Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review | One for All, Not Much for One

Not exactly the Bioware comeback we were hoping for.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard shows how much Bioware has grown as a studio for better and worse. For every moment where the visuals, audio design, and performances all click together to create a fantastic cinematic moment, you’ll be dealing with questionable writing and unfocused game design. In an attempt to appeal to as many player demographics as possible, the game struggles to find proper footing and identity. Here is our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review.

The Dragon Age franchise has never had a firm lockdown on what type of game it wants to be. The first was a tactical RPG, the second was a more linear action game, and the third was a hybrid of the 2 with some light MMORPG design elements. It’s a well-known fact by now that The Veilguard was initially a live-service project and while a pivot to a singleplayer experience was done early on and had significant development time behind it, you can still feel some leftovers of it in the core experience. In many ways, this is what I feel like was the root cause of so many issues that I have with my time in it.

This is arguably the most important game for Bioware after coming off of the critical and commercial failures of Andromeda and Anthem and just before fully developing the next mainline entry in the Mass Effect franchise. Dragon Age: The Veilguard needed to hit the ground running and then some. In a lot of cases, it did, and I had a great time revisiting the world of Thedas in a shiny new Dragon Age title. But there are some significant bumps on the road.

Aged out?

A Dragon Age game lives and dies by its story. This is a series that has an encyclopedia of iconic characters, dense lore backgrounds, and some of the best narrative beats in gaming. Even the 2nd title, arguably its worse entry, is still held up by the classic Bioware industry-class writing. Decades after its releases, we still know about Leliana, Cassandra, Varrick, Morrigan, Allistair, or the cursed Blight and the Darkspawn. But after dozens of hours into The Veilguard, I rarely found myself truly connecting with both the narrative stakes and characterization.

The Veilguard is a direct sequel to Inquisition and its fantastic DLC expansions. Solas, once a trusted companion, is now ripping open the Veil, putting the rest of the world at risk of demons. After spending an unquestionable amount of time in the fairly robust character creation, a fantastic opening sequence plays out where you have to find a way to stop the ritual that’s already nearing completion.

This is where I felt like Bioware was just firing on all cylinders. The visuals were incredible as rifts were being torn open, monsters flooding the streets, and infrastructures are getting destroyed. The thunder and rain making the nighttime pop with beautiful colors. And the sound design with both music and VFX ramping up in key moments were just absolutely chef’s kiss. You feel like you’re going up against unbeatable odds and the danger is at an all-time high.

Unfortunately, The Veilguard doesn’t get to sustain this same level of cinematic quality and interesting storytelling until after about 10 hours in. While the introduction and finale are definite highlights, and I would go as far as to say that it rests in some of my favorite Bioware moments of all time, the journey to get there is filled with inconsistency.

Solas is by far the best character in the game. Easily the most fleshed out who eats up every moment he is on screen. I was extremely excited going into this game knowing he was going to be someone we would be going up against, after spending the entire Inquisition with him by our side. It was a perfect setup. A loyal and reliable friend is now a dangerous foe. So much to play around with. However, while he is certainly an antagonistic presence, Solas ultimately plays second fiddle to 2 other Elven gods that are basically just cannon fodder and mustache-twirling villains. The script tries its best to set them up as a major threat that we should all worry about, but it ultimately feels too manufactured, lacking the real emotional and personal weight of fighting against a former companion.

Rook, the playable character, exemplifies a lot of my issue with The Veilguard’s writing. One of the biggest problems with the game is the illusion of choice. Or better yet, the lack of it. Something I thought I’d never say about a Bioware game. I usually go for the good guy route in my first playthroughs so that I don’t have to face too many consequences in antagonizing other characters but with The Veilguard, every choice is just a slightly different version of a good response. That’s because the script feels like it’s playing it too safe, all the time. There were so many times where it would make sense for Rook to get angry, and so I chose the “renegade” response. Only for my character to just give a normal reply with just some slightly more sass in it.

If the previous Bioware titles were border lining on being rated R-16 at times, The Veilguard stands firmly on a G or at its most daring, PG-13 all throughout. When the game is not being too afraid of Rook offending someone else, it’s busy pulling the sense of control from the player. There are a handful of moments where a conversation plays out and the game will decide what Rook will say. There is barely any roleplaying involved here. The game has already determined what Rook’s personality is. And it’s just up to you at times to choose between being nice, an attempt at being sarcastic or funny, or just being ever so slightly sassy.

Remember how Shepard would talk back to people, calling them on their BS in the most unfiltered way possible? Remember how the ritual to enter the Grey Wardens had one of the members killed right in front of everyone just because they didn’t want to go through with it anymore? The earlier Dragon Age and Mass Effect games were not afraid to touch on dark and mature themes. Or better yet, it had writing that sounded like it belonged in the worlds themselves. The scripts were a large contributor to why we were so immersed in the storylines.

