this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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DAO was very inclusive. It went as far as implementing implicit bias in NPCs. It allowed you to experience racism the way it's experienced usually. Which sometimes led to wondering whether or not an NPC hated your elf for being an elf, or just hated everybody. Where a kid, not knowing better asks if you're really an elf. And explains that his dad said that elves were mean, but your character was nicer than anyone in the refugee camp. Context behind it is that the boy belonged to a family of farmers and may have run into hostile Dalish elves. Or simply bigotry. You never get to know.
It was no stranger to sexism either, and gave a fascinating perspective from female characters who took advantage of it. Both Morrigan and Liliana. One being aware, and the other less so. And another female companion was literally a walking rock. Who honestly didn't care about her being a woman before she became a golem. There was gender non-comformity there before and after she turned into a walking statue. Before people heard of GNC. But she did worry about if the crystals made her look fat. A good jab at feminine insecurities in a light hearted way.
It poked fun at Alistair for being an immature man. Which through experiences would change in the story. He'd either stay the same, or learn how harsh life can be and that people look after themselves first. That no one owed him anything. He had to let go of the knightly stories, and grow up to take the lead.
It was not above describing and talking about awful treatment of women either. Not that they were all victims and life sucked, but some men in power took women they wanted for fun. As the targets were elves and therefore not protected by law enforcement either. Rape is a theme not-lightly touched up on in one of the origin stories. While also describing women fighting back and failing/winning depending on the gender of the PC.
DA Veilguard didn't fail due to incusivity. If failed to greed.
No, it failed because making a good game was pushed aside in favor of making a game with a message—and not even a very good one.
I once played a D&D game where our party was hired to clear a camp of murderous orcs. When we arrived, the camp was nothing but women and children; the male orcs had already been slaughtered by someone else.
But because they were orcs, and because there was a stigma attached to their existence, we were still expected to kill them. Apparently, their heads were worth the same regardless of gender or age.
We were playing a game, but it still felt wrong, and everyone at the table was uncomfortable. That is how you deliver a meaningful message. Not by saying, "I'm nonbinary"—because, in the context of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, no one cares.
You don’t just ram a message down your players’ throats. You present it in a way that is playable and contextual to the game's world and lore.
The Veilguard is set in a magical world. There is no reason to have nonbinary or trans people with surgical scars when Dragon Age literally has polymorph magic—they can change their gender whenever they want.
It makes no sense to have nonbinary people in The Veilguard!
I see! So there was some kind of explicit order, or at least concerted effort with explicit goal, to make a game with "a message". And I assume we have all the evidence to look at to see the day-to-day chain of events that led to the market failure.
No?
Seriously though, there were many reasons why DAV failed, and "having a Message" was not even in the top 100. Every piece of media has a message.
...This is literally just the "historical accuracy" argument.
You’re misrepresenting my point. I never claimed there was an explicit directive to prioritize "a message" over game quality—I said it feels like that’s what happened. That’s a critique of execution, not a conspiracy theory.
Yes, every piece of media has a message, but there’s a difference between a theme that naturally emerges from storytelling and one that feels forced or out of place. The issue isn’t that the game has a message—it’s how it delivers it.
Claiming messaging wasn’t in the "top 100" reasons for failure is just hand-waving. You provide no evidence for that, and even if it’s not the primary reason, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a factor.
Finally, comparing this to the "historical accuracy" argument is a bad-faith deflection. Dragon Age isn’t real history, but it does have established lore and internal consistency. When a game introduces elements that contradict its own worldbuilding, it breaks immersion. That’s the issue.
You're deflecting the real issue here. The issue isn't whether that's factual or just your personal feels. The issue is that you're saying that was the definitive cause of its failure:
And what I was saying was, well, no, it wasn't the definitive cause. Far from it. There's a lot of reasons for the game's failure.
I fail to see how you refute my point by saying that. I never said it wasn't a factor, I said it was insignificant compared to bigger problems.
You know, I didn't list the reasons because I thought they would be obvious to anyone who's actually following what's going on. Buuuut how about the oversaturation of the AAA game publishing space? (People have giant backlogs of great games to play, and there's no end to this stuff.) Rising game prices? (Big game publishers are getting pretty greedy.) Increasing standards of quality from consumers? (Can't release a meh game these days, if people are paying $70+ for games, they have to be beyond excellent.)
Most importantly: people actually want games that were made by studios that give a damn about the end product. Bioware is just EA's puppet, they make product chunks. In my opinion, the biggest reason DAV failed commercially because it was a game nobody was asking for, made by a developer that's a shadow of its former self and everyone knows that. People had scepticism, and rightfully so.
See? I didn't even get into what's in the game. That's what I meant when I said the Message isn't even in the top 100 problems.
