Dragon Age Dreadwolf: The Veilguard?

pauli

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View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1845910/Dragon_Age_Dreadwolf/


I haven't seen much chatter about this one, which is reflected in the front page coverage ("New teaser reminds us that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf still exists" as it comes up in the search), and the lack of a GESC thread.

Based on the trailers, this one is about... the bald guy? I think I played through Dragon Age Inquisition last year, and I can't remember most of the characters - a common problem for me and the franchise. I presume it's still some sort of RPG, but given how the first three vary in style, who knows.

Anyone looking forward to this?
 
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Ardax

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I'm cautiously anticipating it.

I know that the BioWare building this game is not the BioWare that's put out any of the other games in the series, so I know I need to temper my expectations.

I'm also invested in the world and my fantasy friends, and I want to immerse myself in Thedas again and see the next chapter of the story.

So... I'm almost certainly gonna be buying it. At full price. At release. Because I'm a sucker like that for this setting.

I figure -- I preordered Anthem, so this can't be the biggest video gaming mistake I've ever made.

Based on the trailers, this one is about... the bald guy?

Inquisition Spoilers: Yes, this one is going to be about Solas as the antagonist. At the end of the Trespasser DLC for DA:I he was revealed to be the elven god Fen'Harel, and he monologued to your Inquistor his plan to tear down the Veil separating the Fade from the physical world.

I've got an anti-Chantry Lavellan mage who thinks she can fix him.

I've also got a Trevelyan rogue who wants his head.
 

Ecmaster76

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Anyone looking forward to this?
I still need to play DA:I but I'd settle for someone leaking the lore bible fore DA:O

The darkspawn/blight lore definitely hooked me but it seems like they've intentionally avoided it since. At least in II and Absolution.

Maybe Inquisition explores it further but I've been avoiding it for reasons (EA-related and otherwise)
 

Sulphur

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It's been in development for so long, it'll very likely be a sloppy mess. I'm concerned that they're going to continue with Inquisition's school of gameplay design, which was stuffed to the gills with asinine busywork made to give you the slimmest reason to explore its various semi-open environments. That was a shame, because there was a decent Bioware-style RPG buried under all that collectible and crafting loop cruft somewhere. Not a great Bioware RPG, mind, but about on par with Jade Empire or thereabouts.

I'm mildly curious about where they intend to go with the twist about 'the bald guy' - that'd be Solas, pauli. He's a companion and stuff. A decently interesting one, even.
 
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Ardax

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I still need to play DA:I but I'd settle for someone leaking the lore bible fore DA:O

Not exactly the lore bible but there's this:
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/3wuxy1/spoilers_all_codex_entries_for_each_game_as_pdfs/


Maybe Inquisition explores it further

Inquisition goes into a lot of lore for Thedas.

I'm concerned that they're going to continue with Inquisition's school of gameplay design, which was stuffed to the gills with asinine busywork made to give you the slimmest reason to explore its various semi-open environments

I don't think they'll make quite that same mistake again, but they'll probably make different ones this time. Expect to see influences from recent highly rated RPGs -- like Elden Ring.
 

richleader

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My expections are very low. All the people who built Bioware's reputation are gone, EA clearly doesn't understand what made the series popular to begin with, and by all accounts it has been stuck in a very special sort of development hell.

I had a lot of high hopes for the first game and while it ultimately delivered on being most of the things I wanted, all the signs of rot were there: for some reason my bioware account wasn't "sticky" so sometimes I'd load into the game without my character's inventory. And then all the cash grab DLC that was signposted everywhere. I mean, I kinda liked the idea of the enemy campaign (it was the one cool aspect of that terrible Lord of the Rings rpg on consoles), but it was so much "here's stuff, get all the stuff!" And it was so obvious that things were falling apart even then.
 

Apteris

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Kind and knowledgeable GESC,

Do I need to replay Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II to enjoy Dragon Age: Inquisition to the fullest?

I ask because I'm on Dragon Age Keep, filling in my backstory, and I don't remember most of the things that happened. "Nature of the Beast" outcome? No idea. "Paragon of Her Kind"? Lol. "The Landsmeet"? I think I remember making Alistair king, but little else. (That quest was bugged, though, at least for me.)

All I remember is romancing Morrigan and fighting a big dragon at the end of the game. And II is a total blank. I recall there was a pirate woman, a whiny mage, and a bisexual elf, but that's it. I literally could not tell you whether there was a final boss fight.
 

