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planckstorytime · 5 days ago

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard: Strangled by Gentle Hands

*The following contains spoilers*

“You would risk everything you have in the hope that the future is better? What if it isn’t? What if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than what was?”

– Solas, Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

I. Whatever It Takes

My premium tickets for a local film festival crumpled and dissolved in my pants pocket, unredeemed as they swirled in the washing machine. Throughout that October weekend in 2015, I neglected my celebratory privileges, my social visits to friends, and even my brutal honors literary theory class. All because a golden opportunity stretched before me: a job opening for a writing position at the once-legendary BioWare, with an impending deadline.

The application process wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. Rather than copy+paste a cover letter and quickly swap out a couple of nouns here and there, this opening required me to demonstrate my proficiency in both words and characters – namely, BioWare’s characters. Fanfiction wasn’t normally in my wheelhouse – at the time, I had taken mainly to spinning love sonnets (with a miserable success rate). But I wouldn’t balk at this chance to work on one of my dream franchises – especially since the job prospects for fresh English BAs weren’t exactly promising. So, I got to work crafting a branching narrative based on the company’s most recent title: Dragon Age: Inquisition. Barely two months prior, I saw the conclusion of that cast’s story when the Inquisitor stabbed a knife into a map and swore to hunt her former ally, Solas, to the ends of the earth. Now it was my turn to puppeteer them, to replicate the distinct voice of each party member and account for how they’d react to the scenario I crafted. And if it went well, then maybe I’d be at the tip of the spear on that hunt for Solas. Finishing the writing sprint left me exhausted, but also proud of my work.

The folks at BioWare obviously felt differently, because I received a rejection letter less than a week later. Maybe they found my story trite and my characterization inaccurate, or maybe they just didn’t want to hire a student with no professional experience to his name. Regardless, I was devastated. It wouldn’t be until years later that I learned that, had my application been accepted, I likely would’ve been drafted into working on the studio’s ill-fated looter shooter, Anthem (2019), noteworthy for its crunch and mismanagement. My serendipitous rejection revealed that sometimes the future you strive to build was never meant to match your dreams. What seemed like an opportunity to strike oil actually turned out to be a catastrophic spill.

Still, my passion for the Dragon Age series (as well as Mass Effect) persisted in the face of BioWare’s apparent decline. I maintain that Inquisition is actually one of the studio’s best games, and my favorite in the series, to the point where I even dressed up as Cole for a convention one time. The game came to me at a very sensitive time in my life, and its themes of faith vs falsehood, the co-opting of movements in history, and the instability of power all spoke to me. But I will elaborate more on that at a later date. My point is, I held on to that hope that, in spite of everything, BioWare could eventually deliver a satisfactory resolution to the cliffhanger from their last title. Or perhaps it was less hope and more of a sunk cost fallacy, as an entire decade passed with nary a peep from Dragon Age.

As years wore on, news gradually surfaced about the troubled development of the fourth game. Beginning under the codename “Joplin” in 2015 with much of the same creative staff as its predecessors, this promising version of the game would be scrapped two years later for not being in line with Electronic Arts’s business model (i.e. not being a live-service scam). Thus, it was restarted as “Morrison”. The project cantered along in this borderline unrecognizable state for a few years until they decided to reorient it back into a single-player RPG, piling even more years of development time onto its shaky Jenga tower of production. Indeed, critical pieces were constantly being pulled out from the foundations during this ten year development cycle. Series regulars like producer Mark Darrah and director Mike Laidlaw made their departures, and the project would go on to have several more directors and producers come and go: Matthew Goldman, Christian Dailey, and Mac Walters, to name a few key figures. They eventually landed on John Epler as creative director, Corinne Busche as game director, and Benoit Houle as director of product development. Then came the massive layoffs of dozens of employees, including series-long writer Mary Kirby, whose work still made it into the final version of DA4. Finally, the game received a rebranding just four months before release, going from Dreadwolf (which it had been known as since 2022) to The Veilguard (2024) – a strange title with an even stranger article.

Needless to say, these production snags did not inspire confidence, especially considering BioWare’s been low on goodwill between a string of flops like Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and, before that, controversial releases like Dragon Age II (2011) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The tumult impacted The Veilguard’s shape, which scarcely resembles an RPG anymore, let alone a Dragon Age game. The party size is reduced from four to three, companions can no longer be directly controlled, the game has shifted to a focus on action over tactics a la God of War (2018), the number of available abilities has shrunk, and there’s been a noticeable aesthetic shift towards a more cartoonish style. While I was open to the idea of changing up the combat (the series was never incredible on that front), I can’t get over the sensation that these weren’t changes conceived out of genuine inspiration, but rather vestigial traces from the live-service multiplayer iteration. The digital fossil record implies a lot. Aspects like the tier-based gear system, the instanced and segmented missions, the vapid party approval system, the deficit of World State import options, and the fact that rarely does more than the single mandatory companion have anything unique to say on a quest – it all points to an initial design with a very different structure from your typical single-player RPG. The Veilguard resembles a Sonic Drive-In with a mysterious interior dining area – you can tell it was originally conceived as something else.1

That said, the product itself is functional. It contains fewer bugs than any previous game in the franchise, and maybe BioWare’s entire catalog for that matter. I wouldn’t say the combat soars, but it does glide. There’s a momentum and responsiveness to the battle system that makes it satisfying to pull off combos and takedowns against enemies, especially if you’re juggling multiple foes at once. Monotony sets in after about thirty or forty hours, largely due to the fact that you’re restricted to a single class’s moveset on account of the uncontrollable companions. Still, this design choice can encourage replay value, as it does in Mass Effect, and free respec options and generous skill point allocations offset the tedium somewhat.

