cool, but the original material must be respected. If you don’t, you’ll soon go from a series selling millions of copies, to a series bombing because it appeals to one sole vision. You’ve pushed out everyone else … in this case paying customers … that is not a fan … I adored the rendition of Scout Harding in Inquisition. A hard working, professional scout who started as a farmer and developed a positive working relationship with the Inquisitor and then their friend. She could have just been your standard signpost NPC, but some people at BioWare invested in making her more than that and the audience loved it. Now, we have “Grizzled Harding” for the trailer. I don’t recognise our earnest, humorous friend from the earlier game. Hard-drinking. Hard-brawling. Sassy-ass. That is not Scout Harding. As for Varric having a beard … don’t get me started on not recognising your own lore. It doesn’t surprise me to learn Varric’s creator is no longer with BioWare. Again, making an established character change like some multifunction jigsaw piece. Again, that is not Varric, that’s a clone, Varric-01234. I do want to congratulate them on the positive aspects, as you say. No “surprise mechanics”, no always online, or live service rubbish. Doesn’t it just feel odd though to praise them for what should be the basics though? Great video. Great talking points. Keep up the spectacular work.

To say they hate their audience isn't really fair because this is a different bioware. Most of the OGs are not around anymore.

The moment they start talking about how they are queer and it's so important to the game, it tells us this will be a stinker. That's all cover for crap work these days so they can excuse failure with bigotry while reinforcing the position of bigots by pushing this crap and ruining franchises.

Dragqueen Age: The Vileguard

This looks like the kind of game that will pretend to have stealth elements and deep crafting just to get them on the box. The original Dragon Age was a great blend of tactical combat and a story you cared about. Dragon Age 2 was an experiment that failed, and Inquisition felt like an experiment they realized would fail so they changed direction at the last minute. But this? This isn't Dragon Age. This is Dragon Age Cosplay. If they hadn't insisted so hard that it was single player and offline I'd expect Twitch integration to help decide what demons spawn. Because the audience watching you game is more important than the handcrafted experience and story. And honestly, I'm half still expecting it.

Morrigan had one of the most interesting and complex relationships I had seen in a videogame romance expanding from the base game to a dlc to inquisition not only does the hero of ferelden can romance her but they can even have a child together and become a family compare that with the new rolance sistem where you are all basically a poliamorus party where the only reason to romance a especific character is to unlock skills ...... Man I hate modern writing so much is the artistic equivalent of junk food pure superficial trash with no deep value

Game Informer revealed the title change was also because Solas - the Dreadwolf himself - is not even the villain. It will be other Evanuris. I feel like that was not the original plan. But why make the main villain a former friend with complex motivations when you can have generic baddies?

When ea bought them and pushed out Mass effect 2 is when the enshitification began, I was there.

I'm getting some serious Redfall vibes here, and we all know how that went.

The Wayward Realms is the only game that aims to accurately represent medieval fantasy cities. It's on Kickstarter now.

Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and KOTOR were the golden age. 100% all of those games are what made me a fan of bioware....too bad that's all in the past.

I blame D&D getting popular with bigger audiences. Same with Star Wars. Its cool to be a "nerd" now. This new game direction feels like " LOL Im so nerdy Tiny Tina's Wonderland and Vox Machina are my whole personality"

I feel like they are treating us all like we are 9 years old. "Click this and win" This does not feel anything like Dragon Age. I wanted the story to continue. Are we just assuming that our character died off camera, and she never got to find Solace? That is just sad. I hope there is something more than that about the end of Inquisition.

I swear we live in the dumbest timeline. It feels like all new games or movies are soo stupid and/or bad! I've been relying on older content for my entertainment. Rewatching all my favorite childhood movies because I own a physical copy. Until the Dead Space remake the last new paid at full price game I got was Borderlands 3. I soon thereafter decided to play only older games or at least games on sale and so far I haven't been disappointed since. Most excellent video, Greg.

I think the greatest tidbit of information received in this video is that there are cheeseburger mugs available at your local Hobby Lobby. Thanks Greg's Wife! 🤘😃

6:00 What we have here is Dragon Age: Andromeda. I guess the wizards at BINO (Bioware in Name Only) didn't learn their lesson from the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle (and the aforementioned game for which ME:A was a tech demo for, Anthem), they think they can repeat it in Dragon Age. Bioware-EA have very little fans left for their games. The "Nu" audience is not coming.

