Have been playing for seven hours now Dragon Age: Veiled WardensI think it’s fair to say that so far, the game’s marketing messaging hasn’t quite hit the ground running.
When I saw the game at the 2024 Summer Games Festival, I was left with the impression that this was an RPG series that had been chopped, hidden, and removed to satisfy an action-driven market. reduce. But after playing it for a long time, that feeling fades away: Veiled Guard is far more complex than EA’s marketing to date has let on.
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Back in June, I compared the latest entry in Dragon Age to Final Fantasy XVI, another sequel in the series. Really pretty good But obviously, this is also difficult to cope with the legacy of its series and the shadow brought by games such as “God of War 2018”. I absolutely couldn’t believe that moment of experiencing the final, complete thing.
Let me put it this way. “Dragon Age: Origins” is considered the spiritual successor to “Baldur’s Gate”. “Dragon Age 2” structurally borrows many elements from the first “Mass Effect”. Dragon Age: Inquisition offers a post-Skyrim, pre-Witcher 3 open world.
Veiled’s biggest inspirations, at least structurally, seem to be Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. A deeper, more faithful RPG progression dedication to D&D.
Let’s first talk about the overall structure of the game. This is still very much within BioWare’s wheelhouse. This time, your version of Normandy or Sky Fortress is called the Lighthouse. Here you’ll hang out with your companions, develop your relationships, craft, take stock, and fully exercise your leadership skills as “Rook,” the de facto boss of the Veiled Wardens. So far, it’s still so familiar.
When you leave the lighthouse, you’ll go to one of two types of areas. The first type are linear stages that advance the story (most of them are action-driven, but I played at least one stage that was more focused on grim atmosphere), while the second type are functional secondary hubs (think Think Mass Effect’s Castle or Omega) This is home to the general hangout, with a variety of friendly faces, shops, side quests, and battles all in one.
The developers are keen not to make any actual number-size comparisons with Inquisition, but broadly speaking, it’s realistic to say that while Inquisition has some truly massive areas, Veiled Keeper focuses on smaller, carefully curated areas – But there are many of them.
During my day playing the game, I saw a lot of areas that seemed to come from the first act of the game or around there. I should also note that I did see some areas being cleverly repurposed – a city was first visited as a peaceful prosperous town as a leisure hub, and then after one of my choices put it under siege, Revisited as linear action stages. And then, afterwards, as a broken town trying to rebuild. There’s a clever asset economy here, although the way it’s deployed isn’t cheap.
You can feel that the developers didn’t want the more linear action stages to be just a charge of enemies – a lot of the work was done through the visual storytelling to make the experience come alive in each stage. One of the missions sees the characters exploring submerged ruins in a magical bubble underwater (weirdly, I also saw this scene in Expedition 33 at Gamescom). Outside the barrier, fish and aquatic plants shimmered in the mist. In some places, the magical barrier holding back the seawater has reached breaking point, with water dripping dangerously from cracks in its surface.
In addition to combat, areas like this are filled with mini-puzzles. You know the type; destroy a crystal to unlock a door, or another type of crystal you need to escort to activate some magical device to open the next location you need to advance to. Maybe some vicious blight needs to be slain to create a path, or a ballista can blast a hole in the wall. It’s a simple thing, but it will keep you busy and break up the fight. This is the flow of many action-adventure games – but what sets BioWare’s offering apart is that it all fits in with getting to know the cast of characters and making the story truly your own.
Like I said, all of this feels a lot like the second and third Mass Effect games. But the fourth Dragon Age entry stands out in one way: the nuts and bolts of a crisp, satisfying role-playing system. In short, there’s a lot going on here. At times, this can have the feel of a full-blown action game; sometimes it even seems a bit Devil May Cry. The behavior also feels legitimate and satisfying at every turn. That being said, behind this complete RPG lies Braveheart.
I probably should have seen this coming. When I spoke with The Veilguard’s director earlier this summer, she compared what they’d built to the beloved Sphere and License Grid settings from Final Fantasy 10 and 12. When we spoke again at this preview event, we ended up discussing Xenosaga. She is the real deal. But seeing her RPG leanings expressed in the game is another thing entirely than just hearing about it. It’s there, it’s real – and it opens up entirely new possibilities for every combat encounter or every “linear” action phase.
The Mage’s skill grid, for example, has over a hundred skills spread across six subsections – and that’s not counting the three mutually exclusive class specialization trees at the extremes of the different build directions you can go. A network of interconnected abilities depending on which path tree you take, which specialization you want, and what kind of combat experience you want to have.
Mages can focus on abilities that allow you to control the battlefield and trap enemies by blocking their movement options. Or you can become a spellblade, mixing melee and magic by pairing your magic wand with a magic dagger for close range attacks. There are many options. All three classes (Fighter, Mage, and Rogue) are similar in breadth, so these are three large, unique player character skill trees that can be played across multiple games.
This isn’t exactly earth-shattering innovation—it’s something we’ve seen before. That said, its mechanical depth rarely matches that of RPGs, which frame the rest of the game in a more approachable, tight action-adventure fashion. Often, the baby of mechanical role-playing depth is thrown out with the bathwater – but that’s not the case here.
Crucially, this is an RPG system with enough depth that you should be able to crack open the game like an egg. Of course, you don’t have to do this – but for the min/max players among you, this is clearly a game where you can carefully build game-breaking gameplay between the skill trees and gear that’s on offer. It’s the kind of game where a new piece of armor you find might come with some bonus, which will let you craft an entirely new build designed to maximize its bonuses. Veilguard is designed for this too – making skill point respecs and refunds easy and unlimited, encouraging wild experimentation.
So, there is meat on the bones. Don’t let those trailers featuring playful, sexy characters who have the romance and chopping battles you want fool you. That style is there, yeah. But so is the essence.
When I also call this thing style, I want to be clear: it’s not all superficial. The characters, the world, the narrative—they’re all substantial, too. On the one hand, it’s courageous to take this collection to new places. Some of the sharp edges have been gently shaved off – sometimes in the form of lovely quality-of-life changes, like the in-game map, which makes it absolutely clear when a companion has something new to say, but sometimes more so Controversial simplifications, like dialogue options now basically always boil down to “nice”, “sarcastic” or “tough” options.
Of course, some things cannot be judged through a day’s practice. The developers say they’re proud to be building the game around companions this time around – they call them the “weight-bearing backbone” of the entire experience. It is explained that the logic is that BioWare is really good When it comes to being companions – so why not build the entire game around them specifically? This makes sense. It can’t be judged based on just one part of the game – but for what it’s worth, after spending a day with them, I did start to feel like this might be the best Dragon Age ensemble yet. This story also piqued my interest.
The highlight of the show, though, is still the gameplay. Combat feels good – Rogue is absurd. The RPG system has a surprising amount of depth. The overall game performed beyond my expectations.
In fact, by far the biggest sin of the game is that the jump and interact buttons are the same thing – which is what I hate the most. But I can forgive that. Especially if the rest of the experience lives up to the first long practice. October is rolling.
“Dragon Age: Veiled Guard” will be released on October 31st for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. It’s priced at $69.99/£69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and $59.99/£49.99 on PC, with various special editions available.
