Dragon Age: The Veilguard looks like a glorious return to form for BioWare

There’s a lot riding on BioWare Edmonton’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

For one, it’s the highly-anticipated sequel to 2014’s award-winning Dragon Age: Inquisition. For another, it’s coming after the Canadian developer’s last game, 2019’s Anthem, was a poorly received pivot from the studio’s lineage in single-player story-driven RPGs. Even 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda, which was made by the now-defunct BioWare Montreal, is generally regarded to be a disappointing follow-up to the Edmonton flagship’s seminal Mass Effect trilogy.

All of that is to say that many people are hoping that Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be a return to form for BioWare. That was top of mind as I entered a nearly one-hour behind-closed-doors group appointment with creative director John Epler at Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles. Will The Veilguard restore the glory of a developer I’ve loved so much that it inspired me to put together a 20,000-word, two-part story on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic?

Of course, it’s too early to say either way, but based on my demo, I’m a lot more optimistic than I once was.

Right off the bat, any concerns I had about the look of the game were put to rest. The above Veilguard trailer, which featured during the June 9th Xbox Games Showcase, suggested an off-putting cartoonish, Fortnite-esque aesthetic, which put off many. However, the actual game, which was built using EA’s Frostbite Engine, has a sharp visual style that looks realistic while also maintaining that fantastical feel.

To best demonstrate this, the demo began with a quick look at the character customizer. Epler says this feeds into the first of three main design pillars: “Be who you want to be.” As you’d expect, there is a slew of options for whatever kind of Human, Dwarf, Elf or Qunari that you want to create. For the first time in the series, you can also select body shape, either by navigating a slider or fine-tuning specific proportions like height and bust and bulge size. Another new feature? Strands of hair that believably react to movement.

“We heard the feedback of Dragon Age: Inquisition — their options were maybe not exactly what everyone was looking for,” said Epler. “And this time, we wanted to make sure we give players the ability to build a character that looks like them, and that includes having hair that behaves the way they expect this hair to behave.”

For the purposes of the demo, though, we went with a quick preset male build for ‘Rook’ (the player character’s default name) and picked the Rogue class. It’s one of three available classes (alongside Warrior and Mage) and it’s about mixing quick melee attacks with magical arrows for a ranged playstyle. Epler then picks one of the factions, Shadow Dragons, which is an underground resistance group that fights corrupt mages.

With all of that out of the way, the demo properly kicks off during the prologue section of the game. In it, Rook enters a bar in Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Imperium, to rendezvous with a private detective named Neve Garrus who can lead us to Solas, a returning Dragon Age character. The so-called ‘Dreadwolf’ is performing a deadly ritual to break through the Veil and free the elves he once imprisoned, with the party hoping to stop him before he causes irreparable damage to their world.

This bar scene gives us a taste of the classic BioWare dialogue choices, allowing Rook to either fight the bartender and her goons or opt for a non-violent approach. After the demo group called for the former, we get a swashbuckling barroom brawl in which Rook dishes out quite a few punches, kicks and throws while taking a couple himself. Then, another familiar Dragon Age character, Varric, reveals himself, pinning the bartender to the wall with a crossbow bolt. This gets her to tell us where to meet the contact, and Varric remarks that avoiding a fight probably would have been a better alternative.

In response, you can select from “affable,” “irreverent,” or “tough” dialogue options, which will naturally affect your relationship with the character. (Each companion will also have their own arc with optional missions that open up new story moments and gameplay options for them.) For our demo, the group picked irreverent, leading Rook to say the fight got the job done and Varric warning him to not get cocky. Naturally, these little bits of character banter are what you expect from a classic BioWare RPG, so it was most welcome to see them so prominently, even in just a relatively minor scene like this.

You then meet up with another established Dragon Age character, Scout Harding, who is now a party member, and head off to meet Neve. Because we went with the Shadow Faction faction, Neve has some unique lines of dialogue with Rook. With this party, you have to run through Minrathous, and it’s here where you get an even better feel for the stunning visuals. It’s a striking steampunk-esque city that mixes floating fortresses made with old architecture and impressive machinery operated by magic-powered electricity. The strong art design, coupled with the bevy of colourful chattering background NPCs, makes Minrathous feel instantly memorable. Epler says this is part of BioWare’s second main design pillar: creating “a world worth saving.”

