DRAGON AGE THE VEILGUARD REVIEW: A GAME I WAS DISSAPOINTED NOT TO LOVE
platform: pc, sTEAM DECK
HOURS PLAYED: 49.5
When my long journey with Dragon Age: The Veilguard came to an end, I was left with the task of figuring out how I would go about putting Rook, my companions, and the world of Thedas behind me. When a game can leave me with that kind of emotional conflict, then I would thoroughly consider it to be a good game. So, why do I look back at my time with this game with such mixed emotions? Veilguard makes earnest efforts to be an emotionally resonant and mechanically dynamic experience, but feels as if the success it achieves in each of these aspects is always accompanied by a frustrating misstep. Where Veilguard succeeds creating an authentic story surrounding the burden of leadership, it falls short of supporting that experience by refusing to implement any sort of confrontation in dialogue choices. Where it succeeds in creating diverse classes supported by interesting combat abilities, it leaves much of the potential for that system on the table with repetitive combat encounters that never force you to use those abilities in evolving ways. If we dig deeper, can we find that despite the frustrating push and pull of success and missteps, that Dragon Age: The Veilguard did enough to be remembered for what it did right rather than what it didn’t?
Story: Seeing The World Through Rook’s Eyes
I stepped into Veilguard without any prior history with the Dragon Age series which presented a couple of potential options for what my journey could look like. On the one hand, going into the latest chapter of a storied franchise like this without the familiarity of what came before it could result in a checkered experience. On the other hand, there lies the potential for blind discovery uninhibited by expectations that could distort my experience. Though I recognize the importance of how the prior games are connected to Veilguard’s story, at the very least, I would let it pique my interest into its predecessors. Ultimately, I chose to take this game’s story for what it was, go in blind, and replace whatever story expectations the outside world placed on it with my own which allowed me to become fully immersed in seeing this world through Rook’s eyes.
The events of this story are set in motion by Solas, an Elven God who at one point led a struggle against the tyranny of the other Elven Gods. By creating a barrier that separated those Gods and their raw magical power from the mortal world, Solas was victorious in his fight – but at too high a price. As a result of shutting the Elven Gods away the Elven race lost their powers and immortality, something that Solas would eventually come to regret being the catalyst for. To fix his mistakes and free himself from insurmountable guilt, he decided he would destroy the Veil so that the raw magic trapped within it could return the Elven race back to its former glory – but at a cost that would have a cataclysmic impact on the world. When Varric, Rook, Harding, and Neve’s attempt to stop Solas from completing the ritual goes sideways, two of the nine Elven Gods escape their prison and begin moving to reclaim the world for themselves using a terrible blight. Now, Rook must recruit and lead a team of warriors against seemingly impossible odds to bring down Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, the two escaped Elven Gods.
Bioware nailed the story set up with an introduction featuring a high stakes premise supported by characters boasting more than enough intrigue to carry its plot. What’s more, with Rook being ill prepared to recruit and lead a team capable of opposing the Gods, the opportunity arises for the player to mold them into the leader they want them to be. Throughout my adventure, I felt the wealth of tough situations that required tough decision making made the task of sticking to my convictions feel truly authentic. I wanted my Rook to be an empathetic and diplomatic leader, so I consistently chose dialogue options that diverted confrontation in favor of a diplomatic approach..in most cases. Unfortunately though, the decisions I made that had an actual impact on the game’s story were few and far between.
From small conversational squabbles to heated confrontations, hardly any of the dialogue choices Bioware presents the player with have any real impact on the story and its events. For example, in a very early conversation, the team is discussing what to do next in response to Solas’s botched ritual. Harding gives a passionate plea for the team to act immediately to find the Gods, arguing that if they wait, countless people will needlessly die as a result of their inaction. Neve however, argues that it would be best to investigate the Gods first to gain an understanding of what they are going up against – thus increasing their odds for success. Though Harding’s emotional plea resonated with me at first, I decided to side with Neve’s more logical approach. By making this decision, I feared I would suffer a backlash from Harding, and that her developing faith in Rook as a leader would be impacted. However, Harding never put up a fight, in fact, she abandoned her plan so quickly that her passionate plea from just a few moments prior felt like it never happened. Veilguard is filled with moments like this – heated conversations that build tension, only for that tension to sizzle out in a disappointing fashion regardless of your dialogue choice.
