The Disrespect of Dragon Age: A Review of The Veilguard
Duncan Died For This.
I’m rather fond of the Dragon Age series, dear reader.
Yes, each game’s trailer tended to be unnecessarily edgy and when it first premiered Origins was beside itself with smugly billing its world as “dark fantasy” but, damn it all, this was Bioware in their prime and you just knew the story was going to be good.
And it was!
Origins was great, Dragon Age II managed to expand on the combat system and lore, and Inquisition brought elements from both together, adding complexity to established cannon and bringing back previous characters in a natural progression of their story while acknowledging all the story beats that had come before. Inquisition not only managed to do its own thing but also set up what promised to be a profound sequel!
Imagine my unyielding disappointment, then, when after nearly a decade of waiting Bioware released the inconsequential wet-fart-turned-shart known as The Veilguard.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: this piece of shit is everything wrong with modern entertainment.
The world of Dragon Age (known as Thedas) was indeed dark- magic can turn someone into a literal demon so mages are sequestered in living prisons where they’re lobotomized or killed if their righteous jailers believe they pose too great a risk. Elves are forced to live in ghettos. Dwarves are isolationist and slaves to tradition. Horned beings known as Qunari lurk along the edges of civilization, waiting to subjugate those they conquer while humans spread across the world like rabbits- battling and oppressing each other almost as much as they do everyone else. And through it all is the looming threat of the Blight (a divine punishment for mages once having forced their way into the living house of God before being kicked right the fuck back out again) where Darkspawn (twisted, creatures that fall somewhere between an orc mixed with a cockroach) bubble out of the earth while led by an Archdemon to consume all in their path.
It's intriguing, engaging, and quite frankly the perfect setting for Bioware’s D&D homebrew.
Or, at least, it was.
You see, dear reader, The Veilguard does away with all I’ve mentioned above. The dark aesthetic? Gone. We now reside in a Disney Pixar style cartoon world. The dark possibilities of your choices? Don’t matter: everyone is nice to everyone. The brutal apartheid suffered by nearly every race in existence? Forget about it. Literally every race is just a human in a Halloween costume.
It’s like the writers were embarrassed about what came before and are trying to “right the wrongs” with this entry into the series. Established lore is turned on its head for no damned reason. Dwarves can’t use magic- just kidding now the can. Blighted gods can’t be killed by anyone save a Grey Warden- just kidding now they can be killed by literally anyone. Griffins are extinct- just kidding they never were. Grey Wardens are noble heroes willing to do anything to save the world- lol no, now they’re chuds. Blights exist- just kidding we’ve ended them forever via the power of friendship.
The world itself is presented lazily: Ferelden (half of the established world and the setting where the entire series began) gets burned to fucking ash off screen but literally no one gives a shit and they actually treat it like that’s a good thing while Orlais and Antiva (once “fantasy France” and “fantasy Spain”) are now just straight up France and Spain. When the Antivan Crows started cursing in comically overacted Spanish I fucking cringed dear reader. Physically. And not even ballsy Spanish either. No “chinga tu madre” or “pinche cabron” just a throwing out of the word ‘mierda’ like you’re a fucking highschool freshmen trying to be cool.
Yet even worse than the many crimes against the setting is the laziness of Veilguard’s story telling.
You have zero agency in this world. Want to name your character? Jokes on you fuckboy your name is and always will be Rook.
Want to pick a backstory? It will be inconsequential to the point you will be insulted every time you remember we gave you the option.
Want to be mean or tell someone no? We literally will not let you.
Worse, everyone in Veilguard treats you like you’re the Chosen One from the word go but there’s no reason they should.
You see in previous games your decisions in relation to the NARRATIVE are what drove your character to gain clout in-world: in Origins you became a Grey Warden (universally respected stoic warrior class), while in Two you became the Champion of Kirkwall (a city-state’s go-to-problem-solver) and in Inquisition you became the leader of one of the most powerful institutions in Thedas.
So what does Veilguard do? They make you some dude.
That’s it.
You are literally just some rando hired for a job and yet everyone’s default setting is to fall to their knees in thanks as you walk in the door, trusting you with their innermost secrets when they shouldn’t even know who you are let alone want to talk to you.
The entire thing only makes sense if everyone you talk to KNOWS you’re the protagonist!
The Veilguard has been styled as a soft reboot of the franchise but its not. It’s a desecration. A sacrilege against the very art of storytelling with everything that made its world unique having been sanded down to be uniformly inoffensive.
I don’t know who on the writing team thought they had the balls to completely erase the established lore but someone in the office should have grabbed a shovel and beat them over the head with it because that dense motherfucker is in desperate need of a factory reset.
I mean dear God the setting for this travesty is in Tevinter- a nation that has been thoroughly established as being built on the back of slave labor and where human sacrifice and blood magic are common. That should have been rich ground but the Veilguard presents Tevinter as being inoffensive Starbucks barristas and chalks up over three lengthy games worth of lore as harmful stereotypes perpetrated by xenophobic racist propaganda.
Uh, no, dumbass we MET people from Tevinter in the previous games and they were more than happy to tell us of how they wanted to fuck up the world. Fuck me running Inquisition even had a companion from Tevinter who told us all about it and one possible quest line even let you see what the future of the world would look at if Tevinter took control (spoilers: it wasn’t great).
Experiencing the travesty of this story genuinely feels like whoever wrote the Veilguard never played the previous entries, read a wiki summary of what happened, didn’t like what they read, said “fuck it I’m doing my own thing” and just started playing with other people’s toys.
I mean what the fuck.
What is this? Who is this made for? Who does this?
Assholes that’s who.
Make no mistake: this is not a Dragon Age game, dear reader. It’s a piss poor excuse for a story wearing Dragon Age’s skin like Buffalo fucking Bill.
Alright I’m done….actually no I’m not: fuck Taash as a character, and while Duncan may have died for this, Varric died for nothing.
Ok now I’m done.
