It’s rare that I’d stop in my tracks to hear NPC characters chat with each other. But that’s what Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me do. I loved hearing the banter between the Elven Veil Jumper Bellara Lutare and necromancer Emmrich Volkarin about their interest in magic as I just casually ran around an area trying to solve a light puzzle to unlock a door.
The Veilguard has the best cast in the series so far, and that’s what kept my attention to the very end. While its action-oriented combat feels like a step back in some aspects from previous games, it’s still fun to play. And its presentation and visuals make it an incredibly smooth ride from start to finish.
The story follows Rook, an agent hired to track down Solas and stop him from tearing down the Veil, a barrier that keeps hostile beings from another dimension from entering the world. When events go catastrophically wrong, Rook now has to stop two ancient gods, Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, who were accidentally released from their prisons from unleashing their own kind of hell.
It’s an explosive setup that immediately lays out the stakes, and the story that follows is surprisingly well paced. It has three distinct acts and the end of each act leaves players with a sense of accomplishment as it feels like Rook’s crew, despite being made up of mortals, is one step closer to overcoming these seemingly immortal gods.
While The Veilguard has a solid story, it’s the characters that really help uplift it, and there was a sense of camaraderie I haven’t felt since playing Mass Effect 2. For example, Rook recruits Taash, a specialized dragon hunter and Davrin, a Grey Warden. The two gods enslaved powerful dragons and inflicted them with Blight, a sort of spiritual disease that corrupts them and turns them into archdemons; it’s up to both Taash and Davrin’s expertise to help take them down. The former has experience hunting dragons while the latter is able to purify them of the Blight to prevent them from respawning. It’s a smart kind of synergy that makes every companion feel like they have an active role to play in the story.
While the main story itself isn’t that long, the game has an incredible amount of side quests for you to tackle. And they’re not shallow ones either, and are very well worth your time. There are specific quests that you can partake in with each of your companions to learn more about their backstories, as well as some typical world-building ones. Emmrich ended up being my favorite companion. He works with spirits and has a comedic skeleton assistant named Manfred. Even though a necromancer seems scary, his lighthearted approach to the subject and kind demeanor made for a compelling string of side quests about his traumatic past and topic of mortality.
I played the three previous games to prepare for The Veilguard, and I can confidently say that the cast’s rich diversity of both in-game cultures and inspirations makes it stand out. Taash is a Qunari, a race of large humanoids. Not only that, but she’s a female Qunari, which gives her a different perspective from many of the Qunari we’ve seen so far, who have mostly been male. It also seems like developer BioWare has taken real-world inspirations for its characters as well. The group’s hired assassin, Lucanis Dellamorte, has Italian-inspired roots while Bellara’s Eastern Asian influence can be seen through her own magical mythology. While previous Dragon Age games had some diversity in its cast, The Veilguard walks the extra mile and creates a distinctively unique cast of companions in both appearances and backstories
I was initially skeptical of The Veilguard’s art direction, thinking it was a bit too cartoonish compared to previous Dragon Age games. However, I’ve since come around to it because of the current generation’s increased graphical fidelity. Characters and companions in previous Dragon Age games sometimes looked a bit too generic. But between that distinctive style and The Veilguard being on current consoles and PC, each of the companions have a visual identity that makes them easy to tell apart. The designs are well-crafted with plenty of detail within their clothing. On top of the deep side quests, each companion feels like a fully-realized character. The tarot card portraits that pop up when selecting your party are gorgeous as well.
The Veilguard’s environmental diversity is fantastic as well. There’s a variety of city settings, forests, underworld, lava, and tundras to explore. The areas feel much more like those from Origins and Dragon Age 2, where each environment was broken down into sections. This works to The Veilguard’s advantage as now there aren’t vast and empty open-world environments like Inquisition had. It makes exploration feel much less daunting, and the plethora of fast travel points are really appreciated as well.
As for the action, Rook is able to take along two companions with them to venture out into the world—one less than in previous Dragon Age games. That makes The Veilguard feel like a bit of a step back in this aspect. I’m not sure why this was the case, as fights would’ve been more fun with four characters instead of three, when it comes to combining special abilities together. Still, battles are hectic and exhilarating with magic spells and iron swinging everywhere. And compared to BioWare’s previous single-player effort, 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda, The Veilguard is sturdy and dependable. There were very few frame rate slow downs and I didn’t encounter many technical issues if at all on Xbox Series X|S.
The only other issue I have with The Veilguard is its flimsy camera, especially the lock-on feature. Whenever an enemy runs behind me, the camera doesn’t seem to automatically follow them, so I have to manually move my camera which disrupts the flow of battle. This is a problem especially with larger enemies since it also zooms in too much, making their bodies take up the entire screen. Boss fights can be problematic too, as they love to disappear or teleport around the arena, making the camera and lock-on feel useless at times.
One huge change I love about The Veilguard over previous entries, especially with Inquisition, is the change of quality of life features. As an item and equipment hoarder myself, I was always annoyed at the inventory limits in previous games and having to constantly run back to the storage box at the home base to store my pickups. That issue is pretty much eradicated with a new kind of system. If you pick up an identical piece of equipment as you have in your inventory, then it merges with it and increases the original’s rarity and parameters automatically. Another annoying feature from Inquisition was that your character would always have to stop in their tracks in order to pick up items from the ground. That’s not the case anymore with The Veilguard. Like Origins and Dragon Age 2, your character simply just adds it to their inventory without stopping and that drastically reduces friction, incentivizing me to pick up even more items along the way.
It’s been a long time since Inquisition’s release in 2014, less than one year after the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard is definitely worth that wait. It offers the fun and deep character interactions that BioWare is known for, while packaging the best aspects of previous Dragon Age games into a brand new adventure. Despite a few flaws, it’s an engrossing RPG that’ll leave an impression on fans for years to come.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. Our review is based on the Xbox Series X|S version. It’s also available for PC and PlayStation 5.
George Yang is a freelance writer. He’s written for places such as IGN, NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, and Kotaku. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey
