So, How Did ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Turn Out?
Quite well, actually.
In a number of ways, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is caught in-between. The change of title from Dreadwolf — a pseudonym of sorts for the much beloved and much maligned egg-headed elf, Solas — to The Veilguard signals as much. Bioware’s reasoning, as stated in a developer blog announcing the shift, explained it as a reflection of the change in creative direction. While Solas is still an integral part, the game Bioware ultimately created 10 years after its predecessor, Inquisition, leans far more towards a story about its companions than its villain. Bioware, even if it wanted to, couldn’t completely leave behind Solas and what was set up a decade ago. Despite what many say, if you scroll through the credits, you’ll see a number of names that can be traced a long ways back through the company’s history. Their work was not yet done. Of course, their work had been a struggle. Games don’t take 10 years to develop for good reasons more often than not. From pausing to help out on Andromeda and Anthem, to shifting to and from a live-service, leadership roulette, and of course the mass layoff of 50 employees at the end of 2023. The Veilguard is a reflection of all of this, for both good and ill. Messy. Polished. Comfortably familiar. Trite. Compromised. Inspired. It is all of these things. It is Bioware leaning into so many of its very talented team’s greatest strengths. An honesty with regards to why its fans have gravitated towards its character centric storytelling driven by player co-authorship. It is, at times, a profound reflection on what came before and bold promise for what comes next.
A Real Chat-em-up
Every time I sit down with a Bioware game I try to figure out how they breath new complexity into the systems that drive the companions. The original Mass Effect has a memorable cast but they stand around in one spot of the Normandy. In Dragon Age II, everyone has their own home around the city of Kirkwall, and they’ll pop in on each other from time to time. In Mass Effect: Andromeda, at any friendly port, companions aren’t just patiently waiting for your return to the ship, they’re out doing their own thing. In Veilguard, well, Bioware sure did write an enormous amount of conditional dialogue. The seven companions are constantly reacting to the events in each other’s personal quests, their love lives, your love life, and practically everything else you can come across. It is innovation by way of extreme dedication to the bit. To make them feel so lively and interconnected, the script of Veilguard — not including all the permutations for the protagonists, Rook, given the four voices options — is only slightly smaller than Inquisition’s. For context, Inquisition is a massive game whose scope practically doubles Veilguard’s which is not small either.
I’m not saying this to simply stand in astonishment of scope, I’m the type of person who has bemoaned the obsession with enormous games the AAA industry has had for the last decade. Inquisition’s greatest fault is how bloated it is. Veilguard, as scaled down as it is, also falls victim to “too much game.” However, the sheer degree of reactivity and companion conversations, with and without the protagonist is what I am here for.
Hanging out with a crew of lavishly realized characters in a found family or workplace sort of vibe is what makes this 75+ hour runtime not seem so daunting by the end. Being able to return to the home base, The Lighthouse, after pretty much any mission and at least be able to overhear ambient conversations between a few sets of characters almost every time is simply impressive. I was returning often too. After practically every quest — main or side — which there are probably close to 100 in total. It leaves me amazed to be quite honest. Even among Bioware’s other most realized casts, eventually you’ll hit a wall where companions might not have anything new to say for a while or ever again. It’s easy to burn through all of Garrus’s material by the midway point of the first Mass Effect. Arguably his most famous line of the entire series is him blowing off Shepard with “Can it wait for a bit, I’m in the middle of some calibrations?” And sure, I hit points where a character or two around the Lighthouse might just have a “Hey, Rook,” when approached, but the shocking majority of the time, someone has something new. If only, a sentence or two that gives insight into who they are or an exchange with another companion that fleshes out their relationship, separate from Rook.
Some Odd Pacing
This does bring me one of Veilguard’s biggest issues. Act one, or at least until you recruit all the companions, is oddly paced. The first 30 minutes were shown off in June; a cold open to Varric and Rook moving through the chaos of Minrathous as Solas is in the midst of enacting his plan to tear down the Veil and merge the worlds of spirit and mortal. Apparently Rook has been helping Varric pursue Solas for a year now?
You can pick from six factions that fill out Rook’s background. Something that could be handled more elegantly is how much control we have over who Rook is before the game starts. In the spectrum of Bioware protagonists, Rook is less The Warden and more Shepard or Hawke. Origins opens with a choice between six backgrounds, all of which change the first 30–40 minutes of the game. Designing six sizable tutorial sections and having those backgrounds play out in meaningful ways is obviously a big undertaking. It’s not shocking Bioware hasn’t done that again for any of its single player RPGs. Meanwhile Shepard (Mass Effect) and Hawke (Dragon Age II) are far more pre-defined. Shepard is and will always be a career military. Hawke will always be a Ferelden refugee fleeing with their family to Kirkwall. Rook, with the option to choose a background and the cold opening feels very much caught in the middle of these two ideals. Attempting to align my Rook with the person I wrote down in a character sheet the day before release was troublesome.
