Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

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Come on. What's up and welcome back to another episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast live for Monday, October 28th, 2024. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by Andy Cortez. Hello, Tim. Snowbike, Mike. Good morning, Tim. And Greg Miller.

Hello, Timothy. I have assembled this group of gentlemen today because we are reviewing Dragon Age, the Vail Guard. I'm very excited to hear what y'all have to say about this game. every waking moment that I've talked to either of you, any of you, you've been playing this game, talking about this game, journaling about this game. But is this game good? Do y'all love this game?

Is this one of your game of the years? Many of your game of the years? I'm very interested to find out because I truly do not know at this moment in time. But remember, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about all the biggest reviews, previews, and topics and video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services. around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive

show. For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube superchats as we go. So if you have any questions about Dragon Age, the Veil Guards, or how it might compare to some other games this year, please write those in and we'll get to them throughout the show. Little housekeeping for you. You just got our review of Life is Strange double exposure. on Kind of Funny Games Daily, so you can go back and check that out after this. And then the stream after this is going to be very special. We're going to be doing a live draft. Actually, Mike, you want to talk about this?

Yeah, Tim. I'm excited to announce that the kind of funny basketball game is official, and it's happening. And today, we make teams. Today, we bring you out to the schoolyard just like it used to be, and we go one by one down the line with your vote. Kind of Funny Best Friends. We'll vote on the teams that will play in the official kind of. a funny basketball game. You will do sequel to draft day.

It's draft day too. It's going to be a really fun time, Tim. So tune in for that one. We got T-shirts. We got photo-ops. It's going to be a really good time. We got photo-ops. We got photo-ops.

What hell is that me? When you get drafted first overall, first big, you got to get a photo. Of course. That's right. I love it. I can't wait to see if it goes down. But remember everybody, we will be doing the kind of funny basketball game where we actually play basketball

against each other for kind of funny day, 20-25, our 10, year anniversary. So everyone get hype for that, but today we are drafting the teams for that monumental event. So please stay tuned for the shenanigans that will ensue. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's

Gregway about why internet comments suck. And you can get the election 2024 KF podcast this afternoon and tomorrow on YouTube and podcast services. Thank you all, but specifically our Patreon producers. Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today

we're brought to you by New World Eternum, and phasmophobia, but we'll tell you all about that later. We got to get into it. We had to stop keeping the people waiting. It's topic of the show. Tats, dot. Dragon Age, the Vail Guard, formerly known as Dragon Age Dreadwolf.

Better name. It should be known as Dragon Age Vailguard. I'm with Andy on this one. Drop the, just drop the the. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. The developer, BioWare. Of course, this is after Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda,

back to back. Oof. We could say, Mrs. Oof. Right? So do the are they back? We'll have to find out. Big question.

The Steam description is as follows. Unite the veil guard and defy the gods in Dragon Age the Vail Guard. An immersive single player RPG where you become the leader. Others believe in. Wow. Did you get chills? You know, I'm ready for it. Ready to get him.

Who wants to give me him first? Andy, Mike, Greg. Who wants to get this thing off? I'm messaging. Barrett, right? I mean, I think the people, why? watching and listening, you're like, man, Snowmike, Mike is on this? What the heck?

Oh, Mike! I'm happy to say that I am on this, but I will save my opinion for last because I am very excited to hear what Greg has to think. But most importantly, I'm excited for my best friend who loves BioWare games, so he's favorite of all time. So I'm really dying because I would play the game and message him and ask him questions about it. And he said, Mike, stop spoiling things.

Don't talk to me. So I'm very excited to finally hear with Andy things. So let's start with Andy Cortez. The biggest Dragon Age fan I know up to this point. Yeah. What do you think of Dragon Age the Vail Guard? Dragon Age the Vail Guard, Tim. Within the first five to ten hours, all I can think is, thank God this game doesn't

suck. Yeah. Oh. Thank Christ. This is like, I'm, you know, enjoying this experience. Is it amazing? Is it a great time? You know, opinions can kind of waver here and there, but I was like, thank God this

game doesn't suck. And then son of a bitch, the game just pulls you in. And I found myself loving it by the end of it. Beat it last night around midnight, 43 hours. A lot of side quests I didn't do

near the end of it. And I only completed like, or I'd say there was about three companions that I didn't completely do all other side quests for. harsh but

those must have sucked to be those three well I was just running out of time running out of time and I was also pausing a lot to take capture footage for the background and shit like that but I would give Dragon Age the Veil Guard

a 9 out of 10 amazing 9 out of 10 from Andy Cortez it started off just again kind of very I'm glad this doesn't suck I'm happy that this is not going to be a disaster I'm happy that I'm happy that

enjoying it, but there was nothing really blowing my mind about it, aside from how much fun I have with the combat, aside from how creative it gets, how crunchy it gets, I just love the, I love the feel of the dashing and the pairing and all that stuff just feels friggin' fantastic. And it takes me

back to kind of my time with Gosa Sushima where I never got bored of the combat, so I just sought out the combat as much as possible, and I know that your mileage may vary there, because some people may just feel like it gets repetitive, But I had a great freaking time with it. And I think there's no bigger, like, accomplishment or achievement for this game where we walk in, I think, like, after my first night of playing, and I tell Greg, hey, Greg, I did that, you know, I'm kind of past our preview period where we got to preview the game and experience that character's side quest, which, by the way, kind of, I'm still not interested in it, whatever.

and that character's side quest just like became probably my favorite NPC in the game and I'm just so blown away about that because initially I'm like kind of annoying kind of don't really care for them being here and by the end of it just fully amazed by the voice acting and the writing and the game has some drawbacks as well

I'm not going to say like it's a perfect game I think that dialogue can get a little cringy in some moments and I think that there are some scenes systems that I wish they just kind of went the extra mile with, but there's just so much variety in the combat and the powers. And I was just really, really blown away by a lot of what I was experiencing with side

characters and really, really great and well thought out side missions with these characters and kind of gaining their favor. And I'm just really excited to kind of give it another shot with a different character to see how things change. Like, I really, really love this game. I am so... I'm over the moon. So happy for you, Andy.

You deserve this one. Greg Miller. You also, I don't necessarily know you to be a Dragon Age guy, but I know you as a big. This is my first Dragon Age. Western RPG guy, right? I am. And I love, obviously, Mass Effect 2 and 3. Those were, I came on really to fall in love with BioWare for Mass Effect 2 and go through that

and really enjoy that in 3. Have you beat the game and how long to take you? I have beaten this. I beat Dragon Age last night as well, about 1145, me and 80, right and seen. Wow. Up late. 50 hours for me, 5-0 on that one. There's a lot, I think, that goes into beef up my time.

I did a lot of photo mode stuff in there, which I do want to talk about later. And I do have stuff up on Instagram.com slash gameover, you know, spoilers. And on top of that, when we did, what, the last review we were in here for that mattered. Oh, I was talking about metaphor and given my impressions, I talked about journaling

and how, since metaphor was so long, I started journaling at the way I started journaling persona 5, right? And I was talking about how much I wished I had journaled for Starfield, right? And journaling a video game for me is not taking notes for review. That's writing about the decisions, writing about what's going on in both my life and then what's happening in the game and then the characters and the things and thoughts like that. And I was like, you know what?

I'll try it for Dragon Age. And so at multiple times throughout Dragon Age, I would stop and write like actual like little paragraphs of like why I did this or what I was feeling or why I thought my rook would do this kind of thing or whatever. So I think that might have beefed up my time because I know I'm ahead of Mike and Andy here. And I did not do every side mission. did nearly every companion thing. I had one companion who's to get them to max loyalty to be ready for the main mission would have required me to go do a bunch of faction stuff. And I was in the anteboat of I did not have enough time.

And if we, this is like, I'm bursting at the seams with things to say in general, right? While we're here just to get out in front of it, this game did itself such a disservice with its review period. I'm not holding that against it by any stretch of imagination. But 13 days for a game this big, it would have been nice to have three weeks with this,

to actually digest it and go, because we're going to talk about that when we get into the score here. I also would have gotten to the end quicker had I not restarted twice. Would have been helpful for you, yeah, 100%. But I had to customize my Inquisitor. I got it.

And I made my inquisitor look and basically become Shepard. I made my inquisitor of the male shepherd, so I've given like that little shaved hair. But it made a little bit older, so it was like some wider kind of grayer hair. Looks really, really sick, then. In the chat over here too, if you don't mind me,

Julian says, such a dick move on EA's end. I don't think that's fair. It might be. It might have been EA saying, don't give them too much time with it, which would be a weird response. I think it's more the fact of the matter with how video games work.

Video games are hard. They're working as long. Day one patches take a long time. I don't think most games, I bet especially good games, people would want to get to your hands as fast as possible so you can see and do as much as possible.

I don't think this was a, we're withholding information as much as like we are trying to land the plane and get it nice and all the screws tightened on it. I digressed him. 50 hours is how long I did. Yeah, I mean, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it because you, Greg Miller in 2024, playing the game for 50 hours in that truncated time with the life that you have. The truncated time was the thing.

Yeah, right. Says a lot. Thank you to my wife, Jen, for being such an amazing partner letting me sleep downstairs last night. And also, like, I got, I go. I got to get down there and do it. Yeah, it does say a lot of like, I wanted to make sure I was buttoned up for this review, obviously. And I think it would have been, I think what this game is requires you to play as much as possible to talk about it. So talk about it.

What do you want to know, Timothy? I want to know what you would give, Dragon Age, the Veil Guard on the kind of funny scale. I think it's an interesting one, and I think because we're such a cool company and it's such a cool show, we're going to do that here. We're going to figure that out together. Okay. Because I've been across the board with it. I mentioned journaling in Dragon Age. I journaled in Dragon Age.

I have 44 pages. These are pages ones. There's no real spoilers on there of just copious notes and doodles and highlights and things here. and what I was doing, doodles of the characters, I was, all these different things. 44 pages of journal notes here, right? If you want to go here to when I was doing it on day one, right, or maybe not even, I think I'm, when's my last check in here? I got the Part 7 trophy there.

We're well into the game here, maybe two days. I said, my first real thing here, right? Oh, here it is. 10 hours in, I'd give this 9 out of 10 and say it's my game of the year. It's hitting on every front I want. feel like I've been looking for this game for a long, long time. I think go on to say, so why not at 9-5? Why not at 10?

