Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Dragon Age: Veilguard - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Gaming Hosts Ryan and Josh are back and we are pumped to bring you the long awaited Dragon Age: Veilguard episode! Buckle up, because this gaming packed episode is going down as one to remember. It��s another awesome video game review episode from your favorite gaming podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake and Disratory Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, fellow Fade-touched, and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. On today's episode, we're returning to the world of Thedas as we dive into Dragon Age Veilguard. A game that has seen both praise and disdain. It's time to see where things land as we've played it and now it's time to see what it's all about. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me, it's his first time ever playing a Dragon Age game and maybe it's his last if he didn't like it it's Ryan oh brother yeah I can't wait to get into this because everyone will

find out shortly what the answer is to that question we have been hyping this episode up for a while Ryan Dragon Age Veil Guard is one of those games that is very controversial uh reviews came out some people really praised it and said oh my goodness dragon age is back and then we got some other people that said dude what the heck like i don't know what game you're playing but this game's terrible yeah and you know these are both like, I mean, we've seen both sides from some pretty major like publications and gaming websites and very popular YouTube reviewers and stuff like that. So it's been all over the place, man. And I know that like for you and I going into this, it was, you know, what's it going to be?

What's it going to be? Is it going to be fail guard or is it going to be Fail Guard, baby? Exactly, exactly. And it's my first kind of touch into this world. So I was super excited to see, you know, what I was going to get into. Yeah, and so just to start the show off, you know, Ryan has never played a Dragon Age game.

I have played all of them. Paul famously is a huge dragon age fan as well there might be a little little little secret happening later on right that i'll just tease for people i think um but we got a lot to talk about i'm very excited to talk about this game but you know what first we're gonna start off with a review oh we love it you know what we absolutely love it when people take the time to leave us a review it means the world to us it tells other people that might be looking for a gaming podcast that hey this one is worth checking out uh and so we've always said if you leave us a review we will do our best to read it on the show. Like this one that comes in from DKWKCMSDKD.

And it's titled, Love It. And it says, I listened to this podcast on the bus and it starts my day on a good mood. I love it. Keep it up, guys. Oh, that's so good. Short and sweet, man. We're helping people get through school, get through house projects, commutes, bus rides. We're here for the people, man. We are here for the people. I mean, let's be honest. We do all this for free. We have people

that definitely help support this show and keep it going. But we do it because we are lifelong We love talking video games, man. And it's something that we're absolutely passionate about. We hope that comes through for everybody. But also, thank you for taking the time to leave a review as well. Yes, thank you. Ryan, I don't want to beat around the bush on this one. So let's get in to our deep dive on Dragon Age veil guard let's do it are you ready i'm ready ryan wait wait wait a minute are you ready i think i'm ready and you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna be

ready for what's that paul was right it's fail guard dude it's fail guard this game is terrible oh my gosh what happened what happened well i don't even know what the games before and i want to say what happened oh my goodness i'm just going to come out and say it because right now people are going wait what like you guys are supposed to wait till the end of the episode to tell us what you think no i'm telling everybody right now, I freaking hate this game. They have ruined Dragon Age. This is beyond fail guard. This is just Dragon Age fail. There's not even a guard part of it because guarding something sounds like it's worthwhile. And there's nothing.

There's nothing worthwhile about this game, man. Oh, my gosh. Dude, 10 years of development for this? Oh, poor Allie. We're sorry, Allie we know and for everybody else that might enjoy this game listen gaming we were talking about it before we started recording gaming is is art gaming is subjective and we are going to cover the the various aspects of dragon age veil guard so for people like wait a minute you guys just ruined it. No, we're going to get into the game. We're going to actually break things down

because we fully understand that there are people out there that will enjoy this video game. And as much as we are probably going to do some trashing and bashing of this, that's just our opinion. And so just like we always do, we are going to go through the

different aspects of the game so that you can make your own choice on whether or not you think this game sounds like it's for you the only thing that i can say for me is this game is atrocious dude this is the biggest hot mess of a video game that I can think of since Forspoken. Oh. You know? I mean, there's so many things wrong with this game that I don't even know where to start. Like, legitimately. And it's not just me, right?

I mean, Ryan, you're brand new. You are brand new to Dragon Age. For you, you went into this as going, I'm about to play a video game that people love. Yes. And what happened? It's fresh eyes, fresh gaming experience. I have no preconceived notions or no bias.

This is what this game should be. This is what I want it to be. It was totally blank, which is what I loved with us going into this because you're the seasoned vet. I'm brand new. We get kind of both worlds on what we would view it as. And I think we both came out of the tunnel the same. And I don't want to interrupt you, but we don't talk about our opinion. This was not me saying I hate this game and then swaying you somehow into like pointing out all the things that I thought were terrible with it. We did not talk

about our thoughts on this game until literally right before we started recording. And that's when we were like, dude, this is not going to go well. You ready to trash this? I'm ready to trash this. Oh my goodness. Okay. So people are going like, okay, well you hate it, but you know, tell me, tell me more. Like, why do you hate it? Um, I'm just going to give a few things, um, just right off the top. And again, don't worry. We'll get into the actual game, the different stuff. We're going to talk about the story. We're going to talk about the combat. We're going to talk about the characters. We're going to talk about the world. Uh, I mean, we're going to do all that. So hang with us.

But it's just this is one of those things where sometimes it's just we don't want to hold it in, man. Yeah. Buckle up, people. Get to the nitty gritty. We have always said, you know what? We are not afraid to slam a game. We are gamers. We are not experts. It's not our job or our mission to try to sugarcoat things.

We fully understand that there's going to be people that disagree with us. We are not trying to slander somebody because they enjoy this game. If you love Dragon Age Veilguard, we are very happy for you because you found a video game that you enjoy. Us, on the other hand, we may have wasted $140 playing this piece of garbage game. And a lot of hours. And we don't do... We're not here... I know Josh and myself both want every game to be awesome because that's a lot of time we're spending and money we're investing. So we're not doing this.

This isn't clickbait. This isn't just because we like to yell and scream and just talk bad about stuff. We want everything, every experience to be good and everyone to enjoy what they play. This just wasn't it, man. It was not it. Let me, let me just do that.

I'll give a, I'll give a brief snippet of something that bugged me. Right. I'm gonna talk about a quest real quick. I found this quest in one of the towns where there was a dude that was dead with a sword through his back in the middle of this like pentagram. And I was like, Ooh,

what's this? And I interacted with it and it started a quest for me. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. And this ghost pops up and he's been murdered. There's obviously some sort of demonic forces or dark forces. And I get this quest says, ooh, you got to figure out who this guy was.

So you can find out what's going on. And I went, ooh, okay. So I go into a room that is right next door to me where this guy was dead. And I find a book and the book tells me he's somebody. I don't remember who. And then it's like, okay. And then it's like, oh, you've completed one out of three steps on this quest. And I'm like, already? Like, okay, cool. And then it says, you got to find the other people that were murdered in this town.

And I went, ooh, sounds like a mystery to me. I go looking around. Guess what I find soon enough? Another dude murdered with a sword in his back. And it says, you got sounds like a mystery to me. I go looking around. Guess what I find soon enough? Another dude murdered with a sword in his back. And it says, you gotta find out about this guy. And I went, ooh, okay. Well, there's a room right next to me. I bet I know where I can look.

