Dragon Age: The Veilguard – marketing people ruin everything (YouTube)
The reveal trailer for Dragon Age 4 has not gone down well, but despite the cartoonish tone the real game supposedly has more of a horror atmosphere.
After almost 10 years in development, the fourth Dragon Age game finally got a reveal trailer on Sunday night, as part of the Xbox Games Showcase, and… it hasn’t been well received by fans.
Now known as Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the trailer features an unexpectedly comedic tone and visuals which many fans have compared to Fortnite and Overwatch – and which is certainly not the photorealistic style that would otherwise have been expected.
As a result, the trailer has been heavily downvoted on YouTube, although some are trying to insist that it wasn’t an accurate depiction of the game and that tonight’s gameplay reveal will help to reassure angry fans.
The version of the trailer on the Xbox YouTube channel has 20,000 dislikes compared to 2,900 likes but it only has 176,000 views. The most viewed version of the trailer is on developer BioWare’s own site, which has over 1.5 million views, with 195,000 dislikes and only 35,000 likes.
After such a long wait, that’s not the sort of reception BioWare would’ve been hoping for, but then there’s previously been nothing to suggest the game would be adopting a different tone. Although admittedly there’s been almost no information of any kind about the game in nearly a decade.
It’s true that the original games could be a bit po-faced and unapproachable but the reveal trailer seemed to have more the tone of something like Fable 2 or Sea Of Thieves. Although personally we found the slowed down cover of Bowie’s Heroes to be the only actively offensive part of the trailer.
The references to Fortnite and Overwatch were not so much in terms of the graphics, which aren’t really similar at all, but more the fact that, if you didn’t know already, you’d assume the game was some kind of hero shooter – especially as no actual gameplay was shown.
Perhaps in response to the poor reception, BioWare has released a 24 second gameplay clip ahead of today’s full gameplay trailer reveal. It looks and sounds exactly like what you’d expect from the fourth Dragon Age (and has some nice rain effects), so it seems like the trailer was just a misguided attempt to appeal to non-fans.
As someone who’s played some of Veilguard, if you want DAO-like horror… it’s there. Trust me. All of the environments I got to experience were varied and very much felt like Dragon Age, including the new places. I think Tuesday’s gameplay reveal will tone set for the game well.
— Bria LaVorgna (@chaosbria) June 10, 2024
A number of content creators, from the game’s ‘community council’, claim to have already played the game and have been trying to assure ordinary fans that the trailer is not representative of the final product.
Curiously, a number of them mention gore and a more intense horror atmosphere, which is not something Dragon Age is particularly well known for and absolutely not what you would’ve expected if all you knew about the series was watching the reveal trailer.
The gameplay trailer will be unveiled at 4pm BST today but there’s no indication of how long it’ll be. However, considering it’s got to get across combat, exploration, and character interactions we’re expecting something fairly substantial.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard – hopefully the trailer is misleading (YouTube)
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