Whatever. And that's 10 hours in. 50 hours in, I would say that I am between an 8 and a 9. I imagine when we end this show, I'm going to say 9. The problem here is that there has been no time to process any of the emotions, feelings, and thoughts about that, about how you review a game and what you talk about. And so what I find myself left. with after rolling credits on it last night and sitting there and putting my final journal entry

for now in there. It was the idea that like this isn't the game I thought it was, if that makes sense. And I don't, and I knew that well before we got to the 50 hour credits are rolling mark. I knew it after this. But it's so much of like, there's a moment that we won't spoil here and we're going to do a spoiler cast. I'm going to do, I'm going to put my entire journal up as a PDF on Patreon for free. We'll give you a link or whatever. We'll say kindoffundy.com slash Greg's Journal. There's a moment in here where it really clicked for me of like, oh, this isn't an RPG like I was expecting. This isn't, I'm not role playing.

This is an action-adventure game. This is an action RPG, whatever. I am watching Rook's story. I'm making the choices. I'm coloring in it. It's very much my old Walking Dead Telltale stories I used to say. We all have the same coloring book page. It's how you fill in and what you do with it, right?

And so I reset my expectations in what I was doing there. And you make choices in the game, blah, blah, blah, but you go through it and we're all going to get to the end of it together and see the same thing together. And it's not ABC choice, or red, red, red, blue and green, whatever it was back for Mass Effect 3, right? Like, there's things that'll happen and change there. But it was the idea that this wasn't me living as this character. This wasn't for all its faults.

my Starfield Becky character where I'm like I did this and I did that and this is all thing Starfield let you play the theater of the mind really where it was you're out there doing

so many other RPGs you're out there in the wilds doing the thing and so you're filling in the gaps on your story and your things this Dragon Age

the Vail Guard is telling you a story you are rarely given you're the freedom of what quest you want to take here but it's not like you're wandering around

and getting a new conversation that's then you're walking to the giant exclamation point you're walking to the objective and doing thing. And I love that. And I had a great time with this game. But to get to the end last night and be like, oh, credits rolled and I was very much like, after credits, it's going to be a new game plus.

It's going to be jump back in and pick up because there's more shit to do, yada, yada, yada. I am going to be so motivated to platinum this game. I'm going to be motivated to keep going. I'm going to go back and want to see this story that I stopped because I knew I needed to beat the game. And I was shocked at last night, credits rolled and I was like, okay, I'm going to go to bed. and it was like, oh, like, my, I've enjoyed this entire ride with Rook, and I have my criticisms as well, but the story's done now. And I wasn't expecting that. And so I'm not shaken, but it wasn't where I expected to be. If you would have talked to me yesterday morning when I was gearing up and excited to get there and roll credits, it would have been a different thing. But here I am, and I'm like, oh, I'm done with it, which is good, but different than where I thought it would be.

But all that said, walked in today, finally we can talk. It was just me and Mike in there. And he goes, what about this? And I'm like, oh, my God, and this and that. Oh, and that happened for you? That didn't happen for me. And then they did this. And I couldn't believe they did that, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, looking through the notes this morning for really the first time,

because, again, we've just been going, right? I have things about tweaking my build here of, like, what I was going to do and go through and what I wanted it to be different, right? Quotes, obviously, of like, we just don't let people turn evil. Holy fucking shit, blank, like, what's happening in there, like, the toughest choice yet. Fuck this guy. You know what I mean?

Like, this is special. And this is my journey in this game. And to sit here and be able to look back and on every page have something that I really do think is outstanding and different. And again, even though I'm sitting here, like I want to talk out the entire score here, I imagine I'm going to come down and amazing

because this is amazing, right? And to sit here and have this page of like, rank those companions where I went through and ranked them all and said what I liked about them and what I didn't like about him. And to look here and be like, number five, this character that I was like,

I think is maybe similar character of you. like, I've never dug you or whatever. What they do in their side quest, her side quest, his side quest for everybody you go through, do? Because everyone in here, every one of your companions, I was like, either I loved you because of this or I didn't like you at all because of that. And then you'd get to a point. And I'm like, oh, fuck, this is a good.

Oh, your companion sidequist is really good. Yeah. Oh, we got to this thing. And like, some of them don't pay off in the most, uh, daverin, I'm never going to be your guy. You know what I mean? Get out of here with your great ward and shit. I don't like it at all. but like so many

guys. That's my guy. You better watch that. That's my guy. So many of them turn me around of like I think you're one dimensional. I don't like you. And then I'd get to that thing like fucking like that is what bio we're so good at. And that's the storytelling.

And like I know I'm just ranting and I know you want to go. I love that you have podcasts and the podcast in your journal. I love that you get on it. But like I think you know again like again why I think I'm going to be so high. And I totally understand other people not being. But like a great thing is I came up to get a drink one day. And Jen's like, how's it going? I'm like, baby, it's great.

it's been an hour and I haven't fought anybody. I'm just talking to people. You know what I mean? Like that's what I like to do in these games and that's what I want to do. And like Dragon Age tells a really, I think the main quest is very like, okay, cool, you're doing this thing. But the side stuff and the characters you deal with and the way you talk to them and the relationships you form, they're special. I have a great little anecdote I want to say before Mike goes. Because we were in the Discord and Mike was going through it.

He's playing the game a lot. He was out for a while. He wasn't feeling good. So he had a lot of time to game, right? And he goes, man, he's fucking another conversation with this MPC. Like, I just fucking talk to you. How do you want to, like, why do you still have more stuff to say? I was just with you a little while ago.

And yet you still want to hang out. And I was like, Mike, I need you to listen to what you're saying right now. And just reflect on your life. And I want to hang out with Andy all the time. I have so much to tell him. So that's all I wanted to say. So we got a nine amazing from Andy. Greg has undecided.

He will decide by the end of this episode between an eight and a nine. 8.5 is an option there too, Greg. Oh, I'm at the scale. I would definitely think, yeah, 8.5 is right there. Yeah, somewhere in there. It's too low. I'm not going that way. So it's going to be an 8.5 right now.

Snowbike Mike. Talk about Drake. And actually, how much have you played and did you be here? Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's Mike. I'm really excited to talk about this game because, yeah, I had a lot of time off due to a big cold, so I got to play a lot.

But I finished the game. I fully completed it in about 41 to 42 hours. I finished all of the companion quests. And I did more side quest than you could even count. Actually, I counted them all. It was a lot. I probably got 85% of the side quest completed. So I had a lot of fun.

I got lost in this game, Tim. And I'm going to give it an 8.5 out of 10 a great game. Every single time I played this, I said, this is great. I'm having a really fun time. And I will say that BioWare's back. This is going to go down as one of BioWare's best titles. When I look back on this, it is the true Western RPG. There is so much to do.

There is so much choice. There's so much fun to be had from the combat to the companions to the conversations. I will say for players out there that are maybe new to the Dragon Age franchise or just jumping back on board like myself. It is a slow burn at the beginning. It doesn't feel smooth. There's a lot thrown at you. The dialogue doesn't feel as good as it should until you get your companions.

When you get into the meat of it, Tim, it turns on and it flows much better than the beginning. And so at the beginning, I didn't love what I was seeing, but I liked the combat a lot. So I went forward through that, and I will say after 41 hours, I had a great time with this game. It's a blast. It's got a lot to do. The story is kind of by the book, but you know what? I enjoyed the big overarching story. The companions had a lot of heartfelt moments.

There was a lot of cool things from characters I don't really care about to characters where I'm like, yo, that's my dude right there. And we're going to ride or die on some of these cool moments and choices that we can do together. I loved exploring the cities. I thought they were a little lifeless in some of the more city hubs. But the whole world itself is beautifully designed. There are nooks and crannies to explore chest to grab.

There is awesome, like scenic viewpoint where you go, wow, this. This is unbelievable looking. This is awesome to character designs and models that will just wow you from the floor up of like, man, they really nailed how this person looked. The hair looks great, which is surprising to say except for it. If you, there's a griffin in the game. If you pet the griffin, my girl's hair would whip back and forth like a Willow Smith music video. It was crazy, Tim. But all in all, this is a great game.

And I'm excited to talk more about it. I'll keep it simple. Andy, Mike said something that I want to ask you. So BioWare is back. is BioWeirback? I think so with this title, yeah. I mean, I agree with a lot of the sentiment out there that this feels like their best game

since maybe Mass Effect 2. I think Three had a lot of amazing moments. I love Mass Effect 3. Don't get me wrong, but this movie just, or this game just really kind of surprised me in so many different ways. If anything, it restored so much faith in what the future could be.

Because I'm more of a Mass Effect guy. I always have been. I didn't, I, I liked Dragon Age Origins and I really, really enjoyed Inquisition. I've rented Dragon Age 2 a couple times and wasn't really in love with it. So I dropped off of that pretty quickly. But Mass Effect was always my shit. And as somebody who never even beat Andromeda, as somebody who put in a couple of hours into Anthem and just was very, very turned off by like all of the games as a service type thing, even though I think like, I think at its core. Anthem had such great gameplay loops, and the combat felt amazing.

It's just everything else kind of surrounding it was just kind of way off in what we were wanting. This feels like a return to form. So much of the spirit of what the old games had is there. I agree with Greg, though, and a lot of the RPG stuff, like, when we played through Mass Effect with Nick and we had him go through the sort of very evil asshole play through. I don't feel like this game really gives you that freedom. You're not going to be punching reporters and like making being an asshole to everybody. I think if anything, you might

be a little stern with your responses, which is a very, very light role-playing thing, but I was disappointed there. There's a lot of like criticisms I have about this game, but I think like all of the total package just sort of outweighs the little nitpicks that I would have. Greg, you want to get off the bench there. Yeah, but it's also hard. Like in my head when I've been doing this podcast, right? Like in the, when I'm, because I'm always preparing for a podcast, it has been, I thought of like, do I need to get out in front of it of like it's an 8.5 or a 9 and I feel like we're going to talk about it and make it sound like it's a six. Like, is it going to be one of those.

But it's that thing of like when you're talking about a game that is so great, period. And a statement, right? It's definitely that for at least for me. But I do think it's amazing. It's the question of why didn't it go that extra mile? How did it fall short on those little things, right? And I think there's so much to bring in on that front. Before I jump into, I want to talk to Andy and the RPG criticisms, right?

I want to jump off of Mike over here saying that, yeah, BioWare's back. Andy says, Bioware's back. And then Mike's saying, you know, this will go down as one of their best, right? For me, this is my favorite Bioware RPG. Oh, shit, okay. I know that's a crazy statement. Mass Effect 1 and never did it for me. Mass Effect 2.

