Dragon Age The Veilguard Criticism Thread (formerly Skepticism Thread) [Spoilers]

Long time lurker, first time poster. I completed Veilguard exactly an hour ago from the time I began drafting this post, and had such a strong reaction I felt I had to record my thoughts here, not least because nobody else in my offline life is a fan of the series and I have nobody else to vent to.

I'd like to include a TL;DR for this post, but my feelings toward this game and its implications for the franchise are so powerful, I don't think it would be possible to summarise them in a couple of lines without repeating what other fans and reviewers have already recorded, or resorting to a trite one-liner.

As a caveat, I'm a long-time, diehard fan of DA. I played DAO when it released in 2009 (I was still a kid at the time!) and immediately fell in love. It became, and remains, one of my two favourite games of all time, and began a 15 year fixation with the world and characters of Thedas. That said, and given my investment in this series, I don't pretend this review attempts to be objective, or see DAV through the eyes of a new player to the series.

But, without further ado, what follows is my review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

**** SPOILERS BEGIN ****

Upon starting Veilguard, it's apparent this game is a highly polished effort. Despite some controversy over the visuals and art direction DAV took, the opening character creator and subsequent introductory sequence is a testament to BioWare's efforts to modernise the franchise's visuals, animations and mechanics. As has been widely remarked upon, options for customisation within the character creator are genuinely impressive, while both cutscenes and playable sections are smooth, and largely absent of the awkwardness which has characterised BioWare's animations in previous releases. Though there are some exceptions to this, such as characters smirking inappropriately during difficult conversations, this, on the whole, doesn't detract from the major leaps BioWare has made in bringing this franchise into the modern age.

The devs' attention to aesthetic detail is something which is equally evident in the design of the game's environments, every one of which is genuinely gorgeous and create a unique sense of place, always reflecting the pre-established and newly introduced lore relevant to each environment. I counted, perhaps, two or three recycled maps and settings during my playthrough, but these are disguised sufficiently well so as not to become wearisome in the manner Dragon Age II's infamous repeating caves did.

In regard to gameplay and mechanics, the refining process the game went through to make it a complete product on release is evident. I noticed no bugs or glitches during my playthrough, which is both impressive and rare for a product which possess the scale and breadth of content of Veilguard.

BioWare is to be commended for all the above, but these qualities do not, regrettably, save the game from its significant failures.

The key strength BioWare has rightly traded on throughout its history has been the depth and quality of its writing. With a couple of recent exceptions, the studio's ability to craft nuanced and emotionally provocative characters, sweeping narratives on a grand scale and intimate tales of personal conflict, and to integrate weighty and cerebrally demanding choices has been, for the most part, unparalleled in the industry. The quality of the plot and characters is surely, then, the factor which weighs most heavily when reviewing any BioWare game. With that standard in mind, it truly pains me to say this is, by some distance, the worst writing BioWare has ever produced.

The threat the game establishes in its opening sequences follows relatively neatly from the conclusion of Inquisition and Trespasser, but proceeds to move at such a breakneck pace that the player has little time to bed in and establish a meaningful connection to the characters or world with which we interact, including with the PC, Rook. Although we're offered a choice as to Rook's background, much of their character is predefined to an extent I haven't seen before in a BioWare protagonist. Rook's moral framework and worldview feels to have been decided by DAV's writers for us, taking away much of the pleasure of roleplaying, and making it difficult to decide what our character's motivations might be for taking certain actions. In almost every beat of DAV's plot, Rook's expressions of purpose are bland and pedestrian, and there is no option to acknowledge the highly complex and often personally, politically and socially painful decision-making which leadership demands, particularly when combatting a threat as great as the one DAV focusses around.

By contrast, The Warden in Origins was able to make choices so controversial they would test relationships with allies and companions, sometimes to breaking point: people we have fought alongside and perhaps grown to love could be forced into a moral quandary so great by our protagonist's actions that they could leave our side or, in extreme cases, decide we were a threat to their own worldview so great we needed to be eliminated by force. Similarly, Dragon Age II's companion interactions could, depending on player choice, be fraught with a grand scale of emotional, from deep friendship and romantic love, to deadly interpersonal conflict which could cause a decade-long companionship to end in an irreconcilable quarrel or, in the case of Anders, with the edge of a knife. Inquisition, again, gives the player the option to make monarchs rise or fall, imbues the protagonist with the power to pass the judgements which leadership demands, and shape a revived institution according to their morality, ambition and worldview.

What all the previous have in common, to varying degrees, is that the PC's actions in each of these decisions and subplots are explicable within the context in which they operate; the Warden can undertake morally questionable acts and justify them through the cruel necessity of combatting the Blight, Hawke could challenge and be challenged due to their proximity and the desperation of their situations, the Inquisitor can reason in various ways as to why they chose a certain path, be it pragmatism, ambition, or simple mercy.