While the character and creature designs elicit controversy – both for the exaggerated art direction and, in the case of demons and darkspawn, total redesign – the environmental art is nothing short of breathtaking. I worried that this title would look dated because of how long it had been in development and the age of the technology it was built upon. Those fears were swiftly banished when I saw the cityscapes of Minrathous, the cyclopean architecture of the Nevarran Grand Necropolis, or the overgrown ruins of Arlathan. But like everything in The Veilguard, it’s a double-edged sword. The neon-illuminated streets of Docktown, the floating citadel of the Archon’s Palace, and the whirring mechanisms of the elven ruins evoke a more fantastically futuristic setting that feels at odds with all three previous titles (even though all three exhibited a stylistic shift to some extent). It aggravates the feeling of discordance between this rendition of Thedas and the one returning players know.

All of these elements make The Veilguard a fine fantasy action-adventure game – even a good one, I’d say. But as both the culmination of fifteen years of storytelling and as a narrative-based roleplaying game – the two most important facets of its identity – it consistently falls short. Dragon Age began as a series with outdated visuals and often obtuse gameplay, but was borne aloft by its worldbuilding, characterization, and dialogue. Now, that paradigm is completely inverted. The more you compare it to the older entries, the more alien it appears. After all these years of anticipation, how did it end up this way? Was this the only path forward?

Throughout The Veilguard’s final act, characters utter the phrase “Whatever it takes,” multiple times. Some might say too many. I feel like this mantra applied to the development cycle. As more struggles mounted, the team made compromise after compromise to allow the game to exist at all, to give the overarching story some conclusion in the face of pressure from corporate shareholders, AAA market expectations, and impatient fans. Whatever it takes to get this product out the door and into people’s homes.

This resulted in a game that was frankensteined together, assembled out of spare parts and broken dreams. It doesn’t live up to either the comedic heights or dramatic gravity of Inquisition’s “Trespasser” DLC from 2015, despite boasting the same lead writer in Trick Weekes. Amid the disappointment, we’re left with an unfortunate ultimatum: It’s either this or nothing.

I don’t mean that as a way to shield The Veilguard from criticism, or to dismiss legitimate complaints as ungrateful gripes. Rather, I’m weighing the value of a disappointing reality vs an idealized fantasy. The “nothing”, in this sense, was the dream I had for the past decade of what a perfect Dragon Age 4 looked like. With the game finally released, every longtime fan has lost their individualized, imaginary perfection in the face of an authentic, imperfect text. Was the destruction of those fantasies a worthy trade? It doesn’t help that the official artbook showcases a separate reality that could’ve been, with a significant portion dedicated to the original concepts for Joplin that are, personally, a lot closer to my ideal vision. I think it would’ve done wonders to ground the game as more Dragon Age-y had they stuck with bringing back legacy characters, such as Cole, Calpernia, Imshael, and the qunari-formerly-known as Sten.

I don’t necessarily hate The Veilguard (I might actually prefer it to Dragon Age II), but I can’t help but notice a pattern in its many problems – a pattern that stems from a lack of faith in the audience and a smothering commitment to safety over boldness. As I examine its narrative and roleplaying nuances, I wish to avoid comparing it to groundbreaking RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) or even Dragon Age: Origins (2009), as the series has long been diverging from that type of old-school CRPG. Rather, except when absolutely necessary, I will only qualitatively compare it to Inquisition, its closest relative.

And nowhere does it come up shorter to Inquisition than in the agency (or lack thereof) bestowed to the player to influence their character and World State.

II. Damnatio Memoriae

No, that’s not the name of an Antivan Crow (though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so, since we have a character named “Lucanis Dellamorte”). It’s a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory”, applied to a reviled person by destroying records of their existence and defacing objects of their legacy. In this case, it refers to the player. When it comes to their influence over the world and their in-game avatar, The Veilguard deigns to limit or outright eliminate it.

Save transfers that allow for the transmission of World States (the carrying over of choices from the previous games) have been a staple of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. Even when their consequences are slight, the psychological effect that this personalization has on players is profound, and one of many reasons why fans grow so attached to the characters and world. At its core, it’s an illusion, but one that’s of similar importance to the illusion that an arbitrary collection of 1s and 0s can create an entire digital world. Player co-authorship guarantees a level of emotional investment that eclipses pre-built backgrounds.

However, The Veilguard limits the scope to just three choices, a dramatic decrease from the former standard. All import options come from Inquisition, with two just from the “Trespasser” expansion. One variable potentially impacts the ending, while the other two, in most cases, add one or two lines of dialogue and a single codex entry. Inquisition, by contrast, imported a bevy of choices from both previous games. Some of them had major consequences to quests such as “Here Lies the Abyss” and “The Final Piece”, both of which incorporated data from two games prior. The Veilguard is decidedly less ambitious. Conspicuously absent options include: whether Morrigan has a child or not, the fate of Hawke, the status of the Hero of Fereldan, the current monarchs of Fereldan and Orlais, the current Divine of the southern Chantry, and the individual outcomes of more than two dozen beloved party members across the series. Consequently, the fourth installment awkwardly writes around these subjects – Varric avoids mentioning his best friend, Hawke, as does Isabela ignore her potential lover. Fereldan, Orlais, and the Chantry are headed by Nobody in Particular. Morrigan, a prominent figure in the latest game, makes no mention of her potential son or even her former traveling companions. And the absence of many previous heroes, even ones with personal stakes in the story, feels palpably unnatural. I suspect this flattening of World States into a uniform mold served, in addition to cutting costs, to create parity between multiple cooperative players during the initial live-service version of Morrison. Again, the compromises of the troubled production become apparent, except this time, they’re taking a bite out of the core narrative.