I liked the suicide squad mission and all that jazz. But it was the idea when I think of Mass Effect 2. I think of Jack. And then, of course, I'm blanking on his name. The guy- Gareth? No, boy, I loved Garras. I romanced him,

but it was just because I liked him. But it was like the Jacob, Jacob and his dad and all that. Those two missions stand out for me, right? Whereas here to look at all the missions here, I think it's more that, oh, these two didn't work for me, or didn't hit as hard as the others,

whereas the other ones, these were so good that that's what I'm going to remember from Dragon Age, the Vail Guard, right? And the other two Dragon Ages before that just weren't my kind of gameplay style so I didn't get into it. So I do think that this is my favorite BioWare RPG because I think it's so well done.

I think it's so beautiful. I think it plays so well. It runs so well. I played it on PlayStation 5. I've seen a lot of people asking me about Steam Deck questions. There was a big debate leading into it of where I would, but when I realized I wasn't going to be playing it on the road

because I would be reviewing it long before. Then I was like, I'll just do PlayStation 5 for trophies. Play it's good on Steam Deck, by the way. Great. I'd recommend going the Intel X-E-S-S-S like rescaling as opposed to the AMD FSR. AMD FSR makes it look hell and muddy. and when there would be cutscenes and characters' mouths would be talking

and you would see like this weird blur in between them the Intel one seems to be... Lip-seeking is weird on PlayStation 5 too. Oh, no, no, but I'm just saying like visually whatever this rescaler's doing, the Insull one seems to give a cleaner image. Yeah. And I'd say I was getting like a little over

30 to 40 frames per second, yeah. So there you guysie players use Incel 1. You were playing on PS5. Yeah. Mikey, what did you play on? I played on Xbox Series X. X? X. Throw them up? And then how to go for you?

It went flawlessly. I had a great time. You get to choose between performance and visual, of course. Visual was running at 30 frames. I did not like that. I immediately went to performance. Still held a lot of the beauty. Very hard to tell the difference, right? Like very small detail. But running at 60 felt much better and it looked great. Andy, what would you play it on and what was like your percentage between Steam Deck and PC? I only played a couple hours on Steam.

deck. I would say the 95% of it was on PC. I have a very, very good PC, and this thing looked fucking incredible. I played it at 4K with the AMD DLSS set to about balanced, and I had all the rate rate everything set to ultra. Anything that could be

ultra was set to Ultra. The game looks so fucking stunning. You just kept sending me clips. You're just like, Tim. Look at this shit, dude. Yeah, it's insane. I was able to... 10.9 p.m. October 15th, 2024, to Andy, such a gorgeous game.

I was able to capture some footage. Another reason why it took me a little bit longer was I started through some of the sections on console as well. I have a PS5 code, so I started through as there to kind of like capture some gameplay and get some screenshots

and it does seem we'll see what Digital Foundry says. I haven't seen their video if it is up yet, but there, it does seem like whatever the visuals mode on console is, which is 30 frames per second. It seems like it's 1440p,

probably like upscale to 4K. It definitely looks blurrier than what I had on mine because I was able to like get back to back, or I was able to look at screenshots and do some immediate comparisons. Yeah, A, B testing. And then the performance mode, it looks like it's probably running it around

1080P scaled up to 4K. But the PC definitely looked incredible, having all the settings fully set to Ultra and able to get a lot of frame, I was able to get close to 120 frames, but I did drop it to 60 because I was recording a lot of it. I pretty much have my whole

gameplay recorded and my whole playthrough recorded, but that was taking up to a decent amount of resources as well. Recording in 4K. You're trying to go somewhere else? I was, yeah. Can I go for it?

I want to dovetail with what I was going, right? Because I wanted to respond to two of the things. first off with Mike in Bioware being back and then of course this name blah blah. But BioWare being back then transitioning to this RPG and the criticisms of it, right? I think that's a very important point that you're seeing reflected in the gamut of review scores

you're getting today where I would say, yes, BioWare is back and stick with me because this is a walk, but I'll get you there. In the same way when Starfield dropped and we were all like, well, it's a Bethesda game, right? But some people were like, it needs to be a game of the generation. It's like, well, can Bethesda do that in a modern time, right?

I think BioWare is back doing what BioWare does. And I think that that then can make it feel old or make it not feel like the RPG we're talking about it more. Because this is in a way where it's like just looking at it and talking about it. If you've never paid any attention to this game, but you've played Mass Effect, you would totally understand what we're talking about, right? Of like, yeah, you have all these companions. You're using the wheel to command them.

You're building the team. And if they're not max loyalty when you go in, they're more likely to fuck up or die or whatever kind of thing, right? that all sounds very similar. You don't have a spaceship, but you have a home base where after every mission, you go on and you run up to them with their big exclamation marks or bubbles and talk to them to advance the thing, to go out to do more missions, to come back and do it again, right? And it feels like, I feel like that's one of the things of the game that feels old. It doesn't feel immersive and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You're bioware, right? It feels like a bioware game, but we've had so much time since the last great bioware game.

And then you go into the fact that, and I know this is never fair, but it is the truth. We live in a post-Balders-Gate world where it is that idea of like, yes, for some reason this time around, the conversation options are even more muted than Paragon Renegade, right?

You just don't have those extremes. And so while that makes sense of, if you have this team, it then starts to show the seams in the same, as soon as I started Starfield, right? It was like the day after we had done some Baldur's Gate stuff, ran into Constellation,

Started shooting everybody in the face with a shotgun. People are like, oh, stop. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, this sucks, boo. And it's the same thing here where it's like, because you are not, I feel like, playing a role-playing game that is a modern, here's what's going on.

You can't offend your companions and drive them away. You can't kill them. You can't say, I don't even like you. Get the fuck out. You know what I mean? Like there's, you bump up against the walls of what the game is, which is where it comes back to what I was saying

at the very beginning of like, this isn't that giant open RPG. And even with, you know, we knew it was closed, open zone, but like to feel it in the gameplay and the mechanics, like, ah, this is a, there's a vision of this game that isn't that giant thing,

which is fine and I'm not knocking it for it, but it then does become a different experience, I think. I think once I let go of the notion that no game will ever be Baldersgate 3, I was able to enjoy this game a lot more. I think that Balders Gate 3 was just such a lightning in a bottle type thing. What's seemingly like a

unlimited budget with unlimited time and no corporate overlords tell me. you you need to release the game by this date or else, you know, whatever, launch it broken, who gives a shit? I was talking with the Shry guy, Jason Shrier, and DMs. And it's like, look at me, Louis. I know this game, I know this game is not as good as Ballers Gate 3. I like playing this game a bit more than I did Ballard Gate 3.

And I think a lot of that just goes into personal preferences and what you want out of a video game. But I could look at Balls Gave 3 and be like, I get why PC Gamer gave that the best PC game of all. all time that is a 10 out of 10 masterpiece. This game is not as good as Baldersgate 3. I don't think a whole lot of games are better than Balders Gate 3, but I still enjoy playing this more. The one thing I would push

back on is that I think, you know, with the way games gestate and how long it takes to put out a game, it's going to be interesting to see five, six, seven years from now how many lessons from Balders Gate are learned here where it's like, oh, people got so many, I'm sorry, Baldur's Gate

got so many flowers because of the options and permutations even tossing in a few more into Dragon Age would have gone so far. And I know you're trying to transition. I assume to ads at some point. I can even tease it if you want and you can come back to it. I feel like the reason for me I've wrestled a bit with the score and why if it's an 8, 5 or a 9.

Let's just say it, it's a 9. I'm amazed by this game. There's a giant 44 pages of notes that I think. I want to talk to Mike about this. I want to spoil the past week. I want to say a lot. Yeah, yeah, get it. But it's the idea that like there are so many great ideas in Dragon Age.

that just aren't capitalized on. We're going to talk more about that after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Phasmophobia. The genre-defying horror game is finally coming to consoles on October 29th,

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the mysteries of the supernatural island that you can't leave. You love playing RPGs alone? You can in New World Eternom or play cooperatively with your friends as you complete quests, get better gear, and level up. Greg played this at Summer Game Fest on PlayStation 5 and was caught off guard by how much he enjoyed it and how many hours he said he could see himself sinking into the final product. There's boss fights, cool enemies, crossplay, resource gathering, and crafting. So yeah, this sounds like a Greg game.

New World of Turnham is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X-N-S, and PC. We're saying in the break, too. I'm so glad that I had this game to play and not watch my stupid Dallas Cowboys. Just shit the bed. Just, fuck, I hate sports, bro. But thank God for this game. Thank God, everybody. The worst is when I see everybody flipping out, and I'm a lapse, you know, a fan, about a Bears game.

And I open it up and I'm like, no, shouldn't have looked at that. He shouldn't look at that. And then he came up and tipped it. just like, oh, dude, you can't be doing that. You can't do it. Shouldn't look at that? We have a ton of super chats that I want to get to. But Greg, first, you were talking about how this game doesn't capitalize on the RPG elements that Baldur's Gate might have.

You want to explain that a little more? Well, I mean, I don't even even taking out Baldur's Gate from the comparison, I think it introduces so many cool things that it doesn't capitalize on. And it gets it, but it doesn't get off it, right? It's a ground roll double rather than a home run. Okay, okay. Tell me about it. Where it's the idea of like when we left the pretext. preview event and we did the preview, I said on the show, I'm like, if it holds this up,

like, if it's giving me this level of choice throughout the game, holy shit. And it doesn't. Like, there's choices in the game. And again, they're interesting. Again, to sit down with Mike and he's like, what about this? What about that? Did you do this with? I'm like, ah, I did that.

And he's like, that's there. But they introduced cool stuff of, like, we talked about in the preview, you know, at one point, you have it early on in this game, you have a choice. Spoilers are different for everyone. We won't say names. We won't go into stuff. We won't really spoil. But if you wanted to know nothing about it, then heads up, whatever.

There's a choice in this game early on of you're being attacked on two fronts. Which city do you want to go help? They're both represented by people on your team or whatever. You make your choice and then stuff happens, right? The city that you don't help changes. It's not the same city as it was before, which I thought was really cool. And I mean, it changes visually, but then also, like, all the waypoints you unlocked are gone. You have to re-unlock them since the city's changed, right?

On top of that, the person who represents that city then is gone for a while. And when they come back, they're hardened, in quotes, right? Which means that they're harder to get trust with. They no longer do support spells for you. And I was like, oh, wow, like, I love, we can all make choices to change the coloring book, but a choice that actually changes the gameplay or changes the narrative or the world dramatically. That's a really cool thing. And that's like the example of it.

You don't, like, there's not another one of the, those kind of choices throughout the game. Just put two more of those in there. And not big city stuff, whatever, but real choices that make me debate. And this feeds back, I think, to not having that. And then having these conversations where it's like, yeah, do you want to do the romance option, the hard option with your thing, the smiley option, or just the thumbs up? And it's like, you do all these things, but these feel so unimpactful.