Oh, no. And sure enough, guess what? I found out who that guy was. You know? Okay. I'm gonna save everybody the monotony here. I found the third dude that got murdered. I thought this was gonna be some awesome quest. I'm about to save everybody the monotony here. I found the third dude that got murdered. I thought this was going to be some awesome quest.

I'm about to fight some big demon thing that's been terrorizing the people of this town, where I'm going to find some crazy ghost that's going to lead me to loot. I find the third guy. I identify who he is. I'm the savior of the city. I stopped these cold-blooded murders. And you know what their quest reward was i got told by an overlay on the quest that i brought hope to docktown ryan by finding these three murdered people

i brought hope to the town of docktown you're the bringer of hope my man no boss fight no cool gear no awesome quest reward no even no dialogue from the people that were with me that was like that was insane what a dark thing to have to experience or any of that no yeah i brought hope to the town ryan quest over move on yeah dude that makes me think of because they had the perfect template remember in God of War those ghost quests where you find the people and they're like oh my my wife or my son or whatever it was and you have to go and rescue them and kill the people yeah to get back the device they needed or what they wanted like that's how you do it there's a perfect template on how to make that kind of small quest meaningful and uh something you can remember and they just totally blew it up and just did

whatever they wanted and it was horrible this quest was the turning point for me where i was like i i really like i was so like optimistic about where this side quest could go and it's just a side quest it wasn't a main quest or anything but i was like oh this could actually be a really neat like in-depth find the murderer figure out it's somebody like in the government or something and he's dark and there's you know no no there was none of that i just i brought hope to the town ryan and they're all like that it is every quest they're all like that man that, man. That's what's crazy to me. And along those lines of just the lack of depth and everything, I found personally that right away, just my desire to learn who these characters were and learn their stories and the way I was told who they were from somebody who's completely new. Because I know there were some people who made cameos and reappearances and all this stuff that I didn't know about.

And I didn't care to learn because they were just so utterly boring. Everything was just boring about them. And so the way they portrayed all these characters was just, it was miserable, man. All right, let me jump back on my soapbox ryan let's talk about the main character rook rook you play as rook he was a main character uh well i mean maybe i don't even know if you could call him that nobody knows who the heck rook is he wasn't in any of the other dragon age games so it's not even like this is a continuation of the people that you fell in love with or grew to hate

when you played Dragon Age Origins or Dragon Age 2 or Dragon Age Inquisition. No, you don't get any of those people, except for Varric, you know what I mean? And guess what they do? Guess what they do right away? They make Varric wounded and he has to sit in a freaking bed the whole game so you don't even get to enjoy

the one decent character in this video game. No, you get a whole new cast of characters't even get to enjoy the one decent character in this video game he was you get a whole new cast of characters you get to play as the protagonist rook is that because his name is rookie i don't know but he sucks you know it's like rook is the most disinteresting protagonist that i've ever met and i made him i spent time in the character creator to try to make this guy look like he would be the guy that I want to play this game as. And while I'm playing the game as this dude, all I can think about is you suck.

You have no backstory. You have no reason to be leading these people. Like, let me, let me just, because I know there's people that know Dragon Age, Ryan. So, so bear with me here. Okay. Because let's go back to Dragon Age Origins. Okay.

In Dragon Age Origins, you are the protagonist in all the Dragon Age games, because you're playing a video game. You're not going to play anybody but the protagonist in this, right? In Dragon Age Origins, you're conscripted by the Grey Wardens. And you have to watch people die from drinking Darkspawn blood. But you and your buddy Alistair miraculously survive the dark spawn blood and because you two came through together you were bonded your brothers you know what i mean like you have this ability that that catapults you forward because you're able to withstand this you know and now you have this guy you're you know you're you've become a gray warden you're

having to learn how to use your powers. And all this stuff matters. You were chosen in that game. Let's skip ahead to Dragon Age Inquisition. In Inquisition, it starts out, you're shot out of the fade by Justinia, who's a god, if I recall. Don't hold me to that Dragon Age lore, people. It's been a while.

You know, and you have this marking, this mysterious marking on your forearm that you realize will close these wrists to the fade. So it's like you have this special ability. You don't know what it is. You don't know where it came from. All you know is it's super important. And it marks you from the beginning of the game as somebody that's special.

Yeah. Rook? Guess what, Rook? I'm Varric, and I'm wounded, and I can't do this, so you have to be the leader. Oh. Oh, cool. What am I supposed to do?

I don't know. Am I, like, superhuman? Do I have powers? Am I the chosen one? We don't care. Am I the one, like Neo from the Matrix? Who knows? Okay, well, why am I leading this party then?

Because there's nobody else? Like, what the heck, man? He even questions it. He's like, why me? You know? And oh, gosh, yeah. It was something wild to where being new to it like I am, I found myself questioning, wait, who is this guy?

Why? And like you said, I made him. And I was watching him. I'm like, wait, my guy this guy? Why? And like you said, I made him. And I was watching him. I'm like, wait, my guy can't do this. He's freaking lame. I tried to make him as cool as I could, and he was still freaking lame, man. It was something that it's hard to describe how this is you. This is who you want to be.

And everybody, when they play a game, that's why we play it. We want to escape. We want to be cool, awesome characters and just dive into this world and take over and lead this group onto our journey and our quest. And even I felt like I couldn't do it. I'm like, who the heck am I? I don't even know what my tie is in this. Varric's just like, yeah, we had time together, and you're the only one that can lead. And we're like, all right, I can do it.

And then we just go around just yelling at everybody and with no other reason. We're going to, okay. So we're going to get into the characters, your companions in the story here in a little bit, but none of this makes sense. We used to pick on Paul because Paul's very, very logical. And Paul would always be like, this story doesn't tie together very well. And I always went, Paul, you're playing a video game. You have to have the suspension of disbelief, right? Like just give them some leeway. We're people, we're heroes, we're gods, we're warriors, you know, we're video game people. Dude, I don't care how much suspension of disbelief I can muster up. There's no world.

There's no universe. There's no video game where I can go, Rook, my dude, he's a badass man. He's a leader. He's putting together a team of the best people in the world to take on these gods. And then I'm going, this is also fake. These people are just joining this random schmuck who's not even really like a hero for no reason. And you're pledging your life to this guy. Like, I can't suspend that much disbelief to get behind this, man. That's a lot of disbelief to suspend for sure.

Oh my gosh, dude. Oh my gosh. I, you know, we're going to get into our reviews. And I will preface this by saying that I think that this game will be fun for a lot of people. We have talked to people. We have people in our community that love Dragon Age Veil Garden, have been praising it. They're on their second playthrough and they're like, dude, I've waited for this game for so long. I'm so happy. I love that. We love that for you. But one of my pet peeves when it comes to gaming is I would rather a game just be bad, like just be terrible. You know what I mean? All the way around. But when you give me glimpses

of greatness and then that greatness is ruined by terrible design choices, lazy writing, just whiffs left and right, it frustrates me more than if a game was just bad. And that's the case for me for Dragon Age Vilgard because there are moments in this game where I was like, oh, sweet, there's my Dragon Age. This is fun. Oh, that was cool. But there's so few and far between

and they are surrounded by the worst of the worst that it just aggravates me to no end. And I want to rage about that because it's like you had, I got glimpses. You gave me little snippets of why this game could have been good, and then you blew it. Yeah. And I don't have patience for that, man.

