Dragon Age: The Veilguard Hands-On - One Step Back and Two Steps Forward

Let's get it over with - Dragon Age: The Veilguard didn’t show its good side with its June trailer. It completely missed the expectations of its audience, even though the target group of this game has already changed a bit. Then the gameplay was shown, which raised a lot of doubts, but which also calmed some people down - I saw a larger part of the gameplay at Summer Game Fest, played live and with commentary from the game director, so I had a bit more complete set of information, hence my slightly more positive reception. The second trailer made much more sense.

EA botched their form of communication somewhere along the way, although there is also no denying that at this point they are very open to talking about the game and showing this game. I got an invitation with journalists and creators from all over the world to visit EA HQ at the beginning of September for a hands-on session with The Veilguard, and I went there not without some concerns. I like Bioware's games, some say that I like them too much, but for the exact same reason I have some specific expectations. When it comes to the Dragon Age series, I really like Origins, I accept the existence of the second one and I don't really like Inquisition. And I'll say this... Dragon Age: The Veilguard is what Dragon Age 2 SHOULD have been. Let me explain.

What was before (almost) doesn't matter

The Veilguard is the fourth game in the series serving as a direct sequel to Inquisition. In the game, we play as Rook, a new buddy of the well-known dwarf Varric, who intensively hunts for the most characteristic bald head in Thedas, i.e. Solas - an extremely powerful elven mage. A mage who was our companion in the third game, and who long ago imprisoned in the Fade two beings considered to be elven gods: Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

Solas's actions had their consequences: the elves lost their magic, becoming slaves to a large extent as a result, and now our egghead colleague decided to destroy the Veil, i.e. the magical “thing” he created, which separates the world of demons and spirits from the world of the living. However, nothing is as obvious as it seems and due to a failed ritual, the elven gods are freed and we have no choice but to save the world.

The fourth Dragon Age tells its own story, but does not forget its roots. A huge element of the lore of this world is the Grey Wardens and the Blight and here we will return to these themes as well. You’ll find the familiar Crossroads, known from the actual finale of Inquisition (i.e. Tresspasser DLC), although in a slightly new version. There will be no shortage of returning characters, as in the trailer we have already seen Morrigan, beloved by fans, and as part of the character creator, we recreate the appearance of our Inquisitor.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

The series already has three eventful games under its belt, and you may remember that before Inquisition, we got something called Dragon Age Keep, which is a tool that allowed you to import all your choices based on the save from the second game (which could contain the import of the save from the first game), or simply make all these meaningful choices from scratch to prepare the state of the world for the Inquisition. In the Veil Guard, there will be no such option, and instead, apart from recreating the Inquisitor, we can only choose a few of the most important events from the third game. Of course, I needed to know why so I asked Corinne Busche, the game's director, and she directly replied that the answer was twofold. Firstly, the game takes place in a completely different region of the world, so some of these events simply do not matter for what we will see in Veilguard; secondly, 15 years have passed since the release of the first part, which is a very long time in the world of video games. Not everyone keeps their saves, not everyone even remembers what choices they made then, or maybe they don't necessarily want to go back to these old games now. Hence, it was decided to limit the influence of the previous games to these few main choices. I still think it's a pity, but I can understand it - after all, 10 years have passed since the Inquisition itself. There's also no denying that  The Veilguard is trying to reach a whole new group of people as an entry point into the series, so for them, such choices would have absolutely no meaning.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

As I've been playing all three parts  of Dragon Age lately, I'm slowly remembering how each of these games differed from its predecessor. Leaving aside the graphics or the general artstyle, which has also evolved, the design of the game itself has always looked different. Origins is quite open and there is a lot of freedom in the order in which the story is played. DA2 is an extremely linear experience, with massive backtracking and a focus on specific missions to push events forward. Inquisition is again huge areas - and rather too large, stuffed with activities that players did not necessarily like. And this is where Veilguard comes in, which is closest in its design to the second game, although with more open areas.

