BioWare have often struggled under the weight of their own tremendous ambitions. Expectations set by their original games have become the source of much unhappiness for their fans. The studio once excelled at delivering groundbreaking first entries, the last of which came all the way back in 2009 with the beloved Dragon Age: Origins (please be serious, we’re not counting 2019’s Anthem). Now comes Dragon Age: Veilguard, mired in a decade of development hell marked by multiple radical design overhauls. The many changes in direction are readable all over the final product, a smorgasbord of miscellaneous ideas that do not holistically paint the same picture.

The first speculative option was code-named “Joplin,” a heist game with a smaller scale that was pitched with the premise of high-impact dynamic decisions and replay value. It would’ve been set in the land of Tevinter Imperium, a region of Thedas which went back to the origins of humans in the territory, a place ruled by mages and dark magic. What’s so enticing about the original pitch is the idea of early end game states and how choices would matter and shape not only the narrative but the entire arc of the experience. The fate of the game came down to two factors: the primary team was pulled away to save the development of Mass Effect Andromeda (2017) and by the time that was done, it was all hands on deck for Anthem, at which time the studio’s priorities shifted. “Joplin” would’ve followed the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014), while scaling back the open world into a more focused compact space. Only two years of development went into “Joplin,” Dragon Age’s original designer Mike Laidlaw left the company and another several years were poured into a doomed Live Service game.

The next iteration, so-called “Morrison” was designed on the principle that Anthem would provide a new path forward. The new Dragon Age would be built upon the same structure and codebase as the fan forsaken Anthem, a multiplayer-focused concept where your four allies would be controlled by human players. This too would be scraped and the team would rally to return the design, now built around a multiplayer codebase, back into a single-player design. The next iteration, designed for several years as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would only this year be retitled as Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Which brings us to the game BioWare shipped…

The first thing you can tell about Dragon Age: The Veilguard is that it most certainly was a multiplayer design that was rearranged as a single-player game. The world is built around a hub with spoked locations. You can feel how the spaces are meant to play like those in Destiny (2014), as the environments are funneled and meant to keep a party together and yet feel slightly empty, as though they are meant to be more randomly generated and instanced, with more organic events happening within the context of their spaces.

What’s striking is that the environmental art is distinctly beautiful. There are so many awesome backdrops and vistas, hints at a wider world beyond the confines of the narrow paths we travel. Some of the areas have fun looping designs and pathways but in action, there’s very little joy in moving through their spaces, besides random assortments of loot chests (which seem to be delivered unevenly — I only switched primary weapons twice, and then upgraded them). The design does not fit the same ambition the environments exude and rather than the five human players the spaces seem to be designed to host, it’s just you and two invincible allies. If the environments are gorgeous and exude mythology and histories, the characters are the opposite. The character models have become more plasticine, DreamWorks-looking creatures who seem softened by over-design and mismatched aesthetics. They look bad! Their hair moves wonderfully now! Some really beautiful hair physics.

What we do in the world is what matters and it’s better not to get involved. The design pattern is such: talk to allies and collect them in the hub world, travel to the quest area, walk down linear paths stopping occasionally to spam the same attack button and manage ally cooldowns, and solve the simplest puzzles you’ve ever seen in a role-playing game. Insulting simple stuff. Pick up this orb and put it over here. Press the buttons in the order they are shown on the wall. Clear collections of Blight engulfing each area and make your way toward a larger structured boss square-off which is the same as other fights but has more scale and takes longer.

The tougher and more high level the enemies are in the game, the more the plainness of the action-forward and role-playing-negligent design reveals itself to be. Enemies do not become more challenging as the game progresses, they just sponge increasingly more damage. Along the way you can allocate your Skill Points into branching fields. Eventually you’ll specialize in one or two things and only use those attacks. Sometimes you will dodge but usually you can just move out of the way, alternating attacking and managing your party’s cooldowns (sadly your only actual mechanical engagement with them) there’s little authentic challenge to the game on the primary difficulty as long as you dodge and parry sometimes and attack often but the design intention begins to emerge in the next two escalating difficulties (highly recommended, for staying awake). As your partners are limited to cooldowns and otherwise act autonomously.

BioWare games are about the friends we’ve made along the way. The start of Veilguard is about getting the band together and the ending is about deploying them. It’s effective enough. The available characters are diverse and their moves cover a wide spectrum of their design, combining compatible powers together or creating their own effects. Romance options return, of course, but the two options we tested were very PG.

Character creation remains an important facet of the experience. Played as the horned and metallic-skinned Qunari, who have been nerfed appearance-wise from their striking aesthetic in prior games. You can play a dwarf, rogue, and mage. The dwarf cannot use magic, so why would you do that? Played a mage. There are more identity-specific choices available than in many games — significantly Veilguard offers a beautiful choice about whether your character can be trans and has a whole plot line about another trans character. Your basic choices feel railroaded into creating positive choices and outcomes for characters, the dialogue options rarely sufficient as responses to where the game is heading. It’s messy stuff.

The game functions in a different mode of fantasy. Everyone talks like modern people do. Their worldviews seem to be shaped by our own. Characters talk expositionally and as though the expectation would be that this is a second screen experience. The game assumes you are doing something more important and is full of dialogue that reads like “well, that just happened,” and summarily beats itself over the head with every point. It’s dry and not very fantastical. A few choices cover the breadth of the prior few games but most of your selections will be about what you do in this game.

The story is about protecting the Veil from a ritual of evil, as blight is thrust upon the world of Thedus and two Old Gods are awakened. The main quest line flourishes in the start and the ending but gives way to meandering side quests in the middle. The most consequential thing you can do is complete or not complete these side quests, which reveals how much the game needs them to be better oriented with the rest of the action. The story is best told in some really beautiful cinematics and is not as well expressed by how we exist in these spaces and the things we choose to do in them. This model of design feels outdated, and at odds with its iterative version of development, with clearly contrasting designs still readable and in conflict in how the game was put together.

BioWare have proven again how hard it is to make the sort of game they’ve always specialized in. They make it look more difficult this time. There’s a conflicting internal design scheme pushing up against the adventure. The turn toward pure action, à la Dragon Age 2 (2011) never plays out as an interesting mechanical choice. The game becomes a series of repetitions and half-baked systems. What we do in the world doesn’t match the possible beauty of what the world is. After these long ten years of development and this final result, it’s safe to worry about whether or not BioWare will ever be back in optimal form. The reality is it’s never happening again. We are where we are, as a consequence of a team stretched too thin and diverting their attentions to the wrong projects and staff leaving, shifting the culture of the studio. And look, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is fine. It’s just not ever anything more than any of the past entries have been. Earnest, plainly uninterested in role-playing as a game style, and equal parts bland mechanical exercise and rich world of possibilities, Veilguard has hard turns from disappointing to engage with to sufficiently designed. The tortured development cycle shows above all else. If we get another Dragon Age, we can only hope it’s a smooth road and that BioWare in some form stay around as long as their games justify it.

Reviewed on Xbox

5/10