Dragon Age: The Veilguard Without Fully Open World. Devs Bet on Quests
Dragon Age: The Veilguard won't allow exploring everywhere, as the developers rely on hand-designed quests.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard will focus on quests, not a fully open world. We learned this from a recent hour-long presentation by BioWare studio, and now it has been reiterated by the game's director Corinne Busche in an interview for IGN.
As the dev explains, the world of The Veilguard will allow you to visit fantastic places, and the game will feature secrets (including optional ones) and branching paths. However, the studio felt that basing the story on hand-crafted and carefully selected missions would provide the best narrative experience:
Yeah, so it is a mission-based game. Everything is hand-touched, hand-crafted, very highly curated. We believe that's how we get the best narrative experience, the best moment-to-moment experience. However, along the way, these levels that we go to do open up, some of them have more exploration than others. Alternate branching paths, mysteries, secrets, optional content you're going to find and solve. So it does open up, but it is a mission-based, highly curated game.
So it seems that the developers tried to reconcile an engaging, defined plot with the possibility of exploration. Some missions will be closely monitored, especially those involving companions, limiting exploration, while in others, we will have more freedom to traverse locations.
Characters with a background, but not in the background
The character arcs of companions will be a crucial, though not the sole, factor affecting their relationships with the main character and other characters. Of course, allies will start the game with their own background story and personality, but throughout the game we will make decisions that will affect their fate and character. And, obviously, romantic options.
Furthermore, Busche suggested that we may lose some of our companions if we take them on particularly dangerous missions. So it seems that companions will be able to die and we won't be able to bring them back to life.
Now in what we saw there [during the game showcase], obviously no one died. In a situation like that they can get injured, they can influence how they think about you. If they're ready to hit the field with you, it does get more dangerous. We might lose some people along the way.
The relationships and experiences of companions also affect their combat abilities. The fight itself is supposed to be quite extensive, although for now Busche didn't want to reveal too much. It will be crucial to focus on weaknesses and strengths in confrontations and use the right skills.
Dragon Ages
We have already mentioned that prior to the presentation of the gameplay for DA: The Veilguard, it was confirmed that apart from the familiar heroes, players will have the opportunity to bring an old acquaintance from the Inquisition into the game, which will have an impact on the storyline. Clearly, this isn't the only decision like that.
Busche emphasized that 10 years have passed since the release of the last full-fledged Dragon Age and during this time players could forget about the decisions they made. Therefore, the character creator in The Veilguard will allow you (through tarot cards) to recall previous events from the series and recreate choices from those titles.
This is important because the Veilguard most likely won't allow old save files to be uploaded through the Dragon Age Keep service. Busche also confirmed that the new one Dragon Age won't require an internet connection, allowing you to play completely offline.
