Dragon Age: The Veilguard

We’ve spoken quite a bit about Dragon Age: The Veilguard leading up to its launch, but there’s so much that BioWare and EA have revealed about the long-awaited action RPG, which means there’s still plenty that we haven’t covered yet. As we count the days down until its release, then, here, we’re going to go over a few more key details that you should know about Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

TRANSMOG

It’s become abundantly clear that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is going to offer plenty of depth and flexibility in its RPG mechanics, but what about players who also want to pay attention to the cosmetic side of things? Thankfully, BioWare has confirmed that the game will feature a “robust” transmog system for both protagonist Rook and all of your companions, which means you can equip the stats and looks of any armour piece separately.

BESPOKE ARMOUR

Let’s speak about gear a while longer, because there’s some interesting things to cover here. For instance, there are several gear and armour pieces in the game that have been designed exclusively for specific classes, factions, or even characters. That means you’ll find armour in The Veilguard that will only be equippable by certain characters depending on the aforementioned factors (or even a specific character exclusively).

ABILITY QUEUING

Though The Veilguard’s combat is going to be more streamlined than past Dragon Age titles with party members no longer being directly controllable, it will allow for complexity in its action in various ways. For instance, with the action paused and the ability wheel pulled up, while issuing commands, you can queue abilities and combos for you and your companions, and then watch it all be triggered in real-time once the action resumes.

LEVEL CAP

In any RPG (or, really, any game that lets you level up), there’s an undeniable appeal to leveling up your character the most they possibly can be- so exactly what’s the cap that we should expect in Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Well, it seems like there’ll be plenty of room for growth, with BioWare confirming a level cap of 50. That’s the highest it’s ever been in a Dragon Age (though technically, Dragon Age 2 did let you hit Level 50 with certain in-game exploits).

COMPANION BONDS

Forging and improving bonds with its vast and varied cast of characters is going to be a big part of the experience in The Veilguard, clearly, and there’s going to be several ways to do that. Of course, approvals and disapprovals for your actions will affect that, like in previous games, but new to The Veilguard, simply having a companion in your party when you finish a quest will also improve your bond with them, separate from whether or not they agree with your actions. Which characters you take into the field with you will be something you’re going to want to think carefully about, then.

COMPANION PROGRESSION

The Veilguard’s customization and progression mechanics are looking plenty layered and nuanced, as we’ve touched on, and while protagonist Rook is obviously going to dominate proceedings on that front, you will have plenty of decisions to make for your companions’ growth as well. In addition to their gear loadout, each companion will also have their own skill tree, and while these won’t be as expansive as Rook’s own skill trees, they will still have plenty of options on offer.

THE CARETAKER’S WORKSHOP

The Veilguard’s Lighthouse looking like a promising hub location – an area where BioWare has traditionally excelled anyway – and this is going to be one of several facilities available there. In a nutshell, the Caretaker’s Workshop is where, using specific resources, you’ll be able to level up your gear and weapons, which in turn will unlock new enchantments. Meanwhile, the Workshop’s own rank will also impact the quality of gears that you find in the world or at other vendors.

A TRUCKLOAD OF DIALOG

Any modern AAA RPG of this scale is going to have a a ridiculous amount of recorded dialogue – especially when there’s so much variation possible based on player choice – and sure enough, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is confirmed to be BioWare’s biggest game on that front, with over 140,000 lines of recorded dialogue (of which 60,000 are for protagonist Rook alone, who has four different voice options, each with 15,000 lines of dialog). In comparison, Dragon Age: Inquisition had about 80,000 lines of dialogue, while Mass Effect: Andromeda had about 65,000.

ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS

The greater drive for improvements in accessibility in games have been heartening to see in recent years, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard is making big promises in this area, too, with an expansive suite of accessibility tools offered. HUD and UI elements are customizable, there’s different options available for subtitles, cinematics, and more, while a number of settings are also available for everything from exploration and combat to controls, audio, and more.

ARACHNOPHOBIA

Anachrophobia mode has often been offered with games as part of their acessibity options in recent years, allowing those with a particular fear of spiders (which, let’s face it, is more than a little understandable) to remove those critters from their games. Dragon Age: The Veilguard won’t have that because, interestingly enough, the game has no spiders at all, which isn’t something you expect to hear about a traditional high fantasy setting. There will, of course, be those who will miss their presence, seeing as spiders have always appeared as enemies in Dragon Age in the past.

PC FEATURES

Many will be playing BioWare’s newest action RPG on PC, and the developer is promising plenty of features for those on the platform. Support is confirmed for Nvidia’s DLSS 3, AMD’s FSR 2, and Intel’s XeSS, as well as for 21:9 ultrawide monitors. Other features and options on PC include an FoV slider, uncapped frame rates, full HDR support, Nvidia Reflex support, vsync, and much, much more.

ULTRA AND RAY TRACING SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Those looking to play The Veilguard on the highest possible settings will need a beefy rig, unsurprisingly. To play the game on Ultra, which will run either at 4K/60 FPS without ray tracing or at 4K/30 FPS with ray tracing, you’ll need either an i9-12900K or a Ryzen 9 7950X, along with either a GeForce RTX 4080 or a Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 12 GB of VRAM, and 16 GB of RAM. Meanwhile, to play the game at 1440p/60 FPS with ray tracing enabled, you’ll need either an i9-9900K or a Ryzen 7 3700X, along with either a GeForce RTX 3080 or a Radeon RX 6800XT, 10 G of VRAM, and 16 GB of RAM.

STEAM

Frustratingly enough, there’s a number of publishers out there who just can’t seem to get it through their heads that releasing on PC and not being native to Steam is one of the stupidest possible things you can do as a publisher. Thankfully, EA got the memo. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is confirmed to be fully native to Steam, which means you’re not going to have to link it with your EA account, which has often been te case in the past (and has always been a big headache).

STEAM DECK

Alongside being Steam native, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also Steam Deck Verified, which, of course, means it is fully optimized for Valve’s portable device. That means those who wish to play the action RPG on the go will have the chance to do so right from day one.

PRICING

EA adopted the new $70 standard pricing the moment it got the chance to do so, which means that’s the price Dragon Age; The Veilguard’s standard edition is available at- but, as is often the case with modern AAA games, that price only applies to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. On PC, meanwhile, the game is being sold at a price of $60.