BioWare stood on the gallows with the rope already around its neck. Anthem had snapped the beam, Andromeda had kicked the chair, and every trailer for The Veilguard looked suspiciously like a last-ditch plea for mercy. Then the review embargo lifted, and something strange happened: critics who spent years sharpening knives quietly put them away. Not because the game is flawless – it isn’t – but because it’s the first Dragon Age in a decade that remembers why anyone fell in love with the series in the first place.
The mission structure alone feels like an apology letter written in blood. Gone are the endless open-world checklists that suffocated Inquisition. Instead you get hand-crafted hub cities that change over thirty in-game years based on decisions you made in previous titles – yes, even the ones you thought were safely forgotten. One early quest has you tracking down a Grey Warden who turns out to be the child you saved in Origins. He’s forty now, bitter, and carrying the exact facial scar you gave his mother during that fateful dialogue wheel in 2009. The keep-import system actually matters this time.
Combat lands closer to God of War than Origins, but the ability wheel returns in glorious slow-motion, letting you chain primer-detonator combos that would make Mass Effect veterans weep with nostalgia. Rook’s backstory matters too – a Lords of Fortune protagonist can literally gamble quest rewards away in side missions, while a Crow background unlocks assassination contracts that permanently alter faction balance. The romance scenes are shockingly explicit for a mainstream RPG, and Solas finally gets the screen time he’s been hogging in comics for eight years.
It’s not perfect. The art style veers hard into Fortnite territory at times, and the companion AI still occasionally forgets how doors work. But when the credits rolled after 92 hours, I realized I hadn’t skipped a single cutscene. That hasn’t happened with a BioWare game since 2012. The Veilguard isn’t the best Dragon Age ever made. It’s simply the first one in forever that feels like it was made by people who still believe in Thedas – and that might be enough.