Moreover, the game’s unwillingness to acknowledge quantum character states means that it’s obliged to omit several important cast members. At this point, I would’ve rather had them establish an official canon for the series rather than leaving everything as nebulous and undefined as possible. That way at least the world would’ve felt more alive, and we could’ve gotten more action out of relevant figures like Cassandra, Alistair, Fenris, Merrill, Cole, and Iron Bull. Not to mention that The Veilguard’s half-measure of respectful non-intereference in past World States ultimately fails. Certain conversations unintentionally canonize specific events, including references to Thom Rainier and Sera, both of whom could go unrecruited in Inquisition, as well as Morrigan’s transformation into a dragon in the battle with Corypheus in that game’s finale. But whatever personal history the player had with them doesn’t matter. The entire Dragon Age setting now drifts in a sea of ambiguity, its history obfuscated. It feels as gray and purgatorial as Solas’s prison for the gods.

Beyond obscuring the past, The Veilguard restrains the player’s agency over the present. When publications first announced that the game would allow audiences to roleplay transgender identities and have that acknowledged by the party, I grew very excited – both at the encouraging representation, and at the depth of roleplaying mechanics that such an inclusion suggested. Unfortunately, The Veilguard offers little in roleplaying beyond this. The player character, Rook, always manifests as an altruistic, determined, friendly hero, no matter what the player chooses (if they’re offered choices at all). The selections of gender identity and romantic partner constitute the totality of how Rook defines themselves, post-character creation – exceptions that prove the rule of vacancy. Everything else is set in stone. The options presented are good, and should remain as standard, but in the absence of other substantive roleplaying experiences, their inclusion starts to feel frustratingly disingenuous and hollow, as if they were the only aspects the developers were willing to implement, and only out of obligation to meet the bare minimum for player agency. In my opinion, it sours the feature and exudes a miasma of cynicism.

Actual decisions that impact the plot are few and far between, but at least we have plenty of dialogue trees. In this type of game, dialogue options might usually lead to diverging paths that eventually converge to progress the plot. You might be choosing between three different flavors of saying “yes”, but as with the World States, that illusion of agency is imperative for the roleplaying experience. The Veilguard doesn’t even give you the three flavors – the encouraging, humorous, and stern dialogue options are frequently interchangeable, and rarely does it ever feel like the player is allowed to influence Rook’s reactions. Relationships with companions feel predetermined, as the approval system has no bearing on your interactions anymore. There are so few moments for you to ask your companions questions and dig in deep compared to Inquisition. Combined together, these issues make me question why we even have dialogue with our party at all. Rook adopts the same parental affect with each grown adult under their command, and it feels like every conversation ends the same way irrespective of the player’s input. With the exception of the flirting opportunities, they might as well be non-interactive cutscenes.

Rook’s weak characterization drags the game down significantly. With such limited authorship afforded to the player, it’s difficult to regard them as anything more than their eponymous chess piece – a straightfoward tool, locked on a grid, and moving flatly along the surface as directed.

III. Dull in Docktown

On paper, a plot summary of The Veilguard sounds somewhere between serviceable and phenomenal: Rook and Varric track down Solas to stop him from tearing down the Veil and destroying the world. In the process, they accidentally unleash Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, two of the wicked Evanuris who once ruled over the elven people millenia ago. With Solas advising them from an astral prison, Rook gathers a party together to defeat the risen gods, along with their servants and sycophants. Over the course of the adventure, they uncover dark truths about the origins of the elves, the mysterious Titans, and the malevolent Blight that’s served as an overarching antagonistic force. Eventually, Rook and friends join forces with Morrigan and the Inquisitor, rally armies to face off with their foes, and slay both the gods and their Archdemon thralls before they can conjure the full terror of the Blight. As Solas once again betrays the group, Rook and company have to put a decisive stop to his plans, which could potentially involve finally showing him the error of his ways.

The bones of The Veilguard’s story are sturdier than a calcium golem. Problems arise when you look at the actual writing, dialogue, and characterization – the flesh, blood, and organs of the work.

I’ve seen others chide the writing as overly quippy, but that better describes previous titles. Rather, I think The Veilguard’s dialogue is excessively utilitarian and preliminary, like a first draft awaiting refinement. Characters describe precisely what’s happening on screen as it’s happening, dryly exposit upon present circumstances, and repeat the same information ad nauseum. This infuriating repetition does little to reveal hidden components of their personalities, or their unique responses to situations. You won’t hear anything like Cole’s cerebral magnetic poetry or Vivienne’s dismissive arrogance. Many exchanges could’ve been uttered by Nobody in Particular, as it’s just dry recitation after recitation. It almost feels like watching an English second language instructional video, or a demonstration on workplace safety precautions. Clarity and coherence come at the cost of characterization and charisma.

