'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Gameplay Reveal Shows The Death Of Tactical Combat 

RIP Dragon Age.

God I hate the generic fantasy design. Dragon Age used to be a grim dark MEDIEVAL fantasy. All the characters look like they’re competing for the cover of vogue.

I don’t think it looks absolutely terrible but right now I’m just trying not to be overly-critical. Having said that, I think we’re collectively going to have to accept that the charm of the first Dragon Age is not going to be present here. Reserving judgement for now.

It's not Tactical and it's not Party-Based RPG anymore. Also it's not open world, just mission maps. Your companions even don't have HP bar, all enemies only attacking you. There's only 3 skills per chara. Well it's not Dragon Age, just random bad Hack 'n' Slash game with neon lights.

I really want BioWare to go back to their RPG roots from the first Dragon Age. This just seems like another action superhero-esque story where you have to stop the big evil bad guy from opening a sky beam that'll destroy the world. This opening is almost the same one you played in Dragon Age: Inquisition. There's nothing to get that super excited about here.

I've been looking forward to this game for literally years (I loved Inquisition) but the gameplay trailer leaves me disappointed. I'll have to wait for more reveals before fully making up my mind.

It looked like a button mash mobile game. The main guy is jumping and spinning around like a fool. It looked ridiculous.

0:55 none of that is explorable, just pretty set dressing for this prologue area I am sure. 6:22 barrier so useless, the killswitch being front and center getting one shotted lol Ever noticed how none of companions get attacked? Enemies only attack the main character. The companions don't even have their own HP bars either, can they be attacked, or even die in combat anymore? The companions feel like Final Fantasy 16. That game, they aren't controllable, can't be attacked, you forget they're there most of the time, just doing flashy chip damage. Couldn't equipment their gear, no skill trees to customize either, I really hope Veilguard isn't like that. 13:49 yes thank you! The player had full resource bar entire fight just sitting on the ability. It's a defense debuff, you wanna keep it on cooldown for boss fights. You can issue direct commands to companions, limited to 3 equipped abilities per party member during that ability pause wheel thing.

This Hogwarts Legacy DLC doesn’t look like it was made for me. 😂

I think that the difficulty was peobably set easy for this, also, the blood effects were turned off for this

Now it has become a button mash, and less party members on the battlefield 🤦

Combat changes are only thing that I don't like so far mainly because as you said companions feel like a background and even with the ability to use their skills through that wheel it still feels like they are background.

I feel like someone is putting more and more carrots into my chocolate cake. It keeps getting worse but not bad enough for me to refuse a slice.

Where is the inquisitor??? And man do i miss the tactics menu from DAO and DA2. Spent some much time setting up tactics for my party, seeing the combos play out in real time combat was so satisfying. They have it some degree in Unicorn overlord. My excitement for this game wanes. 6:50 was that Dorian's voice? This gameplay reminds me of jedi fallen order tbh. Idk

Agree with you. I enjoyed what I saw but I have some concerns about the combat. The whole party mechanic was one of the few things that made DA stand out on top of the characters and story and I just didn't see enough but there is potential that it will be a fun game to play. We'll see!

seems with each iteration of Dragon Age, the series moves far away from Dragon Age Origins; by the way, I am not complaining, I'll still get this when I can, knowing what to expect and all..

I'm more encouraged about the game after watching this than I was after seeing the trailer.

it doesn't look BAD per se, but this entire thing did nothing for me. I'll play it when it's 50% off or less

Bioware described Dragon Age: Origins as a dark heroic fantasy, a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights in a setting inspired by The Lord of the Rings and A song of Ice and Fire. It was that to me, Grey Wardens had the vibe of the Night's Watch and the darkspawn had the vibe of the white walkers. Bioware was really the first western studio to take characters in your party and evolve them with more elaborate stories and the possibility of relationships, it was also the one part of SWTOR that I liked as well. But, I think Larian had taken that and done a lot more with it, especially with BG3. They wanted Dragon Age to be the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but they handed that crown on a platter, along with the rights to make BG3 to Larian. The Veilguard seems more like a Mass Effect successor than Dragon Age from a gameplay perspective, and they are still using that shitty Frostbite engine that EA put a gun to their head and forced to use. It isn't suited for marking RPGs and it isn't a huge shock that it players more like a Dark Souls game than a Dragon Age game. It looks like a shitty console game. I hated inquisition, the game play was garbage and it was largely due to Frostbite, one of their devs told me Frostbite couldn't handle epic battles like there was in DA:O or DA2. They had to radically reduce the number of NPCs in battles and that left a playstyle that was boring and not much of a challenge. I went through it first try on the hardest difficulty without breaking into a sweat. So far, this looks to be completely dead. I wish they would have just made a different IP and left us with the hope that sometime in the future a competent studio, like Larian, would get the rights one day to make a sequel that deserves the name and in-game lore.

pride demon hehehehe

In the coverage you saw there was NO ONE in your Party. so of course the npcs looked lack luster they had no skill tree yet

This is literally Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth combat.

