Dragon Age: The Veilguard

• 1. Introduction

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  Dragon Age: The Veilguard reached players on the 31st of October 2024 for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S. BioWare developed it and Electronic Arts published it. It is the fourth major game in the Dragon Age series, and the sequel to Dragon Age: Inquisition from 2014. A decade passed between those two games, and the road between them was far from orderly. The project was cancelled once and restarted under a new code-name. Directors and executives came and went along the way, and some of the people who began the work were gone long before it shipped. What kind of game survived all of that, and how did the people who played it respond?

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• 2. Rook Versus The Gods

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  Ten years after the events of Inquisition, a former companion named Solas sets out to destroy the Veil. He now uses his older name, Fen'Harel, and is known as the elven god of betrayal and rebellion. The Veil is the boundary between the physical world and the Fade, the realm of spirits and demons. Solas created it long ago to lock away other elven gods who had abused their power. Now he regrets it. Sealing the ancient elves off from the Fade, he feels, caused their society to fall, and he wants to bring that world back. Varric Tethras, Viscount of Kirkwall, and Lace Harding, lead scout of the Inquisition, are charged with stopping him.

  The player controls Rook, a character who belongs to one of six factions. These include the Antivan Crows, an order of assassins from Antiva, and the Grey Wardens, who fight darkspawn from headquarters in the Anderfels. The Lords of Fortune are treasure hunters from Rivain, and the Mourn Watch guard the Grand Necropolis in Nevarra. The Shadow Dragons resist corruption and slavery in Tevinter, while the Veil Jumpers work to uncover the unexplored forest of Arlathan. Rook begins in disgrace, having disobeyed faction orders and been sent away to let tensions cool. Varric and Harding recruit Rook for the hunt.

  The chase leads through Minrathous, the capital of Tevinter, and ends in Arlathan Forest, once the capital of the ancient elven empire. With Neve joining the team, the group finds Solas about to perform a ritual to destroy the Veil. Rook interrupts it, and the interruption accidentally frees two imprisoned elven gods, Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain. Solas is trapped in the Fade. He forms a blood connection with Rook, and Varric is badly injured. The freed gods plan to use the Blight, the mass movement of darkspawn that follows when they corrupt a Tevinter Old God into an Archdemon. Their aim is to destroy Thedas and build a new elven empire on its ruins.

  Rook then settles into the Lighthouse, Solas' former base in the Fade, and takes the lyrium dagger he used in the ritual. Using the Crossroads, a pathway the ancient elves traveled within the Fade, Rook gathers allies across northern Thedas. Along the way Rook recruits Bellara, Lucanis and Davrin, and later Emmrich and Taash. Blighted dragons strike Minrathous and the Antivan city of Treviso, and Rook must choose which one to save. At Weisshaupt, home of the Grey Wardens, the First Warden refuses to believe in the danger. Rook either talks him down or knocks him unconscious. Ghilan'nain and the Archdemon Razikale then besiege the fortress. Razikale dies despite heavy Warden losses, which leaves Ghilan'nain mortal.

  Tearstone Island is where the gods plan their ritual, timed for the eve of the next eclipse. They intend to pierce the Veil with a red lyrium dagger and flood Thedas with the Blight. Rook rallies allies, with help from the Inquisitor, and storms the island against the Venatori, who are Tevinter supremacists, and the Antaam, the qunari military. Either Davrin or Harding gives their life, and Lucanis lands the killing blow on Ghilan'nain. Then Solas betrays Rook, imprisons them in the Fade and takes the dagger. Rook escapes with the companions' help, and learns that Solas killed Varric and used blood magic to alter Rook's memory of it.

  Minrathous becomes the final battleground, since Elgar'nan has retreated there and taken over the palace of the Archon, with Solas in pursuit. Breaking through Venatori and Antaam defenses, the team learns that killing Elgar'nan will collapse the Veil, and that an elven god must be bound to the Veil to hold it up. Solas hands the dagger to Rook and helps defeat Elgar'nan and his Archdemon, Lusacan. Then he betrays them again and tries to bring the Veil down. Rook can fight Solas, or trick him with a duplicate dagger the team has made, and bind him to the Veil by force. In another ending, Solas is persuaded to stop and binds himself willingly, to atone for his mistakes.

