As Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s late October release approaches, we’re finally starting to see how it will play in close detail. Previous videos and blog posts have focused on the game’s story and companions, and now a pair of recent updates offer a closer look at combat and all the ways you can shape your character before the swords come out. The Veilguard is a big change from previous Dragon Age games in locking players to one character rather than letting them control every member of a party, but the new reveals show how developer BioWare is working to keep the series’ strategic complexity intact.
The latest updates on The Veilguard come from an IGN and a blog post by BioWare. IGN’s video shows a 20-minute gameplay session featuring game director Corrine Busche and BioWare creative director John Epler, while BioWare’s post fills in behind-the-scenes details on all the ways you can upgrade your character.
In the IGN deep dive, Busche goes into battle with a mage character, who’s surprisingly spry for a primarily ranged spellcaster. For The Veilguard, BioWare is continuing the Dragon Age trend of moving more toward action and away from the original’s real-time with a pause battle system. Where the previous Dragon Age: Inquisition was a sometimes awkward half-step between those two styles, The Veilguard commits to full-action combat. Even its wizardly types have fast-paced attacks and an extremely handy-looking dodge to get them out of scrapes.
As Busche explains, mages do have to think a bit more strategically when fighting in close quarters, since their ranged style puts them at a disadvantage in melee. That doesn’t always have to be the case, though. At one point, Busche switches from a staff to the orb and dagger weapon set, which offers a more melee-centric mode of combat that she compares to Inquisition’s Knight Enchanter class.
BioWare’s own new update explains in more detail how players will be able to mix up their playstyle. Every class can equip both a main weapon and a secondary weapon and swap between them at will, even in combat. Similarly, you can switch out which abilities you bring into combat at any time, except for when you’re actively in a fight. That gives players a lot more freedom to decide how to handle each individual battle, rather than needing to specialize in one particular way and stick to it for the whole game. And if you waste skill points on an ability you don’t like, you’re also able to refund it to try something different.
The skill tree you purchase upgrades from has abilities moving out in paths from the center. Starting in the middle, you can progressively unlock abilities along those paths toward one of three Specializations, each of which focuses on a different aspect of combat, like melee attacks or crowd control. Companions each have a simplified version of the skill tree, and they gain skill points when the player completes their personal quests and reaches crucial decision points in their individual stories.
Item progression is also in for a major change in The Veilguard. At the player’s home base, The Lighthouse — shown off in IGN’s video — lives an NPC called the Caretaker. This extremely cool, creepy-looking merchant offers upgrades and enchantments to improve your equipment, but they serve an even more important function as well. You can upgrade the Caretaker’s shop throughout the adventure to unlock additional options, which also affects the level of gear in the world. Whether you purchase gear or find it in the world, everything will be locked to the level of the Caretaker’s shop. Finding duplicates of an item isn’t necessarily a waste either, since picking up multiples of the same piece of gear can unlock additional abilities on the version you have equipped. That all makes it seem much less likely to stumble upon an overpowered piece of gear in the wild, but slowly upgrading your favorite items could be much more rewarding as a result.
As a fan of the Dragon Age series’ more tactical combat, I’m still not completely sold on The Veilguard’s turn to action, but the more details BioWare reveals, the more it seems like the upcoming game could suit me better than I first thought. Where first it looked like The Veilguard would be less strategic than its predecessors, it may just be that your choices off the battlefield are where much of its strategy lies.
