What you need to know
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an upcoming fantasy RPG from developer BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts, and is the first new mainline game in the Dragon Age franchise since Dragon Age: Inquisition.
- During a conversation Windows Central had with game director Corinne Busche, she emphasized that buildcrafting will be an important part of the game, with the level cap of 50 — much higher than the Level 27-30 limit of previous entries — hopefully enabling players to "feel like they can outsmart us."
- "We want players to find emergent builds ... my goodness, nothing would make me happier than somebody outsmarting our best tuners," she said.
- Busche also confirmed that enemies will scale with the player so that the overall experience will remain challenging and engaging throughout, and noted that balancing the expanded number of buildcrafting options required "some really insightful forethought in how we were going to handle the underlying damage calculations."
From their deep, nuanced storytelling to their expansive, handcrafted worlds, there are many things to love about well-made roleplaying games (RPGs). For me, though, one of their biggest highlights has always been buildcrafting — putting together a harmonious, synergistic blend of equipment, character skills, and playstyle to conquer your foes with a high degree of efficiency. It's a huge part of why I fell in love with recent titles like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring, and it's something developer BioWare wants to emphasize in the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard as well.
Speaking with my colleague Rebecca Spear during a recent preview, game director Corinne Busche explained that the studio is hoping players will "feel like they can outsmart us" with their buildcrafting, as The Veilguard's shift from a Level 27-30 cap to a Level 50 one means you'll have more options to work with than ever before.
"We want players to find emergent builds. We want them to feel like they can outsmart us. Maybe not obliterate the game," she clarified, "so when we find those, we try and roll them in. But, my goodness, nothing would make me happier than somebody outsmarting our best tuners." In other words, BioWare is rooting for you to break the RPG a bit with your ideas, though it will likely rein in any wildly overpowered setups people cook up.
The increased level cap is certainly exciting, though Busche did stress that builds will still be challenged by a healthy amount of difficulty. Balancing the looser restrictions on your gameplay options "took a concerted effort" and "some really insightful forethought in how we were going to handle the underlying damage calculations," but BioWare sounds confident you won't be breezing through this long-awaited fourth mainline entry in its beloved franchise.
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Notably, one way the developer is keeping the experience engaging regardless of what level you're at is with foes that level up as you do. "Enemies scale alongside you," she said. "There are moments where you feel like you're maybe overpowering them, and then they leap ahead of you to keep you constantly engaged and pushing forward."
Even with that scaling in place, however, I'm sure savvy buildcrafters will find ways to blow Dragon Age: The Veilguard wide open with ridiculous setups capable of flattening anything the adventure throws at them. From hack-and-slash titles like Diablo 4 to shooters like Destiny 2 and Borderlands, I've seen it happen in pretty much every type of RPG out there, and I doubt that's going to stop any time soon. Since this is a single-player game and adjustments can always be made after launch, though, I think that's totally fine.
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Above all else, I'm just glad to hear that BioWare has focused on making putting together builds a rewarding process in this new Dragon Age. I tend to bounce off of RPGs that don't have satisfying ways to level your character and craft builds, so it's reassuring to hear the studio essentially invite players to try and get the better of their balancing efforts. I do also love a good challenge, though, and hope that The Veilguard's enemy scaling can keep up with the wild setups the community will inevitably come up with.
We'll find out soon enough, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard is scheduled to launch in just over a month on October 31, 2024 — a full decade after Dragon Age: Inquisition's own arrival in 2014. The Halloween release will bring the highly anticipated fantasy RPG to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5, with preorders live now across all three platforms. Normally, they're $60-70, though some nice CDKeys deals (linked below) currently allow you to snag what could be one of the best Xbox games and best PC games of the year for less.
