Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review: heading in a new direction

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not the follow-up to 2009's Dragon Age: Origins that its vocal community of obsessively die-hard fans has been waiting for. In fact, neither were Dragon Age II or Dragon Age: Inquisition. As everyone has already noticed from the trailers and trailers, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has a different agenda, visual style, and combat mechanics.

Which brings us to the good news. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is extremely polished, full of energy, engaging characters, a beautiful world, and satisfying combat. Not everything is sweetness and light either. As Bruce Springsteen wrote, there is darkness on the edge of town. It may not be the heir apparent to Origins, but there's plenty of signature Dragon Age lore and a complex web of relationships in the new game. By design, The Veilguard is also a great place to jump into the world of Dragon Age.

No spoilers ahead

There's a lot of story, a lot of characters, and a lot of incidents that we've been asked not to reveal, which makes discussing the game's narrative a challenge. You play as Rook, who at first becomes embroiled in a battle between familiar characters Varric and Solas, who is trying to contain, or possibly release, the elven gods and their archdemons behind the Veil. Things go wrong and thanks to you, important characters are injured and narrative seeds are planted. The seeds grow over three lengthy acts and dozens of hours of gameplay. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is substantial, with a main campaign lasting over 40 hours (depending on difficulty and side quests), and easily double that to see and do everything.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard begins with a spectacular prologue, then pulls back a bit to introduce some basic mechanics and the first companions, some of whom we've met in previous games, like Veil Jumper Lace Harding. At first, the story and characters feel a little sanitized and bordering on one-dimensional. But as the story develops and Rook helps and gains the trust of an ever-widening circle of companions, the emotional complexity of the characters deepens.

Without giving anything away, there are countless emotional beats and critical decisions. I was often affected by what many of the characters were going through. Veilguard also ends up exploring some current themes, perhaps in an occasionally inelegant way. While the first act has a relatively light tone, there is no shortage of darkness as the story unfolds. There is a lot of loss, sadness, fear, death and conflict in the game, as well as more positive acts of kindness, courage and triumph.

Master class

Considering how many characters there are in Veilguard and how much dialogue needed to be written and recorded, the consistency in the quality of the vocal performance is remarkable. Surely not everyone will be attracted to every companion, whether as an ally in battle, a friend, or a romantic interest. But overall, they are all well written and fully realized. My biggest complaint in this department was that some of the dialogue doesn't always escape fantasy game cliche. From time to time there are some jarring transitions and awkward tonal shifts. BioWare has tried really hard to be inclusive and incorporate some pretty contemporary character concerns.

The developers have gone for a smooth, stylized, Pixar-style cartoon look for many characters. The proportionally large heads definitely take some getting used to. While the art style may stray from realism, the characters are still very expressive, some sketchy lip syncs aside. The biggest drawback to the new character design approach is the way it absorbs some potential impact or threat from monsters and enemies. They're not particularly scary or grotesque like FromSoftware's monsters can be. Many are powerful and inventive, but rarely terrifying.

Branching out

Veilguard abandons the largely empty open-world environment of Inquisition in favor of a hub-and-spoke design and is stronger for it. Your base of operations is the Lighthouse, a kind of interdimensional safe house. The lighthouse is where all your companions will reside, where you will upgrade armor and weapons and head to various locations in both the main story and side quests. Almost without exception, the environments and level design in Vanguard are spectacular and detailed. I would much prefer an intentionally curated and designed world than a lifeless or procedurally generated open design. All Veilguard locations can be visited multiple times and there are almost always secrets, side quests and new things to discover.

The bulk of the combat

In addition to the enormous amount of story and dialogue, the player will spend a lot of time in combat. For Veilguard, BioWare has evolved the combat mechanics and is now best described as real-time action with pause. The pause is not to position your allies but to synergize special abilities with your companions or focus powers on specific enemies. The combat is fast, frenetic and incredibly engaging. Your approach to combat continues to change, with new spells or abilities added as new companions join the team. In fact, you'll often select companions based on how their abilities work with yours or other party members. In some missions, you can change your party multiple times as needed. Finally, leveling up your companions in the skill tree is achieved through a new alchemy based on your relationship.

Combat elements and controls are introduced throughout the first few hours of the game. Over time, they become second nature.

Players who enjoyed Inquisition's semi-real-time combat approach will see The Veilguard as a natural evolution or, more negatively, BioWare's willingness to pursue mechanics currently popular in ARPGs like God of War. Is the combat deep and fun enough to sustain hours of gameplay? It is. However, the combat is also where my biggest complaint about the game rears its ugly head. There just isn't enough enemy variety. I never tired of engaging with my party's skills, spells, and weapons, but after 20 or 30 hours, I was getting pretty tired of the familiar Darkspawn enemies and their very familiar combat style.

A hero forged

To start, players choose from four races and three familiar starting classes: warrior, mage, and rogue. Each can evolve into three specialized subclasses, with a wide variety of active and passive abilities reconfigurable at any time without penalty. The player also selects a faction. As always, these have a significant impact on the narrative, missions, and relationships. Speaking of relationships, Rook can make any of the companions fall in love with him. Companions may also have an affair with each other. Dialogue choices are made using the same mechanics as in previous games, with fundamentally the same types of clues as to their intent or outcome.

There is no arguing that Dragon Age: The Veilguard radically reinvents some aspects of the franchise. For many fans, relationships and characters define a Dragon Age game. At least in my experience, I found this element to be as effective as ever. And speaking of effectiveness, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has an excellent musical score. Two heavyweights, Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, deliver the goods here.

Where are the bugs?

Dragon Age: The Veilguard went through a long development process with some stumbles and setbacks along the way. Sometimes that results in design confusion, messy technology, and other problems. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the most polished, bug-free AAA game I've played in a long time. Over dozens of hours on PS5, there were no crashes, no buggy missions, and only very minor and occasional texture pop-ups or characters stuck on the stage.

The game's user interface can be…a lot. Fortunately, there are ample options to modify it or even disable most of it completely. Overall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has a rich set of accessibility, difficulty, controls, graphics, and sound options. It's a highly customizable experience and includes one of the best character creators ever seen in an RPG.

The path of the future

It's rare for a game from a long-running franchise to strike the balance between deep fan service, staying true to an old vision, and still welcoming newcomers. Recently, Elden Ring came pretty close. So did Baldur's Gate 3. After ten years away, I can certainly see the developer's rationale for moving in a new direction. But I also enjoyed the original games and can understand fans' long-suffering desire for a true modern successor to Origins. All that said, Dragon Age: The Veilguard not breaking even is less of a concern than whether the game is interesting and entertaining, which it very much is.

While it looks and plays differently from previous Dragon Age games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard abandons neither its rich trove of history, its well-imagined characters, nor its ability to tell interesting stories. Dragon Age: The Veilguard has memorable companions and action-focused combat that contains more than enough depth to see you through to the end. Polished and confident, Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels like a return to form for the developer. Dragon Age: The Veilguard gives us a beautiful world to experience, interesting allies to explore it with, and action that becomes increasingly nuanced.