I love a Dragon Age. I love Bioware-style narrative RPGs in general, to be honest. Dragon Age is a bit weird for me as I really don’t like dark fantasy. And, at some level, Dragon Age is trying to be all dark, with blights and demons and slavery and dead bodies strewn everywhere. But it’s it’s also strangely a goofy hang with friends.
I really like the goofy hang with friends part. To the point where I’ll forgive the grimdark. And seeing past the grimdark, I actually came to really like the worldbuilding. I’ve read a bunch of the spin-off novels and I bought the TTRPG (with no real intent of running a game, but I’m all about having RPGs sourcebooks for crap I like.
It’s been a minute since the last Dragon Age game, and Bioware has stumbled a bit since their heyday. I liked Dragon Age: Inquisition well enough. I was kind of looking forward to Veilguard, but put off getting it until I got the Steamdeck. And then it was on sale after Christmas. That gave me enough time to learn that the Internet wasn’t super into Veilguard.
The Internet, as usual, is dumb.
Is there anything very revolutionary here? No. Is it a perfectly serviceable Dragon Age? Yes.
Is the non-binary coming out story wedged into this thing a bit cringe? Yeah, sorry. But it feels sincere. Just wedged in there without a lot of thought to the in-world cultural context. Here’s a bit of criticism from a trans perspective that I will use to replace any criticism I might have. And move on.
It was fun to see parts of Thedas we haven’t seen before. I liked the deep-dive into Dragon Age cosmology we get. I liked my Rook’s northern accent (voiced by Bryony Corrigan). I liked the streamlined loot system and the narrative seemed well-paced. I liked that I got to make out with Scout Harding, although I didn’t feel like the romance aspects of the game were quite up to Dragon Age standards. I did like all my goofy friends, tho. Even the oddly charming necromancer.
Anyways, I just finished the game today, and I had a good time. It’s been years since I’ve gotten this deeply invested in a game.
It’s possible if I’d played Baldur’s Gate III, Veilguard might pale in comparison. That’s the impression I’m getting from the (non-shitty) reviews. But I haven’t played BG3, so I’m quite happy with Veilguard.