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• 3. Building A Rook

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  Three is the number of Inquisition choices that a player can carry into The Veilguard. Earlier games imported a player's past decisions from save files or from a web application called Dragon Age Keep. This one lets players select only three. Creative director John Epler explained that decisions from the earlier games largely did not affect events here, which allowed the creators "to avoid contradicting" what individual players had chosen.

  Character creation starts with a lineage: human, dwarf, elf or qunari. Next come a fighting class, which is rogue, mage or warrior, and a backstory tied to one of the six factions. As with the choice of origin in the original game, that faction sets the character's course through the story. Body size and body parts can be chosen separately from the voice and from the pronouns, which are she/her, he/him or they/them. Players can also remake their Inquisition character, who appears in the game alongside other past characters.

  Seven companions are on offer, and the player picks two to join Rook in a party of three. Bellara Lutare is a Veil Jumper, Davrin is a Grey Warden, Emmrich Volkarin is a Mourn Watcher, and Lucanis Dellamorte is an Antivan Crow. Neve Gallus is a Shadow Dragon, Taash is a Lord of Fortune, and Harding makes the seventh. Unlike in earlier games, players cannot directly control them in combat. The companions are described as pansexual, so a Rook of any gender can romance them. Game director Corinne Busche said they are not "playersexual", meaning attracted only to the player character. She added that the team built forgiveness into the relationships, and that a stronger bond lets a companion grow more powerful.

  Compared with Inquisition, combat now runs in real time rather than through the tactical approach of the older Dragon Age games. A pause-and-play mechanic similar to Inquisition's remains. Inquisition's open world is gone. In its place is a hub-and-spoke design, where magical portals carry players to areas of varying size. The pause-and-play feature is the one thread that still ties the new combat to the older tactical games.

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• 4. Two Code Names

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  In 2015, under creative director Mike Laidlaw, the team began a project code-named Joplin. It was meant to be smaller and more focused on narrative, set in the Tevinter Imperium region of the world called Thedas. One developer described the aim as "a hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth." The design leaned on repeat play, evolving areas and branching missions that depended on player choices. It also included heists and systems that let players persuade or extort guards.

  Late 2016 brought a pause. BioWare's other projects, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, faced development challenges, and Anthem was an online multiplayer game very different from the studio's single-player history. Many Dragon Age contributors were pulled into the final months of Andromeda. The rest later joined the Anthem team. Joplin was cancelled in October 2017, and several veteran Dragon Age staff, Laidlaw among them, left the company in response.

  The project returned in 2018 under the code-name Morrison. Mark Darrah stayed on as executive producer, and Matthew Goldman served as creative director from 2017 to 2021. At first, Morrison included a live-service component built on Anthem's code. Developers felt that publisher EA wanted to imitate higher-selling series such as FIFA and Battlefield.

  February 2021 ended the live-service plan. According to Bloomberg News, EA based the decision on the success of the single-player Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the disappointing sales of the multiplayer Anthem. Several developers also felt that the multiplayer Dragon Age prototypes lacked the feel of the earlier single-player games.

  BioWare had only 18 months to change the game's structure and story, and it did not receive a full reset. The team had to rework the fundamentals on the fly. The finished game kept traces of its multiplayer past, including limited player choices and less narrative depth. Those traits clashed with what players expect from BioWare's single-player games.

  Sony's God of War, released in 2018, shaped the new combat, pushing the game toward real-time action and reducing the turn-based elements of earlier titles. Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe composed the soundtrack. They replaced Trevor Morris, who had scored Inquisition.

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• 5. Changing Hands

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  By the 3rd of December 2020, Mark Darrah had resigned from BioWare, and Christian Dailey, head of BioWare Austin, took over as executive producer. Goldman was gone by November 2021, and John Epler replaced him as creative director. Dailey left in February 2022. Corinne Busche then became game director, with Benoit Houle as director of product development and Mac Walters as production director.

