4) Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024)

Taking place ten years after the events of Inquisition, The Veilguard will likely go down as the most controversial game in the Dragon Age franchise, if not the last. When production began in 2015, the game was originally a live-service game, because EA. After the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019, the game was re-envisioned as a single player experience. After lengthy delays and changes to staff, the game was first announced as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2022, before being renamed and released in 2024. If all of this sound like a recipe for disaster, well, you're correct.

The story begins with a new character, nicknamed Rook, who is travelling with Varric to tie up the loose ends from the previous game. There are some shenanigans that see Varric injured and the Veil, the fabric between our world and the Fade, being damaged and releasing two Elven gods. It's up to Rook to form a team to stop the Elven gods from destroying the world in an adventure that takes us to many locales that had only been mentioned in previous titles.

The game forgoes the massive open-world nature of Inquisition in favor of smaller, more focused locations. This is actually welcome, as it does away with the tedious collection aspects and allows for a more focused narrative. Also gone are any remnants of the tactical combat that the series originally strived for. The team took heavy inspiration from 2018's God of War when designing combat, and it shows. It's actually the most fun I've had with combat in the series.

I praised Inquisition for the way that it took your actions in past games and built upon them in satisfying ways, though you had to go through and put your choices on a website that could then connect to your account. Maybe not the best solution to a problem that Bioware gave themselves, but one that still works to this day. It's odd, then, that The Veilguard doesn't do the same. Instead, at the start of the game, you make your character and choose a faction that they belonged to prior to the game. This choice gives you certain bonuses and affects how certain factions respond to you. You then get to create your Inquisitor, much like how you had to remake your Hawke in the previous game. Also like that example, is the first big problem I had. Going through all of the options, I couldn't get my character to look even remotely like how they used to. Not only was my facial hair option gone, Qunari once again saw a pretty radical redesign. See, in Origins, they were just tall, darker skinned humans. In Dragon Age II, they were made broader and given horns. Okay, whatever. Here, they seem to be modeled after Tieflings from D&D. They're now slender, have different horn options, and vastly different skin tones. My Inquisitor changed the way he styled his hair, which is fine, but also lost a ton of muscle, regrew a horn, and changed from an almost greenish skin color to being blue. It was... Odd, to say the least, especially since the voice actor returned, so the right voice came out of the wrong body.

After redesigning your Inquisitor, you then get to decide on five, yes FIVE, choices that you made in Inquisition. This is what counts as moving your world state to the new game. I'm not even convinced that all of the choices here actually change anything, as the choice of who I romanced previously was never mentioned or brought up. It's baffling, but at the same time it's understandable from a writing perspective. With all of the turmoil going on with this game's development, expecting hundreds of variations based on previous games would be a big ask.

The story, as it is, suffers from the past of the franchise as well. You still get to make choices, but when you do, the game tells you that it will have repercussions, and reminds you when those repercussions occur, seemingly not trusting players to remember things they did previously, or just as a wink and a nod saying "Eh, see that? Bioware game!" During your adventure, a small handful of characters you've encountered previously will appear, though this time it seems far more like deliberate fanservice than in previous games. Among these characters is Dorian, who I previously praised as one of the most well written characters in gaming, a statement I stand by. He shows up here seemingly just to show off his redesign, which is awful, and remind the player of better times.

Speaking of writing, the game is a mixed bag. The companions are written well enough, and will actually form romantic bonds of their own if you aren't actively pursuing them. There was a bit of controversy surrounding one of the companions being non-binary, but I feel as though the writing for this is handled fairly well. If the idea of a person being non-binary is where you draw the line in a story about Elves, Dwarves, dragons, and magic, then I truly cannot understand how your suspension of disbelief functions. The biggest problem I have is when we travel to Weisshaupt, the base of the Grey Wardens. See, for reasons related to the story, we have not one but TWO Archdemons on the loose, because things have to escalate in a franchise. The appearance of two Archdemons at once, let alone so close to the previous Blight, is unheard of. When trying to get assistance from the Grey Wardens, we meet with the First Warden, who's in charge of the Wardens and is the most poorly written character in the franchise.

See, my problem is that, when looking at the lore of this game's world, everything about the events in Origins are out of place. The first blight lasted nearly two centuries, and each subsequent Blight has been shorter, but shortest one still lasted over a decade. The fifth Blight, the one we see in Origins, didn't last a year, and had barely even began. We're told that this, along with optional factors, confounded the Grey Wardens. Here, with another Blight so soon, with two Archdemons, after how odd the previous Blight was, the First Warden can only be a complete ass and babbles on about how things are "always done." He straight up refuses to listen or accept help, and is antagonistic the player. This, despite the Warden's history of accepting help from any source, is beyond insane, and it makes his inevitable death satisfying only because I didn't want to hear him any longer.

Beyond that tangent, the story is... Fine, I guess. There's a couple of obvious twists, but nothing else really stands out aside from the numerous retcons to established lore. We learn why Dwarves can't use magic, and the actual history of the Elves and the Blights, all of which either contradicts what we previously knew or throws away interesting plotlines from the previous titles. It's clear where certain plot points had started initially and where the focus shifted during development.

At the end of the day, this is a very hard game to talk about. As a long time fan of the franchise, it serves as a potentially whimpering end where a series, known for making your choices matter, ultimately throws all of that away. In a vacuum, on its own, the game is fine. Good even. It's visually stunning, great voice acting, big set pieces with satisfying combat. As a Dragon Age game, I can't help but imagine what could have been. Inquisition was always going to be a hard title to follow-up, but this feels like a game steeped in development issues and concessions. It's sad to think, given the commercial reception of the game, that this might be the last we see of the franchise, possibly ever. It's hard to even think of where to go from here in terms of story. If you haven't given the game a chance, I do recommend it, though I urge you to temper your expectations.