Where it really isn't that if, like, even when I picked like the arms crossed one, which was meant to be more short or more stern. My character, Eric Ishi, by the way, fantastic. Just a fantastic voice, Eric, a great job. Rook didn't sound that different. It was still the rook tone. It was still Rook being Rook, which makes sense because it is the same person. But then, like, why are we assigning that?

Like, this is the angry one. This is the happy one. It didn't work for me, Mike. I chose the firm renegade choice 85% of the time, Tim, and nothing changed. It would have been great, like you said, if, like, some characters got hardened off of that. It was like, hey, I'm kind of standoffish. with you or some characters like, hey, that's how I like to be. I vibe with that.

Maybe give me a boost. But I chose the firm stance every single time and it didn't lead to anything different. It actually led to in the first three hours more clunky dialogue because it definitely didn't flow well with it. I can see that. I went mainly like joky responses to more positive, but then firm when somebody who was really pissing me off. I just, that's where I've kind of had the role playing aspect of it.

along with like those the larger choices like Greg was mentioning. I also kind of wish that the let's do a little nitpick session right here. Yay, nitpicks. I wish that when I was shopping for armor, I wish I'd let me preview the armor. Let me just show it on me. And I'm sure that's something I really, really believe

that everybody in that studio probably feels and understands and knows that just maybe one of those things they couldn't ship on time or whatever maybe it's something they're working on for an update but when you go to a little an armorer which like every main city has a main person to sell you

goods weapons, arms, upgrades, things like that and then there's a bunch of other like miscellaneous scattered vendors that sell you kind of random shit but the main person you'll see the arm it's like oh here's this chest piece and you just can't preview it you just either buy it or you don't. You look at the thumbnail I get it I'm

could be cool. I was swimming in gold size. One thing I do love is like each city has its baseline look for how fashion is and then each one of those things

has a color scheme based on the other locations in the world. So one of the areas in the game where the crows are from where one of the characters Lucanus is from

like it's all very like very kind of sexy cool looking arm. It's what I went with. It's one of the photos that I said to Gamescast. But maybe you like that fashion, but you are more with, you vibe more with like the Arlithen elves color scheme or more with this other color scheme. You can get it in different sort of colors, which is, I think, super neat. I think that the, I'm kind of like mixed on how I feel about the whole loot system.

There's a shitload of it. You're going to find it in every corner you look, which I love. I love that. I love being rewarded for just walking three extra feet that way when I could have just gone forward. That's going to happen legitimately in about 100% of this video game. There's no corner. There's no extra corner that you think there's probably not going to be something there. There will be, which I love.

And whether it's because the way the sort of looting system works, you're finding all these either crafting materials or you're finding just different pieces of loot. and then when you, you could sell a bunch of valuables to the person that runs, like, the main vendor in that city, and you level up that main vendor to where they can, when you gain trust with this city, they then have more unlockable options for you. And it might be, you know, at first you're only unlocking the shitty green armors or whatever, but then later on, you'll get the purples or the legendaries. And those only unlock if you are constantly kind of looking for extra loot, if you are doing missions for that area, and if you are, selling them goods and buying stuff from them, then you gain trust with them and you sort of that's how the progression there works.

One of the things I had in my notes was just how refreshing it was to be in a handcrafted environment. You know what I mean? Where I think so many games do want to do the sprawl and do want to do the, hey, it's Starfield and it's like, well, this is all boring. Why would I want to go? Any time it was in this game, all right, the objectives over there, well, sure, but let's double back over here.

And then you find a neat thing to climb through, blow out the wall, go over here. There's a there's trash just everywhere like you're saying. And it is that idea of like, the reward is the excitement of finding the chest, not so much what you get out of the chest, where it was like, I'm just unlocking and getting,

you know, okay, cool, there's this, the armor. The way it levels up your stuff. I like that you'd find the similar item and then it would go from green to blue, blue to purple.

I liked that. But by the time I was swimming in and I was committed to stuff, it's like, all right, well, you've gone up to legendary, but I'm still,

my whole build is based around this. I love the skill tree and I love the idea that it doesn't cost to respect. So I did respect, several times throughout the game where it was like and it's a big skill tree but it's not overwhelming so it was like all right I expect all the way out here for my traps

and stuff but I finally have enough stuff for my poison to matter so hold on blow all that up let's go this way and get that way like that a lot too I've a ton of super chats some of them are a little quick hit some are a little deeper that I want to get into here we got a Mr. Nice Guy Guy saying I'm entirely new to Dragon Age and was

compelled by trailers and previews leading up to release as a newbie to the franchise is this a game for me I would say yes. I think this game, despite it kind of having a bit of a slower start. And when I say slower start, I don't want you all think that I'm like, this is a four or five out of ten, and then it gets good. Then you have to wait for it actually gets good.

I think the game is always good. And then it just gets great and amazing for me. I think this game does a much better job of kind of drip feeding this the world to you. I think it's genius the way they did it. It isn't just, all right, the game is started. Now go do whatever you want. Yeah. It is so, I think, geniusly structured in the beginning

where they're not really letting you do any of that stuff. It's here's a mission and you finish the mission and you get my boy Verrick going, you know, the tail wasn't done because the rook had to do this and that and the bad guy. Well, he's sort of narrating this and it's awesome. And they do such a great job of doing that. And then the mission ends, and boom, you're hit with a summary.

This and this happened. This character did this. And I love seeing all of that just right in front of your face. And then the next mission starts. And it's a very, very similar thing, where they're not just letting you run free and get lost in all these different... They do a great job of not wanting to overwhelm you at the beginning, like a lot of open world games can do.

I think the game also geniusly, like, and masterfully kind of opens up the worlds that you are in, these open zones. Because I think early on when we knew that this game was not going to be a big sprawling open world, in media, I'm just kind of thinking that these areas are going to be a lot more restrictive and constricted. But they do such an awesome job of kind of like thinking back to just old game design stuff of like the Mario 64ification of, well, go back into that world. And now this other place is now somewhere you can go.

Now you have this power, you, this companion. so it's almost a Metroidvania to it. It's not, but it's almost, where it's like, okay, now that thing you saw, you know that you can get through next time when you go and do this. Because this companion has this ability that can then break down that rock or whatever. It's like, oh, shit, cool. Well, now I'm thinking of all the other places with those rocks. Let me go back and kind of explore.

And also, you can just roll into every goddamn barrel you want. Just rolling into every fucking barrel. It's the soulsborn thing, but they're actually giving you loot. Miyazaki take note, okay? You're the goat, but, like, put something in those fucking jars. Put stuff in the goddamn jars I'm rolling into. This game is going to give you

all sorts of shit. There's like, oh my God, the amount of times I crossed by this one wall or this one room that had just walls of vases on the wall, I'm just rolling and breaking all this other fucking. It just felt so good, man. It's awesome.

So it is my first Dragon Age, right? After being turned off by combat in the first two and not being a fantasy guy, I think this one is a great one to jump into. I think it does a great job of setting up the world. And I think, you know, something you talked about there, Andy, that I think, again, speaks to

the kind of game this is, that they are telling you their story. You're not making your own story. You kind of are, but you're not. They're telling you a story. Was the idea that, like, I love the episodic side content? For sure, I love the companion quest more than I love the main quest.

And it is that idea of when you would get to the natural bookend of where the companion quest was stopping for now until it unlocks later. You'd get the beautifully shots, the art that Verrick narrates over. And it's like he's telling you a story. And it always would end. with, they thought they were done, but did they know about this fuckface or what? You know what I mean?

They would always be like, every time, Tim. Every time. They tease the big bad or where it's going next. And I was always like, that is so good. That is such a great way of keeping it going. And then, you know, he left the oven on. Exactly. That's a good.

Did that get you? Yeah, I loved every moment of that. And I agree with Andy and Greg here. As someone who has played the Dragon Age games, but it's not a big fan of it and also has forgotten 90% of it. I think it's a tough onboard at the beginning because there's a lot thrown at you,

but they do a really good job, as Andy says, of like, getting you into the world, by the end of it, you're going to love it. I know so much now about the world and the characters like, I got journals all over the place of all the characters and all the different story moments we had. It was a great time. You're talking about a game that I'm, Mike

being sick, I was like, well, he's playing it. A lot of other people in the office are playing it, but like Mike's not going to stick with this. And then suddenly, you know, boom. He was like, he didn't like it. He was like, I'm 35 hours in. I was like, holy shit, Mike is in it. Mike is in the world. There's a glossary as well, Tim, if you want to read more. And I shout out, you know me. I went in there about text and all that. They keep it very

short and simple. I love that. Could have used some photos. Could have made a little jazzy, a little more fun. Well, you know what? If you want to learn more about it, if you want to learn about the combat, all the different words and the definitions of things, boom, right there. I thought it was really good. I think, you know, for me, one of the ways, and this is such a funny one that I'll immediately derail, right? I thought of this so much as the Dungeons and Dragons movie that I did not watch but based on the trailers, right?

It gave me that vibe of like watching those trailers. I feel like that's what this game is of like, okay, you're in this D&D fantasy world and here's what you need to know if you want and I did. I went into the glossary. Every time I'd get a missive, which is like a letter from somebody you've helped or every note I'd actually sit there

and I'd read and sometimes the notes had, especially where your home bases, there'd be scribbled in stuff from the people on you're like they're having a conversation via note, and I thought that was so helpful. There's so much world building and stuff like that. Every time I'd be running through... They had a book club. I'd run through...

So cute. I'd run through HQ and two people were talking and they weren't the quest. I'd stop and listen to their conversation. Yeah, yeah. You walk up, you pause and then they would start the conversation. You're like, oh, that's cool. But back to it, like, again, like, I feel like this isn't the RPG. A lot of people will be looking for, but it is the action RPG.

I'm playing a movie I was looking for, and I don't know if I necessarily knew I was. I also wanted to mention that the back when we reviewed Horizon Forbidden West and they had a very similar sort of mechanic where you are

go look for these NPCs we're talking about and you bring it back to your home base right and one of my big criticisms there was but you go back to the home base and you're not going to go you're not going to have Garris or Thane you're not going to have like these mass effect characters that I would fucking die for it

a lot of people that I just don't really care for a whole lot. I don't think they're compelling enough. And I still don't think there's a Garras Vicarian or a thing in this game. Really? But it's... I'd lay it all down for Tash. It's as close as I've gotten. It's as close as I've got.

I would... Again, Belara is the NPC that I first started off. I played it in the preview. Didn't care for that section. Talk to Greg when I played it during the review. Told them, yeah, you know, once I got past that part, then I started enjoying him more because I didn't like that during the preview either.

