YouTuber and streamer Asmongold did not hold back as he trashed BioWare’s upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard while reacting to IGN’s exclusive first hands-on preview of the game.
Taash in Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
Almost immediately into the video, Asmongold lampooned the game for its newly redesigned Qunaris. He said, “This guy looks so f***ing ugly and retarded. Who the f**k thought this was a good idea to make a character that looks this way. This is the dumbest looking character in the entire game. Like, why would you do this?”
He did not stop there. After listening to the IGN host claim that she walked away from the preview with “relief to wave many of those concerns goodbye,” Asmongold said, “How can you look at this and think that it’s good? How could you do this? Like, I don’t understand. How?”
When he got to a point in the video where a player character kicks down a piece of wood to create a bridge, he commented, “That’s not how it would work. It’s just bad.”
He then explained, “No weight to it at all? It’s not that there’s no weight to it. It’s that the acceleration is totally wrong. … I want you to understand that if you can’t get this right, the odds are you can’t get anything else right either. This is the exact type of thing I was talking about with mining canary problems in video games. This is exactly what I meant. Poor physics for even a piece of wood.”
“You’re going to call it a nitpick, I’m going to call it a pattern,” he said. “And I guess when the game comes out we’ll see who’s right.”
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
A little bit later in his video, Asmongold compared the game to mobile game RAID: Shadow Legends saying, “I feel like Raid: Shadow Legends has like better like graphical style than this game. … I do. I really think so.”
Moments later he added, “I mean this really just looks like a mobile game.”
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
About halfway through the video, Asmongold asserted, “Maybe we should cancel video games. Maybe we shouldn’t make video games anymore. We should stop doing. We should go outside or something. Maybe I’ll go find a stick that looks like a sword out in the woods or something like that.”
He added, “Go dig a hole. Dig up the neighbor’s cable line, cut it off.”
Concept art of Anderfels by Solelle for Dragon Age: The Veilguard (TBD), BIoWare
Still later during a combat sequence, Asmongold said, “You know what this reminds me a lot of? It reminds me of like games that tried to copy Dark Souls in like 2013.”
He continued, “It’s offensively bad. Yeah.”
Asmongold reacts to IGN’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard hands-on preview
READ: ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Creative Director Declares: “All Companions Are Canonically Pansexual”
He then reiterated his criticisms of the redesigned Qunaris saying, “Who thought it was a good idea to make a character look like that? How did you do this? How did this go past anybody? I don’t even understand. This is insane.”
“I’m going to say something right now and it’s going to be super controversial. This looks worse than Concord. And I don’t even think that it’s close. This is actually worse than Concord,” he declared.
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
“I don’t see how anybody can look at this combat and look at this gameplay and think that it’s anything more than garbage,” Asmongold declared. “This is some of the worst gameplay that I’ve ever seen. And I don’t even understand how this happened.”
“I want to say again, I don’t care about the story. I don’t care about these interactions between the interactions. This isn’t what’s important to me. What’s important to me is the vibe of the game and the way that it plays. And I think this game has absolutely failed the vibe check. It’s not even remotely close. It’s like they have the same shield bar that probably makes it to where they can’t be staggered like the Hades NPCs. This looks like a mobile game. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills looking at this,” he added.
Asmongold then elaborated on his mobile criticism, “It’s not a problem because it looks like a mobile game. It’s a problem because mobile game UIs are obnoxious.”
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
Asmongold then suggested that gamers start judging games by their previews, “You guys need to start judging books by their covers. You need to start doing that because if somebody can’t be bothered to make a good cover they sure as f**k aren’t going to write a good book. I’m just being honest. If you can’t figure out your f***ing cover the book is going to be a joke.”
Next, he declared that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is “the hit” that will send BioWare “into bankruptcy.”
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (TBA), BioWare
Asmongold then summarized, “I don’t understand how anybody can look at the quality of this gameplay and see anything about this game that seems remotely appealing at all. Everything about this game I find absolutely repulsive. I think that the character design is terrible. The story seems bland. The graphics are garbage. The UI looks like it came from RAID: Shadow Legends. That’s not true. RAID: Shadow Legends is better.”
“The animations and spell effects are a combination of non-existent and a visual migraine with nothing in-between. I just can’t see anything good about this,” he declared.
A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare
What do you make of Asmongold’s commentary regarding Dragon Age: The Veilguard?
