The short answer is yes. If you trust me and my reviews, feel free to bounce right now and go enjoy yourself. If you still need convincing, then I’m sure I can manage that. The game doesn’t do a great job of selling itself unless you’re already on the Dragon Age train and looking for your next destination. After all, most trailers for it showcase grand, sweeping events that are mostly exciting as references to past games and older characters (and sometimes things that were specifically avoided in these past games). If you don’t already know who Solas and Varric are, you might not care much about seeing them in opposition. If you haven’t followed the Dragon Age games for their decade and a half run, you might not have a reason to care about the arrival of what might be some Elven gods. Sure, it’s all tons of pretty typical fantasy and RPG type stuff, but most of it doesn’t really make an impact without history or greater context (which I can provide for you). Still, it’s a pretty good video game, taken on its own merits, and absolutely worth your time on that front alone. If you’ve played other Dragon Age games and just aren’t sure you want to continue? Then it is worth your time even more so.
Continue readingDragon Age: The Veilguard
Spoiler-Filled Thoughts On Veilguard Right After Beating The Game
In case the title wasn’t clue enough, this post is going to contain spoilers for the end of Dragon Age: The Veilguard pretty much throughout the entire thing. This little preamble paragraph won’t have any (nor will the full game review I’ll be posting next week), but you continuing to read this before bailing out to avoid spoilers is REALLY risking it. You’re playing with fire here. Just head out before I have enough words to make sure no preview of this post contains any kind of reference to the end of the game or my feelings relating to it. Which is pretty much now. You’ve been warned!
Continue readingSpoiler-Free Thoughts On Veilguard Right Before I Beat The Game
I’ve almost finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I’ve explored every map, found every chest (well, the ones included in the counts for each map since I’m positive I missed a few of the chests from the special areas you can only access during certain quests), completed all of my companion quests, gotten all of them up to level nine (saving Harding, my Rook’s partner, who is level ten because I take her everywhere with me), and even gotten an hour or so into the final quest. I’m almost finished with my first playthrough, though I suspect I’ll keep playing it through again as the next year passes. There’s a lot I want to explore in the game, still, and while most of the big decisions haven’t felt that consequential yet, I’m interested to see how they all play out anyway. Plus, I still need to romance the other six companions since there isn’t a single one of them that I didn’t fall at least a little in love with during this playthrough. I just, you know, had to stick to Harding in order to fulfil a dream almost a decade in the making (since I couldn’t do more than flirt with her in Inquisition, which was criminal). I’ve been having a lot of fun, even if I do have to admit that I’ve been playing it as much as I have been not because I enjoy it that much (I enjoy it plenty, though, just to be clear), but because I desperately need to escape life right now and don’t really want to leave myself with extra time to think about things. As far as games go, though, I don’t think I’ve played one in a while that drew me in as deeply as this one has.
Continue readingI Finally Beat Dragon Age: Inquisition Just In Time For Veilguard
Well, I did it. I beat Dragon Age: Inquisition’s final bit of DLC, thereby completing the franchise, before the official release time of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. As I’m writing this, there are still four hours left before I can start downloading the game, so the victory isn’t as clean or as neat as I’d like. No victory is clean or neat or entirely complete when you’ve stayed up until at least 2am every night prior and then just didn’t sleep during the final night. It’s not quite pyrrhic, but definitely not a victory I feel super great about getting. I mean, that doesn’t invalidate my win or anything, but this so-called win is just a silly little goal I set for myself after talking about it with my Dragon Age “Book” Club (which might even include actual Dragon Age books someday, who knows?). I feel proud of having done the thing, but I wish I also hadn’t filled my upcoming day (the day I’m writing this, October 31st, a week before you’re reading it on November 7th) with as much stuff as I did. I’ve got a blood test (which I’ve been fasting for, meaning I did all this on no sleep and no caffeine in the last 20-ish hours), breakfast out with myself after that (for caffeine and food following the fast), my Veilguard download to start, early voting to do, and then physical therapy in the early afternoon. I was originally planning to go to a Halloween party tonight, but I don’t think that’s going to work out [turns out it worked out. I went and had a nice time being around people for a couple hours. And, you know, doing literally anything that wasn’t a Dragon Age game]. Even if I still wanted to go despite being tired, I don’t think it’s terribly safe for me to drive across the city twelve hours from now [I rallied and had no problems], in the dark. Just feels like I might be tempting fate at that point, even if I can have as much caffeine as I’d like once I’ve gotten the blood test [I had a normal amount].
