The Queue: Into the Veil

So, thanks to the generosity of a person who I will not name here for privacy’s sake, I am getting to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard and I have a lot of opinions.

• The above face is one I have made a lot. I mean me, while playing the game, have made that face. Obviously, I also made that face on the improved character creator, which is objectively one of the best character creators I’ve seen in years and definitely by far the best one Dragon Age has ever had.
• Scout Harding just gave me a huge bump on a theory I have about the Evanuris and the Titans and the origin of the Dwarves.
• I am salivating at all the lore reveals. I can’t even start listing them all without smashing straight through a spoiler warning.
• Gameplay, for me, is a learning process. It’s not instinctive yet. But it kind of reminds me of Amalur in that it marries a very active and fluid combat system to a deep RPG story and I like that about it.
• My Inquisitor dated Solar the last time around, so I’m hoping when she pops up this time (and she had better) that things get heated.
• I do think the writing, especially dialogue between party members, is generally good to great. But because this is a game trying to onboard players into a series that last produced a game in 2014, we end up with some pretty clunky exposition dumps.
• “Why doesn’t X character feel as fleshed out as they did in Y game?” Because this game isn’t about them, it’s about the new characters. I don’t need Morrigan fleshed out for me. I know exactly who she is. I need my party members fleshed out.
• I’m not that far into the game yet but I do like what I’ve gotten to see thus far and I’m super excited to get further.

I know yesterday was a lot of news so I’m not expecting The Queue to have many questions for me, so I figured why not just talk about what I’ve been playing? It’s basically Diablo 4/Baldur’s Gate 3 and now DA: The Veilguard because with my wife being ill I’m just not down for the kind of socialization WoW requires.

I’m just steering into the skid myself. Too much dropped for me to expect anything that’s not a question about something we posted an article about, so I’m just going to surf.

That’s not a complaint, guys. I love see y’all get worked up about WoW. I’m just kind of holding atm.

I don’t think it’s the Ultimate, no. I mean, there are people taking their grandkids to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and people who dress up in as close to Disney themed cosplay as they can get away with aka Disneybounding. If nostalgia is a drug, there are a great many dealers in today’s world.

Heck, among my favorite games we can find the Diablo series, World of Warcraft which I’ll be getting back to once my life calms down, and of course the latest Dragon Age when the first game came out in 2009, so fifteen years ago.  So it’s hard to argue that I’m not at least a recreational user of nostalgia.

However, what would a Sha of Nostalgia’s evil whispers be? Things were better when you were younger?

I agree with you. But it doesn’t upset me at all.

Look, let’s face it — ridiculous monetization is the face of the Video Game Industry and it isn’t going anywhere. Battle Pass shenanigans, turning content into a series of chores and then making it possible to skip some of the chores for real money, and so many other examples are just commonplace now. Events like the Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot box scandal in 2017 seem quaint here in 2024.

So if they finally give players the housing they demanded for decades, but the whole thing is a debacle of spending real money on lamps, all I can say is, I’m relieved that I don’t have to interact with it. The fact is, if it isn’t this, it will just be something else even worse.

I love Diablo 4, but I don’t love the in game store. Nope. I do not even come close to loving that. Instead, I feel utter apathy for it. The opposite of love may or many not be indifference, but I can’t call what my respond to the cash shop is anything but exactly that — absolute and monolithic indifference. And if they go this route with player housing, I’ll feel exactly the same way about it.

I mean, it’s not going to be WildStar so really, what difference does it make? The best possible iteration of the concept has already been done.

Okay, that’s the Queue for Thursday, November 14. I’m gonna go play Veilguard some more.