Aside from just a handful of moments, The Veilguard’s writing feels eerily similar to the MCU style of favoring quips or making light of a scenario rather than recognizing the gravity of things. This lack of narrative tension completely deflates any and all sense of serious stakes. I don’t feel like the world is in danger or that we’re operating on limited time because the rest of the characters don’t act like it.

But despite the noticeably weaker material to work with, the performers still manage to give it their all. There are a number of personalities here that I see other players will grow to love such as Emmrich, a dapper necromancer or Neve, a well-spoken mage investigator. While the colorful roster of companions here are by no means tipping over forgettable status, they don’t have the same immediate impact from the likes of a Garrus or a Morrigan. Only time will tell if they’ll stand among the rest of the iconic cast of Dragon Age characters.

Yet another overhaul

If before, especially in Origins, I found myself trying to skip over the gameplay to get to the story segments, I do the complete opposite with The Veilguard. Because of how disappointing the writing has been, I’ve just been clinging onto the combat to carry me through. Bioware has chosen to fully commit to an action game here. You no longer have control over your companions. They don’t even have health bars to worry about. It’s all about Rook. All the companions around you just acts as an extended skill button to activate after cooldowns.

This shift in focus to only have Rook as the playable character was something that worried me given how people loved how you can somewhat micromanage your party in Inquisiton. It was a good balance of 1 and 2’s combat philosophies. But I also found myself enjoying the faster and more simple approach that The Veilguard took.

What it lacks in strategic control, is made up for in visual spectacle. I first played as a mage because based on the early build I played back in Tokyo Game Show, I really enjoyed the sparks go fly and spell go boom gameplay. It’s easily the most visually satisfying class to play with, complimented by incredible SFX audio work. There were times where I had absolutely no idea what was happening with the number of things happening on screen, but I was having fun just dodging around and making everyone explode.

Remnants of a live-service model is felt with the completely over bloated loot economy. There is an unbelievable amount of gear dropped at every other minute. While a lot of them look absolutely fantastic, I started to notice that I wasn’t really caring much other than if the stats they provide will make my number go up or down. Thankfully, transmog is in the game. That’s always a nice touch, but I wish I didn’t feel the need to constantly stare at the ground for loot drops instead of appreciating the environments themselves.

Visually, The Veilguard is an absolute stunner. Bioware has cooked up some of the best-looking environments they’ve ever done. But sadly, I can’t say the same for the actual level design and “puzzles” that mostly just require you to press a button that’s 5 meters away. While I’m so thankful that this is not another unnecessarily massive open world like Inquisition was, it felt like the devs may have taken the whole linear adventure too seriously. Some of the architecture and the flow of the stages here make no sense. There’s no way that every citizen of a town uses a high-speed grapple to travel across streets. If this was a multiplayer map, it’s fine but The Veilguard fails at creating tangible spaces that you believe can exist. I enjoyed looking at these levels, just not playing through them.

I always loved the more realistic dark fantasy look of the first 3 games, but Bioware has chosen to go for a more stylized look here in The Veilguard which did take some time to get used to. It’s more fantastical and dreamlike in its aesthetics which is great for environments and enemy design, but it completely falls flat for me when it came to the character models. Something about their clay-like looks makes them seem slightly off. Either their heads are too big or too small for their bodies.

Facial animations are also very inconsistent with Rook receiving the worst of the stiff-face allegations. For a game that focuses a lot on face-to-face conversations, this is a problem. And if the Qunari was one of your favorite new additions in Inquisition like me, prepare to be extremely disappointed with their new look in The Veilguard. What were once a race that was defined by a rugged and chiseled faces are now looking like they just came fresh out of a Cartoon Network show.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review Final Verdict – 6.5/10

Dragon Age: The Veilguard felt like Bioware was too afraid to take any narrative risks and decided to go with what they felt like would appeal to the greatest number of players. But in their quest to reach a wider audience, they failed to service longtime fans or entice newcomers with a well-made and focused story.

If it wasn’t for the combat and the extremely polished technical performance of the game, this would’ve been an unfortunate miss. There are some truly brilliant moments here. The last act of the story is some of the highest points in the franchise, but you have to go through so many hours of mediocrity to reach it. The Veilguard is unsure of what its identity is and so it overstretches itself in far too many directions.

This review was made using a game code for the PC provided by the publisher. 

6.5

Dragon Age: The Veilguard struggles to find proper footing when its narrative foundations are held down by some of the weakest writing in the franchise. Once the spectacle of the combat wears down and the story doesn't click for you after a dozen hours, there's really not much reason to stick around.