Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Released: October 31st, 2024
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S OMG Bias Note: Laura Kate Dale, friend & colleague, consulted on this game
I’m not entirely sure I’m the kind of person Dragon Age should be actively appealing to.
It’s not as if I haven’t enjoyed BioWare’s games in the past - y’know, before Anthem and Andromeda - but its particular brand of roleplaying action has never been entirely my thing. Slowly plonking baddies with a stick while acting as my party’s Mission Control isn’t my idea of a good time, but it’s been loved by fans since at least Knights of the Old Republic.
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I can pull a gigantic mortar cannon out of nowhere and rapidly jizz a hail of ordnance before tossing the weapon like a huge explosive frisbee… while wearing a giant crow’s head.
My husband, a diehard Dragon Age fan, understandably feels left out in the cold by this shift in focus. They also really hate whatever happened to Dorian to make him look like that.
Veilguard alters not just the combat but the entire tone, and I completely understand how that would turn off those who’ve been all-in on the series since the very beginning. As I throw out my art deco turret and admire my ostentatious octopus-shaped bow, however, I cannot deny this game is absolutely my business.
This latest installment is a full bore action game, and it’s grown on me more and more. That’s not to say it isn’t free of problems, however, because it is in fact littered with annoying quirks that hold back what could have been top-tier stuff.
That mortar cannon though…
Regarding the premise, you’re called Rook this time, and you accidentally unleash two screwball elven gods while trying to stop that dickhead Solas from shitting demons everywhere. It’s a decent enough story presented in BioWare’s typical writing style - that is to say, it’s got some fun characters and excellent individual moments, but the narrative connective tissue is often awkward and clumsy.
BioWare’s lack of subtlety will give away big plot points by dropping a loaf’s worth of breadcrumbs for observant players to pick up. The expectation is that you’ll be wowed by all the clues on a replay, but it’s just trying too hard to show how clever it thinks it is.
There’s also no need for dialog to point out how funny it is when bad guys complain about everyday problems, but they can’t resist explaining the joke. One particular scene, in which your companions uniformly explain how they all have personal problems that need solving before the climax, is so infuriatingly unnatural they may as well look at the camera and start promising you the XP will be worth it.
There is, however, an exception to the series’ literary gilding of lilies…
Contrary to the whining you may see online, Veilguard’s dialog regarding trans and non-binary experiences is the most natural sounding stuff in the game. You can actively choose to create a trans and/or non-binary Rook, one who can speak of their relationship with gender roles and may use it to help Taash, a dragon slaying companion, figure out their non-binary identity.
I was worried it would be as cringeworthy as some claim based on the studio’s prior attempts at writing marginalized characters, but I personally found the interactions impressively relatable. Some of Rook’s thoughts closely mirror things I’ve said to other trans people who are starting their own gender adventure and looking for advice.
It’s an important step for representation in games done better than I expected. Well done.
Anyway, the game’s controls are rather rubbish.
Veilguard has an issue I’ve seen in many a big budget game, one of over-animation. With a focus on “realistic” momentum and flourishing motions, Dragon Age places form over function. It looks nice, but it doesn’t always feel so.
Should you nudge the analog stick, Rook will lunge into a walk unless you’re really slow, and they’ll not stop moving until a moment after you stop telling them to. This compounds the conflict any game has when it foolishly maps the interaction button to the jump button, which is further compounded by items having a small pickup radius. Hope you enjoy hopping!
You can remap buttons, but your controller’s layout is pushed to capacity and input conflicts are unavoidable. The default setup’s already doing the best it can.
When games add a level of automatic parkour while sprinting, I’m always a fan… unless I end up accidentally jumping over a “guardrail” and plummeting into a chasm. Veilguard is one of the plummety ones, and Rook’s aforementioned momentum can lead you to gracefully hurdle over all sorts of things you didn’t mean to.
Videogames, can we please start flagging barriers as barriers in games with auto parkour?
Falling off of things is pretty easy to do even without the enthusiastic hurdling. Combat often unfolds in high places, Rook has an awful jump, and there are bouts of shitty platforming. Luckily, pitfalls respawn you without any damage, and enemies are hilariously easy to instakill by flinging them into the same pits.
I’m tempted to call that latter element an acceptable tradeoff for Veilguard’s hungry, hungry holes.
As far as combat goes, it took a while to win me over thanks to the flowery animations impacting how responsive it felt. Once I got used to Veilguard’s rhythm, I started enjoying combat quite a lot. Took a while though, given how sprawling the controls are and how commands for your two chosen companions will have an asymmetrical hotkey layout at best.
For ally commands, I stuck with the radial menu instead of memorizing a sprawl of hotkeys for anyone but Rook. The only problem there is that, unlike animations, this menu is too responsive. It’s a twitchy little bugger and I don’t like it.
There’s no denying this is a heavily actionized sequel, as shown by simplified ally commands and an increased emphasis on blocking, parrying, and ranged headshots depending on your class. Things move way too chaotically for me to bother with precision moves, but I’m certainly not against the chaos itself.
The flexibility offered when building a character means I could eventually make my bow more efficient as a hipfire weapon anyway. Chaos reigns.
