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Which part of DEI do you hate? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You’re asking me to prove that the game’s messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but you’re not holding yourself to the same standard. You claim that industry-wide issues like oversaturation, pricing, and publisher greed were the real reasons, yet you’ve provided no evidence that these factors impacted The Veilguard more than any other game.

The backlash against DAV wasn’t primarily about price, oversaturation, or competition. The loudest complaints were about the game’s tone, character writing, and perceived prioritization of messaging over deep storytelling. If industry trends were the dominant factor, we’d expect similar pushback against every game in this space—not just DAV.

The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design. The skepticism around DAV didn’t just appear out of nowhere—it was a reaction to a pattern of changes fans disliked.

If DAV’s failure was mostly about the industry downturn, we’d expect all comparable RPGs to be struggling just as much. Yet, games that focus on strong player-driven storytelling (Baldur’s Gate 3, for example) have thrived. The key difference? They gave players what they wanted.

The burden of proof goes both ways. If you’re going to claim story issues and messaging weren’t significant reasons for DAV’s failure, you need to prove that too. Just pointing at industry-wide problems doesn’t explain why this game failed more than others.

https://www.polygon.com/analysis/520290/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-ea-bioware-layoffs

https://thatparkplace.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-lower-than-reported/

https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/01/23/dragon-age-launch-sales-veilguard-vs-previous-games

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

You’re asking me to prove that the game’s messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but you’re not holding yourself to the same standard.

This isn't true. I'm perfectly willing to prove my viewpoints. You're continuing to jump the gun here. I'm about to explain my viewpoint, eventually. I was just hoping you would prove your viewpoints first. We're having a conversation online, we have all the time in the world. Everything in due time, right?

(It's as if you're engaging in this kind of complaints as a stalling tactic. This conversation would go so much smoother if you'd just address the points. Furthermore, you're repeating yourself a lot, it makes the comments hard to read. So please, address the points. I'm cutting this down for brevity.)

The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design.

Are you absolutely sure it had nothing to do with several key players in Bioware leaving over the years and EA quietly gutting the studio, replacing the talent and increasing their meddling? Because, as I said before, that raises the fanbase's eyebrows. The Bioware that made DAV simply isn't the same company that made DAO. Bioware hasn't really been independent of EA's meddling since 2016 at least - Mass Effect Andromeda was the clearest example of what happened when EA decided to assume more direct control of the process. Fans have had every reason to be suspicious of Bioware's output ever since. It's frankly a miracle Dragon Age Inquisition was anywhere near as good as it was.

Bioware doesn't exist in vacuum, they're not the only ones who are making decisions here.

Who exactly made the shifting writing decisions here? Can you give me concrete examples? I've not played DAV so it's harder for me to compare the things.

I've seen EA put this same kind of ruin on a lot of studios over time. Many classic game series - including celebrated RPG series - have been ruined by EA's meddling. What happened to Origin Systems has been happening to Bioware for over a decade now.

That is part of provable history. I would link to sources, but I suggest you read up on the history of EA and their studios (in particular Origin) on yourself - the information isn't hard to find, the ones in Wikipedia are a very good start.

If industry trends were the dominant factor, we’d expect similar pushback against every game in this space—not just DAV.

Just reminded me: Are you seriously saying DAV is unique in this regard? This kind of pushback is levied against a lot of games these days. There's so much of this kind of cries aimed at a lot of games these days. As long as people keep making lists about "woke" games on Steam, I don't think DAV was a special case at all.

[Sources]

These sources appear to confirm that Dragon Age Veilguard was not as great success commercially as EA hoped. This was not part of our dispute, and I was never even claiming that DAV was a financial success story. The opposite, in fact.

These sources do not, however, appear to support your particular claims about the message being the primary reason why the game failed commercially.

Also, I see you did not respond to the more interesing questions I asked earlier, so allow me to reiterate: Was the whole polymorph magic issue ever addressed in the Dragon Age lore? And allow me to expand on that - what did you think of the narrative ideas I presented? I'm just curious about that.