  Walters left in January 2023. In March 2023, Darrah returned as a consultant, and the Mass Effect team joined production of the game, according to EA.

  In August 2023, BioWare laid off 50 people who worked on the game and on the next Mass Effect title. One of them was Mary Kirby, an original writer for the series who is credited with creating Varric and the Qunari. PC Gamer observed that some veterans of the old days remained, but that the group was very different from the one that made the studio's greatest hits. In October, seven of the laid-off staff sued BioWare for additional compensation. They complained that non-disclosure agreements kept them from adding their work on the game to their portfolios.

  January 2025 brought the end of active development, apart from fixes for game-breaking bugs. Unlike earlier Dragon Age games, this one would receive no DLC or other major post-launch content. Busche left BioWare for a role at another company. On the 29th of January, BioWare announced a restructure and cited its focus on Mass Effect 5. Staff not assigned to that game were loaned to other studios under EA. Writer Sheryl Chee joined Motive Studio, and EA later announced that the staffing shifts were permanent. Several members of the Veilguard team were terminated, including Trick Weekes and other long-term BioWare staff.

  In August 2025, the game arrived on Xbox Game Pass.

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• 6. Titles And Trailers

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  At The Game Awards in December 2018, the game was announced as Dragon Age 4. Early promotion pointed to red lyrium, a corrupted magical power source, and to Solas, the Dread Wolf, as central to the plot. Social media campaigns used the tagline "The Dread Wolf Rises".

  A concept art video appeared at Gamescom in August 2020. In December 2020, a teaser trailer followed, narrated by the dwarf Varric Tethras and featuring Solas. The July 2021 EA Play event brought no details at all. Jeffrey Grubb of VentureBeat suggested the publisher was getting the game into position to begin marketing in earnest, likely in 2022. Ash Parrish, then writing for Kotaku, said the game was probably not ready to be shown, and that BioWare had been drip-feeding fans information for years. In January 2022, Grubb wrote that EA had not decided when to begin marketing.

  June 2022 brought the title Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Parrish, now at The Verge, called the reveal exciting for many fans. It made Solas the antagonist, and it made the game a direct sequel, which earlier installments in the franchise were not. A teaser trailer in December 2023 showed new locations: Antiva, Rivain and the Anderfels.

  In June 2024, the game became The Veilguard. BioWare said the Dread Wolf remains part of the game, but that the new title better reflects its focus. General manager Gary McKay denied that focus testing drove the change and said that keeping Dreadwolf would have been the safer choice. He said the aim was a title "authentic to the companions that are the heart of this adventure we've created." Ed Smith of PCGamesN liked the change. Andy Chalk of PC Gamer and Kenneth Shepard of Kotaku disliked it. Chalk felt the new name conveys less than Dreadwolf did, and Shepard said he would dearly miss the older title.

  The companion trailer drew sharper reactions. Robin Valentine of PC Gamer thought the cast looked "more ready for a battle pass than an epic quest", and Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Rock Paper Shotgun compared its feel to Ocean's Eleven. Critics who saw a hands-off demo at the 2024 Summer Game Fest were warmer. Mike Minotti of GamesBeat advised readers not to let the "weird CG trailer" scare them. Sean Booker of CNET and Alex Donaldson of VG247 were both reminded of the Mass Effect games.

  Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights, published on the 10th of March 2020, is an anthology of short stories that serves as a prequel to the game. Susana Polo of Polygon noted that factions, some non-player characters and even a few companions appear in it years before they were officially announced. The Missing, a four-issue comic by George Mann, was published by Dark Horse Comics from the 25th of January to the 10th of May 2023. It follows Varric and Harding as they investigate Solas, and several companions appear.

  A weekly podcast called Vows & Vengeance ran from the 29th of August to the 17th of October 2024. Each of its eight episodes focused on the backstory of a different companion, and it also featured characters made just for the podcast. It was an Honoree in two categories at the 2025 Webby Awards. For Dragon Age Day in 2024, BioWare also released a free standalone character creator, and players could transfer their Rook to the full game after buying it.

