It’s been about a year since my last narrative video game binge: the incomparable Baldur’s Gate 3. Does Dragon Age: The Veilguard hold a candle to BG3? Not really, but after a slowish start, its gameplay eventually hooked me. One brisk play-through may well lead to a second.
The Dragon Age series is produced by BioWare, who broke important ground with the Mass Effect series. I especially liked the second Mass Effect, which added improved third-person shooter gameplay to its much more impressive, important feature: a robust narrative decision tree that enabled players to directly impact the trajectory of the story, and the fate of a fictional universe, based on the decisions of their character.
The Dragon Age games follow a similar template. I’m not a natural for this kind of sprawling, open-world game; they tend to be difficult to cram into my schedule, and I find them vaguely exhausting. Initially, I thought Veilguard might do the same, but I pushed through early resistance and got into it. The game takes place in a fairly conventional fantasy setting and opens with a crisis: the devious elven god Solas has enacted a plan to destroy “the Veil,” a boundary between reality and a dangerous spirit realm. The Veil prevents demons from flooding onto the physical plane and jeopardizing the mortals of Thedas. Solas has his reasons, but the heroes of Thedas — including your character, “Rook” — are enlisted to put a stop to him. In the process of attempting to thwart Solas, however, two even worse elven gods, Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, are released on the continent, unleashing deadly chaos. Rook must rally the many factions of Thedas against the gods’ devastating assault, an extended mission that involves recruiting a team of specialists — a spy, an assassin, a necromancer, a monster hunter, and more — into the fight. As the gods’ plans get more and more nefarious, Rook’s relationships with the team grow more complex, and the team’s decisions and actions drive the story toward an epic confrontation with formidable foes.
Veilguard is gorgeously designed, and as usual for me the character creation was one of my favorite things about it — a robust system of protagonist design. The hero, tailor-made for personal preferences, then undertakes quests and makes dialogue decisions that impact both their personal life and the fate of the world. The third-person combat is wickedly fun, a mix of magical pyrotechnics and improbable physical feats that complement, rather than overwhelm, the storytelling. On that score, Veilguard is pretty entertaining, although it has muzzy, hand-wavey elements, never quite managing the compelling sense of urgency that BG3 or even the Mass Effect games achieve.
Veilguard’s companion characters are diverse and beautifully designed; personalities are distinct, backgrounds impactful, and storylines reasonably engaging. There is one character whose personal struggle feels jarringly “Earth 2024,” which yanked me out of the story periodically, but generally it’s a likable bunch with a great team dynamic. For me, it recaptures the narrative vibes of Mass Effect but with more efficiency to its drama and logistics. If that makes it shallower, it’s also less daunting in terms of initial progress and replayability, which — given my clumsy start, which led to a fairly weak romance and a lot of missed content — may extend its value to a second run. If BG3 was a rich, deep obsession, Veilguard is more like a flashy, expedited diversion, for me similar in feel to the Final Fantasy Remake of a few years back. Still, it scratches a specific itch, and is a beautifully produced, robust action-adventure likely to please most fans of the series.