This morally complex reasoning and interpersonal conflict is almost entirely absent from Veilguard. There is no option at almost any point in the game to challenge our companions, or indeed most other NPCs with the exception of the villains, on their words, actions or worldview and, by contrast, almost every action Rook takes will be met with a cascade of approval form companions which, so far as I could tell, has no effect whatsoever on how they interact throughout the course of the game. There were two scenes in DAV in which I noted companions bickering with one another; one of these conflicts was resolved in the very same scene and did not depend on interaction from Rook, while the other resolved itself without prompting some hours later. This conflict felt so obviously scripted and phoned in, with no consequence on the cohesiveness of our team, I was left wondering why it was included at all.

The above is underpinned by a general sense that Veilguard's writing, particularly it's dialogue, is cloyingly, suffocatingly safe. It's been remarked elsewhere and often that much of the game's dialogue feels crafted by an HR department, and while I don't want to comment on the specific political and social debates which motivate those comments, I will say there's an undeniably sterile, corporate and often therapised tone to Veilguard's writing. A particularly jarring example occurred when Rook was attempting to convince a spiritual remnant of Mythal to lend her aid in the fight against the game's villains , and appealed to her with an argument which rested on "building a community that's tied together through shared bonds", or words to this effect. The sheer blandness of this statement simply did not match the solemnity or grandeur of speech and manner which meeting a fragment of a murdered god would demand - instead, it felt that I was applying for a job at an NGO.

The game is littered with dialogue such as the above, as well as an excess of quirky and twee conversations and scenes which, though always a feature of the franchise, dominate Veilguard to a sickly sweet degree; indeed, Rook himself often resorts to quips during tense situations, which is especially frustrating when the dialogue wheel suggests a stoic or tough response will follow. This creates both a sense of tonal whiplash when contrasted against the stakes the characters face, and gives the impression of some (though not all) characters being written around recycled tropes deployed in previous instalments.

This lack of true originality or ability to respond appropriately or deeply to the events happening around Rook are borne out in other aspects of the game. Some scenes seem suspiciously similarly to those featured in other RPGs both produced by BioWare and other studios, sometimes appearing to have been ripped directly from them and repurposed to fit the Dragon Age setting. Further, companions, and Rook himself, will often repeat themselves, falling back on stock phrases or clobbering the player with a single aspect of their personality and giving the impression that they are defined by simply two or three superficial characteristics: Lucanis, for example, a character I was excited to discover prior to release, talked at length in at least four conversations about his love of coffee, yet I had no opportunity to explore in any depth his personal history, worldview, his attitude to his employment as an assassin or his questionable relationship with his family. This preference for the superficial over the substantial sadly defines swathes of characterisation in Veilguard.

The above does not apply universally, and there are characters which expand the horizons of the world of Dragon Age and recall the internal conflicts of mind and heart which have historically made BioWare games so appealing. Emmrich is such a character, and the companion I felt most challenged and impressed by, not least due to the fact Rook is able to express discomfort at Emmrich's occupation, leading to the two challenging each other's preconceptions (albeit, on Rook's part, in an often displeasingly squeamish manner). This depth, however, is unfortunately rare and despite marketing for DAV being centred around the companions, I found them on the whole to be the weakest cast of any DA game so far, with a few exceptions.

The often shallow characterisation of companions is mirrored by by a surprisingly diminutive sense of scale and purpose in the overall plot, which juxtaposes jarringly with the supremely high stakes our characters contend with. The allies Rook gathers to combat the apocalyptic nature of the threat in Veilguard occasionally left me questioning their competence and suitability for such an undertaking: rather than marshalling the armies of the nations of Southern Thedas, Rook relies on an occasionally ragtag band of of militias and paramilitary groups, whose role in main and side quests left me questioning whether they were really the best people for the job This often manifested in small but striking ways. In one companion quest, I cleared a warehouse in Minrathous of Venatori, and was assured by the Shadow Dragons they would protect the site against future incursions. Yet several hours later in the game, I returned to the same location to find it overrun with enemies yet again. If my allies can't be trusted to protect one warehouse, are they truly up to the task of defeating risen gods?

Although my interactions with more established factions such as the Grey Wardens and Mortalitasi felt meaningful, DAV is riddled with loose threads which are left hanging even by the games conclusion. To name but a few, we never establish why it was possible for Davrin to kill an archdemon without sacrificing his own life , previously a central aspect of established Warden lore - indeed, this mystery is acknowledge only in passing. The seismic and, literally, world-shattering revelations around the origin of the Blight, its impact on the Chantry's theology, the effect of the elven gods' return on Dalish and city elves, are either addressed merely in strangely casual and breezy dialogue, or not at all. There are yet stranger narrative choices surrounding the elevation of the Venatori and Qunari to the game's secondary villains, without any explanation of their motives beyond a nebulous assertion they desired "power". Why would Tevinter supremacists fight on behalf of ancient elves whose people they regard as fit only for slavery and sacrifice? What were the circumstances leading to the Antaam's rebellion and breakaway from the Qun? How has this impacted the war with Tevinter, the situation in Par Vollen? Why do the Antaam lapse from highly disciplined and cerebral soldiers to thuggish henchmen for a cause their culture teaches them to fear and abhor? The game's refusal to address this tells us that the writers don't care, so you shouldn't either. And yet, with three games, multiple non-game media releases, and 15 years of world-building behind us, it's impossible for any dedicated fan not to.

