Dragon Age: The Veilguard Is Shaping Up to Be an Overpowering Experience
After nearly 10 years of development, media and content creators recently got a hands-on preview of Bioware’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard. For around six hours, we played through Act 1, jumping through sections of the first act that each highlighted different key elements of the game. We made large choices with legit consequences and got to know several companions (particularly Neve, Harding, Bellara, and Lucanis, who were choices for the bulk of the content), and had multiple chances to choose a different class to play for each section.
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Solas—known as the Dread Wolf, Elven Trickster god, and former Dragon Age companion—has tried to tear down the Veil that separates Thedas from the world of demons, with the goal of restoring his people’s immortality and glory only to sacrifice thousands in the process. But when his ritual goes awry, two of his most ancient and powerful adversaries are released and begin to seek the complete and utter domination of his world, spreading blight across Thedas. You’re Rook, and you’re tasked with stopping it all, assembling a new team of companions along the way.
With a more dynamic difficulty system noted as Combat Presets, Bioware has divided the possibilities into six options: Storytelling, Keeper, Adventurer, Underdog, Nightmare, and Unbound. The breakdowns of each Combat Preset allows the player to define their playstyle beyond just the class that they choose.
To start, Storyteller is all about the story and is forgiving when it comes to combat as a whole. In comparison Keeper is a combat preset geared around a balanced combat experience with a larger focus on party composition than your equipment. Adventurer is the default combat preset and presents a balance of party composition and equipment choices with an equal focus on combat, with a story that gives the most balanced choice.
On the more challenging side of things, Underdog tips the scales toward combat and increases your need to focus on defensive timing, pushing you to overcome unforgiving enemies. Because this option isn’t standardized, red text appears underneath, coaching players to only choose this difficulty after they’re experienced players. Nightmare is most difficult of the combat presets and can’t be undone without starting a new playthrough entirely. It offers a chance for the player to showcase combat mastery, knowledge of equipment, and use of skills. Finally, there is Unbound, which offers players the chance to define their combat preset, upping elements they’re comfortable with and lowering ones that they are not.
Adding to the customization of the player experience, Dragon Age: The Veilgaurd empowers players to play the way that works for them. This extends from the combat presets to the customization of classes called Specializations which allows you to choose a path and spec to it. It’s the most robust class customization I’ve seen in a Bioware game, and its combat is strengthened because of it.
That said, customization and player agency always come into play at its strongest in the character creator. Unfortunately the development team’s dedication to allow every player to make themselves in the game falls short when it comes to the diversity of the body types available. Look: I’m a hippy Latina with large breasts and the lack of options through body sliders is frustrating. Restricting the size of breasts, hips, and glutes is an obvious overcorrection for the heightened sexualization of especially women characters in games, but it also restricts curvier body types that do exist in the real world—crucially, the body types that predominate among Latina and Black women. Our bodies should be able to be created in a game without the salacious commentary that comes from gaming’s worst elements, but also without being limited because those making them can’t detach bodies from the sexuality attached to them.
The sliders do allow you to create characters that push traditional standards, but I would like the development team to understand that the body type I’m talking about has long stood outside the Eurocentric body standards imposed on women. While the body sliders seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Bioware’s dedication to both hair animation and dynamic skin color choices is thoughtful in development and excellent in execution.
If you’ve ever bought foundation, then you know that you can have the same shade with three different options attached: cool, neutral, or warm. Those undertones impact how the shade changes, often denoted as 33-N versus 33-C. That shade diversity is fully displayed in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It’s a choice that uses a real-world shade range in the game. This also means some limitations, particularly when distinguishing the last colors in the shade range. That said, the melanin slider also allows you to adjust the pigmentation of Rook’s skin, another factor often considered when color-matching for makeup. It’s a thoughtful approach I didn’t think I’d see in games.
Beyond that element, the most detailed part of the character creator’s customization is choosing your facial features. The first step is to use a dynamic slider that moves between three different default faces. If you’re someone who spends a long time in a character creator (like me) this solves one of the early problems you encounter. Which face do I use? This allows you to adjust the visual strength of each of the features, moving freely between them. From there, you can adjust each individual element of the face, and this is where you can really dive in, get granular, and create a character that fits exactly what you want.
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