After it endured a decade of development hell and heaps of culture war bullshit, it’s a shame more people haven’t played Dragon Age: The Veilguard. (That’s not to even mention the restructuring at BioWare that followed in the wake of the game’s release.) Publisher EA says about 1.5 million people played the long-awaited fantasy RPG as of January, just a fraction of the 12 million that bought Dragon Age: Inquisition 10 years prior. Despite all that, The Veilguard is still a really solid action RPG that should have marked a clean slate for BioWare after the studio spent years getting out from under the live-service and open-world misfires that plagued games like Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Now EA seems to be squeezing any remaining players it can get out of it, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be free for PlayStation Plus subscribers in March.
The Veilguard is the headliner alongside some other good selections like Sonic Colors Ultimate and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. Each game will be available to Plus subscribers on March 4, meaning you can add it to your collection so long as you keep your membership. On March 3, the February games will cycle out, meaning if you haven’t saved Payday 3, High on Life, or Pac-Man World Re-Pac to your collection, you only have a few short days left to do so.
I’m excited for more people to play a game that pretty much rejuvenated the Dragon Age series in my eyes, after I’d grown jaded toward BioWare’s fantasy series in the decade between Inquisition and The Veilguard. But I’m also annoyed at the inevitable bad-faith controversy that will follow the decision to make the game free just a few short months after launch. EA dragged BioWare through the dirt as it rebooted the game multiple times and the team still managed to get a game that spoke to the studio’s strengths out the door. The Veilguard being a BioWare-ass RPG when it could have easily ended up more live-service slop if EA had its way is a miracle, and all the publisher has done since its launch is throw it under the bus. Yes, there’s plenty to pick apart and criticize, but The Veilguard is exactly the type of game BioWare should have always been making, and here we are offering it up as a free PS Plus game when it failed to meet unrealistic expectations.
Anyway, if you’re a Plus subscriber, play Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Even with its flaws, it’s now an important game in the grand scheme of BioWare’s history, potentially representing the last time some of that studio’s defining talent gets to create something together.
