That we would be waiting for the follow-up to Dragon Age: Inquisition for as long as a full decade wasn’t something that anyone could have predicted, but at long, long last, that interminable wait is finally about to come to an end. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is set to launch later this month, and it continues to look increasingly promising as BioWare and EA continue to showcase more of the action RPG in the lead-up to its release. From its story and cast of companion characters to its combat, classes, progression systems, and more, there’s a lot that we’ve learned of The Veilguard in the last few months, and here, to prepare for its imminent release, we’re going to go over all of those key details.
STORY
Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC set up Solas the Dread Wolf as the next big antagonist for the Dragon Age franchise, and The Veilguard is very much set to pick up that very thread. Set a decade after Inquisition’s events, the game will begin with Solas kicking off the ritual that he has been preparing for for so long- to finally shatter the Veil and bring the Fade and the real world back together again. Thanks to the efforts of our heroes, Solas’ ritual is stopped- but not before dangerous entities and fiends from the Fade manage to leak out into the world anyway, kicking off a new and perilous story in Thedas.
ROOK
Like all past Dragon Age titles, The Veilguard will once again feature an entirely new protagonist, referred to as Rook. Like in previous entries, players can customize every aspect of their Rook, including their name, their race (where the options include human, elf, dwarf, and qunari), their gender, and much more. As you’d expect, the character creator on offer will also let you customize your Rook’s appearance in a variety of different ways. Speaking of which…
CHARACTER CREATOR
The Veilguard’s character creator is looking like it’s going to be the most comprehensive customization toolset in a BioWare game to date. In addition to being able to choose between four different voices for your protagonist (with performances from actors Erika Ishii, Alex Jordan, Bryony Corrigan, and Jeff Berg), the character creator will let you tweak and finetune your character’s facial features, hair, eyes, nose, makeup, tattoos, height, weight, and much, much more.
FACTIONS
This will be another key part of the character creation process in The Veilguard. Similar to Dragon Age: Origins’ Origins (minus the unique prologue for each of them), The Veilguard will have players choose between one of six different factions for their Rook, with each set to affect the experience in different ways, such as how characters behave around you, what dialogue choices you have available, and more. The six available factions are the darkspawn-combating order of the Grey Wardens (which fans will be very familiar with); the Veil Jumpers, who are explorers of ancient elven ruins; the Shadow Dragons, a resistance group looking to fight against the corrupt leaders o the Tevinter Imperium; the Lords of Fortune, who are a guild of treasure hunters and adventurers; the Mourn Watch, an order of elite necromancers; and the Antivan Crows, a faction of ruthless and feared assassins.
CLASSES
Like all of its predecessors, Dragon Age: The Veilguard will also let you play as one of three different classes. Your Rook can be either a Warrior, a Rogue, or a Mage, while each class also has its own set of three unique specializations. As a warrior, you can either be a Reaper (who use supernatural nightblades), a Champion (who are equipped with a sword and shield), or a Slayer (who can use two-handed weapons). Meanwhile, as a Rogue, you can be a Duelist (who can wield two daggers), a Veil Ranger (who are ranged bow and arrow specialists), or a Saboteur (who have an affinity for traps). Finally, as a Mage, you can be a Death Caller (who use necromancy), an Evoker (who use elemental magic), or a Spellblade (who combine melee and magic).
COMPANIONS
Unsurprisingly for a BioWare game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is placing a great deal of emphasis on its cast of core companion characters that you’ll recruit, fight alongside, and get to know much better over the course of the experience. There will be seven companions in the game in total, including the rogue Lace Harding, a dwarven woman who was also featured in Inquisition as the eponymous organization’s chief scout; the mage Emmrich Volkarin, who is a necromancer of the Mourn Watch and travels in the company of a dear skeletal companion named Manfred; and the warrior Davrin, a Grey Warden who is accompanied by a companion griffin, and is a renowned monster hunter in his own right.
MORE COMPANIONS
Let’s spend a little more time talking about The Veilguard’s cast of companions, because there’s plenty more to talk about here. The action RPG’s main cast will also include Bellara, an elven mage and a Veil Jumper who has a knack for exploring ancient ruins and uncovering their mysteries; Lucanis the rogue, an enigmatic master assassin belonging to the order of the Antivan Crows; the mage Neve Gallus, who is a private investigator and a Shadow Dragon working in the city of Minrathous; and finally, Taash, a qunari dragon hunter who works alongside the Lords of Fortune.
