CARE BEARS NOW
I’m genuinely angry to report that Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the fourth entry in this once-venerated franchise, is painfully mid. In an apparent attempt to court two audiences at once, BioWare’s executives decided to mash Dragon Age’s dark fantasy universe together with superhero-style storytelling. The result is a tonal disaster—one that reportedly led to the sacking of the entire writing team. Fans, meanwhile, are left watching a beloved series risk ending not with a bang, but a whimper.
In The Veilguard, what was once a mature, nuanced, and morally complex RPG has been flattened into juvenile entertainment. Designed for a Marvel-conditioned audience, the game trades ambiguity and restraint for quippy banter, flashy combat, and a simplistic good-versus-evil narrative. BioWare RPGs have traditionally lived or died by their companions and their writing. Here, you’re saddled with a roster of shallow, stereotypical sidekicks who oscillate between trauma dumping and emotional hand-holding, threatening to underperform in combat if you don’t constantly tend to their feelings.
The overarching plot itself isn’t terrible, but it unfolds in a frustratingly uneven fashion. After a major mishap early on, the ancient elven gods Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain escape their prison behind the Veil—the barrier separating reality from the Fade. They proceed to wage war on Thedas, enslaving populations and unleashing a new Blight complete with two fresh Archdemons. It’s solid Dragon Age material, on paper.
From your base—a lighthouse suspended within the Fade—you play as Rook, tasked with traveling across the Tevinter Imperium to assemble the Veilguard: a diverse lineup of specialists that feel less like characters and more like fantasy superheroes. You bounce between aiding the Grey Wardens, the Antivan Crows, Minrathous, Veil Jumpers, and more, gradually working toward confronting the gods. In practice, this structure quickly bogs down as every faction piles on increasingly urgent demands, stretching the narrative thin.
Your companions span a wide range of Tevinter society: a scout, a detective mage, a Veil Jumper, a dragon hunter, a necromancer, an assassin, and a Grey Warden. Between missions, everyone gathers in the lighthouse to upgrade gear, exchange exposition, bond, and flirt. Every companion is pansexual, which removes any narrative friction or distinct romantic identity—and you’re still limited to choosing just one romance. For a game so desperate to seem progressive and permissive, the emotional interactions feel oddly sanitized and constrained.
Visually, the game makes a baffling stylistic choice. All characters—companions and NPCs alike—are rendered in an awkward semi-cartoony art style meant to reinforce the game’s playful tone. Heads are oversized, skin looks plasticky, and facial animations veer into uncanny territory. The character creator offers excellent facial customization, yet no matter how much effort you put in, Rook still looks like a Pixar escapee. Elves and Qunari suffer the most: stripped of the distinctive racial features established in earlier games, they resemble humans wearing cheap prosthetics. Davrin, the elven Grey Warden, looks less like a veteran warrior and more like a low-effort cosplayer.
One notable exception is Solas. Returning from Inquisition, he plays a significant role here—details withheld for spoiler reasons—but remains the best-written character by a wide margin. Clever, manipulative, pragmatic, and morally ambiguous, Solas feels like a relic from an earlier, more confident BioWare. His Fade-centric questline is the only side content that feels genuinely compelling.
That Solas remains so well-written only highlights how mediocre everything else is. It strongly suggests that the tonal shift was a deliberate, top-down decision. How BioWare thought they could radically alter the tone of the fourth entry in an ongoing narrative and get away with it is beyond me.
Not everything is a loss. I was initially engaged, and whenever the main plot took center stage, I found myself re-engaging. The action combat—clearly inspired by God of War—is responsive and enjoyable, helped by my choice of a rogue archer. Unfortunately, it barely evolves. The skill tree is large, but most abilities are functionally interchangeable, rendering the (mercifully free) respec system largely pointless.
Companions fare no better in combat. Their abilities amount to color-swapped attacks and heals, occasionally chainable for satisfying bursts of damage. They can’t die and contribute little beyond periodic assistance. Meanwhile, they never stop talking—telegraphing every attack, warning of reinforcements, and draining tension from every encounter.
Enemy variety is similarly lacking. You fight the same basic archetypes—fodder, casters, archers, brutes—reskinned across factions. Unique bosses exist and are generally highlights, but even they suffer from repetition. I fought seven dragons, and after the first few, it became clear they all played out identically. I defeated the last one using the same tactics as the first.
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This points to the game’s larger problem: excess without restraint. Everything is bloated. Enemies have massive health pools and respawn constantly, forcing repetitive fights as questlines reuse the same maps over and over. Every ability works in every situation, encouraging rote optimization rather than experimentation.
Dialogue suffers from the same lack of subtlety. Everything is spelled out—emotions, motivations, plot beats—leaving nothing for the player to infer. Potentially interesting companion arcs are undermined by predictable execution and cartoonishly evil antagonists. Even the climactic finale, which—like Mass Effect 2—can end in tragedy depending on your choices, falls flat. Unlike that masterpiece, The Veilguard never earned my emotional investment.
One moment perfectly encapsulates the problem. Approaching a dark, deserted village by boat, the atmosphere is tense. The music grows ominous. Silence hangs heavy. Then the companions immediately deflate the scene:
“This place is usually bustling at this hour.”
“Something’s happened.”
“It’s quiet.”
“Too quiet.”
Any sense of mood is obliterated.
Ironically, this relentless chatter clashes with the game’s otherwise stellar audiovisual presentation. The world is divided into distinct regions, each beautifully rendered with dramatic vistas, crumbling ancient structures, and Fade-touched debris frozen mid-air. The setting feels steeped in history and magic.
Yet it’s miserable to explore. Like God of War, the level design is aggressively linear: narrow corridors, trivial puzzles, and artificial gating. Cities are the worst offenders, riddled with nonsensical layouts that shatter immersion. Roads end abruptly at impassable ledges, rooftops serve as main thoroughfares, and ziplines appear where streets should exist. You traverse shops, balconies, and private homes repeatedly, not because it makes sense, but because the quest design demands it.
Loot is everywhere, stripped of meaning. You constantly swap gear without committing to a build, as stat gains cancel each other out in an endless equilibrium. Fire damage up, bleed damage down—who cares? The numbers lose all significance.
Sidequests feel like noise. The world is ending, yet you’re expected to care deeply about picnics, fashion choices, and personal identity arcs that feel grotesquely out of place given the stakes. There’s no grit, no darkness, no existential weight. Worse, you’re never allowed to push back. You can’t challenge your companions, express genuine disagreement, or tell them to stop annoying you.
In the end, Dragon Age: The Veilguard simply wears me down. It’s impossible to care. The visuals are impressive, the sound design excellent—but they reflect off a hollow surface. The voice acting is strong, but the dialogue is weak. The combat is responsive, but monotonous. After more than 80 hours, I felt no meaningful connection to the game at all.
In trying to appeal to everyone, BioWare lost the soul of Dragon Age.
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