Words alone fail to make them interesting. Most companions lack the subtlety and depth I had come to expect from the franchise, with many conversations amounting to them just plainly stating how they’re feeling. Most rap sessions sound like they’re happening in a therapist’s office with how gentle, open, and uncomplicated they feel. Compare this to Inquisition, where every character has a distinct voice (I should know, I had to try to copy them for that stupid application), as well as their own personal demons that it betrays: Sera’s internalized racism, hints of Blackwall’s stolen valor, Iron Bull’s espionage masked by bluster, or Solas’s lingering guilt and yearning for a bygone age. These aspects of their characters aren’t front and center, but things the audience can delve into that gives every moment with them more texture. The Veilguard’s companions lay out all their baggage carefullly and respectfully upfront, whether it’s Taash’s multiculturalism and gender identity issues or Neve’s brooding cynicism towards Tevinter’s underbelly. You’ve plumbed the depths of their personas within the first few minutes of meeting most of them.

Small exceptions exist. Professor Emmerich Volkarin stands out from the rest of the cast as a particularly inspired character: a charming, Vincent Price-like necromancer. His attachment to tombs and necromancy as a way to cope with his crippling fear of death makes for curiously compelling melodrama. The way in which he ultimately has to face his fear – either by foregoing his opportunity for immortality to save his beloved skeletal ward, Manfred, or by allowing his friend to pass on so that he can transcend into a new type existence – rises above the other binary choices in the game by being both narratively interesting and legitimately difficult to judge. Still, I feel Emmerich’s whole “lawful good gentleman necromancer” conceit, while a unique and clever subversion of tropes, would’ve worked better if it actually contrasted with anyone else in the party. Instead, the whole crew is full of unproblematic do-gooders who are forbidden by the game to nurture any meaningful interpersonal conflict. While I’d appreciate this lack of toxicity in my real-life relationships, fictional chemistry demands more reactive ingredients.

The Veilguard’s developers frequently positioned the game as “cozy” and about a “found family”, but I can guarantee you that there’s more tension at my Thanksgiving dinners than there is anywhere in this title. This family would get along swimmingly even during a presidential election. The thing about the “found family” trope is that it’s more satisfying when it’s earned. Here, it represents the default state, the starting point, and the status quo that they will always return to. Any minor squabbles (Harding wanting to sleep in the dirt, Emmerich taking too many books on a camping trip, Taash not liking necromancy) are introduced and squashed within the same scene. They all feel so extraneous. There’s so little friction among the companions here that you’d think it disproves Newton’s Third Law. The previous games never struggled in this regard, which makes the choices here all the more baffling.

Beyond the intra-party dynamics, characters lack grit or darkness to them – even when the narrative absolutely calls for it. Remember how I described the necromancer as lawful good (to use traditional Dungeons and Dragons alignments)? Yeah, that’s every character. Even the demonic assassin. Lucanis is a notorious hitman possessed by a demon of Spite, and possibly the weakest character of the game. This may or may not be due to the fact that his writer, Mary Kirby, was laid off mid-development. Regardless, he has noticeably less content than the other party members and generally feels unfinished. The demonic possession storyline goes nowhere; he doesn’t exorcise Spite, nor does he learn more about it or how to live with it. Instead, Spite is just an excuse to give Lucanis cool spectral wings (which he will use to fail several assassination attempts). The demon itself mostly just comes across as rude rather than threatening. The biggest issue, however, stems from the absence of any edge to Lucanis. When confronting his traitorous cousin, Ilario – the man who sold out Lucanis’s family to an enemy faction, kidnapped his grandmother, and made multiple attempts on his life – our grizzled, hardened assassin, pushed to the brink, demands… due process. Seriously, if your choices have led Lucanis to have a hardened heart, his method for dealing with the grievous traitor is sending him to jail. That’s The Veilguard’s idea of vindictive brutality among a clan of unforgiving murderers-for-hire. By contrast, Inquisition features Sera insubordinately murdering a stuck-up nobleman for talking too much. I believe that if modern BioWare had written The Godfather (1972), it would’ve ended with Michael Corleone recommending his brother-in-law to attend confession and seek a marriage counselor.

The writers seem intent on making the cast wholly unproblematic, with no way that the audience could ever question their morality or taste the delicious nuance of seeing someone you like do something bad. Measures were taken to child-proof every aspect of the good guys so that they couldn’t possibly be construed as anything else – even if it constricts them to the point of numbness and eventual atrophy.

To make things as palatable and accessible as possible, the language itself was dumbed down. Characters make frequent use of neologisms and bark phrases like “Suit up,” or “These guys go hard.” It emulates popular blockbuster superhero stuff rather than staying true to the diction the series traditionally employed. It’s all about the team, and the entire Dragon Age world has been stripped down into simplistic conflicts and recognizable stock characters.

This is why The Veilguard’s story largely fails. Despite being ostensibly being about the characters, they come off as an afterthought. Most of the time, only the sole requisite follower has anything to say on a given mission. Even in combat, their wholeness as fully-implemented party members falls short of expectations. Their damage output pales in comparison to the Rook’s, they have no health and cannot be downed in battle, and they mainly exist to give the player three extra ability slots. That’s the game’s true ethos for the companions, whether in combat or dialogue – utility, tools to make things happen rather than elegantly crafted identities. We end up with the largest amount of content per companion among any game in the franchise, only to have the weakest roster.

I know these writers can do better, because I’ve seen them do better. Trick Weekes wrote Iron Bull, Cole, and Solas in Inquisition, as well as Mordin Solus and Tali’Zorah in Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3. Mary Kirby wrote Varric throughout the series, as well as Sten and Loghain in Origins. Plenty of other experienced writers, such as Sylvia Feketekuty and John Dombrow also contributed, so I can’t put any of the blame on a lack of skill. I don’t know if the mistake was trying to appeal to a wider audience, or if the constant reorientations of the DA4 project drained the crew’s passion and left them lacking in time to polish things.

