How else can you judge what direction they might go in? If you like the projects they worked on in the past does it not make it more likely that you’ll like their next project? Effectively we are getting a merger of two of the better publishers that are going independent from more corporate overlords? Maybe I’m being overly optimistic…

It says it needs 16GB of vram

It was the photo mode and filters setting in the overlay. You can switch it off.

Interesting, I don’t remember it being talked about for any other game before it was used as an attack on this one. My read from the industry is that it’s a meat grinder, so I would have assumed that most people working on any project are at least new to the company. Plus the big hiring drive that everyone went on during COVID must have brought in lots of inexperienced game Devs to all games?

Is that unusual?

You missed the end of the quote, “Dragon Age: The Veilguard is this year’s Alan Wake 2, squeaking onto the Golden Joysticks’ GOTY shortlist at the last minute, joining fellow award outliers Tekken 8 and Helldivers 2.”

The similarity with Alan Wake is that it launched so close to the cut off for the shortlist.

I think the author is saying it doesn’t belong on the list, along with Tekken and Helldivers.