Continue readingThe Last Day Before Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out
I’m writing this about a week ahead of time (I’m still slowly recovering my buffer) and I have no idea if I’ve gotten close enough to the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition that it might be a reasonable goal to finish it before the fourth game in the Dragon Age Franchise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, comes out. That was my initial goal, months ago during the summer when I first made these plans, but so much has happened to derail that plan that what felt like a decent amount of buffer space has slowly slipped away from me. I mean, I even had a two-week period where I barely touched the franchise because I was so burned out from a mixture of sleep deprivation and work demands that I couldn’t over my dread at the thought of returning to Inquisition for the first time since 2017’s failed attempt to replay the game. I’ve overcome that, though, as I’m writing this (technically I overcame it weeks ago, but I’ve also overcome ALL my hesitancy to play the game), and am approaching the one-hundred hour mark (I’m in the mid-seventies right now). It actually feels like clearing the whole game and its DLCs might be achievable now, since I can absolutely melt every boss I encounter and I’ve made it through the biggest of the world maps in the base game. I don’t know how long the three DLC pieces are going to take me and I am saving them for a bit further down the plot line, but I think it might truly be possible if I can actually use my final weekend well. Still, all I’ve got is a pile of plans and the desire to feel hopeful about literally anything, so this might be wishful thinking on my part. I’m sure the version of me editing this the day before it goes up will have a better idea of how achievable that goal is [I don’t], but right now it feels like it might be within my grasp despite my fears of the week prior. Especially because I’m taking days off and can spend more time than usual playing video games in the last three days before the game releases since I won’t be doing any overtime.
Continue readingGaining Steam On The Dragon Age Hype Train
Well, I’m back on the hype train again, but at least I know when my stop is this time. Finally, after what feels like along time but is probably only a couple months at most, we have a release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard: October 31st. Halloween. Which means that, in my little group of enthusiasts, I won the betting pool for when the game would come out (my guess was mid November and no one guessed earlier than I) and now have Bragging Rights I’m never going to use. It also means that it won’t come out for two and a half months, which might BARELY be enough time to play Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and all of the DLC I’ve apparently owned for nearly a decade and never once played. My “book” club has resigned ourselves to putting all our actual books on hold until sometime this winter as we try to blast through all of these games and then the new one in time for what might not wind up being monthly conversations. After all, that two to three hours of talking is time we could be spending on Dragon Age games. It’s going to be tough to do, if I’m completely honest, since I’m not sure I’m going to really enjoy this kind of focused gaming binge. I might wind up streaming again to help me keep up the pace since that helped immensely with getting through Breath of the Wind in just over a month, but that might be more bother than I can muster. The downside to streaming is that it’s difficult to focus on the game itself (a problem I don’t have in BotW) and it is rather demanding to stay that social and verbally active all the time. I’d probably get more game time in a day if I just played by myself.
Continue readingI’ve Accidentally Gotten On The Hype Train For Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Despite a years-long (nearly decade-long, actually, given that it started in the year or two following the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition) effort to avoid getting swept up in the hype for a new video game or movie, I’ve fallen victim to the excitement around the latest entry in the Dragon Age series: “The Veilguard.” I missed the initial announcement, so I was a little late to last week’s party, but I apparently follow enough Dragon Age fans on Bluesky that I couldn’t help but run into people talking about it. Since it initially seemed like not a whole lot of information, I decided to take a peek. From there, I’ve slowly slid from my place of peace and balance to my current position in the deep end of the Hype Pool as people keep talking about it, as my book club and I turn toward playing through the Dragon Age franchise, as the Dragon Age social media accounts post more and more about it, and as I’ve slowly given up on trying to keep my cool. After all, I’ve been a fan of Dragon Age games since one of my friends in college got super excited about the second one and introduced me to the series as a result (for which I will forever remember her, even if we’ve fallen out of contact at this point). I have plenty of other series that I’ve enjoyed more and franchises that will always get me to buy the next game, but there’s nothing quite like the release of a new Dragon Age game to get me excited about video games. An excitement that, unfortunately, doesn’t always last past the start of playing the game, but which is still fun to indulge all the same.
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