Dragon Age: The Veilguard is almost a full decade in the making. It’s been almost ten years since developer BioWare invited players into an expansive fantasy RPG adventure, Dragon Age: Inquisition. The title boasted impressive graphics that brought its sprawling landscapes to life and a narrative loaded with memorable companions and difficult decisions that would shape the land.
Now, after years of hard work, the EA-published franchise is nearly ready to beckon would-be heroes back to Thedas to will their next adventure into legend in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I recently had the opportunity to play several hours of the upcoming epic, and if the experience is any indication, the series’ future will be secure until its next grand tale.
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As is the norm for the Dragon Age series, the journey starts with character creation, where I picked my character’s lineage from Human, Qunari, Elf, or Dwarf. I’m not certain how much this decision will eventually affect, outside of some dialogue, but what is immediately apparent is that Dwarves cannot use magic, a feature of the franchise that longtime players are familiar with.
Once I chose my lineage, I picked from a few preset characters, in addition to choosing my pronouns and gender, which are separate choices. You’ll also have four options for your character’s voice, two masculine and two feminine, and a few options for the pitch of their voice. Of course, if none of the presets perfectly match your vision, you’re able to go in-depth with customization, sculpting their features until you’re happy with your avatar.
Overall, I was impressed by how many options were available. The feature I enjoyed the most was Head Shaping. This feature allows you to pick three head shapes from thirty available options and then use a triangle-shaped slider to blend the features of your chosen faces. If you only like one of the faces, you can move the slider all the way to your preferred option, matching it completely.
Blending three different faces means that it’s more likely that your character will truly be yours, especially with the rest of the options available. This even applies to your character’s skin tone, with warm, neutral, and cool hues, over a dozen skin tones, and a slider for melanin, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations.
The other features in character creation I really enjoyed were the body paint and tattoos. These elaborately designed markings can be placed on various areas, such as the face, limbs, or torso. Each one is made of multiple parts with togglable visibility, giving you more options within each choice to find the look that’s right for your character.
Best of all, you can alter your appearance after starting Dragon Age: The Veilguard, allowing you to completely change your appearance or add scars and make other changes to reflect your journey so far. While there are still some blind spots within the character creator, such as a deeper range of skin tones and a lack of varying body types, Dragon Age: The Veilguard boasts the most impressive creator within the series thus far.
Next comes the class options, where you pick between Rogue, Warrior, or Mage. Thanks to the ability to swap between two weapon types during combat, players are able to improvise, no matter what class they’re using. Previous Dragon Age games offered a harder separation between a melee or ranged rogue, or a warrior wielding a sword and shield versus a two-handed weapon, but the freedom to swap created more opportunities to think strategically.
Even the mage class can swap between two combat styles, offering different advantages with each. Selecting each class in the character creator also gives you a glimpse of their three specializations, letting you know how you’ll be devastating your enemies later in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Finally, you’ll get to pick which of the six factions your character is associated with. There are familiar names here, like the Grey Wardens or the Antivan Crows, but each group offers an interesting background for your character, including their last name. Additionally, each faction comes with a few bonuses, like increased damage against a specific enemy type or increased reputation gains with that faction. Your faction shouldn’t change the game drastically, but they’re fun hooks for folding your character into the world of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
The last part of character creation is choosing the difficulty for your game. There are a handful of options ranging from the easiest, labeled Storyteller, to the hardest, Nightmare. There’s also a setting called Unbound, which allows you to change the individual aspects of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s difficulty. This includes Incoming Damage, Enemy Aggression, Tactical Challenge, and Defend Timing, which affects parrying. These settings are all part of the pre-built difficulty options, but if you would like an easier experience but want the highest level of Tactical Challenge, for instance, this option is for you.
With the toughest decisions out of the way, it was time to start the story. You really hit the ground running in the city of Minrathous, as you’re dropped into a quest to stop the Dread Wolf from completing his ritual. Failing to do so would result in the Veil being torn asunder and ravaging the world due to a complete demonic invasion, so time is of the essence.
Before the situation truly becomes dire, you’re given the opportunity to gather a party and make some dialogue choices, which go a long way in letting you establish your character’s personality early on. Fans of the series will recognize a few faces in the prologue, but they don’t detract from the urgency of the situation as the party is thrown into combat. It’s a testament to the team’s writing that you can drop into such a hectic situation and still feel like you have a handle on things.
