Home / News /Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s new patch feels like goodbye ByChris McMullen 25 January 202525 January 2025
Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s latest patch is here, and it looks as if developer BioWare and publisher EA are drawing a line under this action RPG. So if you were hoping for a New Game+ or DLC, you’re very much out of luck. Barring maintenance fixes, BioWare and EA are essentially done with the game.
Isn’t that the way things work? A company releases a game, then moves on? Yes, but not normally this quickly. This is happening just three months after Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s release, and a couple of days after EA revealed it failed to meet expectations.
“With the game being in a stable place, we are moving to monitor for any game-breaking bugs should those occur. Dareth shiral!,” the patch notes read. ‘Dareth shiral!’ essentially means farewell in Dragon Age’s Elvish, which is as clear a goodbye as you could imagine.
We awarded Dragon Age: The Veilguard an 8/10 in our review, but remarked that “It’s those who were hoping that it would go back to the series’ roots that will be most disappointed.” Going by the game’s player reviews, that certainly seems to have been the case. But there are other factors involved too.
One major controversy surrounding Dragon Age: The Veilguard is that it essentially ignores all the choices you’ve made. Other games had those choices carry through to some degree, but not Veilguard, which has been called a ‘soft reboot’ for the series.
The first two Dragon Age sequels had you playing as a new character. But there was always that sense that your previous lives had some impact on the world. Barring a couple of minor choices, which you set early on in the game, all those previous adventures are brushed aside. Did you romance Leila? Sacrifice your Grey Warden to save the world? Or did you get Alistair to do the deed? Maybe you persuaded him to take Morrigan’s way out? None of that counts here.
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The patch notes ‘Dareth shiral!’ is also a little worrying for anyone expecting a new Dragon Age any time soon. It took nearly ten years to get The Veilguard and, comics aside, we doubt EA will be returning to the franchise any time soon.
The one positive about this is that it suggests that BioWare could now move onto Mass Effect 5. Despite various teaser trailers, it’s apparently still not in full production. We’ve got our fingers crossed it fares better than The Veilguard. EA is no stranger to shuttering studios, and we don’t want BioWare to be the next casualty.