Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review
“Rook You Like a Hurricane” Written by: Hunter (@ReaperHunter23)
It has been ten years since Dragon Age fans last visited the world of Thedas. The end of Dragon Age: Inquisition contained an intriguing hook for the future of the series that left myself and other fans eager to see what would happen next. With the exception of a teaser in late 2018, it was mostly just occasional murmurings when it came to the next installment of the series. And finally after ten years of multiple staff changes, development resets, and a change from the much better subtitle of : Dreadwolf, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was properly revealed in the summer of this year with a fall release being revealed soon after. So let’s take a look to see what Dragon Age: Veilguard has to show after its long development journey.
Image Credit: Bioware, Electronic Arts
Dragon Age: Veilguard picks up ten years after the end of Inquisition. We take on the role of Rook. Rook is the newest member of a team put together by series veteran, Varric, in order to stop a ritual that will tear down the wall separating the physical world and The Fade, which is the realm of dreams. Rook, Varric, and the rest of the team manage to disrupt the ritual in question but things go sideways and a pair of ancient elven gods get released from their long standing prisons. From there it's up to Rook to assemble a bigger team to combat the old gods and keep them from bringing about an even larger catastrophe.
I rather enjoyed Veilguard’s story. I think a lot of the main story missions with big substantial moments were really well done. And those big story moments were held together with side content that felt meaningful. There are about six main zones that the party travels back and forth from throughout the story and I thought that the side content did a really good job of giving each area a substantial story hook that would continue to develop as time went on. Treviso had The Antivan Crows trying to break the Antaam occupation of the city. Minrathous had the Shadow Dragon resistance force waging its underground battle against the Venatori cult. And the Neverran Necropolis, was goth as all get out.
The arcs of all of these areas would play out concurrently with the main story. I found this approach to be pretty complimentary to how the main story was structured. It kept me from feeling like I was stagnating in one place for too long. By the end of the game I had become thoroughly invested in turning things around for each area. And I had found myself liking the secondary characters such as Teia and Viago or Evka and Antoinne as much as I did the main party members.
Moving on to the main party, I think the team in Veilguard was really good. I think the thing this group has going for them is that by the end of the game, all of them really felt like friends. In the previous games it always felt like the group would have certain people that buddied up to each other, but wouldn’t be bothered one way or the other if certain other party members perished.
I really liked them all individually as well. My favorites were Neve, Harding, and Emmerich. But this is the first Dragon Age game where I mixed up my party throughout most of the game instead of just deciding that my favorites were coming with me on every mission. They all bring something interesting to the table and have a fun dynamic with Rook and the rest of the group.
The center of each of their internal conflicts comes down to being split between two paths or identities. Neve is deeply cynical but won’t stop trying to do good even if she doesn’t think it will last. Emmerich is a necromancer who is profoundly afraid of dying. Taash is a Qunari who is caught between the Rivaini culture they live in and the Qunari culture their mother had taught them. Bellara is an elven historian who has to deal with the crisis that the gods her culture worshiped are evil. Everyone in the group has an internal struggle like this and it was really compelling to help them work through it and see how these struggles overlapped and bounced off of the other party members.
I really like Rook as a protagonist too. They land closer to how Hawke was in Dragon Age 2 where they are a mostly defined character and your dialogue choices serve to color in the page so to speak. As opposed to Origins where you could just choose to be a total menace to society if you wanted to. I don’t mind this approach though. I think it works for the story. Both as a means to make Rook an effective leader for the party and as a foil to Solas. Solas positions himself as a lonely figure in this tragic narrative where he’s the only one who can fix Thedas because everything is his fault so he alone must be the one to undo the damage. Rook is often pretty intellectually dim, but very emotionally intelligent and is powered by the support of their friends and the desire to do right by them. I think it makes for a compelling dynamic.
Aside from Solas, the two other main antagonistic forces in the game are Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain. I think they are pretty effective in their roles. Elgar’nan is the more straightforward, booming and powerful “crush all who oppose me” type of evil. And Ghilan’nain is more of the “Let me peel away your skin and poke you with needles” flavor of evil. They both have solid moments that establish themselves as threats and whenever they would show up it gave that particular story-beat a little more gravitas.
Image Credit: Bioware, Electronic Arts
Dragon Age: Veilguard takes a much more action RPG leaning approach to its gameplay than the previous games have. I’m sure this ruffled the feathers of some purists, but I found Veilguard’s combat to be the most engaging in the series. I played as a rogue so I cannot speak to what it is like for the other classes, but I really enjoyed how my class played. The basic moveset is pretty much what you’d expect. Light combo, heavy combo, dodge, and a ranged attack. When you add on the special moves you can do with the meter, it provides a little more razzle dazzle.