I thought she was kind of annoying. Agreed. God damn, she won me over. This voice actor is fucking phenomenal. I am going to nominate her for like a voice, any sort of voice award or whatever. I think she fucking knocks it out of the park. And I also want to say

the sound design awards, this game needs to win them. Dude. This game needs to win the sound design awards of all of them, Tim. Like all, just every sound effect is so good and satisfying to experience. It's like, this is a huge one for me, you know?

G. Young Hahn is, uh, Balara. G. Young. I'm sorry, just before I gets away. So, yes. There was, like, Tim, you know me. You know I'm an idiot. You know I'm not a sound guy. There'd be parts where I was like, man, the footsteps sounds so good in this mausoleum.

You know what I mean? And then on top of that, the music where Tim, I know you don't, you won't play this isn't your kind of game. You should. That's Hans Zimmer? Fine. Is it no shit, really? songs.

I get it. At least he did the theme. I get it then why you go to see this man in concert. Because again, I'd be playing and I'm like, yo, this violin is awesome. This song is awesome. Damn, I didn't like the music. Yeah. Like, I thought it was fine, but I didn't think there was like big moments where it's like,

yo, that was a track right there. I think the music was like subtle. Oh, man. So it like minimal. I felt like that maybe kind of in the beginning. And by the end of the game was putting sound effects at like 85 volume. because the music really elevated the moments even more where the goosebumps then became like

you may have a medical emergency because your skin is sticking out because the music does really really hidden huge ways where I have I'm getting teary at thinking about moments or watch experiencing certain moments of NPCs and just like that's where it's cemented the amazing status for me

what I was going to build off Vandis was back at the home base I love that everyone had their own room and they were all kind of decoring it out their way they wanted to. I would give them gifts. And every time as the story progressed, you'd come in, oh, you just moved in. Oh, look, are you building statues? Oh, he's got seven statues.

Oh, homie, your whole room is statues. Like, calm down a little bit. I liked that a lot. I thought that was cute. Yeah, a lot of cool character. Didn't really care for our customization. You can customize your room. You can customize the big mega statue.

It just felt, it's like how many times are you really going in the room? Not that many. And then it's like, oh, there's a mirror on a dress. or okay. That's fine. I thought you meant, I liked the ability of the main hall

to go in there and choose from the other things you've unlocked from all the different towns because like the game's beautiful, like the game is beautiful, period. Graphically awesome. The hair fixes is great.

But like the art style which I know has been off putting for people, I adore. And I, the way they play with color and light and every world is so different looking. And, you know, for Emric,

who's your necromancer, his whole deal with the necromancer society, right? And the green fire and the skulls. As soon as I had that style, I was like, flip the switch on HBQ. I'm like, make it look like this. I wanted to, because I loved it so much in playing with the light. Like, just a gorgeous game.

But character customization was sick, Tim, because they have a full transmog system. So you can get whatever gear you want from Legendaries to Purple and make them all. You can upgrade them. You can put on cool effects to help passives. But then you just choose what you want to wear. And it can go from the everyday, hey, we're hanging out at home base. I'm out of my armor to what's my armor, what's my sword, what's my heavy, what's the shield? I love that I had full choice of what I wanted to look like.

And what I looked like from moment one, Chapel throne. Chapel throne here. Oh, Chapel throne, yeah. This is my final battle gear right here. This is me putting on like the biggest armor because I know I'm going into the baddest battle. And I had a cool evolution of what I wore at the beginning to the middle, to the end. I loved every moment of this.

Can you throw mine up? Yeah. Transmog is fantastic. Yeah, Transmog was great. And I'm with Andy that, you know, my rook was a crow as well, one of the assassins. and so spent a lot of time there I only really switched ever between Crow Ware which is this purple

blue whatever you want to call it and I loved this vibe and so I was always in this ballpark between the difference of it and where I wanted to go I started off as a rogue and I'm always rogue I always go rogue in like these Dragon Age games because I just love the fast sort of dual blade

very very zippy very quick and also like I always go elf and I've always had big years. I identify really with elves, right? But the idea of like elves being rogues just worked for me because of the bow and arrows and stuff. Of course. And as much as I loved, Rogue.

I think Rogue is so much fun to play. I just remembered my preview period and being like, God damn, Warrior was a lot of fun. And I had so much, like, as much fun as Rogue is, Warrior somehow even more fun for me. I think the combat is so damn crunchy. the heavies of like charging your shields the the goddamn

Captain America throwing your shield dude it is so good and satisfying to hear those like shield sound effects of like it kind of reminds me of oh shit like Captain America Shield or like Thor's Hammer when it's flying through the air you know the way they

try to make like metal sound as it's flying the feedback on it's so freaking great and the it's not just I am going warrior so I'm going to main these abilities and I have one ultimate. No, there's because every one of these classes has three different subsects that you can then go into specializations that give you more abilities or more

powers to use. It is like, you could tell that this is where they really, really doubled down on we want this part to be the best as possible. If I were to guess what had the most time and like budget and stuff, I would think it'd be the combat because it is so varied. Which is hilarious that we haven't talked. about. Yeah, yeah.

It's so good. I want to, like, bounce off and I ask some questions here, then I do want to have a deeper conversation about the combat specifically. But first off, you were saying that you, you played rook,

you, a rogue. Sorry, rogue. We're all rog. You're all rog. You played rogue, warriors, what you dream of. What'd you play as Mike?

So Mike, Mike was, or chaperone, was a Grey Warden warrior that specialized in my weapon all the way down to the slayer. What did I write down here? Yeah, I'll find it. But yeah, oh, there it is.

Yeah, mine was a Slayer specialization. The bottom. I went all bottom and tell, I loved it. Loved it. And Greg, what about you? I was a rogue as well, yeah, Antiva Crow as well. The backstory, you know, is this assassin who saved a bunch of people when they shouldn't have saved him. So the crow's got mad and sideline, rook.

And then I was like, get out of here. I'm on my own. I'm pari, rook. Oh, see, I was in an Antiva. I was, I mean, that's the fashion I chose, but I was the shadow dragon. It's the specialization I chose. Yeah, I think they did. it's a really, again, for, especially for doing what they're doing and telling you a story,

I really, really loved that character creation. And then, all right, cool, what's your backstory? What's your faction? Like, these actually matter. You get big paragraphs of text, like, setting up where your character is and why it was doing there. Whereas, like, again, for the most recent RPG of Starfield that I got obsessed with, right, it was like, I'm a minor. There's mine.

Oh, that sucks. You know what I mean? I'm also an artist for some reason. I don't know what the hell that is. So we have a couple super chats. I'm going to put together here because I feel like they they weave a tale of questions. Captain Kootte says, is there a point of no return that you can stop and go finish all your character? Side quests?

Can you get locked out of side quests? Is there a new game plus? If not, is this a game you can see yourself rolling a new character on? And then Jim Tacey writes in saying since the game doesn't import saves or choices, does it feel like a continuation of each individual's play through? So kind of like answering all of those. Let me take the top one. You take the second one, right? Okay.

Yeah, the game is. very clear in terms of, hey, if you go into this, you're barreling down end game, right? And that's even the description. And when you click in, it's like, for real, you won't be able to do this or this anymore. You're just going to go into end game. And then you go into end game. From that moment, it's about three hours. I was about to hit it.

I texted Mike when he was in the Slack saying he beat him. How much longer? It's about three hours. And then to something I talked about in the very beginning, no new game plus. You finish it. The credits roll. Then you're kicked back to the main menu. you hit continue, you pick up right from,

right before you went into the main, mega mission, right, the main mega mission or whatever. And so again, that was, I didn't expect that. I expected to get to a, now it's the post credit's life, go clean up everything you want to do.

And I know it doesn't narratively make sense, so it makes sense why they did this. But then it was like, oh, I don't want to, I already did this. You know, I mean, I didn't, but I did this. Like I, you know,

these games for me always are the choices and the story and how it went. So anybody I might have lost on my mission or anything like that. Like that matters to me. And that was Dragon Age the Veilgard, which when I got back there, it's something I put in the journal last night and I haven't had a time to unpack. I felt like coming back and being like, okay, you're back here. Kind of, and granted this is because of how we had a review,

but kind of cheapens the experience where I'm like, oh. So clearly the way the story you're telling in the end game here is that I have to do everything and I have to save everybody and then this has to go through. because to come back here and not have to live with my decisions that or not have to live with my ending makes it feel like that wasn't really the ending you wanted me to have. You want me to go through and do everything

and finish everything to go and do that. Which for me dampens any excitement to replay the game, but we are because we're going to do Nick the Dwarf's campaign. Very excited for that, of course. But that's a streaming thing, whereas this one is like, even platinum me and I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to go back and do that because, again, the choices I had matter.

Like one of the things that happened at the end of my game, right? Like has so many things of like wow like that worked because I fell in love with this character not romantic love I just loved this character throughout this entire thing so to get there and have this character die in my ending I was like wow that matters and then to come back here I'm like I don't know I will just jump off really quick you can miss some missions I missed one of the first companion story missions because I progressed to a point where all of a sudden that was unable to do so I would encourage you if you're having a lot of fun with the companion mission do them as they come up because I did miss the first one of it.

But we jump back into the story. It was kind of awkward to jump into your second part of the story and miss chapter one. Really awkward moment. But I would encourage you to check those out. Andy, what about you in terms of coming from other Dragon Age games or whatever? Well, because when you are creating your character, you can then create your inquisitor.

And with the inquisitor that you are creating, you get to choose, who the Inquisitor romanced back in Dragon Age Inquisition. So you can choose that. You can also choose from a couple different decisions on how they felt about Solus, who is the dreadwolf, you know, who is this person that at the end of Dragon Age, you discovered, oh shit, you were a bad guy the whole time. You were my homie the whole time. And in some cases, in Dragon's Inquisition, you could have fallen in love with Solis or he was just maybe a homie at the time. So there is some customization there.

There are ways to kind of make that play through kind of feel like you experience that. And this is like the dude that I created back in the day or whatever. Yeah, I didn't love that. I just didn't think it was that impactful. It feels like this story is very much of like, we acknowledge that and there's a little bit of that, but we're clearly moving on and we're giving you something new. So it's like, oh, create this character. And then it's like, at the end of the day, I'm like, that didn't really impact my gameplay at all.

I didn't need to spend any time on that. Also, can we give a shout out? Because Andy, you did this wall, right? This is all from the game. Yeah, there's all, yeah. We haven't actually acknowledged these are all dragon age things from the Vail Guard. Got into the photo mode. Oh, you did photo mode for this?

Yeah. How did you do the moving stuff? You just record it. That's fucking cool. Yeah, it took a while. Real quick, too, if I can jump in here, it's 2024, the year of our Lord. All right? Get out of here with these half-ass photo modes.

