Dragon Age The Veilguard guides and walkthrough

Looking for Dragon Age The Veilguard guides? It’s been a long road – and an excruciating ten-year wait for fans – but the sequel to Inquisition has finally arrived. Formerly known as Dragon Age 4: Dreadwolf, the fourth installment in BioWare’s fantasy series was officially introduced to the world as Dragon Age: The Veilguard in a reveal trailer during Microsoft’s Xbox Showcase 2024.

Dragon Age The Veilguard follows fresh protagonist Rook on their journey across Thedas to stop ancient elven gods from taking over the world. As the titular Veilguard takes shape, you must complete quests, master class abilities, and make difficult choices to pull Thedas back from the brink of destruction. While BioWare’s RPG game didn’t blow us away in our Dragon Age Veilguard preview, we’ve got enough guides to see you comfortably through to the end.

Dragon Age The Veilguard guides

Here are all the guides to beat Dragon Age The Veilguard:

Dragon Age The Veilguard release date

Dragon Age The Veilguard released on Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET / 3am AEDT. 

Its available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It’s Steam Deck verified, and prospective players won’t be required to install the EA App after purchase.

Dragon Age The Veilguard trailers

The official gameplay reveal follows the Veilguard as they reach Solas and attempt to reason with him. Needless to say, it doesn’t go overly well. The reveal trailer also offers a glimpse of the companions that we’ll recruit to our cause.

We learned more about these companions and how they interact with protagonist Rook in an exclusive interview with creative director John Epler during Summer Games Fest. He confirms that all companions are “canonically pansexual” and will “reference previous relationships and people they’ve dated before.” A development deep dive also explored how companion progression differs from Rook’s.

Dragon Age The Veilguard gameplay

BioWare showed off 20 minutes of gameplay ahead of release, giving fans a more in-depth look at the story and combat mechanics. We follow the exploits of Rook and Varric, a key companion in Inquisition.

Combat is more action-orientated this time around. You only have direct control over your player-created character, while two party members fight alongside you automatically. The ability wheel also makes a return in Veilguard, allowing players to pause the game temporarily to select a skill.

Aside from powerful class-based attacks, skills also let allies prime and detonate crippling status ailments – such as “weakened,” which lowers an enemy’s resistance to attacks while afflicted. These become pivotal in fights against elite enemies with multiple health bars and shields.

Thankfully, the Dragon Age Veilguard difficulty settings are more granular than the usual delineations of Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties. Instead, you can select the Unbound difficulty mode to customize the difficulty of individual features, from wayfinding to combat. The Veilguard combat limitations are a departure from previous iterations of Dragon Age, but may be more approachable for newcomers to the series.

Of course, it’s not just combat that requires a deft hand. Like Origins and Inquisition before it, Veilguard’s branching dialogue system demands careful negotiations during pivotal moments. While the removal of the Dragon Age Keep system won’t be making a return to Veilguard, the choices Rook makes are sure to have major consequences when it comes to major plot twists and the ending.

Dragon Age The Veilguard news

The Dreadwolf name change was confirmed alongside the release date window during the Xbox Showcase 2024. BioWare general manager Gary McKay said the change was “to capture what this game is all about” after the team decided the original title “didn’t show just how strongly we feel about our new heroes, their stories, and how you’ll need to bring them together to save all of Thedas.”

During a Summer Games Fest interview with PCGamesN, creative director John Epler confirms that Dragon Age The Veilguard takes place in Tevinter, a part of Thedas we’ve not explored before. “You get moments of higher fantasy magic coming back to the world through Solas’ ritual, but also things get pretty grim, and things get pretty dark in some spaces for sure,” Epler adds.

Dragon Age The Veilguard development

Before Veilguard’s official reveal, there were rumors suggesting it would be a live service title, leading to concerns from players about Dragon Age becoming a Destiny-like multiplayer game. BioWare’s general manager, Casey Hudson, posted about these fears on X (formerly Twitter) back in 2018, emphasizing that the live elements would be focused on continuing the story after the main narrative is over.

It was later confirmed in 2021 that Dragon Age 4 will not be getting multiplayer. According to the report, the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the failure of Anthem were contributing factors behind this decision, though there was pushback from BioWare to make it a single-player game before this.

The Game Awards 2018 gave us our first official glimpse at Dragon Age 4 in a brief teaser trailer titled The Dread Wolf Rises. In this very short teaser, we see Solas, the elven apostate mage who featured prominently in Dragon Age: Inquisition. This was the first suggestion that The Veilguard would be a direct sequel rather than a spin-off.

In December 2023, EA revealed Dragon Age Dreadwolf via a trailer that teased the various locations the Veilguard are due to visit on their quest. Many of these diverse locales are where the various factions call home, including the Anderfels and Antiva. Treviso and Rivain are also key locations on Rook’s journey, and the Dragon Age Veilguard environment expectations are high for OG veterans who’ve waited years to see these areas brought to life.

Concern for Dragon Age 4’s development grew following the announcement in 2023 that BioWare laid off 50 staff members, including Dragon Age veterans. However, BioWare insisted at the time that Dreadwolf was in active development. “Our commitment remains steadfast, and we all are working to make this game worthy of the Dragon Age name,” studio manager Gary McKay affirmed. “We are confident that we’ll have the time to ensure Dreadwolf reaches its full potential.”

Despite this turbulent development period, Dragon Age Veilguard’s PC features are certainly impressive and range from custom keybinds to ultrawide support. It even has selective ray tracing to widen the visual gap between high-budget and low-end GPUs. After 200,000 hours of testing, we expect the PC settings to eclipse their console counterparts. However, the system requirements remain within reach for most PC players.

With our guides on hand, you should have everything you need to beat Dragon Age The Veilguard. Check out the Dragon Age Veilguard Metacritic scores to discover the critical consensus on BioWare’s long-awaited sequel. Alternatively, take the best dragon games and fantasy games for spin, and keep up to date with all the upcoming PC games right here on PCGamesN.