Main cast: Alex Jordan (Male Rook), Bryony Corrigan (Female Rook), Erika Ishii (Female Rook), Jeff Berg (Male Rook), Brian Bloom (Varric Tethras), Gareth David-Lloyd (Solas), Ali Hillis (Lace Harding), Ike Amadi (Davrin), Han Jee Young (Bellara Lunatare), Jessica Clark (Neve Gallus), Jin Maley (Taash), Nick Boraine (Emmrich Volkarin), Zach Mendez (Lucanis Dellamorte), Claudia Black (Morrigan), and Matthew Mercer (Manfred)
Developer: BioWare

I have vanished off the face of this website for a few weeks because I had been playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard and then spending the following days in a kind of catatonia that is part hatred spewing irrationally especially at the sight of Taash and part remorse. 

The remorse part stems from the fact that I had been warned. I had seen the trailers, teasers, and early access previews conducted by some of the fakest shills on the planet, and I knew back then that this game is a huge pile of steaming dragon poo. Yet, the completionist in me said, never mind, let’s just play this thing as I’ve also played the last three games.

So yes, my pain is all self-inflicted, and you can laugh at me for that. Still, the worst part of the hurt is that I have experienced firsthand the death of a franchise that has a place in my heart.

THE COMBAT COULD HAVE BEEN OKAY BUT IT ISN’T

BioWare games have never been known for their combat mechanics. They are, or rather, were the “story game” studio. People played their game for the role-playing part of the computer role-playing game or CRPG genre that this studio had reigned considerably in for almost a decade. The choices, the freedom of making these choices and watching the die roll as a result of these actions, and interactions with companions… these are what BioWare games are known for, and that’s okay as they fill a more narrative-driven and human niche in the CPRG genre.

Unfortunately, over the years, this niche attracts people that, for the want of a better description, just don’t play games to play. No, they play these games to live out their fujoshi fetishes. They draw sparkling anime artwork of Solas and Fenris, they write fanfiction starring themselves and Alistair or Cullen or maybe both, and they fixate upon creating the character that they think represents them the most.

In other words, the games have gone from CRPG to fetish fodder for sad people with no lives. So, what happens when these people take over the franchise? BioWare hasn’t had a game that can be described halfway decent in almost a decade, and this one isn’t changing the sad course of that studio from CRPG to CRAP.

Ironically, as the narrative and lore of their games go down the drain, half-baked and often reskinned combat mechanics end up the sole decent aspect of these games. This time, things aren’t different at first.

Let’s see, if you are as exasperated as I am by how Dragon Age: Inquisition removed tactics and dumbed companion combat down to just four skill slots, you will love how companions are just reduced to skill slots here. That’s right, you can’t control them as they don’t really fight—they pretend they do, but they hardly do any damage and are just there—and what they really do is that they give you skills that you can then unleash on the enemies while sharing a universal cooldown. 

In other words, the combat here is a reskin from that in the Mass Effect games, as you now have only two companions instead of three, and like in Mass Effect, their main contribution are their skills. However, while in Mass Effect you can at least position these companions and execute some degree of strategy, here, things are dumbed down to the point that these companions are just, basically, skill slots that Rook, the player-controlled character, can get horny with. Yes, that’s what the hidden slot of these companions is for, baby!

So, you’re playing solo here, using your own skills as well as the skills provided by the companions. It’s not that deep. Once you’ve figured out the combination of skills to stun your opponents, you don’t need anything else. 

Even then, combat is a slough. A big problem here is that “skill progression” mostly involves adding small increments of damage or defense here and there, so there is no sense of Rook becoming more awesome or powerful over time. Instead, you’ll be doing the same combos you’ve come to favor over and over, roll and dodge when skills are in cooldown, repeat and rinse.

Because the enemies have so many hit points, combat becomes a chore. I normally play my first time on medium difficulty to get a hang of things, but here I am so bored of doing the same things over and over on enemies that take forever to die, I eventually lower the difficulty level just to get everything over and done with. 

The only thing I like here is that, unlike in Dragon Age: Inquisition, there is no empty open world nonsense and dead enemies don’t respawn, so I’m not stuck in an endless loop of killing bears and bandits like in the previous game. Nonetheless, combat here is still a chore because of how repetitive everything is.

