unbanshee
Have you played the game?
I haven’t.
Do you have to interact with that character? In all the BioWare games I have played, you don’t actually have to interact with any companions at all outside of critpath questlines. Even big blowup moments like the Miranda/Jack fight only trigger once you’ve completed both of their loyalty missions, and you have to choose to talk to them to unlock those in the first place.
And since I’m assuming you’re referring to the Qunari companion, and I’ve watched a couple of critiques of the scenes I believe you’re referencing - it’s not their sexuality that’s being discussed, it’s their gender.
What happened to BioWare, in your estimation?
Who’s this project director with a corporate background? Are you referring to an actual person, or is this how you assume the industry works?
Of course there are minorities who don’t like Veilguard. No group is monolithic. I found two quite different critiques of the trans representation in Veilguard by trans creators, but yeah I’ll admit I had to do some digging, not because I had to sift through so many agenda-pushing journalist reviews, but because youtube is absolutely FLOODED with anti-woke reactionaries pushing - guess what? ragebait content featuring thumbnails of the Qunari companion.
Complaining about forced diversity and wokeness isn’t critique. When it comes down to it, these are buzzwords that wind up meaning different things to different people. This bandwagon-jumping VEILGUARD BAD, BIOWARE DOOMED shit adds nothing of value to games discourse. People who claim to care about games need to stop engaging with it and seek out or create constructive critiques instead, because it only damages the most human parts of the industry, not some corporate bottom line.
As for sales figures, it seems like it’s doing just fine tbh, but I think you’re wrong to assume that you could really find any sort of critical opinion by sifting through that data.
And just for the record, re: my first two paragraphs:
Over the course of development, the franchise lead writer, the EP (and actually maybe a second EP?), the creative director, and the art director all changed. This is extremely unusual not only for BioWare, but any game.
That said, the people who replaced them were not, from what I can tell, people with corporate backgrounds. They all appear to be industry veterans, many of them internal promotions and longtime BioWare employees. Go check the mobygames credits if you want to see for yourself.
Additionally, BioWare laid off “approximately” 50 people, many from the Edmonton studio, in August of 2023 partway through development of Veilguard.
Dragon Age 4 was not developed in a stable, secure environment. From what I’ve read, significant changes were made between the game’s inception as Dreadwolf, and its release as Veilguard.
That the focus is now almost exclusively on the game’s minority representation speaks volumes about what these supposed “people who care about games” actually value.
I wound up spending a significant amount of time today looking into the development history of Veilguard, and what actually got released, and what people have liked and disliked about it.
And you know what? I don’t think it’s an example of forced diversity at all.
I think a team trying to make a game under immense external pressures made something imperfect, but earnest and deeply personal to some of the team. And it isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine, actually.