When I started Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I was sure I’d only play it for a few hours before moving on. I try to play as many major releases as I can during a year, but the enormity of that task often means that I need to pick my battles. The early moments of Dragon Age painted a picture of a boilerplate modern action RPG with hokey writing, generic action, and a lore-driven story that would be lost on a newcomer like me. I just wasn’t in the mood for another long fantasy story that had nothing real to say to me.
Two weeks later, I didn’t want it to end.
Though it may go down as one of 2024’s most divisive games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard won my heart in ways I never could have predicted. What began as a flat tale about taking down Elven gods quickly warped into a familiar, human story about troubled companions who so desperately need to get their lives in order before moving on to much grander battles. Though it may not be the “game of the year” in a traditional sense, no game better encapsulated the struggles of trying to stay alive and keep fighting on in 2024.
Doing a 180
In retrospect, my initial problems with The Veilguard stemmed from some poor expectation-setting. I had never played a Dragon Age game before and barely seen any game in action. All I had heard about it was through word of mouth, which can be unreliable. From what I could gather, Dragon Age was a dark and serious high-fantasy series filled with deep RPG systems. I didn’t expect something as mechanically dense as Baldur’s Gate 3, but I’d gathered that it was no casual walk in the park either.
So I played through The Veilguard’s introductory hours with a puzzled look on my face. Rather than being dropped into a serious world, there was a lightness to it all. Characters were quippy, the visuals were smoother than I’d expected, and the combat felt fairly basic. I felt like I’d been dropped into a video game equivalent of a PG-13 superhero movie. Any rough edges had been sanded down and every plot detail I needed to know was spoon-fed to me several times. Was this the genre-defining series everyone had been praising all these years?
I decided that I’d play a little longer, dropping it altogether once I got bored. I figured that would happen fast. The Veilguard puts its worst foot forward thanks to its monotonous mission designs. Each quest I tackled felt the same, and none of my early game dialogue choices really felt like they were making much of a difference. Even when I tried to play my character, Rook, as a mean drill sergeant, all my companions seemed to love me no matter what.
And yet, I kept playing. The more tips and tricks I picked up, the more I came to enjoy its combat and how companion abilities played into it. I started paying more intention to Rook’s enormous skill tree and creating a hyper-focused build around arrows and the poison-like Necrosis status effect. The lack of friction in its design started to become part of its appeal. It was smooth and easy to pick up for an hour or two each night. Six hours became 25. Before I knew it, I’d done a full 180.
Maybe, just maybe, I was actually loving this game.
Tabletop troubles
I didn’t fully get what The Veilguard was going for until I began one of my favorite companion’s questline. Taash is a Qunari dragon hunter who gets a properly bloody introduction. From that scene, you’d think you were about to meet your average fantasy meathead who is only there to slay monsters. That’s not the case; in fact Taash gets the RPG’s most human, nuanced story. Rook soon learns that they’re struggling to come to terms with their identity as a non-binary person, a fact that they’re not sure how to broach with their disapproving mother. It’s a heavy-handed questline that arguably finds The Veilguard’s writing at its most obvious, but it’s also where everything clicked.
Up to that point, I assumed I was part of a grand fantasy adventure. That wasn’t exactly right. More accurately, I was part of a group of tabletop friends playing that adventure.
When the world wants you or the people you care about dead, the most radical thing you can do is survive.
If you’ve ever played something like Dungeons & Dragons with friends, you know that there’s a big difference between those two things. With the right group of pals, the latter is a playful experience that’s more about using an invented world as a playground. The table is a sacred space where players are free to bring in any real-life baggage and work through it in fiction. I’ve played campaigns with friends who used weekly campaigns to vent their frustrations with the real world, be the confident person they wished they were, and even work through their gender identity. Taash’s story looks familiar to me not as a fantasy trope but as the kind of story arc I’ve seen play out over weeks of playing adventurer with friends.
The more I viewed The Veilguard through that lens, the more endearing it became. My nightly sit-downs with it started to feel like D&D sessions with friends. I was eager to check in with my companions each time and learn a little more about their lives, as if I were peeling back the fiction to see what was really bothering them. It was my job to aid them on their own quest for self discovery the best I could. When Harding tries to come to terms with her surprising new rock-moving powers, we’re not really talking about magic, are we?
Though The Veilguard may tell an epic story about gods run amok, these grounded stories are its actual focus. There’s a key moment where developer BioWare makes its thesis clear. After a key fight goes wrong, the party agrees that they need to get their lives sorted out so they can focus on stopping the gods. The mainline story grinds to a halt at that point as Rook’s quest log fills up with companion quests. Each one finds its characters fighting through self-doubt, struggling to find their purpose, or coming to terms with their identity. The more of these quests that players see to their end, the smoother the actual end battle will go.
There’s something honest in that. I sit here now only one month after an election in the United States, one that didn’t result in the outcome I had hoped for. When I saw the results, I knew I’d need to expend a lot of energy over the next four years to fight back regressive policies and rhetoric that would make life harder for the people I loved. But in the moment, it felt like an insurmountable task. I was worn out, fighting off depression. It may have been triggered by the election, but that wasn’t the root cause. There are just times where I too easily give in to hopelessness, turning into an aimless mess that wants nothing more than to lie down and die. I lack self-confidence, and that morphs into a feeling that I simply will never have the power to change anything in my life.
It’s in those moments, where the stakes feel the highest, when I need to take a step back. I’m no use in a fight if I can’t put my full energy into it. Personal growth is not a selfish act; it’s a key part of those big battles. When the world wants you or the people you care about dead, the most radical thing you can do is survive.
can undoubtedly be heavy-handed in its writing, but there’s sincerity in its clumsiness. I can see my real friends using fantasy as an outlet in it, finding catharsis in a fictional world where they have control. Sometimes those sessions can be a little awkward, filled with improvised monologues loaded with pained subtext. In those moments, it’s my job to listen and roll a helpful skill check when needed.
Strip back The Veilguard’s fantasy wallpaper and you’ll find one of the year’s most human stories: a tale about friends supporting one another in their time of need so they can all stand together when it matters most.
