Dragon Age: The Veilguard Doesn’t Need To Be Baldur’s Gate 3, It Needs To Be Golden Era BioWare [IGN]

A camp of companions is about as far as the similarities with Baldur’s Gate 3 goes though, if the recently showcased 20 minutes of gameplay is to go by. Dragon Age: The Veilguard appears to be a cinematic fantasy adventure with linear momentum, action combat, and huge set-piece moments. Little of what was shown could correlate with Baldur’s Gate 3’s expansive and reactive world. And that’s okay because Dragon Age is not Baldur’s Gate. BioWare is not Larian. And nor should they be. Rather than attempting to hit Baldur’s Gate’s lofty standards, Dragon Age: The Veilguard should instead be seeking to resurrect BioWare’s golden era. An era that produced very different RPGs to what Larian does.

Before we start, it’s worth recognising that the term ‘BioWare’s golden era’ will mean different things to different people. For some, it’ll be the Infinity Engine years – the time of deep, crunchy CRPGs like the original Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. For what I suspect is many more people (myself included), it’s the 2007-2014 period of epic and emotional choice-driven storytelling, best demonstrated by the Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age. Seeded by Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic’s need to offer a choice between the light and dark side of the Force, BioWare became more interested in the narrative spun by good dungeon masters rather than organic player-driven adventures. As a result, the studio found itself progressively less invested in systemic rules and dice rolls, instead putting all of its efforts into crafting unforgettable stories around a player. The biggest, most impactful moments would be the consequences of weighty decisions that formed narrative tent poles.

The shift from pre-rendered isometric environments to fully 3D worlds enabled BioWare to push its storytelling ambition, with conversations shot like TV dialogue and set-pieces scripted to appear like blockbuster movies. It’s a format that proved hugely influential on the likes of CD Projekt Red, but has somehow remained singular in video game history. Fans now lament the absence of “BioWare-style RPGs”, which disappeared following the shaky Mass Effect: Andromeda and disastrous live-service shooter Anthem. Meanwhile, renewed interest in old-school RPG design means genre trends have shifted. Companies like Larian, Obsidian, and Owlcat have found ways to advance and evolve BioWare’s original, more systems-driven template, resulting in the likes of Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

With old-school being the norm these days, it’s now the gameplay showcase for Dragon Age: The Veilguard that’s a blast from the past. It feels nostalgic, so much so it seems that we could be on the verge of a BioWare renaissance. Depicting a quest from very early in the game, the 20-minute demonstration carries the same sense of cinematic spectacle and drama that powers some of BioWare’s best moments. Tonally and structurally, it reminded me a lot of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s ‘Here Lies The Abyss’ quest, which saw the party push forward through a besieged castle to eventually clash with a group of Grey Wardens conducting a demonic ritual. This Veilguard quest, however, carries even greater weight because it is Solas that awaits at the climax of the demo: Inquisition’s ally-turned-enemy and the Dreadwolf himself.

There’s such a strong sense of character in this sequence, both in terms of the personalities within it and the atmosphere of the entire event. It is unmistakably BioWare storytelling. And, despite this being a snapshot shown entirely out of context, the scene successfully conveys the narrative stakes; as fan-favourite dwarf Varric attempts to talk down Solas from his god-summoning ritual, the conversation carries the weight of their former friendship and the uncertainty of the Dreadwolf’s deception. Watching for the first time, I even questioned if BioWare was about to kill Varric off in what is effectively a trailer, which is testament to how well the demo’s writing conveys threat and how strongly it is anchored in the previous Dragon Age stories.

This effect makes sense when you consider the people working behind the scenes. While detractors like to focus on the key figures who have left BioWare, it’s worth noting that The Veilguard’s creative director, John Epler, is a 17-year studio veteran who was a cinematic designer during the era of Dragon Age: Inquisition, a role dedicated to delivering story beats. Additionally, many of the project’s longest-serving BioWare staff are writers who have penned games as far back as Dragon Age: Origins. The right hands are here to ensure The Veilguard delivers another strong Dragon Age tale.

Of course, Dragon Age isn’t just a story. It’s an RPG, a genre that has evolved significantly since Inquisition released a decade ago. But it is unfair to expect The Veilguard to pilfer from and build upon Baldur’s Gate 3, a game that was only fully launched less than 12 months ago and was built by a team approximately twice as large as BioWare’s current staff roster. However, it is vital that BioWare doesn’t ignore the genre’s recent achievements, especially in the areas that its golden era recipe was once a leader. That means stronger, more impactful, and more nuanced reactivity when it comes to narrative choices. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s story cannot simply branch into binary pathways at every decision; there needs to be deep, long-held consequences across the entire narrative experience.

