This post will contain very minor spoilers (like location names and non-specific references to dialogues). I will do my best not to spoil any story at all, because spoiling stories… spoils stories.

So, I’m Rook. This time, I’m a mage. I played through my first completion as a ranger. If you’re interested, I find playing a mage much more fun than the ranger, but much of that could be accredited to the fact I’m not learning the basics of mechanics and can concentrate on simply playing the game.

I’ve just landed in Minrathous for the umpteenth time, and am walking through a particular location to get to my current quest goal. In doing so, I pass several NPCs who are making the exact same comments they’ve been making since Act 2 began. I’m close to end game at this point. I must have heard that conversation over 100 times. The same two lines. Both NPCs can be engaged in dialogue, so I do so, hoping it will lead to something that will let them move on with their frozen in time banter.

One of them responds with “Rook…” and the other offers some other throwaway line that doesn’t matter at all.

I head down the stairs and find Rook suddenly spouting lines from the end game quest, which is sitting in my available quest list ready to go, but which I certainly haven’t accepted yet as that is a point of no return quest.

And that’s when it hits me… I’m bored.

Not by the mechanics, which are very fun even if Bioware has gone insane with the aggro and can’t fix a setting to save its life (most of the minor bugs Bioware claimed it fixed in its last patch – like equipment screens showing incorrect information – still exist. The advanced combat setting to adjust enemy aggro appears to be a slider connected to no functionality at all.

Not by the end game, which I thought was fantastic and will enjoy playing through a second time with a version of Rook much improved over my first run.

I’m bored by everything in between. I’ve finished all my companion stories and unlocked their perks. The romance options are so thin in story and development that they offer no incentive to try someone new. There are no options to start random conversations with companions that might lead to a new quest or bit of story I haven’t already touched before.

I feel much like I’m playing through Mass Effect 2 for the hundredth time. ME2 taught me everything I need to know about how to complete a “perfect” run in Veilguard, even the first time through as the ME2 format was obvious from the beginning.

The second (ok… second and a half) time through a brand new release, and I feel like I’ve been playing it forever. There’s nothing new to discover in the lore. Nothing new to discover with the character stories. Nothing new to explore except a few random side quests that are no doubt fun, but do nothing for the overall story other than award XP that allows for advancement.

With a promise of no new Veilguard content from Bioware, there isn’t even any reason to pick through the story looking for hints as to where it will go next. By the time there’s new DA content I’ll likely be pushing 70. And that’s assuming there’s new DA content ever again. I’ve run across gamers on Steam that claim to be in their 70s (and I see no reason to doubt them), but I have to wonder if I’ll be able to manage the mechanics in another 10-12 years, or if I’ll even remember Rook by then (if such a recollection is even necessary).

Dragon Age: The Veilguard left me with no reason to look forward to another visit to Thedas. It left me with too little story variation to make replaying as much fun as it should be (given past Bioware RPG titles), and it left me with too little variation in combat strategies to care much about trying a third version of Rook as a warrior.

Class A primes Class B that primes Class C that detonates Class B that detonates Class C that detonates Class A.

It’s rock-paper-scissors. A game mastered by most kindergartners.

I honestly think the Trespasser and Jaws of Hakkon DLCs from Inquisition took about as much time to complete as a full run of Veilguard and offered way more in the way of story and lore.

Overall, Veilguard is an extremely fun game to play through once or maybe twice. Other than that, unless you’re hoping to find Veilguard as an e-sports option, I don’t see a point in playing it again and again like previous Bioware titles.

Was the Deluxe version worth the $90 I pre-paid for it? Hell no. Given that the difference between standard and deluxe is confined to a few cosmetics, the deluxe version is a rip-off entirely. And with nothing new … EVER … coming down the pipeline to make that purchase have some value.

My advice, if you want to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard – don’t buy the deluxe version. Adjust your expectations. Veilguard still feels like a BioWare RPG to me, but a thin one that mostly offers conclusions with any promises of continuation at all. There won’t be a reason to purchase any “Ultimate Edition”, as there won’t be any new content to include as “ultimate.” And the chances of a Game of the Year edition seem slim given that games IMDB rating of 5.6/10 (as of this writing).

A lot of the negativity towards Veilguard is undeserved and more political than game-based. That doesn’t mean the game is above criticism or consequences at the sales box.

I’ve tried Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim and found it to be the most boring game I’ve EVER played. The Witcher series is better, but I still never really got into them. I had every line of Baldur’s Gate 3 practically memorized before it started to even run smoothly, and anytime I think I might enjoy a new run through of it I leave that airship and every single thing I need to do to complete the rest of the game suddenly pops into my head, which makes me abandoned the play… been there, done that. Liked it (more or less) eventually. Likewise with CyberPunk 2077… by the time it was mostly stable, I’d run through so many incarnations of V that doing another one seemed like busywork.

The point is this: I played Baldur’s Gate 3 in pre-release for 8 months before it dropped. I played CyberPunk 2077 while it was till a glitchy mess. Both of these games had extremely problematic and buggy releases. Both offered alternate sexualities (Well, CD Projekt Red’ idea of it, which is a joke… you get Kerry or Judy. Other than that, no homo.)

It took me over a year of playing through both games to reach the point of boredom I’m already at with Veilguard. Which is, it’s still a great game and I’m glad I played it. Past tense.

Veilguard hit the stores with zero pre-release to the general consumer less than a month ago.

With the implication of one DA release per decade as BioWare shuffles devs between Dragon Age and Mass Effect projects, there is nowhere near enough of an impact with Veilguard to make anything that might happen in Thedas a decade from now matter to me at all.

I hope the next Mass Effect game leaves me with less of a feeling that I’m left adrift in a cold empty patch of space upon completion than Veilguard has managed.