Initial release date: October 31, 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
License: proprietary license
Composers: Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe
Genres: Role-playing video game, Adventure game, Shooter game, Fighting game, Adventure, Strategy
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Before we begin, I will admit that I did not expect Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be as good as previous BioWare games. It has been a long time since Dragon Age: Inquisition, and we have had Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem in the meanwhile. But after spending time with Rook, Varric, and the rest of the team, I’m pleased to announce that The Veilguard feels like BioWare’s return.
However, there are several caveats. For starters, the fact that this is a new, mostly younger writing crew is clear throughout. While the tale is compelling and the characters are well-developed, some of the conversation, events, and emotions feel jarringly out of place. Whereas Lucanis delivers his lines with a baroque brogue, many characters, including Neve and Taash, and especially Rook, speak as if it’s 2024, which sometimes feel out of place. However, like Baldur’s Gate 3 last year, Dragon Age: The Veilguard champions inclusivity, not being hesitant to address delicate, contemporary issues without overtly forcing them into the spotlight.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as expected from BioWare, is heavily narrative-driven and beautifully cinematic. Action set-pieces transition effortlessly into and out of cutscenes, placing your protagonist, Rook, at the center of everything. Rook, who is hired by series stalwart Varric to assist in preventing Solas, the Dread Wolf, from conducting a ritual that will destroy the Fade (along with half of Thedas), is completely customizable. You can select your race, gender, and class from Fighter, Rogue, or Mage, which splinter into nine specialisations later. Not only that, but you’ll need to choose a background from one of the seven primary factions, which include the Grey Wardens, the necromantic Mourn Watchers, and the mysterious, stabby Antivan Crows (I chose Rogue).
Each of these backgrounds influences how specific quests play out and how certain characters perceive you. Because everyone of your companions is a member of one of the factions, their behavior and responses around you can be influenced, affecting relationships, romance, and combat performance. It’s nothing “new” in 2024, but the way these relationships intertwine over the non-linear, optional sections of the story is nonetheless impressive. You can even change the world state to mirror how you left it in Inquisition, including changing the appearance of various cameos that appear throughout the story. What begins simple becomes a race against two ancient Elven Blight gods, and the struggle encompasses people from all throughout Thedas.
Characterisation is crucial in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Once you’ve unlocked all of the companions (which should happen within the first dozen hours or so), you can choose who joins you on most quests and story missions. In combat, they all have unique techniques, however certain spells and abilities overlap. Several have a variation of a Healing spell, for example, so you won’t always feel compelled to bring that one character who can save your life. Some abilities are classified as Primers and others as Detonators, thus understanding which rotation to activate your allies’ skills is critical to survival.
More than that, the characters’ personalities are satisfyingly deep and nuanced. Harding and Bellara, for example, are both idealistic and kind, but Harding has seen some stuff and it shows, whilst Bellara is more optimistic and innocent. Likewise, Davrin and Taash, the group’s tanks, have vastly different backstories and challenges to contend with. Then there’s Emmrich and Neve, your main magic-users, one a lovely old Necromancer and the other a street-savvy private investigator for the Shadow Dragon faction. Finally, my favorite character is Lucanis, a demon-possessed badass who drinks coffee all day to stay alert and keep his passenger at bay.
Interactions with the group, whether together or individually, propel the tale ahead, fill out their backgrounds, allow you to offer them gifts, support or oppose their views, and, most importantly, make you care about each of them and their place in the world. There aren’t many games like this anymore that prioritize conveying a cohesive, nuanced tale over delivering compelling action and exploration.
You’ll spend a significant amount of time in the Lighthouse, a destroyed stronghold buried in the Fade, where you’ll converse with specific personalities to advance the plot, change your look, uncover secrets, and use the Eluvian network to travel to various semi-open-world places via the Crossroads. Each location contains its own set of objectives and side issues, but it can also be thoroughly explored to solve puzzles and find hidden loot. BioWare takes up little space, and usually if there’s a location you can reach, a ledge you can jump to, or a side door you can open, there’s something worthwhile within.
