The upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn’t solely a comeback for BioWare’s high-fantasy role-playing collection but additionally one thing of a return to kind for its builders. Releasing ten years after the discharge of Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Veilguard (previously referred to as Dreadwolf) took a while to seek out itself throughout its prolonged improvement, which sadly noticed key BioWare employees depart the corporate. Throughout this time interval, BioWare additionally launched Anthem, a co-op multiplayer title that struggled to seek out an viewers and drifted the studio away from its single-player roots.
However now, The Veilguard is shaping as much as be a modernized tackle a traditional BioWare roleplaying sport, one which leans into the dev’s wealthy historical past of storytelling and forged of characters—all of which inform gamers’ resolution making as they navigate the political and social strands of the world of Dragon Age throughout darkish instances.
As inventive director Jonathan Epler defined to Sport Developer in a current interview following an prolonged hands-on with the sport, taking time away from Dragon Age gave the studio an opportunity to study from its errors (and successes) of the final decade. He stated that the staff took inspiration from earlier critically-acclaimed DLC releases—and that he has an aversion to the phrase “BioWare Magic.”
Revisiting Dragon Age with renewed focus
Set years after Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Veilguard sees the world of Dragon Age going through an apocalypse. Enjoying as Rook, a brand new protagonist of the participant’s making, you assemble a staff of latest and veteran heroes to tackle the evil gods inflicting mass chaos and resolve the destiny of Thedas in its darkest interval. This all happens after after the ritual carried out by former alley Solas goes awry, shattering the barrier between the mortal realm and the Veil.
That sense of impending doom amid an apocalyptic occasion is on the forefront of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and proper from the opening, we battle by the capital metropolis, Minrathous, which is overrun by demons. It is a raucous chilly open that accommodates collection newcomers and chaotically greets returning gamers. The prologue serves as an efficient opener for what’s to return in addition to a showcase of the sport’s pivot to a extra guided, mission-based construction that blends quicker and extra dynamic motion with character-driven storytelling.
Picture by way of BioWare/Digital Arts.
In accordance with the Epler, this important shift to a extra tightly designed RPG with out the open world sprawl was not solely in response to participant suggestions following Inquisition, but additionally served the imaginative and prescient of the sport’s deeper give attention to its characters.
“It is attention-grabbing, for a BioWare sport we often begin with designing the world and story and go from there, however for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, we knew just about from the beginning that we needed to make this sport all in regards to the companions and your relationship to them,” stated Epler. “Above all, we needed to make sure that every character has a key function to play in the primary story—we by no means needed to have a companion that has one factor going for them within the social gathering and simply stays there for the remainder of the sport.”
“After bringing the Dragon Age collection to an open-world-style format in Inquisition, you’d be forgiven for pondering The Veilguard would happen in a fair greater panorama. In fact, it really goes a special manner, leaning extra into the kind of expertise that feels nearer to Mass Impact 3 or Star Wars: Knights of the Outdated Republic—a extra contained, mission-driven expertise that hopefully is full of much less busywork.”
Much less sprawl, extra goal
After the opening sequence, Rook and their crew discover themselves in a haven within the Veil referred to as the Lighthouse, an evolving base of operations the place the social gathering can coordinate and plan their subsequent transfer. It additionally serves because the nexus level for journey to the totally different cities and zones in Thedas. The Lighthouse felt like a well-recognized headquarters—akin to the Normandy from Mass Impact—however with extra incentive for inside exploration.
True to the developer’s claims, The Veilguard successfully presents an endearing social gathering and a way of camaraderie, and also you assemble a correct crew rapidly.
When going into the totally different explorable areas, that is the place the sport’s extra guided and mission-focused construction grew to become clear. As a substitute of the Inquisition‘s sprawling open-ended zones, The Veilguard‘s totally different areas current extra of a structured and centered house to discover—akin to the zones from video games like God of Conflict: Ragnarok or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Whereas initially these zones felt smaller in scope—they usually definitely are in comparison with Inquisition, particularly its notorious Hinterlands space—they do open up all through the story as Rook positive factors new skills and learns of latest threats.
