Dragon Age: The Veilguard has impressed the press before its release and attracted tens of thousands of players at launch – who are also expressing positive opinions. Now the first user reviews have appeared on Metacritic and strike a significantly worse tone.
This is how The Veilguard is received on Metacritic:
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard has a solid Metascore of 84. The press and many experts praise the new role-playing game, although there are some criticisms here and there.
- However, the user score for the latest BioWare game is significantly lower. The Veilguard only receives 3.4 out of 10 points, with a declining trend (via Metacritic, as of November 2 at 1:00 PM).
- In the over 2,100 reviews, users are very critical of the new Dragon Age.
This is what users say: In the reviews, there is very little substantial criticism. Most reviews either give a score of 0-1 or 9-10 points, with both sides of the spectrum providing only a few justifications.
In the negative reviews, users mainly criticize BioWare’s decision to make The Veilguard significantly more inclusive. For example, in German, the entire game is gendered and several non-binary characters appear in the game.
The positive voices counter with a similar attitude: they just want to balance out the “transphobic crybabies”. Here and there, some reviews at least praise the gameplay or the story or provide somewhat more detailed criticism such as flat characters.
Comparing the reviews on Metacritic with those on Steam reveals a clear divide. Steam players rate The Veilguard much better at 79% and share a similar opinion as the press.
The Veilguard fails to impress users on Metacritic – Where does the difference come from?
Steam has strict guidelines regarding reviews. A new law aims to prevent disreputable reviews, leading some users to notice that critical reviews on Steam seem to disappear arbitrarily. Moreover, you usually have to own the game.
On Metacritic, however, anyone can share their opinion about a new game 36 hours after release. This often leads to “review bombing”, where a game is penalized even if it is not actually that bad. Often, the reasons are trivial details or entirely different issues.
A sort of meta-war is currently being fought around the new Dragon Age, not directly about the game itself, but about the direction in which video games are generally developing. Specifically, this is a battle between proponents of inclusive content and the “anti-woke”.
This dispute is mainly fought out on social media, but also on Metacritic and, in the past, on Steam.
In the case of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the lines seem to be quite hardened. So much so that an entire community has decided to strip anyone associated with a declared opponent of their right to participate: The subreddit for Dragon Age: The Veilguard blocks every fan of a Twitch streamer
