Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Clumsy, Preachy Political Messaging Does More Harm Than Good

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Carighan@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/10/31/dragon-age-the-veilguards-clumsy-preachy-political-messaging-does-more-harm-than-good/

Not sure how particulary I think about it.

I kinda agree though because, honestly, I genuinely like prodding at RL-issues in my video games, but if the best the writers can do is some MCU-level shit that I would expect in Forspoken or Fortnite, then I really wish they’d not. It just feels like making fun of transgender people with how terrible the scene’s dialogue is (there’s a video in the article).

Plus, as the update says, they couldn’t even be arsed to search through the previous games for whether this was already talked about.

Sigh.

Still, the game is far better than I expected it to be, so this isn’t just a rant, but I wish the dialogue in particular had decent writing behind it, it breaks immersion near-constantly even if the general scene and story were done well.

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simple@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I watched some videos for the game and I’m genuinely baffled by how bad the writing in this game is. The rest of the game looks fine but most of the dialogue really is Forespoken territory. I think SkillUp put it best when he said “It’s written like the HR is in the room”

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Paradachshund@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
This article perfectly sums up the issues with this way of writing. Unfortunately people often don’t acknowledge the nuance there, and will jump down this reviewer’s throat for the take I imagine.

It’s icing on the cake that apparently there was even an in-lore term for something like a trans character of this species that they didn’t use. That makes it seem like they didn’t even study their own lore well enough. Never what you want to be thinking about a writing team. 🫤

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LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
“Aqun-athlok” means one who was born one gender and is now living as another. So yeah that means trans. But there’s also a conversation in the trans community about if Non-Binary is technically trans. I would argue it is but some disagree and others say that while Non-binary is trans it is not a “normal” type of trans. That Non-Binary is not either gender. Sometimes Non-Binary is literally no gender. Non-Binary is it’s own umbrella term. So it’s not necessarily living as “another” gender, it can be living in between genders, without gender, or as both genders.

So i would say that “Aqun-athlok” is probably more applicable as binary trans as it was used to refer to krem who was a trans man. Now they could have just thought up a new word for Non-binary trans but Non-Binary is just kinda the perfect word for it. I’m Non-Binary and I actually think saying this is immersion breaking is just kinda bs. Plenty of words in our world also exist in Dragon Age. Not everything has to have a different word. For instance, Dwarves are a thing in our world. Sure they’re not the same, it’s a medical term, but they still exist. But the Dwarves in Dragon Age are still called Dwarves. Why are they not a different name? It’s a fantasy world, shouldn’t they have made up a new word instead of using a word from our world to describe these people? No, because Dwarves is just the word that fits best. Non-Binary here is the same.

Now whether or not it is written well is a better approach to this discussion but also, every trans person has experienced the exact thing that this writer describes, except it’s not always pushups. I’ve had people feel incredibly guilty over misgendering me and done some stupid stuff. When I hear this being described I don’t think it’s awkwardly written, I think it’s an accurate representation of what it can be like being trans and how some people will just be like that when they misgender you.

I also think calling it “preachy” is 100% playing into the narrative it’s Woke because people don’t call CoD preachy even though it’s filled with pro military propaganda. Why is this preachy just because it accurately shows an experience that trans people have all experienced in our own lives?

I haven’t gotten to this place yet in the game and I might end up finding it awkward, but I more likely expect to actually relate to Taash more because of it.

Anyway, just my thoughts from a trans dragon age fan.

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- mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  interesting points, especially about the evolution in language / perceptions re: dwarves. I’ve heard dragon age being described as ‘fantasy, but more mature’; I played the first game and it didn’t click.
  
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RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
This article stinks of ignorance and bellendness. Complaining about “modern” or “new” terms is always a huge red flag to me, so now I have to wonder, for example, whether the The Bright Sword character referenced does in fact use she/her. Oh noes, the setting wouldn’t have this one word! It does, of course, have the entirety of any English dictionary other than that word, though. Just the one is icky, like all of those pronouns the woke crowd keep _shoving down our throats! But the woke crowd don’t exist in that world! The whole damn world is drastically different but this one conveniently common language is almost identical! Couldn’t have been that they say “are with” instead of “have,” noooo, it’s one coincidentally “political” word that’s gotta go. That’s the one critical difference in “a fantasy setting divorced entirely from the real world” where they’d suddenly not say things the same way we would!