So it's tough it's like almost like we famously talk about food quite a bit here it's like you go to this this awesome barbecue restaurant it's a it's a continuation of all these other chains that you've always loved and you get a brisket and fries and uh beans and coleslaw and your brisket tastes like a dried tire everything else is absolute garbage and your coleslaw is the best coleslaw ever but everything else is horrible so like how's your experience not good you know you're not going to be like oh you know i would recommend it no it's everything overall becomes bad because the little bits that are great don't overcome everything else. Yeah.

It's, oh, man. All right. Listen. All right. Back on track. All right. We're professionals. We can do this.

I don't know what happened there. I apologize up front for spoiling the episode, but sometimes things just need to be said, man. Yep. Okay. We're professionals, Ryan. We can do this. I don't promise that I won't slander every other aspect of this game

because there's definitely things to slander in every aspect of this game, but I'm going to try, I'm going to try to talk about some of this in a light that people maybe will resonate with, maybe not, but you know what? We're human and we're gamers. And like I said, we call it when a game doesn't work for us. And man, Dragon Age

Fail Guard was a huge, huge whiff in my opinion. But let's get into it. Let's figure out why. Let's talk about some of these aspects. Ryan, I mentioned it at the top of the episode, but just in case people missed it, you are a complete noob to the Dragon Age series. You have no skin in this game. You have no background with the characters. You don't know what to expect. You had no, nothing, zero zilch to compare this to other than how is it as a video game itself? Me, I have a rich history with Dragon Age, a fan of all of them. I love them. They're some of the best RPGs that I have played. And so I have that stigma of, will this live up to the Dragon Age legend, to the honor that should be making the third Dragon Age game or fourth Dragon Age game? I can't count. But that's where we're at as far as our approach to this going into it.

So one other thing I do want to point out is there will be minor spoilers. You may have heard a few of those already. Sorry about that. We are not going to spoil the big story or any of that stuff. We will be talking about some party members, some general story aspects and things like that. So if you are worried about having the entire

game ruined for you, don't worry about it. We're just going to talk about, you know, we're going to keep it on kind of a general level as far as that goes. But again, you know, for example, you put your party together. The first 10 hours of this game are kind of building your party and finding your companions. And we're going to talk about that. So if you don't want to know who you find at all, you know, then you may want to just pause this and come back to it later on. But all right, well, let's get into it, Ryan, as we have been doing, we always like to start out a deep dive with saying, dude, what is the part of this game that stood out to you the most? Every game has a hook. It has a catch. It has something that

stands out in the grand scheme of things. And I want to hear what you think that is, because you and I have not talked about this. Yes. But we're going to go to a break first, and then we're going to hear about it. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others.

BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. All right, Ryan, we're back and that was a tease, I know. What stood out to you, Ryan? Give me the thing, the catch, the draw, the thing where your brain said, dude, this was the part that stood out to me. Oh, man.

So it has to be positive, right? Or we can just do one negative. No, I didn't say that. Did I say positive? I just said, give me what stands out to you, Ryan. I'll tell you what my favorite part is that stood out to me. I liked, is it Lucanus? Lucanus. Yeah, Lucanus, Lucanus.

Lucanus in boots. This was 100% a ripoff of Puss in Boots, and that's literally all I thought about the whole time I played the game, and I just was talking in that voice the whole time I played. What do you mean, Ryan? You don't want to save this city? I will save this city. You don't. The Veilguard. Oh, here we are.

There's a dragon in my homeland. I need help. Rook, come with me. I am Lucanus in boots. Do you have any milk? Or you'll scratch my back for me. Oh, look, yarn. Here we go.

No, no. I had to kill a man once who did blood magic on nugs. A hundred little pigs with hands came after me. Shrek? For you, baby, I could be. Fear me if you dare. Joking aside, I will say what did stand out to me, even though I didn't like the character style and the animation style that they designed this in,

I do think they did a really good job graphically i think that it was uh a very beautiful looking world i think that the characters looked great for what they were and um that's that's like the biggest thing overall as i played i'm like man this is this is kind of a pretty cool environment and it looks good overall i don't like the the what they chose but i can recognize that i think that they did a good job in what they did um i don't disagree with you on that and we'll get into the art style and characters actually next um because i do have some stuff to say about that as somebody that has history with the Dragon Age games. For me, the thing that stood out the most on this game was how absolutely lackluster everything was.

Honestly, it sounds like I'm just being mean, but the dialogue in this game was bad. The combat was mediocre. The characters I could care less about. Even like the RPG elements of this game were so dumbed down. Like that's probably, maybe that's the term I want to use is I felt like everything was just dumbed down. And that's not an insult to people that like this game. And I don't mean it that way at all. What I mean is that nothing was cutting edge. Nothing was daring. Nothing was on the forefront of like, let's push the boundaries. This felt like a game that was made in the safest, most routine, most non-offensive uh bland you know like everybody loves mashed potatoes right mashed potatoes can be good but nine times out of ten they're just mashed potatoes you know it's like you eat them they're okay i'm not slain or mashed potatoes i love mashed potatoes i'm just saying

that like this is a game where somebody made mashed potatoes and forgot to put like any seasoning in it no butter it's just it's just pureed potatoes and that's it. And it's like, I hope you like potatoes. And you're like, well, I like potatoes with flavor. And no, you don't get any flavor. You just get potatoes. Yeah. Where are the spices?

Where's the flavor? Yeah. If you put some spices in my potatoes, it might make them more delicious. I've had diarrhea since Easter. So for me, the thing that stood out is just how absolutely bland and unimpressive just about everything about this game was. And I hate that. I hate it for this game. I hate it for our experience for this game. I hate it for the

developers that probably put 10 years worth of effort into this game but that's what stood out to me is every time i just kind of went this quest is boring this dialogue sucks this this combat is bland man the one thing that i got super excited about that we'll get we'll dive into a little bit later is it had the most massive skill tree that i have seen in a while and i went oh my gosh. Here we go. Yes, this combat's gonna be fantastic. And then none of it mattered. No. Enjoy your three skills. All right, Ryan.

Let's talk about the art style and by nature, just the overall styling. Not the graphics necessarily, but just the, this was a major thing, right? When they released some of the trailers, the very first thing, and you were there when we watched it. That started the fail guard. That's what started it. Paul and I both went, what the heck is this?

Yeah. What is this art style? This isn't Dragon Age. It's a cartoony? It's Fortnite-y? Like, what? This isn't Dragon Age. This isn't dark fantasy and gritty and scary and impressive monsters.

Like, what is this crap? So, what did you think about the art style i thought it was the fortnight effect man i i did it was just so it's hard to say because going into it fresh you know i got an open mind and i'm ready to experience whatever is there and whatever is given to me. And immediately, it looked like I was playing a game of wax figures. I did not like the art style. The voiceovers didn't match because their faces didn't move. There was no facial expressions whatsoever.

