BioWare's taken a beating in the last 10 years, but I'm a glass half-full type of guy.
The response to Dragon Age: The Veilguard seems mixed, confused even. I’ve seen some people get pretty excited for it, but the Dragon Age fans of PC Gamer are all feeling pretty dire. None of us were in love with the first trailer at the Xbox showcase, online editor Fraser Brown thinks the doubling down on action was a catastrophic mistake, and associate editor Lauren Morton doesn’t see how it could compare with Baldur’s Gate 3. The Veilguard’s long, troubled development and BioWare’s loss of veteran staffers, including the gut punch of a 50-person layoff last year, loom over everything.
But despite all that, I’m still pretty optimistic about the game. I’ve got a song in my heart and love to give, and there are some concrete facts to remember about BioWare and RPGs in general that contribute to my rosy outlook. Better than Baldur’s Gate 3? Absolutely not. But better than anything BioWare’s made since Dragon Age 2? I think it’s a possibility.
RPGs don’t get good trailers
OK, sometimes they do—that in-engine Cyberpunk reveal from 2018 certainly springs to mind—but in general? RPGs are chunky, cerebral, slow burns that don’t translate well into 90 seconds of sexy sizzle trying to sell you something. The way marketing campaigns always call these games “mature” always makes my eyes roll: “our game has swears and sex and stuff!” We’re all adults here, you don’t have to make me feel like I’m sneaking something past my parents. I always think fondly of how The Witcher 3 pokes fun at its own edgy story trailer in a late-game quest with Lambert. “Killing Monsters” indeed.
Someone thought this was cool back then
Look no further than Dragon Age’s own marketing history for some cringe-inducing stuff. Take the pre-rendered “Sacred Ashes” trailer for Dragon Age Origins, for example: porn parody versions of our beloved party members led by a guy who looks like the facial composite of every single Xbox 360 shooter protagonist. They do epic mid-air flips in combat to the tune of the most generic butt rock the early Obama years had to offer. Someone thought this was cool back then, but it’s not really “Dragon Age” and it didn’t really matter: Origins is still a classic no matter what its marketing looked like.
With that in mind, a quippy trailer set to a remixed pop song ain’t nothin but a peanut. The David Bowie classic “Heroes” is about lovers separated by the Berlin Wall and not Elf Rogues, but if RPG history is any indication, The Veilguard will have a more deft touch than the vulgar language of promo trailers. How about one more bad RPG trailer for the road: This E3 showcase of the classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was utterly heinous. “Embrace your demons… Or die by them!”
We’ve only seen the worst part of the game
The rainy city jumpcut to rainy elven forest sequence from The Veilguard’s extended gameplay showcase felt stiff and on rails, but it’s apparently the opening section of the game and already looks better designed than the equivalent bits of Dragon Age 2 or Inquisition. RPG intros can be a hard thing to nail, with utter classics bogged down by excruciating “protagonist’s quaint home village” tutorializing, and the Dragon Age series hasn’t always nailed that first hour.
(Image credit: Electronic Arts)
Origins remains a high water mark for the genre, with its six unique prologues and the memorable Battle of Ostagar, but Dragon Age 2 just had you trudging through some ugly brown hills killing Darkspawn and being sad that your annoying younger brother or teacher’s pet little sister died. Inquisition’s intro, meanwhile, feels like it was chopped and reworked at the last minute. The cool start menu transition to watching the temple get nuked aside, its in medias res opening and immediate crescendo of demon fights felt disorienting and stilted. I’d played the first two games for hundreds of hours before loading up Inquisition and I still barely knew what was going on my first time through.
We haven’t even seen the Veilguard’s entire prologue, and it already boasts more interesting locales and looks better-paced than two thirds of the series’ intros so far. I will say I wish they took more time to warm us up: both Inquisition and The Veilguard immediately slam the accelerator into a Pride Demon fight. It cheapens what’s supposedly an end-game boss when you’re fighting one at level 2 with an iron shortsword.
BioWare is an action RPG studio
It’s worth being realistic about what BioWare’s specialty actually is at this point.
This is an issue I really diverge from the CRPG Sardaukar party line on: BioWare was only ever briefly a company that made tactical, hardcore CRPGs. While I absolutely prefer crusty RPGs where you miss every attack for the first five hours, BioWare only made three of them (plus a few expansions) more than twenty years ago.
Even Dragon Age: Origins was just a blip, a paean to the crusty games I love produced amid an inexorable tide of simplification and consolization. Everything else BioWare has made since 2002 has moved in an action RPG direction. With over twenty years of actionization versus only five or so of making CRPGs, it’s worth being realistic about what BioWare’s specialty actually is at this point.
(Image credit: BioWare)
As much as I am a CRPG guy, BioWare is good at making action games, and seemed to be getting better at it even as the company’s fortunes soured. Despite their myriad failings, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem had excellent gunplay, and I’ve always thought Andromeda’s character building and ability system were inspired. Even Inquisition, despite frustrating encounters with an overabundance of hard crowd control, was a superb action RPG at its core. CD Projekt Red may have surpassed BioWare as the king of the cinematic action RPG, but BioWare games’ core ability design and feel have always quietly remained superior in my book.
So the most Mass Effect-y Dragon Age to date? Eh, I’ll take it. I don’t think Veilguard’s set to revolutionize RPGs like BioWare used to be able to, but I do believe it will be a good game, maybe even a great one. There’s one caveat though: I extended a similar benefit of the doubt to Starfield this time last year and yeesh. By reading this article, you legally agree not to be mad at me in three to four months’ time if I turn out to have been wildly off-base.
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