Does this person give a damn at all and have a crappy take, or just feel like spewing another “omfg woke newspeak agenda” wall of whinge onto… er, Forbes. Not the place I’d look first for sensible discussion of social matters. I guess a click is a click.

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Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Okay, fine, let’s see what their argument is.

In my piece, I noted that—so far at least—I hadn’t encountered anything overtly preachy or that one might describe as garishly political or “overly woke”.

Aaand done with the article! Good, that didn’t take too long.

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- Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  What’s wrong with acknowledging a term a lot of people use? It’s also implying it as it’s only acknowledging the word and not endorsing it, the “…” for that I think.
  
  And the article is well written, explains what’s lacking, gives an alternative way of doing it better.
  
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  - Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Skibidi toilet is also a term a lot of people use. It’s also stupid and has no meaningful definition in discussion.
    
    If you want to use the term “woke”, and believe its presence in media is an issue, please define it first.
    
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Shadywack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I wish critics wouldn’t even bring up the preachy-ness of it. I’m finding other tangibles really fucking annoying like the cringe dialogue itself “Who doesn’t like talking about dragons?” or how fucked the companion and enemy AI is. We haven’t seen AI this bad since Colonial Marines, but nobody’s really talking about it because of the flashy combat animations for the main character acting as a curtain covering how dogshit the rest of the gameplay is.

My character can slam the ground and make a shit ton of visual effects, which is acting as a red herring to my companions that don’t do shit the vast majority of the time at enemies barely smart enough to navigate the terrain to run at me. This is like Doom 1993 AI.

Irritating jokes less amusing than the most formulaic of trashy sitcoms, and they don’t address that either. I think people irked by this article are really put off by the way it adds fuel to the fire of criticisms toward progressivism. It’s well written and does bring out the irony of it, but it seems more of an attempt to undermine the progressive messaging and justify the audience polarity. In reality, there’s no need for the division, people who positively react to the game are wearing rose colored glasses to a game with serious issues that don’t get fixed on the technical backend.

On the technical front, if you ignore the absolute garbage AI and look at the rendering engine’s performance, this is the best release of the year by far.

I have so many mixed feelings on the game. This shit going back and forth over the wokeness just gives everyone a red herring to defend or attack.

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- Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I mean despite how I feel the linked article’s author uses a type of language that makes me wary of them, I kinda agree. The utterly Marvel way the game talks about things combined with the inane inability to ever have any conflict, negatives or issues combines to essentially make a mockery of very real issues.
  
  And I’m sorry, it’s one thing to want to use art to showcase real issues and poke at them and shine a spotlight onto them. That’s good, personally I want art to do that. But when you essentially use it as a joke piece due to the inherently non-serious nature of all your scenes, it just becomes even worse than not doing it. 😔
  
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- CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Whether it has terrible dialogue, too many bugs, lacking in technical prowess, cost way too much to make or is simply too preachy. It all boils down to a single problem: corporate suits sucking the soul out of the project, devoiding it of any passion one could possibly have. It looks, feels and smells like an empty shell of a game because that is exactly what it is. Nothing stands out because every decision was calculated with the goal to moderately please everyone in the room, resulting in compromises stacked on compromises all the way down.
  
  The often sloppily implemented progressiveness in these products quickly starts to look like an afterthought. Perhaps to shield themselves from criticism after they realized what they’ve created or maybe they slapped it on when they realized their story has literally nothing to say about anything and is a hollow shell of a product.
  
  Whatever the case, soulless slob does more harm than good to anything their creators associate it with, so I totally get why someone wouldn’t even want to read about that aspect of the game in a review. It’s just one more of several symptomps of a bad product.
  
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