My favorite thing about Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also my favorite thing about Anthem. I didn’t play Mass Effect: Andromeda, but it’s also the same thing that its fans and critics seemed to agree it got right. In all these recent BioWare games, the combat feels really good.
BioWare Has Gotten Really Good At Combat
As I work my way through The Veilguard’s hyper-linear levels, I tend to get kinda bored. And then an enemy shows up, and everything clicks into place. Marking opponents with conditions then detonating them feels great, comboing companions’ abilities for stronger blows is satisfying, and unleashing your ultimate to disintegrate everyone who stands in your way is the *ahem* ultimate power fantasy.
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Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Combat Seems Better Now Companions Can Fall Out With You
Some companion characters change how they act in battle depending on choices you take.
Then, when combat ends, I go back to being kinda bored. Ten hours in, the game has finally introduced some mildly intriguing characters, but Emmrich and Taash aren’t enough on their own to make my team’s world-saving mission interesting. I have so little agency in shaping my Rook, which sucks considering this is ostensibly an RPG, and each mission feels so on-rails that the game feels suffocating.
And yet I’m not having a bad time because the combat is fun enough to inject some life into the experience every time you enter an arena. It’s the same arc I went through with Anthem, a game that — I can’t believe I’m saying this — I actually liked a bit more than Veilguard.
Anthem Had Great Gameplay In A Boring Structure
That game was an incredible Iron Man simulator, and after a less fun game where you could actually as Tony Stark came out the next year, I’m all the more impressed with BioWare’s accomplishment. Taking off into the skies was visceral, skimming along the surface of the water was invigorating, and being able to maneuver around your enemy in every direction brought the opportunity for incredibly expressive gameplay.
I liked other things about Anthem, too. Routinely returning to the hub city was fun, even if (maybe because?) BioWare weirdly opted to make these sections first-person. It’s a shame that the game’s structure and writing let it down, as it became way too repetitive for a single-player experience and way too talky to play with friends.
The problem with both Anthem and Dragon Age: The Veilguard is that their great combat systems are being wasted on uninteresting levels. Anthems’ maps were so big that missions never felt specific, while Veilguard’s are so linear that they feel like they can only play out one way.
BioWare’s Strengths Have Shifted
BioWare has, historically, been a great RPG developer that can do okay combat. Mass Effect was an okay third-person shooter, KOTOR‘s combat system was a bizarre take on real-time with pause, and Jade Empire‘s action was fine, but uninspired.
You put up with the mediocre fights because the characters and story are compelling. But over the years, the studio’s skillset has flipped. It’s no longer a best-in-class storyteller, with its recent efforts being eclipsed by genre leaders like Obsidian, Larian, CD Projekt Red, ZA/UM, and others. But it has become a great action studio, to the extent that I’m now sticking with its games for combat more than anything else.
If this is what BioWare is now, it should lean into it. Take those excellent combat systems and put them in levels that actually feel like they were made for single-player games. Let me fly around a wide-linear level with interesting secrets to find and structures designed for layered vertical combat. Give me arenas that enable more interesting movement, a la God of War Ragnarok. Throw a wider range of reactive elements in each combat encounter so I can electrocute my enemies when they’re standing in water or coat them in toxic goo from a green barrel.
BioWare has lost touch with what made it great, but the good news is it found a new talent in the process. Lean into that. Don’t give us another mediocre RPG with great action combat. Just make a good action game.
