I probably have a foot in each world when it comes to romance in media generally. I think it's very fun to write but whenever I read it, I get the sense - communicated by the hairs on my neck - that I am being observed. The shit people are saying online about this old man, and others, heroes of every conceivable description, is so out of pocket that it's lying on the actual ground. I'm the last person who is gonna be out here policing a kink, but I will admit to a little confusion about what kind of speech is kosher when describing even imaginary people. I feel like the rules keep changing in a kaleidoscopic shibboleth, a three dimensional hard-light cipher. I get more value out of trying to describe it than I do trying to solve it.
Veilguard looks like a retreat from the tactical gameplay that I sorta thought was Dragon Age. At the end of the day, it's BioWare's to do with what they want to. All change isn't necessarily bad; I'm a Splinter Cell, stealth gameplay stalwart type dude, and with Conviction they completely deconstructed what "stealth" meant. As in, from the ground up. It's not the same game at all anymore, it was an incredibly dangerous move - and I love it. I don't replay games for the most part, and I've played Blacklist through I think three separate times. Their approach to movement and cover was so good it formed the substrate for The Division, an entirely different game in an entirely different genre. And, lookie here! The official Twitter showed off a sphere grid. I like spheres, and I love grids, so I don't hate a sphere grid at all. My mother gave me my first sphere, and just look at where I am today.
For my part, I would say "Are we actually sure that the old Baldur's Gate style of play - the kind Dragon Age: Origins was created as a paean to, and which Larian modernized and secured more than fifteen million sales of - isn't of interest to people?" A full year of memes later, sites like Dexerto are still pulling mad SEO out of BG3, which is a mind-bogglingly complex digital skirmish wargame which operates atop a full environmental simulation. Veilguard comes out this fall, though; probably too late for any of that. Going action for an RPG franchise just makes me feel like you are worried your audience isn't smart enough. Unless... are they going for a Fantasy Mass Effect thing? Probably. It makes sense. They might not even be wrong! But it's not the same, it is in fact orthagonal, and it's currently legal to recognize and subsequently verbalize the fact.
I think people genuinely, earnestly want different things from Dragon Age, but BioWare can only make one at a time. It's also quite expensive! There's a kind of doom associated with that. I'm sure the developers will join me in mourning the strictures and tight corners of our finite universe.
(CW)TB out.