At the end you hit on the root problem in media today - they make it for themselves and not a wide audience. That USED to be the goal of those in Hollywood and the games industries. They used to make movies, shows and games that did have a target audience but could also appeal to a wider audience outside. That is how you end up with Star Wars having a 70% male and 30% female audience. That 30% is NOT insignificant, yet they constantly act like it never existed. That 30% is proof of widespread appeal. Today we have creators making things solely for themselves and then telling the world if they don't like it they're a bigot of some sort. How is it not blatantly evident why this has led to failure after failure? They act like the LGBTQIABCDEFG+/& community didn't have a strong presence in Hollywood and gaming before now, which is absolutely ridiculous. They seemingly want to have majority representation for minority groups instead of equitable representation and widespread appeal. They want to make things for the smallest parts of our population and then cry "bigot" when the majority of the population can't connect with it because they reject doing anything that would increase it's wider appeal beyond that small target demographic.

Did no one at Bioware play Baldur's Gate 3?

I remember in Dragon Age Origins companions, I believe Shale and Sten would try to stab me if I attempted to romance them.

BioWare is having a severe self esteem issue. It used to be my favorite game company. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and KOTOR are classics from my teenage years. The problem is that they are so insecure that (unlike Larian and CD Projekt Red). So they rely so hard on superficial “marvel” humor and Overwatch character designs. The lack of confidence in IP has become a plague in entertainment.

I put in a funny little comment in my Dragon Age Origins analysis script that I believe will age like fine wine: "Who the fuck are you marketing this towards, because it's absolutely not the people that used to buy your games."

In my headcannon the series ended at Origins

To quote my bisexual friend: "Pansexual is just a bisexual person who wants to be special."

Finally someone whose speaking facts… all I’ve been getting is recommendations of how great the game is going to be and blah blah blah no calling out the “modern audience” bs injected into the game. It’s safe to assume ALL triple a companies hate their fans. Except maybe larian, which has only recently become triple a. I mean, we’ve even seen cdpr hire Anna megil (the person who wrote on the flop avatar game) as their HEAD WRITER for their next cyberpunk game; as well as even directly saying they’re making their games for “modern audiences” if larian falls there will truly be no triple a companies standing.

Its both an incredible time to be a RPG fan.....and a terrible time. We got BG3 and some good AA titles......but on the other hand if you are a older RPG fan who grew up with Bioware being your favorite PC developer, and Square Enix being your favorite console developer, you really cant help but feel a sense of existential dread.

Dropping Bioshock references is tight!

So we have a mentally ill game director who believes in the plodding team mediocrity attitude of many large companies who is making a new game because they don't understand the old game. Awesome.

I'm still waiting for publishers to have the characters do KZfaq style ad-read segues, to keep it "organic". "Wait, you need a shield. Just like Surfshark shields your data."

A slave obeys.

You've perfectly described my feelings towards the trailer...makes me very sad that over the past 11 years, this is what they had for us. Their goal was to move in a more "Origins" direction, and they went for Overwatch vibes instead. Nearly heartbreaking man...how are they THAT disconnected??? Who's choice was this? Why didn't anyone say anything when they thought this was a good idea?

To be fair, Resident Evil went after the Call of Duty crowd with 4, 5, and 6 and all of them easily outsold the earlier entrees.

I still remember getting torn to pieces by the dogs in the dungeon at the beginning of DA:Origins.

i gotta say that it feels like greg hasn't played any of the dragon age games. the whole mentioning of quips, combat, and the part about the pride demon were bad points in all honesty. if quips in the midst of a conflict are an issue, then these games are not for you. look at sera in inquisition or varric in the second and third. just plain tomfoolery

*takes a break from getting my butt kicked in a video game to listen to Greg talk about video games*

I've read the interview where they basically confirmed, that solas won't be an antagonist, because he will be trapped in the fade and other two elven gods (probably female, hard to tell by names) will be actual enemies. Hence they scrapped "Dreadwolf" - because there isn't the "Dreadwolf" in the story. Solas and protagonist will have a "telepathic bond" and that's pretty much all. And that varrick isn't part of the team (probably only an npc at best, at worst he's dead or sulking because they broke bianca) is a travesty.

The "You have to invest in the relationships in order to unlock skills" seems like an (poorly done) attempt to mimic Persona 5 Social Link system. In that game, investing in relationship quests unlocks bonuses that make your playthrough easier and that is on of the game's shortcomings imo, since sometimes you NEED to spend time with a character you don't really like because the bonus skill locked behind the Social Link is just that essential. Here it seems to be even worse, since you'd be locked with an useless character unless you actually spend time with them. "Oh but if you don't like them, you'd probably not use them anyway", I hope that's the case because lord knows I've played a plethora of RPGs that force a specific character in your party at times.

Honestly, I'm severely disappointed with how this game looks and all I want at this point is for BioWare to either scrap the story of this monstrosity or leave my companions/friends from Inquisition the f**k alone, except for Solas and Vivienne; those two can go eat bees. (2020-2021 were a rough few years and I got waaaay too attached to the companions in that time. Don't judge me, I come from a very isolated family living in the middle of basically nowhere and extra isolation hit real different.) Also, 18:06 *YOU BLOODY WHAT?!*

One of the things that always puzzles me is when companies want to change their own franchises to try to look appealing to a wider audience. The final fantasy series is an example of this. Fans want the turn base system for FF not the action based system but for some reason Square thinks that an action based system is better because its what their audience wants and they are wrong. Elden Ring is a real good example of what allot of companies should be doing. It is a hard game with a dark mid evil violent tone but fromsoftware didn't need to change their formula to fit a wider audience and till this day is the biggest game of the year.