And sure enough, the party does indeed have to save Minrathous even sooner than expected as demonic enemies suddenly break through the Veil. Immediately, I was impressed by the fluidity of the combat. Running at a steady 60fps, Rook danced around the area with dual blades, launching a flurry of light, heavy and charged attacks with balletic grace. All the while, Rook was juggling an ability called Static Strike that launches a wave of energy at enemies, and magic arrows to hit those pesky ranged enemies.

Epler says the design ethos for combat was “every hit matters,” and it certainly looked that way in the gameplay footage. Adding to that feeling is the classic BioWare ability wheel, which brings time to a crawl so you can issue commands to each party member. This being an early-hours demo meant that there disappointingly wasn’t anything in there yet to show for companions, but it’s nonetheless reassuring to know that this added layer of depth will be there.

Even more complexity came from the enemy variety, which was remarkable even in just a few combat encounters. Besides your basic wraith-like ‘Shade’ creatures, there were variants that had special resistances to melee and magic, respectively, as well as a towering mini-boss that had a wide-ranged area of effect for attacks.

On top of the dynamic combat, Minrathous itself was getting utterly torn apart as we made our way towards Solas. There’s an impressive level of scope here as you run, jump, climb and shimmy through crumbling buildings and platforms while monstrous beings are bounding and flying all around you and chasing the everyday people, rain and gusts of winds hammer the city and magical vapours swirl everywhere.

“One of the things we wanted to do is make the first mission after the prologue feel like the final mission of another game — really bring that intensity, that sense of stakes, into the action as quickly as possible and get the player to understand why it is they need to stop Solas and what would happen if they don’t,” says Epler. “Dragon Age has always been a spectacular world with spectacular stories and we really wanted to make sure we leaned into that sense of spectacle on this one — telling the story in the environment and telling the story through the art as much as the dialogue.”

The third and final core design pillar that Epler speaks about, “inspire a team of unforgettable heroes,” really plays into the end of the demo. When you finally reach Solas, Varric proposes trying to talk down his old friend, and you have the choice of supporting his decision, which we ultimately did, leaving the party to hold off some fiends in the meantime.

However, Varric’s words fail to reach Solas, leaving the party to decide to break some scaffolding to bring down on the Dreadwolf. Alas, your daring rush to make it to the support beams is for naught, as a major character moment transpires that leads Solas to escape. Worse still, the ensuing chaos leads Rook to get thrown around, hitting his head, reaching around to touch quite a bit of blood and then passing out from the injury. It was a tantalizing moment to end on, leaving me quite intrigued to see what happens next.

All in all, it was an impressive first showing for The Veilguard, especially since we’d been waiting quite a while for it. The very polished vertical slice touched on pretty much everything I’d hope for from a BioWare RPG: the character customization, engaging character banter, choice-driven narrative and tactical combat.

The only thing I really need to see next is how compelling the structure and content of the larger world ends up being. Epler is quick to note that The Veilguard isn’t open-world like Inquisition, focusing instead on larger areas to explore. While some might be upset to hear that, I’d wager that’s a smart move since far too many games rely on an abundance of bloat and overstay their welcome accordingly.

And in a broader sense, we need to see how everything comes together across an experience that will presumably last dozens of hours. We’re in a post-Witcher 3 and Baldur’s Gate 3 landscape, two games that really set the bar for western RPGs, so there’s no doubt even more pressure on BioWare to deliver.

Clearly, then, a lot of questions still remain. But unlike my first looks at Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, which left me feeling mostly underwhelmed and puzzled, this Veilguard demo felt far more confident in its direction. Simply put, it felt like a tried-and-true BioWare game — something I’ve sorely missed in recent years. If Veilguard can maintain the level of quality shown in the demo throughout the entire experience, we might just have another BioWare classic before too long.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC sometime this fall.

Image credit: EA