The Pros and Cons of Mass Effect 4 Possibly Adopting Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Combat UI

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 11, 2024 12 Views 6 Min Read
The Pros and Cons of Mass Effect 4 Possibly Adopting Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Combat UI



Combat has always been an interesting part of BioWare’s games. It can be occasionally terrific, as seen in some Mass Effect games and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but it has also been one of the most inconsistent aspects of the studio’s design process, with the combat of games like Dragon Age: Origins arguably not aging well at all.




But sometime around Mass Effect 2, BioWare seemed to have landed on a solid overall formula, leveraging a careful balance of strategic and real-time gameplay. This approach maximizes player engagement during combat encounters while also synergizing with the fundamental squad-based gameplay of the studio’s RPGs. Such design principles made their way into Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, and ultimately Veilguard, which all effectively toe the line between white-knuckle action and careful, short-term planning. That said, each game makes small adjustments to this formula, and some of these most key changes are embodied by the user interface of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which Mass Effect 4 may or may not adapt for its own purposes.

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How Dragon Age: The Veilguard Breathes New Life into Inquisition’s Necromancy Mechanics

Dragon Age: The Veilguard made some improvements to necromancy with the introduction of the Mourn Watch and Death Caller specialization.

What Mass Effect Could Learn from Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Combat UI


Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s UI Is Streamlined

The Mass Effect franchise has always given players access to the full spectrum of unlocked abilities during combat encounters. Rather than having to assign specific abilities to the radial menu that can be accessed mid-combat, every offensive power, buff, and other ability is available all at once. This allows combat to be expressive and open-ended, but it can also be overwhelming for some players. Moreover, it cuts down time spent in real-time combat, as maximizing effectiveness often requires long periods of looking through different powers and weighing them against the threats at hand.


Dragon Age: The Veilguard takes a different angle with its character abilities, which is reflected in the design of its UI. Characters can only have three active abilities equipped at once, meaning that there are fewer options for tactical gameplay. This helps battles maintain a consistent pace and energy, as real-time combat is prioritized. There’s also a helpful feature that identifies when different abilities can combine with one another, further smoothing out combat encounters, making them more accessible, and reducing any sort of friction between player and game.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Combat UI Might Be Too Streamlined

If UI is a facet or reflection of a game’s deeper mechanical leanings, then Veilguard‘s more trim and accessible UI is representative of its more stripped-back, watered down combat sandbox. Limiting each squadmate to just three active abilities at once is great for making fights easier, smoother, and more accessible, but it also necessitates a more active, less tactical style of play. The clear communication of which abilities synergize with each other further decreases potential for experimentation and emergent gameplay opportunities.


This is a rather stark change from the older Mass Effect games, which offer players a broad assortment of different abilities for use at any time. It may be overwhelming at first, but after gaining some experience, it’s nice to have several distinct ways to approach a single fight. And while things like synergies aren’t communicated in black-and-white terms, this is part of what makes combat so enjoyable. Discovering, for instance, that Pull can be combined with Singularity to fling enemies off a structure, is exciting by virtue of the fact that it’s not communicated to the player. Rather, the player themselves has to conceive the idea and test it out, deepening their connection with the interactive aspects of the games.

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