After over 100 hours of stomping around in Thedas, I finally finished Dragon Age:The Veilguard last night. Going in, I knew that this title had been in the center of some controversy about being too ‘woke’ and because of that it got a lot of hate from certain parts of the gaming public. Professional reviewers placed it somewhere around an 80/100, (based on Open Critic and Meta Critic) which seems pretty decent to me. I was curious to learn how much of the negativity around it being “woke” was justified, and to see if some of the hate was because of the actual gameplay.

What I ended up finding was a decent game that was marred, in my personal opinion, just by being too long. My completionist playthrough clocked in at a hefty 105-110 hours, with all quests finished, my main character hitting the level cap, and my companions achieving Champion status (though not all reached their maximum Companion level). Basically I did everything except track down every hidden chest or secret. Perhaps part of it being too long was self-inflicted, but I did have this sense that the difficulty of the ending was going to be predicated on the strength of your companions and their associated factions. I was right about that, and that led to the final boss battle being challenging but not frustratingly so.

Difficulty was “Just Right”

Overall the difficulty was just about right for me, and the action combat was fun though often felt a little sloppy. In particular my character (a Mage) had an ‘ultimate’ that had such a long wind-up that enemies would often have wandered out of the target area by the time she cast it. I also had some lock-on issues and in general the combat didn’t feel quite as crisp as it should have. Then again, this wasn’t a souls-like and the challenge level wasn’t huge on Normal difficulty, so the combat issues weren’t game breaking.

In addition to yourself you can bring two of your Companions with you. They’ll fight on their own or you can give them basic directions like “Attack my Target” or “Use Spell/Skill X now.” Some skills are what are called “Primers” and others are “Detonators”. If you pair these you can do big damage to the baddies, but they generally won’t happen unless you direct your companions to use the right skills.

The story was OK, though honestly some of the companion storylines were more interesting to me than the main one. My overall problem with the narrative was that the main storyline was apocalyptic: we’re trying to save the world from a pair of rampaging evil gods. So, y’know, somewhat urgent.

But then before we go and take that on, we need to sit around and discuss our feelings and every character has to take care of their unfinished business so their head can be in the game. It just felt like a pretty low-effort way to weave in the Companion storylines. It’d be like, I dunno, during the London Blitz if the RAF pilots said “We have to get up there and defend the civilian population from the German bombers… but first let’s work through our daddy issues so our head is in the game.”

I mean this is often an issue in games, right? The narrative is all “GO GO GO world is ending!” but the gameplay is “Oh but first let’s figure out how to get past this puzzle to see what’s in that chest tucked away in a secret room. And while we’re at it, there’s some crafting materials that might come in handy later; we’d better collect those. The bad guys will wait!”

Thedas isn’t very big

The game isn’t open world; instead there are 7 or 8 zones of various sizes, and you’ll revisit these again and again as you play. I got kind of sick of them and found myself really missing the sprawling world of Dragon Age Inquisition. In particular the more urban zones feel very game-y with you having to constantly climb up or down ladders or use ziplines to cross gaps. How do the people who live in these cities get their groceries home if they have to use a zip line to get there?

Each zone has a faction associated with it. For example one is where the Grey Wardens hang out. By doing quests in their area, as well as shopping at their merchants, you can increase the strength of that faction. In certain big battles these factions may come to aid you and the stronger they are, the easier the game will be for you.

Phat Loot

The loot/gear system is kind of interesting. Gear has both a rarity and a level. For example a common staff that is +2, or a legendary helmet that is +5. Finding/buying a duplicate piece of gear ranks up its rarity (it uses the typical color scheme, green to blue to purple to gold, etc). To increase its ‘plus’ level you have to find items that level up what is essentially a crafting station in your headquarters, and then you can spend resources to increase the level of your items. Later you can also add enchantments which also get unlocked as you level up the crafting station.

This system rewards exploration to find both the materials you’ll need and the gee-gaws that level up the crafting station. You’ll also be rewarded for visting vendors to see what they have on offer, and they too can be leveled up by buying/selling with them. Right up until the end of the game I was swapping out gear as older stuff got a better rarity or something.

There are also skill points to spend, and these can be refunded for free at any time, so you can play around with different builds to your heart’s content, which was nice. No more anxiety about ‘gimping’ your character by spending points wrong.

Was it too Woke?

As to the complaints about the game being too woke, I’m surprised to find myself saying that yeah, I think it was a little bit too woke. Let me explain before you get out the torches and pitchforks.

There is one character who is non-binary and part of their story is coming to grips with that. My beef is that this is a fantasy game with fantasy-dialog except for this one character constantly talking about being non-binary. I can’t think of a better term to use, but it’s such a modern phrase that I found it jarring. I had no problem with the character coming to grips with who they are, it was more the words they used to discuss it that kind of broke the immersion for me.

This was the one Companion who had an issue that couldn’t be solved through combat missions. Instead this character had a 2nd plotline to work through that gave them a quest line they could solve via combat, while the non-binary topic was relegated to dialog choices and cut-scenes. The character also was born into one culture and raised in another, and had to deal with their mother disapproving that the character wasn’t being true to their cultural roots (an issue aside from the gender one). On top of all that, they had a physical property that set them apart from others of their race. So they had PLENTY going on even without the non-binary issue. In the end it just felt like the non-binary aspect was bolted on late in development, almost as a marketing strategy, and it didn’t have anything to do with this particular character’s race or culture. It could’ve been anyone.

So to me, it just felt a little contrived and a little immersion breaking. All that said, it wasn’t a big deal and if someone out there felt like they were represented due to this characters’ issues, then it’s a good thing that they put it in there. Just for me personally, their dialog felt a little out of place and dealing with their many issues felt like it took a lot of time and slowed the pace of the game down.

So in Summary…

A few last odds and ends.

Your character is named Rook but beyond the name you can customize them. There’s even a magic mirror where you can change their appearance. I played a female elf mage and spent some time customizing her and yet I still met a few other characters that looked VERY similar to her, which was disconcerting. In fact a lot of the characters feel oddly generic. Even body type feels a bit unisex, almost? It’s the armor that gives that characters most of their definition.

What else… OK so there’re romance options but they are pretty darned bare bones. You pick the “heart” choice in dialog trees and suddenly, bing! you’re a couple and some of the other characters mention it here and there but I don’t think much else changes. Hard to say without a second play through and no way I’m doing that.

There were a few returning characters from the earlier games including Morrigan, still voiced by Claudia Black and any game that includes her gets a free pass anyway.

All in all, I’m glad I finished it. There was literally nothing to do when I was done unless it would’ve been to go hunt for chests, but I had no quests or major enemies to fight. I got the ‘good’ ending and no deaths due to my choices. [Spoiler: One of your team will die and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it from happening.] So I’m done. The only thing I could do would be to play through it again and it was definitely NOT good enough to devote another 100 hours to a second playthrough.

I got the game via PlayStation Plus Extra so it was “free” and at that price, I’d suggest giving it a go. Or if you find it on sale for $20 or something and you like fantasy action-RPGs. Had I bought it at $60 or $70 when it first came out, I think I would’ve been disappointed.