Dragon Age: The Veilguard Table of Contents

[whiteraven191]

Dragon Age: The Veilgard

The creation of this game is such a mess I have no idea who to credit as writer and director. Too many hands touched this.
Music by: Hans Zimmer
Developed by: Bioware


Alternate Title: Dragon Age: Failguard
SPORKER: whiteraven191

Once upon a time, there was a game called Dragon Age: Origins. It is widely considered one of the best RPGs ever made. It was a very gritty dark fantasy game about a rag-tag group of heroes trying to stave off the apocalypse and navigate the political intrigue brewing in the country of Fereldan. It received two follow up games (Dragon Age: 2 in 2011 and Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014) and then the franchise went dormant for a decade. Fans were eagerly hoping and praying for a fourth game to be finished. Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC had left the franchise on a massive cliffhanger. One of the romanceable companions, Solas, had been revealed to be the Elven trickster god Fen’harel in disguise, and he planned to tear down the Veil between the mortal world and the world of spirits and demons.

As the decade went, things started to look more and more dire for the game. Bioware was experiencing a high volume of creative turnover. People were being let go or leaving the company in droves. Even the format of the game was in question. First it was going to be a single-player RPG like its predecessors. Then, to fans’ horror it was going to shift into being some sort of MMO/live service game. Finally, it was announced they were scrapping that multi-player version and going back to single-player RPG. It was exactly the sort of chaotic development environment that leads to shoddy games. Fans began to worry, especially when the name of the game changed from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to Dragon Age: Veilguard. Such a last-minute change to something so important seemed to bode ill.

And then the first trailer dropped, to extremely poor reception. It was full of quippy Marvel-esque dialog. The art style seemed a lot more cartoony than the previous games. It was almost purely a character introduction, which led to people comparing it to a hero shooter game a la Overwatch. The final release of the game was met with similar vitriol. Those bright flashy colors and quippy jokes weren’t just for the trailer; the whole game was like that, it seemed. All the dark, meaty world-building and moral conundrums of the previous games had been stripped away and sanitized. Almost all the choices players had made in previous games were completely wiped away. Unfortunately, a lot of the valid criticism of Veilguard got buried under rightwing chuds who were mad that one of the companion characters was non-binary, so let’s take a look at what actually makes it a bad game and a bad follow-up to the previous Dragon Age games.

Table of Contents

CHAPTERS
Character Creation
Chapter 1: The Minrathous Job
Chapter 2: Ruin’s Reach
Chapter 3: Awakening
Chapter 4: Tevinter Nights
Chapter 5: Anvallenim
Chapter 6: Older Blood, Older Oaths
Chapter 7: Fire, Feather, and Fade
Chapter 8: No Sacrifice Greater
Chapter 9: Bonds and Blackened Wings
Chapter 10: The Blood of Arlathan
Chapter 11: As Shadows Fall
Chapter 12: The Best Tales
Chapter 13: The Last Gambit
Chapter 14: The Dread Wolf Rises
Miscellaneous Companion Banters
Final Thoughts