No, perhaps I was being unclear. What I meant by that is that it's in the same category as "historical accuracy" whinging. It's a fictional setting, so arguing that it has to match some real world facts and logic is utterly pointless.
So how exactly did it contradict the worldbuilding? Was it specifically established in DA lore that all nb/trans people will use polymorph magic? I'm genuinely curious here.
Or did you mean that this particular logic doesn't make sense to you personally? That's not "lore". That's not a worldbuilding issue. That's projecting your own assumptions.
Besides: Even if it was specifically earlier established in DA lore that all nb/trans characters will just use polymorph stuff, who cares? The writers are well within their rights to retcon their stuff. Worldbuilding is not dogma.
You’re shifting the goalposts. My argument wasn’t that messaging was the sole reason for failure, but that it was a major factor—one that contributed to the game feeling like a product with priorities misaligned from what players actually wanted. Saying there were “many reasons” doesn’t refute that.
Your claim that messaging wasn’t even in the “top 100” is still unsupported. Listing industry-wide problems like oversaturation and rising prices is fine, but none of that explains why The Veilguard failed specifically. Plenty of games thrive under these conditions. The difference? They connect with their audience. DAV didn’t.
As for lore consistency—yes, Dragon Age has established magic that lets people change their gender at will. If that exists, then the idea of medical transition (and scars from it) doesn’t naturally fit within the world. That’s not a personal assumption; it’s a logical question based on the rules the setting has already established. If a game contradicts its own internal logic without explanation, that’s bad writing.
And no, “retcons” don’t excuse anything. A writer can change their worldbuilding, but doing so in a way that breaks immersion, alienates players, or makes the setting feel incoherent is bad storytelling. Just because you can rewrite lore doesn’t mean you should—especially if it weakens the internal consistency of the world.
No, we're having a simple disagreement over whether this was a major reason why the game failed commercially or not. You're the one who's making this complicated.
Insisting that the game having a message is the most major reason the game failed doesn't refute any of what I said either. We're still having a disagreement, nothing more. You've not proven your claim either.
OK, so you continue to be the one who's making the extraordinary claim here, that DAV specifically failed because the game didn't connect with the message, and that it was specifically because it was the message.
There are still plenty of reasons why a game wouldn't connect with the audience, as I said. You've not exactly proven why and how this was the definitive reason. That's the claim that needs to be proven, yet you've not done that.
Whether or not you're acknowledging it or not, you're acting as if as you think the game having a message is the sole reason why the game failed commercially. You acknowledge that it was a "major" reason, but then, above, you're also specifically saying that industry-wide problems aren't affecting the game's situation at all. Why? Why isn't the industry downturn affecting this game specifically? Why can't we explain this game's failure in large part with the incompetence and greed of major publishers?
You didn't answer my question. I didn't ask if it "naturally" fits the world. I asked if it was established that this is what is actually happening in the lore.
Because you're still projecting your own assumptions on how the world should work on the work. You're not criticising the game's writing on its own merits. You're complaining that the game writers didn't write the game the way you wanted. In other words, this is still the "my historical accuracy in my fantasy game" argument.
Besides, there's plenty of reason why, in a fantasy setting, you could have trans/nb characters who don't get to use polymorph magic. Cost. Class gap. Haves and have-nots. The class divide is a pretty common topic that is often explored in fantasy literature and people being denied this kind of magic treatment, for whatever reason, is a valid catalyst for a story. It'd make an excellent fantasy plotline. But that's not relevant to DA specifically.
You’re asking me to prove that the game’s messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but you’re not holding yourself to the same standard. You claim that industry-wide issues like oversaturation, pricing, and publisher greed were the real reasons, yet you’ve provided no evidence that these factors impacted The Veilguard more than any other game.
The backlash against DAV wasn’t primarily about price, oversaturation, or competition. The loudest complaints were about the game’s tone, character writing, and perceived prioritization of messaging over deep storytelling. If industry trends were the dominant factor, we’d expect similar pushback against every game in this space—not just DAV.
The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design. The skepticism around DAV didn’t just appear out of nowhere—it was a reaction to a pattern of changes fans disliked.
If DAV’s failure was mostly about the industry downturn, we’d expect all comparable RPGs to be struggling just as much. Yet, games that focus on strong player-driven storytelling (Baldur’s Gate 3, for example) have thrived. The key difference? They gave players what they wanted.
The burden of proof goes both ways. If you’re going to claim story issues and messaging weren’t significant reasons for DAV’s failure, you need to prove that too. Just pointing at industry-wide problems doesn’t explain why this game failed more than others.
https://www.polygon.com/analysis/520290/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-ea-bioware-layoffs
https://thatparkplace.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-lower-than-reported/
https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/01/23/dragon-age-launch-sales-veilguard-vs-previous-games