I think the thing that really clicked for me was how much each element of the combat feeds into itself. My meter was tied to what the game called Momentum . And it was built up by doing damage in succession. This meant that if I took damage during a fight, my meter would be penalized slightly. This encouraged better play on my end since if I was rock solid at perfect dodges or parrying I would build up my momentum that much faster. It was a very aggressive risk/reward type of play style. If I tried to be too methodical I would be really slow to generate any meter and my damage output would suffer.. And if I went in guns blazing and got hit too often I would also fail to generate any meter.
There were so many abilities or passives in the skill grid that would feed into this play style. One of the buffs I could get was called Adrenaline, which would activate after ten consecutive hits, when it was active the momentum meter would fill up at a substantially quicker rate. But if I got hit the adrenaline buff would go away. Eventually I unlocked the ability to have the adrenaline buff stack which would give a little bit more of a margin for error. All the while unlocking abilities and weapons that inflict a myriad of different statuses on my opposition.
One point of contention I saw pre-release was the lack of active control of your party members. I was not bothered by this change because the only time I was taking active control of someone else in prior games was if my character had died. I actually think that way party members were implemented was pretty effective. You can give each of them commands either in real time like you would when using an ability, or you can pull up a radial menu if you need a second to think about what you want them to do. Each party member can also inflict or detonate a status effect as well. The way that works is if Rook were to hit an enemy with a move that causes Sundered, I can then go and tell Neve to cast this spell that would detonate that status and do a large chunk of damage to the targeted enemy and sometimes surrounding enemies as well. I found this to be a pretty effective compromise between only having control of Rook while still giving everyone else a presence in the fight.
One of my favorite gameplay moments during Veilguard was encountering a level 50 dragon fight at the conclusion of a sidequest. I want to say I was in the level 31-33 range. Despite being dramatically underleveled for this encounter, I gave it a shot anyway since I really didn’t feel like leaving that thread dangle. And to the game’s credit I was able to succeed at the fight. I did not just get comedically stomped into the dirt. Sure, it was a tough fight and took me longer than it would have if I had come back later but I really like that through careful play and effective use of my party members, I was able to pull off a victory like that.
Image Credit: Bioware, Electronic Arts
Talking about art style in a Dragon Age game is a mildly sisyphean task. Not once between games have things stayed visually consistent. That being said, once you get over the initial visual inconsistencies with the previous games there are a lot of really striking visuals in Dragon Age: Veilguard. I think the environments are what sing the most to me. Whether its the lush and ethereal look of the Arlathan Forest, the tropical coastline of Rivain, or the absolute blight filled misery of the Hossberg wetlands, each area felt distinct and like a legitimate locale that exists within the world of Thedas. This in turn made them much more enticing to explore.
I think the character designs are all rock solid as well. The character creator in this game is the best one yet and I was able to make Rook easily my favorite looking main character in the series so far. The other main characters such as Neve, Emmerich, Lucanis, Davrin, and so on all managed to convey what they’re about while also standing out from the faction or area they are a representative of.
The only things I think found to be kind of hit or miss were the enemy designs and some of the armors. As far as the enemy designs go it just felt like there were a lot of them that felt samey. Like the Antaam Reavers barely felt different from the bigger darkspawn. Even some of the bigger classes of darkspawn didn’t feel that different from each other. As for the armors, there are around 120 different armors and I think I enjoyed maybe 25 of them. A lot of them would be mostly okay but then be betrayed by really goofy looking shoulder pads or a bad color palette.
The sound design and voice performances in this game were fantastic. One of the first distinct things I noticed with the sound of this game was the first instance of a blighted area. Everything in the organic tendrils sounded so wet and sloshy in a way that provided the appropriate amount of discomfort. All of the combat abilities and attack noises were accompanied by sound effects that were immensely satisfying. I think the exploding dagger move was one I used a lot simply because I liked how it sounds.
The voice performances were very impressive. Everyone got a fair number of moments to stand out.I really enjoyed Alex Jordan as the voice of my Rook. Ali Hillis’s performance as Harding went a long way towards her being one of my favorite party members. Jee Young Han did a great job at bringing Bellara’s nervous intellectual energy to life. And Zach Mendez did a great job at portraying Lucanis’s suave professionalism.
Image Credit: Bioware, Electronic Arts
Summary
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a must play if you like the same things that I do about the series. Or if you like action RPGs in general. While I was playing this game, any time that I wasn’t playing it, whether it was to go to work or do something else, I could not wait to get back to it. Each game in the Dragon Age series is pretty different from the ones that came before it. And each comes with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Dragon Age: Veilguard is no different. It has the most engaging gameplay loop in the series but it lacks some of the political intrigue from previous entries. The important thing to me is that it delivered on an enjoyable cast of characters that I was able to get invested in. And the setting and plot worked as a great vehicle to deliver the story of those characters to me.