Somebody's yelling and they just look stone-faced. Oh, I can't believe we're not doing this. We need to go this way. And he just looks normal as he's just ripping into everybody. I agree 100%, dude. Yeah, it's just ripping into everybody and he just looks like he's as calm as can be. And it just didn't seem, from what I've read and what I've looked at before, to fit what this game was supposed to be. And it just seemed Pixar, Disney, cartoonish.

Like, let's make this. And again, it falls back into the safety thing. Like, we're just going to have a nice, safe experience for everybody. Which is fine if you want to do that. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people that will enjoy that. But just to me, immediately, I'm like, oh man, here we go. Really? Like, this is what we're

gonna do you know and so that's what the graphic style or the art style that's what immediately came to my mind and i just was immediately turned off i will say that it was it was very difficult for me to adjust to the art style dude i can imagine. and kind of how they approached it. And I actually remember thinking like, this is growing on me. I'm not opposed to the art style and the direction they went until the characters started talking. And that's the problem, right? Is because the,

the dialogue in this game does not match the art style for the characters. They're wax figures, dude. And you, that you hit the nail on the head, dude, is it's like, there's, there's terrible animations for the characters they're wax figures dude and you that you hit the nail on the head dude is it's like there's there's terrible animations for the characters their expressions when they're interacting and talking about the end of the world these you know their city is under attack by

dragons and oh my goodness and it's like i feel like they're all just doped up on prozac where they're just like oh no the dragons are attacking our city. And it's like, but wait a minute, you have this beautiful art style that I finally come to be okay with. Yeah. And then the dialogue just does not mesh with that art style at all. It's like the,

it's like the voice actors didn't read the overall script and we're reading things like page by page to where they had no idea about the overall script and we're reading things like page by page to where they had no idea about the overall like tone or theme or angles that this game was going to take and when you take that dialogue with this art style that's new and you try to mesh them they just don't mesh and they wind up just colliding for me and it just did not work and so it's like i actually got to where i appreciated the art style but then it was ruined the rest of the game yeah oh my gosh yeah yeah it was it was a tough one man that was um i understand that you could fall fall in love with that a little bit like like i said i recognized how pretty it was for what it is but i just i just

do not like that style and so it just was a no-go for me right off the bat and then the dialogue made it worse paul was sharing some screenshots with us of of like dragon age origins and dragon age inquisition and dragon age veil guard The different characters and stuff. And he was pointing out a lot of the monsters and stuff like that. And the boss fights. Yeah. It is night and day, dude. And when you said this was the Fortnite effect or the Disney slash Pixar effect, that is 100%, dude. I don't know if they were worried that they were going to scare like eight-year-olds that might be playing this game.

But like that's the approach that this entire game felt like it was taken or like, or developed with is like, we can't upset anybody under the age of 10 guys. So we have to make sure that everything fits within this narrow little range of nothing scary, nothing bold, nothing offensive, nothing blah,

you know? And it just, that's what it felt like. So I will say I became a fan of the art style until it was ruined by other aspects of the game and not fitting into those aspects and then it just started to feel jarring because i'm like this doesn't it just doesn't jive man it's just too it was too happy campy like la la la you know it just for what it's supposed to be there's they're tearing down the veil there's elven gods there's monsters everywhere and it la, you know, for what it's supposed to be. They're tearing down the veil.

There's elven gods. There's monsters everywhere. And it's just, you know, there's no conflict, no strife, you know. I feel like there should have been happy music playing in the background. And it's like, oh, here's a, you look, watch out for this enemy. He's going to come try to hurt you. Watch out. He might have a sword.

What do you think you should do? I don't know. Maybe I'll attack him. That might be a good. What do you think you should do? I don't know. Maybe I'll attack him. That might be a good idea. Good job. Oh, man. All right. Let's get into the party slash companions on this game.

You know, this is another thing that we saw going into the game is there were a lot of comments about the characters. I mean, Dragon Age has always been about your companions. It has always been about the bonds that you form, the choices you make, the story that you experience by playing the game with your companions and with your party is how the story is told. And we're going to get to the story in just a minute, but I will say that this is a huge, huge failing, again, in my opinion, on how they approach Dragon Age Veilguard versus the other Dragon Age games. But I will say this, in regards to the companions, in Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, you became very, very bonded with your party. You adventured with them. You would argue with them.

Your choices in the world would actually affect your party so much so. And we see it a little bit in Dragon Age, Veil Guard. So, Ryan, when you saw the like Harding agrees with you or Harding approves or Neve disapproves and stuff like that, they flash up on the screen in Valegarn and you kind of go, oh man, was that a bad choice? Like I didn't want to tick off Harding, you know? Uh-oh. And it kind of makes you wonder in the other Dragon Age games, if you made a decision that somebody drastically disapproved of, they would actually fight you. They would say, I cannot be a part of this decision. I'm warning you, you can't make that choice. And you go, I'm making the choice.

And then they go, no, no, this goes against every virtue that I have. And you'd have to fight and kill your party members at that point. Or they would just say, I can't be associated with somebody that would just murder innocents. I'm out of here. And they'd leave. Yeah. Forever. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Gonezo. But those were the choices that you could make. You were'm out of here. And they leave. Yeah. Forever. Yeah, you're gone. Gone, though. But those were the choices that you could make. You were in control of that. In Vilgarn, hey, I murdered an innocent child. Neve disapproves. That's it. That's it. That's it.

No big deal. So, sorry, Neve. Did I make you disapprove of me by doing something heinous she just she disapproves anyway let's go on this mission yeah all right if you're coming with me to go do this okay cool yeah no no problem rook i mean it this is the problem with this game man is like it it doesn't follow anything that made dragon age what dragon age was um so i did did you feel invested in any of your party members i i mean did you feel like you were forming a bond with anybody or you cared about their story you know what i mean or any of that stuff not in the slightest i felt that

the only thing my uh companions did for, it was almost an extension of myself. Because when we were in battle, you know, on the combat side of it, you use them, you use their attacks, and then it's almost like it's just you and it's your attack. So they're not their own entity. They're not their own beings. I didn't care about their story. I didn't care about what they wanted or what they needed or any of those things. It was just, let's go on this mission. You attack this.

You do that. You do this. And then it was off to the next one. And that's all it ever felt like. It didn't feel like more than that. And that probably had to do with the dialogue and how the lack of investment it gave to you to you know, to where you just didn't care. But man, it was just, I had no desire to learn more. And I'm a big story guy.

I'm one, you famously don't finish a lot of games. There's very many games or very little games that I ever don't finish because I'm like, all right, I need to know what happens in this. I had no desire to find out anything each step of the way. I'm like, okay, cool. I ended up just doing combat to get through the campaign is what it was. It was not like I wanted to know the story.

