Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024)

I went into Dragon Age: Veilguard already half-poisoned about its preamble: my very first post about this title was way back when we didn't know much about the game and I was already second guessing most of the choices that were mentioned in passing. Turns out it was worse.

Dragon Age: Veilguard is the last foreseeable entry to the Dragon Age series, aimed at closing the circle of narrative started with Dragon Age: Origins and brought forward by Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition. It suffered a long development cycle and a long stay in hell before coming out, clawing its way through a retooling that saw the title going from live service to a narrative RPG game.

I came into Veilguard with tempered expectations because I had been witness to Dragon Age: Absolution (animated series) not too long before and felt like the writers had forgotten about the lore they had painstakingly built over three games and several novellas. Imagine my face when I found out you had to have read Tevinter Nights (novel) to have the needed context as to why things are the way they are.

The disconnect between Trespasser and the initial few cutscenes of Veilguard only served to stiffen my attitude towards it which did not go overly well when it came to Solas and his big reveal, as well as Scout Harding and her own big reveal (which throws, more or less, the entirety of Descent into the trash can so we can have a Special Dwarf and not just a regular one for our journey).

Veilguard simply lacks the audacity that the other predecessor had in exposing a world full of racism and overt classism, full of extremely dark deeds that were never mentioned but it has the audacity to demand that all the lore established throughout the years bends to the simplified tale that is being purported in perhaps the weakest pieces of literature associated with Dragon Age. Why are the Qunari in Antiva? Read Tevinter Nights to know. Why does everyone in the game knows everyone but you are given next to no context as to why you even want to associate with Neve (as opposed to Dorian Pavus)? Read Tevinter Nights.

Never once, if your character is an elf, are called anything but your name. Never once are the Tevinter slaves mentioned (so much so Minrathous looks like a generic Orlais if not for the dark and brooding atmosphere and some of the poorer status people) and the Venatori are now an even bigger threat for no particular reason given despite multiple snippets and Dorian himself revealing that the Venatori - ten years prior - were already in disarray and scattering after the death of Corypheus. Everything is sanitized in order to be fit into neat and tidy boxes while adhering uniquely to Tevinter Night's own canon.

The previous games, despite being a core part of why and how we got to Veilguard in the first place, are written away much like Dragon Age: Absolution did and impart little to nothing on those who are voracious fans of the series down to the novellas written post-games.

The gameplay is fine, if that's what you want to hear: it's snappy and particularly responsive, fun in some parts but overshadowed by the fact there isn't really a way to make me care about anything or anyone.

This could have been a decent Tevinter Nights spin-off, much like Tevinter Nights was a fanfiction of its own (no, it's actually not, it's a collection of stories without particular thought or care about the general world at large). Not a main series title.

I felt very excited when I saw the trailer for Veilguard's release. I played all the main games since 2018, so it was thrilling to have a new Dragon Age to play. But that's exactly where my disappointment goes.

The designs were mostly cool and soundtrack was good. Didn't really like most of Rook's armor and weapon designs.

Combat looks good, but gets stale pretty quickly regarding its dynamic. Losing the ability to control the companions was, in my opinion, quite the mistake. Also, making the party a three-person team seems a cheap way of trying to raise the game's difficulty somewhat.

Keeping the maximum level at 50 seems rather pointless to me, since you can get there quite a few missions before the story's end and you keep getting experience. Leaving to the player the ability to chart skills any way you want and refunding points was a good thing, I thought, although I took no advantage of that while playing (didn't even try to specialize Rook).

Now, I think the writing is mediocre in two levels. The story is not as enticing as the earlier games and dialogues are way inferior. The dialogue issue ties in with the reduction in the party. There's almost no meaningful conversations between characters during quests, which is dumbest thing about this game since it's a Dragon Age. I mean, most of the fun comes from the flirting, the bickering, the tidbits of lore that come from the companions. And none of that exists in this game. There's something else about dialogues: there are too many of them when it comes to Rook's interactions for initiating quests. I mean, to go to a companion's quarters just for a two minute scene for a quest that ends up being just a bunch of dialogue while running around? Even if this is present in the other games, which I honestly don't recall (since I've played each one just once), I think it's excessive in Veilguard. To the point which I grew tired of the companions instead of liking them.

Speaking of the cast, I really liked Emmrich, Lucanis and Neve. Harding could have been so much cooler (and I even romanced her). Now, Davrin? Dull. Bellara? Not that cute. Taash? Felt like a teenager trapped in an adult Qunari's body. Between the griffon and Manfred, Fred is way cooler.

The romance mechanics take way too much time to kick in, by the way. At least, that was my expericence. I committed to an exclusive relationship with Harding and I thought it's crazy that there's no sex scene right away and I couldn't get one before the end of the story. And that goes for any other romantic scenes, actually. There are no opportunities to build the relationship.

