For a number of years now, I have been a fan of the games that Bioware make, the interconnected characters, grand arching narratives and behind all of that, some pretty fun gameplay. It was that fondness that let me believe that Anthem would be special, but as someone who is not a fan of always connected videogames, I was hesitant to play it, but I did and found myself wondering where the Bioware that I adored had gone. Now with the first new Dragon Age game in 10 years, minus a few weeks, I am happy to report that the Bioware I so richly cherished is back in form once again.

The story of The Veilguard is by the numbers, if you look at it from the top, it is about a group of heroes saving the world, a tale that Bioware are quite familiar with by this point. However, once you start to look at the characters that the game is offering to you, things become far richer, with everyone having their own tale that weaves through the main narrative. Now in order to avoid any spoilers on story, characters and events, I won’t say any more, there are some characters that I barely spent any time with, so I couldn’t give you a complete breakdown anyway. What I can say and am willing to say is that what I expected here was that we would get a story with a lot of highs and lows and for the most part, that is true, but there are more odd beat moments than anything. What I mean by odd is that there are times when story beats just jump ahead, you are in a fight with a large group of enemies and then bam you are back at base. There are some more critical ones, which again spoilers, and if it were once or twice I would be willing to overlook things. But the way it shakes out, it feels more like someone has cut pages from a book, or clipped scenes from a movie and the result is that you know there should be something between the events, but you just don’t get to see it.

That is not the say that the story or characters are hurt by those omissions, they are not, much like leaving a sauce off your favourite dish won’t hurt the flavour, but if it was included it would be all the richer. There are a few story beats with one character that feels rushed and I can’t help but feel that they would have been better served by a series of slowdowns, in order to give events more time to shake out. Outside of the companions that can run around with you, there are major factions that you will spend time with and each of those has a number of folks you will get to know well. There was one faction that I did not spend much time with, again due to my lack of connection to the character that hails from them, but the ones I did were great. I spent a lot of time with the Shadow Dragons, as that was the group I aligned with in the creation of my character. As people who appal slavery and fight against a cult, it felt like a good fit for me and spending time with them, was worth it as they had some fun members. I also enjoyed time with The Crows, a group of assassins based out of an Italian themed city in Treviso and The Grey Wardens, a returning group from past games. Each faction has perks if you get to know them, but they offer more support and beyond, should you become allies of them and their objectives. The only real issue I have with the games story is that there is no sense of time to anything, there are a number of times when events would have you believe danger is just moments away, but you can ignore that request for help or support for as long as you like.

So I like the story, but have some concerns about its pacing, but what about the gameplay, as that is what makes you stay between those story beats, thankfully there is good here and weird. First up the good, the game is very approachable, even before you dive into the accessibility settings. The first games in the series were more akin to the Baldur’s Gates or Neverwinter Nights titles that Bioware made and that is good, but Dragon Age: Inquisition moved to a more action rpg style of game and this feels like a good blend of the two. When you enter into combat, your options are two fold, you can run in and attack with your various weapons or spells, or you can pull up a giant wheel of options to give yourself and your companions specific commands. I mostly stuck with the more action RPG style, as I enjoyed getting into the mix as a duellist, but there were times where I needed to bring up the wheel, in order to have my allies direct their attacks towards certain foes. There is no one or the other, as even out of combat you can pull up that menu for special actions and you will a lot, so if you start out wanting to be one style and find it not for you, you can just ignore the other and keep playing. As a RPG as you level up you unlock skill points that you can use to obtain new attacks, abilities and buffs and the same happens to your allies. The only major difference is that while you earn xp from every mission, the allies only earn it if you take them on a mission, so if you leave Harding back at base for half the game, she won’t be as powerful as Neve who spent all their time by your side. This was one of the reasons that I didn’t spend a lot of time with one of the characters, by the time they joined the ranks of the Veilguard, I was pretty set with my line ups and vary rarely strayed from them.

Once you assemble a team, you do have to go out into the world and complete whatever mission you are on, now you can fast travel to most places, akin to the war table from the last game, you can also explore the crossroads. This is a realm between realm, a place where mirrors connect and allow you and those able to use them, a means of traversing from one side of Thedas to the other. There were times when I would use the crossroads and times when I would fast travel, again there is no reason to stick to one of them, however there are times when you must fast travel. This has nothing to do with time, as I explained before there is no sense of it, but rather that there are sections of the world you can’t get to otherwise. This is one of those weird parts, the fact that you can’t run across the world and yes, you couldn’t do it in past games in the series, I was hoping for it here. Even if you can’t travel from Minrathous to Treviso, it would have been great to be able to travel to places within that space. There is a character who has family in Rivian and you can head there without issue and run around, but visiting the family requires fast travel, there is no other way in.

Beyond the weirdness of how you get around, the games use of weapons and armour has some odd inclusion, namely that you can’t sell off your old stuff. As you explore the world you can buy new gear from shops, or find it in chests – usually after a boss fight. The items you get can be swords, bows, staffs and parts of armour, with the game letting you swap at any time, as long as you are not in combat. Why this is an issue is that when you get into a run of battles, you may not think to check what new swag you scored and when you do check you might find that your armour set has expanded out and finding that new piece in the mix can be a challenge. I do get that the game will automatically fuse parts together, so if you have a piece and you get another of the same, they basically merge and become a stronger piece and I do like that that is there. But if I am not using a common armour set from the first hour of the game, I don’t think I need it at hour 40 still, more so if it has never been touched since. I will give them some credit here, the game lets you wear an armour set, but have it look like another, which means if you find a set you like you can enjoy the look and take advantage of another’s perks.

