Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches this fall

BioWare is announcing the release date for Dragon Age: The Veilguard and sharing a new trailer to commemorate the occasion. Players will be able to return to Thedas — the name of the game’s world that is simultaneously a clever acronym for The Dragon Age Setting — on October 31st, more than 10 years after the release of the previous game, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Oh man, there’s some lore going on in this new trailer. Up until now, fans assumed that Solas, a companion from Inquisition who went rogue during the events of the game’s Trespasser DLC, would be the main bad guy. But this trailer confirms a burgeoning community theory that Solas is just a small fry compared to the game’s real big baddies — the Elven gods.

BioWare announced Veilguard back in 2018 but shared very few substantive updates until 2022. In the intervening time, some senior talent left the studio, including general manager Casey Hudson, executive producer Mark Darrah, production director Mac Walters, and senior creative producer Matt Goldman. Several employees, including several BioWare veterans, were also lost to layoffs.

Development on Veilguard was also impacted by changing trends in the video game industry. After the critical and commercial failure of Anthem, BioWare’s MMO-style action RPG with flying exosuits, BioWare’s parent company EA canceled the planned multiplayer elements for Veilguard in hopes of capturing the kind of success enjoyed by other EA-produced single-player games like Jedi: Fallen Order.

Veilguard will be available for preorder today for $59.99 on PC and $69.99 on Xbox and PlayStation. Though the long development cycle, layoffs, and departures have fans concerned about the potential quality of the game, Veilguard arrives when single-player narrative games are experiencing huge success, most notably 2023’s game of the year, Baldur’s Gate 3. Comparisons between the two are inevitable, but based on this trailer — we are so very back.