So, for my last 80 hours, I have been playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and I have since completed a 100% playthrough, and earned all the achievements. And I feel compelled to talk about this game.
For some backstory on my relationship with Dragon Age: I’ve played every single Dragon Age game multiple times. I think Origins is great. I really love 2, despite its obvious flaws. And I think that Inquisition has good moments but is really held back by its sheer bloat.
Going into The Veilguard, I tried hard to not go in with any preconceptions of what a Dragon Age game should be, because realistically, this franchise has always been unsure of itself. As Dragon Age games have been released, each one has progressively moved the dial more and more towards being more action-oriented, and being lighter in tone from the dark fantasy established in Origins. Going into a Dragon Age games with expectations for what it should look and play like is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster. So, in terms of gameplay and tone, I let Dragon Age: The Veilguard speak for itself, and I judged it on its own merits.
And overall, I had a fine time with the game. There is some stuff that I enjoyed quite a bit, and other stuff that I didn’t enjoy much at all.
The biggest win in my eyes for this game is the combat. I played as a mage on the highest difficulty, and I thought that there was a lot of fun to be had here. I was initially quite concerned about the lack of mappable abilities. Going from Dragon Age: Origins where you could map as many abilities as you had access to, to The Veilguard’s three(?!) plus an ultimate ability, seemed like a blasphemous simplification, but as it turns out there is a lot more to do than just your activatable abilities. Dragon Age: The Veilguard allows you to activate your companion’s abilities on the fly, much like you can in the Mass Effect games, which instantly brings your list of activatable abilities to nine (plus your ultimate), which all apply different effects like taunts, heals, knock-downs, damage over time, and the ability to combine two abilities to cause a detonation, which is a huge AOE splash. Additionally, you can now perform light and heavy attacks, a ranged attack, and dodges, blocks, and parries, which allow you to unlock and perform a variety of God of War (2018)-style button combos like jump attacks, sprint attacks to increase your damage, and the skill ceiling. Combined with each class having two distinct weapon types, I found that there was quite a lot to do in combat, which is a far-cry from the previous game’s simple auto attacks. Admittedly it isn’t quite as crunchy as God of War – though me playing as a mage does make this quite an apples/oranges comparison – but I do genuinely feel like this is the best combat in the series.
The build craft is quite a lot of fun too. There are three classes, and each has an expansive skill tree of dozens of nodes of minor and major abilities to unlock, and three specialisations that you can choose to spec into, with each unlocking a new ultimate ability, and leaning into one particular playstyle. Between all of your abilities, all of the different gear and their stat bonuses and passives, it really does feel like there are loads of build possibilities to explore for each class, and there are three classes to choose from. There is a lot of replayability to be found here.
One consequence of this new combat, however, is that you no longer can take direct control of your companions, like you could in the previous game. Though honestly, didn’t care about this this being gone as much as I thought I would have. Whilst it was great that you could assume direct control of one of your companions in a fight in the previous game, If I’m being honest, I never really used this feature all that often, other than to just move a companion out of a hazard. In the previous games, all I ever did was amend their Tactics so that they would use their abilities when I wanted them to, and then let their AI do the rest. I really don’t think this was as big of a blow as I initially thought it would be. The benefits of this change allow your companions to be more distinct and unique in combat, where previously they had access to the exact same list of abilities as you. For example, Davrin’s unique abilities include his griffon in combat, Bellara is a mage who can uniquely use a bow, and Taash dual-wields axes. Additionally, they are also now invincible, and are a lot more responsive with their ability activations, as they just teleport to where they need to be to use that ability – and this never actually bothered me, or looked distracting.
But whilst I have gushed about the combat, that is sadly really the most positive thing that I have to say about Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
This is an RPG, and the real meat of this genre is the story, and this is where the game kind of falters for me.
The tone of this game is honestly quite bizarre. I knew going into this game that this would have a lighter tone, though again, Dragon Age has been slowly pushing in this direction for years, so this wasn’t much of a surprise to me. What kind of shocked me though, was that this was pushing even further into the territory of Young Adult fantasy, or something that wouldn’t be too out of place in a Disney movie. The world is ending, and yet everybody is just so pleasant and happy to be here. The rough edges of the world have been sanded back or pushed out of sight. Its quite a stark contrast to the Dragon Age of the past. But honestly, I don’t think it would be quite so bothersome, if it wasn’t constantly contradicting itself. You are summoned to have a meaningless conversation with some of your companions about how many books they should or shouldn’t bring on a lovely camping trip that they are about to have (that you never see), or you frolic through the woods looking for truffles to feed to your pet griffon, and then the next minute you’re on a quest where a blood mage is controlling hostages through their blood, which visually looks like a puppet’s marionette strings, or you’ll shock someone to death in combat and they will literally explode in a shower of blood. The main theme doesn’t even sound like it was made for this game, and was intended for something much darker, with its sinister strings and loud horns.
