It’s been a decade since the last Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, was released. Fans eager for more of Bioware’s series got a first look at the gameplay of the next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
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The Veilguard gameplay trailer
The video showed protagonist Rook traveling with returning DA characters Varric and Harding along with newcomer Neve to stop Solas. He’s another returning character who wants to tear open the Fade (a dimension housing many spirits and demons) and allow its inhabitants to enter the world. Rook can dodge and parry attacks, quickly recover when knocked down, and pull up a talent wheel to stop time and activate his and his buddies’ abilities, as well as issue commands to them. The UI will also indicate which abilities can be combined to deal greater damage to enemies.
Like with previous DA installments, there will be dialogue options that make you come across as a nice or terrible person. These choices can lead to your party members liking or disliking you, depending on their personality, and changing how a situation plays out. For example, you can choose to either participate in a brawl or use your words to avoid a potential fight. Just like in previous Dragon Age games, players will be able to enter into romantic relationships with party members.
As for character customization, players can have Rook be a dwarf, quanari, elf, or human and decide between becoming a mage, rogue, or warrior, all of which have three specializations. They’ll also need to pick one of six backstories for their custom character that grants them certain perks, like dealing more damage to certain enemies, and access to new dialogue options.
Of course, Rook’s appearance can also be changed to whatever players want. An Xbox blog post spotted a “larynx customer” and the choice to give Rook heterochromia. They also mentioned the ability to preview how Rook would look in certain lighting conditions and the option to hide Rook’s helmet if players want to see the character’s face during cutscenes.
In an interview with IGN, Game Director Corinne Busche said that players will be able to import their decisions from the previous three DA games and that importing these decisions is “fully integrated into the character creator this time around.” Busche said that players may not recall the choices they made because it’s been a decade since Inquisition was dropped (and longer for the other two games), so they may need help remembering past events and what they picked in those situations.
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Busche said the character creator will let you “go into your past adventures” and it will explain the context around certain situations. From there, the players can decide on how things play out. The Game Director also mentioned that some characters (but not all) from the previous games will also pop up in Veilguard.
The less-than-stellar reception
Some DA fans aren’t exactly reacting warmly to The Veilguard’s debut. They’ve criticized the art style, with many taking issue with the looks of the demons that appear in the video and saying that they don’t resemble the demons from the older games. The reveal trailer in particular caught a lot of flak from fans, who commented that this wasn’t a dark fantasy game and that the art style looked like it was from Overwatch and Valorant.
Some commenters also likened the trailer’s tone to Marvel movies, since it was upbeat and similar to an MCU movie trailer. Others also dislike the game’s combat, with a few mentioning that Veilguard doesn’t seem to have any strategy, unlike the previous games.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is coming out sometime on Fall of 2024 and you can stop the threat of Solas on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
