It’s almost a decade since the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition, and just over three months since Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s gameplay trailer gave everyone a real peek at what’s to come. Now, with the imminent release of the fourth game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels like a proper torchbearer in BioWare’s dark fantasy RPG tradition, and Screen Rant played five action-packed hours of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Dragon Age releases over the years were often met with their own share of skepticism and trepidation – more so than its storied sci-fi counterpart Mass Effect – thanks to a proven habit of reinventing itself at every turn. Dragon Age: The Veilguard follows suit with a spirited action-adventure foundation, complete with input combos, a massive skill-tree, perfect dodges and ripostes, and, yes, an elaborate narrative that dives further into the world of Thedas. It has the most reflex-based action in the franchise, to the point where a cynic might dismiss it as Dragon Age’s Final Fantasy XVI, but that's underselling the experience, which still carries plentiful Dragon Age classic storytelling and chaos.

A New Dragon Age Means New Characters and Old Favorites

Players Can Finally Create A Qunari Avatar in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the world's storied lore has already deepened tenfold. The fourth game’s narrative centers on the actions of the “Dread Wolf” Solas, an elven god who sets a fresh adventure in motion that ties readily in with the old. As an added bonus and series first, the horned Qunari are now available for character creation alongside elf, dwarf, and human lineages, all with the sliders and physical presets modern players have come to expect.

Three potential classes offer rogue, warrior, and mage options to choose from, each with their own unique specializations. It technically boils down to nine possible class combinations to start with, and that’s before digging into faction selection to establish some backstory, personality, and dialogue nuances, let alone skill tree upgrades. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s character creator is unsurprisingly the best in the franchise, and watching those detailed faces animate during cutscenes provides a perfect sense of how far the technology has come since Inquisition.

Fresh out of the character creator and I'm face to face with mercenary adventurer Rook, off to interrogate a barkeep for info alongside companion Varric Tethras. The crew seeks an audience with Varric’s associate Solas, who's enkindled a raucous ritual to destroy The Veil, the liminal barrier separating The Fade from the physical reality of Thedas. And yes, technically, Solas also created The Veil in the first place, so let's just say that his exact reasons and expectations remain threateningly obscure.

Solas' Hideout Is Now Yours

A Look At Dragon Age: The Veilguard's New Dreamlike Hub, The Lighthouse

After a brutal scrap through Minrathous and the horde of creatures now rampaging out of The Veil, Solas’ ritual is disrupted and everything goes belly-up. Rook and Solas become bound by blood, sharing a nebulous dream-chat before the team awakens safely in The Lighthouse, a mystical locale in The Fade which becomes Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s formal hub. Here, players can explore the Escheresque grounds for secrets and lore, catch up with (and eventually romance) a growing party of companions, and upgrade gear, before assembling at a collection of Eluvians to instantly warp to other regions of the land. Also: you can hug a baby griffin, but that's neither here nor there.

The Lighthouse feels like it would be the turning point in the game, giving way to freewheeling exploration, but the flow of our preview kept everything primarily on the rails for the duration. It's a little unclear if this is entirely by design, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels much less like an open-world canvas to conquer than any of its predecessors, although the preview hinted at some eventual moments of increasing agency. Absent of a large map to un-fog, the individual areas I played did have their own detours and secrets, with bonus treasure chests, puzzles to decipher or ignore, and other interactive alternatives. And, incidentally, not a single boring fetch quest to be found.

Classes and Companion Tactics Fuel Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Spicy New Combat

The Return of the Ability Wheel Feels Different With Veilguard's New Action-First Approach

The best news about Dragon Age: The Veilguard is that its combat is as fun as it looks and mostly pays off the concept's gamble so far. The challenge quickly increases after the prologue, spawning larger waves of enemies in varied configurations, including Darkspawn of all sizes, Venatori cultists, blood mages, and impressive boss set pieces.

I started off as a rogue with high mobility, spectral dodges, and a magical bow and arrow; noting that all three classes have some form of projectile. Enemy attacks are clearly telegraphed but designed to confuse and discombobulate the player, which plays well with Veilguard’s agile combat and always felt busy but readable.

Companions can be triggered to create additional openings for player attacks (or each other's), with Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s ability wheel highlighting any combos available for the current party configuration. Returning scout Lace Harding has a quick bow, Neve Gallus casts spells, and Antivan Crow Lucanis is a dashing rogue assassin with daggers, and all can be guided with the wheel, but never directly.

Of course, it's not just about the menus, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s action feels responsive and exciting using any chosen class and the multiple builds found therein. The conversational trees, romance options, and divisive choices are certainly all prominently present and ed for, but the game truly is as uniquely action-forward as its recent trailer implies.

Are Faction Backstories Impactful In Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

Details About The Six Factions In The Game Remain Murky, But They Do Factor Into Dialogue and Events

Other Dragon Age tweaks were subtler than its combat upgrade, but still recognizable. The mood icons that appear in the dialogue wheel return, but feel a little more precise and informative during conversations with companions. There doesn’t seem to be an entrenched binary morality system or the like, just invisible relationship bars, as players must eventually disappoint and/or devalue some companions in favor of others to move the plot along. One decision I'm not at liberty to reveal was quite shocking, and drove an entirely understandable wedge into the party.

I also utilized my faction backstory at key points, including at a Veil Jumper outpost where we could upgrade weapons; presumably, had I not chosen this faction at the start, that wouldn’t have been available to during exploration. Each faction also seems represented by the potential of the party, but it’s hard to tell if a player's choice in this regard will automatically draw their favor.

There are six total backstories in Dragon Age: The Veilguard to draw from, offering plenty of roleplaying variety and potentially unknown access later. Each backstory also introduces a few minor buffs, like an advantage against certain enemy types or a buff to crit damage, but these gameplay quirks ittedly seemed minor.

Final Thoughts on the Dragon Age: The Veilguard Preview

It’s interesting how the very things that have me most excited for Dragon Age: The Veilguard may put off some longtime fans. The shift to a firm action foundation may open up the series to a subset of players who would otherwise skip over a RTwP fantasy RPG, which is arguably what Dragon Age has always been, albeit with a lot of visual bells and whistles.

In most cases of design, adding something big means replacing something else. Here, what was primarily missing in my time with the game were intricate multi-tiered quests. Eluvians send Rook and their companions off to new locales, but objectives were always straightforward: save someone, save a town, break someone out of prison, invariably fight a boss. Conversations still steer the ship, but I didn’t get any feel for creative individual side quest design, or how they might integrate into this fantasy adventure.

Of course, this was just a staged preview of what’s to come, and it’s possible that BioWare primarily wanted previewers to experience the delightful combat it's clearly proud of. In that sense, it's mission accomplished, because all I wanted to do after five hours was dive back in, experiment with other builds, and take on Thedas’ hardest new encounters. If past history is anything to go by, this sample of the complete Dragon Age: The Veilguard experience is holding a lot back, and I'm excited to see what's next.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 31. Screen Rant was invited to attend a special event at EA in Redwood City for the purpose of this preview.