It felt, indeed, that Veilguard often treated the series' pre-existing lore as an inconvenience, an irritant which blockaded the smooth progression of a plot of whose compelling brilliance its writers seemed inexplicably convinced. Indeed, nowhere was this more apparent than the omission of any acknowledgment that events did actually take place in Thedas prior to the tail-end of Inquisition. This could have been a far richer and compelling narrative if player choice in previous games were integrated into the game, yet, far from this, we're informed via a letter that every location in which the previous games took place are effectively destroyed beyond repair, the characters within them presumably dead. Quite aside from the way this breaks the cardinal "show, don't tell" rule of good writing, I couldn't help but feel this was an act of, at best, laziness on the writers' part, and at worst, spite born from a desire to punish longtime fans for their misplaced investment in the world of Dragon Age pre-Veilguard, and wipe the slate clean for future instalments which will now, necessarily, be founded on what feels like a far shallower, poorer and less compelling world than the one established over the previous 15 years. This likewise applies to many returning characters, whose contributions to the plot feel shoehorned, not least because it's impossible to interrogate them as to their own pasts - it becomes difficult to connect meaningfully to a character when one receives the impression they don't know, or are unwilling to give away, anything about their own history, particularly given some, such as Morrigan, are talked of as being embroiled in some of the most significant events in Thedas of the previous 20, in-game years.

The above does not apply to every act and scene of the game. Interactions with Solas throughout the game were a reminder of the delicate and often beautiful character writing on which BioWare built its reputation. Events in Act 3, in which I was hit with twist after twist, devastating turn after devastating turn, elevated the game's coda to high drama which represented some of the most impactful and memorable writing and visual sequences I've seen in any video game, drawn together in an elegant and satisfying conclusion. It left me bitterly sad and disappointed this level of quality was reserved for a few hours at the game's conclusion however, and was realised only after dozens of hours of pablum.

Much more ink could be spilled on the manifold issues with Veilguard's writing at the micro level, but this post is already longer than intended, and there are yet further issues with the game that I'll attempt to summarise here. DAV's combat began as one of the game's highlights, a striking improvement from any previous instalment, and although it kept me relatively challenged throughout, enemies often felt repetitive, with a limited range of attacks which could be predicted ahead of time based on their type. There are similarly hordes of low level foes in this game, which will respawn in an area sometimes after simply visiting an adjoining room. There is no mechanic in Veilguard which acknowledges I've 'cleared out' an area of the map, and it sometimes felt as though the game assumed I wanted to fight as much as possible rather than being allowed to explore unfettered.

The game's combat is further defined by comprehensive skill trees which allow us to access unique, class-based abilities, which are engaging and fun, but absent from any part of our skill development is the option to select non-combat based skills. There are vanishingly few options in Veilguard to resolve

A similar problem exists with the endless puzzles which litter the game, which are simultaneously so simple, ubiquitous and repetitive in form, they become a major source of tedium which serve no purpose except to impede progress and pad the game out with needless content. This was reflected in the game's quest design, which often had me run between points A - D, collecting various notes and trinkets, with a litany of side quests following a formula in which we were tasked with finding a missing person from an allied faction who, in almost every case, I was able quickly guess when the quest started my target would already be dead by the time I got to them. None of the side content in this game felt truly meaningful, and felt like a clumsily disguised repeat of the infamous fetch quests which bedevilled Inquisition. Much of this felt like it was a holdover from the game's day as a live service product, with simplistic and low-impact objectives which served only to punctuate a cavalcade of hack and slash combat.

Overall, then, I found Veilguard to be a baffling, shockingly disappointing, and sad entry to the series. I was stunned that this game was the end product of a ten year development cycle, and felt to a degree misled by much of the marketing and developer statements which preceded the game's release. BioWare's future remains uncertain, and so, necessarily, does Dragon Age's. If this is the series' swan song, I can't help but regard it as a tragically unworthy bookend to a series which has previously been so richly crafted, and which teemed with narrative potential which has gone unfulfilled. If, however, Veilguard is the stepping stone to a blank state worldstate in which the series undergoes an explicit reboot, I can't say with any confidence the game has left the franchise at a point that makes a retained investment appealing at all.