#2: Dragon Age: The Veilguard

After 10 years away from the series, BioWare had a lot to live up to with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The fourth RPG in the fantasy franchise makes a hard pivot into action and succeeds brilliantly, delivering fast-paced, expressive, engaging combat which rivals that in many of its contemporaries. It also brings in an almost entirely new cast of memorable companions while trying to wrap up over 15 years of story, and somewhere in the midst of all that, it has to make good on a cliffhanger that has been hanging over the franchise for a decade. Somehow, The Veilguard manages to pull off all of the above with a level of refinement not seen in anything BioWare has done before. The Veilguard has been divisive, but even so, here I am, writing about it as #2 on our 2024 Game of the Year list.

I came into The Veilguard jaded, feeling that BioWare had lost the plot in its constant attempts to make Dragon Age an anthology series, each with a different protagonist, even as it focused on presenting a world influenced by your heroes and their decisions. Some of The Veilguard’s greatest failings are in its inability to marry an anthology structure with the choice and consequence BioWare has become synonymous with, but what it loses in a lack of carryover from decade-old games—importing only a handful of decisions from its direct predecessor—it makes up for in being probably the best foundation for a brighter future the series has had since Dragon Age: Origins

The Veilguard is all about wrapping up loose ends and paving the way for the next generation of Dragon Age heroes. Some of the game’s most moving moments are ones in which it feels like you’re watching an origin story unfold as the heroes of before pass the torch to the next young whippersnapper doomed to save the world. New hero Rook is one of the best-realized heroes BioWare has ever created, giving you some of the most thorough tools yet to define who your character is in ways that extend beyond how they fight and what they look like. But despite how much wonderful specificity and detail you can bring to your own Rook, their story is universal for long-time fans of BioWare’s fantasy series. It’s not all great, as there’s an unnerving sense at times that Rook isn’t the one who should be here to watch history be uncovered. But the long-hidden truths they unearth about the world of Thedas are by turns satisfying, thrilling, and shocking, and The Veilguard manages to wield the uncertainty about Rook’s worthiness to pave the way for one of BioWare’s best finales.

Each tale it tells on the way to its climactic battle, whether it be Neve Gallus fighting for the city she loves or Davrin uncovering Grey Warden history, feels like a fresh start for this world. Given Dragon Age’s past, it’s hard to tell if The Veilguard is setting the series up to finally shed the weight of its long, overarching lore, or if it is ready to finally use it to its advantage with more forethought. But for the moment, The Veilguard did exactly what it needed to do. It put BioWare back on track with Dragon Age to do what it does best: create worlds for us to inhabit and define who our heroes are. We’re given a space to create, destroy, fall in love, hold violent grudges, fight for what we believe in, support those around us, and ultimately save the world we’ve helped define. — Kenneth Shepard