Dragon Age - The Veilguard

Title:: Dragon Age: Veilguard
Year:: 2024
Studio:: Bioware
Genre:: RPG
Rating:: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
date created:: 2024-12-14 21:28
date finished:: 2024-12-14 00:52

Intro

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the fourth instalment in Bioware's Dragon Age franchise and was much anticipated after a ten year wait. It follows the adventures of Rook and their companions as they try to stop the elven gods from bringing down the Veil between the physical world and the world of spirits and destroying the world as they know it.

Warning: potential spoilers ahead.

Story

Veilguard is set 8 years after the events of the Trespasser DLC, in which it was revealed that erstwhile companion Solas was, in fact, Fen'Harel, the elven god of lies, who wanted to destroy the Veil and restore the world to its ancient glory at the cost of its current inhabitants. We catch up with old friends from the Inquisition, who have spent that time trying to track down Solas in order to stop him, along with player character Rook. They finally have a lead, just as he's preparing his ritual to bring down the Veil. The team manage to stop him, but in doing so accidentally release Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, two of the most ruthless of the elven gods, trapping Solas in their place. Rook must then put together a team to stop their plan to Blight the world while accepting a tenuous alliance with Solas.

Having purposely avoided any of the trailers for Veilguard, I was a little annoyed at the apparent bait-and-switch on who the main protagonist of the game was going to be. This was soothed as I played through the game and saw just how clear it was that Solas was a problem deferred rather than solved. The characters are well aware that, given the chance, Solas will escape his prison and resume his plans to destroy the world.

Veilguard manages to make the stakes seem genuinely impossible, with every victory tempered by some kind of loss. I spent much of the game wondering how the hell I was going to win this one. Where Inquisition felt insurmountable in the beginning, the fins coming easier as the Inquisition grew and they made more allies, Veilguard feels like a a plucky group of heroes up against impossible odds from beginning to end.

While Veilguard focuses on events in the north of Thedas, it does make it clear that shit is going down in the south too, and things are not going well. While this does make it feel more like Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain are truly a threat to the entire world, it is a little annoying that it the south basically gets destroyed off-screen. I've spent the last fifteen years trying to stop that from happening, dammit!

As a continuation of the story, Veilguard feels pretty satisfying, building on the things learned in previous games about the Blight, the Veil and the elven gods. I do think they could have incorporated the red lyrium from Inquisition a bet better, especially since we learn that that's blighted too, but maybe that would have been too much!

By the games conclusion it's clear that the whole of Thedas will need rebuilding, and that makes me wonder about the future of the franchise. With the conclusion of Veilguard it felt like the story was complete, and with the level of destruction of the world setting, it may well be that Veilguard will be the last Dragon Age game. Either that or Bioware will need to do something radically different for DA5. Personally I wouldn't mind it being a big old world builder sim!

For those interested in the lore of Thedas, Veilguard provides revelation after revelation, particularly about the origins of the different Dragon Age races. These revelations may well upset some of the die hard fans, but I found them fascinating. Some of them line up with theories I'd previously had, others were a complete surprise. Either way, I've spent many an hour discussing these revelations and their in world ramifications.

Characters

The supporting characters have always been one of the strongest selling points of the Dragon Age franchise and for my money, Veilguard does not disappoint. Veilguard brings back old favourite Varric Tethras and promotes scout extraordinaire Lace Harding from side character to main companion. Which means I can finally romance her, so thank you Bioware.

The new characters are also great. While I definitely have my favourites (mostly Taash), this is probably the first Dragon Age game where I actually like all the companions. Usually there's at least one character that I neither actively dislike or simply bores me, but that's not the case here. The companions personal quest lines are all interesting, and most if them intersect with the main plot in some way, meaning there's motivation to complete them.

One thing I love is that the companion characters interact with each other more than in any previous game. Bioware clearly heard us when fans said they wanted more party banter, and the companions even have conversations while in the base, which I like. They even form their own relationships independent of Rook, which I absolutely adore.

The downside of that is it does seem to have come at the cost of the PC romance being less robust. It felt a little closer to the Mass Effect model, where the culmination (and consummation) of the relationship comes just before the final battle. Which I would mind a lot less if I could kiss my romantic partner whenever I wanted, like in Inquisition. As it stands, there's a little too much saving the world in my romance simulator. Patch to fix this please, Bioware.

In addition to the new characters there are plenty of familiar faces returning. which is obviously fan service, but that doesn't feel like that's all it is. The returning characters are well integrated into the story and always feel like they're there for a reason. It's satisfying and never takes away from the main characters.

I do however, want to know what Isabela's skin routine is, because daaaamn!

"Woke shit"

Probably the biggest criticism, by people who have presumably never played any of the previous games, is that it's "too woke". From what can tell, this mostly refers to the fact you can play as a non-binary Rook (with optional top surgery scars, the horror!), along with Taash being canonically non-binary, and their personal quest line involves them exploring and figuring that out. There are also several other trans and non-binary characters scattered about, and a few conversation options that talk about gender.

