2d ago

Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty"

www.rockpapershotgun.com Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard consultant and series veteran Mark Darrah says that players don't need to resort to cruelty to have their voices heard.

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Can someone explain to me why people think DA:V is bad? I’m thoroughly enjoying the game, I picked it up this last month, and haven’t seen any issue with it. The only thing I can think of is the vocal minority neckbeard gamers complaining about LGBTQ+ narratives… that their character relationship decisions directly influenced their exposure to.
- Have you played much of the rest of the series? DA:V is a perfectly adequate game with incredibly lukewarm themes in a series of pretty good games with dark and interesting themes. I think a lot of people, myself included, were hoping that after the success of Baldur's Gate 3, EA would turn to the studio that made Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and say "I want that, make me a game like that." Instead, we got a serviceable fantasy RPG. Fine if you really like that kinda thing, but I've only so much time for those games, and it's much better spent on Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
  
  I’m definitely not one of those GamerGate dorks. DA:V was a 100% day one but for me, as someone who enjoyed DA:I. However, after seeing some gameplay and dialogue, I lost interest. It looks and sounds like a Disney game. I understand if EA was moving toward capturing a segment of younger gamers with this entry in the series, but it didn’t seem like it was for me. I still plan to try it, but only once it’s on sale for significantly less than retail price.
  
  I have not, and I was wondering if that was the case.
  Griping (giving it negative reviews) about it not being the same as prior iterations, even though it’s a perfectly adequate and fun game sounds like nitpicking a little to me. Sure, it may not be 5/5 for returning fans, but review bombing a perfectly good game because you wanted or expected something else seems a little much.
- Skill Up’s review perfectly summarised all the criticisms. One of the most damning indictments was the feeling that HR was always in the room. He brings receipts for all his complaints. Some of the most unbelievably stupid, juvenile, and ham-fisted writing I’ve ever seen in any video game. This would be a failure if it came from any other studio, but to see BioWare fall this far is really difficult to see.
- Bad RPG elements: there's a lot of dialogue choices that's is "Yes" but worded differently, kills off-screen previous relevant characters of the franchise, butcher some characters(Morrigan), disregard previous choices of the older games(the main selling point of DA for a lot of people), change tone, art direction and combat mechanics(is more action oriented instead of tactical). Basically a lot of DA players doesn't like the changes.
- I think Baldur’s Gate 3 raised the bar for storytelling in RPG games. The previous Dragon Age games also had fantastic world building and storytelling. Vanguard fell a bit short and suffers from “Marvel Dialogue” where they undercut every emotional moment with a quip.
  
  That’s weird, because marvel writing was almost constant one liners. And the joke option is one of three for every decision. But, yeah w/e
- Mediocre combat, shits on old lore and polarizing characters. There's the culture war bs but it really isn't the main factor on how it is performing.
- I didn't think it was bad, I honestly enjoyed it. I think people are too polarized, it's either baulders gate or it's trash. I disagree. It wasn't top tier, but that doesn't mean it was bad either. It's okay to have a mid game.
  
  Combat changes put me off initially but honestly, enjoyed it far more than inquisition, combat is far closer to me:a and that's a good thing, me:a is easily the best mass effect game mechanically (and that's coming from someone who still loves me1), skill tree is massive and you can respec whenever to try different things, as an RPG I personally felt it's quite strong. Also, felt da:v was more focused wrt maps, da:i has really large, empty maps that I originally tried to do everything in, by the hissing wastes unless it was shards or an interesting side quest I ignored it.
  Felt them making companions invulnerable was a good idea too, da:i on nightmare they usually died almost immediately against things like dragons or dlc bosses unless you micromanaged the hell out of them.
  Story wise, it's me:2; you collect a bunch of experts for an impossible task. Personally, I like bioware RPGs, they've always been cheesy. Shepard has lots of one liners that are sarcastic quips, "it's a big stupid jellyfish" comes to mind immediately, half the dialogue between Shepard and Garus in the later games (especially me:3). One criticism is probably shared with me:a, we had time to experience the me characters over the course of the games, they weren't immediately like that, but honestly it never really bothered me, jade empire has really cheesy dialogue and is up there for me flaws and all.
  IMO one thing bioware has always done well is world building and veilguard isn't an exception to that for me, I like that the set the game in a region only really mentioned in previous games.
  is it the best game I've ever played? No but definitely an enjoyable one, I personally feel we'll see retrospectives in a handful of years like I've seen with me:a recently (another game that was actually solid and had some interesting ideas and concepts)
- The art direction and the combat mechanics. But I can’t be sure.

I don't think anyone really celebrates layoffs at a studio because they didn't like a game they made.
I think it's mostly reserved for when Devs or CMs have come out of the woodwork to shit on their own potential audience. A response to overconfidence and disregard of the customer. Because there's definitely been some of that as of late.
Ofcause there's bound to be other opinions, but I think this is the overall gist of the current situation.
- This is demonstrably not true. Definitely people cheering for Ubi's layoffs recently. Not about the execs, about the devs.
  As the other guy says, literally two posts down the line.
  
  I think, in Ubisofts case, people just want to see it burn at this point.
- The other comment contradicts your assumption
  
  As I said, there's bound to be other opinions.

Do players celebrate layoffs? Or do they just enjoy the schadenfreude when karma bites executives and managers who disrespect their customers?
Either way, yeah $70 for a game, especially for a bad one, buys me the right to complain.
- Yeah, he agrees.
  You don't have to like a game, and you don't have stay quiet if you have complaints, says Darrah. You're entitled to be angry, and you're entitled to express that anger. "If you are mad at that Ubisoft game, be mad at Ubisoft," he says. "Express your anger to Ubisoft or the studio that made the game. But you cross a line when you start being cruel about it."
  Reading. It works.
- I bet you suck at darts.
- It never effects executives or managers though. The whole problem with the current Western games industry is that the idiots who keep thinking up games nobody wants to play are the only ones who don't get fired when their idea flops.

Nobody is forcing you to work at Bioware.

When you celebrate layoffs at a studio because the game that you don't like didn't do that well, you're crossing a line
No you don't? If you do a bad job and get fired for it, it's not crossing the line just consequences of doing bad job. Your circumstances aren't really relevant here, just own your mistakes and move on.
- I don't think that those who are responsible for game being bad are the ones being laid off
- Congrats on missing the entire point of what the guy is saying.
  The people losing their jobs are not the ones making the decisions that created a (subjectively) bad product.
- Thats fucked up dude. Those people lost their livelihood.
  
  Maybe someone else will take that livelihood and make a better game.
- There's everything the other comments said but there is also an important distinction in "celebrating". I would argue that while layoffs as an event are a potentially logical outcome of a bad game, it is the act of celebrating and/or calling for those layoffs that is crossing the line.
- Reading comprehension 30%

38 comments