Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Avowed, and Grifting

Dragon Age: The Veilguard caught an unfathomable amount of shit even before its release. It was criticized for looking too “Disney,” too “modern,” and having LGBTQ+ elements. One can even argue that these criticisms caused the game to have the lowest sales of any Dragon Age game. It was review bombed for its “wokeness” and further development and DLC seems to have a snowball’s chance in hell.

As a long-time Dragon Age fan, I can say the game is not without its faults. The storytelling is questionable at times, with odd choices and plot holes riddled throughout. I would chalk this up to it being initially a live-service game, which had to be quickly turned into the single-player RPG as all other games in the franchise when publisher EA finally realized no one wants live-service. Companions are hit-or miss (Lucanis, I’m so sorry dawg they really fucked you over) and it’s clear a ton of content that was sorely needed was cut.

None of this, however, should have led to the mass bemoaning and outrage over Veilguard. Overall, it’s still a fun game. Is it a step down in terms of Dragon Age? Sure. That doesn’t make it a bad game. In fact, it’s fine. I enjoyed it enough to beat it several times.

And now, several months after its initial release, Veilguard is hitting gaming services and people who were curious but didn’t want to pay extra for it are beginning to play it. And — brace yourselves — they’re enjoying the game. All of their reservations about the game because of online reviewers and grifters suddenly became moot once they actually played the game for themselves.

All of those LGBTQ+ references? Aside from Taash, your companion who is struggling with gender identity, are player character-based, meaning if you don’t want to play with those elements, you don’t have to. Taash’s gender identity also aligns with their feeling torn between cultures in game (weirdly you choose one for them???) so it’s a storytelling choice and not as ham-fisted as some would lead you to believe. Furthermore, it’s not like the Dragon Age franchise hasn’t had queer characters. Krem from Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) is canonically female-to-male transgender, multiple characters have been bi, lesbian or gay, and yet only Veilguard caught an insane amount of flack for it.

The same detractors tried to go after another game I’ve deeply enjoyed, Avowed. Set in the Pillars of Eternity universe, which I’ve put an embarrassing number of hours into, Avowed provided the horrifying option of allowing players to choose their character’s pronouns and having a few queer characters.

And that’s it.

People tried to review bomb Avowed, probably since it worked so well for Veilguard. This time it didn’t work at all. Firstly, the pronoun choice in character creation is such a non-issue that I missed it the first time I played and had to go looking for it on my second go-around. Secondly, the game is absolutely fucking incredible, and I don’t even have anything bad to say about it other than some of the story choices that lead to consequences later kind of suck.

As much as I hate to say it, I can’t say the same for Veilguard, which has plenty of faults beyond “woke.” That’s the main difference between the two, and why Veilguard suffered so badly from bad actors. Veilguard was faulty in ways beyond the bad faith actors, and beyond even what Dragon Age fans usually complain about (usually no one hates new Dragon Age games more than Dragon Age fans). Its developer, Bioware, has had a litany of issues over the last few years, which already drew more eyes on the project and made it easy to turn into a lightning rod of “everything wrong with diversity, equality and inclusion.”

Obsidian never had that issue. They made one of the most beloved Fallout games, New Vegas, had underground success with Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, decent reviews and sales with The Outer Worlds, and haven’t had the bad press of Bioware. When reactionary grifters flagged it as “woke” during early builds, it didn’t gain the same amount of traction. Instead, the game came out and looked way too fucking cool and was way too fucking cool for a pronoun toggle to even matter to anyone not tied up in the manufactured culture war.

Avowed just came out about two weeks ago as of writing this, and its still getting a few comments such as, “I wasn’t sure about this, but I bit the bullet and wow.” Veilguard too, gets multiple posts a day on its subreddit lamenting how much they enjoyed the game after initially writing it off. Multiple comments have even said that they’re no longer basing their opinions on certain sources solely because of how wrong they felt they were.

Through the examples of these two games, I think there’s a growing shift in how people take online talking heads and influencers’ opinions. Grifters make money off of your anger. They want you to feel appalled, scared, or upset at how things are changing or how someone lesser-than is getting more recognition than you. Minorities happen to be an easy target, and it started all the way back with Gamergate. We can almost directly tie Gamergate into the current right-wing propaganda we see today and how it’s shaped the online landscape. Now, any game that has a woman with a normal build, a person of color, or a queer character is written off as “woke” or checking off boxes to fill a quota rather than, diverse characters open up a different set of storytelling elements than a hot, straight, fit white Christian man does. It’s that simple.

Grifters don’t want people to think that. They want people to fear being replaced, fear retaliation, and to fear anything different from them. Grifters want folks to think they’re the only thing holding back the tide and if you just give them a few dollars every month, you can help them fight against the “woke” tide that is in reality, different people coexisting and not bothering each other. I have to give it to them, it’s a lucrative grift, and if I didn’t think my ancestors would line up like that scene in Airplane and take turns slapping the shit out of me, I’d get out of debt. People are desperate, and the Internet Hate Machine is unfortunately churning out money.

It’s more important than ever to take anything you see online with a grain of salt. Is this person trying to create ire, stir up controversy that isn’t there, or taking things out of context? Compare with other sources and fact check what they’re saying. Don’t just take things at face value because someone sounds convincing. If you can, try it out for yourself. Hell, for PC games, Steam will let you refund games if you play less than 2 hours of it.

Don’t let other people tell you how you should feel about something. Try it yourself. This goes for games, movies, music, any piece of art. It’s always going to be subjective, and you’re doing a disservice to yourself if you let someone else’s thoughts dictate your own, even if you’re usually aligned.

The people I feel worse for are the artists, developers, writers who are just doing their jobs, and trying their best against out-of-touch CEOs and bad actors who gain ad revenue from negativity. Bioware, despite creating two of my favorite franchises, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, unfortunately may not recover from the hate machine. We can only wonder how things would have turned out if Veilguard was allowed to continue developing and building.