The other part of the game, when you are not running around and stabbing things, or setting them on fire if you prefer magic, is the conversations with the people that call Thedas home. If there was one area that I was not concerned about, it would have been this, the studio has done this in games forever now, but there are some issues. The usual layout is around the wheel, and you move the stick to the option you want to select, which is fine, but there were times when I moved the stick ever so slightly and the option would change. Now it wasn’t a drastic change in how the story progressed, but it was annoying and while in past titles from the studio, there would be a way of easily spotting which options progressed the conversation forward, that was not as clear here. Now in the middle of the conversation circle, you get an icon that helps portray an emotion, like anger or humour and that is fine. But where past Bioware games have often kept the options on the left to be used for expanding your understanding of a character or events, there are times when things move the conversation forward, just with a new emotion attached to them and there is no way of knowing if that is a conversation mover or not.

My final gripe with the gameplay is down to the camera and its weird issues and there are a few of them. Most of the time the camera never gets in the way, it behaves like you would want it to, but when it does get in the way it is almost always at the worst possible time. The annoying but passable times are when are climbing up or down ladders, the camera just never gets into a position easily where you can see where you might need to go. The really annoying times is when your attempting to fight in battle without the lock on mechanic and the camera just won’t point the way you want. The issue with this is that your attacks are sort of funnelled by your viewpoint and your movement, but if you can’t see where someone is, you can’t hit them. Now I know what you are going to say, just make use of the lock and I did, but it often had issues of its own. There were times when I would be fighting a larger enemy and once defeated the camera would lock onto another, further away than another right next to me. Even in the final run up to the last boss, there were a horde of foes to vanquish and the camera was picking the smaller threats, rather than the trio of very dangerous foes. For the most part the camera worked fine, but when it didn’t it was usually at the wrong time and it just frustrated me.

Moving away from camera functionality, lets talk about what the camera sees and that is the incredible world that Bioware have created. For the most part, almost all the locations that you visit in the game are original for it, a few like the Fade or Deep Roads do carry over from past games, but not the exact same locations you have seen before. The location you will spend the most time in is the Lighthouse, a place that is in a location all of its own. When you first arrive there isn’t a lot going on, it has rooms, but they are barren and devoid of life, but as you recruit members to the Veilguard and complete missions more life returns to it. This can be a simple as Neve having books on a shelf or for Harding plants growing near her, these changes are really the only sense of time passing in the world. Outside of the Lighthouse, the next two locations I spent time in could not be more different from each other, Minrathous was the first as it was the starting point for the adventure, but was also the home of the Shadow Dragons. This city was one that reminded me of some of the seedier parts of Novigrad from Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. The other major location I spent time in was Arlathan Forrest, which was nice with its autumn look and lot of flowing water. Each location felt like it was its own, even when you visit locations that are impacted by the same disaster, they still look unique and I enjoyed that about the game.

The characters from your group of heroes look good, but I do feel that they leaned a little into the stereotype a bit for their design. There are countless ways you can design a historian, but the common is someone without confidence, usually wearing a bag and equal parts excited and rambling and they did that here. Now I am not saying we needed to see a 2m tall bulky historian, but bucking the trend would have been a real delight to see. The NPC design is mostly the standard you might expect and all tend to fit the locations they are in, but they have an issue, they don’t react to things. There was one mission I was doing for the Grey Wardens, where an enemy was attacking and after securing forward locations, they attacked and all the NPCs just didn’t care. This was just meters back from the front, the NPCs were doing their usual task, some were practicing their attacks, others looking like they were in conversations, all the while an enemy was pounding at the door. It wasn’t just here, giving gold to the poor in Minrathous resulted in no response, petting animals was fun, but you could often hear them bark or meow without actually moving. I get that a team needs to focus on certain areas, but if you are going to pack your world with characters, maybe give them actual character.

With the visual issues aside, I do have a lot to say about the games audio, because I think that it honestly outshines the visual. First up is the voices, there are a good number of voices you can choose from for Rook, your character and as there are no restrictions, you can set any voice to any body type. The companions all sound good, and the members of the factions are just as delightful. What I did like here was that the voices in the world, beyond just your companions, all had variety, there wasn’t like one accent per region, but a number of them in each and it made the world feel lived in. Where the voice work was great, the games score astounded me, as there were times when I would just stop moving to enjoy the music. The game has a few tracks that kick in when the action does and it always felt right, but I have to give a call out to the final moments of the main story, there was such a cinematic feeling thanks to the music, that I was honestly so impressed, it made me want a movie for Dragon Age.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a strong game, it has some really fun characters and tells a story that has quite a few twists that make it worth discovering. Where it falls short of greatness though is that quite a few times it attempts to make you think time is running out, but then does nothing to push you forward, undercutting the tension its attempting to build. With the games freedom to be either tactical or action-y in battles, players should be able to find a blend that works for them or not and with a good number of characters to spend time with, learning who works alongside you in battle is also going to be fun. I do wish the games world was better connected, maybe not like an Elder Scrolls title, but being able to venture to the edge of a location to go straight to another would have been enough. The game looks great, but there is clearly more attention paid to some areas over others, but the score and voice work more than make up for it. If you are a fan of Bioware, they have returned to glory after Anthem, but beyond that they now have a game that will welcome in players of all types. The Veilguard might not be a perfect game, but there is enough going on here that the issues won’t stand out amongst the rest of the incredible game that players are going to experience.