I personally suspect that the writers had to rush out a script for all of the voiced dialogue. A video from August of 2020 showed off the voice actors for Davrin and Bellara, more than four years before the final game’s release. I think the codex entries, letters, and missives that you find throughout the game, which consist of only text, are much better written than the dialogue. My theory is that the writers had more time to revise and spruce up these tidbits, where edits were minimally invasive, as far as production is concerned. But my knowledge is limited; after all, BioWare rejected my application almost a decade ago.

Still, there are aspects of The Veilguard’s plot that I enjoy. The lore reveals were particularly satisfying2, and many felt rewarding after a decade of speculation. I called that elves were originally spirits, as well as the connection between the Archdemons and the Evanuris, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the Blight formed out of the smoldering rage of the Titans’ severed dreams. I’d concisely describe The Veilguard’s story as the opposite of Mass Effect 3: Whereas ME3 did excellent character work, the characterization in The Veilguard leaves much to be desired. Whereas ME3’s tone was overwhelmingly grim, The Veilguard feels inappropriately positive. Whereas ME3’s lore reveals ruined much about the series’s mystique, The Veilguard’s helped tie the setting’s history together. And whereas ME3 fumbled the ending about as much as it possibly could, The Veilguard actually coalesces into a spectacular third act.

While I think the twist with Varric’s death is weak (outright pitiful compared to the Dread Wolf twist of Inquisition), the actual events that make up the finale carry a momentum and urgency that the rest of the game severely lacked. Everything from the sacrifice and kidnapping of Rook’s companions to the slaying of Ghilan’nain to the awe-inspiring battle between the Dread Wolf and Archdemon Lusacan – the whole affair takes the best parts of Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission and elevates it to the scale of an apocalyptic series finale. Ultimately, Solas takes center stage as the final antagonist, and the drama crescendos to a height the rest of the game desperately needed. He remains the most interesting character in the game and perhaps the franchise, and thankfully, the resolution to his story did not disappoint me (though I would’ve preferred the option for a boss battle against his Dread Wolf form if the player’s negotiations broke down). So in that sense, I think the worst possible scenario was avoided.

But is that really worth celebrating? Averting complete disaster? Exceeding the lowest standards? In many regards, The Veilguard still could have been – should have been – more.

IV. A World of Tranquil

In my essay on Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (2024), I briefly discussed a trend in media to sand off the edges so as not to upset the audience in any way. The encroachment of this media sanitization seems to be an over-correction to the brimming grimness of late 2000s and early 2010s fiction (to which the first two Dragon Age titles belong), which earned comparable levels of criticism. Like Solas, I occasionally feel trapped in a cycle of regret, where it feels like our previous yearning for less aggressive, mean-spirited content led to a media landscape that prioritized patronizingly positive art. Now it’s clear to me that, in order to have a point, you need to have an edge.

Dragon Age historically drew a very progressive audience, and many of them congregated around Tumblr in that website’s heyday. Tumblr has garnered something of a reputation for overzealous discourse and sensitivity among its userbase, and I think that the developers of The Veilguard, in an attempt to cater to one of their core audiences, may have misunderstood both that passion and the fundamental appeal of their products. They became so concerned about optics, about avoiding politically charged criticism, that they kneecapped their world-building, rendering it as inoffensive and sterile as possible. It’s not so much “PC culture” as it is “PG culture.”

To that end, the various governments, factions, and societies of Thedas lost their edge. Dragon Age previously presented itself as anti-authoritarian by showcasing the rampant abuses of power across all cultures. Whether it was the incarceration of mages under the Chantry, the slavery practiced by the Tevinter Imperium, the expansionist anti-individualism of the Qun, the restrictive dwarven caste system, or the rampant racism against elves, social strife abounded in this world. I think that’s one thing that drew so many marginalized fans to the series. But the correlation of fictional atrocities with those of real life frequently prompted volatile discourse, with many concerned about how allegedly allegorized groups were being represented. You began to see countless essays pop up by folks who use the phrase “blood quantum” more than any healthy person should for a setting about wizards. BioWare responded to this by making Thedosian society wholly pleasant and the people in power responsible and cool and the disparate cultures tolerant and cooperative. If nothing’s portrayed negatively (outside of the cartoonishly evil gods), nobody can take offense, right?

For starters, the Antivan Crows have gone from an amoral group of assassins to basically Batman. These figures, which previously purchased children off slave markets to train them into killers, are now the “true rulers” of Antiva, by which the official government derives its authority. The Crows in The Veilguard stand against the insurgent qunari army as heroes of the common folk. They’re not an unscrupulous faction that Rook is reluctantly forced to ally with for the greater good; no, the Crows are simply good guys now. When the pompous governor of Treviso rails against them, with such audacious claims as “assassins and thugs should not represent the citizenry,” we’re meant to laugh at the governor’s foolishness. The unintentional implication this sends is that lethal vigilantism and unchecked power are cool because the people who use it are cool and stylish. The slave trade goes unacknoweldged; Antivan children want to grow up to be assassins now. The Crows never do anything wrong in The Veilguard – the governor is later revealed to be cooperating with the invaders for their own power. BioWare avoids the unpleasantness inherent in the Crows’ concept by pretending it never existed.

