Review
Played on: Xbox Series XReleased: 2024
It would be ten years after Inquisition in 2014, review here, before we finally received a Dragon Age sequel again. What feels like a franchise that suffers from too long hiatuses before releases with changing development teams and a reluctant Electronic Arts being indecisive about putting the effort into the series, it’s more than positive to see a new entry.
I’m reviewing Veilguard a while after release, having just finished it, the original release was late last year, and I’ve been working myself slowly through it. We now know that this is probably the last Dragon Age entry for an indefinite time ahead, with sales numbers not reaching expectations and BioWare workers complaining about the franchise be put at a second behind Mass effect in priority by EA.
Nevertheless, I’ve solidly enjoyed my time with Veilguard and that's what counts the most at the end of the day. It’s a massively overlooked franchise with a ton of potential and this last entry is more than a worthy swan song.
Let’s take a closer look!
A noticeable change in design from Inquisition, which suffered the open world syndrome, is a narrower and more linear design to Veilguard’s worlds. There's a clear focus on shrinking the size of each map and focusing on its design. Reminiscent of how Dragon Age 1 & 2’s worlds felt like, but with a little more freedom. The quality over quantity design really pays off and exploring feels interesting and rewarding, rather than endless roaming about.
Environments are varied with each location sporting a distinct design. There are lovely autumn clad forests, cold and hostile snowy mountains, as well as lovely beaches with palms and castle ruins. Even though they're not massive in size, they have a ton of item chests and secrets to discover. I enjoy the smaller maps with corridors leading to larger areas; it's a lovely throwback to simpler times back on the Xbox 360.
Gameplay sees a massive revamp, with a more direct and faster feel to combat. Leaning into typical melee combat styles, with a hint of Souls-like parrying and dodging. I played as a rogue and found the gameplay satisfyingly nimble and speedy. Allowing me to delve deep into my preferred weapon, which is a bow, I could almost play it as a shooter! Either firing rapidly to deplete armour and barriers but also powering up a critical shot which pushes back and takes a lot of damage.
Allowing players to choose their preferred fighting style and make them so diverse is testament to gameplay having a strong focus in development. There's a more dynamic feel to it, less scripted into certain animations, although underlying there's probably a precise mechanic to working out attack points, critical hits and enemy levels. On the surface you don’t see that and as a result it feels less restricted and fast. Probably the series high point when it comes to combat; balancing tactics and raw fighting into a satisfying result.
Controlling the team feels more intuitive and quicker than before. Reminding me of how the first Mass Effect trilogy let you control the team; at any time, you can freeze the gameplay and choose between special attacks, but at the same time you can choose which ones your teammates use too. Furthermore, you can combine certain attacks from your teammates for super attacks that deal lots of damage. The good old, primer and detonator combo!
It's fast and satisfying system to navigate and allows the player to quickly understand what attack combination to use or ask for healing instantly. From here you can activate runes too, these have passive boost, but also an active one that requires activation from the ability menu. It's significant step up from the old Dragon Age titles!
Dialogue has a modern and unformal conversation style, often sprinkled with humour. Somehow, it consistently feels a little awkward and "too cool for school" combined with the classic medieval styled world for me. The script is lacking something, there’s just so much filler and waffling mindlessly with teammates, veering into bad writing more often than I wish to admit.
An obvious annoyance is the need by the developers to consistently repeat and explain with baby steps what is happening in the story and repeated reminder of the the task at hand and that you-need-to-do-side-missions. Plus “we are a team, a team that needs to do team stuff and we all love teamwork”. I get it, I get it.
Taht said, there are some charming friendship dialogues to be had. If you want that kind of thing Veilguard offers a lot of cool dialogue options and friendship missions to really get to know the rest of the team. Romancing is possible with any gender or characters, with some of them even having romance within themselves!
There’s a varied roster of main companions to choose from, with diversity in personalities, combat classes and appearance. I personally would’ve liked Varric to be a part of the team; I miss him chatting away as you explore the world. He remains as the main narrator which is wonderful. Another change is that you no longer can take control of your companions like the earlier titles, which in turn allowed you to try out their classes, powers and combat styles.
Technically, I love the visuals! There's a wonderfully soft and organic look overall. Lighting is stunning, highlighting detail in foliage and buildings. Especially Arlathan forest is stunning, with autumn colours, leaves falling from trees and light shafts peaking though trees. Each map has this fantastic fantasy design to them.
Same goes for the characters with amazing skin detail and I’m constantly blown away by how incredible the hair physics are. They reside in the same design vein as the modern Resident Evil titles; where they balance a realistic look combined with a slight CGI movie style. It goes so well together and makes the characters look amazing.
For the console version there are two visual options to choose between. Performance, which I prefer for responsive is movement and combat, which dips down to 720p. Resulting in a noticeably soft picture, but there's a ton of magic going on with visuals enhancements to compensate the low resolution. The result is a satisfying image to look at, free of jaggies and shimmering edges.
The fidelity option, on the other hand, sees a jump to a sharper 1080p image, with a more refinement in the smaller detail. I looks sharper but retains the softness to the point where I decided to stick with performance. If you can still stomach 30fps, this is probably your choice for the added sharpness.
I'm a little divided in my overall opinion. On one side the gameplay, visuals and smaller scale of Veilguard is excellent, truly hitting the high notes of quality and going back to the design of the first two games in the series. I can't stress enough how damn fun it is mid-combat!
On the other side, the story is conveyed in a stumbling manner, lacks something to pull me in and waffles about in awkward dialogue. From a company like BioWare I expect something better on the latter, there's too much leaning back on your character Rook being a newbie and not knowing what to do. The older games felt like a stronger and more decisive leading role. That said, the ending hours of the game are awesome, and really helps end the franchise on a high note! They should have used this type of storytelling throughout the main quests.
It’s a shorter take on the RPG genre for sure, compare Witcher 3’s 120+ hours to this which is roughly 50-60, maybe down to 40 if you skip levelling everyone up and doing friendship missions. However, it feels like something that should've hit the 30–35-hour considering the story.
Overall, each Dragon Age title has its strong and weaker sides and Veilguard is no exception. Perhaps the Achilles heel of the franchise, not knowing exactly where they wanted to go with it through four titles spread out over a long-time span. However, they’re all solid releases and excellent additions to the RPG genre. Veilguard does a lot of changes to return to the original formula in a modern way and succeeds at most of them.
It's a modern RPG classic to check out if you're in the hunt for something special. There’s not that many games in genre quite like Dragon Age, plus it's a stunning looking world to explore! Now, rest easy my wonderful franchise, please return.