Oh, and the enemies are all clear reskins of the same base models and there is hardly any variety. They can be tough, make no mistake, but that’s mostly because they have a bazillion hit points and you end up making mistakes because your brain has halfway melted after doing the same combat routine so many times.

UGLY IS EVERYWHERE

I know, many people say the scenery is gorgeous. The environment looks fabulous. I suppose I can agree… had this been, oh, Fortnite or something. 

Seriously, I know this game takes place about ten years after the last one, but it looks like Thedas has turned into a colorful theme park with the same purple-everywhere aesthetic that plague so many modern AAA games today. 

Then, there is the problem of how obvious the characters’ heads are way too big for their bodies. They all look like bobbleheads, especially Lucanis. Lucanis is short and his head is huge, making him look like a garden gnome, and that’s most unfortunate, because he’s supposed to be the dark and angst-filled potential love interest here. 

Also, this game strips away the uniqueness of the many races in Thedas, making them all look like human beings wearing tacky Halloween costumes. Everyone, whether they are an elf or a Qunari, has human face and voice, and worse, the elves are now of various skin color because seriously, in the last 30 years on Thedas, maybe the actual elves died and the degenerate soy-consumers from Portland and Edmonton moved in and think wearing jewelry and sticking paper pointed ears to their heads qualify them as an UwU Dalish princess. As for the Qunari, they look like humans that applied Klingon make-up and pasted rolls of paper mache on their foreheads in the dark. They are hideous.

THE COMPANIONS ARE OVERGROWN CHILDREN IN A KINDERGARTEN CIRCLE

These companions all have classes, but remember, they are of no use aside from filling up Rook’s skill slots, so in the end, they are just in this game to get players to experience all the vicarious love stories that they can’t have in their real lives. 

Good luck, though, in finding any semblance of a romance that doesn’t resemble a therapy session in which they pay you with sex, and it’s not even sex sex because everything related to relationships and emotions in this game feel like it was done by people with limited interaction with other human beings in their real lives. That or they used an AI that only scrapped data from Reddit and TikTok.

Lucanis. Short bobblehead midget with the most cringe name (Dellamorte… seriously?). Despite being a Crow assassin (we’ll discuss this later), he has all his edge blunted and his only personality is that he needs coffee, lots of it. He has more chemistry with Neve than you, so a romance with him feels like Rook just coming in between a couple with a more natural chemistry.

Neve. Bland goody-two shoes. Meh.

Harding. Forget the confident and capable scout in the previous game; here she is a stammering, insecure mess that doesn’t display any of her previous game self. Someone in BioWare really wants her to be the special UwU little girl that has always had a crush on her senpai. 

Taash. Vile. Loathsome turd that spends the entire game acting like being non-binary is the toughest thing in the world, unlike trans and gay people that have never died for being what they are, because the people behind this game wants everyone to know that non-binary folks win the oppression Olympics. So, this awful wretch spends its entire arc whining about how people don’t understand how hard it is to be non-binary even as the world around it suffers from a cataclysmic crisis. Oh, millions of people are dying? WHO CARES, RESPECT MY PRONOUNS, OH MY GOD YOU BIGOTS!!!

Worst of all is that it extends no courtesy to other people, constantly insulting Neve for being a woman and refusing to address Emmrich by his name because it refuses to respect him and his preferred way of being addressed.

TL;DR is that Taash can fuck off and get dragged into the Deep Roads to be made into a Broodmother. Every second of being subjected to it on screen is like having to sit down deeper on a rusty sharp pike and the darndest thing here is that there is no escaping this horned monstrosity. It even gets prominent placement in various cutscenes so ugh, seriously, can the darkspawn please drag it away to give it the Broodmother hospitality?

Bellara. Were not for Taash, she would be the worst companion in this game. She suffers from constant “Let me announce what I am doing or thinking, so pay attention to my vapid babbling, everyone!” disease and she can’t shut up. The people behind this game clearly wanted her to be some amalgamation of Merrill and Tali but unlike those two, Bellara has no compelling depths to balance out the quirkiness. Even when her brother dies in front of her, blink and soon she’s acting like nothing really serious has happened. Oh, she’s babbling again, hee-hee-hee! Ugh.

