Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the next entry in BioWare’s dark fantasy RPG saga, is now scheduled to go live for PC (Steam page), Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 on October 31, 2024. The release date was announced in a cinematic trailer featuring everyone’s favorite bald elf Solas, the game’s colorful cast of companions, and numerous vibrant locations. The trailer also highlights the game’s central theme of fighting corrupt Elven gods as part of the elite Veilguard.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Release Date Trailer
Originally revealed as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf back in 2022, the fourth mainline Dragon Age title was later renamed to Dragon Age: The Veilguard in 2024. According to this blog post from BioWare’s general manager Gary McKay, the new title is supposed to highlight the importance of your team – the now eponymous Veilguard – to the game’s story. It also indirectly suggests that Solas the Dread Wolf, while still a big deal, might not be the game’s big bad and main focal point, which the trailer above pretty much confirms.
With its late 2024 release date, The Veilguard will be launching nearly a full decade after Dragon Age: Inquisition (released November 18, 2014). Naturally, a lot has changed since then in the gaming landscape, so it’s not surprising that The Veilguard will bear little resemblance to its direct predecessor. The upcoming RPG will apparently feature a lot more action (you can see it in the official gameplay reveal) compared to Inquisition or the earlier entries in the series.
According to this recent interview Edge Magazine did with BioWare’s game director Corinne Busche, the game won’t even let you directly control your companions. Instead, your companions will have their own combat preferences that you’ll be able to adjust by manually activating their abilities on the ability wheel. This change seems fairly uncharacteristic for a series that in the past had full party control and a robust Tactics system on top of that, allowing you to essentially create scripts automating your party actions.
We’re going from this……to this.
In its current iteration, The Veilguard resembles a Mass Effect game more than it does Dragon Age. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing – a fantasy Mass Effect doesn’t seem like too shabby of an offer. We’ve recently been pondering, however, if The Veilguard will be more akin to Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Either way, we’re now just a couple of months away from being able to find out for sure if BioWare still got it and whether The Veilguard can be its triumphant return as the premiere RPG developer. And in the meantime, according to BioWare’s roadmap, we can expect pretty much weekly reveals that include a high-level combat spotlight, an overview of the game’s companions, developer Q&A, and more.
Do you think Dragon Age: The Veilguard has what it takes to become a smashing hit for BioWare? Or will it be another middling success that quickly gets forgotten?
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Val Hull
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