Solas, great character now just some cartoon bad guy

Basically we now die easily, since we are not allowed to use barrier when necessary ☝️ Got it! Nice work biokangz 🤦

Combat isnt the problem imho... I dont mind both... tactical or action oriented... but the overall tone of this game is horrendous... everything else seems pretty mediocre... standard ... Really worried about dialogue and story though... this looks more like a Dragon Age DLC for Fortnite... Also how the hell did they manage to mess up scout Harding for gods sake???!!!!

Yeah, the combat looks like it's another type of game from the last adventure: yuck. I loved the last game's party system where you zoomed out, made choices, then zoomed back into whoever you want to at the time and got busy with the arsekicking. To me, equipment based RPG games work best when it feels like you're making choices that are immediately impactful. I don't want to press buttons in combo's or *hold down* a charge move, but it might work. I recall that there was an earlier Dragonage game that was more along the way this game presents itself. I'm just more into turn-based stuff whenever it comes to elves, dragons, babes, and knights.

I'm kinda getting "Dragon Age meets Baldur's Gate meets Dragon's Dogma" vibes from this trailer. They could be quite possibly aiming to attract the Baldur's Gate crowd, hence the story beats from what we could see. Would be a bummer if we're locked into sticking with only one playable character.

The combat is my biggest disappointment with this, the world actually looks pretty good and I'm sure the story will be good, but the combat is a disappointment. It's too bad they'd already gone too far by the time BG3 came out and showed everyone that tactical combat can still be done well and be popular with fans. If they would have stuck with more traditional rpg tactical combat I'd be more excited about this game. Right now it's more 'wait and see' mode

Are the characters unnecessarily unnatractive or am I being a anti-woke dudebro right now?

What is he? Wushu martial arts? Lmao 🤣

We just had Baldurs Gate 3, God of War Ragnorok, and Elden Ring in the last two years. Maybe this would have been exicting 6 years ago but now it just looks "meh". Don't go back and play inquisition it's all grinding.

Mediocre, just like Inquisition. Actually worse than Inquisition. Same plot: stop the tear in the veil/stop the veil being destroyed = stop the demons. Same party: only smaller. Same game play: only less. Setting sure has changed, from independent magical nobility city, to 1984 fantasy drone dictatorship. Can't control companions. No "open world." Venatori wall = hit the crystal with a sword. Ice ball = touch it, it opens. Take small dwarven archer to push gigantic statue, or ice magician who previously shattered everything around her? Giant statue? Remove ancient scaffolding (which doesn't support it's weight..do writers know what scaffolding is?) Falls, like dominoes.

Not my style of gameplay. Ill pass.

I feel like this is what they wanted for Dragon Age after Origins. This is the direction the franchise was heading, whatever tactical combat was left is because they didn't have the tech the do full action combat. The important thing here, is that they didn't go Dragon Age Souls so thats good. This combat still looks like Dragon Age.

Better to have full on action combat than the mish-mash abomination that was in Inquisition.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Every dragon age game had their strengths and weaknesses. I went back and played Origins for the first time in years, the combat was a slog and boiled down to pretty much just grabbing all the crowd control abilities and hoped you killed the enemy before they killed you. Try to enjoy this game for what it is and let the past be the past.

It looks fine. This is the same drivel as people crying about turn-based versus not turn-based with sequels in a series. Grow up...

This abomination is not Varric and that terribly looking "game" has nothing to do with DA. Never thought I will be praising design of DA2" character models. Turned out, you can make them worse.

I dont care for their modern speak..ughh whats up with that?

Alright...! A black man; a powerful girl-boss and a dwarf...!!! YES. Diversity and representation are the EXACT things which draw me to Fantasy RPGs. This is perfect. Please gods, let her be a lesbian...!!!