It came as a bit of a surprise then, when at the midpoint of the story, Rook is forced to make a decision that would have a massive impact on both the team and the entire world. It felt as if Bioware were attempting to make up for the lack of impact my decision making had up to that point. By waiting until the middle of the game to do this, I felt that the entire decision making system and experience felt imbalanced, especially given that after this point, aside from end game decisions, impactful choices were still few and far in between. However, despite the fact that I don’t love where this fork in the road was placed, I will say that its impact on the story was very well executed, as how the events following your decision unfold in thoughtful, exciting ways. In any case, despite the game’s shortcomings with dialogue choices, I still felt Bioware crafted an experience thorough enough to let me see the world through Rook’s eyes through thoughtful and plentiful dialogue choices, even if their lack of impact left much to be desired.
Story: A Cast (Mostly) Worth Remembering
In order to build a team capable of standing against the Gods, Rook must search for those who are strong in their convictions and unwavering in their ideals. The journey to build such a team takes Rook far and wide throughout the world of Thedas, and as a result, they form a group with a diverse set of backgrounds. In regards to gathering the crew, I actually enjoyed this process, because it felt like I was actually earning their companionship rather than having it handed to me. For example, when you first meet Grey Warden Davrin, he agrees to join Rook’s cause if they in turn assist him in taking out an adversary hell bent on kidnapping his Griffins. As a Grey Warden, Davrin is already working to remove the blight from the world, but Rook must work to further align Davrin with their goal of taking out the Gods as well, as not every Grey Warden believes that the Gods are actually responsible for the blight.
With so much of an emphasis placed on gaining your teammate’s trust, the relationship that is built upon that trust is paramount to how effectively the player is able to connect to that character. In this regard, Veilguard achieved mixed results, as I felt I was able to connect with some characters more than others. Having chosen the Shadow Dragon background, I was easily able to connect with Neve, a Minrathous investigator of the same origin. Not only because our shared background yielded deeper dialogue and quest options, but because I genuinely enjoyed watching her journey as a passionate investigator determined to do whatever it takes to keep her home of Docktown free from corruption unfold. And though he wasn’t a companion, Rook’s relationship with Solas was a constant maze I had to navigate, as it was hard to know if at any given moment he was truly trying to help me to take down the Gods, or cleverly deceiving me for his own gain.
Where I was able to connect with Neve, Solas, and others through engaging dialogue or a thorough connection formed by a common background, I couldn’t say the same for Bellara. Bellara’s awkward, childlike nature made it difficult to take her seriously, as she would often stumble her way through conversations with responses that often felt tedious to wade through. Her character commits the cardinal sin of RPG’s by setting a bad first impression, and in doing so, pushed me to write her off very early in the game. Though my perception of her did improve throughout the game owing to some truly interesting character development, I just couldn’t seem to shake my dislike for her overly quirky personality that never seemed to fit in with the more serious tone of the story.
While the quality of my connections with various members of my team were hit or miss, I felt that they were much more consistent with Veilguard’s factions. The conflict with the First Warden over the blight felt tense and authentic. Assisting the Antivan Crows in their fight in Treviso was a satisfying fight from the shadows to root out corruption. In moments where I felt Veilguard failed to help me form connections with my companions through direct dialogue, I felt interactions with the various factions they were connected with helped make up the difference. With that said, though I wish I could have felt equally connected with each member of my team, I still felt the team as a whole was quite memorable.
Combat: A Cool System That Is Rarely Tested
Whenever I play an RPG I typically go the sword and board warrior class route — or something similar to it. The wealth of combat class options presented in Veigluard inspired me to switch it up a bit and go the Mage route. As a mage, you’re equipped with a primary sorcery staff for medium to long range spell casting, and a mage knife for close range spell combat. Mages can access a handful of projectile style spells supported by a variety of elemental types including electric, fire, necromatic, and ice. Mixing and matching different elements between your staff and mage knife provided an opportunity for some interesting combat approaches. On the battlefield, combat feels satisfying to carry out. Landing a lightning shot on an enemy causing them to come to a standstill so that you can go in for heavier damage results in a genuinely fun combat loop. Furthermore, my special cool down abilities felt truly powerful, making the act of holding out until they’re ready to be launched a rewarding task.