As a Shadow Dragon, one conversation in particular bugged me. Roughly 30 hours in, in a optional dialogue very much off to the side, my Rook could to bring up that they were adopted by a military officer in the Tevinter Imperium. I had totally forgotten that this was a thing. The only other time it came up in nearly 90 hours of play was a single sentence during the character creator. What purpose did it serve other than to exists as an annoying little detail to stand in contrast to player headcanon?
As scaled down as Veilguard is to Inquisition, a lot of my feelings about scoping through the first 20-ish hours are conflicted. There is little busy work. By simply not having an absurd 10 open world maps, Veilguard almost feels small by comparison, but it’s still an enormous game. I did a near completionist run and that took me about 90 hours. Granted, I’m on the leisurely end of players when it comes to pacing. Like I said, I went back to base after almost every mission, barely sprinted outside of combat, and I rarely fast traveled. Whereas Inquisition suffers from more of the Ubisoft style of bloat, Veilguard is a little more difficult to pin down. It’s quite possible that there is too much of a good thing going on, but I think the biggest source of woes is the world design. There are no spaces that are quite open worlds, but there are a number of large explorable locales. They’re all rather maze-like, unfortunately. Lots of “tunnels” leading to moderately sized open areas that buckle under the weight of themselves. The cities of Treviso and Minrathous are by far the worst. On multiple occasions I would be following an objective marker on the edge of my mini-map only to run into a situation where my goal was on the other side of an impassable wall. The route to get there would require backtracking and heading some roundabout way that only put me in a state of frustration. Not helping this is that much of these areas look rather samey, which isn’t to say there aren’t spots that make for beautiful screenshots. This is probably the lowest I’ve been on Bioware’s world design since they’ve gone 3D, but highest on the visual direction in the entire series. By default, the waypoint system is turned to its max settings. Meaning, there is a bright white diamond on screen leading you around by the nose every 10 feet. It’s obnoxious to be sure, and I turned it off right away, but… you know I can see why it’s like that by default, which says that the developers knew how muddled the design is.
In Lena Hafer’s review on IGN, they describe the level design as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in structure and…no. That’s incorrect. I’ve belabored this point plenty of places but that classic Bioware Formula opens on the tutorial area. It then, generally, heads to a central hub where you get access to your home base and a list of episodic missions before entering the more linear end game. Here, Rook and company are jumping to and fro constantly. As a result, areas are these expanding mazes. Returning to a location for new quests is the norm, which only makes the pacing a bit wonkier. There are big inflection points strewn throughout the main quest, but between them it can be hard to get a sense of progress. A chapter or episodic structure isn’t a must for the Bioware Formula but it does lend itself to a unique sort of pacing that many AAA RPGs don’t often do, especially with the modern obsession with enormously scoped projects.
Not Quite a Fully Realized World
Veilguard is a game with bombast and spectacle. From its flashier than ever combat to the core of its plot. Both Origins and Inquisition have world-ending threats. The former focuses on a single nation while the latter takes place across much of southern Thedas. So what does Veilguard do? Naturally you fight the gods of all gods, who are not just a threat to Thedas, but an active apocalypse. It’s as dire as it has ever been, and yet I would be lying if it didn’t feel a bit like the old power scaling issue of Dragon Ball a bit. I’ll admit, rarely does the end of the world plot work for me. Ironic, I know, considering it is so common through Bioware’s catalouge. If it were up to me, the villain of a Dragon Age game taking place in the Tevinter Imperium would be the Imperium itself. A magical oligarchy riff with corruption, and home to the heart of Thedas’ slave trade is far more compelling. However, without getting into spoilers, I do still quite enjoy a lot of the capital “L” lore going on here. Peeling back Solas’ actions in the past which led him to being a man he is works. The many awful things he did in an attempt to make a just world, that is all very much my jam. The bits with uhhh… the other two big villains… uhhh I mean they’re plot devices first and foremost. Results of Solas’ actions and the game is aware of such, but also I did find myself wishing they’d just go away.