The developers describe this game as "mission-based" because they themselves decided that they need to go back to the roots of what they do best. The plot is a series of missions that we play in a specific order on fairly linear maps. This time, however, these are not the same maps over and over again, and instead each of the locations has been prepared for a given fragment of the story. There are also slightly larger hubs, the largest of which is the Crossroads, there are also side quests, missions for companions or collectibles. We will also discover Solas' memories to better understand his history and the context of the events in which we participate. Still, it will be a coherent story that I find much more engaging than in Inquisition precisely because it filters it into a much more linear experience. I saw 5 different sections from the first act of the game, which gave me about 6 hours spent with the game, and I already had the impression that all this is more interesting than the story told in Inquisition.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

Of course, there will be choices that affect the fate of ourselves, our companions, and even entire locations. As part of the event, we could see one of these choices and its consequences, but we were asked not to talk about it directly, so as not to spoil the experience for the players. So I will only say that the scale of one decision in the first act will decide the fate of many creatures, the results of which we will see very quickly in the game. And this is one of those decisions where there is probably no good way out.

At this stage, I still have mixed feelings about my companions, although I have already started to form specific opinions about them. I haven't found my favorite comparable to Alistair or Morrigan yet, but I think of them much more warmly than when they first introduced them. However, you have to be prepared that they will be closer to the companions that can be found in Andromeda - more "up-to-date," a little different from typical patterns known from fantasy. I admit that I still can't get rid of the impression that Lucanis is the Dragon Age version of Zorro. Maybe because of his accent.

What is this game?!

The gameplay in Veilguard has changed quite a bit, but it's not that different from what Bioware has done so far - it's just much closer to Mass Effect than Dragon Age. We no longer control our companions, but only give them commands - who to attack, what special ability to use. Replaying the series recently, I got used to the ability to control companions, but it's not particularly necessary for me to have that option - that's why I very quickly stopped paying attention to the fact that the only character I control is the one created entirely by me.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

The combat here looks quite good, although it required a change from what we know from the series. There is no longer a whole bar of skills that can be used, and instead we’re left with 3 skills on cooldowns and a special "ultimate," which we gradually charge during the fight or by picking up the appropriate potions that lie in special destructible items. Does this mean that the fight is bad? Not necessarily, although it now resembles more of what we know from action RPGs, mainly due to the fact that we can easily refund skill points and allocate them in a large tree that allows for a large variety of builds. The typical class restrictions have been removed, we no longer choose specializations within those classes and spend points permanently; instead we can choose the option to reset the distributed points and go in a different direction at any time from the menu. And so, playing as a Rogue, we can go for a build that’s long-range, for instance by placing automatically shooting "turrets" made of crossbows or attacking with a rain of arrows as part of an AoE attack; or you can go for skills in close-range combat, where we hit enemies with electricity when they are too close to us, or simply by inflicting a singular strong attack on one enemy. There are no more tactical presets that you may miss from the days of Origins, but instead you will find quite smooth and not too badly implemented combat in the new installment. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing Diablo in TPP, although it's not the most precise term either. It is a very individual thing whether you like it or not.

I also felt a lot of differences between the character classes and was quite surprised at how boring the mage seemed to me, at least at the very beginning, when the character is not very developed yet. The ability to fight with a two-handed wand is pretty slow, and switching to a dagger+orb combo means more dynamic combat, but again, I couldn't really get into a rhythm here, even when I realized pretty quickly that the key is to stack orb hits on your opponent and then implode them with the dagger. A warrior is indeed a typical warrior, with a shield I felt like a powerful tank, but fighting with a two-handed spear was too slow for me in relation to the pace of the game. Fortunately, there was also a Rogue, who is agile, dynamic and the dual-weapon combat turned out to be what worked best for me. I really want to play with the classes a little more and on my own, because here, apart from the first section of the game, we played with previously prepared characters in a given class to be able to see different builds.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

Since I have already mentioned items, it is worth highlight the different system of upgrading equipment than what was there before. We don't collect dozens of versions of the same item with better stats, but instead there will be a finite pool of types of items in the game that we can come across during our playthrough. Picking up a duplicate item increases the rarity of the one you already own, and thus increases your stats, as well as possible additional bonuses. Of course, the items themselves are different, as you can see by the armor for example - heavy armor has increased defense, but low damage buff for special abilities, while light armor is the exact opposite.

