Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, and the new RPG has divided the Internet. To this end, a metric ton of criticisms have been lodged against the new BioWare game. The primary criticism is the game’s writing. In his review of the game, popular critic Skill Up summed up the problem noting that every interaction in the game between companions feels like HR is in the room. One of the reasons scenes feel like this is because the game’s writing is unbelievably sanitized, devoid of tension, maturity, and anything that truly challenges the perspective of players.
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This approach doesn’t just render scenes and interactions as sterile, but it waters down much of the lore Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition have established over the last 16 years.
Those who played these games — especially Dragon Age: Origins — will remember one of the major themes tackled was racism. And to approach the subject, the games had racist characters, spewing racism at the expense of the races like the Qunari and Elves. Dragon Age: The Veilguard doesn’t really continue this trend of the series, and fans aren’t very happy about it.
The top post on the Dragon Age Reddit page this week is a post wondering why no one is racist towards Elves anymore. Meanwhile, the comments point out the same thing is true with the Qunari as well.
“Also why is no one racist to Elves when the world ending apocalypse was caused by Elves? No way Tevinter wouldn’t be using this to justify more hate,” reads the top comment on the post.
The second top comment adds to the discourse by bringing up the same issue with the Qunari: “No one cared about me being a Qunari either. Like, Minrathous has been at war with Qunari for centuries now, and Treviso is actively occupied, and I got maybe two unique mentions of me being a Qunari? And that led to zero racial slurs.”
The declawed nature of Dragon Age: The Veilguard wouldn’t be that noteworthy if it was a new IP, setting the tone and cadence for a new series. It isn’t this though. It is the fourth game in the series, yet it feels, at times, it looks and sounds like a tourist.
“The more I play the game, the more it feels like they’re trying to distance themselves from the previous games,” reads another popular comment on the post above. “Like whatever the current team didn’t like about the world building in the past games, they removed it or hard pivoted to another direction without justifying it. The game feels very whitewashed in a lot of ways.”
