I mean, I agree with the linked article, AAA preview events are largely useless, uncritical marketing arms of whichever game’s next in the hype cycle. But it’s no mystery why they persist; they drive the traffic and ad revenue that games sites need to stay afloat.
Much as I’d love to see games media push out beyond endless previews, reviews, lists, and guides, I think Austin Walker’s recent assertion on cohost (RIP) rings true. The audience for longform games journalism and crit may simply be too small to support articles and authors with interests outside the immediate zeitgeist. And until we can find a way to expand that audience, we’ll keep seeing sites publish the fawning AAA previews and blatant clickbait that keep them in the black.
I know you’re right, I know they need to chase these kinds of stories to keep the lights on. But I do value the outlets that try to avoid feeding the hype cycle in non-critical ways. It’s impossible not to feed into it in some level if you cover upcoming games, but I think there are more and less critical ways to do it. In Luke Plunkett’s quoting of Stephen Totilo, he cites, “ You’ll read an optimistic preview in May and then wonder why the game we previewed seems, in November, to be junk.” I’ve seen comment threads under game reviews where readers are confused by the fact that the outlet had published a ton of favourable media only to give the game a poor score at launch. They are confused because they don’t have a great grasp on the difference between preview and review, the two blending together in a lot of readers’ minds. So I think finding ways to critically and thoughtfully cover pre-launch content to provide clarity to readers can be a useful function of games journalists. They know their audiences are not always the most media literate, and I think Luke Plunkett’s advocation for a more selective approach to preview coverage might be worthwhile and is hinting at just such a critical approach.
I remember a while back watching a video on how Sonic Adventure DX gimmped the original game. All the info in the video came from the brilliant Dreamcastify page.
The video maker at the start says how the site is just full to the brim with every detail you could possibly imagine of how DX ruined things and how to fix it. They they go on to say how they are just going to go over the main details because no one has the attention span anymore to read 100+ pages of such issues.
It was only a half joke, and I think he’s totally right; the majority of people don’t want to sit a d read an in-depth piece about a game. They just wanna know if they’ll like it and if it’s worth their money. That’s fair, I can understand it. I’ve never read as deeply into, say, films or music as I do about games.
I think the folks on this site are the exception to the above; we like to pry back the layers, understand how games tick, what went into making them. But that takes a lot of explanation and pre-knowledge. Some (most?) just don’t want to deal with that.
The dragon fight showcased during the Sony State of Play kind of gave me some pause. Something about the fight feels off. I don’t know if it’s just the fov and the lack of tactical mode, or if that I’m even more worried I’m going to compare fighting a dragon in Veilguard to Dragon’s Dogma 2 and doubt that the first will have the same weight to it.
Our detailed specifications include settings for both Ray Tracing on and Ray Tracing off, so that players can know what to expect for launch.
RT on is 30 FPS only? I am still messing with graphics options and I feel I have not yet fully understood what to choose in games, but I definitely would choose 60 FPS over RT any time. I wonder how important RT is for most people on Grouvee? Am I stupid to often not see a huge difference?
Dragon Age: The Veilguard won’t include any 3rd party DRM (such as Denuvo) on any platform. The lack of DRM means that there will be no preload period for PC players.
That’s good and no preload is a price worth paying when your game isn’t held back by Denuvo stutters.
I don’t buy that. I suspect that this is without DLSS upscaling. We’ll see once it’s out. I’d also have to compare On and RTX Ultra. Also these are all with settings on Ultra. I suspect people will be able run at high with Ray Tracing on. I’d wait for a Digital Foundry assessment before judging.
I would chose fps over RTX, but I do hope a time comes when all cards are handily RTS capable. I think some people think RTX is just some sort of gaming snake oil. But it’s a significant tool to handle lighting and reflections. And when more hardware can support it, it’s actually a great way to take processing burden off the GPU and CPU. Think of things like reflections. I took these two screenshots in Control:
It’s a subtle difference, and not one that mandates that a person turns RTX on if it hurts performance, but RTX does contribute to the environment in ways that improves its verisimilitude. And here I’m not talking about graphical fidelity, I literally mean the feeling of being in a real space. That reflection adds to the sense that you are in a real space, and if you walk around that space, the reflection behaves the way you expect a reflection to behave. It enhances immersion and your perception of the space. Pre RTX it was possible to do that, but it took a lot of calculations to determine the way the reflection behaved. In many instances the game was just rendering the entire scene twice, which is resource intensive. RTX puts an additional processing burden on your machine compared to no RTX, but it puts less of a burden than older methods of rendering reflections.
When I played Star Wars: Outlaws RTX drastically improved the believability of the Star Wars universe because all the lights and reflections that you’d expect in one of the original films were made possible through RTX. RTX enhances that very “sci-fi” vibe of bleeding neon lights and the like. Is the game playable without it? Absolutely. But I enjoyed having it on because it gave the game extra texture and depth. RTX is also best when the game is designed with it in mind. It’s worst when applied after the fact to something not designed with it in mind (cough, cough Portal with RTX).
