Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Don't be distracted by the relative technical competence of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The real evidence of its ten year development hell lie in its wildly underdeveloped characters and surface-level plot. Every story feels like it's missing a majority of the necessary components to mean something, to make us care. The game takes a classic Bioware structure of 'get a team together' with the associated quest structure but has the lightest touch that makes its 50+ hours amount to very little. It's no coincidence that the only aspect of Veilguard's narrative that has impact is Solas, because he's the legacy of much better, more interesting games. Equally, when the game overtly relies on Dragon Age's rich history (rather than clumsily cherry picking from it) there's a genuine sense of weight and intrigue. This is rare, though, and certainly not enough to recommend it to players to enjoy Dragon Age for its strengths (the complications, the edge, the unpredictability), or really any gamer that values thoughtful storytelling and strong characterisation.
It does look nice, as you may've seen. It's approach to environmental design - a smaller arena style rather than sprawling open-world - really worked for me. You backtrack a lot, but rather than detriment this makes these places feel more alive and evocative. I was often delighted by undiscovered corners of a map that I either stumbled upon or was led to by side quests. It's a shame then that player movement is so janky. Veilguard has parkour aspirations - you jump, climb and slide - but your character moves like a tank and animations constantly interrupt each other and frustrate momentum. It's another example of how the game presents something superficially intriguing but alienates in execution.
Combat is fine. It's wholly an action system with skill cooldowns, elemental damage and a primer/detonation mechanic (i.e. one character primes with a skill, another detonates) that doesn't feel particularly sophisticated. Fights do feel intense, demanding your attention most of the time, and the designers put some thought into how the environment complicates encounters. As a contrast to normal traversal combat animations are fluid and satisfying. They often allow a reptile-brained gratification in their impact and flashiness.
So, Veilguard offers us a pretty bog-standard action RPG with aspirations to be a snappy cinematic universe style experience. It does this with reasonable competence. What it sacrifices in service to this is what the franchise built its reputation on - unusual, often disagreeable characters; a rich untrustworthy history and setting; moment-to-moment plot that operates on numerous of levels. Veilguard disappoints not in the sense that it fails to satisfy a prescriptive idea of what Dragon Age should be, but rather it ignores or doesn't understand what makes it so compelling. Those approaching this with an open mind will probably have a fine time. Those hoping for a meaningful continuation of a game series they love are as well watching selected YouTube highlights. This is a Dragon Age running on fumes.