Part of this ties back into world design. I’ll avoid major spoilers here, but the devastation to the Thedas is rather significant based on the information Rook is getting through other characters. What we see does get pretty bad! But the reaction to such from the world design doesn’t sell it as well as it should. I often think about the Citadel in Mass Effect 3. As the Reaper invasion expands across the galaxy, devastating worlds, you see that play out on the Citadel. The hospital starts as fairly normal, and by the end patients are on makeshift beds in the hallways and staff are overworked and panicked. The lines of refugees coming in by the docks gets larger. The memorials to the lost too. The little conversations you pass in the streets are increasingly dire. I never got that wandering the streets of Minrathous. It looks the same, people barely talk about what’s happening in the rest of the world.
I’m currently replaying Origins for like the 10th time, and it’s interesting to note the difference in how each game lays out its world and the portrayal of factions. The ability to question characters about who they are and their cultures like you’re doing a 6th grade paper has largely been removed. Delivery of such information from NPCs is much more naturalistic. This extends to the codex, as much of it comes off less encyclopedic and more like notes you’ve come across. Yet, they still retain valuable worldbuilding information. The highlights though are the little notes by the denizens of the Lighthouse such as grocery lists, book club meetings, Taash’s diary entries about figuring out their gender, or the academic exchanges between Emmerich and Bellara. Like a number of aspects, both the codex and the more naturalistic dialogue exchanges likely need to find a better middle ground in future games. Information I would have liked to have had earlier for the sake of understanding plot events or helping the early pacing issues could be resolved with such. But this is the right direction to go.
Maybe the most puzzling tonal shift is the handling of factions. A staple of Bioware worlds are the tensions between factions and races. That’s here to some extent for sure, but much of it sanded down. For example, in Origins you can recruit Zevran, a member of the Antivan Crows, which are a fearsome organization of assassins. When asking about his past, Zevran will reveal that he was a slave purchased by the Crows. He was put in a life and death competition against other “recruits” and even after becoming full members you never gain true autonomy. That’s not the Crows we see in Veilguard. They’re kind of Ezio and his buds from Assassin’s Creed. Loyal protectors of their home city of Treviso, and all around seem rather good natured. Maybe if you pick the Antivan Crow as Rook’s background you get some sort of explanation, but as is, it feels like Bioware didn’t want players coming from a faction with bad vibes.
Maybe the funniest are the Lords of Fortune, a group of treasure hunters. But don’t worry, they’re the good kind! They have cultural experts on staff who can help get the treasures the Lords plund…errrr… rescue, to their proper cultural owners. No potential complications there! Which, hey, this could be interesting in isolation with more meat behind their ethical practices, but that isn’t quite here and stacked up with five other well natured factions, it leaves a desire for variety. Oh, by the way The Lords also have the obligatory Bioware Roman colosseum to fight in. Don’t worry, they also found a way to make that ethical too.
The Evolution of Choice
Maybe the biggest point of contention pre-release, that could actually be held in good faith, is the extreme reduction in the number of choices being carried over from previous games. Nothing from Origins or II carries over. All that does from Inquisition, are who your Inquisitor romanced, did they disband the Inquisition or not, and how did they react to Solas’ big reveal at the end of the Trespasser DLC. There is a larger, fundamental conversation to be had around this, but that’s for another piece. Suffice to say that the distance in time and space matters. Veilguard takes place 10 years after Trespasser, 20 after the start of Origins and II. It is hundreds of miles removed from the locales of any of the previous three. It is also a time of great flux for Bioware. While more familiar old names appear in the credits than some imply, there has been a lot of change. Veilguard went through a number of iterations over a decade of development and different leadership and creative desires from its team. Andromeda and Anthem decimated the good faith of many fans. Now the team has to turn the page onto something that wins back trust and forges a new path creatively satisfying those that remain and those that have since joined. Largely, I’m okay with this decision. All choice driven narratives have to go through bottlenecks, and with everything else considered, I’m just not going to fuss that much.
Okay, so now for the parts I really love.
There isn’t a more likable group of Bioware companions. I thought about qualifying that with, they may not be the most compelling as a whole, but in truth they very well might be. The aforementioned ample amount of conversations extends to overall material. That question of “how did Bioware evolve its companions” proposed earlier; I think they’ve taken some incredible steps even if I have some issues here and there. I love this group. The thing that always gets me at the end of a good one of these games is not wanting to leave that cast behind. The desire to spend more time with them and see their stories continue. To be a part of that. The series has reinvented itself with each title and largely has a new cast of main characters each time. This is genuinely the first time I want to see the entire crew back together. To have a full on direct sequel.
As always with a Bioware RPG, companion quests are a focal point and the attention given to them here is impressive. Lucanis, who is the Antivan Crow, is easily the weakest of the bunch. There is an unfinished quality to his arc — as well as so much of the Treviso/Crow storyline — but even then…I love my romanticized, fantasy Italian mafioso who just wants to cook for his friends and brings them artisanal cups of coffee.
