andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk)
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With Dragon Age: The Veilguard now locked in for its Halloween release, Electronic Arts is getting deeper into the specifics of the game, including most recently a rundown of the game’s difficulty settings and accessibility options.
“Regardless of skill level or ability, we want everyone to be able to enjoy the full experience and story of our game,” EA said in today’s update, and to that end it’s whipped up five “curated” difficulty levels aimed at covering all the bases.
- Storyteller: Here for the story.
- Keeper: A balanced combat experience that emphasizes party composition and equipment choices over reaction times.
- Adventurer: A balanced experience that places equal emphasis on combat, party composition, and equipment choices.
- Underdog: Here to be pushed to the limit, requiring strategic planning and tactical decisions.
- Nightmare: Overwhelming battles that give no quarter. Requires a mastery of combat, equipment, skills, and game mechanics to survive.
Self-selecting strategic masterminds-slash-tough guys should note that choosing the Nightmare difficulty level is a permanent commitment: Once selected, the only way out is to give up completely and start a whole new playthrough. Exercise caution as you see fit.
For those who prefer to pick and choose, there’s also the Unbound option which will enable players to customize individual settings that “impact numerous aspects of gameplay.” EA recommends choosing a preset for your first playthrough, but again, you do you. On top of the difficulty settings, there are a range of other options that can be used to further adjust the combat experience: Parry timing, aim assist strength, aggressiveness of enemies, and that sort of thing.
On the accessibility front, Dragon Age: The Veilguard offers adjustable UI text size and customizable subtitle text, audio aids, adjustable motion blur and camera shake, an FOV slider, and “full-screen color filters to improve visibility.” Inputs are fully remappable, input sensitivity and deadzones can be customized, and interactions that require a button to be held can be switched to tap instead.
The Dragon Age: The Veilguard accessibility portal provides a deeper dive into all the options at hand, and it looks quite thorough, but not necessarily complete: “As always, accessibility is a continuous journey and we are actively listening to feedback from the community,” EA said.
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Dragon Age: The Veilguard has over the past several months inspired mixed feelings among the crew here at PC Gamer. Lauren Morton, who actually played the game for several hours in September, thinks it’s the “BioWare comeback fans want,” while Fraser Brown worries that its rote recycling of old ideas could finally spell the end of BioWare. Harvey Randall remains unconvinced but is willing to at least futz with the systems a bit, while I continue to harp on the point that Dreadwolf was a really good subtitle, and The Veilguard is not. (I’m not really a Dragon Age fan though, I’m just throwing that into the mix as a way to continue complaining about it.)
We’ll find out who’s right in just over three weeks: Dragon Age: The Veilguard comes out on October 31.