As mentioned in my post about Story Amnesia, I want to try writing more reviews and things about media I’ve consumed. I was initially going to do a big post about all the things I’d read or played in the quarter, but decided after the first one that I couldn’t do it much more justice than a brief summary of the story. In this review, I wanted to give some actual thoughts on each part of the story and gameplay. I had to dig back through some Wiki pages to put it together because it took me so long to get through the game and it’s been a few weeks since I finished it.
!!! Spoilers Ahead !!!
Recently, Sony added Dragon Age: The Veilguard to the PlayStation Plus subscription. I had been considering buying the game, so the timing was serendipitous and I soon threw myself into the game, creating my Rook as a female Qunari Veil Jumper mage. It has been 10 years since I played Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I didn’t remember any of the choices I made there in order to customise my experience; nor did I remember any of the characters - the most important one being Solas in Veilguard.
Plot
The story begins with Solas attempting to tear down the Veil between the Fade and the physical world, which would unleash all manner of demons upon the world. The Veil was previously created by Solas to imprison the elven gods for their misdeeds. His reasons for doing this are vaguely explained as him believing it’ll free his people (the elves) and return them to their former glory. As a motivation, this sounds reasonable, but Solas is presented as being extremely self-centred, and in my opinion, it never really fit with his character. At any rate, lovable rogue from previous games, Varric Tethras tries and fails to reason with Solas. Rook then succeeds in disrupting the ritual but Varric and the companion you select to accompany you are badly injured.
When Rook disrupts the ritual and steals Solas’ ritual blade, a blood connection is formed between them and they are now able to communicate with each other in the Fade. More importantly, two old elven gods - Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain - are released back into the world. They intend to harness the Blight and darkspawn to create an Archdemon, destroy Thedas, and build a new elven empire upon the ruins. Which, come to think of it, could be considered a new golden age for elves and exactly what Solas wanted to begin with, except with him at the helm.
As part of the story quests, Rook recruits companions from various factions - Bellara (Veil Jumper), Lucanis (Antivan Crow), and Davrin (Grey Warden) alongside her existing companions - Neve (Shadow Dragons) and Harding (Inquisition). The elven gods then send blighted dragons to Minrathous and Treviso and you must choose which city you will save. The choice is presented pretty innocuously, I didn’t feel there was much of motivation to save either one, so I chose Minrathous. Boy, would I come to regret that. The game forces you to make a choice, but then if you choose Minrathous, it makes you feel guilty about making that choice for the rest of the game - you are no longer able to romance Lucanis and some of his skills are locked out. He also spends the majority of the game basically sulking after his city becomes blighted but in the same breath will tell Rook that he doesn’t blame her (he totally does).
Some people have said they liked this because it was a choice that actually meant something, but in my search for answers, I found out that if you save Treviso, Neve does not sulk nearly as much and you’re still able to romance her. If I’d know that to begin with, I would’ve chosen differently because up till that point, Lucanis was one of my favourite characters. There’s no real sense of time passing in the game, so whether the sulking from Lucanis is reasonable or not is unclear. I think this is something the writers should have been aware of from the player’s perspective.
After that battle, the team decides that they need to recruit a Fade expert and dragon hunter. This leads to Emmrich (Mourn Watch) and Taash (Lords of Fortune) being recruited. The story moves forward to the Grey Warden stronghold at Weisshaupt where we confront the gods. The First Warden has repeatedly refused to listen to Rook’s warnings about the elven gods and their blight, refusing to assign forces to assist. You’re given the option to either knock him out or talk him down. I cannot express how much of a dick this guy is characterised as, so I felt zero guilt in knocking his ass out. There’s a big battle with the Archdemon, the First Warden is killed trying to claim his glory as a Grey Warden, and the Grey Warden forces are decimated, but ultimately the Archdemon falls and Ghilan’nain is rendered mortal (huzzah!).
Rook learns that the gods plan to conduct a ritual in Tearstone Island at the next eclipse in order to pierce the Veil and unleash the Blight. Rook calls on the help of the various factions she has become allied with over the course of the story and along with her companions, they storm the island and fight off the gods’ allies - Venatori (Blood mages), Tevinter supremacists, and the Antaam (Qunari military). You can choose a companion to sacrifice in order to let Lucanis strike the killing blow to Ghilan’nain. I chose Harding, because I liked Davrin and his griffin Assan better.
