Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s press preview gave me the reassurance I was looking for

Dragon Age: The Veilguard entered manufacturing solely a yr after the discharge of its blockbuster predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, however when it comes out this Halloween, it should miss Inquisition’s tenth anniversary by a mere 17 days. It has really been an age between Dragon Age video games, and that age has really dragged o— Ow! All proper, I deserved that, nevertheless it’s been a really very long time since Dragon Age followers, and even BioWare followers, had strong excellent news.

2017’s Mass Impact: Andromeda and 2019’s Anthem debuted as pricey letdowns, all whereas manufacturing on Veilguard stopped, began, and restarted. Over the previous decade, BioWare has additionally misplaced an alarming variety of Dragon Age’s founding names and inventive stars, like lead designer and inventive director Mike Laidlaw (resigned in 2017), producer Mark Darrah (resigned in 2020, returned in 2023 as a guide), and author Mary Kirby (laid off in 2023).

If you happen to’re a Dragon Age fan approaching The Veilguard with wariness, nobody may blame you. It’s a tough assortment of reports for any upcoming online game, not to mention a franchise as relationship-focused, lore-dense, thematically wealthy, and narratively difficult as Dragon Age. However this month, gamerjive had an opportunity to take a seat down and play Veilguard at Digital Arts’ Redwood Metropolis headquarters.

And the sport appears to be like good. Sure, even the real-time fight.

BioWare’s occasion furnished journalists with PC variations of the sport, operating on the corporate’s {hardware}, showcasing 5 totally different sections of gameplay from the primary “act” of the sport. We had been in a position to play by the introductory sequence, the invention of the Lighthouse (the titular Veilguard’s HQ), introductory quest strains for 2 companion characters, a basic BioWare “wide selection and penalties” sequence, a extra open part that included a companion’s Act 1 private quest, and at last the concluding mission of Act 1, utilizing personal customized Rook (the alias of Veilguard’s participant character) and a selection of three premade Rooks for every character class.

It was quite a bit to play, and assembled employees — together with recreation director Corinne Busche, producer Jen Cheverie, and inventive director John Epler — appeared excited to point out it off. There have been laughs across the room as Busche, realizing the core Dragon Age viewers, cautioned friends to not spend greater than half an hour within the character creator.

BioWare had already introduced that Veilguard’s character creator has the least binary gender selections of any Dragon Age recreation earlier than it, and Busche’s delight shouldn’t be undeserved. Veilguard is the primary Dragon Age recreation to permit gamers to tweak their PC’s dimensions under the neckline, and the primary to characteristic hairstyles that fall under the chin.

There are additionally some welcome quality-of-life updates. Gamers of Inquisition, which shrouded its character screens in murky inexperienced gentle, shall be comfortable to see buttons in Veilguard’s character creator that toggle between three separate lighting environments. And in case you have the expertise of hitting that first cutscene and instantly regretting your selections, the now almost ubiquitous RPG Mirror of Oops My PC Seems to be Unhealthy Really turns into accessible nearly instantaneously.

Naturally, my demon of the perverse needed to push these instruments at their restrict. I picked an elf (who, in Dragon Age, aren’t a lot “supermodel skinny” as they’re “scarecrow skinny”), selected the thickest base physique sort, after which flipped all of the sliders to vast.

My Rook seemed again at me, a lady with spherical, spherical thighs, a curved, tender abdomen, and hips that, like mine, would discover these dumb steel Ikea chairs that each restaurant in New York appears to have proper now infuriatingly uncomfortable. She seemed like an adventurer who may need gotten into the life after having a child or two, and she or he additionally seemed scorching. She didn’t seem like she simply had a wider set of muscle tissue.

Then I picked her hair: a mane of free 3A to 3B curls that fell to mid-back and swayed together with her motion. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s character creator has almost 90 hairstyles to select from, and each certainly one of any size, from brief locs to lengthy straight lengths, is physics-enabled.

Enjoying on BioWare’s PC {hardware}, no less than, Veilguard appears to be like spectacular. My Rook dodged, ran, fell, and leapt, and she or he seemed good doing it. The closest I got here to noticing a seam was her hand clipping by a little bit of layered clothes on her thigh in a single shot of a cutscene. Her hair remained impeccable the entire time, bouncing and sliding with motion however staying out of her face for close-ups.

The sights didn’t cease on the technical wizardry behind a head of real-time-rendered curls. The traditional arcano-mechanical guards had been draped in cobwebs that swayed within the forest breeze. I trotted by a market within the Fade itself, staffed and patronized by spirits. I fought cultists in a repurposed undersea spoil the place shimmering magical drive fields held again hundreds of thousands of tons of water and swam with runes and rainbows after I drew shut.

