Dragon Age as a Milepost for Personal Growth

When Veilguard debuted earlier this year my first thought on sight was "this isn't a real Dragon Age game." My better brain came to bear though and I realized that instinct was wrong before I could finish typing it out.

I played Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, and Mass Effect. When Dragon Age: Origins released, to give it a go was not an open question. Nu-metal music in the trailers. Over the top blood splatter. Claudia Black of Farscape voicing a character. It was all effective marketing to show this wasn't your granddad's cRPG.

My recollection of Origins is roughly this. Starting by using near death as inoculation against your character becoming a zombie. Then in the vein of ME you'd go to set piece location, get some character interactions. You could pause a combat encounter. Pull back to an overhead view of the field. Control your other party members. Make some consequential decisions.

One of the dilemmas, at the end of the game, was how to sacrifice somebody to stop some world ending event. My character wasn't endearing. There was an option to sacrifice my character and spare everyone else. This was in stark contrast to ME where you wanted your Shepard to stick around for the coming games in the trilogy. I took that bait and it was satisfying, the game staying true to its edgy self to the very end. My new character for the expansion arrived into the mess of events from Origins as an outsider. Great design execution.

Then came Dragon Age II, confined to one city for the setting. Changing format to an action RPG. Eschewing the option of an isometric view. Not deliberate, planned combat controlling characters to set up devastating combos, but spam. I surprised myself to see that I put 4 hrs into DA2. Looking back I hated it and wouldn't afford it that same degree of charity today.

I put the same amount of time into Inquisition when it came out, and tried again earlier this year too in advance of Veilguard. The focus on action and the quasi-MMO nature of the game again didn't do anything for me then or now. There was no Garrus or even Morrigan to help get over any bumps. The Warcraft setting with invaders for another plane of existence was already worn.

Getting through the prologue of Veilguard, I wanted to like it. Veilguard was going to be different. I'm growing and changing, I'm different. There's a version of this game where I could have stuck with it. I appreciate being in a tube and funneled to set-piece encounters. Yes, that sounds unhinged. But look to Armored Core VI, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, and Monster Hunter. These rank boss fights and deliberate duels over blasting away cannon fodder. That clarity of purpose was absent in Veilguard, and after that intro so was I. Too much snide banter. Too much using the one skill off cool-down on trash mobs. A bland appetizer for a buffet of OK food and here I am with no appetite.

In looking at the totality of the games in the series, if anything isn't Dragon Age, it's Origins. I am the outlier, the fan in the margin. Owlcat and Larian are putting out great games that serve the cRPG genre better than Bioware ever did. Other developers like FromSoftware are with me on fatigue of combing through open worlds for hours in pursuit of drip fed lore or power increments. Veilguard wasn't made for me, and that's fine!