I was one of the people that played this game only after it was quickly offered for free with my PS-Plus membership. I thought it was amusing, the backlash that the perceived woke elements of the game received, but I wasn't going to outright ignore it because of this. I suppose you can consider me one of the people that is perfectly content to sit on the sidelines during the culture war, if it can even be called that.
What did bother me about the game was choosing your pronouns or getting lectured by some beast that was non-binary or something, what I didn't like about the game was the incredibly repetitive gameplay, the bad story-telling, and how combat was just straight up boring.
If you want to get upset over current-world politics being in a game go ahead, I'm not a fan of it but it isn't a game-ender for me. The thing that upsets me about this game is that it is, for a lot of long-term fans of RPG's, objectively bad. I wrote enough about this in the past, perhaps 10,000 words, so I don't want to get into details about that again. I'll just say this: If we were to completely swap out the story for something that was really awesome like, say Final Fantasy 3, and everything else about the game remained the same as it is, I would still think it sucks. So do a lot of other people.
However, lately, my feeds have been getting bombarded with Veilguard updates and press releases about the "grand success" of the game and I can't help but just roll my eyes at the fact that the gaming media is running cover for this absolute disaster of a game.
Time Magazine named it "Game of the Year" and myself and tens of thousands of other people presumed that this was some sort of Reddit joke but no, it is legit. Time really did that. It beat out Black Myth: Wukong, Silent Hill 2, Astro Bot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and frigging Helldivers 2 for this award. What a load of nonsense.
The positive media coverage didn't stop there though, and it continues to this day where my feed will be filled with mostly newer gaming news but for some reason, everyone is still running cover for Bioware with vague statements stating that "people that actually played the game liked it" not true... and that "we failed to include shared world features (online co-op, seasonal reward options, etc) and this lead to poor sales" which is also nonsense. Balder's Gate 3 anyone?
The media also tends to focus on internal development struggles and attempted to deflect and state that all video games sales are down, which they most definitely are NOT.
The consequences of this game selling less than half of what they needed it to has had broad reaching effects for Bioware including a drop in in EA (parent company) stock price to a total of a $6 billion valuation drop. I understand that there are other factors involved here, but the timing wasn't a coincidence. EA tried to lie their way through sales figures stating there was 1.5 million Veilguard players. Sure, the game was free for PS Plus and was included with the EA subscription mode. I'm sure a lot of those 1.5 million installed the game, played for an hour, then stopped. Many others would have been like me where they were desperately hoping that it would get better, and then after 20 hours realized they have wasted enough time and gave up.
These things happen in the gaming world, but what gets me is the media, and most of the streamers exposed themselves for being shills for the corporate world when this game was released and they are really sticking to their guns to this day. I don't know a single person that thinks Veilguard was a success. I know a few people that thought it was just ok, but nobody out there really believes this is the best game of last year.
The media tried to just ignore it for a while and then some of the same media that was praising the game came forward to tell the truth, I suppose in an effort to salvage their own credibility. Forbes was one of the big ones that came clean but also failed to recognize that Forbes themselves was part of the media "problem" they describe in the article I linked above.
It all just makes me feel as though I cannot trust anything that is written by anyone about any game and maybe that all just seems so obvious to many of you out there and I should rely on word of mouth rather than companies to get my information. It's just crazy to me that here we are nearly a year later and I am still getting articles forced into my feed talking about how great a success it was.
I mean, what is the point? Nobody is going to be buying that game now are they? Hell, they barely succeeded in giving it away on PS Plus and PlayStation users instead flocked towards a TMNT game that was also on offer that month.
It happens with films all the time and therefore I am not surprised it is happening with games. But what gets me is why they are still doing it now? I was perfectly content to just let this be a bad memory but now it seems like the shills are trying to rewrite history. Maybe there is a Bioware game that is coming out soon.
What do you think? I know that IGN and the like have long-since-been compromised but is there any honest gaming journalism in existence today?