I just wanted to go, oh, there's another guy to fight. Oh, there's another guy to fight. And that's the way I progressed through the game instead of that involvement and that connection with the characters that you have in these types of games is supposed to be like you described, this bond that's unbreakable. And I just didn't even come close to feeling that. Yeah. Or tentative. In some characters, you had almost like a slightly adversarial relationship in the other Dragon Age games and you knew it and you're kind of like, I don't know if I like this guy, but he's a great warrior and i kind of need him in my party yeah yeah you know

but he would disagree with you a lot but you're kind of like dude you really serve a purpose that i need and in this in veil guard there's none of that dude there's just none of it and i will say i don't want to slam the voice acting in this game because i'm not a voice actor i don't know what it takes to be a voice actor you know and I get that these are humans behind the microphone and they're being put in front of you, and then you have subpar voice acting slash writing. Again, I don't want to pin this on the voice actors, with weird character animations with a very hard-to-get-used-to art style

that, again, I already said I started to get used to it and actually appreciate the art style, but when you have those things and they're not jiving together, it all just feels like nails on a chalkboard in a way. Because my brain at least went, something's not right. It's not working. Like when Harding's like, I don't know what I'm going to do with my new magic. And you're just like, who has these kind of conversations

oh my gosh what just happened what the hell what is what's happening to me i'm scared i don't know what's going on rook no this was like oh what is this weird thing that's going on i can move my bodies and and oh let's go practice that harding not you know like it my gosh man I can't I just can't all right let's move on uh let's talk about the story Ryan um Dragon Age again story driven dude this like talk to Paul right Paul just says dude the story of Dragon Age and how they go about telling it is some of them a favorite I've ever played in any video game ever. And I'm with them, dude. I like, I kind of touched on it, but part of what made dragon age special was that you experienced the story through your actions, through your party, you played the game and the,

and the story kind of just enveloped you, right? It's like God of war. One of my favorite games ever. I absolutely love the story of Kratos, Kratos and Atreus in the beginning, because it's like a father and son and they get forced to go on this journey right and on the journey things happen and and and they it's how they interact and how they approach those things that are thrown at them that makes that game so great you know what they don't do they don't just tell you everything they don't just say well kratos is upset that atreus is a boy and not listening to him and wants to like dragon age veil guard does nothing but tell you yes like tell you what the story is instead of actually letting you experience and find out the story there's no discovery there's no discovery yeah zero discovery yeah everything even they'll do it multiple times

you'll be at your little meetings in the cut scenes. And it's like, oh, this is holding our team back. We need to figure out this and this. And they'll just go on and list the things. It's like, all right, I got to go do these side quests, you know, to figure out this and hash that out. Instead of having you discover it on your own, there's not that diving into what makes this character what they are and figuring that out. And then that helps the bond, you know? And we were just missing that. Yeah.

So the story on this one did not jive with me at all. I mean, they try. You can see glimpses where there's like, ooh, we have political intrigue. And it's like, yeah, but you told me that the Venatori are bad. I didn't discover that they were bad. You know,

you told me that this leader is corrupt. I didn't discover that he was corrupt, you know, like all this stuff. So it's like, you know, there's apocalyptic events, you know,

and it's like, I don't really care about any of those because I don't care about any of these characters, you know? So honestly, Thedas can just, just burn, have it gods. I don't care. Good luck. luck you know and it's like okay well hmm how do we make you care about these gods that you know

these elven gods that are super bad we'll just tell you they're bad yeah okay tell you the bad and they're gods even though they're not really gods but they just call themselves gods but you know why they're bad ryan? Because they spread blight. And you know what? Blight's ugly. Blight's gross. Ew, blight's bad. Ew, bad gods.

Bad gods spreading that ugly blight around. So the story for me, it all felt very contrived. It felt very in your face as far as exposition dumps and things like that. There's no natural discovery of the story or any of that stuff going on. I just couldn't get into it, man. I wanted to because Dragon Age has always been known for that. But it sounds like you weren't gripped by any of these events or any of that.

Like I said, as somebody who's heavily story-driven and I love to just dive into a game and just find out the lore and find out what's happening and experience it all. I found myself just going combat to combat and the story was just kind of there. And like I said, the combat wasn't that great. And I was just going combat to combat

and the story's just kind of the how I get to the next section to fight some generic boss that's maybe a different skin but you know offers the same attacks so it was just it was the story just did not hit for me either yeah i i mean just some touch points the dialogue in this game amongst your party was atrocious to me it was i i want to reference because skill up, very, very famous, if not the top like YouTube video game reviewer.

I mean, he's up there with like Video Game Donkey and stuff like that. But like Skill Up, I watched his review on this game. He said something that I thought was really, really like profound in the dialogue. And he said, all the dialogue in this game sounds like there was an HR representative in the room listening and saying like, oh no, you can't say that. Nope. You have to tone that down. Nope. Too extreme. Bring it back. And he actually said it sounded like HR was in. And after playing it, I think he's 100% right, dude. There's nothing of substance in the dialogue in this game. I could care less about any of the

characters and they try to make them fantastical. I could care less about any of the characters and they try to make them fantastical. I mean, you've got an undead necromancer and a, uh, a giant dragon slaying Kunari or Kuhn or whatever they're called. And you know, you can tell they tried to make it like have some variety. Don't care about any of them, man. You know, um, the choices that you make in this game, they don't matter. Neve disapproves, Ryan. Does that make you feel bad? Nope. Let's keep going.

Yeah. Why? What does it matter if she disapproves? Is she going to leave my party like they would before? Nope. We just want you to know we'll go to the next mission.

No problem. Yeah. Yeah. No worries there. You know, you know, yes, there are choices where you have to make A or B. And if you make A, then B can't happen kind of thing.

And they throw one of those at you within the first, probably six hours of the game. But that was the only thing I saw in this, like that, that mattered in that regard. You know what I mean? Um, I,

the term I'm going to use, and yes, I mean, this is a derogatory term. This is the most Disney fide game game I think I've ever played. And what I mean by that is everything is just safe. It's simple. It's dumbed down.

We don't want to upset anybody. We don't want to have to make anybody think. We don't want anybody to not understand the story. So we're going to make sure that this story is kindergarten level uh dialogue options romance you know there's romance in this game oh yeah you can get a character to say that they like you and you can almost kiss but not quite because again disneyfied you know oh and by the way if you make this choice we're going to let you know that it's a romance choice because we're going to put a giant red heart on it. So you don't even have to think. You don't even have to think about your responses.

Yeah. So, I mean, there's nothing. Nothing dark. Nothing of conflict or that might make you uncomfortable in your decisions or any of that stuff, dude. Nothing dangerous. Just nothing. It's the most dull, bland thing. It's Disney-fied, man. They're not willing to take any risks whatsoever, and it completely ruins it for me. And I watched, I forget which one it was from,

but you talk about how in the prior, one of the prior Dragon Ages where they have to drink that blood stuff and one guy dies, so the other guy tries to back out and then homie walks up shanks him right in the chest and kills him because he knows you can't back out of this ritual and he just kills him and then i forget what he said but i was watching old videos and it was like oh that's dark like that's that's that's getting into something some kind of response yeah like

that was that was 10 times darker than anything in the veil guard like right there right off the bat like he just shanks this dude that's part of the crew because he was gonna abandon the ritual and so it just totally avoided any uncomfortable situations any uh conflict within within the group it it just you know it just avoided all of that and like you said it was it was disneyfied you know which yeah if you like that and if i mean i love a lot of disney movies and they're great for what they are but when you're playing a video game you want to have that kind of depth and involvement to draw you in and there's you're talking about the end of the world you know yeah it's not going to be happy and fun there's going to be some nasty stuff

there's going to be dark choices there's going to be things that people die to kind of you know ends to justify the means you're going to kill this guy or these people and it's it's gonna for for the better cause and you know just all kinds of things like that. And there was none of that. None of it. Zero. Absolutely none. Compared to the other Dragon Age games that did it so well at the same time. All right, let's get into combat.