I love photo modes. I put up 20 screenshots today on Instagram and, Twitter and whatnot. And it's like, I make it look good because I'm talented. But like after something like Spider-Man, and I don't, it doesn't need to be as detailed as Spider-Man, but like, there's no expressions I can put on my character's face. I can't put a different pose on these characters. Like, you have to capture it in the moment or have them stand the way you want. And that's why so many of mine are vistas and how beautiful the game is and how much I love this green light. Because it's like, well, turn off the people. They don't matter. Like, it's that. There's no filters on it.

I could not get depth of field to work. I don't know if that's a day one patch. Like, I was excited because the game is gorgeous and I clearly wanted to do it but getting in here and doing it I was like so disappointed by what the options were and I hope that's a patch that comes yeah I hope they continue to kind of iterate on that because I was pretty disappointed by it as well you can choose to not view

enemies or your characters in the game which is awesome but like one thing I one thing I fucking love about Sony's photo modes is that they allow you to a lot of them allow you to leave the effects on so that things continue to move whether it's a fire

which is what I was really, really hoping for for these walls to be able to see stuff like that, but only some things continue to move, and you could tell it was like an unintended consequence because certain effects would continue to move, but you're not going to get trees swaying or anything like that. So they had no poses for characters. One thing that also really, really, really disappointed me

is during cutscenes, you can't pause and go into photo mode. Yeah. Which a lot of games do that. A lot of games, like during a cutscene, when you hit pause, they won't let you freely roam around because this cutscene is very catered to how it's supposed to look.

Totally fine. But I couldn't hit start, go into photo mode, and not have the HUD up. Like the HUD was always going to be there, whether it said like continue or whatever or skip cutscene or whatever. So I hope that that's an option

that they introduce as well. Ali Kat writes in saying, Paul Tassie said the game doesn't let you be a bad guy. And a lot of RPGs, I like to be a douchebag sometimes. Can I do that in this game? No. Yeah, Greg said it best.

You are playing their game. You can't do that. That's right. Kevin Lindsay asked, do this game at any point make you cry? Yeah. About, well,

about two or three times. Of just like tears, you know, just like tears in the eyes. Like, yeah, that's good. That's some good stuff right there. It's that thing where,

you Greg? No, I felt, but again, this was very watching, even though I'm playing it, but watching Rook's story and watching this thing,

I was disconnected enough where I wasn't so into it. I would catch myself with facial reactions and I'm sure I'd be really embarrassed if they were caught on camera but in the moment I would catch myself just like like goddamn like I've just been stuck in this

sort of like slack. And I like there's a lot of things that I won't go into but I will next week in spoiler cast and journal walkthroughs of like quotes. There's a lot of great quotes and there's a lot of great things that hit and there's one in here specifically where a character says something and it didn't make me cry but it did make

that was like the hardest I felt or I was like oh that sounds like something Ben would say right now, right, as a toddler looking for comfort in his parents. Yeah, we need to take on the dread wolf. Can I be a most poster for Halloween? It's so relatable. War Table says, how's the lighthouse? Is it like the Normandy as a character hub slash area?

Yeah, I think it's awesome. I think it expands. It also really need ways that they sort of gamified in a couple of ways where you, you can then expand the areas you can reach and some new areas will open up. And once you sort of unlock the first couple of companions, I love the walking by the airs and going, oh, somebody's going to be in there next. Yeah.

Somebody's going to be over here next. And suddenly these areas are opening up that I didn't even know were walkable. And I just sort of enjoyed the sort of interplay there. Yeah, it's a, the lighthouse is the HQ even dancing around or whatever. It does. I like, again, liking this game more than Mass Effect. And, you know, back then I wasn't the biggest space. guy. I'm still not for the most part.

Like this one I liked because it felt more grounded and I felt like it made more sense and I like the way they used the communal spaces. It's funny the stuff you're talking about expanding of like I felt personally and just how I review games, I felt the gun to the back of my head the entire time I was playing it.

So the first thing I did after I rolled credits last night was discover that there were treasure chests around the lighthouse. Oh! Things unlocked because I was like, I don't have fucking time to do anything. I'm running objective to objective to do the thing. Last night it was like, oh, cool, there's a little puzzle here to unlock this thing and do it. And like, that was nice.

I appreciated that. And I think, again, we still haven't talked about gameplay and I want to do all these things. But it's like, that's again, one of the reasons I love this game so much that it was just a joy to play. I felt throughout. I loved the combat. I loved respecting. I loved feeling powerful. I did kind of unheard of for me where it was like I was playing and I was like,

you know what? I like this so much I want to be challenged. I went up in difficulty. And then after probably 30 hours of the up difficulty, I had a good. the one bug I had where I was playing I got killed I came back in

the enemy who killed me got stuck in the stairs and this is like 1230 at one of the nights and I'm like I'm gonna come in and dial the difficulty down and I was like oh like this is interesting

the enemies aren't dumber they just have fewer I'm doing more damage it feels like than anything and I stayed on that difficult the normal difficulty the rest of the way but it was like

I'm glad you brought up bugs yeah like I had maybe one and a half bug that was my one thing One of them was me jumping on a platform and when you fall into the water, you die. You can't swim. So I kept on and I knew it was going to happen.

And I was assuming it was going to happen a lot more. But like I would fall and then as I would die, I would come back and I kept on falling. I was like, oh, let me reload this and then it never happened again, which is like really shocking to me because I assumed that was going to be a very common sort of thing to happen. And then the other thing was my Inquisitor had different color eyes. in one of the cutscenes. And I was like, you have blue eyes like Shepard. Why don't you have blue eyes right now?

But I was very shocked by Tuzzi just sort of the state of the current day gaming of, you know, a lot of games just ship broken and incomplete because of rushes and, you know, corporate overlords making you put them out sooner. But I was very, very happy with the little amount of like issues I had with this game. Before we jump,

just because these are throwaways, right? Again, I was saying rare for the difficulty. it was also rare for me to connect with the combat system as much as I did here. I talked about respecking, but like in my notes here, right, going through and making note of like, okay, cool, I'm using this many control abilities, this many tool abilities, which means now when I go through the skill tree and I respect, I need to find that stuff, right?

And it's the other one here, the note I have from deep into the game here, what, 22 hours. This is the first game in forever where I'm actually using a diverse selection of ally support skills. Usually for me personally, at least the way I play where it's like, oh, they can, they can, they can, heal you or they can defend you or this that the other, I'm always like, I don't care, they're just attacking, they're just attacking, or are you just heels? And this was the thing of when the party would switch up, it was like, okay, I'm investing in this skill tree

so you can do this, but then I'm also using you to fortify me. And it was interesting to see the way who I was running with would then dictate how I played. Yeah, I went with overwhelming force, Tim, with my goal. I had two companions. I knew exactly what their mega moves were. We went in, and I loved how great the combat feels and then the tactical side of things where you can

kind of pause and slow down. I didn't need to use that much because the controls are so simplified where you can fight, fight, fight, and call out your companion to do quick access abilities real fast without having to pause it. But then by the end of it, I would just find the one person we'd identify. I'd pause it. I'd say everyone's

attacking there. Do your mega moves. I'm coming in with mine and we would just wipe the battlefield. At one point, you hit about, you hit a certain level, you just start killing little mobs. Like, they had nothing to you by that point. I, early on, I realized that I love this ability that Belara has because she sends out a spell that sucks all these enemies towards like a, just a orb of power or whatever. But early on, I was like, I just don't really love her as a character, but I'll rock with her anyway because that ability is so sick.

And I'm glad that I kind of just fell in love with her as a human because I loved having her in my squad. And that ability is so sick because you could pair that up and the game will tell you when certain moves will combo well with, here's a common. opportunity with this other characters move and they do such a great job with that and I oh gosh there was one other thing I wanted to bring up and I'll probably I probably blanked on it and I'll get back

to it. Don't worry about it. What do you got in the Supis? Stay in line here. Samson L. writes insane I'm hearing lots about the story and unlock options but what's the moment's a moment combat like? Is there a lot of replayability? Andy you are the king of combat here. Oh, that's a good day for him. The most of anyone I know what do you think about the combat in Dragon Age, the Vale Guard?

I think it's as good as it could possibly be. I don't really know how it could get better. I think it's so varied. That's the thing that I'm the happiest about is that even if two people pick Warrior, you could have two completely different-looking game plays because you're specking into different spots. I was to say technically like three, right?

You have the core tree and then you have the three offshoots. Exactly, yeah. I think it's so deep and so varied with the different amount of moves you could be using. Comparatively, I know a lot of people were disappointed by the ability to not control other people in your party. That's what Inquisition did. That's what all the other games did, where you would pause, go into tactical mode, and be like, ooh, I'm going to now play as Solis over here and get my spells on or whatever.

That was never for me anyway, so I didn't mind that that was no longer part of it. This is the right amount, I feel like, where I can command you to do your spells or just attack, and then we feel like. This is Mass Effect 2 combat. This is, I am controlling my dude, and these are my two squadmates, and I can now make you do that move, and that's going to combo well with your move, and then I'll follow up with my third move, and my squadmate will even be like, someone follow up on this, which is super sick. I just love that. I think it's, it's so crunchy, it's so satisfying. There's so many moments of, that remind me of the tiny moments that I loved about Anthem. Like here's all of these enemies grouped up in this one spot.

Let me just drop this big AEOE attack. Let me have this one character who's now applying bleed to everybody or some characters that's applying necrosis and now everybody's poison and their damage over time is going down. I think it's as good as an action RPG can feel. It reminds me a lot of how awesome and how varied God of War Ragnarok feels with the switching to different weapons,

switching to different abilities. I had such a great time with it. warrior, you not only have your sword and shield, but if you hit down to the D-pad, you then switch to a big heavy, which is like a gigantic axe or a hammer or something like that. But again, if you don't like the look of the hammer, you can fucking... Transmog it. You could transmog to make it look like a different weapon if you want, which I've freaking love.

But, yeah, I just had so much fun with the combat and just kind of making it my own, making it as fun as possible, kicking dudes off of ledges, then chucking the... the scorpion, get over here and move, bringing them towards me, shield bashing them. It's as fun as it could get. I didn't try Mage. Mage was the class that I enjoyed the least during the preview period. So I thought I was going to go Rogue,

and somehow Rogue was even, like, as much as I found Rogue to be as fun as it was, a warrior was even more fun for me. I played on this, I did a custom difficulty thing. So you can switch a lot of things in the difficulty to then make it custom. or whatever.

