Dragon Age: The Veilguard is BioWare's Triumphant, if a little safe, return | Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Code Provided by Publisher

BioWare has had a rough past 10 years. Like I’m talking really rough. Especially if you ask fans, because between failed projects like Anthem, a game I actually really enjoyed playing and the mishandling of the Mass Effect follow up it was starting to feel like the BioWare we know and love no longer existed. Having covered and watched their struggles I came into Dragon Age The Veilguard cautiously optimistic. I kept thinking, “can they recapture what makes BioWare RPGs feel so unique?” After some initial pacing issues at the beginning of the story, I felt more and more at home in this deeply connected and clearly more focused Dragon Age world. So, I’m happy to report that BioWare has delivered a fresh take on the beloved franchise, whose scope and personality are greater than the whole of its flaws. As I assembled my Avengers of Thedas, a team full of complex, interesting and nuanced characters I couldn’t help but feel that same old BioWare magic come back. The Veilguard isn’t just a return to Thedas, it is an ushering in for an all-new era of Dragon Age games.

From the opening act of the game you can feel that the DNA of Dragon Age is there just altered. Largely in part due to The Veilguard wearing its influences on its shoulders like a proud badge of honor. The devs have commented on the impact games like God of War and Final Fantasy VII Remake have had on their views of not just game design but on RPGs as a whole. I was worried that taking those specific sources and applying them here would make the game feel less like Dragon Age or less like an RPG but there was clearly a passionate interest in maintaining a good balance of old and new. Perhaps no better illustrated by the scope of Veilguards story and world. Taking place across the vastness of Northern Thedas, long-time Dragon Age fans will finally get to visit and more importantly explore places we had only read about. Instead of going for the often bloated and needlessly large open world format, BioWare opted to show restraint and make each area a contained zone. These areas are more precisely laid out, harkening back to my days exploring the worlds of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, another BioWare RPG. Each area was deliberately laid out with winding paths and naturally flowing lanes that double-backed on each other creating sprawling locations that encouraged an explorer’s heart. I found myself drawn back to areas to find new paths and loot taking in the breath-taking visuals as toured Trevanos and took a moonlit walk with some skeletons in Necropolis.

BioWare has always been a beacon of creativity and flow when it comes to world design and Veilguard is no different. Gorgeous flame lit cobblestone streets and fantastically vibrant wild areas found throughout Thedas, Dragon Age has never been more on point when it comes to environments. I especially love the way the dynamic lighting helped paint a moodier atmosphere. I mean you can’t take more than a couple of steps without being floored by some awe-striking beauty whether it be the gothic Spanish inspired city of Trevano or the mind-bending, gravity defying ruins of Arlathan Forest, every inch of the game’s world is full of character. Speaking of character, the details of this fantasy escape are a shining star in a darkening world. Character designs are impeccable, telling their own stories within the way that person is dressed. Fabulously crafted armor and outfits make for a fashion style unique to the world of Dragon Age. After watching so many game studios head for photo realism, I’m happy to see BioWare stick to a more stylized approach. I just wish that style included facial animations that looked more modern. In fact, in cut scene conversations, I often felt like I was briefly pulled back in time to 2011, with at times stiff npcs delivering incredible voice acting with their faces showing all the emotional nuance of a bag of frozen peas. That being said, the voice acting was incredible from start to finish, I never got tired or annoyed with the inner-personal chats my team would get into. Most impressively, Dragon Age The Veilguard features the single greatest hair sim I have ever seen. It moves and responds so realistically and doesn’t look like polygonal strands but instead has volume and definition giving it the weighty feeling when in motion. It’s quite possibly the greatest hair in all of video games.