Perhaps more ridiculous is the Lords of Fortune, a new faction of pirates and treasure hunters based out of Rivain. Except they don’t really do piracy or treasure hunting. The game goes to lengths to ensure that the audience knows that the Lords don’t steal important cultural artifacts from any of the tombs and ruins they raid. What do they steal, then? There is no such thing as an ethical treasure hunter – plundering indigenous sites for souvenirs is inherently problematic – but the writers wanted to reap the appeal of adventurous swashbucklers without any of the baggage, regardless of whether it makes sense or not3. It comes across as a child’s idea of a pirate: they’re not thinking about the murder and looting, just the funny men with eye-patches who say “ARRR!” The developers want us to like the Lords of Fortune, and to that end, they can’t do anything culturally insensitive – even fictional disrespect toward a made-up culture. This is doubly amusing because the Lords are represented by Isabela from Dragon Age II. The same Isabela that kicked off a war with the qunari by stealing their holy book, the Tome of Koslun. This irony goes unacknowledged by the game.4

When these rogue buccaneers aren’t busy giving land acknowledgments to displaced Dalish elves or whatever, they’re enjoying their nonviolent coliseum. Pirates revel in bloodsport, but only so long as no actual blood is spilled. The Lords refuse to fight prisoners or animals in their arena, as they find such acts too cruel. I guess they’re all big Peter Singer readers. Instead, they summon spirits to adopt the visages of common enemies so that the player can kill them with a clean conscience. It’s another example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too – they wanted to create a glory hunter/gladiator faction, but couldn’t stand the underlying implications of such. So they twisted and bent them to fit into their unproblematic paradigm, leaving the Lords flavorless and lame. They barely even contribute to the main story, and they’re practically the only look we get into Rivaini society (which remains criminally underdeveloped).

More tragic is the handling of the qunari, once one of the most unique and nuanced civilizations in the Dragon Age setting. The Qun, as portrayed in the first three installments, is a society that demands all of its composite parts work in harmony. Thus, they have predetermined vocations for their children, rigid gender roles, strict codes of conduct, and an ambition to “enlighten” the rest of the world. While the Qun has often been presented as antagonistic toward the heroes, the series has commonly balanced its portrayal by showing how seductive its absolutism can be for people without hope. In some cases, life under the Qun is preferable, as is the case with former Tevinter slaves. Conformity becomes comfort when the world is regularly threatening to split apart.

The Veilguard opts for a different approach. See, Rook’s not fighting members of the Qun in this game – they’re fighting the Antaam, the former qunari military. The Veilguard constantly reiterates that the Antaam, which makes up one of the three branches of the Qun, has broken off and decided to invade, pillage, and stoke chaos. BioWare didn’t want the questionable morality and complexity of fighting an invading people from a humanized, multi-faceted culture, so they removed their culture. Their efforts to turn the non-Western-coded qunari into something digestible for their mistaken conception of a modern audience instead results in two caricatures: one being a fetishized, perfect society where there are no perceivable social ills; and the other a bunch of rampaging brutes.

Contending with a realized conception of Plato’s Republic mixed with the Ottoman Empire makes for more compelling drama than a horde of murderous giants. Again, BioWare wanted to have it both ways, and they still needed nameless, faceless orcs to kill. So every bit about the qunari’s militancy, imperialism, and repression coexisting alongside some of their more progressive ideas and communal unity is stripped of its context and meaning. Blame is placed solely on the Antaam, who no longer represent (and retroactively, never represented) the Qun’s ideology. It’s a cowardly compromise, attempting to pin the blame of all the Qun’s failings on a renegade military and seeking to exonerate the political and social apparatuses of their culpability.

At one point, a minor character named Seer Rowan lectures to an ignorant human (a proxy for the audience absorbing these retcons) that qunari society has always been egalitarian in practice, with mages enjoying freedom there. Previous games showed that the qunari shackle their “saarebas” mages, stitch their mouths, cut out their tongues, and teach them to commit suicide if they ever stray from their masters. However, we’re now assured that this is only practiced under the Antaam, and No True Qunari would ever do such a thing. Ignore the fact that, in Inquisition, we witness the enslaved saarebas under the supervision of the Ben-Hasserath, a subdivision of the Ariqun (i.e. not part of the Antaam). In fact, the Antaam that Rook fights in The Veilguard never command saarebas at all. They’re completely absent from the game (likely because the image of the bound, mutilated minority was too much for The Veilguard’s sensibilities). Seer Rowan’s weak, conciliatory retcon can’t even justify itself in its own game. The scolding diatribe communicates an intrinsic misunderstanding of the Qun by the writers – namely, it continues the pattern established with the Antivan Crows that the mechanics of power in society are fundamentally good as long as aberrant forces aren’t in charge. While I understand the desire to be conscientious about the portrayal of fictional cultures that draw upon non-Western traditions and iconography (which have historically been demonized in media), glamorizing the Qun and stripping it of its realistic nuance does little to alleviate any problems with representation. If anything, it creates new ones.

But hey, now we have our faceless orcs to guiltlessly slaughter. That’s what the Antaam’s been reduced to, bereft of the ideology that made them people. We kill them because they’re strange and scary and foreign and seeking to destroy our cities for fun. They remain the most prominent representation of the qunari in-game, barring our party member Taash. BioWare’s attempts to reverse what they viewed as problematic components to the qunari instead devolved into the very tropes they wished to avoid.

