I understand what you mean. I wait for a sales on a lot of titles unless I really want to play it right at launch. But to put it in context, it’s $79.99 CAD on Steam, which is about £45.
The thing I think is weird is that it’s $89.99 CAD on Xbox and $79.99 on Steam.
But in the UK it’s £69.99 on Xbox and £49.99 on Steam.
£20 more is a hell of a lot more than $10 CAD.
This was a much better trailer than that terrible trailer they led with earlier in the Summer. And aesthetically this looks like a logical progression from the previous games rather than a drastic change to the art style that the original trailer had people fearing was the new look to the series.
Steam has long had issues with regional pricing. In some countries the difference is even worse, especially in some European countries like Germany. I don’t know how they are able to get away with it to be honest.
X-Box is the only option for me without buying a while new computer, which isn’t happening. As much as I love the series I’ll be waiting on a price drop for this one.
“You’ve got this,” the laziest phrase in writing that needs to be abolished quick smart!
Otherwise, good trailer. Certainly makes me wanna play it (until I see the price tag). Interested to see what Corrigan and her son are up to. Lelianna better in it, too. She’s been my favourite character throughout the series.
Aren’t the studios the ones setting the price? I’m assuming EA set the price at £49.99 on Steam and £69.99 on every other store. If anything the Steam price in Canada is fairly comparable to the Steam price in the UK, while it’s the price on Xbox and PlayStation where EA seems to be gouging. If EA is selling the base game for £69.99 on Xbox and PlayStation, that’s $124 CAD. But the price for the base game in Canada is $89.99. In fact the Deluxe edition is $115 CAD. So I can buy the deluxe edition on Xbox for less than people in the UK can buy the base edition for the same platform. It seems like EA is screwing over UK console owners.
Maybe they think they can’t get away with that higher pricing among PC gamers in the UK.
I don’t know who is responsible for the pricing, but I have heard that many countries pay much higher for their games than the US equivalent. I have heard Germany is one, and I’m pretty sure Brazil is another. I think it’s generally the countries they don’t see as “important” to the business. This is all from memory though, although I have read several articles about it over the years. There was an actual investigation into it in Australia maybe 10 years back, but I’m not sure if it lead to anything.
I haven’t watched this yet, but BioWare put out a high-level combat showcase for Veilguard:
This may be of interest.
I’m actually more concerned about the game now. I don’t have any issue with the combat style in its own right, but it doesn’t feel right for a Dragon Age game. Similarly, that art style does not fit what is historically a hard dark fantasy title. Oh, and I’m still not going to be paying £70 for it.
Personally I don’t mind the art and don’t think the art is that much of a departure from DA:I, just clearly designed with contemporary shaders and lighting that give it an updated stylistic look. It’s far from the cartoony, plastic look that the launch trailer mistakenly implied, thankfully.
I don’t love the God of War style combat, and am sad that Sony’s approach to action RPG is rubbing off on studios like BioWare. But I don’t think that BioWare exists anymore. They’ve been succeeded by companies like Larian. And I’m excited for Avowed from Obsidian.
For my part, I think the previews look really promising! I’ve been playing a Rogue since Origins and shan’t be switching now, but Mages and Warriors looks vastly more fun to play than they’ve ever been. And the character creator looks great.
What this game feels like to me is a return to the action based combat of DAII. Being a made in that just felt like something plucked out of Mass Effect 2.
The Mage in that preview feels like something closer to an Arcane Knight, a hybrid class you could make in DA:O. I don’t mind that, but I’d have also liked the option for a more traditional mage class. I like hybrid magic/melee users, but I love spellcasters, and I like the strategies required when playing a squishy class like a mage. If this mage is indeed like an Arcane Knight, I bet it’s not going to be very squishy. If I can face tank as every class in the game, that doesn’t fully excite me. I hope not.
I think that since this is an action RPG, I think it’s going to be competing with Dragon’s Dogma 2 in my mind given they both came out this year, and I worry that this will feel very simple compared to the complex class abilities and team makeup that DD2 features. DD2 is so mechanically satisfying that I know it’s going to skew my perspective on this game, for good or bad.
Ultimately, I won’t know until I can actually get a feel for the game directly.