Particularly, I fought cultists utilizing Veilguard’s real-time fight system, which has been greeted with not-insignificant apprehension. A 2023 leak of gameplay that described it as being within the fashion of the God of Conflict reboot despatched the fandom right into a minor tailspin. The priority is comprehensible: Whereas it’s true that Dragon Age has by no means been a turn-based franchise, you’ve by no means been in a position to block, dodge, or parry on command in a Dragon Age recreation, both. However this author discovered the fight didn’t really feel as unfamiliar as you would possibly count on.

And this author… Look, I’m sure there are folks on the market for whom the fight system of a BioWare recreation is a big draw. However that merely couldn’t be me. So take that as context after I say that I’m replaying Dragon Age: Inquisition on its lowest problem setting in the meanwhile, and I might swap it out for Veilguard’s fight, on regular problem, in a heartbeat.

Veilguard’s three-sided system of synergistic, cross-character means interactions (slap a debuff in your goal with one character, set off a injury explosion with a synergizing means from one other) is paying homage to Inquisition’s related rock-paper-scissors-style association of debuffs and injury triggers. However the distance between the 2 is stark. Inquisition’s debuffs and triggers are minimally referenced within the fight UI, with the precise clarification of the system tucked away in a single codex entry. And as synergizing talents had been restricted to just some of the eight means slots every of your 10 characters had, it was by no means one thing I felt the necessity to memorize and even take note of.

This synergy system is the important thing to Veilguard’s fight, and BioWare’s workforce has stepped as much as make it possible for mastering it’s simple and enjoyable. The normal four-person Dragon Age get together (your PC and three companions) has been pruned to 3, and whereas I do mourn the lack of three-way get together banter, the trade-off is straight away apparent. Veilguard is shifting the scope of the participant’s management from 4 equally advanced get together members to 1 well-oiled, party-wide interface.

Fight is a mixture of fundamental assaults and guards from Rook, punctuated by a pause display/means bar that means that you can survey the battlefield at your individual tempo and select from 9 character talents (three from every character, together with Rook) to dunk in your enemies. The characters’ synergy talents are clearly marked within the fight UI with a connecting line of huge yellow chyrons that seems on mouseover, and the sport does an excellent job of alerting you when talents are able to undergo a various array of voice barks particular to every companion. The system efficiently makes you are feeling like a workforce, quite than a participant character and three charismatic bots.

With this give attention to one menu to your whole get together’s suite of talents, there’s a thought-about hole between the complexity of Rook’s programs and people of the companions you possibly can select to deliver on every mission. In Veilguard, your seven companions have fewer merchandise slots and easier ability bushes than Rook. That may sound like a downer, however once more, I’m presently replaying Dragon Age: Inquisition, through which all 9 companions are simply as advanced as your primary PC in abilities and kit. To me, Veilguard’s model appears like a reduction — reduction from having to do 20-40 minutes of Dragon Age Menu Homework simply to get again to really taking part in the sport.

I really like Dragon Age: Inquisition, regardless of its half-dozen separate gear customization menus which can be by some means all three layers deep. However what strikes me, after getting a glance underneath Veilguard’s hood, is that none of Inquisition’s gear customization truly modifications the best way I play the fight — it’s simply so my numbers will keep larger than the dangerous man numbers.

BioWare reps have taken pains to emphasise that Veilguard’s fight system is designed to provide gamers of any fashion an choice that works for them, and with seven hours of play underneath my belt, I feel they could have carried out it. The second of realization got here, sarcastically, after I began to get actually annoyed with my progress by a sequence of inauspicious enemies.

I used to be annoyed as a result of I used to be on a time restrict, attempting to make it to the ultimate sequence of the demo earlier than the tip of the occasion. And I used to be annoyed as a result of I knew what the issue was: The get together I’d chosen didn’t have sufficient synergizing talents, and the pre-built warrior Rook I’d opted for was specced with a parry-based play fashion. If I hadn’t been on the clock, I might have taken a break, reloaded, chosen totally different companions (or respecced them, which is free), and reworked Rook’s ability tree (additionally free) to one thing I discovered smoother to play.

In earlier sections of the sport, I’d experimented with a melee mage, utilizing an orb of uncooked magic in a single hand to cost up the lengthy dagger I held within the different, and a rogue with daggers and a bow. To me it felt nice to zip and dodge across the battlefield, needling at my foes shut up and, if that grew to become an excessive amount of, retreating, swapping to my alternate weapon set, and blasting them from vary. Being up within the melee combine with these difficult enemies and this parry warrior construct will surely be exhilarating for some, however for me, on my time crunch, it bordered on overwhelming: sifting by twitchy UI indications of which assaults might be blocked and which needed to be dodged, and attempting to get my very own hits in on the aspect.

