Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review
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It doesn’t take too long for Dragon Age: The Veilguard to establish comparisons to BioWare’s biggest leap into the mainstream in Mass Effect 2. It’s clear that the enduring success of that title has influenced much of the decision-making behind the latest entry in the fantasy sister series, both in terms of its narrative structure and approach to combat. On the whole, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is somewhat successful in emulating Mass Effect 2′s appeal; it’s a highly enjoyable title in the moment with a strong presentation and an assured level of polish, but it’s also one that is hard to see sticking in the memory for any length of time.
After putting players through a robust and fully inclusive character creation where they select protagonist Rook’s appearance, main class, and previous factional membership, Dragon Age: The Veilguard throws them right into the thick of the action. Rook is part of a group recruited by series mainstay Varric to prevent Solas from bringing down the Veil, the layer separating the regular world and the magical realm known as the Fade. As Solas is on the cusp of achieving this, Rook manages to interrupt his ritual, but doing so allows two ancient elven gods to escape the prison that Solas had weaved for them, while trapping Solas himself. As Solas’s actual motivations and goals are revealed, Rook gets tasked with stopping the gods from re-establishing their tyrannical hold over the world. To do that, Rook needs to continue Varric’s work and bring together an elite team to handle the threats posed by the gods and those who would happily throw their lot in with them. Fortunately, they also gain access to Solas’s former base of operations known as the Lighthouse, and the various Eluvians that can teleport them to locations all around Thedas.
With the game taking place in the north of Thedas, choices from the previous games are largely irrelevant, such that the only things players get a choice to carry over are the final fate of the Inquisition after the Trespasser DLC and who the Inquisitor romanced. There are some small supporting roles from other previous cast members as The Veilguard finds itself stuck in an awkward spot of both trying to continue a series story and separating itself from its past. Making up for this, however, is an almost brand new main cast. The initial team assembly plot is a rather conveniently contrived sequence of characters knowing just the person needed for a role, but the game quickly finds more solid footing as its assortment of story threads gets going.
The biggest problem Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s story suffers from is its disjointedness. The game leaps between locations and disconnected story threads, which never satisfactorily join up until right at the end and are not helped by generally shallow antagonists. There are plenty of big reveals and twists, but they don’t really answer any pressing questions, nor do they drive anything other than to question the characters’ (and players’) understanding of the world. Even with the reveals and the upheaval those might bring about, the game does very little to actually build upon the world and its cultures, making many of its concepts reliant on newcomers doing some reading to get familiar with their particular intricacies. The moment-to-moment writing is of good quality, but there’s very little cohesiveness for much of its story.
Where Dragon Age: The Veilguard does succeed narratively is the individual character stories and the bonds generated between its main cast. The diversity among the members of the Veilguard is a definite strength, with its varied backgrounds, motivations, and personality allowing for differing viewpoints. The conflicts between the team are smartly handled, as each is mature enough to eventually understand, learn from, and support each other as they deal with their own issues. Each character has their own satisfying personal story thread that can be dealt with, and doing so is important for helping to ensure the worst of the multiple potential endings doesn’t come to pass. The banter and other vignettes between the characters are great at making the group feel much more like a team that spends its time together, much better than previous games in the series, even if the individual stories don’t have much overlap.
Rook as a character sits in an odd place. Players don’t really have enough agency in their decisions to truly put their stamp on them, and not having as deep a personal story or background as the rest of the cast sticks out a bit. Regular conversation choices are overall less impactful and varied than players might hope, being more focused on applying a style of response than actively guiding a conversation. That’s not to say the game is lacking in major choices that determine certain fates impacting individuals to entire cities; there are plenty, but in terms of a trade-off between making these choices blend in or guiding the player, the game generally opts to fully telegraph them. That said, Rook ably fulfills their role as the story’s main hero and connecting focal point, as well as being the glue that holds the rest of the team together in the tough times. In addition, although the game is rather over the map in its storytelling up to that point, the ending section successfully brings everything together into a grand and fitting finale, even if much of the workings behind it are not remotely new.
Combat in Dragon Age: The Veilguard ends up as as bit of a curious amalgamation that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be. The game is very much full-on action as players can fully control only Rook, who is joined by two companions who fight on their own with the occasional prompt to attack specific enemies or use a skill. It’s primarily driven by regular or heavy melee attack combos and ranged attacks for all classes, with both elements coming in regular and charged flavours, as well as timed dodges or defends. Despite this even heavier focus on action, there are also some deep RPG systems at play, particularly when it comes to character builds and progression, but the streamlining of everything takes away much of the bumps and foibles that gave the series its character.