Davrin. I almost forgot about him. He’s one of the sanest ones of this lot, which means that he isn’t that annoying. Unfortunately, since I’m so busy being annoyed by Bellara’s chatterbox syndrome, Harding’s clinging antics, Lucanis’s grating voice, and everything Taash, I barely remember he’s in this game. Oh, he has a griffon. That’s about it.

Emmrich. I wish he is in another game, I really do, because a necromancer with an abject phobia of death is a fantastic concept. Especially a gentlemanly necromancer that looks like Vincent Price, oh my. He and Davrin are saddled with cutesy sidekicks that should have been banished to a Disney cartoon ages ago, which is unfortunate, but this dapper older man has my heart the moment he asks Rook how Rook is feeling. Yes, he is the only one that shows any concern about Rook. The other companions just take and take and take from Rook like emotional vampires, but Emmrich is different. Hence, his feelings for Rook, should Rook choose to pursue a romance with him, feels the most genuine because of this reciprocity. 

So, to conclude, they all suck, except poor Emmrich, who should have been in a better Dragon Age game. These companions have no genuine angst, they all agree with one another and seem to share the same thought bubble because this game is filtered through a few layers of sensitivity consultants so nothing that is remotely offensive to someone somewhere is allowed.

It’s like being in a Reddit sub or a Discord channel where you have to watch what you say, or you’ll get banned by their overzealous PDF file moderators. Even when Taash is being a hypocrite, for example, there is no way to tell it off. Everyone has to be enabled or coddled.

Hence, these characters spend all their free time prattling about food or their anxieties. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is getting destroyed by the blight, millions are dead, and the survivors are likely to starve or be wiped out eventually. Hey, who cares, right? Let’s all bend over backward to make sure that Taash doesn’t get its fee-fees hurt—that is the most important thing in the world.

CHOICES? WHAT CHOICES?

Only three options from the previous game—game, not games—are carried over: whom the Inquisitor bandy-shagged, whether the Inquisition get disbanded, and whether we want to snuggle up to Solas or perforate his rear end. 

You’d think these choices would mean that Solas would take prominence in the plot but nope. Egghead gets sidelined shortly into the game, with two mustache-twirling evil knife-ear gods (okay, they don’t have mustaches, but if they have one, they would be twirling it 24/7) taking prominence instead. Whether the Inquisition gets disbanded only affects a few throwaway lines during the cameo appearance of Inquisitor, now ugly like everyone else in this game.

Ah, but if the Inquisitor romanced Solas, here they get a very special ending that actually makes zero sense, because Egghead-mancers, as the crazy faction of fans that ship those two are called, are the most important people in the fandom.

Meanwhile, Morrigan shows up, but she makes no mention of the Warden, who could have been the love of her life and the father of her precious son, and worse, the game makes her out to be some skank that had zillions of lovers. What the hell? She was such a major character in the first and third games, and now she’s just… whatever the hell she is in this game, ugh.

Isabela shows up only to lecture everyone to respect pronouns of vile Qunari things. Yes, the same pirate queen that stole a precious relic and caused a city to erupt in a civil war that killed so many people is now the leader of a band of treasure hunters that… only scavenge responsibly and take stuff that don’t belong to other cultures. Is there any treasure that doesn’t belong to any culture? Wait, the more important question here is WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO ISABELA?

Dorian shows up looking like he’d contracted at least ten types of Thedas hepatitis since he last showed up in the previous game and I weep for what they did to this beautiful man. Oh, and while for the most part he is thankfully in character, he doesn’t have much to do actually. One could pick him or his ally to lead the Tevinter ruling council, but like most “choices” in this game, nothing really matters. 

Therefore, this game is in an odd place. It wants to include fanservice in the form of beloved characters from previous games, but it refuses to acknowledge their past or, in the case of Isabela, takes a wrecking ball to her character. It’s like promising people that their favorite beer will be served, only to urinate into the beer. I guess the people behind this game just didn’t know what they were doing.

At any rate, the lack of choices and carry-over extends to the rest of the game. The choices in this game are illusions in the sense that nothing really changes in spite of your choices. Pick Maevaris or Dorian? Doesn’t matter. Emmrich to remain mortal or become a lich? You still get to bone him, ahem, if you want. Win over or piss off the First Warden? He’ll get offed anyway shortly after, so again, your choice doesn’t matter.

