2024’s most divisive game is really fun, actually.
Writing about Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s shortcomings at this point feels like beating a very dead horse into a red stain on the carpet. Almost everything that can be said about its flaws—whether it’s the post-Endgame MCU-style dialogue or the drastic reduction of world state options to a mere three—has already been discussed. Yet despite these imperfections, The Veilguard is far from the unmitigated disaster that certain corners of the internet would have you believe. It’s a fine game—albeit a weaker Dragon Age entry.
The first thing The Veilguard has over its predecessors is simple: it’s fun. Dragon Age: Origins is widely considered one of the greatest roleplaying games of all time, but even its most diehard fans must admit that parts of it drag. A mod that skips the infamous Fade section of the Circle of Magi quest has been downloaded over 300,000 times. Dragon Age 2 is notorious for its heavy asset reuse, forcing players to fight through the exact same cave layout dozens of times in a single playthrough—a symptom of its rushed development. Meanwhile, Inquisition, for all its grandeur, was bloated with filler content to the point where new players are routinely advised to flee the Hinterlands as soon as possible to avoid burnout.
The Veilguard tackles these issues head-on, offering a more streamlined experience with tighter, more linear levels, faster-paced combat, and a leaner runtime. In previous Dragon Age games, combat often felt like filler—something to endure between the story’s more compelling moments. But in The Veilguard, the tables have turned. What was once a chore has been transformed into one of the game’s highlights.
Where The Veilguard truly shines is in its third act. Without spoiling too much, the game’s finale is nothing short of breathtaking. It’s a masterclass in cinematic storytelling, packed with high stakes, emotional weight, and a sense of scale that rivals any of BioWare’s previous finales. Perhaps its best decision is borrowing heavily from Mass Effect’s iconic Virmire and Suicide missions. The possibility of failure is ever-present, and when it’s finally over, the payoff is immensely satisfying.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Veilguard is that it exists at all. Its development was notoriously troubled, with the project undergoing two full resets over the course of a decade. It’s easy to daydream about what The Veilguard could have been if BioWare had been given the time and resources to realize their original vision without interference from their EA overlords. Yet, despite these challenges, the game we got is a fully single-player RPG with no live-service elements or predatory microtransactions. In an era where many AAA titles are riddled with monetization schemes, that alone is worth appreciating.
The discourse surrounding The Veilguard has been dominated by outrage and hyperbole, to the point where it feels like it requires its own 30-kilometer exclusion zone. A quick YouTube search will reveal dozens of videos decrying the game as not just the death of the Dragon Age series, but of Western civilization itself. Much of this outrage is performative, driven by clickbait and a desire to capitalize on controversy. The Veilguard was a commercial disappointment for BioWare; the studio’s most recent round of layoffs has left the franchise’s future in an uncertain position. Any potential future instalment is likely more than a decade away, if it all.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not without its flaws. It’s a simpler, more linear game than its predecessors, and it doesn’t always live up to the lofty standards set by Origins and Inquisition. But taken on its own, it’s a genuinely fun—if somewhat flawed—entry in the Dragon Age series. And for many fans, that’s enough.
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