It’s ultimately a perfectly competent fast-paced, action system, and comes with a very flexible set of difficulty options for players to adjust. The difficulty options ensure that players of all abilities and styles can find a balance that works for them, and the vast array of other accessibility options are absolutely worth celebrating. However, the reduced impact of the companions means that strategic considerations are severely undercut. Regular encounters quickly get tiresome as they play out in much the same way, with the game overly reliant on character builds rather than encounter design and in-the-moment tactical decisions. Much of the challenge appears to be simply reliant on throwing out distractions or wreaking havoc with the game’s camera. The very few interesting boss encounters simply aren’t enough to get over the monotony that makes up the vast bulk of battles.
Players have a good amount of flexibility when it comes to their character builds; even if they might not feel hugely different in practice, Rook’s skill tree provides a lot of ways players can upgrade them and create strong synergies that come into more importance with higher difficulty settings. Rook’s active skills and skill tree can be freely changed at any point in the game, allowing players to experiment. In their somewhat diminished role, companions have considerably less customisation, with players simply able to select which three of five skills to have active and a couple of upgrade paths for each.
Meanwhile, loot and equipment tries to find a balance between giving players the satisfaction of finding lots of it and avoiding the pain of having to sort and sell most of it. Instead of giving players new items every time, there’s a pool of items that can be obtained from notable treasure chests or store purchases. Should the item already be in the player’s possession, it unlocks the next level of “rarity” for that item, which usually means a stat boost and an additional passive bonus. It offers a decent balance and there still are a good number of unique items, usually rewarded for completing noteworthy sidequests, that grant substantial trade-offs to help create some more extreme character builds.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard adjusts the series largely realistic graphics — although even this has changed from game to game — with a more stylised look, and it works pleasingly well. The models and animations are great, being particularly effective in displaying expressive reactions for the characters, although some of the modern-looking UI design elements feel a bit at odds with the setting. Combat animations and effects are all appropriately action-packed and flashy, even if there’s the usual blip when it comes to height conflicts that no one’s yet been able to fully solve.
The game’s locations are all perfectly well designed and offer some great views and details, but their layouts make them largely forgettable and a little one-note. Instead of the large open zones of Inquisition, The Veilguard features very winding paths and areas, which are good for inserting a lot of small puzzles and treasure locations, but poor for making parts that stand out from the rest. It doesn’t help that each major location has at most just a half-dozen characters with any relevance, and the little tricks placed to try and breathe life in them, such as beggars who can be given a token donation and small wildlife that have the exact same animations every time, paradoxically end up drawing attention to the thin veneer than distracting from it. Puzzles are primarily of the pathfinding type, with the occasional bit of lever pulling or statue rotating, and do a good job of encouraging players to explore. Certain environmental elements require specific companion abilities to bypass or use, but Rook’s dagger allows him to utilise any companion abilities if they aren’t currently accompanying them, somewhat diluting the whole thing. There’s also the slightly puerile pleasure of being able to destroy lots of conspicuous crates, boxes, and vases, which has the added bonus of sometimes providing small amounts of money and upgrade materials.
Audibly, The Veilguard packs a strong punch. The heavy-hitting composing duo of Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe unsurprisingly provides an excellent musical score that knows exactly how to ratchet up the excitement, tension, and emotion where needed, making great use of familiar themes throughout. Alex Jordan’s performance as one of the four voice options for Rook used for the review playthrough is great and goes a long way to giving them proper credence as the main protagonist. The rest of the cast is similarly solid, providing an excellent tapestry to match the variation across them and fully offer that feeling of fire-forged bonds. Some performances are a bit stronger than others, but all of them add to the overall experience.
It should be said that for all of the criticism to be made about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there’s nothing it outright does poorly. It is absolutely lots of fun in the moment, and the cast is worthy of note. However, when all is said and done, there’s little that sticks in the memory. Combat is heavily diluted by a lack of variation and strategy in its encounters, while the locations have little that draws them to life outside of their general premise. The quest to emulate Mass Effect 2 is all well and good, but there’s very little that The Veilguard does that it makes its own. The game will certainly garner plenty of highly satisfied fans, but in a time of much greater competition it’s far from a must-play recommendation.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.


Great character stories and memorable main cast
Excellent accessibility options
Very strong audio presentation
Disjointed main plot
Combat quickly becomes monotonous
Lacks its own identity
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