Because for me, combat was the enjoyable gameplay part of this game. I honestly didn't mind the combat in this game at all. At first, I joked around about, I opened up my character when I leveled up and it said, Hey, you've got a skill point now. And I opened up this skill tree and I went, I just marveled. And I was like, Oh baby. Yes. And I started looking at all the different paths and all that stuff. And you know, you can play as a rogue, as a warrior, as a wizard or source or whatever they call it, you know? So you do have some choices there i will say that at first i knew that this was going to be much more action-based i've already said i don't like the fact that they didn't let you directly control your party members but they

said oh actions per minute you can't handle that guys you can't handle the actions per minute if we let you control your party members but guess guess what? You can combo with them. You can pause the game. So take yourself out of the action, which is jarring. You can pause it and you can issue a command to your party member. You know how many commands you get to issue to your party member? Three. No, it can't be that. You got to be able to do more.

Three abilities. That's it. Come on. That's it. Three abilities that you can say, hey, and you know what? Honestly, I really only use like one because the only reason that you command your party members at all is to set up these combos.

So it's like, ooh, I need to apply Sundered and then this person detonates Sundered. That's it. The reason being is that combat is so simple. I'm going to say dumb down again because it's like it's just button mashy you know it's it's it's it's flary my dudes i played rogue you know which i always play right so it's like i want

that mobility my dude's spinning around and he's leaping up in the air with double dagger slams and all this stuff and i'm like dude this is a spectacle like kudos to this. None of it mattered, dude. It was just mash A, mash B, blam, blam, blam, until that dude's health bar's done. Oh, here comes a very telegraphed attack. Let me dodge out of the way on that one. Oh no, he hit me.

He took off one 17th of my health, you know, or something like that. It just, the skill tree that I was so excited for, doesn't matter you can only equip three skills three skills yeah at a given moment out of all that heck why are you giving me 20 skills if i can only equip three of them man oh well we're actions per minute yeah well you don't want to overload people you know i remember looking at that i can't think beyond three skills ryan i remember looking at just laughing i, whoa, this is a lot of directions.

And I'm reading it. I'm like, this does this. This does this. And then I'm like, wait, I can do this one, this one. And I can only attach three? What's the point of all of this if I can only do three? And then what's the point of all of these companions that I have and all their upgrades? They can only do two or three.

So all of us are so limited on these attacks and what you do and then they're not really their own thing like i had said before you just click you pause the game basically you just hit like for me it was rb you pause it click click those combos you know go together and ignite boom you hit that just because that's the reason it does the most damage there's no other reason other than it it looks cool and it does a lot of damage and that's it like yeah that's that's the basis of the combat so i felt it also just to be very almost monotonous it was just continuously a new skin same attack same telegraphed movements dodge roll or shield i played mage i always like to play mage too so some of the stuff was neat charged up staff blow and then you do your normal

attack or you can do some kind of charged laser thing and then you added your super and whatnot but it was all the same and it was the same start to finish like there's really no difference from the beginning to the end with you or your companions it's just more damage on the same characters and so it the and this is the best part of the game that we were talking about this is the best part man this is the best part that's why i was saying i just found myself going from combat to combat to get through the campaign like that's that's what i was doing. And I'm not going to lie, man.

I had a hard time loading this game up. Every time I had to boot it up, I got a million other games to play and I got to boot this up. So this is for you, the people. We're trying to do what we can to let everybody know. But yeah, it was a tough one, man. I found the combat to be so mundane, to be so lackluster to, again, to get that glimpse of what it could have been.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And then to have it just fail guard its way into mediocrity, just like the rest of this game, in my opinion, limiting me to three skills, limiting my companion to three skills is a crime in Dragon Age, dude. Like this is this is an RPG and I get that they made it an action RPG. But what are you doing, man? You know, and turning up the difficulty level because there's going to be people that are going, you guys are idiots.

This game is fantastic. You're missing the point on all this stuff. And that's fine. It's OK to disagree on this. Right. But, you know, they'll say, well, turn the difficulty up and then the combat becomes better no because you know what happens is it takes me longer to kill that guy with my three bland skills that i'm now using a hundred times you know what i mean like i just want the combat to be over at this point so why would i make it harder on myself

to do that like that doesn't make any sense all it does is make them more spongy that's all that does yes and it just goes okay well now you have to fight this guy longer speaking of fighting this guy the enemy variety in this game sucks dude yeah the venatory the dark spawn even the bosses and stuff are the most uninteresting again disneyfied we were sharing screenshots and it's like i joked around that these look like they're villains out of the incredibles because it's like we can't we can't offend anybody we don't want anybody to be scared or think that these are too dark or whatever it is dude if i have to fight another faceless guy in a mask and robes that looks like the most bland thing i've ever seen in my life this fortnight npcs in this game like i'm going to

i'm going to smash my hard drive through the wall dude you couldn't you couldn't make them look different you know what i mean like oh well there's big ogres and i'm like dude that ogre looks just like the other ogre what's the difference oh no this one's scary he has fierce in his name it's a fierce ogre ryan fierce ogre man look just like that other ogre i just killed no no no no no no no it's fierce it's fierce for sure yeah paul was paul was sending us screenshots of like the other enemies and the other bosses in the other dragon age games and i'm like okay those are sweet man giant crazy blob guys and and big angry monsters and these all look just basic generic dudes and the one

you said with like with the cloaks and the robes they made me laugh it looks like the cobra guys from gi joe like 80s gi joes like the most generic base enemy type character you can fight you know is who you're battling i feel like they said they went to chat GPT and said, give me an image of a guy that looks like an enemy. Create bad guy. Yeah. Like, and that's it. So, all right, we're going to move on. Combat the best part of this game and pretty darn dull and bland.

I mean, all right. Graphics, dude, the graphics in this game are fantastic. I'm not going to lie. For what they are. The world is beautiful. Yes. You know, the art style for the characters, I told you, you get used to that. But the world and the graphics, top notch.

