Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The fourth major game in the Dragon Age franchise, The Veilguard is the sequel to Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014). Set ten years after Inquisition, the game features new locations in the fictional world of Thedas for the player to explore. The story follows a player character known as Rook who was recruited by Varric Tethras to help him stop Solas, also known as the elven trickster god Fen'Harel, from bringing down the Veil. While disrupting Solas' ritual, they accidentally unleash two imprisoned elven gods – Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain – who then wreak havoc across Thedas with the Blight in an attempt to conquer the world. Rook, supported by companions and various factions, sets out to stop these members of the elven pantheon from achieving their goals. Players control Rook from a third-person perspective and travel to various zones via magical portals known as Eluvians. Veilguard utilizes a hub-and-spoke world design unlike its predecessor's open world design.

The game's development, which began in 2015, has been marked by lengthy delays, several fundamental changes in design, and high staff turnover. The game was announced as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2022, and retitled to Dragon Age: The Veilguard in June 2024.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on October 31, 2024. After release Dragon Age: The Veilguard topped Steam charts and broke BioWare's concurrent player record. The game received generally positive reviews from critics and was nominated for awards such as Ultimate Game of The Year at the Golden Joystick Awards and Innovation in Accessibility for The Game Awards.

Gameplay

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a single-player action role-playing game. In previous games, a player's role-playing choices in earlier titles were imported from save files or the web application Dragon Age Keep. Veilguard instead allows players to only select three choices they made in Inquisition. Creative Director John Epler said that decisions made in the previous games largely didn't impact events in Veilguard, which allowed the game's creators "to avoid contradicting" past choices individual players made.

During character creation, the player is able to choose a lineage for their player character (human, dwarf, elf, or qunari), a fighting class (rogue, mage, or warrior), and a character backstory with one of six faction associations. Like the choice of origin in the original game, this faction sets the character's course throughout the game. Unlike in previous games, customization options include body size and body part selections that are independent of the voice or pronouns (she/her, he/him, or they/them) chosen for the player character. Players are also be able to remake their player character from Dragon Age: Inquisition which appears in the game, alongside some other previous Dragon Age characters.

There are seven companion characters from which two can be chosen to form a combat party of three. Unlike previous games in the series, players cannot directly control the companions in combat. The companions in Veilguard are described as pansexual, allowing romances with player characters of any gender, but Busche said that they were not "playersexual", or only attracted to the player character. While the combat system is now real-time action-based, as opposed to the tactical strategy approach of earlier Dragon Age titles, Veilguard still employs a pause-and-play mechanic similar to Inquisition's.^: 35 Instead of that game's open world design, Veilguard uses a "hub-and-spoke design" where players get around the game's world by magical portals; the areas so accessed vary in size.^: 38

Synopsis

Setting

The story begins ten years after the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition, with previous companion Solas, now known by his previous alias, Fen'Harel, the elven god of betrayal and rebellion, attempting to destroy the Veil, the metaphysical boundary between the physical world and the Fade, the world of spirits and demons; Solas previously created the Veil to imprison the other elven gods after their misuse of power, but now attempts to restore the world of ancient elves out of regret for sealing ancient elves off from the Fade and causing the downfall of their society.

The protagonist player character is "Rook", a member of one of six factions: the Antivan Crows, an order of assassins from Antiva; the Grey Wardens, an order dedicated to fighting darkspawn with their headquarters in the Anderfels; the Lords of Fortune, a guild of treasure hunters from Rivain; the Mourn Watch, guardians of the Grand Necropolis in Nevarra; the Shadow Dragons, a Tevinter resistance faction opposing corruption and slavery; or the Veil Jumpers, a multi-race group dedicated to uncovering the forest of Arlathan which was once the capital of the ancient elven empire. After disobeying the orders of their faction and being sent away to cool tensions, Rook was recruited by Varric Tethras, Viscount of Kirkwall, and Lace Harding, lead scout of the Inquisition, in their search for Solas.

Alongside Harding, there are six other mandatory companions: Bellara Lutare, a Veil Jumper; Davrin, a Grey Warden; Emmrich Volkarin, a Mourn Watcher; Lucanis Dellamorte, an Antivan Crow; Neve Gallus, a Shadow Dragon; and Taash, a Lord of Fortune.

Rook, Varric, and Harding pursue Solas in the Tevinter capital city of Minrathous, attempting to stop Solas from destroying the Veil. Rescuing Neve, the team locate Solas in the forest of Arlathan, capital of the ancient elven empire. Rook disrupts Solas' ritual to destroy the Veil, which releases two ancient elven gods tied to the Veil; Elgar'nan, the god of vengeance, and Ghilan'nain, the goddess of navigation.