Solas then betrays Rook, taking back his dagger, and trapping her in the Fade. With the aid of her companions, she manages to escape after learning that Varric was actually killed in that initial attack and Solas had altered her memory with blood magic. This particular twist felt really cheesy to me because it felt like it came out of left field. I do wonder if there were hints at it earlier in the game, though I could’ve sworn other characters had interacted with him.
By the time we land back in the physical world, Elgar’nan has taken over Minrathous, with Solas in pursuit. Rook and her allies fight their way through the city and Solas relinquishes the dagger to Rook and helps her defeat Elgar’nan and his Archdemon. He then does the ol’ double cross and tries to rip open the Fade again. Sometime during this whole ordeal, we find out that defeating Elgar’nan will collapse the Veil. By that logic, Solas could’ve done nothing and gotten what he wanted but whatever. Apparently though, an elven god needs to be bound to the Veil to uphold it. So, because I defeated a bunch of optional bosses and then correctly answered the little Mythal (Solas’ bae) quiz, I was able to make Solas bind himself to the Fade. Huzzah, a happy ending.
Overall, I found the plot a bit… lacking. As noted throughout the summary above, I found Solas’ motivations hard to understand and seemingly contradictory at times. The writing in general is probably what let this game down the most and a lot of the conversation choices are the same bland, agreeable sentiment. I tend towards the snarky option in these games because they’re usually fun but in Veilguard, it seemed like the conversations just continued along on rails with no acknowledgement of Rook being kind of a dick.
The cast of characters is diverse (sometimes to a fault) and unique, but a lot of the interactions were either toxic positivity or extremely stilted. No one seemed to be allowed to be miserable in the face of the end of the world. Except maybe mopey ass Lucanis.
Gameplay
The gameplay was fun once I found a build that worked for me. I originally chose to specialise as an Evoker, which is focused on ice-based spells. I quickly found this quite boring and underpowered and mostly just spent my time spamming the one button while I waited for my mana to regenerate. There were two other specialisations - Spellblade and Death Caller. I didn’t get a chance to play with Death Caller but it looked like your standard necromancer fare with minions, using health as mana, etc.
Once I’d specialised as a Spellblade, I started having a lot more fun with the game as it no longer took me chipping away slowly at enemies. It is basically a generator/detonator type class in that you stack Arcane Bombs on the target using standard attacks before detonating them with a heavy attack for massive damage. Many of the mana-based skills for the class will add Arcane Bomb stacks for quicker detonations and towards the end of the game, it was laughably easy (if a little repetitive) to take down standard mobs. I liked that the skill tree left enough flexibility to pick supporting skills after the main specialisation tree was filled out, made even better by the free respecs.
One thing I wish I could’ve switched off was the companions’ comments during battle. They would yell out things like “That’s Rook for ya” when I’d land a killing blow or otherwise be cheering each other on. It got old and cheesy pretty dang quick. The companions would have little conversations with each other out in the field, which was fun and made them feel more like real people… up until they had the same conversation 3 or 4 times.
Characters
Harding
Harding is a dwarven scout that gains stone-based powers and begins to hear voices from the stone. Her companion quests are focused on helping her learn the secret to her sudden powers, which leads the player to Kal-Sharok, where we meet the Oracle. Eventually, it all comes to a head and Harding fights some sort of weird red lyrium clone of herself and masters her rage. This Wiki page does a way better job of explaining this stupid storyline.
Neve
Neve is a Tevinter mage working as a detective in Minrathous’ Dock Town when she is recruited by Rook and Varric at the very beginning of the story. She’s invaluable throughout the story, gathering information and acting as an expert on magic. Her companion storyline leads to taking down the Venatori Aelia and greatly decreasing the blood mages’ presence in the city. I don’t remember much of this quest line and I can’t find a whole lot in the way of synopsis online either.
Bellara
Bellara joins the party after the team travels back to Arlathan Forest after disrupting Solas’ ritual and the Veil Jumpers ask for Rook’s help in finding her. The team locates Bellara and they get stuck in a Veil Bubble which she helps them break out of by locating and activating an artifact called the Nadas Dirthalen, which is an archive of elven knowledge.