The cities actually felt alive and lived in. There's multiple vendor stalls everywhere that you can actually interact with. You can go into little doors and huts and find treasure and all that stuff kudos on the graphics but man graphics do not a game make yeah let's everybody this is coming from a graphic snob like josh is like he lives and breathes with graphics and for that to to take such a big hit on this game you know it even like yeah man it was they it looked good it did it just it looked great and good and that just wasn't even close it's like a it's like a lamborghini that like can only do like three miles an hour oh looks fantastic but what the

heck is the point man oh that'd be horrible yeah well exactly so yeah horrible is is a good term um real quick rpg elements loot dude this is another one of these absolutely stupid stupid things in my mind dude everybody loves looking for that treasure chest finding loot in the corner you know behind the waterfall like all these things that we know as gamers you know where they put loot in this game everywhere oh up that ladder everywhere there's a bag just laying on the ground in the middle of the street treasure chest over there just randomly placed there was no thought given to the loot in this game at all no i mean i can't tell you how many times i laughed because i was in some random place and

then oh look there's a pouch on the ground just glowing i mean the most obvious gold glow you know we talk about the yellow paint stuff in video games how annoying some this was the most obvious thing and it's just like and it was everywhere dude now here's the problem guess what you get when you get a loot bag you get some crafting material nice that's it yeah that's what i'm looking for sweet oh i got three pure or cool what's pure or for i don't know oh no you need pure or to upgrade your weapons oh cool what weapons you mean that the occasional piece of gear that i get when i find a big treasure chest somewhere where it's like this was this it just wasn't satisfying like yes you you can wear armor

and you have a sword and you know a couple rings and stuff like that but dude i don't know that i've cared less about equipment in an rpg than i have in veil guard because again the combat is simple so what do i need a flaming sword of of destruction for when it's not really going to matter because the combat's boring yeah no that's and i'm a dude i'm like i'm a gear whore i love just hunting and searching for that stuff. I love, in these types of games and adventure games and RPGs and stuff, I love to explore. They always take me so long because I'm always off the beaten path looking for something. I don't want to miss anything. I'm, unfortunately, you know, it's a fault, but I'm big on FOMO. I do not want to miss out on anything that I could have gotten or could have had. So I always journey around and look for more. And I found myself just not even caring. Like, oh, I got to go this way.

Oh, look, there's a ladder up to that loft. I'm like, eh. And I just keep going. Because I knew it wasn't going to matter. Because I knew at the end of the day, the next group of people I'd fight would be the same as the last. Maybe a little bit tougher. It'll have a little of people I'd fight would be the same as the last, maybe a little bit tougher, it'll have a little more health, but it would be the same battle.

It's always the same battle. And so I just didn't care about the loot. Yeah, and that's a shame to me, especially in an RPG, like loot should matter. And you're right, it just doesn't matter at all. Like it doesn't affect the game.

As much as that like hurts me to say, it just doesn't affect the game in any much as that like hurts me to say it just doesn't affect the game in any meaningful way whatsoever and so for an rpg that just takes away a huge component that progression you know what i mean just didn't wasn't there for me at all um finally because we're we're running out of time the quests in this game i found to be very lackluster you start off the game by having to go and put your crew together which sounds great we just did that in star wars outlaws we're getting the crew together star wars outlaws made it at least interesting in my opinion yeah that dude the biggest thing and i i started off this episode by talking about a side quest that i thought was going to be really neat and

then it wasn't all of the quests in this game i found to be like none of them stood out to me. You know, even putting your companions to put your party together seems so contrived because it's like, oh, we have to, we need a fate expert. Cool. You go meet this necromancer guy that looks really cool.

And then you go, hey, necromancer guy, we need you to join us because we're on this mission. And the guy just goes, okay. Sure. Sure thing, buddy. I don't know who the heck you are i've never met you in my life but i'm gonna follow you till the end of my days now you know and it's like but what you know and it's it's just not believable at all so i found the quest to be lacking as well did any quest stand out to you

at all no dude it was it was the same for me it was just the same like i said before every every quest was just kind of a means to the end you just go beat some guys it's always i heard a really good description of this is is you're either leading your crew to a battle for the quest or you're following them while they're talking to another battle for the quest it's it's always just the same walking while somebody's talking or you're leading them while you're talking and that's it and then you fight and then he goes to the next stage and that's like all there is to it and uh so i just yeah it was just not not there for me all right listen ryan maybe we're jaded. Maybe we missed the point.

Maybe we've just been playing too many video games and we've got Stalker 2 on the mind instead. And we're not being fair to Dragon Age Veilguard. We have a special surprise for everybody. We reached out to the one, the only, the most biggest expert of Dragon Age that I know in my life. And that is a man that we all know and love by the name of Paul. And we asked Paul, we said, Paul, can you give us your thoughts on Dragon Age? We'd love to hear them. And Paul said, sure, guys. And here they are.

Hello, gamers. It's Paul. I'm back with a little snippet here to share some thoughts about Dragon Age The Veil Guard. Huge shout out to Josh and Ryan, who gifted me a copy of this, which was incredibly sweet. Really appreciate that, guys. So for those who don't know, I am a huge Dragon Age fan. I have loved the series for a long time. Origins is in my top 10 ever. Expectations by me were through the roof. Probably didn't matter what kind of game they popped out. Probably wasn't going to meet my expectations. But let's go ahead and jump into some of the good. I love being back in Dragon Age. I love seeing the continuation of the story of Solas. And I got to say, I love the colors. And especially when you are outdoors, the graphical fidelity is really high of plants and mountains in the background.

And I love seeing additional detail with the blight. You get to see these like sacks of liquid that are pulsing. You can shoot them, unlock new areas. I think that stuff's pretty amazing. Let's talk a little bit about the negative. The animation style I shared about anytime we saw new reveals, I was very worried about this.

Dragon Age, to me, has this history of having grittier graphics. The stakes always feel high. You always have a sense of danger as you go through the world. Big, nasty-looking ogres, they are pretty horrifying. And you hop into this kind of graphical system which is much more akin to fortnite and to me it just kind of saps any kind of fear or worry of the world or characters it's just a little too shiny a little too polished and to me it just doesn't make sense when you have this history of more hardcore fantasy lore uh to me it just seemed a little bit weird. Also, I've noticed that a lot of the voice acting and the vocabulary they use doesn't always sound like it's in a fantasy setting. I've heard some phrases like, oh, wow, you really got banged up after that fight. And it just seems a little

anachronistic to me. It doesn't always feel like I'm in the world of Dragon Age. But the biggest disappointment is surely the combat. It is just very button clicky and it feels just so dumbed down compared to the older ones. You know, it feels closest to Dragon Age 2, which was my least favorite of the bunch. And I gotta say, at least as Mage, I'm not enjoying the combat. Hopefully I'll be able to do multiple playthroughs and test the others out, but I don't like having parties of only three people. It just seems to be missing a lot of that secret sauce of the other dragon ages.