Talking about the music for a second, it is in a word: weird. Synths are an odd choice for a fantasy game, but it does admittedly occasionally work, and there are a few decent tracks to be found. But overall, I feel as though the music is quite a big step back from Inquisition, which is pretty evident by that often when I was thinking to myself "wow, the music is really good in this scene", it ended up being a song from Inquisition. But alas, Trevor Morris was not brought back, and was instead replaced by Hanz Zimmer(?!) and Lorne Balfe for their 10 billionth project.
As for the story and the companions, it’s a bit rough. The game is structured basically exactly like Mass Effect 2, which is likely great news for most people, but it is a game that I have soured on somewhat over the years. This is to say that the game has the occasional and impactful story mission, but the majority of the game is running around recruiting companions, or progressing their companion quest. But unlike Mass Effect 2, these quests are a lot longer and a lot more involved than just a few chats on the Normandy, and then a singular loyalty mission. Unfortunately, just like Mass Effect 2, these quests are often only tangentially related to the main story, so the main plot often takes a back seat, as you go for another round of the previously mentioned truffle hunting in the woods.
Unlike Mass Effect 2, though, the companions themselves are not the highlight of the game, and are honestly a career-low for BioWare (at least of the games that I have played). Not a single one of them left much of an impression of me, and I was never excited about bringing any of them out with me – unlike Dragon Age 2 where three slots was agonisingly small! I just didn’t really care about any of these people, which made me not care about their personal quests, which made a majority of the game quite a bit of a slog. Most bizarrely, often these characters indicated no real preference for how their personal quests would end either, with them often deferring major decisions about their lives to you for some reason. I get that RPGs are all about choice, but too much choice in what should be very personal decisions for these characters just makes them feel very unconvincing. I think one of reasons why I never quite gelled with these companions, is that (with one exception) each one is tied to one of the 6 major factions in the game, so aside from one or two extraneous "personality" traits (Lucianis loves coffee, and wont shut up about the city he comes from) they mostly just act as ambassadors for the faction that they come from rather than actual people.
As an aside, your character seems like the least special person of the bunch; you aren't the chosen one, there is nothing special about you. You might hail from the same background as one of your companions, but they are inherently more special than you - you might be a Grey Warden, but Davrin is a Grey Warden with a Griffon. You might be an Antivan Crow, but Lucianis is a Crow possessed by a demon. Your character's backstory is always one-upped by someone standing next to you.
I think my biggest surprise for The Veilguard is how few of your choices from the previous games are imported. There are a grand total of four(?!) decisions that can be imported, and these are: your Inquisitor’s race and appearance (which you do get to customise), who they romanced, whether or not you pledged to stop Solas by any means necessary, and whether or not the Inquisition was disbanded. And as far as I could tell, the latter two choices barely made any impact at all. Its quite shocking to me that this was cut down in such a way. BioWare game’s special sauce in my view has always been that your previous choices would impact future games. Importing your decisions from one game into the next is and always will be cool as shit, and it is a crying shame that this was mostly removed here. I'm not expecting a meaningful payoff from the outcome of sidequest number 47 of Dragon Age 2 here, but even bigger picture stuff like “Is the Hero of Ferelden still alive?” or “Is Hawke still alive?” are nowhere to be seen, and their absence is really felt. You can’t even pick your Inquisitor’s class, so they just run around in their pyjamas for the whole game.
As for the plot itself, I didn’t think that it was anything exceptional. Solas, who was built up to be the next big-bad by the end of Inquisition, is immediately sidelined in favour of two mustache-twirling villains. Solas’ occasional appearances are a highlight, but they only ever make me yearn for what could have been. But sadly, just like in Mass Effect 2, the whole plot is unfortunately sidelined so that you can deal with your companion’s personal drama, instead of saving the world. So maybe that name change from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, was more fitting than I had originally expected.
Overall, I think it is a decent game. A solid 6/10. I have no idea what the reviewers were injecting into their veins when they were scoring this game a 9’s and 10’s, but similarly, calling this game Dragon Age: Failguard is being a bit overdramatic. This certainly wasn’t what BioWare needed to stage their big comeback.