A large part of my praise is how player agency has shifted. Typically, choices are defined by those big A plot moments. Who do you save on Virmire in Mass Effect? What side of the revolution do you come down in Dragon Age II? Does the late game revelation of Knights of the Old Republic turn you to the Dark Side? Veilguard still has big choices in its main plot, some of which have some really interesting consequences with lasting tangible impacts for dozens of hours. The focus really is on the companions though. How you shape them as a comrade, a leader, a friend, or lover plays out in some fascinating ways. Choices are the less black and white, save the kitten, kick the puppy. Which I’m probably a bigger defender of then most and am not someone easily impressed by morally “gray” stories.
I’m going to talk a bit about Taash’s story for the next paragraph so some spoilers are included.
Taash is the group’s dragon fighting expert. A Qunari whose mother fled their lands when she had reason to fear for her child’s safety. And yet, Taash’s mother is a historian of Quanri culture. While she left to protect her child from the increasing militarism within their society, she still firmly believes in teaching her child the parts of their culture worth preserving. As a second generation immigrant to their new home of Rivain, Taash finds themselves in a strained relationship with their mother who they see as overbearing. Pressuring them into proper pronunciation of Qunlat — the Qunari language — and gender roles within Qunari culture. The latter hurts the most, as Taash is in the midst of figuring out their gender identity. Another compelling inflection here is, if you play as a trans or non-binary Rook, you can offer your perspective to Taash. It’s these meaty moments of interiority spilling out that drive the storytelling and play out in delicious scenes such as that very awkward dinner at Taash’s mother’s house.
In previous Bioware games, there is a linearity and hard ending to much of the companion stories. You reach the climax, a big battle happens, and then that’s it. They stand around the home base the rest of the game soulless. Worse, you chase a romantic relationship down with someone in a way that feels like the end goal is an awkwardly animated sex scene. Here though, they simply keep existing. Keep having those ambient conversations. They keep chatting with folks around the Lighthouse. They keep asking Rook to grab drinks or go for a walk. They still need Rook. They’re still people. And this is the fundamental truth of Bioware and why I keep coming back to their games. It’s why I pore over them, babbling on about agency and co-authorship. Plenty of other developers create compelling casts, but I’m not convinced any are better at intermingling that sense of tying the player’s action to that cast.
Conclusions
Okay…so that ending. I mean that finale. I mean those final four hours… god damn if that ain’t some of the best stuff Bioware has ever done. Far and away the best they’ve ever stuck a landing. They’ve got some stuff to say… and I would very much like to talk about all of that, but I’m going to save that for a video, which will hopefully be out before the end of the year.
Suffice to say… it actually doesn’t. I’m not sure anything really does. Bioware… the people who make up Bioware have been through a lot these last 10 years. The industry is on fire and it doesn’t matter if you’re a successful mega-hit selling tens of millions of copies. Layoffs are coming for you if they haven’t already. Veilguard has seemingly done well, and yet there is nothing that can convince me that anyone at Bioware is safe. How could they be when even some of the human beings most synonymous to its success during its golden years were unceremoniously discarded and subsequently contested in court over severance? And then as reward, even when the team finally manage to release a new game, they get to be yet another flash in the culture war of reactionaries confounded by the fact queer people might just want to create queer media for an audience whose most ardent supporters are often queer.
This industry deserves no good will. I’ve fallen off of keeping up with new releases and AAA titles because of its inherent extractive nature. Every ounce of passion is nothing but dollar signs in the eyes of some schlub in a blazer who we always seem to find out is also some sort of sex pest, bigot, or unfortunate combination of both. Art still exists despite it all, but so rarely do I come away feeling emboldened. The extreme risk aversion of AAA companies has led to fewer games with fewer things to say. Veilguard may not please the folks who claimed to have given up on Bioware over a decade ago but can’t stop complaining about not getting Origins 2. It may annoy people who think this looks like a Pixar movie or Fortnite. It doesn’t. Seriously, the fact that a major YouTuber complained about Pixar character designs while claiming Prince Charming of Shrek — a Dreamworks film that looks distinctly not like Pixar of any era — would fit right in, is laughable. The discourse around games is probably the worst it’s ever been.
Yet, I love writing about games because of the folks at Bioware who’ve been discarded and who very well might be forced out into an unforgiving job market all too soon. The most boring gamer guys you know might lead the discourse alongside the most rancid sort of reactionary grifters. Still, I love this damn game. I’m going to keep writing about it. I’m going to keep singing the praises of the people who made it happen deserve every bit of recognition they can get.
