Dragon Age: The Veilguard Assures Its RPG Roots with Massive Skill Trees for Each Class

More hyped every day.

Okay. So, we have an awful trailer that didn’t set the right tone for what the game actually showcased. Then we got the gameplay which was cool, but obviously in the early parts of the game. Now we got a robust skill tree. We now need to see more on the dialogue choices and RPG elements. I know it was in the gameplay demo, but it didn’t seem necessary, with your responses to character questions basically being a “yes” or “no” answer.

This game is looking to be pretty solid at the very least. Hopefully, this can make BioWare return with some positive outlooks, particularly for the new Mass Effect.

I should bloody hope they have massive skill-trees for each class and all!

In no way a criticism, but excited to see the return of the Sphere Grid! Looks like it’s taking a little from various excellent RPG’s.

The other games were a bit of a pastiche too, and if they nail the dialogue and characters should be every bit as good as the others (if not the best yet)

The more that information comes out the more optimistic I become about the game. Still need to be convinced it will be great but I'm hopeful Bioware can pull it off.

This will live or die on the writing. Mass Effect Andromeda was great to actually play but its shoddy writing was what hurt it.

@ApostateMage Agreed. Andromeda had the best combat in the series, but I can't bring myself to care enough about it to finish it. The writing, character design, disrespect of the lore, and shallow character development just nuked the whole experience. What made Mass Effect successful wasn't the combat - the first game certainly wasn't the belle of the ball in that regard - but the narrative. Mass Effect 2 had an excellent balance of the two, while ME3 leaned more heavily in to the combat while sacrificing narrative in its sloppy wrap of the story.

No clue how Veilguard is going to turn out, but the trailer + EA + recent history doesn't give me warm fuzzies.

@IntrepidWombat @ApostateMage The writing in Andromeda definitely wasn't as strong as the trilogy, but I also don't think it was really that bad. I honestly think it was the tonal and visual shift that upset the fans, though maybe not consciously. Andromeda had a much more Star Trekkie vibe of exploration and the art design was much cleaner, whereas the trilogy was more dour in tone with a more dirty, almost cyberpunk aesthetic.

N.i.c.e. dragon age the veilguard is going to be incredible.just like 2014 game of the year dragon age inquisition.playing as a mage is excellent.the magic is amazing.word up son

I need to see more of the game before I decide on anything

They should show off clips of these classes in play.

Ok... ok... a bit more interested. But that is a lot of nodes... If they're just "reduce cooldown of spell by 2.5%" then that's seriously underwhelming.

@ApostateMage I think what hurt Andromeda the most were it's overly large planet surfaces which were mostly barren, with repetitive enemy outposts sprinkled in. The game seemed to be taking it's level design from Inquisition, and although it did have interesting elements - like doing missions to raise the planets' habitability and opening up new areas of the map, and upgrading the Nomad was really fun - there were what, only five or six planets to explore?

Plus, I found the world building in Andromeda (the galaxy) really lacking. There were really only two new races, and one of them were similar to the Reapers in how they were made. Overall, it was just the same races from the Milky Way: Humans, Turians, Asari, etc trying to make a new Citadel in a new galaxy. I was really hoping to see a society of new races with their own alliances and conflicts, now upended by the new arrivals.

I agree though, the gameplay was quite fun, and the booster jets made everything quicker, snappier, and added verticality. Definitely not the complete stinker that it's made out to be.

When i saw the thumbnail, I was thinking "What is going on with that Gamecube logo?"

Oops, haha!

@wildcat_kickz I'm actually playing it right now and enjoying it in parts. Some of the dialogue is questionable but I think they've nailed the squad banter when out in the Nomad. I do love my Sara Ryder though, she's such a goofball.

@Mikey856 Jesus man it's a skill tree

Best hope it's not like Inquisition same moves for everyone which is what annoyed me the most. Mage magic was all the same I was hoping for loads of different spells etc

Yawn, bioware is dead, this will be a disaster. You heard it here first.

Still skeptical, but this does help.

Erm...ok? All i see are some funky lines. I don't know what these skill points actually do.

They don’t show any actual skills, which is curious. Could just be stat increases. Again, we shouldn’t really think one way or the other right now, this team deserves scepticism until reviews or more gameplay come in.

@wildcat_kickz We'll have to agree to disagree - for me, it has some of the worst dialogue since Resident Evil '96 ("My face is tired.") The characters don't act in ways that make any kind of sense ("Oh hey son/daughter, let's swap using the mask every 60 seconds or so and hurry back to the ship" would have been the logical thing to do for highly trained space farers), and the plot holes need a mass relay to traverse (translators work for races on first contact? Both ways? And they translate idioms no problem? Come on). Those are just examples that come to mind; there was a lot more than that. This is one game where the great combat gameplay wasn't enough to overcome the rest for me.