In contrast to another Dragon Age recreation I’ve performed, Veilguard’s fight was a puzzle I truly needed to resolve. I knew there was a approach to do it that may work higher for me, if I simply had the time to search out it. Even within the restricted hours we needed to play, the sport had already proven me the solutions, and I knew my subsequent steps.

Right here’s what I don’t know: what The Veilguard is definitely about. However it is a Dragon Age recreation, and actually, that’s precisely the place I wish to be.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is in an fascinating place because the fourth recreation in a sequence recognized for altering its scale and scope with every installment. These modifications have solely highlighted the ways in which every earlier Dragon Age recreation has rhymed with the others, and makes one wonder if Veilguard will select to proceed these patterns or subvert them. For instance, all three earlier Dragon Age video games have included some form of Act 1 twist that radically alters the scope of the sport or your character’s place in its story.

Which is simply to say that when BioWare’s representatives informed us we’d solely be taking part in sequences from Act 1, I assumed, Aha. Yeah, I shall be making no laborious assumptions on the plot. So what do I consider the story of Dragon Age: The Veilguard thus far? I gained’t point out specifics from what I noticed, as a result of no person truly needs to listen to them, however I’ll speak concerning the generalities that appear, to me, to be telling.

The BioWare staffers who spoke on the preview occasion careworn that their objective in Veilguard was to create a contained RPG expertise. Dragon Age 2 allowed gamers to load a Dragon Age: Origins save to play their very own customized world state. For Inquisition, the Dragon Age Maintain web site allowed gamers to manually tweak dozens of world state selections earlier than connecting them to a playthrough. However in Veilguard, the “Maintain” is correct there within the character creator. After I requested Busche concerning the motivation behind that evolution, she responded, “If something, […] our dedication to having a single-player, full, offline RPG — that’s what led us to essentially wish to have the whole lot inside the recreation be self-contained.”

After I requested if there have been any Veilguard DLC plans within the works, Busche additionally cited this notion of contained completeness. “Earlier we mentioned that we needed to make this essentially the most feature-complete, genuine BioWare recreation that we’ve seen within the final 10 years. That’s utterly our focus proper now. […] Who is aware of what the long run holds, however proper now, it’s all about delivering one of the best recreation we are able to.”

BioWare reps additionally careworn “remorse” because the narrative theme of the sport, embodied by two returning franchise NPCs — Varric Tethras, the dwarven adventurer and novelist, and Solas, the traditional elf mage whose exploits had been warped by retelling till he grew to become worshipped as a god. And so they additionally careworn the seven companion characters, notably the depth of their tales and the way interwoven they had been with the primary plot of the sport, most of them belonging to certainly one of six factions with which Rook will work together.

All of it makes me surprise if Veilguard would possibly set one other sample for Dragon Age: that of a vastly expansive story through which the participant can decide the destiny of countries (Origins, Inquisition), adopted by a extra private, character-focused, darkish journey. It wouldn’t be the primary time that Dragon Age has responded to stress by rooting itself in character and narrative.

Dragon Age 2, coming in scorching just one and a half years after the large breadth of Dragon Age: Origins, is infamous for its scope concessions (and crunch time). Nevertheless it’s additionally beloved for its distinctive, trope-subverting storyline, and a set of companion characters with out a single weak hyperlink. Living proof: Varric Tethras, created and written by Mary Kirby, served because the narrator of Dragon Age 2 and remains to be going robust as a voice of the franchise over a decade later.

There’s someone studying this who’s going, “Veilguard is contained like Dragon Age 2? That recreation happened in just one metropolis! It had like 5 property! Oh no!” So let me be clear: What I’m questioning about is whether or not Rook’s story might prioritize navigating the private motivations of a set of compelling companions and antagonists (like Dragon Age 2) over navigating fantasy politics and prejudices (like Origins and Inquisition). Veilguard, make no bones about it, feels massive from the beginning.

Whereas a lot of what I noticed had been contained missions, Busche and Cheverie characterised Veilguard as having a mixture of closed sections — the place, Busche mentioned, “we’ve essentially the most salient narrative beats the place we are able to inform one of the best tales” — and exploratory, self-directed environments.

Referencing her personal playthroughs, Busche mentioned, “There’s been a number of occasions the place I’ve picked up a quest, I’ve tracked it, I’m off to Arlathan Forest, and alongside the best way I’ll see Taash [Veilguard’s Qunari companion] there like, Hey, I assumed we had been going to fulfill up. I’ve been ready for you. And subsequent factor, I’m becoming a member of Taash, we’re on one other journey, and lo and behold, I come throughout a puzzle adjoining to this path that Taash has taken me on, and I find yourself doing one thing actually satisfying and stunning.”