So there's like story mode. There's one above that. Adventure. There's another one above that. Underdog is above adventure. And then there's another one above that. I think there might be too. I played with the difficulty the lowest,

the one lowest, below the hardest difficulty to where I wanted to feel punished. Yeah. If I was getting hit, I wanted to like, you sick little freak. You got to be perfect with these paris. Like,

not perfect because I didn't play on the hardest difficulty ever. But you got to be really, really good about defense and dodging and just being aware of your surroundings. But then I dropped the enemy's health to be one tick lower because I didn't want to feel like I was just in a sponge match of just constantly wailing on this enemy. I wanted to feel the consequences of getting hit and maybe dying in two shots.

But I didn't want to be swinging away at an enemy for a damn hour or whatever. Yeah, that seems I just kept it with what their settings were. And yeah, coming back down from underdog, I was like, oh, okay. This is nicer. where it's like I'm doing more damage and it's just going a little bit quicker at this point. Yeah, Vary is a great word for this. It's really fun of,

I loved being in control of just me and my companions never have a health bar. They never go down, so I don't have to worry about running over to them and picking them back up off the kneel. Also, at the same time, if I die, you can resurrect. If you have certain slots that allow that,

you can just restart at a certain save point. But when it comes to combat, I was really impressed with not only my skill tree, but also all seven of your companions, have a big skill tree of up to six different spells that they can choose from. You can level it up and pick what you want. And I think there's this moment of like, for me, I stuck with two companions. We overwhelmed everyone.

We had a plan. But if I wanted, I picked Tosh and I picked Devereign. Yeah, because he has a Griffin. And that's sick. If you don't pick him, you're lost in life. Get the fuck out of out of here. That's pretty sick. He's cool. He's cool.

Tosh and Lucanus is where I want. And so I love that, like, I chose just two. companions stuck with them the whole entire time. We had a game plan. But if you wanted to, there's up to seven people to choose from, and you can change each and every one of their spells on the fly. You can respect them. Like, it's really, really done

well done with that. And also, having the tactical view slash also the easy combat of QuickTack, doing all their stuff while still attacking. I loved that. I will say again, though, you will hit a moment where you were too strong for the game on normal difficulty.

on the penguin writes insane Oh, your show is great I like to show up, but he's a thing, you know My fine, so good, thank you, thank you. What a good show. It's a good review, but, you know, I think there's a lot of DEI involved, you know. Just want to push back on the idea that only Ballersgate 3 can do the RPG thing of truly shaping up your path and story.

Pillars of Eternity, rogue traitor, wrath of the righteous, and Dragon Age origins all exist. Oh, that's true. I just think like, I think Ballows Gate 3 took it to a much higher level in an industry where that doesn't seem possible. And that's my point, too. I said we live in a post-Balderscape 3 world, so mine is the most recent of those, right?

And I'm talking about the fact that that was a critical success, success game of the year. Everyone knew about it. And one of the things it was lauded for was how crazy the permutations could get. And then Enter Chasmins says there hasn't been a great Dragon Age game since origins, in my opinion. Well, hopefully, Mr. Chas, that changes for you here. Sounds like it did for Andy, at least.

Yeah, I mean, well, I also really, liked Inquisition. So, like, I know there's a lot of people that feel like Origins is the end-all be-all for what Dragon Age was, because Two took it a lot more action-y, and then Inquisition tried to bring it back and try to meet everybody in the middle, which I still

enjoyed, but again, I played Origins on Xbox. So, for me, it was kind of an action RPG. I wasn't, like, just clicking on dudes, and the combat, I'm sure, felt like World of Warcraft combat to a lot of people back in the day. To me, it didn't, because I was playing with the controller.

But I really enjoyed Inquisition, and I loved this video game. But I'm definitely leading more towards the action side of things. Sure. Metal Baby Mario says, have they talked about romance options? Is it a bio-aware? It is a bi-aware game after all. I don't know if we can. Yeah, I mean...

I mean, the romance options are there. I assume you can romance every companion. Yeah. You'll have options to push for... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You'll have options to kind of just play the field in a lot of moments. And then you will have a cutoff moment of, hey, if you push forward with this, you're, no more flirting with everybody else.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you entered the committee. Yeah, they're like, we will lock you down and, but that's like way later on. Yeah, I wanted to bang everybody. It was messed up. I had to pick one. And there was these awkward moments of when you pick one. If you're like, depends on, because it all kind of like, hey, this is number one,

then number two kind of your flow of who you're with. Yeah. It's like, then you get to number three, four and five. And it's like, oh, this was supposed to be the moments. Too bad, bro. It's like, I didn't like that. I wanted to just bang them right. I had a couple moments where I had to, like, reload the save because I got like, I got like cold feet.

I was like, no, I don't, I don't. Like, it's funny in the journal to see me go from, oh, I'm romancing this person to, oh, no, I'm going to romance this person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I loved that. I thought it added a nice dimension to gameplay, the nice dimension to the thing. I thought it was reflected well in the storytelling and then in the finale where like, yeah, my character hangs.

Okay. And then, like, all right, cool. And there's a lot of cool dialogue moments near the end of the game. So, like, yeah, it'll be fun for spoiler cast. But even like, like, yeah. in combat. Like there'd be things they'd yell out.

I'm like, that's fucking funny. Yeah. So we have just a couple more super chats I want to get to before we close out. Is there anything you guys want to bring up? Um, I got a lot of good quotes in here.

I got things like this where it says this game is fucking sick. You know, yeah, we're going to keep going. Just a little. Toughest choice. Yeah, fuck this guy.

I don't like that you can't swim and you can't fall from too high. That got annoying sometimes. Like the swimming I get and the swimming is very minimal. But there's moments where like you're trying to navigate of like, can I just, jump down there and then you would jump it's like no you can't jump down there you respond you're like okay that sucks uh i think they do a fantastic job at kind of guiding you with the mini map marker of like hey this is where you need to go fantastic job there's moments where you don't think it's right

there's a puzzle figure it out because there's like moments where i'm like it's not telling me where i'm supposed to go but 90% of the time you tell me where it's supposed to go that's just a puzzle figure it out it's a lot of fun and jumping out fantastic really great and you can tweak it as much as you want to where i was like i don't need it up all the time and there's like three different settings of like how much you wanted up or if you want it up at all. I thought that was great. I think I think mine was broken. I think that may have been a bug for me because I wanted to just experiment with having no markers or none of that. And I feel like I was able to do so during the preview period. But this time around, it's still kind of stuck

around my HUD. Maybe I wasn't selecting the right option. But I'm pretty sure I looked into it. And I think maybe it was just a bug that was still showing me here's where you need to go. and if I turn around, now it's on the bottom of my screen, and if I turn back around, now it's kind of like guiding me in the right direction. I love quest timing. You can definitely tell there's, like, quests that will take you five to ten minutes.

There's some that will take you 10 to 15. Definitely the meteor ones that will take you 20. It was very cool of like, I know this quest is going to be a shorter one. I knock it out, five minutes, easy, been done that. I, like, really enjoy that you can get a gauge of like how long that's going to take you and have fun with it because there's a lot of cool quests from side quests to companion quest the main quest that like you could just do all the time and i i appreciated the uh again for what i want out of a game like this the quest that were like cool you're gonna go meet with these

people and have a conversation and i did it wasn't that it broke into this giant fight or whatever it was just like we're actually having a conversation that's building the narrative slash story slash relationship uh a little bit more a lot of cool things from you know dragons to uh fighting pits little disappointed in the fighting pit we'll talk about that in the spoiler cast but at the end they're like that dragon's 52. It's like that's the dragon age. It was just interesting of like the fighting pits clearly just random and like you build up because like they want you to do 10. Like the mini first mission is like hey win 10 battles. And it's like every time they're throwing different things at you by the 10th one.

It's like oh, are we building to something big and bad? No, they just gave me small rats for number 10. It's like oh. Hey man, you deserve it. I like the fighting pits, dragons. There's location champions. So like every cool little world you go to, there's a champion waiting for you to fight it, then you take their spirit and you take it to another area where you'll fight even more champions. Those champions are awesome.

Like truly honestly, the enemy designs and like the different enemies in this, there's a lot and every single time, it was like, that's exciting. There were some where it's like, oh, that's a little boring. You know what I mean? And once you know the repetition of the fight, it's like, eh, I wish we weren't doing this all time,

but like it's so cool looking and it's awesome. But there's a lot of fun to be had in that. I'll say I think that's maybe another one of my issues with the game that's like preventing it from being true goat masterpiece level is um it's it's there are a lot of different enemies in different like uh when we talk about destiny we have like here are the vex and here the the fallen or whatever the fuck right yeah and in mass effect there are those different things right there are the like the undead people there are um the the

the venatory. There's all these sorts of different factions. I just, I somehow just wanted more variety because I did feel like the fodder was the same. Some enemies, well, not even, not near necessarily the fodder, I just feel like some larger enemies that are meant to be more brooding and more hulking would have the same move set as a dude from a completely different enemy type or whatever. I don't know. As somebody who, it's hard to reach the level. of enemy variety in a game like Elbin Ring, but I just,

I wanted a bit more different stuff. There are some cool, really unique boss fights that I enjoyed. I just wanted more, more variety that wasn't, you know, the big guy that does the swing that you could pair and does that swing

and then does the down. Like, I experienced that one a little too much for my taste. Did you find the skeleton crew? There's skeletons with Dungeons and Dragon, dice for heads. Super cute. Just a,

like a little random small one, but super fun. I'm like, oh, that's cute. I like that. Like, every anime design was, like, cute and cool and, like, different. I like that a lot. My final one is, uh, the mission details. I do wish that they gave you a little more description on, like, the level you're going into.

I found probably three times I would be doing a side quest that's building into something. And then you get to the final one, you're like, holy shit. Like, that boss is level 40 and I'm 27 right now. Like, I would, I would like a little more detail just because I wasted 10 minutes of my time to get to the boss fight, to get absolutely rinsed on and be like, okay, well, now I got to put that in my back burner. Yeah, you'll notice kind of with the rhythm that I had on that first time that I experienced what Mike's talking about is that I believe that was probably a champion. And then from then on that, I was like, oh, okay, any champion mission, they're going to be a lot

higher level. I'll probably wait to go back to those later. Because, yeah, I had the same thing where I was like, holy shit, this dude has necrosis powers that like my life bar is just going down. And I haven't even been hit because I stepped into his pool of poison or whatever. And that was like, holy shit. That was a awakening. No.

