The Dragon Age series had abandoned for a decade.
A decade! It’s a really long time for a franchise, but, thankfully, the wait is now over. A game once subtitled “Dreadwolf” releases on October 31st as Dragon Age: The Veilguard, almost exactly ten years after the previous game in the series, DA: Inquisition.
Let’s take a look at what you can expect from The Veilguard, because it does some things differently from the previous games.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard – new and returning features
Action-oriented combat
The Dragon Age series has been moving away from DA: Origins’ fully tactical, Real-Time with Pause, combat system for a while, and Veilguard is where the series decides to become fully a tactical action game.
Whether you play as Mage, Rogue, or Warrior (the classic DA classes), you’re going to spend most time clicking away at whatever button you assign to the “attack” action, with an occasional dip into tactical menu to activate specific abilities.
It’s quite reminiscent of the way Mass Effect did things, and it’s also not the last time you’re going to see BioWare’s SF franchise being mentioned in this text.
The replacement for this smaller degree of tactical complexity is a more direct influence of how your character fights, with combos, melee and ranged attacks, and blocks and dodges themed appropriately to your chosen class.
4th main game, 4th brand new player character
Every game in the series brings in a new player character, and after the Warden, the Champion, and the Inquisitor, this time we’re getting Rook.
Rook’s precise role and reason for involvement are best left to be discovered in-game, but what can be said right now, is that there’s a decent bit of customization involved.
- We’ve mentioned the three core classes already, each said to branch out into three specializations.
- The DAI spread of playable lineages returns, with humans, elves, dwarves, and qunari being available.
- You’re also getting a choice of faction Rook might be representing, including the Grey Wardens and Antivan Crows. There are even lesser known groups like the Veil Jumpers who only appeared in non-game Dragon Age media.
- Visual character customization is also available, of course
Several difficulty levels
In order to cater to different playstyles, The Veilguard will offer several difficulty options:
- Storyteller for people mostly in it for the plot
- Keeper for people who prefer combat to be guided by equipment and team composition, rather than reflexes
- Adventurer for people who do want their reflexes to also matter, it’s the balanced difficulty
- Underdog to those who are up for a challenge that can be solved with good planning
- Nightmare for those, who want to truly test their mastery of The Veilguard’s various systems
There’s also the sixth option, called “Unbound”, which will let you adjust various aspects of difficulty to your liking. It’s further supplemented by robust control, gameplay, and display settings and accessibility options.
Relation to previous entries
From what’s been shown about The Veilguard so far, a lot of its plot is going to be strongly related to the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition, with special attention to its final DLC, Tresspasser.
Playing the previous entries most likely won’t be necessary to enjoy Veilguard’s story, but some beats and returning characters might fall a little bit flat if it’s going to be your first interaction with the series.
Every Dragon Age game builds on the foundation of its predecessors, which over three games (and a fair amount of supplemental media) has created a robust and intricate setting.
Hopefully, The Veilguard will offer a good in-game codex for newcomers to refer to when in doubt.
You won’t fight alone
While the game is more action-like, you will be accompanied by allies like before. You won’t have direct control of them, however.
Instead, they’re mostly going to do their own thing and occasionally you’ll tell them to fire off an ability that primes or sets off a devastating skill combo. The team is also going to be smaller, with up to two active companions, compared to four in previous games.
Team-building exercises
It wouldn’t really be a BioWare game if you couldn’t form bonds with your allies, so, of course, you’ll be able to do so in The Veilguard as well. It’s even going to be mechanically beneficial as one of the best ways to level your allies up. Grinding EXP won’t be anywhere near as efficient as just putting in some R&R time with your crew.
That’s also a great place to name drop the companions, so here goes:
- Harding – a dwarven scout, and a familiar face if you’ve played DA Inquisition.
- Davrin – a Grey Warden warrior whose companion is a juvenile griffon
- Bellara – a mage who’s into tinkering and seeking the knowledge of the ancient elves
- Taash – a Qunari adventurer with interesting draconic talents
- Lucanis – a dapper assassin who has a special talent for dealing with mages
- Emmrich – a scholar and necromancer, but not a malicious one
- Neve – an investigator keen on ice and time magic
Save importing
Although The Veilguard will allow you to define certain things about the state of the world left after completing DAI, it won’t be as extensive as in previous entries.
Reportedly, it will mostly involve specifying whom, if anybody, the Inquisitor romanced, what happened to the Inquisition, and the attitude towards Solas.
World structure
One of the biggest departures from the series’ usual style is that the open world is pretty much gone, replaced by dedicated missions with somewhat explorable maps. If it sounds like Mass Effect 2 and 3, you’re not wrong.
It’s been a hot second since a story-driven RPG had a mission-driven structure, and hopefully The Veilguard makes the best of it. It can certainly help with managing the pacing of the plot.
Interdimensional HQ
Shepard had the Normandy, The Inquisition had the Skyhold, and The Veilguard has The Lighthouse, safely tucked into an interdimensional space that’s going to be quite familiar to series veterans: the Crossroads.
It’ll have plenty of space for your companions to get comfortable, enough secrets to stay interesting for a longer time, and it’s going to make leaving on missions quite easy thanks to ancient elven artifacts called Eluvians. A perfect HQ.
Old friends
Returning characters are a staple of the series and The Veilguard isn’t going to abandon this tradition.
The trailers have already revealed a decent number of appearances, including scout Harding and the adventurous storyteller Varrick, but the full roster of characters making a comeback is left to be seen on one’s own, to minimize spoilers.
Mysteries unveiled
This article certainly doesn’t exhaust the topic, but if you’re on the fence regarding Dragon Age: The Veilguard (it’s really tempting to abbreviate it as DAVe) this might be just what you needed to decide if it’s the right game for you.
And if you decided that it is, then you should head over to our marketplace, where you’ll find attractive offers letting you grab DAVe (and other DAs) without running out of gold.