I felt that pull in my very own time with the sport, which was stuffed with issues I wish to reexamine at a slower tempo, to search out extra secrets and techniques and even sit and chill with (the second that I reached over to urgently poke the pal taking part in subsequent to me was when I discovered a stray cat, mendacity in a metropolis road, that Rook may pet). Even within the six hours accessible to play, I ventured from a darkish metropolis the place mages dominated, to the dream realm of the Fade, to a lush forest marked by the fallout of a magical catastrophe, to a metropolis of fashionable assassins, to a repurposed undersea spoil, to an historic fortress underneath siege.

Previous to the press occasion, in case you’d requested me to explain Dragon Age’s core attributes, I in all probability would have referred to as it a “low-magic fantasy setting.” I wouldn’t try this anymore. Dragon Age lore has all the time contained the concept that there are areas on the planet the place mages and magic are a lot much less restricted than they’re within the ones through which Origins, 2, and Inquisition had been set. Veilguard takes gamers to these locations for the primary time, and the distinction is straight away — understandably — noticeable.

In fact, new gamers gained’t ping to that in any respect — particularly not those who’ve spent the final yr or so exploring, say, Faerûn. And although it’s troublesome for me to place myself within the sneakers of somebody for whom Veilguard is their first Dragon Age recreation — to roll again the years I’ve spent marinating within the dank, red-yarn-crazy-board-strewn depths of Dragon Age lore — I feel what I noticed was an exciting, and useful, on-ramp.

For brand spanking new gamers, I can inform you that after the prologue sequence proven off at Summer season Sport Fest, which does an excellent job of organising the stakes, you’ll be tossed immediately right into a quest line that helpfully underscores all this details about historic elven gods by linking it on to a bunch of NPCs, their targets, and the brand new location you’re exploring. Veilguard continues Inquisition’s custom of an exposition-collecting codex outfitted with attractive tarot-inspired artwork, and (the primary I feel I’ve ever seen in a CRPG) a separate glossary for all these new fantasy-ass nouns you’ll be listening to.

For Dragon Age veterans, whose eyebrows would possibly go up at merely the point out of Shartan, or Kal-Sharok, or the Executors, I can inform you (with out spoilers!) that there’s heaps to get enthusiastic about. With Rook, you’ll have the ability to discover reminiscences from Solas’ historic previous, after which sit down for a goss sesh with all of your companions to choose by the most recent soiled laundry of Dragon Age’s most controversial or beloved (beloversial?) frenemy. The dialogue wheel is as soon as once more labeled to your decide of heroic, sarcastic, or aggressive tone, like in Dragon Age 2. In case your companions have new issues to say, the lanterns exterior their room in your headquarters shall be illuminated, so that you don’t need to examine each in flip and get actually bored of their default dialogue. Celebration banter will pause after which resume in case you set off a cutscene or fight in the course of it — no extra screeching to a halt to be sure to don’t miss an excellent line.

Maybe most devastatingly of all, BioWare has picked up one of the highly effective instruments of its narrative recreation rivals: Alerting you instantly after an un-flagged dialogue selection that it was secretly, by some means, a big one. Sure, Dragon Age has realized from “Clementine will keep in mind this,” and now we’re all in hassle.

9 years and 11 days in the past, BioWare launched Dragon Age: Inquisition’s remaining DLC, Trespasser, and pointed on the stands like Babe Ruth. As a dramatic rating pounded, the Inquisitor actually stabbed a knife right into a map of Tevinter, a rustic beforehand unseen in any Dragon Age recreation, and spelled out a particular setting, a particular antagonist, and even a particular set of characters to observe (i.e., brand-new ones) within the recreation’s sequel.

Over the interim, and following the numerous hurdles Veilguard vaulted to get right here, I’d way back launched any expectations I had that the sport’s plot would observe immediately from that referred to as shot. Out of kindness, if nothing else, it appeared an excessive amount of to count on the artistic people behind the franchise to leash themselves so carefully to Inquisition after a lot time, turnover, and tribulation.

However I got here out of my time with Veilguard nursing the miraculous-seeming hunch, “Mythal’enaste, I feel these loopy fuckers would possibly simply have carried out it.” Perhaps I’m flawed. Perhaps I’m proper. Perhaps I’ll become proper, however solely after the first-act rug pull. However both method, to my private reduction, I’m actually trying ahead to discovering out.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard shall be launched Oct. 31 on PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X.

Disclosure: This text relies on a preview occasion held by writer EA in Redwood Metropolis, California, on Sept. 5. EA supplied gamerjive’s journey and lodging for the occasion. You’ll find further details about gamerjive’s ethics coverage right here.