Dragon Age: The Veilguard | The Mandalorian, Season Two

The Force grows stronger while the age of dragons comes to an end.

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Here's what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...

MOVIES

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Does this long list of movies I've re-watched give away that I might've had some time off work recently?

Anyway, I still really like this movie and I hope we get to see Galactus and this Silver Surfer at some point again in the future.

Prisoners

I know he's Wolverine, so this question is purely rhetorical, but Hugh Jackman does murderously angry very well, doesn't he?

Spotlight

Like The Big Short, another film that may provoke stronger reactions than normal due to it being unfortunately based on real events.

And also like The Big Short, this remains an excellent movie.

Star Trek: First Contact

I wanted some big name sci-fi action and, without access to start watching Deep Space Nine and re-visiting the Dominion War again, this was the next best option - and it's still pretty good too, although I'll wait before going through all the Star Trek movies before doing a proper review.

Thunderbolts*

I actually re-watched this before Fantastic Four: First Steps and they still make for a pretty great duo.

GAMES

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Game summary: Rook, a new hero, leads a team to stop dangerous forces tied to the Veil, as rising chaos threatens the balance of the world.

I'm going to try and keep this short as I don't enjoy being negative and I unfortunately have very little positive to say about Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

To be fair, this series has suffered from diminishing returns for me from the start, which is a little unfair when it kicks off with a truly fantastic game like Dragon Age: Origins.

Unlike a lot of Dragon Age fans, I didn't particularly enjoy Dragon Age: Inquisition and its MMORPG-like nature, finding much of the optional content to be tedious and those tendencies are only amplified here.

What's perhaps the most dispiriting thing about Veilguard is that even when it does something well, that shining part is still usually countered by a big pile of... well, you get the idea.

For example, I really like the animation work in this game and how it really helps the improved traversal options and being able to climb, run and jump around the environments - the hair technology used here should be the minimum standards for games going forward.

On the other hand, the visual style is so different to anything in the series before that this might as well have been a brand new IP and isn't helped by everyone feeling a little 'squished' to fit in with the exaggerated art style.

You do grow used to the new art direction over time, but at no point at all did the game's appearance ever reinforce Veilguard's place as belonging in the series' history.

Then there's the voice acting, where I can't really fault any of the performers - none spring to mind as being anything less than adequate at worst - but the material they've been given is mostly bland and uninteresting.

Remember how companions clashed in previous games? There's none of that here - there are signs of tension between party members that could've been interesting avenues to explore, but any issues are pretty much resolved in a line or two of dialogue and everyone's back to playing happy families again.

Then there's Taash, who may well be the single worst-written party member in not just Dragon Age games, but most party-based RPG games.

All credit for BioWare for trying to include a non-binary character, but simply using modern-day terminology when it comes to gender identity rather than any other terms that might actually feel like they belong in the fantasy world of Thedas is destructive to immersion.

Then there's the story of the game, which feels like the creative team were told there would be no more Dragon Age games after this, so they tried to tie off as many loose ends as possible and make just about everything that happened throughout the series be the fault of the Elven 'gods', who are the main antagonists.

Rather than these reveals feeling revelatory, they instead made me think "really?" and not in the pleasantly surprised way, more like "did you really need to do that?"

And then there's the combat, which could've been interesting if the enemies didn't default to attacking the player character, making your Rook the 'tank' of the team regardless of whether you play as a warrior or not.

Seriously, MMOs figured out 'aggro' decades ago! Why is this shit happening in what was once a flagship franchise?

To end on a positive note, I did like the multiple occasions where the entire team would be involved in a mission - similar to the suicide mission at the end of Mass Effect 2 - and that was apparently the influence of the Mass Effect team helping the Dragon Age team to get the game finished.

So one of the brightest spots in Veilguard is that the team working on the next Mass Effect game seem to know what they're doing at least - doesn't really help this game though, does it?

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a sad way for this series to end (if it is the end), bearing little to no relation to the masterpiece that started it all. [3/10]

Also currently playing: Batman: Arkham City; Clair Obscur: Expedition 33; Ladykiller in a Bind; Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)

TV

The Mandalorian, Season Two

Season summary: Din Djarin escorts the Child across the galaxy, seeking fellow Mandalorians for aid, confronting Moff Gideon, and ultimately delivering the child to a familiar Jedi Master.

Episode 1, “The Marshal”

My love for Knights of the Old Republic is no secret, so an episode where the mission is to lure a Krayt Dragon out of a cave and blow it up for the Sand People on Tatooine, just like in the game? Fantastic.

Episode 2, “The Passenger”

An enjoyable enough one-and-done, although it’s interesting to see the normally compassionate Child not detect the titular passenger’s eggs as its children – hunger over life feels very Sith-like to me…

Episode 3, “The Heiress”

As it turned out, the ‘heiress’ in question was Bo-Katan in live-action!

Let’s hope not too many more Mandalorians show up though – in small numbers, like here, they’re fine; it’s when you get a lot of them together that the stories take a nosedive…

Episode 4, “The Siege”

An interesting episode – was that lab a reference to/continuation of Project Necromancer from The Bad Batch and setting up Rise of Skywalker?

And will the Child’s hunger never end? Seriously, he’s either secretly a Sith or a Force Vampire like Nihilus

Episode 5, “The Jedi”

While it’s nice to see Ahsoka in live-action, I imagine it could be a little confusing about who this new Jedi is if you didn’t watch Clone Wars and/or Rebels.

And we finally learn the Child’s name: Grogu (which I obviously already knew thanks to all the marketing starting up for the Mandalorian & Grogu movie, but still…)

Episode 6, “The Tragedy”

A lot of action this time, with Boba Fett making a return too, although it did feel like a pre-finale episode with how much Moff Gideon, the main bad guy, came out on top here.

I’m guessing the next two episodes are one big one split in half.

Episode 7, “The Believer”

Okay, a bit different to how I thought it would turn out, although I’m not sure it needed an entire episode for only one thing to happen.

Still, was nice to hear that seismic charge effect again.

Episode 8, “The Rescue”

Luke Skywalker showing up to annihilate the Dark Troopers is a pretty great sequence, especially the hallway section where he mirrors his dad’s efforts against the Rebels at the end of Rogue One.

Oh, and Din is now the leader of Mandalore as the wielder of the Darksaber? Interesting...

Oh, and can I just say how much I love the design of the female Mandalorian armour and helmets in live-action? So, so good.

Ultimately, The Mandalorian's second season did feel like a step up in confidence and comfort with the characters and what kind of show this is, even if the inescapable tendrils of the wider Star Wars universe creeping in are going to leave a lot of people scratching their heads in confusion at times. [8/10]

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