Developer Bioware was never going to have it easy with Veilguard. It’s been a decade since the last Dragon Age game, a decade for fan theories to percolate and expectations to rise out of control – and that’s not to mention all the strife that’s gone on at the studio after the disappointing Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Veilguard is by no means bad, with plenty of charming characters to meet and new places to see. But the writing, the heart of previous games, is surprisingly mediocre, while the new combat style gets repetitive fairly quickly.
You play as Rook, an associate of Varric, who served as companion and storyteller in the previous games. Varric and Rook have been on the hunt for elven god Solas for the better part of a year. Just when it looks as if you can stop him from tearing down the Veil between the physical and nether worlds, unleashing hordes of demons in the process, a magical mishap leads to the release of two other, even worse gods. These new villains are comically evil, but they are a disappointment compared with the compelling character of Solas, who is, after all, right there. Veilguard tells his side of the story, too, through side quests.
As we travel around the continent of Thedas, we visit places that previous games haven’t explored: the city of Minrathous in mage-led Tevinter, or the sunny Rivain peninsula. Each place is gorgeous and filled with detail, from glowing butterflies flitting around Arlathan forest to animated skeletons swinging brooms in the Nevarran necropolis. Veilguard lets you travel freely, but certain areas of each map are closed off until a quest unlocks them; this can feel jarring, but also offers freedom to explore without the overwhelm. Exploration is fun, too, with plenty of treasure to find. Each area is home to a different faction of characters, and they immediately start asking favours. There’s a lot of variety in these tasks, which unlock vital gear for each companion.
Combat is now entirely real-time. You can still order your companions to use their skills via a ring menu similar to Mass Effect’s, which I sometimes had to do because my companions wouldn’t do useful things such as healing Rook or slowing down time without my say-so. But for the most part, they act autonomously. All I have to do is attack and dodge, pressing the same three buttons over and over again, throwing in the occasional combat skill or finishing move as my companions yell at me to watch out for imminent ranged attacks or explosions. It’s serviceable, but we’ve seen it before in countless other games, and there’s not much room for strategy. Boss battles are quite challenging, however. Dodging is vital, and you won’t get ahead by blindly slashing at your enemies.
Generally, Veilguard is loth to let go of your hand for even a second. While a lot of the default damage numbers, wayfinders and blinking treasure indicators can be turned off in the options menu, the game seems to assume no player can retain information for longer than a few seconds. Characters will endlessly repeat events that have just happened and point out things you’ve just seen, often by using the exact same words: “Our rogue necromancer might be behind that door.” “Well, I sure hope our rogue necromancer is behind that door!” In case this were somehow insufficient, there’s a written summary for each mission so you can be absolutely sure what happened. The important ones are hashed over yet again in team meetings.
Big decisions that affect the story are few and far between, and the game will tell you exactly what they lead to before you pick. Decisions do, for the most part, carry real consequence, which is nice, but it would have been nicer if the game didn’t tell you that several times before you commit. These choices get rarer as time goes on, almost as if time to implement them ran out later in development.
Rook is our hero of the hour because, by their own admission, “no one else was there to do it”. It’s good to play as someone other than a magically chosen superhero for once, but Rook hasn’t got much of a personality behind their ill-timed quips. No matter which dialogue option you pick, a lot of it inevitably ends in some sort of joke, and sometimes even mildly embarrassing pop culture references and idioms. (I never want to hear a character say a griffon is “feeling his oats”, please. Please.) Veilguard isn’t the Guardians of the Galaxy-esque jokefest fans feared it might be after its first trailer, but Rook is written less like a person with opinions and more like someone who makes witty observations.
The central story is the least interesting thing about Veilguard, both in its narrative and gameplay. Many quests have you endlessly slotting crystals into receptacles to open doors or vanquish blight-boils, pulsing, fleshy growths that keep you from travelling to a place to fight a monster. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Dragon Age, but coupled with dissatisfying cameos and by-the-numbers gameplay, it left me feeling disappointed.
The companions save the day. The quality of writing does vary wildly, but it’s fun to get to know your new team. Necromancer Emmrich genuinely cares about the dead, wielding his magic like a conductor, and Qunari dragon hunter Taash struggles with questions of identity and gender. Romantic options don’t immediately go in hard on awkward flirting and instead often just constitute the nicest thing you might say to someone who’s struggling – though the game does have a habit of ruining the fun by jumping in to say, Careful! You’re being romantic! Are you sure you want to commit to a romance? The bigger annoyance here is how they behave when you take them on a mission together, when they will make small talk like two colleagues meeting at an office party. “Sooo, Taash, you hunt dragons? I hunt monsters.” It’s a far cry from Dragon Age: Inquisition’s banter.
There is plenty to like about Veilguard, but I sometimes had to dig deep to look past its flaws, from repetitive gameplay to a story that doesn’t know how to bring everything together. It’s a perfectly enjoyable RPG, then, but an underwhelming Dragon Age game.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out 31 October; £69.99