Dragon Age: The Veilguard Is Shaping Up to Be an Overpowering Experience

After nearly 10 years of development, media and content creators recently got a hands-on preview of Bioware’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard. For around six hours, we played through Act 1, jumping through sections of the first act that each highlighted different key elements of the game. We made large choices with legit consequences and got to know several companions (particularly Neve, Harding, Bellara, and Lucanis, who were choices for the bulk of the content), and had multiple chances to choose a different class to play for each section. 

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Solas—known as the Dread Wolf, Elven Trickster god, and former Dragon Age companion—has tried to tear down the Veil that separates Thedas from the world of demons, with the goal of restoring his people’s immortality and glory only to sacrifice thousands in the process. But when his ritual goes awry, two of his most ancient and powerful adversaries are released and begin to seek the complete and utter domination of his world, spreading blight across Thedas. You’re Rook, and you’re tasked with stopping it all, assembling a new team of companions along the way. 

With a more dynamic difficulty system noted as Combat Presets, Bioware has divided the possibilities into six options: Storytelling, Keeper, Adventurer, Underdog, Nightmare, and Unbound. The breakdowns of each Combat Preset allows the player to define their playstyle beyond just the class that they choose. 

To start, Storyteller is all about the story and is forgiving when it comes to combat as a whole. In comparison Keeper is a combat preset geared around a balanced combat experience with a larger focus on party composition than your equipment. Adventurer is the default combat preset and presents a balance of party composition and equipment choices with an equal focus on combat, with a story that gives the most balanced choice.

On the more challenging side of things, Underdog tips the scales toward combat and increases your need to focus on defensive timing, pushing you to overcome unforgiving enemies. Because this option isn’t standardized, red text appears underneath, coaching players to only choose this difficulty after they’re experienced players. Nightmare is most difficult of the combat presets and can’t be undone without starting a new playthrough entirely. It offers a chance for the player to showcase combat mastery, knowledge of equipment, and use of skills. Finally, there is Unbound, which offers players the chance to define their combat preset, upping elements they’re comfortable with and lowering ones that they are not. 

Adding to the customization of the player experience, Dragon Age: The Veilgaurd empowers players to play the way that works for them. This extends from the combat presets to the customization of classes called Specializations which allows you to choose a path and spec to it. It’s the most robust class customization I’ve seen in a Bioware game, and its combat is strengthened because of it. 

That said, customization and player agency always come into play at its strongest in the character creator. Unfortunately the development team’s dedication to allow every player to make themselves in the game falls short when it comes to the diversity of the body types available. Look: I’m a hippy Latina with large breasts and the lack of options through body sliders is frustrating. Restricting the size of breasts, hips, and glutes is an obvious overcorrection for the heightened sexualization of especially women characters in games, but it also restricts curvier body types that do exist in the real world—crucially, the body types that predominate among Latina and Black women. Our bodies should be able to be created in a game without the salacious commentary that comes from gaming’s worst elements, but also without being limited because those making them can’t detach bodies from the sexuality attached to them. 

The sliders do allow you to create characters that push traditional standards, but I would like the development team to understand that the body type I’m talking about has long stood outside the Eurocentric body standards imposed on women. While the body sliders seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Bioware’s dedication to both hair animation and dynamic skin color choices is thoughtful in development and excellent in execution. 

If you’ve ever bought foundation, then you know that you can have the same shade with three different options attached: cool, neutral, or warm. Those undertones impact how the shade changes, often denoted as 33-N versus 33-C. That shade diversity is fully displayed in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It’s a choice that uses a real-world shade range in the game. This also means some limitations, particularly when distinguishing the last colors in the shade range. That said, the melanin slider also allows you to adjust the pigmentation of Rook’s skin, another factor often considered when color-matching for makeup. It’s a thoughtful approach I didn’t think I’d see in games. 

Beyond that element, the most detailed part of the character creator’s customization is choosing your facial features. The first step is to use a dynamic slider that moves between three different default faces. If you’re someone who spends a long time in a character creator (like me) this solves one of the early problems you encounter. Which face do I use? This allows you to adjust the visual strength of each of the features, moving freely between them. From there, you can adjust each individual element of the face, and this is where you can really dive in, get granular, and create a character that fits exactly what you want. 

