Doom Spiral

As the spooky October 31st release date of Dragon Age: The Veilguard creeps ever closer I've been keeping my lil' peepers on any prominent news.  It feels like almost every week there's a semi-bi-polar slide between items that fans find "good" and those that are "bad" (but thanks to the general cynicism of the interwebs are painted as downright catastrophic).  I've seen excitement over the character creation options (especially the hair...which if you've ever followed any RPG you'll know is absolutely VITAL) that immediately turned into an absolute doom spiral with this piece of news--apparently, few of your decisions from Origins and Dragon Age 2 will carry over into The Veilguard.  Instead, only 3 choices you made in Inquisition will have an effect on the world state.  (Read the interview with the creative director here)  I am a member of a very well moderated Dragon Age group on social media and I would classify the reaction as a total freak out.  Is that reaction warranted?

There's a part of me that thinks, no, it's just people being overly cynical.  I think BioWare has always done a good job of making your decisions feel like they had weight and part of the fun in carrying over those decisions is seeing the outcome in a subsequent game.  But in reality, how big of an impact did those decisions really have on the world?  You might get a brief reference to someone you saved or have a slightly different character be part of something.  In reality, I think the illusion of choice is what players experience.  The main outcomes generally don't vary much and it's usually a very outcome A vs. outcome B type of scenario (think of Mass Effect 3's controversial red, blue, green ending--I mean, did many of your choices from previous games really matter there?).  It also sounds like they're trying to separate the game world from the tangled web of lore and decisions from the previous games and do something new-ish (which...given Andromeda...I don't know).

On the other hand, I can somewhat empathize with the naysayers.  Part of the fun of making even the small decisions is witnessing their outcomes.  The Keep offered players the chance to experiment with various decisions and make each new playthrough unique.  That has always been a hallmark of BioWare games and given them the ability to be massively replayable.  Are we going to be losing that factor?

I've read several articles about how the ginormous RPG's of the modern era have become so unwieldy that maybe we're due for a change in the size and scope of them.  Maybe this decision is a reflection of those changes coming to fruition?  I'm not someone who is going to be pre-ordering or playing on day 1 and I'm interested to just sit on the sidelines and see how things play out.  I would highly encourage people not to get sucked into the overly negative reactions to every piece of news that comes out and to play it first.