The following may contain minor spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is available now.
Those who are longtime fans of my work will know I am a big Mass Effect fan, but narrowly missed the boat on Dragon Age. I couldn’t tell you why. I played a fair whack of Dragon Age: Origins, and I really enjoyed it. A few years ago, I finally sat down and played Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I really enjoyed it, but the franchise as a whole just never seemed to get its hooks in me the way Mass Effect and its grand space opera did.
That may have finally changed, though. I picked up Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the long-anticipated sequel to Inquisition, and I’ve been spending some quality time with it this past week. I’m about 24 hours into the game, and I am absolutely addicted. The story, the characters, the combat, everything has me hooked.
The game is absolutely incredible, which is why I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that most of my excitement isn’t for Dragon Age but rather what it means for Mass Effect.
Meet Vincent, the last hope of Thedas
For my playthrough, I’ve created a new character: Vincent, a rogue and a former member of Minrathous’ Shadow Dragons organization. Vincent, by design, is kind of the polar opposite of my Inquisitor, Maxwell, a Paladin who was all too willing to dip his toes into weird powers for the good of the country.
Vincent, as I’m playing him, is a lot looser and a lot more flexible with his stances. He makes hard choices and then laughs it off because, hell, what’s he going to do about it now? The result is someone taking a fairly unserious approach to the end of the world.
He’s not being goofy across the board, mind you. I talked shit to Solas immediately upon meeting him, and I’ve been a real ass to The First Warden, an overly-stoic jackass Grey Warden who has dismissed me wholesale at first sight. But, for the most part, Vincent is a little more of a free spirit than Maxwell or even Commander Shepard, which has opened up some truly entertaining character moments.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard features Bioware’s most human characters
Bioware writes good characters, which is no surprise. I will adore and remember my adventures with Garrus and Liara for as long as I live. Hell, I’ll even remember Carth Onassi despite my frustration with his drop-of-a-hat hatred of my character (though, in his defense, I was secretly a Sith Lord).
All this to say The Veilguard is a return to form. The characters here are all just so human and well-written. They all have a thing they want and a thing they need.
For example, take Taash, a Qunari dragon hunter who can breathe fire and is grappling with the notion that she’s in the wrong skin. I’ve only just begun to unravel her story, but the interactions I’ve had with her have been so poignant and powerful. It’s incredibly moving and important, and I’m way more interested in exploring what makes her work as a character than I am in watching her fight dragons (though, admittedly, that is pretty fucking cool to watch too).
This character element is exactly what was missing from the last Bioware game, Mass Effect: Andromeda. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Andromeda (though I’ve yet to finish it as of this writing), but the characters just didn’t have that same impact. I like Peebee, Cora, Liam, and…uh, the rest of them, but I don’t really remember them.
But The Veilguard is the total opposite. I don’t just remember my fellow Veilguard members; I want to spend time with them. I want to go on little quests and find out about all the weird things they did. I like it when Neve has a catty comment about a thing I should know because we’re both Shadow Dragons. I love it when Harding just happens to know yet another all-powerful deity for whom she made tea for once. And I simply cannot get enough of adorable side characters like the sassy but friendly griffon Assan or the wisp servant Manfred.
It takes me back to the hours I spent doing laps around the Normandy, speaking with characters in the hopes that Liara would have found a new nugget of information, or Thane would have another flashback for me, or maybe Garrus would just want to put down the wrench and bro out for a little bit. I feel attached to my team, and the game has both rewarded and punished me for that attachment in ways that I can’t detail too much here for fear of dropping too many spoilers.
All this to say that I’m loving The Veilguard after roughly a day’s worth of playtime under my belt. But as I’m standing outside a broken Eluviam while Bellara tells me she’s in the middle of important calibrations, I can’t help but smile and think, “Yeah…Mass Effect is gonna rule.”