For some backstory on my relationship with Dragon Age: I’ve played every single Dragon Age game multiple times. I think Origins is great. I really love 2, despite its obvious flaws. And I think that Inquisition has good moments but is really held back by its sheer bloat.
Going into The Veilguard, I tried hard to not go in with any preconceptions of what a Dragon Age game should be, because realistically, this franchise has always been unsure of itself. As Dragon Age games have been released, each one has progressively moved the dial more and more towards being more action-oriented, and being lighter in tone from the dark fantasy established in Origins. Going into a Dragon Age games with expectations for what it should look and play like is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster. So, in terms of gameplay and tone, I let Dragon Age: The Veilguard speak for itself, and I judged it on its own merits.
And overall, I had a fine time with the game. There is some stuff that I enjoyed quite a bit, and other stuff that I didn’t enjoy much at all.
The biggest win in my eyes for this game is the combat. I played as a mage on the highest difficulty, and I thought that there was a lot of fun to be had here. I was initially quite concerned about the lack of mappable abilities. Going from Dragon Age: Origins where you could map as many abilities as you had access to, to The Veilguard’s three(?!) plus an ultimate ability, seemed like a blasphemous simplification, but as it turns out there is a lot more to do than just your activatable abilities. Dragon Age: The Veilguard allows you to activate your companion’s abilities on the fly, much like you can in the Mass Effect games, which instantly brings your list of activatable abilities to nine (plus your ultimate), which all apply different effects like taunts, heals, knock-downs, damage over time, and the ability to combine two abilities to cause a detonation, which is a huge AOE splash. Additionally, you can now perform light and heavy attacks, a ranged attack, and dodges, blocks, and parries, which allow you to unlock and perform a variety of God of War (2018)-style button combos like jump attacks, sprint attacks to increase your damage, and the skill ceiling. Combined with each class having two distinct weapon types, I found that there was quite a lot to do in combat, which is a far-cry from the previous game’s simple auto attacks. Admittedly it isn’t quite as crunchy as God of War – though me playing as a mage does make this quite an apples/oranges comparison – but I do genuinely feel like this is the best combat in the series.
The build craft is quite a lot of fun too. There are three classes, and each has an expansive skill tree of dozens of nodes of minor and major abilities to unlock, and three specialisations that you can choose to spec into, with each unlocking a new ultimate ability, and leaning into one particular playstyle. Between all of your abilities, all of the different gear and their stat bonuses and passives, it really does feel like there are loads of build possibilities to explore for each class, and there are three classes to choose from. There is a lot of replayability to be found here.
One consequence of this new combat, however, is that you no longer can take direct control of your companions, like you could in the previous game. Though honestly, didn’t care about this this being gone as much as I thought I would have. Whilst it was great that you could assume direct control of one of your companions in a fight in the previous game, If I’m being honest, I never really used this feature all that often, other than to just move a companion out of a hazard. In the previous games, all I ever did was amend their Tactics so that they would use their abilities when I wanted them to, and then let their AI do the rest. I really don’t think this was as big of a blow as I initially thought it would be. The benefits of this change allow your companions to be more distinct and unique in combat, where previously they had access to the exact same list of abilities as you. For example, Davrin’s unique abilities include his griffon in combat, Bellara is a mage who can uniquely use a bow, and Taash dual-wields axes. Additionally, they are also now invincible, and are a lot more responsive with their ability activations, as they just teleport to where they need to be to use that ability – and this never actually bothered me, or looked distracting.
But whilst I have gushed about the combat, that is sadly really the most positive thing that I have to say about Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
This is an RPG, and the real meat of this genre is the story, and this is where the game kind of falters for me.
The tone of this game is honestly quite bizarre. I knew going into this game that this would have a lighter tone, though again, Dragon Age has been slowly pushing in this direction for years, so this wasn’t much of a surprise to me. What kind of shocked me though, was that this was pushing even further into the territory of Young Adult fantasy, or something that wouldn’t be too out of place in a Disney movie. The world is ending, and yet everybody is just so pleasant and happy to be here. The rough edges of the world have been sanded back or pushed out of sight. Its quite a stark contrast to the Dragon Age of the past. But honestly, I don’t think it would be quite so bothersome, if it wasn’t constantly contradicting itself. You are summoned to have a meaningless conversation with some of your companions about how many books they should or shouldn’t bring on a lovely camping trip that they are about to have (that you never see), or you frolic through the woods looking for truffles to feed to your pet griffon, and then the next minute you’re on a quest where a blood mage is controlling hostages through their blood, which visually looks like a puppet’s marionette strings, or you’ll shock someone to death in combat and they will literally explode in a shower of blood. The main theme doesn’t even sound like it was made for this game, and was intended for something much darker, with its sinister strings and loud horns.
