Bright orange lighting bloom (and other bugs I have known)

Hi all,

So I'm definitely what you'd call a casual video games enjoyer. I don't mind if a game isn't fully optimised, so long as it's playable. My technical knowledge of computer specs could probably fit on the back of a matchbox, and my laptop isn't a gaming laptop by any means - but it's reliable and I've never had any real issues, apart from a bit of stuttering and slow loading times. It's happily run Mass Effect, Bioshock, Fallout, Final Fantasy XVI, BG3 and all the previous DA games. Put simply, I've played games that made it break a bit of a sweat, but I've not yet found a game it can't cope with at all.

I really enjoyed all the previous DA games so when the new one came out I got it without looking too deeply into the requirements, assuming it'd be similar to BG3 in terms of specs. Since I got it it's been riddled with crashes, unexpected shut-downs (including the dreaded Direct-X error), lagging, freezing, glitching, etc. The only thing that pushes this past "annoying" into "unplayable" is this blinding orange light that completely obscures the screen in certain areas. I first encountered it in the character creator:

Which wasn't an issue, since I could get rid of it by just switching to a different lighting style. But then I started actually playing and found it persists in-game as well:

If my game crashes I can reload and start again, but this lighting issue is a nightmare because I genuinely can't see a thing. I've altered the light settings, deleted the shaders cache, turned off bloom - nothing works. Has anyone else encountered this problem? Should I wait and hope it gets patched, or just bite the bullet and get a refund on the game? Can I even get a refund after putting in 6 hours of gameplay?

I did look up graphics cards, but they all seem to cost upwards of £400 and I am nowhere near being able to afford that. I'm pretty disappointed - I've been looking forward to playing Veilguard since it was announced, and it seems a little unfair that it's apparently only accessible to people who are able to afford either a high-end gaming laptop or a high-end graphics card. (High-end for me, anyway!)

Laptop specs for those who understand them:
Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core (TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz
Graphics: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (integrated graphics card)
Model: HP Pavilion 15-eg0-xxx
Installed Physical Memory: 16GB
Available storage space (after game installation): 155 GB