As the long-awaited fourth game of Dragon Age series, Dragon Age: The Veil Guard has some fans divided over whether it’s a worthy sequel – especially after a 10-year wait since the initial release of Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014. For everyone Guard of the VeilDespite its perceived merits and flaws, there is one area in particular where it fails to deliver on the promise of a BioWare RPG, as it inherits one of the series’ long-running flaws that hinders its ability to tell a continuous story. story between games.
Since even before the start of BioWare’s two biggest franchises Mass Effect and Dragon Agethe studio’s RPGs delivered on the promise that player choice would heavily impact the games’ narratives, deciding the course of key events, the relationships between characters, and even which characters would live or die. However, as games have received multiple sequels, they no longer only need to take into account decisions made in their own stories, but also decisions from previous games, in an attempt to create a long-running series. story that the player can influence in several different titles.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has a continuity problem
DAV feels disconnected from the previous three games in the series
Unfortunately, although the decisions in Dragon Age: The Veil Guard can influence the game’s story in important ways, the same cannot be said for decisions in previous games. In total, Guard of the Veil implements only three important decisions of Inquisitionall of which can be set during character creation, and none of which Dragon Age: Origins or Dragon Age 2. The result is that many Guard of the Veilreferences to the past Dragon Age games are frustratingly vague, especially when it comes to legacy characters like Guard of the Veilversions of Morrigan and Dorian, whose histories are not specified.
So while players may have certain versions of Dragon Agein mind the old companions, when they appear Guard of the Veilthey cannot commit to any specific version of themselves. Even important choices, like whether Morrigan will have a child, must remain undefined in the game, leading to versions of characters that feel disconnected from their original stories. In the grand scheme of Guard of the VeilThis may be seen as a minor issue, especially by newer players who may not have played the previous games, but many longtime fans will feel the disconnect from the versions of these characters they are familiar with.
It is important to highlight that Guard of the VeilThe lackluster handling of choices from previous games likely stems from the increasing difficulty of implementing those choices. With each pass Dragon Age game, the variability of past events increases – while Dragon Age 2 I just had to be accountable Origins maintain continuity, if Guard of the Veil wanted to achieve the same effect, it would have been left with the difficult task of trying to cover Origins, 2and Inquisitionpotentially bloating the game and expanding its scope beyond what BioWare could reasonably develop. Unfortunately, the end result is that Guard of the Veil feels particularly disconnected from other games.
Dragon Age never represented the previous games well
Each Dragon Age sequel has had problems with the choices made in the previous games
However, while Guard of the Veil does perhaps the worst job of maintaining continuity with other games, the problem is not entirely exclusive just Guard of the Veil alone. While Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition Both had more comprehensive systems for implementing player choices in previous games, the consequences of those choices were largely cosmetic and did not carry much weight in each game’s overarching narrative. In most cases, these choices simply served as little nods to old Dragon Age fans, with minimal impact on the rest of the story.
Furthermore, while Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition do a better job of implementing past choices than Guard of the Veilthe difficulty of keeping each separate storyline under control for each returning character causes some inconsistencies. Hawke’s appearance as an NPC in Inquisitionfor example, it is especially notable as its dialogue, appearance, and general position in the setting can be jarring to players who previously had full control over almost every aspect of Hawke in the previous game, and InquisitionHawke is seen by many players as acting out of character.
Dragon Age fails to replicate Mass Effect’s narrative
Dragon Age’s structure is not conducive to maintaining strict continuity between games
Of course, while BioWare has another RPG franchise that generally does a better job of keeping player choices consistent between games in Mass Effect, the series has some important differences from Dragon Age that facilitate implementation. Most notably, while each Dragon Age the game tells a practically independent story in the setting of Thedas, each starring a different protagonist, the original Mass Effect The trilogy was a completely continuous story, detailing the journey of a single protagonist, Commander Shepherd, in his fight against a main enemy faction, the Reapers.
The result is that Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 can develop the stories of the previous games in much more natural and meaningful ways, allowing the choices in the previous games to matter more than they can in Dragon Agewhere placing too much emphasis on decisions from previous games can detract from the current game’s story rather than enhance it. Dragon AgeThe structure of the story means that games have trouble connecting to stories from previous entriesthat in Guard of the VeilHis case is not helped by the 10 year difference between him and Inquisition.
Dragon Age: The Veil GuardIts treatment of the events of previous games has given it a somewhat mixed reception among longtime fans of the series, as the game fails to address the previous games in a satisfactory way. Although this flaw is most apparent in Guard of the Veil However, the problem was already present even in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisitionand if there is another sequence after Dragon Age: The Veil Guardthe difficulty in recognizing past events will only get worse.