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• 7. What Critics Said

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  Metacritic rated the game "generally favorable" across its Windows, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions, and OpenCritic found that 71% of critics recommended it. User scores told a different story. The game was review-bombed on Metacritic, with some users calling it "woke". Steam, which requires players to play the game before reviewing it, showed a "mostly positive" rating. Metacritic responded by pointing to its moderation system, which removes abusive reviews.

  Hayes Madsen of Rolling Stone called the game a "fresh start for the franchise" and "practically a soft reset". Leana Hafer of IGN described the story as both a send-off and a soft reboot, which she found refreshing and disappointing at once. Andy Bickerton of NPR called it a well-executed action RPG, but considered the omission of past player choices a "letdown". Lauren Morton of PC Gamer said the streamlining sometimes made it feel more like an action adventure than an RPG.

  Matt Purslow of IGN said the game was "at war with itself". He felt it showed little interest in the franchise's past, and that it sidelined Solas and Varric. Malindy Hetfeld of The Guardian found the writing "surprisingly mediocre" and the new gods "comically evil" next to Solas. Parrish of The Verge praised Solas' arc for refusing to soften his actions the way villain backstories usually do. It still made her want to choose differently.

  Todd Harper of Polygon described the companions as the heart of the game, "weird and idiosyncratic in the best ways". Hafer liked that each is one of the "stars of their own story", but was disappointed that in combat they felt like extensions of the player character. Parrish enjoyed the banter and the way the game states when a player becomes locked into a romance path. Morton disagreed, arguing that "good people don't make great characters".

  Alyssa Mora of IGN highlighted the character creator's "body diversity", where "the options feel almost endless". Robin Bea of Inverse and Oliver Brandt of Sports Illustrated both commended Taash's story arc. Bea also called the coming out narrative "low-hanging fruit", and felt Rook's gender identity went unexplored outside Taash's storyline. Harvey Randall of PC Gamer was more critical, citing "scattershot, clumsy, and unpolished" writing. Brandt considered making every companion romanceable regardless of the player's gender expression "a small step back" from other Dragon Age games.

  Bickerton of NPR called action gameplay the game's strongest feature, finding the mastery of combat and party composition rewarding from start to finish. Hetfeld found the combat functional but repetitive. Hafer called the boss fights its highlight. Parrish praised the combo system, the elemental effects on weapons and the way mage characters can switch between melee and ranged attacks. She disliked the length of encounters with "wave after wave of tanky enemies". Harper called the combat "hit or miss".

  Graphics and level design drew more agreement. Hafer cited "visual splendor", and Harper called the game "graphically gorgeous". Bickerton thought the levels improved on Inquisition's "bland open zones". Morton praised each area's "incredible visual design" and welcomed the move away from Inquisition's giant zones toward "more constrained maps of coiled corridors and clearings".

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• 8. Sales And Awards

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  Steam showed over 85,000 concurrent players during the opening weekend, and the game topped the platform's global top sellers chart. That broke BioWare's record for players on Steam, and it ranks among EA's highest single-player totals for concurrent players. Rhiannon Bevan of TheGamer wrote that the Steam figures suggested a strong showing compared with BioWare's recent releases. In the UK, the game debuted at No. 7 on the sales chart, and in the US it debuted at No. 6.

  EA announced in January 2025 that the game had engaged 1.5 million players in the three months ending the 31st of December 2024. That missed the company's expectations by nearly half. The same month, EA reported poor results for EA Sports FC 25, and its share value fell 18% following the holiday earnings reports. CEO Andrew Wilson called The Veilguard a high quality, well-reviewed launch. He suggested that EA's single-player games may need to reach "beyond the core audience" with "shared-world features and deeper engagement".

  The game won Outstanding Video Game at the 36th GLAAD Media Awards and Game of the Year at the Gayming Awards. It was nominated for Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards, and The Game Awards nominated it for Innovation in Accessibility. The 28th annual DICE Awards nominated it for Role-Playing Game of the Year. At the 5th Canadian Game Awards, it received 10 nominations, including Game of the Year.

  Year-end lists for 2024 also featured the game. GamesRadar+ named it Best RPG of 2024 and ranked it third overall, the Associated Press placed it fourth, and Time put it first.

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