We have skills, we have weapons, but what we don't have is clarity on the screen during combat. The interface does look a bit like a mobile one, with space left on both sides for thumbs, although the more time I spent with it, it simply felt more console-like. However, when we fight and a lot is happening on screen - we have a ton of particle effects, mages cast spells, something falls on the map during a siege - you can rarely figure out what’s happening; Which is all the more troublesome because our hero, in addition to the dodge option, also has the option of parrying and before the opponent's attack there is a color marking showing what kind of attack it will be and whether it is blockable at all. It usually works fine, but when there are many opponents and a lot is happening on the screen, you just don't see this block marker. Apparently, it is possible to remove many things from the UI - including enemy life bars or damage numbers. However, I don't think it will change anything in the readability resulting from the graphic effects alone.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

During the game, I also had the impression that the whole story is terribly cut and sometimes illogically jumps between places. So I asked the game director if the sections we were playing - which were already cut from various moments in the first act - were cut further to avoid spoilers. Corinne said yes - what's more, sometimes for the purposes of the sequences we played, moments from other parts of the game were inserted into the cutscenes to give these fragments the right context. Which would mean that I absolutely cannot judge whether this element of the game is made correctly, because we got a pre-release version that was first cut and then sewn back together. On the one hand, I could skip talking about it completely, but on the other hand, I'm leaving it here in the form of information to reassess after the release to see if it's really a misleading impression resulting from the limitations of the pre-release event, or maybe the game throws us from place to place, without maintaining a reasonable flow and consistency of the narrative. It would be a pity.

This character creator is good to the point of exaggeration

I wanted to devote a separate part of this article to the character creator and I’m doing this as a person who doesn't really like to play with character creators. I'm not good at it and when I try to create a more custom character, I always ends up accidentally breaking the presets and I have a choice to either play as an ugly guy or go back to the default settings. In the case of Veilguard, Bioware opted for a creator, which is by far the most advanced character creator I've ever used.

We start creating the whole thing on presets, but over time we go into absolute detail to adjust these predefined settings. You probably know the standard triangle of body structure, where we choose what we want between a thin, fat and muscular character. Of course, this is also the case here, but a similar triangle system works in the case of faces, where we first choise the faces from the presets at its ends, and then easily morph their result into what we like. In general, we can go so deep into the settings in this game that we set cataracts in the eyes, choose asymmetry of the ears or even choose the color of the sclera.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

I also really like the contextualization of our character. When creating our hero, we can put him on different backgrounds and with different lighting to see if we are satisfied with the appearance in different situations. In addition, by choosing the class and faction of the character's origin, we can see how our character looks in starter clothes, as well as in much more advanced faction armor, which we can get later.

Many times during the interviews there was a statement about the freedom of choice and being the character you want to be. And this creator definitely looks like something that will allow you to fulfill this fantasy - regardless of whether you want to try to recreate yourself or the image of the character that you have in your head as perfectly fitting into this world. I'm not a fan of character creators, and here I finished making my character after half an hour only because it was suggested to me that if I stay here too long, I will soon run out of time to actually play the prologue.

Who is The Veilguard for?

The tricky question is, for whom is the latest Dragon Age installment actually targeted? I think I'm slowly starting to get it, although I say it only after a few hours with the game. First of all, Veilguard is NOT for people who expect a game in the style of the first installment of the series. This is not a tactical RPG with an active pause, in which you will manage your party - in the form of a mixture of classic RPGs with a slightly more modern approach. It's also not a game for fans of Baldur's Gate 3, which took the RPG world by storm. Specifically, it’s not a formula in which you get absolute freedom of action and a multitude of choices in a huge game, full of complexities and dependencies, which is the modern ultimate RPG that anyone can play however they like.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

If you like the world of Dragon Age because of its previous installments, you will be satisfied. This game has a lot of the DNA of the series, just in a form that Bioware has not yet openly shown. It is dark in places, the Blight affects the world at times even more than before, turning these colorful places into ruins full of slime and hideousness.

This is also a game for those who like Bioware RPGs - which means games that are sometimes a bit naive, often full of pathos, putting at stake the events that can change the face of the world if we don't stand up to evil. There are not many shades of gray here, there is a lot of black and white, but the story is presented in such a way that you feel involved. It's a bit like a Call of Duty campaign dressed in fantasy RPG robes - not everyone will like it, but people who like simplicity and epicness will get something like this. It's like a really tasty hamburger.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Electronic Arts Inc., 2024

And I do not agree that it was that much different previously. That's why I'm replaying the old installments and even the first game is exactly like that - just with a different combat system, with a different idea on how it was made. Veilguard adapts to today's realities, trying to draw new players into the world, while still maintaining plenty of nods to the fans of the series. I don't feel that Veilguard will be a breakthrough game, nor will it probably be the best game in Bioware's history. Despite this, it became a must-have point for me in October shopping list, because Bioware abandoned many of the Inquisition's ills that bothered me. I simply like their games and I have the impression that the studio has taken a very big step back, and then took two steps ahead and reached the place of an imperfect game, but one that ignites the imagination.