Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches with positive reviews on Steam – despite having sparked significant discussions beforehand, especially around one topic: Inclusion. In German, the LGBTQ+ theme is even more pronounced through an unusual choice of language. How are players reacting to this?
What is the issue with the language?
- “Gendering” in German aims to promote linguistic inclusion, so women and non-binary individuals feel included rather than excluded when using the generic masculine form.
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard has opted for such language in German. There are also so-called neopronouns used for non-binary individuals.
- The direction that The Veilguard is taking has already led to accusations before release that the game is “too woke.”
This is what German players are saying: At release, over 70,000 players played the new Dragon Age on Steam and rated it 79% “mostly positive.” Filtering only the roughly 300 reviews in German, it even reaches 81% positive opinions on Steam.
Players praise the gameplay and combat system, as well as the visuals, in their reviews. Hair especially gets mentioned repeatedly. In contrast, the performance demands on hardware and the overly angular faces and masculine figures receive criticism.
Additionally, there are scattered complaints about the story, lack of open world, and the companions. The issue of gendering hardly comes up at all. However, whether players play The Veilguard in German or English cannot be inferred from the reviews written in German.
Why did the developers decide to use gendering? We have already critically questioned the decision to use gendered language in our review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as it makes texts partially hard to read and incomprehensible. At the same time, we asked EA why they are even using gendered language. This is the answer:
Since non-binary language is neither universally established nor recognized officially in grammar and dictionaries, we collaborated with linguists to integrate grammatical elements and pronunciations aimed at respectfully representing the non-binary characters in our game.
The “Anti Woke Bubble” criticizes The Veilguard for its content
Dragon Age: The Veilguard unmistakably places a high value on diversity and inclusion. There are several non-binary characters, all romance options are pansexual, and everyone is treated equally, regardless of gender and skin color.
A detail that caused a lot of trouble before release is surgical scars under the breast. During character creation, you have the option to choose scars resulting from mastectomy, meaning breast removal.
The meta-discussion has developed so radically that alleged review templates from BioWare have appeared, claiming that testers may not criticize the “woke” content. However, this turned out to be fake.
One of the biggest opponents of BioWare’s decisions is streamer Asmongold. His opinion seems to be so strong that an entire subreddit decided to punish any contact with him directly: The Dragon Age subreddit bans any fan of a Twitch streamer
