Bioware had one last chance to pull back from the brink and they blew it. Instead of making an RPG with a meaningful story, they turned Dragon Age into a cartoony cardboard cut-out of itself. This is what happens if you chase away good writers and replace them with activist hacks.

Header image: Electronic Arts / Bioware

This is not a review. I haven’t played Dragon Age: The Veilguard and I don’t plan to. This post is me explaining why.

I used to love Dragon Age. I can’t really remember how often I finished Origins, but it was more than half a dozen times — across two gaming platforms and more than a decade of playing it. To this day, I think that Dragon Age II has probably the singular best executed storytelling of a main story of any video game. Ever. There were periods of my life where I must have spend more time in the world of Thedas than I did in the real world. I really did love these games with all my heart.

I’m writing in the past tense here because even though I tried very hard, I’ve never managed to love Dragon Age: Inquisition. I never finished that game either. The decision to bring the franchise up to date by porting the setting to an open world was a very bad one — driven by EA’s desire to conform to what, they perceived, were the market pressures at the time — and it destroyed the game. A narrative RPG with meaningful stories where every decision mattered had turned into a fetch-quest-laden mess that was more akin to a much prettier version of World of Warcraft than the next entry in the series I loved so much. Bioware, and EA, obviously recognised they made a mistake and it’s hardly surprising The Veilguard was ten years in the making. With simultaneous missteps that also ruined the Mass Effect franchise for a lot of players, Bioware clearly recognised they needed to return to what people had loved about their games. They knew they could not fail again. Well, guess what? They did.

Isabela used to be my favourite Dragon Age character. I think I was genuinely in love with her when I played DA2. Now she’s been visually mutilated, keeps splurting random drivel and is the main “star” of a scene that, one day after the game’s release, has already been universally panned by everyone on the internet. To add insult to injury, she only does five push-ups while talking about having done ten. What the actual fuck, Bioware?

The Veilguard doesn’t look like a Dragon Age game. Not only do the Qunari not look like Qunari (a problem Inquisition pioneered), but the colour grading of everything and the tone of the story is just wrong. They turned a gritty, adult dark fantasy setting into something that looks like a Disney TV show for children. The Failguard, as it was named by the internet on the day of release, also doesn’t seem to play like a Dragon Age game. You can’t import decisions from the previous game — a revolutionary innovation of the series at the time — and the decision you can make with your new protagonist are very limited. Even critics who have praised the overall game seem to agree that it is a bad RPG, as role-playing and your ability to influence the story are almost non-existent. It’s a Marvel-style fantasy film on rails, in a world where Larian just showed everybody what an RPG should look like. And I hate Marvel movies.

You could argue that they dumbed everything down to appeal to a mass audience. That I’m just a fossil who clings to the old days and can’t go with the times. The flaw in that argument is that Baldurs Gate 3 and Larian just schooled everyone on the obvious fact that there’s a massive demand for intelligently written RPGs with deep stories and meaningful interactions. You know, games like Origins and Dragon Age II. I was actually going to buy The Veilguard yesterday. I was ready to give Bioware one last chance. I had hoped ten years was enough for them to realise their mistakes, learn from their peers at Larian and go back to what they do best. I’m glad that the first reviews raised enough doubts for me to wait before pulling the trigger on that purchase and plunge head first into this mess. My time is too valuable and there are too many good games out there to waste it on shoddy writing like this.

I could spend another thousand words talking about the stupid woke messaging the game is trying to force down people’s throats. A thing as misguided as it is hilarious for a game series that’s always been incredibly progressive and has, until now, managed to elegantly introduce gay and even transgender characters into a medieval fantasy world without being preachy, condescending or clumsy at all. A shame that The Failguard is throwing all of this away in a misguided attempt to bank some easy DEI credit. I will not write more on this, however, because Steam reviewer Pandora already said everything about this that needs to be said. Here’s a condensed version of what they wrote:

I am a long-time fan of the series. I have played each of the entries several times for hundreds of hours. The game is not a bad game for what it is. I actually do like the visually stunning environments. The game deserves a thumbs down for what it fails to be — a Dragon Age game. On the other hand, gameplay is too weak to stand out as an action game either.