One of the earliest aspects of combat I noticed was that unlike Dragon Age: Origins or Inquisition, you won’t be swapping between your party members. You’re firmly in control of your custom character, known as Rook, the whole time. You can, however, order your party to use abilities in combat, allowing you to set up or activate combos. Your companions also don’t seem to have health, allowing players to focus on managing their own resources instead of dealing with three health pools and stamina or mana reserves.
As a mage, my staff allowed me to fire off magic missiles, with the combo finisher launching several at once. I wasn’t limited to this more passive fighting style, thanks to the mage’s alternate weapons: a dagger and orb. This melee-oriented weapon set still offered some ranged attacks, but the dagger was the star of the show. The orb’s attacks would apply an arcane mark to the enemy it hit, turning into an arcane bomb after three hits.
Then the dagger would set off the bomb, causing an explosion of extra damage to your target and any enemies unlucky enough to be nearby. The dagger doesn’t feel as agile as the rogue’s daggers, even with the addition of a combat dodge, but it’s nice to switch between it and the staff to change up the tempo of combat.
Besides the combat dodge, every class can also block or parry most attacks, with the rogue and warrior classes having near-immediate access to a counterattack in their skill tree. The mage also has access to one, but it’s not as easily accessible, appearing further down one path of the skill tree. Ranged attacks are telegraphed, which seems to make combat too easy in the prologue, but it’s a welcome addition in later, much more hectic encounters.
Weaving through enemies, deflecting a projectile, and setting off a large area of effect spell without getting hit feels incredible, and it feels earned each time due to the renewed focus on combat. Despite this focus, or perhaps because of it, combat still has a tactical feel to it, owing in part to the number and variety of enemies you’ll face. Bringing the right companions along is essential so you have a diverse set of skills. Presumably, however, this is less important if you play with a lower Tactical Challenge setting.
While each BioWare game has a different feel to the combat, the writing tends to be consistently strong across the series. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is no different. Each companion feels like someone you could actually meet, with their own interests, motivations, and attitudes. By the end of my time with the game, I definitely had some favorites, like the Veil Jumper archaeologist type, Bellara, but I looked forward to getting to know all of the companions. On a similar note, Rook and the other characters have some of my favorite writing in the series so far, exchanging sarcastic quips or earnestly laying themselves bare when the situation and player choice allow for it.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard lives up to the BioWare standard regarding its narrative crossroads. In my time with the game, I was allowed to make one of its trademark difficult choices, and I saw the ramifications of that decision later on. The scope and timing of the decision have me excited to see what other hard choices the game will offer. The whole scenario BioWare has created somehow feels both grand and personal. The fate of the world is on your shoulders, but once again, they’ve managed to tie your personal relationships to the larger conflict, narratively and mechanically.
Your bonds with your companions are the result of choices, too, albeit ones with smaller stakes, but even these choices can affect your experience in addition to nurturing or destroying your chances at a romantic or platonic relationship, your companions ‘level up’ based on their bond with you. They lack a traditional skill tree, but you can still upgrade their skills and earn new passive abilities. Ultimately, I’m confident Dragon Age: The Veilguard will offer greater narrative branches than past games based on what we’ve seen so far.
While Dragon Age: Inquisition portrayed Thedas with big open areas to explore, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is tackling the same problem with the opposite approach. With more linear or “open area” settings, the developers are able to flesh out their new environments more thoroughly. Minrathous and Treviso feel like sprawling, lived-in cities filled with all manner of people. The buildings range from claustrophobic alleyways to towering structures stacked haphazardly like expansion was a hasty afterthought. The ruins I explored with Bellara felt like they’d been hidden or forgotten by the world for ages before we showed up to knock down half-crumbling walls with a magic cannon.
Some of the environments I explored were nothing short of breathtaking, with some particularly creative destinations used as your hub and for a mission in Treviso. Each setting feels gorgeously crafted to fit into Thedas, and the sound design matches it all perfectly. My personal favorite touch is the guttural sound of magic during the prologue. It’s a deep sound like it’s ripping open reality to allow all kinds of horrible demons into our world.
Despite the hours I played, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. I have never been so immediately hooked as I was on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. If the combat, writing, and world design I saw are maintained across the rest of the game, then deciding whether or not to play it will be the easiest choice BioWare has given me.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard releases October 31, 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