Fair enough, I very much doubt it’s gonna be able to keep pace with DD2 on the combat front.
For me I’m mostly comparing Veilguard to the combat in earlier Dragon Ages and Mass Effects, which I’ve always found to be decent at best. Battle isn’t really what draws me to these games, so as long as it’s tolerable I’ll be on board.
It reminds me of Mass Effect more so than previous Dragon Age games. The combo attack element feels very Mass Effect. And I enjoy Mass Effect for that feature. I’m sure I’ll still have a good time, but I really like the strategy of planning your approach using the tactical view in the previous game when playing on Nightmare. This feels like it will be less strategy focused and more reliant on my mechanical skills which will make for a twitchier Nightmare mode. Which is ok, it’s just different.
In the video it says that the characters always look clean, no blood or scars or what have you appear on them. In the previous games you’d walk away from a fight drenched in blood, you could feel the grime from the adventure, even in Inquisition (although that admittedly was less than in Origins). I think removing that is going to make the game feel a lot lighter than it should.
I’ll hold final judgment until I finally play it, but the fact remains it’s not going down a path I’m particularly fond of. I just hope the story/lore is still awesome, that’s really my main thing for the game.
Did you see that the preorder bonus is blood splattered armour? The marketing specifically says “A throwback to previous Dragon Age games, the crimson stains on this armor will never fade.” Seems like they know people will miss the blood splatter and are monetizing it.
I’m willing to bet someone will mod blood splatter into the game in no-time, lol.
Yeah, I’d be surprised if there isn’t an elaborate blood spatter mod by the end of the year.
Any of the classes/specializations catch y’all’s eye? I’ll probably be going with the Duelist, I’m a sucker for any class that fills out the core moveset or adds more non-cooldown abilities.
No, I haven’t seen it. As things stand I’ll probably be getting it on Xbox so mods won’t be me much good but I hope someone does make one for the PC version
Salient points made by Aftermath staff on the current round of DA: Veilguard previews:
I woke up this morning in 2024 to find my social media feed awash with games media getting extremely excited for Dragon Age: The Veilguard having played through a seven-hour preview.
What are we, as press, doing here? This type of broadly uncritical coverage of a select slice of a AAA video game isn’t serving anyone’s readership, they don’t need to know any of this. As for publications, nobody knows what anything outside of those seven hours is like or, say, how many bugs the game will have at launch. Every site previewing Veilguard will presumably also be reviewing it in just a few weeks, they can just pass judgement on it then! The only thing a glowing preview is doing now is generating hype, and ahead of release the only people truly being served by this hype are EA, who are banking on the preorders and wishlists all the positive coverage will generate.
We, and I mean video games media, can do better than this! Readers deserve better than this! Yet here we are. Times for this industry have rarely been tougher, the line video games media has to toe between serving their readership and keeping companies happy has never been more precarious. Which is why I don’t want to pick on any particular site or writer here; this isn’t something individuals are responsible for, it’s a broadly systemic problem, like so many other issues facing games media.
It’s still not a great look, though. And if you as a fan read any of these previews and got excited, please remember that, of all the series that exist on this Earth, you might want to wait until someone has paced their way through an entire Dragon Age game before saying it’s a Game Of The Year contender.
I agree that previews often just drive hype and it’s worthwhile waiting until reviews are actually in before drawing any conclusions. This is why I can’t get too excited, not until I have had a chance to get my hands on the game and really feel around if I’m going to enjoy it, as with anything.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Developers Reportedly Didn’t Like The Reveal Trailer Either
According to YouTuber Luke Stephenswho previewed Dragon Age: The Veilguard for 7 hours, his conversations with people from BioWare suggest the studio wasn’t thrilled with that trailer being used as the reveal, either.
“I spoke to a number of people [at BioWare] and one thing I heard from pretty much everybody I spoke to was that they didn’t like that trailer either. They didn’t want the trailer to go up and be the first look at Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It seems as though internally the people actually making the game felt as though that was not representative of what the game was…” Stephens said.
Stephens goes on to say that he feels a marketing arm of Electronic Arts or someone else was insistent on portraying the game a certain way and BioWare couldn’t do anything about it, but that’s all conjecture on his part.
Although one should take anything YouTuber says with a grain of salt, if this is true it’s certainly interesting.