I myself am a transgender lesbian, so I suppose that somewhat makes me part of the “Modern Audience” this game is targeted at. In real life, I am happy if I can live my life as the woman I always longed to be, with people either not noticing any difference, not commenting on it, or at the very least, treating me with respect. I was able to find this sense of acceptance in traditional RPGs as well. I don’t need (nor want) the whole world to turn LGBTQ+ and have everyone loudly declare it.

Personally, I prefer realistic character editors where I can create an avatar with feminine curves (which Veilguard prevents). Even as a male on phyto hormones, I was able to grow bigger breasts than can be set up for women in this character editor. So how shall I see myself represented or included in this game? Instead, self-proclaimed “queerosexual gendermancer”¹ and game director Corinne Busche obviously saw the need to have top surgery scars included in the game (notably as a prominent dedicated feature toggle, not as just one scar to choose from within a long list of scars). Actually, that would not be such a bad idea if it didn’t focus on such a small aspect only, catered to such a niche audience, contradicted the whole setting, and led to losing sight of tackling all the other shortcomings this game has. In real life, no one chooses these scars; they are simply an unavoidable side effect of the transition process. So why would I want them in an RPG where I can transition whilst avoiding these scars? People playing RPGs don’t want to see their real selves represented; they want to escape real life. And how should I imagine sex reassignment surgery in a medieval fantasy setting anyway? Is Volo removing one’s breasts with a rusty spoon before gifting his magically infused “Ersatz penis”? Sorry, it’s things like that, that break the immersion for me.

With my female alter ego, I loved to seduce Leliana and Isabella. I liked transgender Krem, which seemed very authentic to me. Seeing him treated with the same respect as anyone else felt truly heart-warming and inclusive to me. I’m fine with Taash considering themselves “non-binary”. But why do they have to use that 21st-century notion? I’m sure there would be more suitable means to express the same thing in a medieval way.

Despite that, if BioWare plays the inclusivity card, why focus on that very specific aspect? Where are eunuch, orchiectomy, and vaginoplasty scars? Why not be inclusive towards hermaphrodites? How about people with obesity, disabilities, artificial limbs, genetic defects (e.g., progeria or neoteny), parasitic twins, you name it? How about being inclusive towards people with Tourette syndrome, anxiety or bipolar disorders? You think that’s funny? Actually, it isn’t. No one wants to see the marks of their real-life imperfections, humiliations and sufferings in a video game where they want to role-play a life without these burdens. I suppose only people not having such scars would want to roleplay having them. So how about being inclusive to 85% of all people and providing the most basic features in a character editor — female women and masculine men? It’s barely there! So obviously inclusivity to BioWare means including gay and transgender men and discriminating everyone else. It’s just too specific and inconsequent to call this game’s character editor inclusive. Even worse, by messing with a franchise like this out of a political agenda, it only leads to the opposite of what BioWare wanted to achieve: aversion and hostility towards us LGBTQ+ people. It’s pathetic!

This game might mark the end of Bioware, and I meanwhile no longer care. If a software studio does not care about its most skilled staff members, nor the heritage of this genre-defining franchise, nor the opinion of its fandom, why should I care about that software studio?

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I am also done with Dragon Age for good. It breaks my heart, but it is better to conquer this grief now, lest I waste more precious time on things that do not make me happy. To say it with Seneca:

No one is shattered by hostile fortune unless first beguiled by its favour […] But the person who isn’t puffed up by prosperity is not diminished when circumstances change; his strength of purpose is already tested, and he maintains a mindset that is unassailable in the face of either condition; for in the midst of prosperity, he has tested his ability to cope with bad.

He wrote this to his mother about her grief when hearing of him being exiled to Corsica. But the following might just as well describe my feelings of what Dragon Age has turned into.

Consequently, I’ve never thought that there is any real good in the things everyone prays for. Besides, I’ve found them to be all show, decorated as they are with appealing but deceptive colours, but with nothing within that resembles their outward appearance.

— Lucius Anneus Seneca, Consolation to Helvia, from Seneca: Hardship and Happiness, The University of Chicago Press, paperback edition 2016