> [!Quote] Some Redditor: > I think the hand-crafted cinematic approach [of Dragon Age: The Veilguard] would've been really incredible if they stuck with DA's darker, more serious tone, but I worry it's going to feel generic and Marvel-esque with the YA fantasy visual design & writing. Saw this and was thinking about how a lot of the times we don't know what we're talking about. Like truly. This is kind of unfocused, I don't plan to have a thesis around this but like. You ever think about how much of media discourse is just ad-libs? This comment feels like it's copy-pasted. I think it might literally be, given how often I kept seeing it. Media discourse is just one person making a short, pithy, needlessly venomous comment on Twitter that gets picked up by everyone else as a talking point and is then regurgitated like slop. Everything is "YA" or "Marvel-esque" or "overly quippy," but what do these things mean? Marvel did not invent quips or jokes or team ups. I don't know if you know this, but [Bioware isn't exactly new to the idea of team-ups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect_2)[^1]! We talk about *Dragon Age*'s tone as if it's reverent and serious and hasn't been filled with jokes and clownery since day one. *The Veilguard*'s gameplay reveal matched *Dragon Age: Inquisition* almost entirely when it comes to tone! And listen, I'm not saying we need to give **Bioware** the benefit of the doubt, of all companies. I'm just saying, let's critique the company and its games based on its actual merit - or lack thereof - and not based off of the "Marvel-writing" ghost that you're already shadow-boxing in your mind. And the funniest thing is that people who say this don't consume anything that *isn't* Marvel. That's the only way you'd believe those elements are endemic to those movies. There's also something to be said that if you think everything you see in every western fantasy game you pick up as being bland and boring, maybe try another genre, another culture, another medium even? But who am I kidding *The Lord of the Rings* is still treated as gospel we're not getting anywhere with that train of thought lmao. [^1]: This game came out two years before *The Avengers* by the way