Dragon Age: The Veilguard review: Very pretty... What was I doing again?

I have been on and off with Dragon Age and BioWare for a while. I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition, and I’m quite fond of Mass Effect 2 and 3, and especially the remake of the trilogy. I’ve been curious to see what BioWare would do with Dragon Age: The Veilguard as my first taste of new BioWare in years. My verdict? A little stale. Competent, but without something truly intriguing to keep me locked in. This is formulaic BioWare set in a fantasy story with the feels of a summer movie, and while I think it’s a very well put-together game, I ultimately couldn’t find the oomph that could push it over into greatness.

Elven gods threatening the world or something

Dragon Age: The Veilguard takes place ten years after the events of Inquisition. I will say right away that if you played Inquisition, then you can go in and fiddle with the choices you made there to change Veilguard’s story and the state of its world and characters a bit, which is always a cool touch from BioWare. Otherwise, the default story sets you on a course to chase down the elven god known as the Dread Wolf before he tears down the Veil, which keeps the spiritual world away from reality as they know it and will unleash demons on the unsuspecting populace.

With the help of the dwarf rogue Varric, dwarf ranger Harding, human mage Neve, and our own created character Rook, we stop the Dread Wolf’s ritual, but it causes some bad side effects. Two worse gods than him escape the Veil and their plan is to unleash the full power of a dark force known as the Blight upon the world. Eventually, your character takes the reins as team leader in a mission to stop the gods.

On paper that sounds like pretty high stakes, but I was put off by the tone of Dragon Age: The Veilguard right away. For a good portion of this game, everyone was way too quippy, seemingly waiting for their “well, that just happened” moment. They carry out their mission, but it was few and far between that I ever got the vibe that they felt the weight of what they were fighting. It’s like having a fantasy campaign where everyone is playing bard class and all of them are trying to get in their schtick while the world is supposed to be on the brink of apocalypse. It gets a bit better with time, and more interesting characters like Lucanis eventually help to add reasonable moods and narratives to the mix, but it’s a long road to that with not enough pay off in my opinion.

I can’t speak ill of the environments and locations you go to, though. The Veilguard is filled to the brim with interesting and beautiful places to explore from Dock Town to Treviso to the Lighthouse you make as your base. Every locale in this game is bustling with life and beauty and they were fun to explore. I felt like the music was trying to match that summer blockbuster movie vibe, so it’s often majestic, but I wouldn’t call it particularly memorable. It serves its purpose and not much more.

Dragon Age Melee

When it comes to gameplay in Dragon Age, I feel it’s quite well put together and smooth playing, but I have to question the placement of some of the pieces. Character creation is fine. You get to pick from elf, qunari, dwarf, and human and there is a massive collection of tools to make your character look exactly as you want. I wanted a roguish mage and ended up on sort of an “if Adam Driver was a wizard” vibe. Then you get to pick your class, your background, factions, and more. I was pretty satisfied with the whole process.

There are only three classes - Warrior, Rogue, and Mage - but they also have very extensive skill trees that let you specialize in a variety of ways. For instance, Mage has corners of its skill tree that focus on death magic, ice magic, and lightning magic. Specializing down a certain path is key to getting the best skills out of your character, but you can also respec your skill points pretty freely, so players should be able to find a style that satisfies. Your companions also have cool skill trees with branching paths where you can specialize their skills to do unique things, such as Lucanis being able to bleed or poison targets based on his specialty.

Combat is where I get a little bored with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It’s very action-oriented, which wouldn’t be a bad thing on its own, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so heavily that the teammates were resources and nothing more in a BioWare game. They move about, do little attacks, and support, but their main purpose is for you to call up the command menu and select their skills when they’re ready. Mixing their skills with your own is important because in this game, certain status effects can cause skills with other status effects to trigger a big chain reaction explosion on enemies.

That’s cool, using my skills in tandem with small attacks is fine, but allies feeling like little more than an extension of my overall hotbar is kind of humdrum. Most fights boiled down to me hitting my first spell, casting my teammate’s triggering skill for a chain reaction, and then trying to stagger foes for a finisher or back off and spam small attacks until our skills were ready again. The only real difference was in whether or not I could brute force a foe or if they had armor or shields that made me have to prioritize dodging before I could belt sand them with skills again. Rinse and repeat, and it gets old fast.

There are some cool aspects of questing outside of combat. Narrative-changing dialogue is back, as are romances, and some of the choices you make in The Veilguard are interesting. In fact, there’s a whole faction system in the game, and with the threat of the gods, a big part of your journey is making sure to support those factions so they’ll support you against the Blight. Doing quests for a faction, buying gear from them, and generally supporting them raises their strength and support of you, which comes in big handy down the line when it’s time to go after the biggest opponents. I just wish the characters, combat, and vibe provided a better ride to where the fun can be found.

The safest BioWare game

The biggest thing that bugs me about Dragon Age: The Veilguard is that it feels like the safest possible BioWare game. It follows a formula that I have learned to recognize since Mass Effect 2: Get a quest, go to a place, fight enemies in sporadic arenas along the way, fight a boss, do some critical dialogue, and move on to the next, with slight variations along the way. It’s a big river with the illusion of explorative opportunities and just a few branching canals. I think that would be fine if the characters were more compelling, but the quippy, non-serious vibe just feels at odds with the narrative. What we end up with is a game that is technically sound, and very beautiful, but fails to get its hooks in where it counts, and I feel like among other great RPGs that have come out just this year, Veilguard will have a hard time standing out.

This review is based on an early PS5 copy provided by the publisher. Dragon Age: The Veilguard comes out on October 31, 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.