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The Veilguard is the first Dragon Age game where my companions don’t care enough about anything to argue with me

Pabio November 16, 2024

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The Veilguard - Neve grimaces and uses magic to fend off a magical punch. — Credit: BioWare, Electronic Arts

My biggest disappointment with Dragon Age: The Veilkeeper it’s because everyone likes me. Seriously. I honestly wish one of my companions would yell at me for my choices. But none of them seem to care enough about anything to disagree with me, and that lack of tension is what flattened my group into the cast I cared about the least in the entire series.

The Veilguard sets a fairly rigid framework: six of the seven members of my party come from factions around Thedas with whom I spend the majority of the game working to prevent the elven gods from destroying the world. I hoped that these factions, and my party by proxy, would bring with them disagreements over strategy, priorities, and questions of morality. But companions and factions have both been diluted into a thin mush of cuteness that I find hard to care about.

I explained briefly in my Dragon Age: The Veilguard review how disappointed I was that the game seemed to have stripped all of its companions of values related to the wider world. They think we should stop the gods who want to destroy Thedas, and they all agree that anyone who accepts the power of the gods and uses it to harm others is evil. That’s pretty much where their opinions end.

Take the Antivan Crows and Lucanis, for example. Surely I thought our first real dive into the Antiva Assassins’ Guild would raise all kinds of questions about how they operate and natural opportunities for Rook to support or fight with Lucanis. I was hoping to see some recognition that an unregulated murderer might not really be good for Antiva. I was hoping to see how Lucanis, the heir to the Dellamorte family, had been shaped, for better and for worse, by the horrible things we know from past games about how the Ravens operate: trafficking, child conscription, and even worse. Lucanis should, at a minimum, be complicit in a pretty terrible status quo, if not actively defending it.

But The Veilguard ignores all that in favor of painting the Ravens as action heroes wearing purple spandex and hearts of gold. The only character who questions the Ravens is, conveniently, an evil, power-hungry traitor to the country. Thus, Rook is never put in a position to challenge or question Lucanis’ loyalty to the family’s goals.

Lucanis bursts into Dellamorte Manor with his purple wings outstretched

I don’t even disagree with him that he’s possessed by a demon called Spite who has a habit of taking his body for walks when he falls asleep. Wickedness never causes real harm. Lucanis is not even personally responsible for the possession. Despite his “perfectly gathered clouds of doom” over the situation, Rook is forced to be supportive and never questions whether Lucanis is compromised – by Spite or by the Ravens.

I could write a similar tirade about Neve, who apparently has no problem with Rook making a deal with a local crime syndicate in Minrathous to fight the oppressive Venatori cult. I had hoped to see the downtrodden detective question whether the ends justify the means when he allies with the Sons. But that never happens. The end of Emmrich’s personal quest, which I won’t spoil, is the only one that poses anything close to an interesting question for me.

Part of the problem is that there is no working disapproval mechanism in The Veilguard. In the last three Dragon Age games, companions could challenge your protagonist’s decisions. But the Veilguard practically eliminates this concept. There are a handful of choices in the game that my party members may supposedly disapprove of, but without ever having any noticeable effect (in the menu or in dialogue) on Rook’s bond with them.

Even the most likely source of companion disapproval, Minrathous or Trevisoreally falls flat. This decision has consequences, of course. I appreciate that this has real effects on romancing Lucanis. Both he and Neve can be harmed by the possible consequences, but the choice itself lacks complexity when the threats are functionally identical. THE trolley problem This may be a morally stupid question, but it would be even stupider if you had to choose between two people with the same risk of becoming a car accident.

I understand that The Veilguard is basically telling the story of an unlikely hero, so there’s no room for Rook to be evil. But couldn’t Rook debate ideals with someone? other than Solas?

I really miss some of the key discussions from previous Dragon Age games. Fenris and Anders in Dragon Age 2 are both messy canons who resent and disapprove of Hawke’s leaning too far for or against mage rights in Kirkwall. Origins gives its hero the terrible choice of what to do with a demon-possessed child, and Alistair is furious if you choose to handle it a certain way, culminating in a loud blow of disapproval. I even like Vivienne in Inquisition, very controversial as she is, because she is indeed a crust who believes that her fellow mages should be relegated to the towers of the Circle. These are just a few examples of how Dragon Age heroes have fought against their party’s morals in the past.

The Veilguard does not want to go near such disagreements and fails even when trying to introduce conflict. More than a few companions find themselves with personal differences to settle: Lucanis and Davrin being two who initially don’t respect each other’s work. Don’t worry though, Rook can step into this fight and choose between two functionally identical ways to resolve these differences. And then they do it, per Rook’s instructions. Copy and paste this onto some other companion disagreements.

In the end, Rook’s companions are all goody-two-shoes characters with simple beliefs. There’s a ton of groundwork for each character that could have made them morally complex and interesting but, frustratingly, not all of this is accomplished. I understand that in the plot presented by The Veilguard, everyone must be willing to put aside their differences to fight the greater evil. But with no desire to challenge their leader, The Veilguard’s companions make up the most impartial cast in a series once so full of emotion.