Dragon Age: The Veilkeeper activated a side of the Internet that was living on crumbs for a decade. Think about it: the Dragon Age fandom hasn’t had a game to dissect, anticipate, or scrutinize since Inquisition launched in 2014. The veil guardwhich should finally conclude the devastating cliffhanger of InquisitionIt is Intruder DLC, is only a few months away, and after a name change, cinematic trailerAnd gameplay revealfans finally have something substantial to chew on, rather than subsisting on comics, short stories and a Netflix anime. After seeing BioWare fans go through some tough times between Inquisition And The veil guard, it’s heartwarming to see the explosion of fan art, theories, and love springing up from all sides of the internet in anticipation of the next chapter. But this anticipation is tinged with a little fear. After waiting all this time, what happens if The veil guard Isn’t it up to the game that someone has been imagining for ten years? Worse still, what will happen to BioWare if it suffers what some might consider its third “strike”?
While Dragon Age itself has been sleeping for ten years, not BioWare. In 2017, the studio released Mass Effect: Andromeda which, despite having fairly ambitious combat and a cast with the potential to become something as beloved as that of the original trilogy, was lambasted for its bugs, clunky animations, and bloated open-world design, to the point that BioWare put the series on ice. This was followed by AnthemA ill-advised loot shooter it felt like a poor use of the RPG studio’s talents, and ultimately came to nothing after the studio retains its scheduled revision. These two games would have been bogged down by development issuesand from the sound, The veil guard also had difficulty taking off after InquisitionDevelopment of is complete.
The veil guard has apparently gone through at least a few iterations since BioWare’s development began, including versions that Live Service Centered Elements And multiplayer. NOW, The veil guard is marketed as a streamlined, single-player, microtransaction-free action RPG. It seems that BioWare has its priorities clearly established, but it also seems that The veil guard exists in the form it had after the studio and publisher Electronic Arts got it wrong twice in a row. This is what makes it easier to get excited for game four. BioWare said many good things over the past two weeks since Summer Game Fest. The veil guard went from an essentially conceptual idea to Dragon Age fans are turning to something very close to what these fans have been asking for ever since party member-turned-villain Solas announced his intention to watch the world burn. Intruder.
Of course, this also sowed discord. Dragon Age has changed subgenres over the past 15 years, but The veil guard is more of an overt action RPG than even Dragon Age II that was in 2011. So naturally, those who yearn for the tactical gameplay of the first game in the series, Originstook issue with BioWare’s presentation of acrobatic gameplay, particularly on the heels of Baldur’s Gate 3last year’s success. Look, it wouldn’t be a BioWare game if it didn’t also invite some of the most vitriolic online discourse known to man. But after seeing the studio go from chasing bloated open-world trends to creating a live-action looter shooter over the past seven years, seeing BioWare create a game that strips away all that to get to the heart of what the studio has always done. well reignited enthusiasm for the studio. I admit it, looking The veil guard‘s closed-door presentation at Summer Game Fest pumped me up in a way that has only happened a few times in my career.
The fact is, BioWare fans never venture too far when their favorite series is on hiatus. At the very least, the studio did a good job and resulted in The veil guard through extended media like comics and short stories to present characters the studio was working on the fourth game. In fact, a few The veil guardParty members have been waiting for their big presentation for years. So fans had time to get an idea of who new characters like Neve the mage detective and Lucanis the mage-killing assassin are long before they appeared in a video game.
Fans may love these new characters, but at the same time, The veil guard brings people back to a story they’ve waited a decade to discover. BioWare is clearly aware of the investment of these enthusiastic fans and is playing with their expectations and their years-long investment. How do you hook a fandom that has been dying to see a story finished for 10 years? Putting one of their favorites in danger in an agonizing screaming match between him and an old friend. Tug at their heartstrings and remind them of all the choices they’ve made over the last three games, knowing it was all leading up to this moment. Give them something to project their own journeys onto.
With all the conflicts The veil guard reportedly gone through its multiple iterations, fans seem relieved to see that, based on what BioWare has shown, much of the original vision still appears to remain intact. Case in point: fans scoured old teasers for clues, and a 2016 article by then-producer Mark Darrah (NOW work on the project as a consultant) caught the attention of Dragon Age irreducibles. It shows Darrah looking through what appears to be a design booklet for the game with a rook chess piece on the cover. Rook is the name of The veil guardthe main character of.
While The veil guard seems to prioritize continuity and gains, the path to arriving at this current vision of the game has been tumultuous, to say the least. BioWare’s revenue over the past decade has not gone unnoticed, and the studio has even licensed 50 developers last year, including veterans like writer Mary Kirby, who was a key creative force behind the Dragon Age series. The studio was also at at the center of a legal battle on severance pay owed to dismissed employees. Even though some key executives remained at the studio, BioWare lost some of the main players it helped make some of its most famous games what they were.
With all of these key players gone, this is a studio at a crossroads, one that could aim to stay true to the work done by those who came before it, or chart its own path, or find a happy medium between two. , honoring this heritage while venturing into new territories. What we saw from The veil guard suggests it aims to do the latter, and it feels like a leap of faith for BioWare after all this time.
There are plenty of things to do Dragon Age: The Veilkeeper. The stakes are high for the series, which fans have been dying to return to for so long. They may be higher for BioWare itself, though hopefully with this release, a studio we’ve all collectively seen stumble into the modern era will be able to right the ship as it sails to shore tumultuous of this incredibly volatile industry. I’m excited and terrified to find out when Dragon Age returns this fall.
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