Dragon Age: Veilguard - A Spoiler-Light Assessment
My goal here is to discuss Veilguard as a whole without talking much about specific plot-beats or decisions, after completing my own playthrough. I wouldn't mind reading this before playing, and I'm very spoiler-averse.
If you want the short version - I recommend it, but not as a Dragon Age fan.
I feel a game like Veilguard encourages the formation of hot takes more than most - it's a big-budget, long-awaited sequel from a company that has... a poor recent track record. They've released 2 new games in the decade since the previous entry and they were, respectively, a let down and a disaster.
Mass Effect: Andromeda had all the hallmarks of an under-resourced over-pressured development, with grand ideas and limited experience behind it. Disregarding a launch rife with meme-able glitches, it still fell extremely short of the expectations of a Mass Effect fan looking to dive back into a world they loved. It was Mass Effect flavoured videogame rather than more Mass Effect. It's lucky they set it in another galaxy centuries removed from the main series, because that means they can ignore it entirely as they make ME4 - and they'll lose nothing of value in the process. The inverse is probably why they did it that way - they didn't need to port your Shepard's decisions into the game because they were irrelevant details in Andromeda, no matter how much they mattered to you.
Anthem was a complete flop of a concept, sharing enough of Mass Effect's aesthetic (suits of armour and double knees, primarily) to invite the comparison while being a clear attempt to claim an early-and-yet-too-late share of the live-service squad-shooter market. I never played it, you never played it, but it sets the scene for our main topic.
Veilguard shares a lot of the same problems as its predecessors - word is they had to broadly restart development after starting down a live-service path, and you can really feel the scars of that process. It feels insubstantial. The character relationships feel extremely of-a-procedure, encounters respawn very quickly so revisiting areas can add up to a massive amount of time, and almost nothing happens off the beaten path - you may think you've left the beaten path, but you're actually just warming it up for when you beat it later. On top of all this, Veilguard relies extremely heavily on the player having done their reading.
I want to harp on a bit about this last part. The main plot contains a handful of revelations that rely heavily on knowledge of Inquisition's DLC which started releasing months after the game's initial release - the only people who played those DLC are die-hard fans doing multiple playthroughs, or late-comers to the series who bought some kind of "Ultimate Edition" or some such. I assume the majority of DA:I players never played these DLC because I never did, and also I have professional experience that would indicate it. This is something of a pattern for Bioware, to the point where it's beyond a theory for me -
- Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening (that's the official punctuation, I checked) sets up the primary conflict in DA2
- Dragon Age 2: Legacy sets up Inquisition entirely.
- Mass Effect didn't have Batarians until they added them in the Bring Down the Sky DLC
- Mass Effect 2: Arrival is a must-play piece of context for Mass Effect 3.
- At this point, I am about 95% certain that Mass Effect 4 is going to build directly on the Leviathan DLC, because that's the only reason I could ever think of to leave it out of the base game. This is me making my prediction explicit.
Anyway, back to Veilguard.
There are a handful of moments throughout where Veilguard absolutely sings as an action-adventure game, namely the big action set-pieces and their associated cutscenes, and the first 1/3 or so of the game when you just get to run around solving puzzles and doing sidequests. Seeing a treasure chest you can't get to, relating it to a nearby puzzle, and mapping out a solution is very satisfying during this period of the game. Each hub area in the game has its own kind of theme, but honestly the first one is by far the best - really well conceived, nicely executed, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Returning to it always feels nice. I wish I could say the same for the last couple, which are at best a slog when you're clearing them up in the mid-late game.
I diverted away from the set-pieces - they fuck. The finale is extremely cool, but throughout the game there are these critical missions that always feel great, getting the crew together and seeing non-party team-members scurrying around the periphery from time to time - it's crack to me. Add that to some truly spectacular visual work, art, and music, and you have a formula for some of the best action-adventure gameplay I've experienced in years.
It's just not Dragon Age, to me. Dragon Age is about characters, stories, and grey morality - poring over contradictory lore and trying to figure out who's got the better of it - there's some massive supernatural threat but the real problem you face is People and their shitty little schemes. "I won't help you save the world until you help me screw over my business partner" is such pathetic bullshit but that's Dragon Age! These people are pathetic! "Oh we'd love to help you prevent our extinction but there's an election on, see" so you're the only sane person in Thedas, crawling through mud and blood and spit and shit, not necessarily doing the right thing but doing the things that need done - at least you think they need done? Surely they need done.
This game lacks that spirit. Our protagonist has it to an extent, but Veilguard doesn't - Veilguard has all the answers, and it's happy to tell you them.