The Veilguard Hits the Bullseye With One Playstyle

Key Takeaways

• Dragon Age’s bow evolution is highlighted in The Veilguard, offering unprecedented control and customization.
• The Rogue class in The Veilguard allows free-aiming, unlike any Dragon Age game before it.
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s bow has an unprecedented number of skills available for players to take advantage of.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been a long time coming, having now arrived 10 years after the last game with an entirely different look and feel to it. While these changes have affected Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s visuals and environments, its combat might have taken the most drastic hit — even sparking a bit of controversy in the process.

Despite any contention surrounding Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s combat, it has managed to achieve something with a specific playstyle that no other installment before it was capable of. Specifically, Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s bow is perhaps in the best place it has ever been in the series, thanks to the game’s action-oriented combat and all it entails.

Dragon Age’s Bow Finally Gets Its Due in The Veilguard

Dragon Age’s Bow Has Evolved Only Slightly Over the Years

The Dragon Age series has always featured bows as a viable combat option for players to use, but they didn’t have the most glorious beginnings. In Dragon Age: Origins, both Warriors and Rogues could use a bow, but the slower pace of the game’s combat made the weapon a bit less appealing than the more fluid melee and spellcasting playstyles. With Dragon Age 2 came faster-paced combat than the first game, which inevitably affected bows by making combat animations more responsive and requiring more involvement from players. Unfortunately, Dragon Age 2‘s bows took a hit from the game’s fast-paced combat, as it seemingly exchanged depth for speed by lacking plentiful dedicated skills for the weapon.

Dragon Age: Inquisition
‘s bows were given more abilities than before, but they were really only more effective than other weapons if they were specced correctly.

Furthermore, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition all featured a more automated targeting system where players would lock onto targets rather than aim at them freely. While bows have become increasingly powerful with each subsequent installment, they have still been one of the less engaging ways to approach combat throughout the series and have continuously lacked a surprising amount of depth. However, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has drastically changed the way bows work since they were first introduced in Dragon Age: Origins, and has improved them far and above what even Dragon Age: Inquisition accomplished.

Players Can Free-Aim the Bow and Access a Multitude of Bow-Related Skills in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Unlike previous Dragon Age installments, players can finally free-aim the bow in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as long as they choose the Rogue class for their Rook. The ability to free-aim a bow in a game may not sound like much, but it marks a major turning point in the Dragon Age franchise and simultaneously emphasizes Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s action-oriented combat. The benefit of being able to free-aim the bow in Dragon Age: The Veilguard ultimately comes into play when hitting enemy weak points (usually their heads) for extra damage.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard
‘s bow can also be manually charged for extra damage, and is capable of delivering a Perfect Shot once fully charged.

In addition to being able to free-aim the bow in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Rogue players also have access to a novel range of bow-related skills, especially if they go the route of the Rogue Veil Ranger specialization. Scattered throughout the skill tree for Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s Rogue are a multitude of skills players can use with their bow, some of which deal high single-target damage and others that prioritize area-of-effect damage. In a sense, players can create a Rogue “sniper” class for the first time in Dragon Age, thanks to the free-aiming capabilities of the bow and the deep pool of skills to choose from.

It is clear that BioWare wanted to ensure bows shined in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as players have an unprecedented amount of control over them and can customize their skillset more than ever before. With Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s bow, players can stay mostly out of harm’s way and deliver devastating blows from afar to ensure their enemies are hardly given a chance.