Bellara spends much of her time throughout the game trying to repair the archive and speak with the spirit inside it. Eventually, she manages to speak with it and it’s the servant of an old god. He’s a condescending dick, but they find out he was tied to Anaris. Again, I’m missing how we jumped from here to there, but Bellara’s presumed dead brother, Cyrian, is found to be alive but bound to the service of Anaris. The quest eventually leads to us freeing Cyrian and he sacrifices himself to The Greater Good so that we can defeat Anaris.
Lucanis
Lucanis is presumed dead however his grandmother suspects otherwise and sends us to chase down a rumour of the legendary “Demon of Vyrantium”. We free him from a jail and this dude is literally possessed by a Spite demon but hey, it gives him sweet wings, so whatever. I think because I chose not to save Treviso, I didn’t actually get to complete Lucanis’ whole quest line but there was something there about his cousin being a power-hungry jerk and trying to overthrow their grandma so he could run the Crows.
Davrin
Davrin was one of my favourite characters, in large part because of Assan, but also because I could pick the snarky responses with him and he did actually seem to respond to them. Davrin is bonded to Assan the griffin as part of his work with the Grey Warden griffin trainers. Over the course of the game, Davrin shows himself to be a strict but fair griffin-daddy to Assan and their bond only grows. His companion quest leads the player to find and take down a blighted Grey Warden named Isseya (The Gloom Howler), who has kidnapped Assan’s siblings and threatens to blight them.
We save the adorable eagle-lions and then decide their fate. In my case, I leave them in Arlathan Forest with the Dalish to act as the forest’s protectors, because I thought that was a nice wholesome ending for wild creatures that never asked to be forced into the service of the Grey Wardens.
Emmrich
Emmrich was my least favourite character. I found him a bit pompous and maybe a little bit autism-coded. He’s part of the Mourn Watch, who are Definitely Not Necromancers. This guy can talk to spirits and he has a skeleton companion named Mannfred. Taash finds the entire thing creepy and is kind of a dick to Emmrich but I get it, dude is kind of weird.
A lot of his quests involve hanging around in graveyards, lighting candles, placing flowers, and talking about how scared he is of death. By the end of his quest line, you get the choice of whether to encourage him to become a lich or not. I opted for lichdom because he was talking about it being his life’s work/dream and seemed like he was gonna let a little fear of death stop him.
Taash
I really liked Taash. If you’ve read anything at all about this game, you know that a lot of people got upset about it being “woke”. Taash is the reason for that, but first the overview.
Taash is the Qunari dragon hunter that we pick up in Rivain. They are a rare fire-breathing Qunari, though forced to hide their abilities for personal safety. Their mother is a bit overbearing and when I first saw the two interact, I definitely got spoiled child vibes. That said, I enjoyed Taash’s characterisation and thought they were pretty badass from the start, so I ended up following the romance path with them - though I was locked into the romance before the questline where they come out.
There’s a cutscene where Taash becomes frustrated because their mother says something about their mannerisms being masculine. I don’t remember the exact details but it ends in an outburst about “no one enjoys being a woman” and Taash claiming non-binary as their identity. Later on, when they come out to their mother, Shathann, she tries to relate it to something she knows about in Qunari culture - aqun-athlok - which is roughly “one who is born as one gender but lives like another”. Taash shuts their mother down and says it’s not that and it’s something different.
I found the way this whole thing was handled to be really clumsy. My biggest issue being the use of the term “non-binary” when there is an in-universe analog for transgender people. The most charitable explanation is that the writers didn’t feel like they could get the concept across with another word. The least charitable is that they were trying to check a box.
Conclusion
On a surface level, I enjoyed this game. I’ve previously played the other Dragon Age games so the world was familiar and compelling enough to keep me going even if the writing often left something to be desired and the characters sounded like caricatures.
The gameplay was enjoyable and there was enough complexity to the skill trees to experiment with different builds as well as the freedom to respec either parts of, or the entire tree at any time. Quests were reasonably easy to follow and most things were marked on the map, so it was easy to just autopilot your way through.
The main thing letting this game down was the lazy writing. I do wonder if most of the people that had an issue with Taash being non-binary would’ve had a problem if they hadn’t explicitly used the word “non-binary” and instead used an in-universe word that didn’t feel like breaking the fourth wall.
Good dumb fun that I sunk 77 hours into. I think the game would’ve been worth the $40-50 asking price at the time if I hadn’t gotten it with my subscription. Overall, I give it a 6/10.