You’ve already read hundreds of words on character creation, but I still have to talk about hair. While Bioware has been known for its meh-to-bad hair choices from Mass Effect to Dragon Age, The Veilguard truly offers some of the most visually beautiful hair options in a videogame. Before you roll your eyes at the strand technology the Bioware team used, you need to understand the difficulty for any animation team, let alone one that has to adjust for independent player movement. Pixar animators have long explained that Merida’s hair in Brave took three years to research and required two new technologies to pull off. Hair is a hairy proposition.

So hair is notoriously difficult to animate, which is why your favorite MMOs restrict the length of hair to avoid clipping through shoulders and armor. It’s also why many developers have made excuses for restricting hair types represented in their character creators, limiting the number of tightly curled hairstyles (if any exist) and thus ignoring Black hairstyles altogether. Dragon Age: The Veilguard had previously showcased its strand technology at Summer Game Fest, but seeing it in action and seeing the spectrum of hairstyles is astounding. 

It’s almost overwhelming to choose from its wide array of hairstyles. Bioware did a stellar job in adding more than just bun, braid, and bob. But if you want to see the absolute wonder of the new hair animation tech, choose a Qunari with the long mid-back length straight hair option. To see it in motion is absolutely breathtaking. The hair doesn’t clip. It moves fluidly, it gets stuck around things, it adjusts, it moves with the wind, and it reacts to your combat movement. It is a new standard for hair in videogames. Additionally, the fidelity of animating each individual strand across all hair textures from board straight to tightly curled in both loose and styled forms is unheard of. I was amazed with it in my first preview, but getting to play myself, it stuck.

When we got down to the brass tacks of it all, I knew that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was going to be one of the most beautiful games of the year after I previewed it at Summer Game Fest. However, I still had my reservations, particularly where combat is concerned. When demoed for the crows at SGF, the pause and play system felt slow and impractical. However, after hours of playing the game during the most recent demo, I realized that it may be one of the best combat systems in its genre. 

Traditionally, I avoid the sword and board playstyle in action-adventure games. It’s always the clunky choice, and I’m impatient. That said, Bioware has managed to take sword and board to a new height. Slower than the other classes of course, the way that the shield is utilized as a weapon feels both dynamic and heavy. The sound design around the impact of your weapon lends to this. Weighty without being clunky? This is what I have been looking for. 

As you get more comfortable in your playstyle, which took me about an hour and a half of our full-day play session, everything falls into place. Using the ability wheel becomes as simple as hitting a button to attack, and for your abilities, you can quickly choose them without pulling up the wheel. Instead of being distracting, the pause-and-play style pushes you to strategize, but it never feels like it’s dragging down the pace of exploration or combat. The wheel also gives you context as to which abilities from your companions and you work together in synergy and deal the most damage. This helps you understand how to balance your party and, more specifically, understand your own playstyle in relation to them. 

One of the other elements I was concerned about was visually depicting the trajectory of enemy attacks. However, the trajectory lines don’t feel the same when you’re controlling the character compared to watching someone else. When you’re in the thick of it, the trajectory lines can help you, but they can also add pressure because you can see your mistakes in real time. It all compounds for a combat style that rewards a little strategy but never punishes you for moving quickly. 

The synergy between your attacks and those from your companions is also something that works flawlessly. During our time with the game, we got the chance to add every companion to our company. While we were only able to have larger conversations and dialogue options (including romance) with Lucanis, Neve, and Harding, Bellara landed in my rotation consistently because she was one of the first we met. While it’s clear that what we saw was just scratching the surface, my time with Lucanis showcased the care in the backstories and histories with which the developers have situated the companions.

In our short time with these companions, we saw them open up and show us pieces of the world through their perspectives. Relationships, romantic and otherwise, is what Bioware is known for, but here, it feels like we have just seen the surface of a layered experience that has me clamoring to come back. Additionally, the narrative also gives you the option to find pieces of Solas’ memories strewn across the different zones. As you engage with them, you see the world through his eyes. You see his dedication to preserving order, but you get an important answer and perspective as to why he is that way. 

We’re approaching 2000 words here, but there is still so much more to talk about, explore, and embrace when it comes to Dragon Age: The Veilguard—most importantly, how it feels to return to Thedas after so long. To put it simply, Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels like a game that has been in development for 10 years, and I mean that in the most complimentary way. Nearly perfect in its push to allow everyone to play as themselves and who they are, player agency is central to the game. But Bioware also manages not to sacrifice the individuality and depth of companions for it. This is the game we’ve been waiting for, and that’s what’s important.

Kate Sánchez is a pop culture journalist and co-founder of But Why Tho? A Geek Community.