Don't worry, most of us still feel about this new DA the same after the gameplay reveal as after the 1st trailer. It's gonna be a pile of sh*t. -__- :D The BioWare we knew, long gone. And the original core team members of BioWare coincidentally started to move (escape), just around EA bought them... Sadly BioWare is just a sinking ship since.

Just discovered your channel and watched a whole bunch, Wanted to compliment you on far you’ve come & how much you’ve improved: pacing, wittiness, comfort in front of the camera. So good Greg, keep it up!

I like that I'm in the background of your videos :D

Greg, as a fellow Dad, you have great taste

'''Devolver is like the A24 of games'' - best analogy I've heard this year.

It looks like they made Dragon Age 2 all over again. My whole Dragon Age experience has been waiting for an actual sequel to Origins instead of whatever the heck they've been doing to this series for years.

This kunari looks more like a tiefling now.

I loved the concept of Anthem and was heartbroken on how bad it was. It got so bad that I didn't care when they shut it all down.

The companies are all now to the point of doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on the New Coke Mentality they invested everything in over the past decade.

Got a marvel ad right when you were taking a sip of mug around 15min. Thought it was part of your video for a sec. Timing was perfect and hilarious

I need to ask. Did it take anyone else a minute to realize that it was Varric. I maybe stupid, but I only noticed it was hime due to his voice and Bianca.

Ohh just F off with the ME3 ending slander. We're firing the Crucible no matter the method. It only makes sense that the visuals are pretty similar. If you've paid any attention instead of stroking your own superficial resentment, you'd realise every major choice during ME3 is the ending and leads to massively diverging states for the Galaxy after unleashing that weapon. Hell even with 2024's AI tech we lack te computing power to accurately portray all variations beyond the firing sequence. Ever since Priority: Mars I knew we were heading toward a Black Sun Cannon ending (Supreme Commander, the GOAT RTS) and it delivered. Also Bioware started to fall off with ME2: the corridor shooter and thermal clip BS. ME3 and Andromeda was the last push, better than ME2, but the studio is indeed dead inside post-Andromeda.

My personal favorite thing about the fact this game is coming out, is that I, a person that had never played Dragon Age, just got the 3 original games 90% off in a sale. So it's time for me to sink my teeth into those! I may pick this up after all reviews and things (and the inevitable patching of issues) go out.

I clicked on this vid hoping that I won't be as mad at the game as I was going to be. And I was dead wrong. I'm so mad this game was allowed to be made it's unreal. How are these people still getting work?!

Not even 30 seconds in and the character Rook was floating like the gameplay wasn't really ready.

It is such a weird decision to be inclusive by making every character a sexuality that excludes the majority of people on the planet. Gay, straight, by, whatever. Most people aren't pan sexual. Being inclusive means excluding every sexuality that isn't inclusive enough. Inclusivity would be having different characters with different sexualities, or just letting the player choose what they are interested in (the whole point of an rpg). Anywa, point is the more inclusive modern companies and societies are, the more exclusive they get. Being gay isn't inclusive enough, so no characters can be gay. They must be pan sexual.

The #1 clue to me to check out of this game was the relegation of "The Warden" to just another party member. The whole "origin" of the story was about the Grey Wardens. It'd be like playing "The Witcher" when you're not a Witcher. They can't seem to pick a story direction and stick to it, same thing with gameplay. Each game they keep changing direction. It feels so disconnected and disjointed now they don't even feel like they are part of the same series to me anymore.

Honestly the changing the name from dreadwolf to Veilguard immediately told me how out of touch they were Literally just the chad and virgin meme just with the subtitles

Looks like Immortals of Aveum got the Gotham Knights + Overwatch treatment in a fantasy setting. A digital bowl of vomited color. Someone wanted a game to play high. Makes me remember that Skittles commercial: "THE COLORS! THE COLORS!"

He said it! “Would you kindly” Greg was this an Andrew Ryan reference from Bioshock? I have no choice but to hit that like button 😂

As far as I’m concerned, Greg, if someone is adapting source material, it doesn’t matter what it is if you did not make it, you are to stick as close to the source material as humanly possible doing otherwise changing things unnecessarily is narcissistic and disrespectful. This is what Hollywood has been doing for decades, and it is been slowly and surely piss me off even more.

You gotta look into the mass effect 3 reaper theory. It makes so much sense and I believe it's what they were hinting at

Over a decade in the works and they cant even give us an actual release date with the rebranding...