Which leads us to the elves. Much of the series’s discourse has surrounded the portrayal of the long-suffering elven people, who endure slavery under Tevinter, expulsion from their homeland in the Dales, confinement in ghettos, and the general disdain from other races. The games’ stories use symbolic shorthand of real-life oppressed peoples to communicate these tragedies, and this has led to a variety of intense, emotional interpretations over the years. The unending misery of the systematically marginalized elves hasn’t gone unnoticed by the fanbase – and their criticisms haven’t gone unnoticed by the developers. To quote The Veilguard’s creative director, John Epler, in an interview with Polygon:

“Dragon Age has not always been the kindest to the Dalish [elves]. Somebody once made a joke to me, and it’s not untrue, that it’s possible to wipe out a Dalish clan in all three of the games in some way.”

He and others on the development team must’ve thought elves needed a break, because the omnipresent racism against them vanishes completely in The Veilguard. Tevinter, an empire built on the back of chattel slavery, doesn’t show any of that. Consequently, it feels like players in the know still haven’t seen the true face of Tevinter, despite spending half a game there. The notion that the capital of Minrathous gives now is one of a prosperous city that’s centuries ahead of the countries down south, rather than a cruel regime cracking the whip at every opportunity. Perhaps the writers weren’t comfortable portraying this, or felt that their audience might not be amenable to it after years of incendiary argumentation. Nevertheless, it castrates their established world-building and robs us of the opportunity to witness true elven liberation in the climax. With both the fall of Minrathous and the toppling of the tyrannical elven gods, we could have delivered a much needed catharsis after four games of oppression, but The Veilguard forgoes this storytelling opportunity to play it safe.

I worry that this hesitancy originated from anxieties about the sensitivity of depicting marginalized peoples in brutal, dehumanizing conditions, and how that might look to more fragile viewers. But I think it’s important for all players, watchers, and readers to know that, though there might be aspects shared between them, fictional minorities are distinct from real ones.

Dragon Age’s elves are aesthetically Celtic. Their residency in alienages evokes images of Disapora Jews in Europe. Their Long Walk after being driven from the Dales calls back to the Trail of Tears, sharing an experience with Native Americans. Their subsequent migratory nature is reminiscent of the Romani people. And their ancient empire of Arlathan, with its large columns and temples of worship, headed by ascended humanoid (for lack of a better term) deities that cast down an enemy called the Titans, and which has since had its religion and culture co-opted and renamed by Roman-inspired Tevinter invites comparisons to classical Greece.

My point is, the elves of Dragon Age don’t represent one group of people, because fictional cultures are constructs drawing from countless inspirations. If they represent anything beyond themselves, it’s the idea of a proud people that’s fallen under the yoke of conquering powers – a supervictim to embody all. The idea that one must be limited in their storytelling options based on how the portrayal might reflect upon or disrespect an existing culture is flawed, in my opinion. In the overwhelming majority of cases, coding cannot be read as a 1:1 allegory, especially in speculative fiction like science-fiction and fantasy. I believe the most mature way to evaluate a story isn’t to try to pigeonhole what it’s trying to say say about who, as if there’s some insidious encrypted message in the text. Rather, it’s to see the forest through the trees and interpret the work as a complete whole in itself.

On that basis, I ask: would it have been so bad to see some of those enslaved elves, praying for salvation, side with their manipulative, nefarious gods? To add some nuance to the conflict with Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, would the story of elven liberation not have been better if the game actually engaged with it? Could we actually have a moral quandary with those whom Rook ends up fighting, even if the content might be seemingly problematic?

Epler might respond in the negative, per the Polygon interview, claiming that the gods “simply don’t care” about the elves.

“Those blighted, decrepit gods, they’re not bothering with the soft pitch. Their pitch is, We’re going to make a horrible world. We’re going to give you a lot of power, and maybe you’ll be OK.”

Like a chess board, the core conflict of The Veilguard is black and white. BioWare abandoned the chance to make Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain more interesting villains because it was too risky.

Similarly risky was Solas’s role as an antagonist, since his motivations, as explained in “Trespasser”, are deeply sympathetic. Perhaps too much so for the developers’ comfort. Unlike the Evanuris and their disinterest in the elves, Solas wants to restore the elven people to their former glory. At least, that seemed to be his pitch in the last game. Frustratingly absent from The Veilguard are the Agents of Fen’Harel – elves who swore fealty to Solas’s cause. They infiltrated and compromised the Inquisition, effectively precipitating the final decision to end the organization in its current form. The idea that Solas had amassed an army of common folk who found the idea of a renewed elven empire appealing made him appear formidable and intimidating. “Trespasser” implies that a mass uprising of elves under Solas’s leadership was imminent, and anyone could be in on it.

None of this happens in The Veilguard. Not only does Solas lack an army, but their absence isn’t explained or even acknowledged. As a result, Solas remains a passive antagonist until near the end, since the player has no disciples of his to contend with (either physically or ideologically) along the way. It wastes a side of his character that had been foreshadowed in a decade-long cliffhanger – that of a charismatic leader, capable of coordinating a rebellion that could spell disaster for its own followers.

In a Reddit AMA after the latest game’s release, Epler answered where the Agents of Fen’Harel disappeared to:

“Solas’ experience leading the rebellion against the Evanuris turned him against the idea of being a leader. You see it in the memories – the entire experience of being in charge ate at him and, ultimately, convinced him he needed to do this on his own. And his own motivations were very different from the motivations of those who wanted to follow him – he had no real regard for their lives or their goals. So at some point between Trespasser and DATV, he severed that connection with his ‘followers’ and went back to being a lone wolf. There are Dalish clans who are sympathetic to his goals, but even there, there’s an understanding that he’s too dangerous to have a more formal connection with, and that he will, ultimately, sacrifice them to his own ends if necessary.”