Talking about the music for a second, it is in a word: weird. Synths are an odd choice for a fantasy game, but it does admittedly occasionally work, and there are a few decent tracks to be found. But overall, I feel as though the music is quite a big step back from Inquisition, which is pretty evident by that often when I was thinking to myself "wow, the music is really good in this scene", it ended up being a song from Inquisition. But alas, Trevor Morris was not brought back, and was instead replaced by Hanz Zimmer(?!) and Lorne Balfe for their 10 billionth project.
As for the story and the companions, it’s a bit rough. The game is structured basically exactly like Mass Effect 2, which is likely great news for most people, but it is a game that I have soured on somewhat over the years. This is to say that the game has the occasional and impactful story mission, but the majority of the game is running around recruiting companions, or progressing their companion quest. But unlike Mass Effect 2, these quests are a lot longer and a lot more involved than just a few chats on the Normandy, and then a singular loyalty mission. Unfortunately, just like Mass Effect 2, these quests are often only tangentially related to the main story, so the main plot often takes a back seat, as you go for another round of the previously mentioned truffle hunting in the woods.
Unlike Mass Effect 2, though, the companions themselves are not the highlight of the game, and are honestly a career-low for BioWare (at least of the games that I have played). Not a single one of them left much of an impression of me, and I was never excited about bringing any of them out with me – unlike Dragon Age 2 where three slots was agonisingly small! I just didn’t really care about any of these people, which made me not care about their personal quests, which made a majority of the game quite a bit of a slog. Most bizarrely, often these characters indicated no real preference for how their personal quests would end either, with them often deferring major decisions about their lives to you for some reason. I get that RPGs are all about choice, but too much choice in what should be very personal decisions for these characters just makes them feel very unconvincing. I think one of reasons why I never quite gelled with these companions, is that (with one exception) each one is tied to one of the 6 major factions in the game, so aside from one or two extraneous "personality" traits (Lucianis loves coffee, and wont shut up about the city he comes from) they mostly just act as ambassadors for the faction that they come from rather than actual people.
As an aside, your character seems like the least special person of the bunch; you aren't the chosen one, there is nothing special about you. You might hail from the same background as one of your companions, but they are inherently more special than you - you might be a Grey Warden, but Davrin is a Grey Warden with a Griffon. You might be an Antivan Crow, but Lucianis is a Crow possessed by a demon. Your character's backstory is always one-upped by someone standing next to you.
I think my biggest surprise for The Veilguard is how few of your choices from the previous games are imported. There are a grand total of four(?!) decisions that can be imported, and these are: your Inquisitor’s race and appearance (which you do get to customise), who they romanced, whether or not you pledged to stop Solas by any means necessary, and whether or not the Inquisition was disbanded. And as far as I could tell, the latter two choices barely made any impact at all. Its quite shocking to me that this was cut down in such a way. BioWare game’s special sauce in my view has always been that your previous choices would impact future games. Importing your decisions from one game into the next is and always will be cool as shit, and it is a crying shame that this was mostly removed here. I'm not expecting a meaningful payoff from the outcome of sidequest number 47 of Dragon Age 2 here, but even bigger picture stuff like “Is the Hero of Ferelden still alive?” or “Is Hawke still alive?” are nowhere to be seen, and their absence is really felt. You can’t even pick your Inquisitor’s class, so they just run around in their pyjamas for the whole game.
As for the plot itself, I didn’t think that it was anything exceptional. Solas, who was built up to be the next big-bad by the end of Inquisition, is immediately sidelined in favour of two mustache-twirling villains. Solas’ occasional appearances are a highlight, but they only ever make me yearn for what could have been. But sadly, just like in Mass Effect 2, the whole plot is unfortunately sidelined so that you can deal with your companion’s personal drama, instead of saving the world. So maybe that name change from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, was more fitting than I had originally expected.
Overall, I think it is a decent game. A solid 6/10. I have no idea what the reviewers were injecting into their veins when they were scoring this game a 9’s and 10’s, but similarly, calling this game Dragon Age: Failguard is being a bit overdramatic. This certainly wasn’t what BioWare needed to stage their big comeback.
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