While the demo’s brevity means it isn’t able to showcase how Veilguard’s approach to narrative choice works, there are nonetheless small glimpses that provide hope. You are able to select a background for your protagonist, Rook, during character creation, and that history is said to impact how you navigate the story. The demo makes a couple of references to the Shadow Dragons background (a resistance group from Tevinter who opposes the mage imperium’s corrupt leadership), suggesting that your character’s traits will impact dialogue, relationships, and opportunities. Longterm fans will recognise this as an echo of the first Dragon Age’s origin stories, but I’m actually reminded of the tag system from Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin 2, in which key traits such as race and class would open up new dialogue trees where appropriate. I’m hoping that BioWare has crafted its own version of this system to ensure our Rooks feel significant within their own story.

The big question is how any new approach to character choices will fold into the larger structure. In an interview with IGN, game director Corinne Busche explained that Veilguard is “a mission-based game. Everything is hand-touched, hand-crafted, very highly curated.” It’s a design that will presumably feel akin to the linear main quest chain that runs through the core of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Or, more likely, Mass Effect 2 (arguably the pinnacle of BioWare’s work in this ‘cinematic RPG’ field.) That means we can thankfully say goodbye to the MMO-like bloat of Inquisition’s busy work-filled hubs, but potentially at the cost of a world that feels alive, organic, and reactive. The narrowed scope means the focus may entirely be on character narrative – a perfectly valid approach, but one that can’t use the same toolkit as Baldur’s Gate 3. Where Larian crafted a world that reacts to your every move, BioWare should focus on building a story that reacts to your every decision.

To some, that will sound like a low-level ambition. But let’s face it, BioWare has been in a bad place for a decade and realistically needs to get back to what it was good at before it leaps too far into the unknown. That also means addressing its pre-Anthem faults too, which brings us to combat. Without beating around the bush, combat in Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition sucks. Their design points to a reluctance by BioWare to admit it had moved on from the Infinity Engine era of real time-with-pause battles, and so what we were given was a hybrid action system that was unfulfilling both tactically and mechanically. While I do pine for the robust tactical combat of old, that’s what we have modern CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 for. And so thankfully Veilguard completes Dragon Age’s full transition into action combat with a system that looks to do for swords and sorcery what Mass Effect did for rifles and telekinesis. It appears active and impactful, with an even mix of character abilities and skill-based mechanics. Hopefully it will offer something much more engaging than Inquisition’s barely readable slog-fests.

While I welcome Dragon Age’s shift to proper action combat, I do still hope it’s more reliant on tactics and squad command than Mass Effect. The series’ roots still need to be acknowledged, and so I wish the demo showed more of the new Ability Wheel, which can be used to issue commands to your two NPC allies. While the party size is down by one member, I do hope that Veilguard’s battles are still built on a foundation of interesting interplay between fighters. A screenshot featuring much more developed characters than those in the gameplay demo shows an Ability Wheel populated by skills that can combine and ‘detonate’, indicating the Power Combos system from Mass Effect Andromeda (one of its few good ideas) has been adapted for Dragon Age. It’s stuff like this that makes me hopeful that Veilguard will offer the best Dragon Age combat since Origins, even if it’s of an entirely different format.

At a time when Baldur’s Gate 3 is incontestably the strongest RPG ever made, it’s understandable to be a little surprised that Dragon Age: The Veilguard looks so unlike it, especially considering the series was developed as the spiritual successor to BioWare’s original Baldur’s Gate games. But while those roots are experiencing an unprecedented surge of new popularity, we shouldn’t forget BioWare’s golden ‘cinematic RPG’ era was really, really good. Dragon Age: Inquisition’s story and relationships remain top-notch. Dragon Age 2’s detonation of the Chantry is one of the most memorable moments in Western RPGs. Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest games ever made. These games may be not be as systemically advanced as the best RPGs of the moment, but they gave us stories and characters that stir significant emotions in players both old and new to this day. The magic of BioWare’s glory days is singular, and still just as valuable to the RPG space as any of Larian’s most important offerings. If it’s back, then that’s nothing but a good thing.

But don’t just take it from me. As Larian’s own publishing director Michael Douse recently tweeted: “Two deliberately very different games (which is good) joined thematically by a few principle vibes (character, narrative, romance) that should be enjoyed as part of a giant RPG buffet.”

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.