This particular criticism seems to mostly come from salty cishet white dudes who don't want their videogames to remind them that LGBTQ+ people exist. But since these are largely the same people who yell about the "historically accurate" rape being a necessary part of Game of Thrones, I don't really care much about their opinions. And honestly, their online whining is what turned Veilguard from something I planned to get around to into a must play. Because guess what? For some of us this "woke shit" is a selling point.

I played as a non-binary Rook because actually getting to play someone like me in a videogame is still a really novel experience. I cried several times over the course of the game, particularly when my Rook was talking to Taash about their own relationship with gender, because I felt seen. Bioware clearly did the work of actually talking to a bunch of non-binary people during development, and that really pays off.

This isn't the place to do a deep dive into gender stuff, but what the cishet white dudes complaining about "wokeness" don't realise is just how much it matters to see be able to see yourself in media. They're complaining because, for once, they're not the centre of attention. I'm crying because for once I get to be the hero as myself. We are not the same.

Most of the outcry has surrounded the gender stuff, probably because that's the shitty culture was du jour, but I did also appreciate the other ways in which Veilguard shows it values inclusivity.

I legitimately didn't notice Neve's prosthetic leg until Taash mentioned it in game, but I am so glad to see a disabled character kicking ass and taking names. And that prosthetic is cool as shit. I also really like that it isn't made a big deal out of. When Neve talks about how she lost the leg it's pretty much "fought some bad guys, lost a leg" and then the conversation moves on. We really don't need to know more than that, and in my experience, most disabled people hate talking about their disability like you've unlocked their tragic backstory.

I did have some concerns about the Inquisitor's prosthetic though. They lost their glowy arm at the end of Trespasser, so I was looking out for it. In the scenes where the Inquisitor appears there's something on their left arm, but looking closer in photo mode it just looked like a regular arm? Did Bioware forget until the last minute or do they just have some fancy skin tone prosthetic? We don't know, and to be fair, the Inquisitor isn't the centre of attention here. They had their game.

Update: on further inspection in the character generator, the Inquisitor seems to have a wooden hand.

Honourable mentions to Bellara, who is highly ADHD coded, and to Taash, who is very autistic code. I have no idea how intentional this might have been, but It definitely deepened my affection for these characters.

Mechanics

I was a little saddened to find out the party size had been reduced for this game. There's just something about a party of four that really feels like the sweet spot, and how am I supposed to choose just two?! I do wonder what the reason for this decision might have been. The reduced party size doesn't seem to impact the difficulty of combat, at least on the difficulty level I was at, and I did appreciate not having to manage the health of my companions as well as my own. Likewise, I appreciated being able to use companions abilities regardless of whether they were in the party.

I found that I basically left the other party members to their own devices during combat, as the control mechanisms of that weren't very intuitive to me. I definitely preferred the previous pseudo turn based combat in many ways. The combat mechanics were a little more challenging than in previous games, but more satisfying for it. Playing as a rogue, I had to get real good at dodging, real quick.

One of the major selling points of Veilguard is that the player decisions have a much bigger impact on the story. One of my criticisms of Inquisition was that the decisions in Inquisition didn't feel like they had in game consequences most of the time. Choosing the mages over the templars resulted in a slight difficulty increase, but that was it. I was particularly annoyed that the choice of Chargers vs Qun had zero impact on gameplay, making what is played out as a gut wrenching decision a no brainer for me as a player. Chargers every time.

Not so with Veilguard. Every decision your'e presented with has potential ramifications for a character, the world or the plot. And some of the decisions are tough, feeling like there's no good choice, to the point where I reloaded and changed my mind after the first major decision. For the most part I really enjoyed this mechanic, but some decisions were just The Worst. But the fact these decisions hurt shows just how invested I was. Which brings it back around to being a good thing. I think.

Conclusion

Overall Veilguard is a good game, maybe not game of the year, but still good. In some ways it's a better game than Inquisition, even if it didn't spark the same kind of joy in me that Inquisition did. I don't know if that's because I'm different person that I was 10 years ago, or it's because Veilguard is just a different style of game.

There are definitely places where Veilguard feels rough around the edges, which is frustrating in a game we've waited 10 years for, but that's no doubt down to behind the scenes stuff with the developer. Bioware basically restarting it twice definitely did not do this game any favours. But it might just be that with so long a wait, Veilguard was always going to fall short of what fans had imagined.

But even if it didn't light that particular fire in me, Veilguard engaged me on every level. I had a blast playing it and I ended up crying like three times during the last few chapters. I'm definitely gonna go for a replay sometime. (Update: started my second playthrough less than 24 hours after finishing my first.)

And you know what , I have two criteria for a game being good: it must either

Since Veilguard allows me to pet a griffon, it's alright in my book.