14 Things We Noticed In Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Combat Showcase

Runes are used to augment equipment in the Dragon Age games, and they’ll be making their return in The Veilguard. The Warrior showcase shows the player equipping runes that are effective for crowd control, such as one that weakens enemies within a six-meter radius of Rook. The synergy between your class, ability loadout, and your runes will be key to making sure you have an effective build.

Next up we got a look at the skill tree, which includes stat buffs, abilities, and specialization branches. The showcase highlights the Champion specialization, which gives a Warrior defense-driven abilities, so it’s meant to be a frontline tank. This is further underlined by acquiring Heavy Armor Mastery in the skill tree to allow Rook to wear the most powerful armor sets in the game.

The sequence BioWare shows here includes Darkspawn enemies, who are susceptible to fire damage, but they don’t bring a mage character like Neve to cast fireballs. We instead see Rook equipping burn-based equipment to add a fiery element to their physical attacks. Given you can only have two party members with you in The Veilguard, it’s nice to know you won’t have to default to having one of every class to handle certain situations, as that would be more limiting.

Here’s our first look at the party selection screen, which uses Dragon Age: Inquisition’s gorgeous tarot card-style art, but also has a Mass Effect: Andromeda-style render of the characters. The trailer includes the Grey Warden Warrior Davrin and the Antivan Crows Rogue Lucanis, who I’m leaning towards for my own party when I play The Veilguard because I also plan to make them fight for my love and affection.

When we saw The Veilguard at Summer Game Fest in June, one thing I noticed about the action-oriented combat is that Rook seems to have a Batman: Arkham or Marvel’s Spider-Man-style alert above their head when an enemy attack is incoming. Initially, I wondered if this might be exclusive to the Rogue class, as the dual-dagger playstyle is meant to be nimble and quick on their feet. But it looks like this also applies to the Warrior class.

The Veilguard seems to prioritize fast-paced action, so even if the Warrior class is meant to stand their ground and control the crowd, we can see Rook rolling, parrying, and getting in and out of a scrap with relative ease as a shield-wielding Warrior with passive abilities like having a fire element added to their weapons by parrying incoming attacks. So the class seems like it’s been fine-tuned for the action pivot.

Yes, you can use the kick ability to reenact that one scene from 300. Rook is shown kicking a Darkspawn off the side of a cliff, and it looks pretty damn satisfying to pull off if the circumstances are right.

Davrin and Lucanis are shown having three abilities just as Rook does through the Ability Wheel, and pulling up this menu during fights has a fair bit of intel to help you in a fight. Combo opportunities between Rook and their companions are labeled, enemy vulnerabilities and resistances are laid out, and you can command your party to use either specific abilities or just direct their attacks toward a targeted foe.

As you and your enemies tussle in The Veilguard, you’ll notice they have a stagger bar above their life bar. Focusing on an enemy and hitting them with a barrage of attacks will put them into a staggered state once this bar fills, which will open them up to greater damage or a takedown finishing move. This can be increased by inflicting status effects like the Overwhelmed debuff via Davrin’s Heroic Strike attack.

If you’ve got a shield-based build, you can throw your metal frisbee like Captain America. That’s pretty cool, in my personal opinion. This Warrior Rook had spec’d their build to include the Shield Volley passive ability, which allows it to ricochet off multiple enemies. If you don’t think that’s the tightest shit, I can’t help you.

I don’t know if we can pet Davrin’s griffon friend Assan yet, but if the Grey Warden is in your party, he has an ability called Death From Above, which calls down the creature to attack enemies from a distance. That shit rules, and I’m feeling like Davrin having a pet is already endearing me to him before the game is even out, which is an unfair advantage in this love triangle I’m thinking about weaving through my playthrough. Lucanis, get a pet. Even the odds.

Previous Dragon Age games have had ability combos that allowed players to use abilities to set up devastating combos, but The Veilguard seems to codify it a bit further by baking primers and detonators into its systems. The example shown in the trailer is using a Crystallize rune to encase a group of enemies in ice, then having Lucanis follow it up with an area-of-effect ability called Eviscerate. The Ability Wheel highlights this as well, so it won’t always be a matter of trial and error to see if attacks can work together.