Much has been made of the official reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the latest and hopefully greatest title from EA's BioWare and the first real significant appearance from the long-gestating sequel. It would be easy to look at what small amount we've seen overall and draw negative comparisons to its predecessors or evolutionary relatives like Baldur's Gate 3, but to be completely frank, that would be foolish. In all honesty, my biggest concern about the new Dragon Age game at this point is what it means for my decade-long tabletop campaigns.
Wisdom saving throw
I don't mean this to be glib; I take my tabletop games, which use the Green Ronin-published Dragon Age AGE system, quite seriously. There are three of them in total, running concurrently that share a single canon with 13 total players, a frankly incorrigible number of NPCs, and far more hours invested than I care to admit. So, the concern is genuine as I've spent years exploring previously unexplored areas that… are now officially getting explored. New canon is likely to butt heads with headcanon, so that's front of mind from the jump.
But I do also find as I grow older and do this job longer that I increasingly feel it is less useful to try to draw any sort of conclusions from cinematic trailers or first-look gameplay. Initial reveals are just that: initial. Chances are good that whatever's being shown under laboratory conditions is by no means relative to the final product. It's all marketing. Whether that marketing is successful doesn't particularly concern me as it's not my job to generate hype. I'm more interested in the actual meat and potatoes of a game than whatever a PR-backed drip feed wants me to know.
I don't begrudge people their knee-jerk reactions, nor do I think we should ignore what's being presented. As with all things, however, the important thing here is context. Some important context here, for example, being that this is the first new Dragon Age game in a decade, and it was never going to be the same as it was before. Inquisition wasn't Dragon Age 2, which wasn't Origins. That's on top of the aforementioned reality that reveal trailers are rarely indicative of what a game actually is. Not acknowledging all of this just feels a bit like burying your head in the sand.
Real talk? I would love a Dragon Age game that fully bought back into the idea of the classic CRPG formula as recently revitalized by Baldur's Gate 3. Of course I would! Strategy RPGs are my absolute bread and butter. (Unicorn Overlord is easily one of my favorite games of the year so far, but I digress.) But the fact of the matter is that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not Baldur's Gate 3 and directly comparing the two does each a disservice.
There is simply no value to evaluating something based on what it is not. It makes as much sense to compare Dragon Age: The Veilguard to Baldur's Gate 3 as it does to compare Baldur's Gate 3 to Avowed. Sure, there's role-playing involved, and they are games, and they share some ancestral DNA, but that's roughly the extent of it. They're not the same games, and they're not trying to be the same games.
There is every possibility that the new Dragon Age releases and completely disappoints me. But there's also every possibility that it surprises me instead, and trying to divine exactly which of the two will occur here and now ahead of any actual hands-on time feels foolish at best. The only tangible worry that even remotely feels pragmatic is just how different the canon Tevinter Imperium will differ from the tabletop one I've cobbled together over 10 years, and I secretly hope it avoids Hasmal entirely for reasons that only matter to two dozen people total.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is set to release for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in Fall 2024. If you simply can't wait, you can always check out our ranking of the best RPGs to play right now.
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