I'll rip the band-aid off right from the get-go, I'm so crazy I'm going to talk about a bad video game. I'm insane, even.
Veil Guard? An objective 6/10, putting aside all my subjective obsession love of the franchise. Subjectively, I give it a 3/10. I must also confirm that I have, in fact, actually played the game and am not just making things up out of some weird deep-seeded outrage addiction like 90% of modern gaming discussions. I didn't finish it all the way through, but got a little over 40 hours in myself and saw my now ex play the entirety of the game, so I at least know and have witnessed the parts of the game that I didn't personally play.
What works: the combat.
What doesn't work: everything else, but primarily the RPG mechanics and the writing.
The combat is derivative for sure, as it's just every modern action brawler trope, but I cannot say it's bad. It's just bland, pure slop. There's nothing much to it but at least it's a mostly competent pastiche of better games. The combo detonations have always been a little goofy in concept to me, but they're something. BioWare really seems to like the combo mechanic considering it's been unchanged essentially from ME3 and Anthem. My biggest complaint with the combat I think is just how dinky feeling everything is; there's very little weight to any of the animations, and vey little hit feedback making it kind of hard to tell if you're actually hitting enemies most of the time. The finishers/takedown animation things also felt a little tacked on, like they only included them since the games they're copying had them. I never saw a purpose for them, considering you'd really only stagger an enemy to set them up when they were already essentially dead anyway and you could have just slapped them one or more times to finish them off regardless.
The RPG mechanics are such a massive downgrade from a series already streamlined. Even the whole 'sphere grid' design of the skills I really don't like; it comes off to me like they had a focus group say sphere grids are the hot talking point now and shamelessly skinned it as one as they thought it would help sell the game, as what they give isn't even an actual worthwhile sphere grid. There's like 3 different 'builds' essentially per class, and you get railroaded into them; that's the opposite of a sphere grid. Part of the issue is that 90% of the passive skills you unlock are things so utterly inconsequential that I often just didn't even bother spending my points until I had enough to get to the next active ability; wow, +8% damage with DoTs on enemies affected by three status effects. Wow, that's a really cool and impactful ability, really makes the game seem fun when you read it out and not at all mindless and overly convoluted. Every node is so blaise like that that it never feels like you're actually making a unique build; its all just busy work and point dumps until you get you specialization, essentially, which is the exact opposite of what a sphere grid should be. Failing grade. I also personally despise the majority of the class abilities for being really silly and lazy over-designed tropes. They couldn't think of anything to give the warrior for example, so they just gave them a dropkick and the ability to summon, uh, ghost arrows somehow and magic hammers? Are they mages now? How does that even make sense? Why is there a mage specialization where you use a 'mage knife' and an orb? Where did those even come from in the context of the series? I personally just hate that goofy ability shit in my RPG's, which unfortunately have become all too common in recent games.
It's also really sad to see the backstory faction choices having like 5% impact on the story. They kind of change some dialogue here and there sure, but it's not like any of them even give you unique content or something; every Rook meets the same factions and gets the same quests, it's just that a Veil Jumper Rook has one unique dialogue choice of like 'hey guys, it's me' that still gets you the same content.
I don't even know where to begin with the writing issues. They're just everywhere, in like every aspect of the game somehow there's some issue with the writing. The tone is just all over the place; this is something that has been slowly happening over the course of the series already, but it's obviously hit critical mass here. It's no longer a dark fantasy that subverts the common tropes of the genre, it's now just entirely those tropes. Characters are essentially now just super heroes rather than entirely normal people in the context of the universe, and they are so one-note in Veil Guard. There's also been more character assassination's than I can even mention here; Dorian is unrecognizable, Varric is just a fucking meme who spends the whole game being sleepy for some reason, Morrigan shows up then just stands next to the first areas vendor for 90% of the game despite being immensely powerful and knowledgeable in specifically what's happening here. Solas went from being an objective dick as presented in Inquisition into a completely redeemable villain who actually did nothing wrong and was just resisting tyranny the whole time or something. They even did Harding bad somehow, and she was barely a character in Inquisition; there was hardly anything to ruin. Why is she like this oddly awkward and giggly goofball in Veil Guard when she was an entirely by-the-book scout in Inquisition? I have no idea what she's supposed to be character wise in Veil Guard.
There's also blatant contradictions of the established lore, such as 70% of the reveals the game makes later on relating to the plot and the elven gods and specifically the Blight, and specifically a lot of the stuff in Davrin's side quests just don't make sense with what has been established previously about the Wardens. A really glaring one I distinctly remember is Warden Rook never having the ability to sense darkspawn. One of the first missions is when you go to a blighted village and, what a surprise, it's darkspawn. The whole lead up to it, everyone's going 'wow what's happening here?' and Warden Rook doesn't say shit which is just insane. They're a Warden, this is literally their job. Warden Rook should have such an massive, raging war-boner going on there, and yet they literally don't say a single line of dialogue until the surprise darkspawn are dropped on you. I think the game makes some silly attempt at defence there with the darkspawn being 'super, weird blighted' or some bullshit so Wardens can't sense them, which is stupid and also contradicted later when you meet the First Warden who actively talks about how the Wardens have been going around sensing these ones and killing them. This goes into the biggest issue of the writing I think, similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda; you have absolutely no agency in the story. People make decisions for you, Rook hardly ever says anything of any value or cool factor, you can't even be mildly mean to any of your companions, and nearly every attempt at character interactions falls entirely flat. I'm not unconvinced that a lot of your companion conversations in the Lighthouse or whatever the hub is called weren't Frankenstein'd from other cut scenes or earlier story treatments, as they often had that really weird disjointed feeling where the responses didn't really fully mesh with the conversation or your prompts. They often felt just a little uncanny valley. I can't recall any specific instances of this literally off the top of my head, unfortunately.
Okay, so 6/10, here me out; I think for an average person, as much as I hate to say this, this game is perfectly playable. There's room in the gaming space for easy to play slop, and I'm not going to soap-box at how sad that is as it has literally nothing to do with me and they aren't made for me. I think there's enough negatives to still knock the game down to a 6/10 as even people I've talked to who aren't big gaming fans have said the game felt kinda rough to them, and they have practically zero reference and context and are therefore the best example to draw from. Subjectively, this game is terrible of course; 3/10. There's plenty of stuff I've had to leave out of this novella that I'm sure I will rant about later, but I think this all conveyed my opinions pretty well.
Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
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