Ardax

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I guess when my character stepped into the portal with Morrigan it kind of mentally closed my narrative window into the world

That's rather the point of the DA games -- each one can stand alone. Some characters, themes, and events carry from one game to the next, but not your PC. It is a very different series than Mass Effect in that way.
 

VirtualWolf

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That's rather the point of the DA games -- each one can stand alone. Some characters, themes, and events carry from one game to the next, but not your PC. It is a very different series than Mass Effect in that way.
+1 I never played DA:O or DA2 before I bought DA:I and I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed and played the hell out of DA:I, and there was plenty of lore and background building to fill me in on what had happened.

My wife, who is by no stretch of the imagination a gamer (the only games she's properly gotten into are several of the Forza games, Diablo III, and DA:I) loved it as well, and it was the first game that my now-seventeen-year-old daughter PROPERLY got into. She was adored the world-building and the characters and everything, to the point that she's (still) writing fanfic and constantly drawing her own characters from its world.

Mark me down as "cautiously excited" for Dreadwolf.
 

Apteris

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Well, I'm not liking it so far.

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has a term, "the magenta game". He describes it thus:

It refers to games such as Overwatch, Fortnite and Bleeding Edge that present a punky, free-spirited, bohemian aesthetic despite being cynical corporate committee designed sexless overly polished guff. Typically this is brought across with an exaggerated, Disney Pixar-adjacent art style with lots of smug facial expressions, trendy music, trailers with lots of freeze frames on characters as their names appear at an angle in an edgy font, and splashes of bright neon color, including but not limited to magenta. Expect at least one character to have magenta hair, and bonus points if it's a partial buzzcut.
This is from a video which released on 2024-04-25, so written more or less two months ago. I find it downright prophetic.
 
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KT421

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The marketing team that puts together the trailer has probably no overlap with the team actually making the game. The trailer was a fun way to introduce the party, if strongly influenced by the hot trends in trailer-making, and I'm super happy to see Scout Harding promoted to full party member.

I maintain reservations about the lengthy time in development hell and the staff turnover, but I'm not going to condemn the game because the marketing team is doing what marketing teams do.
 
The preview of the opening of the game has been expanded to the first 20 minutes, instead of 15, later this week.

They also release a 24 second clip of the intro to a new city and Varric walking with a Rook (player)

It seems pretty clear that the art style of the preview above does not reflect the final game.

Big news is that you will see now only have 2 companions with you at a time, ala Mass effect.
 
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cblais19

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I finished the story of 2/3 Dragon Ages (1 was the one I put down close to the climax), where playing all the way through a single player game is very rare for me. I’ve heard some encouraging things posted by their “community advisors” who are super invested in the world & story. Put me down as optimistic and will buy it, and that for some reason the marketing trailers for DA have always been really weird tonally compared to the game (DA1 had a super odd early trailer).
 
Major change seems to be that they have adopted the Mass effect style of combat where you don't have direct control of companions.

In my current inquisition run I almost am always controlling my main character but at times it is nice to swap. If only a rogue would automatically swap when I try to pick a lock.

Also 100% single player with no micro transactions.
 
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NamelessMonster

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The art style still bugs me. The fade demons and shades don't look threatening to me at all. And the poor pride demon lost its legs. :(
The animation looks so floaty too. I don't remember DA:Inquisition being like that, but my memory is not the best.

Also, wasn't Varric blonde/ginger? And didn't he eschew a beard as a "fuck you" to dwarven social conventions?
 

mogbert

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I'm concerned about how some previous Dragon Age's were, where the first chapter of the game was super polished, then each subsequent chapter became more and more just phoned in, until you are running through a cut and pasted house with different boxes stacked up to try and make it look like a different house, where the game had one cave which they tried to pretend was seven different caves by changing what door you came in and went out of.

Basically, they expect that a lot of reviewers won't both playing past the first part, so they really only polish that, and maybe one other part halfway which they show off during events. And the rest is rubbish.
 

Ardax

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until you are running through a cut and pasted house with different boxes stacked up to try and make it look like a different house, where the game had one cave which they tried to pretend was seven different caves by changing what door you came in and went out of.
That was Dragon Age 2, and the map reuse in the game got rightly shit on at release. This was mostly a side effect of the very compressed development cycle -- 14 months between DA:O and DA2 (along with Awakening and the other DA:O DLC) -- that particular game had.

This was not a problem for Origins or Inquisition.