I find this explanation unsatisfying, not the least bit because the narrative offers next to nothing to imply this. The disappearance of Solas’s agents represents my biggest bugbear with the game, depriving it of the full potential of its highly anticipated antagonist in favor of the more generically villainous Evanuris. Moreover, this omission fits into the aggravating blueprint for The Veilguard’s inoffensive direction. The motivations, emotions, and backgrounds of the Agents of Fen’Harel would be sympathetic, and therefore might problematize the otherwise cut-and-dry conflicts. Epler seemed concerned that audiences might think Solas was “a little too sympathetic in his goals,” according to an interview with GamesRadar+.

But that’s the thing: sympathy isn’t endorsement, and portrayal of sympathetic characters isn’t endorsement either. But neither does that invalidate the emotions and experiences that generate that sympathy, even if the character’s actions ultimately turn toward evil. I’ve noticed a trend (especially in symptomatic criticism, which I generally dislike5) to view art as propaganda, and to evaluate it from a moralizing, top-down perspective. Antagonists with complex or understandable motivations (in this case, revolutionary villains) are often judged by this framework as tools for stories wishing to champion the status quo. Common arguments that I’ve seen imply that the relatability that we often find in villains is not a strength of the writing, but a devilish trick of ideology by which writers can reinforce conservative doctrine, to scold us away from certain beliefs. Any decent writer knows this isn’t the case, and that people don’t write morally or emotionally complex antagonists for didactic purposes. Instead, characters such as these embody the anxieties of their creators – the fear of losing yourself to your passions, the fear of going about things the wrong way, the fear of sacrificing too much to achieve your desired ends. The concepts and feelings that compel these characters remain authentic to the writer’s heart and the connection they established with the audience.

Art isn’t propaganda. To read it as such reduces it and promotes intellectual dishonesty and foolhardy myopia. Stories are irreducible (otherwise, we would not waste our time with them), and so I believe interpretations should be formed from the bottom-up, rooted in the text as much as possible. The “message” cannot be imposed from the top-down, but symptomatic readings, in their focus on tropes and cultural context, frequently condemn without a trial. Hindering your story in order to future-proof it for the sake of optics is a safeguard against this, and one that leads to bad stories. Artists should have confidence that their text will hold its ground on its own. To quote Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “A Message about Messages”:

“The complex meanings of a serious story or novel can be understood only by participation in the language of the story itself. To translate them into a message or reduce them to a sermon distorts, betrays, and destroys them… Any reduction of that language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete.” (67-68)

BioWare’s doctrine of passive writing violates this wisdom by surrendering to their fear of (bad) criticism. The Veilguard lacks punch, stakes, and empathy and becomes incongruous with its established lore because it’s not willing to take risks that might alienate or upset players. They’re more concerned with making sure their work is inoffensive than they are with conveying a moving story.

I believe all of this was inherited from an incestuous feedback loop between a vocal minority of critics, of which I might’ve once counted myself among the blameworthy, and the apprehensiveness of out-of-touch corporate board room decision-making. Dragon Age’s genome mutated, and it slowly lost its teeth.

Over the course of a decade, we bred the Dread Wolf into a Dread Pug.

V. What It Took

The Veilguard’s lack of confidence in itself and lack of faith in its audience contribute to its capitulatory nature. In many respects, it feels like the developers lost their passion for it over the course of the ten year hellish production and just wanted to be done with it. This resulted in a decent game that nonetheless feels divorced from what came before it. It tries to juggle being a soft reboot while also trying to close out the series’s biggest and longest running story arcs, but inevitably fumbles.

Nearly everything done by The Veilguard was handled better by Inquisition. And Inquisition was certainly the more ambitious title. Perhaps more returning characters would have established a sense of continuity between the two, or at least made it less awkward by having them present for the story’s grand finale. For as strong as the endgame is, it could’ve benefited from the presence of slave liberator Fenris, elven history aficionado Merrill, possible Evanuris soul vessel Sera, or Divine Victoria (any of them). The core pillar of Dragon Age is the characters, and The Veilguard’s under-performance (and in some cases, outright dismissal) in that regard sabotages its integrity. Without this to anchor it, the changes to gameplay, visuals, and roleplaying depth become more alienating.

Personally, what do I take away from this? The Veilguard is far from the game I dreamed about for ten years, and not the one that loyal fans deserved either. I’m no stranger to disappointment at this point in my life, and yet this still leaves me with a hollow feeling. Will I still be able to return to Inquisition, a game I truly adore, and see it the same way as before, knowing now where all this is leading? The true cost of The Veilguard, for me, has nothing to do with the price tag: it’s the loss of that perfectly tailored dream, now that the possibilities of the future have shut their gates.

Where do those dreams go? Are they doomed to fester in their lonely, incommunicable agony? Will they be twisted by their enmity, like the blighted dreams of the Titans, and spread their corruption into those important happy memories?

In 2014, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: Inquisition helped me to see the light and come out of it. In 2024, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me feel nothing. There’s no less favorable comparison in my eyes. It’s disheartening to behold something that once meant so much to me and be greeted with numbness. I have to wonder if that affection will ever return, or if I’ve just grown out of it.

But as I wandered the streets of Minrathous as Rook, I heard a familiar song. It was one of the tavern songs from Inquisition, its nostalgic chords filling me with wistful sentiment. I know, deep down, there’s still something there. Maybe I just need to dig it up. Maybe it’s time to look back…

To be continued…

– Hunter Galbraith