COMBAT
The Dragon Age franchise loves to experiment with its combat systems, and with The Veilguard, it’s once again offering something new. For starters, it’s a much more action-driven combat system this time around, with inspiration clearly taken from games such a the modern God of War titles, while still placing an emphasis on pause-and-play tactical action, especially when it comes to combining with companions to exploit enemy weaknesses and set of a variety of chain reaction attacks. Each class will bring unique combat actions and abilities, while players will also be able to build up enemies’ stagger meters to be able to break through their armour.
MORE COMBAT DETAILS
Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be changing a few core tenets of the series’ past combat systems. For starters, instead of four characters, your party will now be capped at three characters, which is something that Mass Effect fans will find more familiar. Something else that The Veilguard is taking from BioWare’s sci-fi series is that, unlike past Dragon Age titles, you will not be able to control your companions directly- though you will always have the ability to pause the action and issue commands to your allies, which, in turn will be a big part of the combat’s more tactical side of things. Each companion will have a total of five unlockable abilities, though you will only be able to equip them with three at a time, so make your choices wisely.
MISSION-BASED STRUCTURE
After the sprawling (and arguably bloated) experience that was Dragon Age: Inquisition, most would have expected its follow-up to take the fully open world route, but BioWare has shown some restraint instead. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not an open world game, and is instead confirmed to follow a mission-based structure. The game will largely be linear, with players moving from one mission to the next in a hub-and-spoke style overarching structure. The Lighthouse, will serve as said hub location, a la Skyhold in Inquisition or the Normandy in Mass Effect.
OPEN AREAS
Though The Veilguard is going to be a largely linear mission-based game, that doesn’t mean it won’t have any room for exploration. On the contrary, BioWare has confirmed that though story missions will take place in linear and handcrafted locations, outside of such quests, players will be able to travel to and frely explore multiple large and open-ended maps, including Arlathan Forest (which we’ve already seen glimpses of in pre-launch gameplay), the Hossberg Wetlands, and more.
PROGRESSION
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is placing heavy emphasis on its RPG systems and build diversity, and its skill trees will seemingly have a big role to play in that. Players will be dividing attention across three different skill trees for Rook – Weapons, Abilities, and Survival – with a multitude of different abilities and passive buffs being available to unlock. This is also where class specializations will come into play, with players being able to work towards specializations’ skill tree nodes on their own. Companions will each also have their own skill trees, though as you’d expect, they won’t be as expansive as Rook’s skill trees.
DIFFICULTY
As it does in other areas, Dragon Age: The Veilguard will have plenty of different options available on the difficulty front. The action RPG will let players choose between six different difficulty settings, including Storyteller (which is the easiest); Keeper and Adventurer, both of which are balanced difficulty modes, with the former focusing on equipment and your build, and the latter on your skill with moment-to-moment combat; Underdog, which is a harder mode; and Nightmare, which is exactly what it sounds like. The sixth option will be Unbound, which will let you completely customize every aspect of your experience in terms of how difficult it will be.
PC REQUIREMENTS
Unsurprisingly, Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s system requirements aren’t the most modest, especially if you’re looking at its recommended specs, where you’ll need either an i9-9900K or a Ryzen 7 3700X, along with either a GeForce RTX 2070 or a Radeon RX 5700XT. On minimum settings, meanwhile, you’ll need either an i5-8400 or a Ryzen 3 3300X, along with either a GeForce GTX 970/1650 or a Radeon R9 290X. On either setting, you’ll also need 16 GB of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage, while on recommended settings, an SSD will also be required.
PS5 PRO ENHANCEMENTS
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is confirmed to be one of 40-50 titles that will feature dedicated PS5 Pro enhancements when Sony’s mid-gen console refresh launches in November, shortly after The Veilguard’s own release. Specifically, the game will tout higher resolutions on the console in both its Fidelity and Performance Modes, thanks in large part to PSSR, while the latter will also feature ray traced ambient occlusion, which is otherwise only available in Fidelity mode on the base PS5.