The only choice that may matter is to decide whether to save Minrathous or whatever that Antiva city is called, but the choice just boils down to whether you want to lose the quests that come after you save the former. If you don’t want to lose those quests, then yeah, this isn’t really a choice at all—you will pick Minrathous then.

Compare this to previous games, where things can drastically change in a game depending on the choices you make. Alistair could have been king, or maybe a Grey Warden, or maybe a drunkard in a bar. The choices you make have consequences that carry over to the next game, if not the game after as well. Here, however, the game offers a very linear story with the illusion of choices.

Oh yes, you can choose to ignore your companions and refuse to waste time coddling their endless anxieties and whining, only to get the “bad” ending where everyone dies. I know, an ending where all of these obnoxious characters die sounds like a great ending!

Still, that is not what the developers of this game want people to think. They even left a chastising note stating that players should play the next game enabling and pandering to the companions to get the “good” ending. The one where Taash lives. Oh, sod off BioWare, I’ll stick to the best ending, so there.

THE LORE IS, NO WAY TO SAY IT IN A POLITE WAY, FUCKED

As I’ve mentioned, every edge has been sawed off and blunt through levels of scrutiny by sensitivity consultants, so this game is an abomination.

Here are just a few examples of the lore in previous games getting buggered the living daylights out of:

• The game begins in Minrathous, the capital of Tevinter, a land built on the backbones of slaves and blood magic… except, in this game, there are no slaves or blood magic. Wait, what? Apparently, they just let the slaves go in the last ten years? The sensitivity consultants in BioWare must have given the people there a finger wagging. In this game, this place could have been any generic city. 
• Racism and persecution are the backbone of the lore. Everyone hates elves and think they are either slaves or savage forest people. Mages are corralled into closely watched concentration camps because they can be possessed by demons and kill everyone else, which understandably is something other non-mage folks are not keen on. However, in this game, mages roam around happily with no one even worried about them getting possessed, and everyone is BFF with elves. Wait, what?
• The Antivan Crows, a secretive clan of assassins with unrivaled cruelty is now a band of cutesy superheroes that protect Antiva from mean outsiders. They show their faces and openly discuss internal politics with Rook, a stranger, minutes after meeting this stranger because they are obviously brain-damaged superheroes. Because of this, Lucanis is more like a coffee addict that stabs bad people and sprouts purple wings that are ridiculously small for him. 
• I’ve mentioned the “ethical” scavengers led by Isabela so let’s not touch on them again. It’s too painful.
• They destroyed southern Thedas and, worse, narrate the destruction in a codex entry because what’s a modern game developer to do these days aside from shoving their genderqueer trans were-helicopter middle finger up the nostril of fans of older games in a franchise, eh?
• Every mystery in Thedas has one answer: it’s the knife-ear gods’ fault. Andraste was actually Mythal, for example, so every supposition and fact in the last three games is false. Does it matter? Thedas is destroyed, and this franchise is dead. All because the people behind this game are too incompetent to put out a proper game that plays well and doesn’t feel like a mobile game with especially ugly purple blob aesthetics and epic fail attempts at Marvel-esque humor.
• The MCU-style post credit scene, if one did all the dumb side quests to unlock it, is the fuel poured over this trash fire. Without any logic whatsoever, it proceeds to insist that a bunch of goons from over the sea are responsible for everything terrible in the last three games. So not only does this game defecates on itself, it proceeds to do it on the last three games. Oh, fuck off.

Everything that made Thedas brutal, ugly, fascinating is forcibly stripped away because the morons running the show now can’t bear to imagine even a fantastical, fictional world that doesn’t conform to their own brutally limited and short-sighted view of the world. Thedas needs to be just like their gentrified neighborhood, damn it, where everyone thinks like them and acts like them. Forever.

RIP, Thedas. It is now a daycare center and participation trophy dispensers for fragile adults, just like real life BioWare.

WOKE CRAP

Yes, let’s address the elephant in the room.

Look, I have no issues with trans representation in a fantasy game. I’ve gone on record before saying that there’s no reason why beings on other planets and realms can’t have different means of sexual reproduction. An alien species with ten genders? Why not?