Veilguard’s combat is a direct evolution of what came before in Inquisition and Dragon Age II. Long gone are the days of tactical turn-based gameplay, because short of JRPGs and the rare Baldur’s Gate pretty much every “action rpg” has taken the approach of over the shoulder real-time battles. On the one hand this makes crossing blades more dynamic, allowing for more improvisation and giving more player freedom when it comes to builds. On the other dagger clenched fist, BioWare perhaps leaned too much into their inspirations, because while the combat is excellent at times and gets progressively more cohesive and satisfying, its use of similar systems in fights means I can do a direct comparison. For instant the basic melee combos are the usual light and heavy moves. Simplistic chains of mashing a sequence of lights or heavies ending with a flourish. God of War also had this simplistic rhythm, the difference being variety. Veilguard lacks options to infuse into combos meaning that when you don’t have an ability up for use you are just doing the exact same parry, dodge, combo attack situation until you can throw some exploding daggers at a bone man. Ironically, Rook is much like his counterpart in chess, lacking movement variety. Which is really disappointing because I had hoped that this move to pure action-adventure combat had come because of a really unique battle system. Companions do help the flow though, allowing you apply a primer like overwhelming followed by calling a friend to detonate that with a corresponding skill. On paper this idea sounded so cool but the execution is limited and uninspired. Which I got to say, BioWare, this was not the year to drop the ball on originality. I hate to do it but compared to games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Dragon’s Dogma 2, Veilguards companions, at least in a fight, feel undercooked. Not only do they have no risk associated with them since they have no health bars but on top of that, it almost doesn’t matter who you bring together on a mission. You’d think with a team combo attack system in place that BioWare would have gone all in on unique skill interactions. Okay so say I have the Ice Mage Neve and the Pheonix befriending Warden Davrin on my team. I have Neve throw a blizzard at a foe encasing them in ice and priming them for Davrin to strike his fire engulfed phoenix into them to detonate. The resulting combo could have triggered shrapnel damage from flying shards of ice, or created a cloud of steam to conceal your next attack, but no. The reality of this mechanic is a yellow circle of magic, time-dilation and a generic explosion. I just wish my Necromancer friend and my demon-possessed friend couple team up in some cool unseen way. I think my biggest problem here is that the game’s combat feels more in-line with Mass Effect than it’s own predecessors. Maybe it’s unfair to pin the expectations of my mind on the devs, because the combat here is serviceable and inoffensive, I just had hoped your teammates would be more than mere extensions of the player. All those gripes aside, several of the boss fights throughout the game offered genuine challenges and required me to play very intentionally to win. At one point I had to fight two dragons at once which is in my top 10 boss fights of the year now.

In a way the real BioWare RPG is the friends we made along the way. The very core of every BioWare RPG is it’s characters, story and world all of which are front and center in Dragon Age The Veilguard. Our story follows the newly formed Veilguard group as they seek to stop the risen blighted so-called elven gods, Ghilan’nain and Elgar’nan from engulfing the world in blight and subjugating its people. These two eldritch horror looking assholes show up to bring havoc and impossible odds to the world threatening any and every part of Thedas they can. The first 2-3 hours of the game are spent repeating these facts to various parties ad-nauseum. Which kind of kills the pace, but after that, when you find out...Well I won’t spoil anything here, but BioWare cooked something special up with this narrative. Following the story’s twists is like getting duped David Blane on the street in front of your Dad. He distracts you by making a quarter disappear while his swift deceptive moves allow him to trick you into losing your watch. Then he asks you to pick which one of your friends should die for your ignorance. Veilguards narrative is as deceptive a storyteller as the Dreadwolf himself. How the story goes is determined by important choices that truly impact the world around you and let me tell you, messing up one of these crucial decisions can have gut-wrenching impacts. This extends not only to the main quests but to all the faction and more direly, companion quests. At first, I was kind of bummed out by how these choices seemed less dire than previous entries but after making a few of them I saw these forks in the road for what they truly are: Deeply ingrained and intimate consequences for your actions. This meant the effects on my friends were far more personal, which carried a somehow heavier weight than the literal end of the planet.

The reason these decisions hit me harder was because of how truly likeable my companions all are. Each of the 7 members of the Veilguard has their own trajectory, a story arc all their own. Rook can strike up important conversations, go together on outings and special companion specific missions. I want to leave you to explore these characters and discover their personal stories yourself, so I won’t go into detail here. Suffice to say, the team is made of deeply enjoyable and complex characters who are directly impacted by your choices in the larger world. Which means when you complete all their designated quests and earn the Hero of the Veilguard status, you’ll be confronted with some truly dread inducing choices. Over the course of my playthrough I came to love just about every character in my band of heroes. Emmeric is a deeply sympathetic character who speaks with all the eloquence you’d expect out of someone dressed as he is. Neve is a stoic but indispensably passionate mage who isn’t afraid to offer up a little sass. The only drawback I had here was that the characters were maybe a little too agreeable. Don’t get me wrong, there is spats and conflicts, but the vast majority of the group take to each other fairly quickly. All of them are well acted, fun characters with nuanced emotions just maybe a little too safe on the interaction front at times.

VERDICT:

Dragon Age The Veilguard is a triumphant return for BioWare. With solid gameplay roots, excellent level design, memorable characters and compelling personal stories set against an existential threat Veilguard more than earns a spot amongst the best of the years RPGs. While I enjoyed my time with its underwhelming combat, the thing that will pull me back in for second and even third playthroughs are the incredible characters. I want to see the consequences of my choices from every angle, a narrative trick that few other studios have pulled off quite as well. Dragon Age The Veilguard is as amazing a sequel to the legacy RPG series as I could have ever imagined and easily earns its 9/10. Here’s hoping BioWare can start a new streak of excellent titles going forward. Looking at you Mass Effect. For Hardwired I’m Andrew Hamilton

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