Dragon Age The Veilguard is just as much an RPG as its predecessors

There is a jump button Dragon Age: The Veil Guardian. Press it and the game’s customized protagonist, Rook, will jump up. Using the same button, Rook leaps over waist-high barriers and climbs ledges, traversing the fantasy world of Thedas with acrobatic ease. It’s a small detail, that jump button, but combined with dozens of other design choices, it sets The Veilguard apart from more traditional RPGs. The latest from BioWare, a studio responsible for classics of the genre ranging from the original Baldur’s Gate games to the Mass Effect series to the first trio of Dragon Age entries, is a significant departure from the team’s house style .

Dragon Age: The Veilguard functions and is presented like a standard third-person action game. There are light and heavy attacks in combat. There’s a parry button and an “ultimate” ability that you can use by pressing down on both thumbsticks on a controller. The camera hangs behind Rook’s back as they move, capturing the world so that walkable paths or incoming groups of enemies are easy to spot. Look at the screen for a few seconds without context and The Veilguard looks like the new God of War games or The Last of Us.

But at the heart of the latest Dragon Age is its emphasis on player-influenced storytelling, which is distinctly “RPG.” This becomes clear shortly after launch, as Rook’s customization process not only allows for extensive aesthetic choices, but also decisions about the character’s personal background – which of The Veilguard’s warrior, treasure hunter and revolutionary factions he belongs to. Branching paths are presented throughout the game, with the player deciding which version of the plot they wish to pursue or, more specifically, how their priorities and views define their version of Rook. These important decisions are not as numerous as in, say, the first Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins, but they have a major impact on both Rook’s characterization and the path that The Veilguard’s story takes.

This kind of reactivity is at the heart of role-playing, a genre whose dimensions have become increasingly difficult to define for many years. For example, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released back in 2007 and brought with it an extremely influential template for action game design. Although multiplayer mode can be boiled down to an endless series of frenetic gunfights, it also includes progression features that affect how those gunfights work. Players earn experience points for killing or helping their team achieve objectives. You level up and unlock new weapons, character abilities and other equipment. This is essentially a role-playing game design, even if you don’t think of it as such, because again, Call of Duty’s multiplayer is all about providing fast-paced action.

So it’s a little harder to define an RPG as being solely about leveling up and strengthening a character with new equipment and abilities. Trying to fit every game so neatly into a genre – or arguing about what belongs in it and what doesn’t – ultimately requires meaningless contortions. It is better to look at the central focus of a particular work and determine what a game is based on based on the type of experience it wants to offer players.

The Veilguard is a role-playing game, even if that definition stretches beyond what it might have meant a decade or two ago. Although the customizable tower has a more distinct personality than some blank slate game protagonists, his dialogue responses, appearance, and combat abilities are all determined by the player. Call of Duty is still a shooter or action game, as it emphasizes reflex-intensive shooting over its RPG elements. The Veilguard remains a role-playing game because, despite its action-packed combat, it places an emphasis on player-led storytelling. If that means that a game like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, where players can choose their avatar and decide between earning experience points and unlocking skills, are also RPGs, then that works too. The genre is broad enough to accommodate a wide range of expressions of its core theme.

It also makes sense that Bioware’s production would push the boundaries of the genre. Since its second installment, Dragon Age has established itself as a series whose tone and design sensibilities vary greatly from game to game. Each entry represents the fantasy setting of Thedas in a different way, offering an aesthetic, plot focus and combat style influenced by its predecessor, but remaining distinctly different. It is only natural that “The Veilguard” would continue in this spirit and differ so much in terms of look and feel from its predecessor “Inquisition”. The core of the series consists of thematic passages that persist across entries – the nature of religion in a world of living, sometimes physical gods; Historical hostilities and cultural differences are put aside in pursuit of a common goal – not a set visual or writing style or the design of battles and level exploration. The first Dragon Age plays more like a repeat of the Bioware-developed Baldur’s Gate games, and The Veilguard incorporates more direct action influences into its design, but they have a lot in common with each other.

Game genres can be just as fluid as series identities. The role-playing game, like Dragon Age The Veilguard’s take, is a genre so nebulous that it can be expanded and reconfigured to include other influences. It can retain so much of its formal foundations that it doesn’t matter much whether the characters on screen take turns preparing their attacks or jumping across battlefields to execute them with a button press – in short, an RPG has a jump button or not .