Talking with Epler, the selection to maneuver away from the open-world expertise and again to a extra conventional story-driven development was to give attention to the sport’s forged of characters and their development whereas avoiding a way of aimlessness and fatigue that was current inside Inquisition. Epler significantly talked about the response to how gamers engaged The Hinterlands, which many gamers struggled to get previous.
“The Hinterlands zone from Inquisition was one thing we actually mirrored on after the discharge,” stated Epler, “We realized we wanted a stronger narrative maintain to get you out of that zone as a result of, on the time, we needed gamers to expertise the house how they needed to in Inquisition, but it surely ended up making it straightforward to lose observe of the primary story arc for that sport and really feel considerably aimless. So, for The Veilguard, we needed to make sure that irrespective of the place you go and what you do, there’s all the time this looming menace of the traditional gods or the top of the world coming.”
“We made certain that the sport’s content material was rather more centered and anchored by that narrative hook.”
Picture by way of BioWare/Digital Arts.
He defined the staff was enormously impressed by the beloved downloadable expansions from earlier video games like Trespasser from Dragon Age Inquisition and The Citadel from Mass Impact 3. “I believe lots of the teachings we realized that helped us with increase The Veilguard was from Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC,” stated the inventive director. “The complete sport is an enormous, large journey and an enormous open world, and we bought lots of suggestions about how going open world made the story and narrative really feel diluted, and like they did not matter as a lot. Trespasser for us was placing extra of a give attention to the story, the villain, and constructing the expertise round that tighter and extra contained story.”
“BioWare has all the time been about its forged of characters and its tighter story, and we realized from Trespasser, together with Mass Impact 3’s Citadel DLC, that it was OK to focus issues down slightly bit from the open world construction and put the story, the aspect content material, characters right into a tighter expertise.”
Is BioWare really going again to its roots?
After enjoying Dragon Age: The Veilguard I used to be actually impressed by the participant companions, a characteristic BioWare has lengthy specialised in. One stand-out character was Lucanis, an murderer specialised in looking rogue mages who additionally occurs to be haunted by an evil spirit that solely he can see. The interactions with Lucanis, and the way he performs off participant decisions and the reactions from his darkish passenger felt very very similar to traditional, multifaceted BioWare-style character development—however with a fairly implausible sense of gravitas layered on.
Picture by way of BioWare/Digital Arts.
Epler acknowledged that The Veilguard took a while to seek out its imaginative and prescient throughout improvement—particularly as BioWare was in an ungainly transitional interval following the 2014 launch of Inquisition.
“The phrase ‘Bioware Magic’ is one thing I type of have an allergic response to at this level once I hear it, however for us in terms of making this sport, it was all in regards to the characters of this world and constructing that world up,” stated Epler. “That is what we’re greatest at, and it is also a mirrored image of the individuals who made this sport. This staff has pulled one thing really wonderful collectively and I believe folks will see that pleasure and love that is been poured into each element of this sport.”
For now, Dragon Age: The Veilguard presents an thrilling return to the collection that is extra of a punchy and character-driven tackle a high-fantasy epic. For the inventive director, the sport represents an enormous second for BioWare and its give attention to transferring again to its roots and bringing the studio again to what they’ve achieved greatest.
“Truthfully, the large lesson we realized in the course of the making of this sport was that we simply must give attention to what we’re constructed to do. BioWare has all the time been about constructing sturdy, character centered role-playing video games all through. We did definitely strive different issues in the course of the improvement of this sport, however as soon as we actually centered deeply on what BioWare is basically all about, that was when the sport actually took form for us. I need this sport to really feel such as you’re coming house to the Dragon Age universe, and setting foot again into Thedas.”