Solas is imprisoned within the Fade and bound to Rook via a blood connection at the ritual site; Rook learns that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain plan to harness the Blight, the period of darkspawn corrupting Tevinter Old Gods into Archdemons, out of revenge for Solas rebelling against their rise to power and subsequently imprisoning them within the Veil after their murder of Mythal, the elven goddess of love who attempted to keep the peace. The team take up residence within the "Lighthouse", Solas' former base of operations within the Fade, and recover the lyrium dagger used by Solas during the ritual. Travelling through the "Crossroads", the pathway between ancient elves and the Fade, via magical mirrors, Eluvians, Rook enlists allies to pursue Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.

Alongside Harding and Neve, Rook recruits Bellara, Lucanis, and Davrin, before being informed of blighted dragons sent by Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain to both Minrathous and the Antivan city of Treviso; Rook must decide which city to save. Rook then recruits Emmrich and Taash, before meeting leader of the Grey Wardens in Weisshaupt, First Warden Glastrum. Unable to convince the First Warden of the danger, Rook either talks him down or knocks him unconscious, as Weisshaupt is besieged by Ghilan'nain and arisen Archdemon, Razikale. Despite heavy Warden losses, Weisshaupt is saved and Razikale is killed, rendering Ghilan'nain mortal.

Fighting off the Gods' allies, the Venatori, Tevinter supremacists, and the Antaam, the military of the qunari, Rook learns in Treviso that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain plan to conduct a ritual in Tearstone Island on the eve of the next eclipse, preparing to pierce the Fade with a red lyrium dagger and flood Thedas with the Blight.

Rallying their allies with the aid of the Inquisitor, Rook and their companions gather at Tearstone Island; either Davrin or Harding leads a distraction team and is killed in the process. After Ghilan'nain is killed by Lucanis, Solas betrays Rook and entraps them within the Fade prison, recovering the lyrium dagger. Rook escapes with the aid of their companions, learning that Varric was killed by Solas and that Solas had used blood magic to alter Rook's memory of the event; the team also created a duplicate of Solas' dagger. Elgar'nan retreats to Minrathous and overthrows the palace of the Archon, with Solas in pursuit.

With the aid of their remaining allies, Rook and the team break through the fortified defenses of the Venatori and the Antaam. After being given the lyrium dagger by Solas, Rook learns that killing Elgar'nan will collapse the Veil and that an elven god must be binded to the Veil to uphold it. After Rook kills Elgar'nan and his Archdemon, Lusacan, Solas again attempts to collapse the Veil. Rook either forces Solas' binding to the Veil via fighting Solas or tricking him with the duplicate dagger, or (if the essence of Mythal was recovered) can peacefully convince Solas to stop the ritual and voluntarily bind himself out of atonement.

Development

The development of the fourth main entry in the Dragon Age series, code-named "Joplin", began in 2015 with Mike Laidlaw as its creative director. It was intended to be a smaller, more narrative-focused game set in the Tevinter Imperium region of the game's world setting, Thedas.

Problems with the development of BioWare's other games Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem led to repeated interruptions as Joplin staff was shifted to these games. This included putting Joplin on hold in late 2016 with development resuming in March 2017 after Andromeda shipped. In October 2017, BioWare and its parent company Electronic Arts cancelled Joplin altogether, reportedly because it had no room for a live service component to provide ongoing monetization opportunities.

Development of the game was restarted under the code-name "Morrison" in 2018, this time with a live-service component and based on Anthem's code. According to Bloomberg News, after the success of the single-player game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the decision to cancel the reworking of the massively multiplayer online Anthem in February 2021 following its lackluster launch, EA and BioWare decided to remove the planned multiplayer components from Morrison and to develop it as a single-player game only. Alpha-stage footage leaked in February 2023 indicated that the game would use real-time action combat gameplay, influenced by God of War, unlike previous Dragon Age games.

Staff turnover

The project has been marked by a high turnover of leading staff. Several veteran Dragon Age staff, including Laidlaw, left the company in response to Joplin's cancellation in 2017. After the 2018 restart, Mark Darrah remained as an executive producer, while Matthew Goldman took over the position of creative director for the project from 2017 to 2021. By December 3, 2020, Darrah had resigned from BioWare, replaced by BioWare Austin studio head Christian Dailey as executive producer. Goldman left BioWare by November 2021, and was replaced as Creative Director by John Epler. Dailey left BioWare in February 2022. Corinne Busche became game director thereafter, Benoit Houle director of product development, and Mac Walters production director. Walters in turn left BioWare in January 2023. In March 2023, Darrah returned as a consultant for the game and the Mass Effect team joined the production of Veilguard, according to EA.

In August 2023, BioWare laid off 50 people working on Veilguard and the next Mass Effect game; this included Mary Kirby who was one of the series' original writers and credited with "creating Varric and the Qunari". PC Gamer commented "that's not to say there are no veterans of the good old days left, but you're looking at a very different group of people than the one that made the studio's greatest hits". In October, seven of them sued BioWare for additional compensation, complaining that BioWare's NDAs prevented them from adding their work on Veilguard to their portfolio.

Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe composed the game's soundtrack, replacing Trevor Morris, the composer for Inquisition.