Guard That Veil!

I finally started Dragon Age Veilguard, many months after it released and about ten years after the previous installment "Trespasser" came out. I'm still very very early in the game; Steam says I have about 10 hours, including character creation. But I wanted to jot down some first impressions. If previous games are any indication, I'll have much more to write later on!

 

 

MINI SPOILERS

Veilguard continues the series' pattern of changing what feels like everything about the game with each new entry. There's a total new combat system, a total new visual aesthetic. On the visuals, there's a very prominent purple motif that carries through all the menus and user interface, as well as much of the gameplay. It's really striking, and I think I like it.

 

 

For combat, I'm still getting used to it. The combat reminds me a lot of what I've seen of Hogwarts Legacy, a real-time action RPG that's oriented around dodges and parries and counterattacks. For the most part you'll attack an enemy until you see a glow around your PC's head signaling an incoming attack, then dodge or parry to avoid the damage, and resume attacking. Your companions' special abilities occur on cooldowns, while your own can be activated after you do enough damage.

 

 

You acquire skill points by leveling up and occasionally by finding special items, then spend those skill points in a web of possible abilities. This aspect is similar to skills in Inquisition, which in turn owes a huge debt to Final Fantasy X. One big change is specializations: you directly unlock a specialization by reaching it in the tree, instead of requiring a special quest or unlock as in previous Dragon Ages. (Dragons Age?)

In a blow for the series, you now only can bring two companions with you on quests, down from the traditional three. Some quests are locked to a particular companion, leaving a lone slot to fill. The overall dynamic now feels very similar to Mass Effect, in particular how you need to prepare for synergies: each companion will be able to inflict a certain status effect (like Sundered, Weakened, etc.), and will be able to "detonate" another status effect, exactly like in Mass Effect building teams that can product Biotic Bursts or Tech Explosions.

 

 

Companion builds have a similar skill-tree unlock system, but significantly simplified from the player character's, and it appears that you get companion skill points by progressing their stories instead of from leveling. In combat, companions mostly run on auto-pilot, but you can order them to use cooldown abilities on specific enemies, or can requests buffs for yourself.

The game keeps the Barrier system that's been around for ages, but seems to have dropped the Guard mechanic that was introduced in Inquisition. Enemies may have Armor that you need to take down before you can stagger them, or barriers that will regenerate after a delay, so usually you want quick, light attacks on Barrier enemies and slow, heavy attacks on Armor enemies.

I'm playing as a male Qunari rogue. I didn't spend as much time as usual in character creation, but I'm very very very very happy to see that the hairstyle options are dramatically improved over what Inquisition offered. I'm also pleased to see Dragon Age following the path of Baldur's Gate III and other recent RPGs in allowing mix-and-matching of sex and gender characteristics, where you can vary your character's voice, genitals, pronouns, etc. It's interesting how franchises seem to start exploring in this space with NPCs before later opening the door to PCs to escape the traditional rigid divisions in character creation.

 

 

I was mildly bummed that the Dragon Age Keep is no longer in use; instead, there's an option buried in character creation where you can make a handful of selections about what happened in Inquisition. I'm not surprised about this - maintaining lore consistency becomes exponentially more complex as the number of games grow, many casual fans probably don't remember what they chose 15 years ago in Origins, and properly supporting the vast number of decision points Inquisition did would have required spending a ton of engineering time and money in content that most players would never experience.

 

There is a very light Origin option for your character, where you can select the faction they were associated with prior to the events of this game. It's much less involved than the Origins origins, but offers more choice than we got in DA2 or Inquisition, so that's cool.

 

 

Your main character is known as Rook, although that's clearly a code name, and they have an actual name you can select (which nobody will ever use). Again, this makes me think a lot of Mass Effect with Shepherd and Ryder. We kind of went through this with Hawke, but Hawke had a much more fixed background, while Rook's varies based on your origin. I have noticed that Rook seems significantly more dominant from the get-go than any of the previous protagonists. The DA:O silent protagonist has a very slow and gradual climb in authority throughout the game, and even at the end is still arguably playing second fiddle to other folks like Morrigan, Alistair and Logain. Hawke canonically gains power between acts 2 and 3, but during the actual gameplay portion is always a lone agent against the world. The Inquisitor grows into a position of authority within roughly the first third of the game. Here, Rook seems to be giving orders and steering the direction from basically the start. That isn't bad or good, just different. It does kind of make me think of the difference between, say, GTA games where your protagonist starts off riding bicycles and finding baseball bats versus Saint's Row where the game might start with you being the President of the United States and firing off laser death rays from a UFO.

 

 

As for the story: Again, I'm very early on. (This still counts as Mini Spoilers for Veilguard, but probably Mega Spoilers for Inquisition and earlier games). You start off on somewhat familiar ground, working with Varric and Harding to track down Solas. In my backstory my Inquisitor vowed to stop Solas and kept the Inquisition active under the Chantry; so far that hasn't impacted this game but I expect it will. My Rook is similarly anti-Solas, though I am growing increasingly curious about the implications of that. It's been clear for a while that Solas sees himself as a good guy, and the damage he's causing as a regrettable sacrifice for a greater cause. My Rook isn't having any of that nonsense, though.

 

 

So far I've recruited Harding the scout, Neve the detective, Bellara the Veil-Jumper, and Lucanis the Antivan Crow. Since Rook is a Rogue, that's a solid 3/5 rogue-heavy party! I've been prioritizing Harding so far, although it looks like all companions are eligible romance interests. I am really enjoying the direction of the party so far. In Inquisition, I was a bit bummed that there were twice as many male companions as female, so it was pretty fun to have the first three companions in Veilguard all be ladies.

 

 

MEGA SPOILERS

For decision points... I brought Harding with me into greater danger during out first confrontation with Solas, and as a result she's been pretty beaten up, though her spirit remains as strong as ever. I opted to leave the Mayor of that one blighted town to his fate. In general I'm always a good guy who believes that everyone is capable of redemption... but what the Mayor did was heinous and he didn't seem remorseful about his actions. I was interested to see Harding approve of my harsh action; I would never think of Harding as "evil". But that's always been one of my favorite things about Dragon Age: it's better than any other game I've played at evoking complex moral dilemmas that explode the trite good/evil dichotomies most other games wallow in.

 

 

 

 

END SPOILERS

I think that's about it! So far I'm enjoying the game; I'm not fully "hooked" just yet but I imagine that will set in as the plot advances. I'll probably be semi-completionist in the game, I usually like doing all the companion quests and faction quests and things, but won't feel compelled to, like, get 100% of the collectibles or anything like that. I expect I'll have at least a few more posts to drop as the game kicks into gear!