A lot ofDragon Agefans were bummed out byThe Veilguard’s CG reveal trailer, sayingit looked “cheesy” and “goofy”. It’s hard not to agree with them. The series is best known for being fairly serious and thematically dark, so seeing an Avengers Assemble-style trailer showcasing Veilguard’s various companions as if they were the characters in a hero shooter was disconcerting, to say the least.
I decided to reserve judgement until the gameplay trailer was released, sincecinematic trailers often don’t do a good job of representing the experience of actually playing a game. It’s hard to judge the tone of a game from a cinematic alone, and I wanted to see how the characters interacted with each other outside of these circumstances Unfortunately, after seeing the gameplay trailer, I’m even more concerned about the tone.
What Is This, A Marvel Game?
To be fair, many optimistic previews are coming out of Summer Game Fest from people who have actually seen the demo for themselves, and they have a better idea of how the game plays than I do. Our own Stacey Henley hadquite a lot of good things to say about her time with it. But what the gameplay trailer has shown us has thrown me off in a big way.
The art style isn’t the problem, though many fans have expressed reservations about the more cartoony rendering of DATV’s characters. The issue is the dialogue, which is loaded with exposition and a strange humour that doesn’t fit with the series’ tone so far, presumably to familiarise newer players with the lore and characters in an unintimidating way.
The tongue in cheek “Oh, crap” from Varric as the ritual begins in the distance immediately makes the game feel almost light-hearted. Harding’s “Don’t worry, scouting’s my specialty. Follow me.” feels plucked straight out of a Marvel movie, as does Varric’s, “I hate these assholes!”
Characters announcing the arrival of enemies that we can clearly see approaching also feels hamfisted, prompting me to dig into my memory and try to remember if the writing in other Bioware games I’ve played was this lacking in delicacy.
Rook going “Anyone got a better idea?” as his companions object to him doing something dangerous, and Harding’s “Should I take the shot?” are eye-rollingly cliched and painfully predictable. Disrupting the ritual by dropping a pillar on Solas isn’t revolutionary. Even the delivery of the lines can feel vastly in contrast to what’s going on in the scene, with the characters going from borderline jokey to “People are dying!” within minutes.
The Problem Isn’t The Goofiness, But The Lack Of Balance
It’s not like Dragon Age hasn’t used jokes like this before – the series has generally managed to balance this brand of humour with seriousness well enough – but the pure predictability of the writing is a huge bummer. Callbacks are fine, dramatic musical stings can work, and an epic story can be a huge boon to a game, but DATV feels just like things we’ve already seen again and again. I was half expecting to hear “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” out of someone’s mouth.
The reliance on tropes makes the characters feel flat. While this is presumably gameplay from very early in the game, and there’s plenty of room for DATV to make its characters feel complex and lovable over the span of an entire campaign, what we’ve seen makes me cringe with disappointment. If the game maintains this tone and schlocky writing throughout, I’m not sure it’s going to be anywhere close to the game we’re all hoping for.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
WHERE TO PLAY
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the long-awaited fourth game in the fantasy RPG series from BioWare formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. A direct sequel to Inquisition, it focuses on red lyrium and Solas, the aforementioned Dread Wolf.