When you stack your companion’s combat abilities on to your own, the experience rises to another level. At first, I was having trouble sinking my teeth into the combat system, but the “AHA” moment for me came when I finally figured out the formula for not only using my abilities in conjunction with my companion’s, but when I figured out how to time team attacks in a way that could turn the tide of battle. During an early encounter where Rook, Neve, and Harding are outnumbered by Darkspawn, I pulled up my action menu to see how I could use everyone’s abilities together. That’s when I noticed that if I combined one of Harding’s cold down abilities with Neve’s, then it would result in a “detonation”.
This resulted in freezing the Darkspawn in place and hitting them with a blast that took a sizable chunk out of their health bar. Shortly after, I could hear Harding from the other side of the battlefield yelling “someone needs to follow up!”, prompting me to capitalize with my own attack which just so happened to have also just come off its cool down. It was a perfect moment of team synchronicity, and from there I realized how finely tuned the team combat system really is. However, where the moment to moment and team combat systems shine, Bioware unfortunately does little to put these systems to the test.
About 10 hours into my playthrough, I started to feel that I had seen all there was to see when it came to combat encounters. Even as the game continued to introduce enemy types, none of them required me to rethink my combat strategy. Whether I was facing a common darkspawn, the Archdemons of the Gods themselves, or anything in between, none of these enemies forced me to adapt to their skill sets – and that’s because at their core, they’re all the same. I was able to easily get away with using the same elemental magic, paired with the same team combo attacks regardless of the enemy which felt like a huge let down for a game that was clearly trying to shoot for combat and enemy variety. In addition to that, the fact that there’s not only a skill tree for Rook, but that there are also robust skill trees for each character feels redundant given that the myriad abilities you can acquire make no tangible difference on the battlefield other than visual splendor. I’m disappointed because I actually liked the moment to moment combat, I just hate that it got very old very fast owing to repetitive combat encounters.
Technical Performance
The majority of my playthrough took place on a PC sporting an RTX 4060 GPU with an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D CPU, while a small portion was played on Steam Deck. On Deck, the game runs smoothly, as I was able to achieve a high of around 40 FPS. However, the game itself looks incredibly washed out, despite configuring the settings to optimize the visuals. Of course, with this being a graphically intense AAA title, I didn’t expect its performance on Steam Deck to blow me away, but the intensity of the washed out blurriness made it borderline unplayable for me – especially in visually dense moments. On my PC, generally speaking, the game looks and runs well with settings set to high and with NVDIA DLSS with frame generation turned on. However, while I didn’t experience any crashes and very little stuttering, I noticed that my FPS would dip considerably in certain areas. For example, when venturing through Arlathan forest, an area of incredibly dense foliage, my FPS would drop to 40. While hanging out in the Light House Crossing, it would jump to around 100 FPS. This didn't in any way ruin my overall experience, but made taking in the beautifully crafted Arlathan Forest a bit of a bummer. Outside of location specific FPS drops, frame rate performance was solid, staying between 80 FPS during intense combat and 100-105 FPS in cutscenes.
Verdict
As I stated at the top of the review, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was a game that I thoroughly enjoyed but left me with mixed feelings. The most heartbreaking thing about it in my opinion is how pedestrian its approach to all of its systems. The writing, while not perfect, was certainly engaging for me, but Bioware’s refusal to take any sort of confrontational risk left me feeling unfulfilled as a player. The combat system is propped up with tons of potential with finely tuned team battle dynamics, but that potential is never reached owing to a lack of enemy variety that never demanded that I shake up my strategy to overcome its challenges. To Veilguard’s credit, it did well enough with its lore construction to pique my interest in what came before it, but not enough for me to want to revisit this entry.