Now, RTX made less of an impact in Dragon’s Dogma 2 from what I could tell, so I just turned it off. If it doesn’t enhance my experience, I have n need for it. I assumed because it was a fantasy game full of stone, cement and trees, with no real contemporary surfaces or lighting to make RTX worthwhile. Given DA: The Veilguard is fantasy, it might very well go the same direction. We’ll see.
I agree with this in principle, but I’ve yet to play a game where RTX both enhances my experience and it tanks the performance. I played Star Wars: Outlaws with full RTX on and was hitting over 170fps if I didn’t cap it. I don’t really have a need for even higher framerates, so RTX seems workable for me.
I don’t really care about RTX. Ok, it looks a little nicer, but for me personally it doesn’t add enough to make a load of difference. If a game needs good reflections to draw you in, it needs more done to it than upping the graphics.
That said, I’m a bit of a troglodyte in regards to these things. I noticed an jump in FPS in No Man’s Sky moving from the One to the Series X, but I don’t think it improved that much that I’d demand it from now on. The biggest thing was not having to wait five minuets every time you warped.
For me it really isn’t about needing it. Control didn’t originally have RTX lighting and reflections. It was perfectly great. The added lighting flourishes and reflections don’t make Control. But they do add extra texture. RTX is just a tool that lets devs add additional depth to the feel of a world. Games don’t need it, but it’s also not a bad toolset that devs have available to work with. Reflections can be a nice touch in a game. To me this discussion reminds me of the advent of GPUs. Some gamers thought they were a waste of money. After all, there were plenty of PC games before GPUs. GPUs were expensive and niche and only a few games needed them. But they did allow completely new possibilities in game design. Flash forward and GPUs are ubiquitous. RTX will one day be just as ubiquitous and we won’t give it a second thought. It will be available to everyone and it will mean every game can benefit from lighting and reflections that work dynamically. It won’t be a discussion flashpoint, nor a thing people feel a need to take a stance on. It will just be given.
EA did not present financial numbers in their preliminary quarterly report, but they did provide player stats. EA claims the game engaged 1.5 million players, which was down 50% from expectations. At best we can say that if each copy was $70 USD that’s 105 million USD in revenue, and they wanted twice that.
Dragon Age: Inquisition has sold 12 million copies since launch ten years ago, and is apparently BioWare’s best selling game. Of course, the DA:I sales are based on ten years of existence. We have no idea what ten years for Veilguard will look like.
But DA:I was launched at a time before things like Anthem when faith in BioWare was probably higher. And the culture war against Veilguard invariably hurt word of mouth. Even if the anti-woke crowd isn’t the majority, their messages and controversies earn YouTubers gobs of money through viewer traffic, so YouTubers boost the most negative of messages which can’t help but hurt any game’s sales. Unfortunately, I think the trolling works.
Dragon Age: the Veilguard is an enjoyable game. I like the story and characters, but I will admit didn’t feel compelled to run the game multiple times with different classes like I have in the past with other BioWare games, largely because I didn’t feel like combat would change dramatically if I did roll a new class.
I remember reading the budget for Inquisition was $250US million (can’t seem to find the source now).
Adjusting for inflation that’s about $340 million today, so I guess EA’s disappointment is justified.
It’s a shame, as it pulls into question the future of both the studio AND the series. This is why I think games need to change how they manage success and consider sales over a larger period of time.
I think a lot can be said about how poorly EA marketed it. Not enough of a lead up, a downright terrible trailer that everyone, not just the trolls, disliked, and not enough focus on why people should get excited for the game. Even though I wouldn’t call it my favourite BioWare game, I still think the marketing sold it short.
But yes, I think measuring success on a single quarter of sales is setting many games up to fail. But execs and shareholders want their slice immediately. They have zero patience in terms of waiting for games to earn revenue gradually.
Veilguard’s narrative director, Trick Weekes, reposted a tumblr essay which argues that the dev team knew they weren’t going to get a sequel greenlit, and that the whole game is an intentional effort to wrap up plotlines in the world of Thedas.
So that definitely points to Dragon Age being on ice for a while.
Looking at how EA is shifting people around and how many vets are looking for new work, my prediction is that if ME5 isn’t a significant hit, BioWare is toast. If ME5 satisfies EA, there’s a chance for DA to come out of mothballs in the future. But I’ll be honest that I’m not counting on it. From my view from the cheap seats, it looks to me like EA is already preparing to close up shop. What a terrible waste on so many levels.
Interesting article but the writer seems to forget/ignore the fact that while the games do give you options on how things play out, only one option is considered canon.
In regards to theage/templare war they mention, canonically Anders is considered a terrorist by pretty much everyone. Even some mages don’t like him as he re-instilled the fear and mistrust that many had of them.
Regardless, interesting article and it makes me want to play the game even more.
