Summary
After the gameplay reveal of the long-awaited and hotly-anticipatedDragon Age: The Veilguard,BioWarehas revealed that the follow up to 2014’sInquisitionwillnotbe an open world game. Inquisition was the first game in the series to implement an open world, a choice that proved controversial with players – there were lots of places to go, but very little of interest to do once you were there.
This is still the case with many open world games, and it’s the thing that has most pushed me away from the genre. The bigger an open world is, the more meaningful things have to be put in it to make it worthwhile, and because that can be labour intensive, we often end up with large worlds full of repetitive, meaningless activities that prompt us to explore the open world but don’t give us a compelling reason to.
What Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard Offer Instead?
Inan interview with IGN, Veilguard director Corinne Busche explained that the game would pull away from the open world of the previous instalment in the franchise and instead become “mission-based”. Each level will “open up”, with some having “more exploration than others” with “alternate branching paths, mysteries, secrets” and “optional content”. This allowed the team to make the game more “hand-touched, hand-crafted” and “very highly curated”.
One example of side quests and optional content Busche gave was that you might be investigating a missing family, and the entirety of the setting would be open for exploration. You would be looking for clues and finding a way to solve their disappearance, but there wouldn’t be a “one-size-fits-all solution”. Another example might be that side quests allow you to discover the “motivations and the experiences” of your companions.
We can see some of this in the brief gameplay trailer BioWare released earlier this week. The party runs through a linear section of Minrathous. It’s possible that this is one of the more straightforward parts of the game, especially since it’s the opening sequence, and the devs probably wanted to avoid overwhelming players with things to do so early on.
Is This Good Or Bad?
While I’ve been sceptical of what we’ve seen of Veilguard so far, and it’s hard to tell if the game will be as curated and hand-crafted as the team insists it is, these are keywords that definitely pique my interest. A game that isn’t open world but gives you more levels and important choices to make is infinitely more replayable than one thatisopen world but is full of filler and bloat – for example, I’ve done near every quest inBaldur’s Gate 3but I still want to replay it just to see how making different choices will change the game.
This nature is in Dragon Age’s DNA. Your choices change the world, just as the world changes you. Knowing that attention is being diverted towards creating involved, detailed, interesting quests (or ‘missions’, as it were) instead of towards filling an open world withstuffmakes me believe that the game will be more compelling and more replayable.
As someone who’s tired of wandering around open worlds, hoping to come across something I haven’t already seen before and getting disappointed every time, I’m glad I won’t have to do that in The Veilguard. I’ve closed enough Fade rifts in the wild for one lifetime, thank you – I’m excited to do something different this time around.
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.