Loot is colour-coded and can be improved by visiting an NPC in the Lighthouse or getting a different version of the same item. Duplicates do not clog your inventory; instead, they upgrade their counterparts, progressing through the colors from grey, green, and blue to purple and gold. As you improve items, more affixes become active, but unique red-coded goods are typically extremely powerful but frequently have negative affects that push you to reconsider their use. The Veilguard throws a lot of riches at you, not just for Rook but for your companions as well. Armour, weapons, trinkets, and mementos can improve stats, increase your potion tally and the number of revives you have before having to reload a save, or simply increase or decrease elemental damage and resistance.
Standard elemental damage principles apply to Fire, Chill, Shock, and Necrotic (poison), but you can also inflict status ailment Primers like Weakened, Sundered, and Overwhelmed, which can be detonated by the associated skills and abilities. You’ll also receive a dagger that can be loaded with three Runes on a cooldown, further customizing your build and providing temporary bonuses to you or your group. The complete skill trees allow you to spend points to develop Rook’s talents, but the companions’ trees are smaller yet similar. Respecting them is also free, allowing you to experiment with your classmates.
While wandering across the realm and interacting with the individuals and groups is undoubtedly the best part of The Veilguard, the fighting isn’t bad either. The Rogue is incredibly fast with two blades and can specialise as a long-range combatant or crowd control expert. The Fighter can prioritize survival or damage output, holding threat to keep adversaries focused, whereas the Mage can mix and combine status ailments for sustained lethality and area of effect damage. Each character also has their own traversal skill, such as Neve being able to freeze switches or Davrin summoning his griffon to destroy Blight boils and clear the path. Without them, Rook can carry out the activities with a dagger, but employing the characters strengthens their bonds.
However, there are occasional difficulties with dialogue layering that disrupt immersion. Your party members will converse with one other and Rook, but if they are interrupted by fighting or another conversation, they will have to continue the session. In a congested environment, this might rapidly become frustrating. There is always so much going on, and this includes combat. Some of the boss encounters, notably the optional fights against Darkspawn Champions, take place in enclosed settings, making it difficult to see what’s going on or take a break to breathe or think. You will also occasionally wrestle with the camera.
Beautiful, complex environments and spectacular cutscenes bring Thedas to life in the style that this franchise is known for. Dragon Age: The Veilguard features a slightly less gloomy art style (characters aren’t typically bathed in blood after a combat), but the armour, weapon, and opponent designs are undeniably Dragon Age. Even though there are several callbacks and easter eggs to prior games and other properties scattered throughout, it has a mature feel.
Despite a few visual faults and difficulties with the sound design and cinematography, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is just a great time. It may be as fast-paced or as meandering as you choose, with plenty of side quests and extracurricular activities to keep you busy, but the tale delivers where it matters most. It has the franchise’s normal threads of shadowy guilds and malevolent darkspawn, noble heroes and fascist mages, but updates everything in ways that are more effective than not. I spent hours exploring the various biomes with my companions and hunting for rare riches, and I’m already excited to re-roll my choices and do it all over again.
Review Overview
Gameplay: 90%
Controls: 88%
Aesthetics: 93%
Content: 85%
Accessibility: 82%
Value: 87%
Overall: 88%
EXCELLENT!
Summary:
“Dragon Age: The Veilguard” dives deeper into the world of Thedas, allowing players to discover new lands and face ancient, hidden evils. Its gameplay combines traditional Dragon Age fighting with updated mechanics, making each battle both strategic and enjoyable. The game’s visuals are intriguing, with a darker, more immersive style that complements its narrative focus. While some content may seem lengthy, the engaging lore and character interactions keep players engaged. It’s a solid addition to the series, with plenty of mystery to keep both newcomers and series veterans interested.