That's like such a nerdy. First off, in general, the room you're in when you're, is like fucking cool and it reminds me of another game. And then to have that, I think Easter egg reference, I thought that was pretty funny. Also the health pots. That's just one thing I want to, there's like good and bad. health pots are awesome. Like it's great that they got the health pots there,

and I like that you have to break through them to use them because, like, I don't want to just run over them at a random time when I don't want to use them, but at the same time, there is moments of frustration when I'm battling, and I have to now roll through this and add an extra moment into my gameplay to then go get it. And also, they clearly give you enough to get by, in my opinion, but also just enough where, like, sometimes you're like,

I need more health pots here, but they're like, yo, you should have your companions with health stuff, but I'm like, no, no. Yeah. I'm not listening to you. We're never going to heal. Trust me, me and my crew, we're murdering. Oh, I needed heels a lot.

I healed a lot. Never won't. And the, like, fortitude of like, all right, you're invulnerable for a second. Yeah, my squad. Which was so helpful when you had to go, like, do like, we'll take care of the big, they're not saying this, but like, have them fight the enemies and I have to go do the blight or whatever. I, I love the sort of, um, like, strategy that went into, because Belar was always, like, one of my main, uh, squad mates.

and then my other character would kind of rotate depending on who I was going to be fighting where I know blight are weak to fire I should take Tosh with me or I should take Daverin somebody with fire abilities that are going to really help sort of power this up or if we were fighting whatever enemy this person has electric abilities

or Lucanus has his necrosis or whatever and that's where I would I like the strategy that went into that. Reminding me a lot of like Final Fantasy rebirth fights going into a fight it's like oh I want this person on my squad because they have these moves Did you feel like it became repetitive combat? No, that's one of the comments I've seen from people.

And I, and I'm not, obviously, we have their own take on video games and yet, yeah, yeah, they didn't get wrong. The only time I felt it was repetitive was personally last night. And again, I think that's the pressure of the review embargo, where when it was like, all right, cool, I'm in and I, I'm an hour and a half in. And I know that Mike said it was three hours sold credits. I'm like, I got another hour and a half in it. So when it was, then it was like the big moment, run in arena battle full of people, get to a, another arena, then it was another moment, then it was arena battle. That was the only time where I was

like, let's speed it up a bit. Any other times combat happened, I was like, let's fucking go. Yeah, I'm dodge rolling, I'm shooting my arrows, I'm doing this, this boat shoots out three arrows at once, this is fucking awesome. I had a parry that if I perfect parried them, it would suck a bunch of different enemies around towards the area that I parried at.

Did what to a bunch of enemies? It would suck them off Barrett, it would just suck that juice out of them. It would suck them off towards the parry. It would suck them towards the parry area. It was so satisfying to do. You would hit that pair and you would see all the other enemies come near and then you would follow up with that big sort of either shield bash or whatever the hell is great. We didn't even talk about the little dagger, which is like your move set plus Y,

which gives you three like passives or instance that you can then use. And I really enjoy. Go get this up for us. I didn't think I was going to go get so deep into the menus, Tim. Yeah. I did. Right? I was deep in the menus.

There was moments where I was like, I'm going to stop this right now. And I'm going to completely respect. but then I was too dominant to respect so I never did. But I did like going into the dagger and choosing my three instant slash passes of like you kick it on and you get 10 seconds of invulnerability

or my crew would instantly restart all their ability so the cool down timer would be gone or I would get something buffed up. I really, really enjoyed that. Things always seem impossible at the time, at the beginning. I fucked out of.

Just fight one battle at a time. Berwick Tetris. as you all know this is the collector's edition with goddamn Solace's dagger look how sick this shit is we are gifted this

and Tim I was willing to break every FTC law by accepting collections edition of plastic so thank you for this this is awesome Andy actually I have a question a super chat for you

from Russ Fine saying hi K if you had to prioritize one game based on vibes surprises and art direction. So vibes, surprises, and art direction. Which game would you give the most time to? Dragon Age, metaphor, or rebirth?

Oh, fuck. I haven't played metaphor. You can't go wrong. Like, either way you go. It kind of depends on what you get... What style of RPG are you in the mood for? What do you get the most joy out of? Like, I think if you... Heavy combat.

Like, personally, if you are more into combat, but I also think like Final Fantasy Rebirth is probably my favorite combat system ever, just because of all of the strategy that goes into it. Man, I don't know, it's, that's really, really tough to say.

If you have found yourself ever enjoying persona, then obviously go metaphor. If you are somebody who really, really loved God of War 2018 and Ragnarok and enjoyed those, like, enjoy the combat system there, go with Dragon Age. And if you

if you want to like marry Tifa go incredible story killer soundtrack awesome a guy with a motorcycle reactions I mean

maco freakouts left and right can you beat the game you go with Final Fantasy revert what a time oh my god don't get me started have you beaten the game

no I haven't but I'll tell you all about it I think great one for you here from Ben Kossum how much does listening to vows and vengeance increase or affect your enjoyment of the story

if at all Vows and Vengeance of course the Dragon Age podcast Right, that I adore that I had a really great time listening to. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think for me personally in the lead up to this, after the preview where I was like, damn,

all I want to do is play this game. Getting vows and vengeance as a nice little appetizer was great. I don't, I mean, I don't think it did much for the overall story. I mean, you can skip it. It's not required listening at all.

It's very much a, if you want a fun story that involves the side characters. They pop up every so often. And then another one for you, Greg, here from Julian Favelli saying first time Super Chatter. What do you guys think about the review code drama? Some creators weren't given codes due to slightly negative opinions. I have not heard of that.

I don't know if you either of you have heard about that. I saw drama and it seems like some people were critical and didn't get codes and some people that were critical did get codes. That's my thing where it's like I'm an outsider and I don't know anything about this. So I should be careful with what I say. For me, all the usual suspects are reviewed. it. Like I'm IGN and GameSpot and VGC like us like the people I would expect to have code have code. So then I don't know how far into the outskirts we're going of people who don't have

code. But they're also kind of like within just people we know. And there's like a lot of people out there that I just don't know that didn't get code. So I'm like I'm not I don't really know who you are anyway. That sounds like I'm talking shit. Yeah. Like trust me, plenty of people don't know who I am. I think it's tough to answer when you know, all we have is to assume that's the reason why certain people weren't given codes and maybe that's not the entire story. 100%. And again, like very much from the kind of funny perspective,

remember, we're not owed codes. We're not promised codes. It's nice to get codes. But if somebody was like, we didn't like what you did, then we don't fuck off then. We don't do it. You know what I mean? So it's like, I've also like made fun of Mass Effect and Drameda a lot in critical ways. And I don't know.

That wasn't held against me. I don't know. Yeah, it's a weird one to do. But yeah, I don't know anything about it. It does seem like it's good. There's so many reviews up on Metacritic and there are so many negative reviews on Medicaid. I think it's great ammunition for people that want this game to be bad to use as like an excuse for why it wasn't worse. Earlier somebody went through the chat on YouTube that was like Phoebe something

other who's like, ah, another woke game. Sorry, I won't play it. Yeah, if you're a bigot, you're not going to have fun in this game. Yeah, you are not. It's a very diverse, awesome game. Yeah. And it was like that with the rest of the games too. So that's a, I feel like not a huge, like new thing for the series.

Yeah. And there's probably just a lot of other games on. on those lists that you probably shouldn't enjoy anyway, but you do and you excuse the diversity in them. Somebody put it up, yeah, it was a tweet I never saw from Doom today, but in response, somebody was bitching on one of my posts,

and they responded with a screenshot of a Doom tweet, that was like, you press the buttons. Yeah, you press the buttons, you want to press. You make it, it, and whatever happened. Yeah, yeah. So any then on our, bringing it back to our opinions here, is Dragon Age the Veil Guard,

getting a nine from Greg, an 8.5 from Mike and a 9 from Andy. Is it a contender for the three of you? And is it currently your game of the year? Nah, man. I mean, it's easily in my top 10 list. It's going to be very, very up there.

I think, I don't know if it'll overtake like Shadow of the Erd tree for me, though. But I don't think it will, but it's fucking up there. Like it is, it's probably going to be top three for me, I would say. Mikey. It's all saying and done.

Yeah, Tim, this is a contender. This is going to battle for the top spots. You know, my top spot currently, Deadlock. So it's going to be tough to try to take your redlock. Let's talk more, man. You know, let's have a conversation about this being around Final Fantasy and, you know, other games like that. So we'll see. We'll see.

But this is a great game, great game. Greg Miller. Is it a contender for you? Is it your game of the year so far? It's a contender. for sure. Game of the year I want to reflect on. Right now again, Astrobot, I think, was such a stem to discern, amazing time start to finish that like again with the realization through this game that it wasn't in RPG as much as it was an action RPG slash I was

watching a story rather than making a story, I need to flip around on it. But more importantly for this, I think, yeah, it's a nine out of ten for me. It's an amazing game. I don't know for people if it'll be an amazing RPG. If that's what you're looking for, I don't know if that'll be the game for you. But in terms of an overall game, as somebody who, for so long. It's talking about how great kingdoms of Amalor Reckonings Combat was and how much I loved that world and just being able to go do things in it. That's here in spades

with the bioware story, with the relationships, with this stunning environment and lightning fast load times and amazing music. There's all this stuff that comes in to make it an amazing experience. Is it game of the year? I don't know. It might just be like a blockbuster movie.

I really enjoyed, but I definitely am going to think about characters. I cannot wait for next week to do the spoiler cast. I can't wait for next week. to go through the journal page by page. I'll put the journal up, like I said, kind of funny.com slash Greg's journal. We'll put it up on launch day so that you can page through it with me. There will be spoilers if you look ahead,

but you can kind of see where I'm at. And so a little bit of looking ahead. There will be a lot of Dragon Age coverage. Clearly, we are enjoying the game quite a bit here. A kind of funny. Greg was saying he's going to post the journal on launch day, kind of funny.com slash Greg's journal to check that out.

And then starting this Thursday, Thursday and Friday, it's going to be, Greg and Andy creating Nick the Dwarf in Dragon Age the Veil Guard. Let's see what this dork looks like. Take him on a little adventure. You can check out that on YouTube and Twitch

as we stream it. Next week, Gamescast is going to be Greg. One episode of Gamescast will be Greg walking you through the journal. So you can download it online and check it out or get Greg's kind of personal solo spoiler cast adjacent type journey

through his time with the game. And then we'll also be doing a fall on actual spoiler cast, there will be a bigger discussion with everybody that wants to be a part of it. Hell yeah. Very exciting times. Let us know in the comments below if you are planning to get Dragon Age to the Vale Guard, if this review swayed you one way or another.

Remember, stay tuned after this. We're about to do a amazing, super fun basketball day game draft. I can't wait to see what we are. So if you're watching on Twitch, stay right where you are. If you're watching on YouTube, you need to make the jump over to a different link. But until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.

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