Not having a New Game+ in a game that you have multiple endings is just dumb, in my opinion. Too much grind and not everyone wants or can afford to put in 90+ hours (I did, regrettably) more than once.

I was really hoping that I could enjoy Veilguard as much as I enjoyed the other games, especially the first and Inquisition.

And, finally: killing Varric? I mean, are these people crazy? That, for me, was just the worst decision that anyone could make for the Dragon Age franchise.

Picked this up and put a few hours into it. It’s…. Fine? Granted it’s been eons since I played Inquisition, but things are pretty simplistic so far. That said, It’s entertaining enough I suppose.

What is getting me though is the constant inane chatter. Having characters constantly babble useless dialogue is one of the worst design decisions you can make for a game’s atmosphere. It’s like they were afraid having even a single moment of silence would make people get bored and quit the game.

Was gonna say that it felt like Rogues were being railroaded into a parry-focused playstyle if they wanted to optimize damage, but taking a deeper look at the skill tree it turns out they can get most of the same benefits elsewhere. Which is lovely news, since I find the wait-and-parry playstyle to be dreadfully boring outside of Sekiro.

Still tweaking details here and there, but I think I'm basically happy with how my Rook turned out!

Haven't played enough to form any real opinions just yet, but mapping sprint to L3 remains the single most cursed button assignment in videogames. It's especially bad here since rogues have a long range dash attack that makes you constantly re-toggle sprint to use it.

Surprise surprise, both MetaCritic and OpenCritic have been hit with review bombing and now this game has an overall negative user score.

Meanwhile on steam, positive scores outnumber negative scores three to one.

Metacritic and OpenCritic don’t require you to prove you bought the game. Steam does. That should speak volumes to anyone paying attention.

Sadly, I’m old enough to remember that there is an active contingent of gamers that hate every BioWare game even before it drops and make the same complaints each time. And just like every BioWare game before it, the loud haters were declaring the game a failure days before it launched. And when the critics and other games didn’t support that view, they turned to review bombing. This isn’t new, and the review bombing really isn’t a surprise.

So far 4 hours into it (paid EA Pro Play Tier to play it).

Technically speaking, the game runs like a charm: it does not stutter neither does have any glitches. I haven't found any bugs that broke my experience which is more than welcomed in the 2024 landscape of hellish Day One 12gb patches.

The environments are amazingly rendered and the stream-lined nature of the maps appeals more to those people who found themselves stuck in the Hinterlands for hours on end (but, for me, it lacks the same charm as the semi-open world I could revisit anytime I wanted).

Frostbite's issues with active combat that were present in Dragon Age: Inquisition present themselves again in the shape of sluggish primary attacks that feel so much slower than Inquisition's and the parry/block is a hit or a miss. Sometimes it does work, sometimes the attacks pas through you anyway, sometimes it's delayed and sometimes it's not in the right timing it wants you to do but the combat is engaging enough and it isn't too bad to work with it.

Main gripe I have is the writing: it feels... flat so far. Hard ass, jokester and brute/forceful options have no bearing of how a character reacts to you minus the "approves/disapproves" that has happened when a choice is very specific to a want/will of a character (such as leaving the mayor to die in the blight) and there is never much contention between how you reply and how they respond to you (when I told off the Veil Jumper from being aggressive towards us, he basically just said 'alright, you did that' and left it at that, despite the reply being rather confrontational on both sides).

Everyone seems to "know"/"know of" one another but you get no introduction on how Rook or Neve even came to be and without following on the podcast or the visual novel, it makes it hard to follow the story, mainly when you have no background (if not for a meager codex entry) on who the Veil Jumper and the Shadow Mages are.

I'll keep chipping away at it, but for now I'm particularly unimpressed by it.

It's remarkable that twenty people have already played this game enough to give it a rating here on Grouvee in the couple of hours that the game has been out. Do ya'll not want to at least pretend you played enough to arrive at a conclusion about the game?

Same thing on Steam, hundreds of reviews already, both positive and negative. And I'm supposed to trust player reviews because they are somehow "unbiased"? 🤦🏼‍♂️

Everything I hear about this game makes me angry, for some reason. We've gone through the developers trash talking the prior games as if they didn't do anything right, to parading around Veilguard as if it were the best title of the series, to locking preamble and why and how behind comic releases and an in-character podcast (which, last I heard, was silently ret-conning a bit of choices).

Now we're missing all choices from Inquisition but three of them, one of which was a dialogue made in passing before Solas both betrays and abandons you. We don't know anything about Morrigan's fate, about Dorian (since you can either shun him and chase him away or recruit him fully), we don't know anything about Orlais too which I would guess is pivotal to the politics of Thedas and, more importantly, some of the choices that should carry GREAT significance (such as the Grey Warden's fate post-"Here Lies the Abyss") aren't even included.

Some of the choices you made as the Inquisition were pivotal to the landscape which makes no sense as to why not carry the majority (or the most important of them) through World States.