However, it has to be done organically. Yes, I am not too pleased with Cremisius Aclassi or Krem in Dragon Age: Inquisition because, no matter how one bends over backwards to justify it, a trans character allowed to exist in Qunari society is a retcon. However, in that game, the writers came up with a Qunari-flavored retcon that gives a plausible justification for Krem allowed to live as a man: he’s considered a Aqun-Athlok, which is the Qunari term for one born as one gender but living like another. 

Here, however, these lazy writers just slap in present day 21st-century made-in-Tumblr terms without even bothering to wrap them up in the flavors of the setting. It’s so jarring to see everyone in this game talking like it’s just another day in a Starbucks in Portland, so good luck trying to take this game seriously.

Oh yes, the fact that one can choose to have top scars for Rook: who cares. That is just distraction, jingling keys for mentally unstable influencers to squeal and clap like a seal. The impact never makes it into the game, as it’s not like there is a scene where Rook rips off their top, those scars producing a powerful laser blast at a dragon as they scream, “Behold, the power of a trans-former!”

On the other hand, this game actually offers more conversational choices if Rook opts to announce to all and sundry that they are trans. Given that not choosing to be trans or non-binary—the last I hear, it’s not enough to be one or the other, snowflakes now insist on being a non-binary trans—actively locks one out of certain content, I can’t really blame people for thinking that this game is woke propaganda.

To be fair, though, I should point out that there is a precedence to this: in the previous game, if you play as a female human or elf protagonist, you have far more options of pixels to mount on compared to protagonists of other sexes or races. The female elf has the most ones, because she gets a chance at Egghead when no other Inquisitors can. The joke’s on those Egghead-mancers, though. My male Inquisitor chose glorious Dorian to be his extra-curricular activity, and there is nothing more right than that decision.

Anyway, yes, this game is woke but it’s woke done atrociously without any care made to integrate the woke elements into the world and lore of the Dragon Age series. That is the most unforgivable part of all, as bad propaganda is one of the most insulting kinds of drivel to sit through. How did we go from Aqun-Athlok to “I’M A NON-BINARY!!!”? 

AH, THE TRAGEDY 

Just think. In a different and better multiverse, this game would have been epic.

Merrill, hoping to atone for her clan and her people, could have been Solas’s staunch ally, which makes Varric’s involvement in the plot more believable. He’s a far closer friend to Merrill than Egghead, after all. 

The knife-ear gods making a comeback would be a great excuse for the Hero of Ferelden, the protagonist of the first game, to show up as he is seeking to end the Calling, which could be tied to these gods. He and Morrigan could act in tandem to assist Rook, and their son Kieran (if he exists in the world state) would also be old enough to be a companion for Rook. 

Hawke’s Grey Warden sibling, Sigrun, Oghren, Nathaniel, and Blackwall are all possible cameos when Rook and companions in the Siege of Weisshaupt arc. With the Blight unleashed, the Architect and Velanna could show up to offer an alliance against the darkspawn led by the knife-ear gods.

If left in the Fade, Hawke could have made an appearance when Solas was banished there, perhaps as a leader of lost souls, and perhaps he, or whoever left behind in the Fade, could form an “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” alliance to assist Rook against those mean gods. If out in the wilds, there’s no reason why Hawke will be idle when Varric and his Grey Warden sibling are in danger.

Instead of having Kirkwall fall in a codex, why not have Rook and friends assist Cullen and Aveline against the darkspawn, with Sebastian and King Alistair making a glorious last minute appearance to help repel the siege in a scene that mirrors the awesome Battle of Ostagar cutscene in the first game?

Meanwhile, the chosen Divine in the third game could write missives advising Rook. Cassandra, if she still leads the Seekers, could show up as the head of one of those factions in the game instead of the nonsensical cabal of liches or cartoon scavengers. Vivienne could have been the leader of the mage faction. This is also a great opportunity to introduce a more human Templar character to represent the Templar faction. Sera, Iron Bull, Fenris, and the rest could all appear as quest givers. 

My point is that even with the dumb plot, this game could have been an epic, rousing immersive experience that ties all three past games in one glorious climax.

However, the clowns behind this game chose to give me… this. Boring combat, irritating companions, hideous aesthetics (seriously, the chests are huge and pop like a chest in a mobile game when opened, what on earth), and “I’M NON-BINARY!!!”

VERDICT

Fuck you, BioWare, fuck you for doing this to one of my favorite video game series ever. Fuck off to Fuckoff-istan and don’t come back, assholes.