‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Could Have Been Great

Image; EA

Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024) is the fourth title in the Dragon Age series, a standard grim dark fantasy world where elves are oppressed, magic is a loose metaphor for addiction, and religious oppression abounds. This latest outing stars the protagonist Rook, who is in charge of a team of specialists known as the Veilguard, trying to stop old Elven Gods from releasing a plague onto the world.

This game could have used an extra year or so to refine its various issues. Bugs were too common. I would notice that audio would not trigger for many moments, and I more than once fell through a wall or phased into a pillar, which forced me to reload a save file. The dialogue was famously clunky, especially its unskippable opening hours that set up the story.

These flaws (and more) led to a game that was middling in quality — not terrible, not great — just sort of okay.

It’s an unfortunate outcome because a good game is buried underneath all this blunder. Between the bugs and frustrating level design, there is a beautiful reflection on grief and regret, and I wanted to highlight those themes and focus on what could have been.

The good game beneath the surface

The first God the Veilguard is tasked with defeating is Solas, the elven God of Lies — at least according to the myth. He wants to tear down the Veil, a force dividing the material plane where elves, dwarves, and humans live, and the Fade, a magical land of memory and emotion. His destruction of the Veil would allow for spirits and demons from the Fade to flood into our world, killing many people in the process.

It’s an undesirable action but one that makes sense as you come to understand this God’s psychology. Solas is motivated, first and foremost, by regret. A long time ago, he organized an anti-slavery rebellion against the other elven Gods or Evanuris — petty warlords who passed themselves off as deities and used that standing to enslave their elven worshippers.

Solas constructed the Veil to imprison these Gods, and it, unfortunately, had devastating impacts on Elven society. Elves were heavily reliant on magic from the Fade, and when the Veil was put up, their cities crumbled, their immortality waned, and they became vulnerable to external threats. Humans usurped the remains of the Elven empire — their land colonized and stolen until all that was left of them was a migratory diaspora known as the Dales.

Solas blames himself for these events, and in tearing down the Veil, he wants to rewind history. As he tells your player character: “This world is broken, Rook, because of my mistakes.”

Do you see how compelling this motivation is?

The Veilguard was originally titled Dreadwolf, based on one of Solas’s many names, and I can see why: his emotional struggle is the core of this story. Throughout the Veilguard, your character has these back-and-forth quips with Solas in the Fade, and they were the most engaging element of the game for me. Whether learning his perspective about the Dalish or hearing out the rationalization for his plan to destroy the Veil, we come to understand him as someone whose pride prevents him from moving past his regret.

Yet regret motivates not just the Elvish God of Lies but also the other antagonists. When the Veilguard stops Solas from breaking down the Veil, two different Gods — Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain — are released into the world. They are motivated by this same emotional impulse. Their biggest regret is the collapse of their empire, and they are willing to unleash a plague (i.e., the blight) to recapture that old glory. “Every pointed spire,” Elgar’nan monologues, “and warding enchantment in this city is a child’s unwitting imitation of the empire I built. I would have restored the glory your lives are too brief to remember.”

Solas and the Evanuris are mirrors of one another. They both want to implement a reactionary plan that will risk the lives of millions in the process. The only difference is the time they wish to return to. Solas wants to turn the clock shortly after the Elvish rebellion won and the Evanuris before the rebellion existed.

What makes our heroes heroes is not the absence of regret — members of the Veilguard are also weighed down by unfinished relationships — but their ability to embrace their regrets and consequently process those feelings. A significant part of the plot involves helping your party move on from various types of psychological trauma so that they will be in a better position to kill the Gods.

One of the most direct examples involves the companion character, Bellara, an elf with an unfinished relationship with her brother. Her quest ends with his funeral, where you must guide her through metaphorical obstacles to grief.

Moments like this were moving, some even bringing me to tears, and it was disappointing that a game with such a mesmerizing theme was so buggy and incomplete.

A regretful conclusion

Now, many games (as well as most artworks) are just okay. A lot of video games are, at best, fun distractions and, at worst, jingoistic propaganda with predatory gambling mechanics.

There are plenty of games that are worse than Veilguard.

And yet, this game wasn’t trying to be mediocre. There was a serious attempt to grapple with themes of regret, revolution, and pride that are rare for a AAA title to discuss. Going into Veilguard, I was honestly worried that Solas would be just another revolutionary with “the right intentions” but “going too far.” And instead, we got a well-rounded villain with believable psychological motivations.

There is this sense that, with just a little bit more time, this game could have been great — and for a title about regret, that’s almost poetic.

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