Battles rage swiftly and are startlingly aggressive - if you don’t have Davrin or Taash popping off taunts, prepare to have demons and darkspawn in your face as if you’re made of twatnip. Each fight is visually busy, full of enemies, special effects, and a perpetual spamming of AoE attacks. I can’t deny it looks cool, and only feels moreso when Rook grows stronger and their attacks get more grandiose.
Lock-on targeting can help navigate the anarchy, but it’s not altogether reliable, chiefly because so many enemies break it by charging or fucking teleporting. This is remarkably frequent and makes me wonder if locking on’s been undermined on purpose for some bizarre reason.
While I have many little grievances with the mechanics, fighting in Veilguard consistently endeared itself to me as I built my character. It really has been enjoyable to dodge around and pop off arrows or rapier jabs in between abilities that are figuratively and/or literally explosive.
As you gain levels and pump points into a freely respeccable skill tree, you’ll be able to equip a number of delightful cooldown abilities and pick an “Ultimate” move from which most of the game’s entertaining silliness comes from. It’s all very over-the-top, though the skill tree itself has a maze of a layout.
Companions have their own - and far less complex - skill trees, serving the usual array of roles that compliment your chosen class. Spell Combos from previous games are reworked as Detonations, where some moves inflict special status effects on enemies that other moves can trigger to deliver additional punishment. True to the game’s action focus, Detonations are straightforward and easy to use.
What look like a few vestigial remnants of the game’s original “live service” roots rear their heads, mostly extensively with the weird in-game economy. Some merchants belong to Factions and will sell more gear as you rank up your reputation with them. In any other game, you’d gain these ranks by buying items, but here you have to sell stuff. It’s not just any old stuff either - an entire class of item labeled as Valuables exist, and they’d just be typical RPG vendor trash if not for non-faction merchants selling the things complete with rarity levels as if they were loot.
While you pick up Valuables during play, the trash you buy for no other reason than to sell it (at a loss) will rank you up faster. It’s a system best described as fucking stupid. Convoluted and initially confusing, it has to be a holdover - only a “service” game would have such a moronically fucked up economy.
While I’m at it, why can’t you preview the gear you’re buying? You can’t even make the small picture in the vendor’s menu bigger to get a better look. Considering the amount of cosmetic-only armor skins on sale, the inability to view them in detail or context is almost as dumb as the junkonomy.
I have an opinion about Darkspawn I’d like to shoehorn in.
Their art design is great this time around. Darkspawn always looked a little dull to me in prior games, but the mutant ones in Veilguard are freaky body horrors. I can’t say the same for Demons, who are considerably more generic looking now. The dichotomy between these enemy designs emphasizes what a mixed bag this game’s visuals are.
Some characters have good facial animations, while others have faces that ooze over their skulls with uncanny slipperiness. Combat animations - indulgent as they are - look very pretty, but people are charmlessly stiff in other contexts. Some environments are colorful and interesting, while others are thoroughly uninspired. At no point is the game horrible to look at, it’s just rather inconsistent.
One thing that really stands out is the game’s pace. Veilguard moves along at a good clip, getting into the action right away and keeping things going through quests that largely feel more condensed than usual. While there are some lengthier objectives, the story does its best to not drag on too much.
That said, true to the Veilguard’s dual nature, there’s a level of repetition that can certainly slow things down. The main problem is how many bloody missions are padded out with simplistic “puzzles” in which you run around lighting braziers or turning statues to face different directions. It’s not exciting to begin with, much less after multiple occurrences.
While there’s a lot of running back and forth through the same environments, a very convenient fast travel system keeps backtracking to a minimum. Travel points are liberally dotted around every location, and no matter where you are you can hop to any discovered point across the world. Combined with Veilguard’s fast loading, you don’t lose much time at all to covering the same old ground.
One consistent positive is the cast of characters you align with. As well as capable fighters, the people you befriend are likable folks. Taash’s deadpan delivery and relatable story is great, and Davrin breaks the boring “serious warrior” archetype with his strong opinions on heroism and adorable griffon buddy. At the risk of objectifying men, I’m just gonna say it - Lucanis is hot as hell.
Neve is a little directionless but not unlikable, and her artificial serpentine leg is bloody cool. I actually don’t find Belara as annoying as some do, though I can relate to her obvious ADHD, and Emmrich’s own brand of clear neurodivergence is adorably sweet, as is the love for his skelatally-inclined servant Mannfred.
Harding is Harding. She spends her time Hardinging around like the Hardinger she is.
One more note, the various antagonists are delightful. They look incredible and play an active role throughout, never ending an appearance without mouths full of scenery. Ghilan'nain is easily the star of the show, an eldritch abomination who is perfectly portrayed as a self-styled god gone completely mad. She most definitely carries much of the plot as a memorable villain.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is heavy on the action, light on the bullshit, and gets progressively more enjoyable as you expand your abilities and get used to some wonky controls. Its tone, art direction, and exaggerated combat is most certainly not the Dragon Age of old, but what can I say? It’s the Dragon Age I’ve enjoyed the most, even if I can name a laundry list of things that piss me off about it.
The fact that you can make it very gender is a huge positive, especially since the only people claiming it’s “forced” on you are lying through their stupid teeth. It’s there to help more players feel seen, and that’s only a good thing.
All that said, character creation won’t let me make Rook’s tits even half as big as mine actually are. A true step backwards for representation, I think you’ll agree.
7.5/10
