Propaganda in our entertainment has become a real problem and it’s one the video game industry is just beginning to suffer under fully. After the events of 2020, many major game companies committed to bringing on consultation companies that were supposed to help them diversify their storytelling. Instead, games of today, now having been in development often since even before the pandemic, tend to look more like educational courses in divisive ideas than sources of universal entertainment.
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
Still, as much as it has pained us to see the gaming industry damaged by losses such as Concord, Star Wars Outlaws, Dustborn and more, we’ve reached a new level of awful with Dragon Age Veilguard. According to a veteran gaming developer, the situation is so bad that BioWare is allegedly attempting to have certain gameplay sequences struck from the internet.
The WORST SCENE in DRAGON AGE VEILGUARD just dropped.
You can never apologize enough, and you have to do it in JUST the right way, Dragon Age lectures.
Dragon Age Veilguard lectures you on the right way to apologize for m********** someone, and it is as cringe, long and… pic.twitter.com/oT5KxwcmAt
— Grummz (@Grummz) October 30, 2024
In the captured footage by Mark Kern (Grummz), who happens to have been the Project Lead on the original World of Warcraft, Dragon Age features a character making a modern-day grammatical faux pas in a fantasy world. As a result of the unintentional phrasing, presented as a virtuous error, the leading character makes a point of doing push-ups to atone for their semantic failure. The whole thing is reminiscent of a new-age, digital penance… but lacking any type of depth or meaningfulness. Bland, uninspired voice acting does not help.
EA and BioWare are yanking this clip off the internet as fast as it can be posted. Within minutes!
They know it’s terrible, just like the rest of the game.
Watch it while you still can! https://t.co/KlTNZafQaA
— Grummz (@Grummz) October 30, 2024
Dragon Age Veilguard is just one of many games in a pattern of woeful underperformance as a result of modern “virtue” inclusions. And unfortunately, it’s having a massive impact on an industry (gaming) that is thirteen times the size of the film industry. With vast sums of money on the line for each game, as well as development timelines that often take half-a-decade to complete, we could be looking at another Atari-level collapse in gaming as a result of heavy-handed storytelling aligned with particularly niche worldviews.
In fact, John Trent notes that one of the impacts is in full public view. Gamers and general consumers are turning to older content to satiate their needs. It’s not a foreign concept. Most music purchased today is older rather than newer — a likely result of synthetic artists who often do not align with the vast majority of consumers, either in their public personas or lyrical messages.
.@Grummz 2-year moratorium on AAA gaming appears to be in full effect. Ubisoft just reported that 77% of its net bookings for this year is from its back-catalog. pic.twitter.com/YGkx7oxtLg
— Rosary Warrior John F Trent🇻🇦 (@jftrent) October 30, 2024
But despite what is likely to be another financial disaster for the gaming industry, the video game reviewer class is quite pleased with Dragon Age Veilguard. You shouldn’t be surprised; they peddled the other huge losers as well. As was the case in movies for the last decade-or-so, we’re still at the point where many of those who make a living reviewing games are professionally beholden to review them in a way that keeps the access flowing. And thus the pattern keeps marching right along. It’s another industry where readers and viewers are turning away from the gatekeeping intelligentsia and flowing to those they perceive to be truthtellers on social media and on YouTube. The chances of them ever returning are slim.
Maybe the journalists need to consider taking a “Barv”. Dragon Age is ready to teach them how.