So anyway, that kind of wraps things up here. I will be back for the end of year awards episode. And until then, happy gaming. Thanks so much for all the support and love. I miss you all. All right,

Ryan, that was Paul's take on Dragon Age. Now, Paul, to be fair, he says he's only about eight to 10 hours into the game. He hasn't had a lot of time to play, but that was his thinking on that first eight to 10 hours. And I can tell you right now, it doesn't change in my opinion. It just, it doesn't get better. It doesn't change. It doesn't improve. So you have three different viewpoints. You have the viewpoint of Ryan that has never played this game and had no idea what to expect. You have my viewpoint where I go, dude, I really like the Dragon Age games. And then you have the viewpoint of Paul that considers them some of the best games ever made and has been very, very much looking forward to Veil Guard. Tentatively optimistic. He's always said, hey, I didn't expect the world, but I also didn't expect this game to suck either. And so there's another viewpoint for everybody that might be thinking maybe we're just being unfair to this game. Ryan, do me a favor. We've been slamming it. We've been talking

about everything that's wrong. Give me the 60-second pitch as to why somebody might like this game or why people might want to consider picking it up. Okay, really putting me under a barrel here. No, I'm kidding. I don't think this overall is a bad, bad game. I just, it's just not a good game know it's one of those where i think that if it's your first experience and you like this art style and you want to kind of dip your toes into this world of of rpgs or action rpgs however you want to classify this and you want combat that

is somewhat simple to where you can do your little attacks, you can have your combos, and it's not going to be crazy. Enemies are going to be a little spongy, but that gives you more time to kind of hash out and figure out your play style. I think it will fit. I think it will fit for people who

just kind of are looking for that experience. For me, it just wasn't it. But I think that there's a market. You know, there's people that like everything. There's always going to be somebody that wants it. So I think there's a really good market for this. It may not be as much as a lot of more popular games, but people will like this game if this is your style.

So I always encourage everyone. We're just two gamer dads. We have our opinions. And today we felt very strongly about them. But I will say, don't take our word for it. This is our experience. There's a million other people on there that reviewed it very highly. So go look at other reviews.

See what other people have to say about it. And if you're unsure still, check it out. Try it. You know, worst case, you're out, you know, so many bucks. And it's a bummer, but, you know, it's something that you can at least experience. I think my 60-second pitch on this is going to be that I think this game is very digestible. Right? Yeah, that's a good word.

It's an easy game to get into. It's an easy game to kind of follow along with the combat is not difficult. It's, it's very routine and kind of comforting in a weird sort of way because it's not Elden ring or challenging at all. I mean, I did die. I'm not going to say like I never died, but it took a lot for me to die. And again, there was just no fun like like, or intricacies, I should say, to the combat in this game. But I don't want to use the term simple because a lot of people view simple

as like being like derogatory, right? Like if you like this game, it's because it's simple. And then people kind of go, well, that's not very nice. But it is easy to digest. It is a comforting game to just jump into without having to think or try really

hard. And there is definitely a market for that. We all have games. I mean, I have a few of them that I call my comfort games, right? Like I don't have to think about this game when I play it. I can just tune out. I can escape work. I can escape the world. And I have a good time living in this world for however long I get to play it. And that, that does exist in Dragon Age Vilgard. And so I think that for people that might be on the fence, if you want a game that doesn't really try to push any boundaries, keeps things very simple, uh, and, and kind of plain and is just, it is what it is kind of thing. I think this would work for a lot of people. You know, that's my pitch in that regard, I guess. So, all right, Ryan, we're going long.

We got to rate this game because we have berated this game and we have to give it our rating. So let's go to the leaderboard and see where we're going to rate this. I'll start off on this one. I'm interested to see what you have to say. Like, really interested. Despite all of my whining, despite all of my complaining, despite all my griping and being disappointed with this game, I can fully say I think that this is a pretty decent video game.

I think a lot of people will actually enjoy this video game. You know, it does have things to offer. It's beautiful. The combat is flashy and there's animations and there's different skills and, you know, stuff like that. There's characters that are kind of fantastical and you go on these fantastical quests and you're fighting gods and dragons and all that stuff.

So, I mean, there definitely is a video game here. And so I don't want to do the thing where I'm like, fighting gods and dragons and all that stuff. So, I mean, there definitely is a video game here. And so I don't want to do the thing where I'm like, it's a one because I hated it. Right. Even though I do hate this game and believe me, I thought about rating it a one, but I'm not going to do that because there are parts of this game that I think people would enjoy.

I'm going to rate this game at a 6.1. So that puts it behind the cave torchlight to little nightmares to and Gotham nights puts it above civilization six, tiny Tina's wonderlands, which is another game I found kind of frustrating and just, um, I, it just,

it has some stuff to offer, but not a lot in my opinion. Um, is it a bad video game? No. Is it a game that I hate vehemently with to the core of my soul? Yes, because it could have been and should have been so much better. This is not Dragon Age to me. It's not, it doesn't deserve the name.

It doesn't deserve the praise that dragon age should get like this is an abomination it should just be cut out of dragon age history altogether so well like and that's being generous at a 6.1 well like you uh you like pizza right so so like you know pizza's pretty tried and true you know so yeah so what we should do is we should just change everything about pizza you know oh yeah yeah let should do is we should just change everything about pizza, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's just change everything about it. Yeah, let's just change it all, man.

But it's still a pizza because we call it a pizza? Yeah, but we're just going to change everything, you know? So you should like it still, right? No. So I mean, that's interesting. So coming from you who has this kind of longstanding relationship with the series, I was interested to see how far off we would be. And we're actually not too far off.

So the one thing that I was looking at, I was looking through our leaderboard, and I have no rest for the wicked at a 6.1. And that game was just so stinking frustrating to me. And it was hard. And that's kind of where I wanted to rate this originally, kind of like you. But I feel like it was a little bit better than that. I feel like I did enjoy the combat somewhat for what it was.

I thought it was graphically beautiful, even though I didn't enjoy the art style and there's there's little pieces there but it's just all of the other parts of it just made it so much worse so I'm gonna put it at 6.5 because I think it was a little bit better than the no rest for the wicked but it wasn't you, it just nowhere to get into the sevens or anything like that. But I think it was a fair game. Not mine. Not for me.

Not my style. I don't I think they could have done a ton of things different. But if this is what you kind of gravitate towards, you might have some fun. So 6.5 for you puts it exactly on par with Star Wars Squadrons and Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. Okay. Yeah. So I think that's fair. I mean, that's kind of my takeaway on this game.

As much as I hate it. Listen, in my heart, this game is a one. Like legitimately, it's at the bottom. I hate when games have moments of greatness and then they're ruined by very bad design decisions and developing decisions and publisher decisions and all that. And so it's like in my heart, I want to slam it and just rip it apart like I did with Forspoken. Very similar in that vein. But I'm trying to mature, you know, as a gamer and say, hey, listen, I get that there's people out there that are going to enjoy this game. And we've heard from people that love it. You know what I mean? And that's fine. Again,

we love that you love the game. And again, you know, games are subjective. There's different games for everybody. And so we're not saying that you're wrong for enjoying it. It just didn't resonate with us, but in my head, I have to go, Hey, this is a decent video game overall. Um, and so I'm going to rate it like that. But also that rating is like, it's thoroughly good. Get it on a sale. There's a thousand other games that are way better better than this one if you want to spend the time doing that so all right well for those that love dragon age and we're waiting to hear our thoughts on this we're sorry we have always been honest we have always been up front on our takes on games we do not sugarcoat things because we're gamers we don't do that know, we're not experts trying to sound nice to developers and publishers and stuff like that.

So if you were on the fence about this game, it's not a recommend from Ryan and I. But again, maybe look up some reviews and talk to people to see what they do like about it. I wish I had something to say I liked about it so that I could relate to that. But I don't. Oh, man. So, all right, Ryan, that's it for this episode. Let's get out of here and go play a real video game, something fun that we can enjoy. And then that's it, man.

So until next time, happier gaming than what we had to do for the last two weeks. I am Ryan in boots adios