I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m bullish on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and I’m not ashamed to defend its honor. Yes, BioWare’s had a streak of lean years. Yes, there have been numerous high-profile departures from the studio. Yes, Larian and CD Projekt have kind of eaten BioWare’s lunch in the meantime. And yes, there was just something slightly off about its first trailers. Despite all that, the game underneath always seemed solid to me. But god damn, EA and BioWare could have avoided a lot of doubt if they’d just led with something more like today’s release date trailer for The Veillguard’s official reveal in June.
The unanimous take from DA-likers on the PCG team is that this just felt more Dragon Age than anything we’ve seen of The Veilguard to date. The surprise return of Claudia Black as Morrigan helps link The Veilguard to the rest of the series, and I think more than anything it helps that this video shows us more of the game. Instead of a context-free rundown of companions we haven’t yet formed attachments to or a let’s play of the prologue—the worst part of any RPG—this latest trailer is delivering core samples from deep into the game.
And I like what I’m seeing! The foppish necromancer companion seems to have a sick necropolis level associated with him, complete with a giant skeleton baddy straight out of Dark Souls 3. There’s plenty for lore sickos to chew on as well, including what might be our first look at the inside of the Black City, a staple of Dragon Age skyboxes and codex entries for 16 years. I also love the sheer variety of fantasy environments: We’ve got at least two other urban environments alongside Minrathous, autumnal elven ruins, a rocky desert zone, and more. It reminds me of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s eclectic world, but according to the developers, The Veilguard won’t have Inquisition’s MMO-style open world bloat.
This would have made for a far better first impression of The Veilguard than what we saw in June. Even the game’s companions, the nominal focus of that first reveal trailer, come off better here—they’re more organically introduced, with small snippets of how you interact with them in the game, as opposed to some kind of heist movie roll call.
This latest trailer ends with one last pleasant surprise: An October 31 release date. That’s on the earlier end of EA’s projection from the beginning of this month, and I was expecting something in mid-November at the earliest. We won’t know for sure until we finally have the game in our hands, but a pro-Veilguard vibe shift is continuing to take root in our collective unconscious—maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying I feel really good about it now.