Dragon Age: The Veilguard Director Talks RPG Systems, Skill Trees, and His Final Fantasy XII Inspiration

Dragon Age: The Veilkeeper has been fully revealed with a flurry of exciting activity this week, with BioWare releasing a trailer, gameplay footage, and plenty of information. But since the promotional material aims to woo the general public with dazzling action sequences and its characters, it has of course sparked an outcry among fans: is it still a role-playing game?

Naturally, this interested us too. The hands-on offered insight into an incredible character creator, interesting dialogue choices, and some consequences of those choices – all staples of roleplaying. But what about the fights? What about old-school RPG character progression and growth, which in many ways is the foundation of the genre?

After seeing the hands-on demo, we had the opportunity to briefly chat with Corinne Busche, director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, who immediately says she is a true enthusiast of RPG systems. I feel like we could have sat down and talked about classic RPGs and their mechanics for hours; she is one of us. In our brief chat, she explains how The Veilguard’s progression, growth, and skill tree works – revealing granular information not present in the demo shown so far. Here is our discussion.

RPG website: So, can you tell me basically about… in this preview, we don’t even see the menu, right? So, can you tell me about the state of the game and what it looks like in terms of RPG progression, from the perspective of die-hard RPG fans?

Corinne Busche: Incredibly deep! So if I had to contrast Mass Effect against Dragon Age, for example… I really consider Mass Effect to be an ARPG. Big action, small RPG. We are almost the complete opposite of that.

So after a few missions you immediately unlock the skill tree. With each level up you get skill points, of course. The skill tree is absolutely huge and it’s tailor-made for your class. So when we talk about specializations, we know that skill trees can also be overwhelming for players. So what I like – I’ll try to paint a picture for you….

When unlocked, almost imagine a gigantic spider web-like visual. And if I’m a mage, at the very center is the heart of the Mage kit.

RPG website: So I’m going to interrupt you briefly here and say something – this may resonate with you, it may not – but when you say this, I think, uh… Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid.

Corrine Busche: Heavily influenced! Absolutely. Final Fantasy X – one of my all time. I will tell you that the 12, especially the Zodiac edition, is my favorite. The level of selection of abilities, passives, in our case also traits – I would say the level of customization is more analogous to that. The organization is more similar to the Sphere Grid.

Final Fantasy XII could therefore be in my top three of my favorite games. I am heavily influenced by this when it comes to our progression. But if you, if you want to paint a picture, the spear grid is more… not an exact match, but it’s closer.

What we’ve done though, to make it more accessible, is have each of the specializations on the outer edges of the grid.

RPG website: So you start and you work outwards, but you can choose which direction you work in?

Busche: Yeah. I know where I’m going to start. I have an idea of ​​which spec looks coolest – and it really helps players chart their path so they’re not just lost in the wilderness.

RPG website: That’s why you lay this out at the beginning: show not only the base classes, but also what the specialization options are, right in the character creator, right? Because you want people to know “oh, I’m a warrior, I have this specialization here, this one here”, and you choose your direction.

Busche: And we even put help tags along the way. It is therefore divided into three sections in addition to the specializations. In the case of Warrior, for example, you have a section more oriented towards defense, another more oriented towards weapons and another more oriented towards abilities. So what you might do when trying to get to, let’s say, the Reaper spec is go… Rather than going through defense to Reaper, I’m going to go down through ability to Reaper.

RPG website: It’s a really great, very easy way to sell it – talking about the licensing grid, the sphere grid… people, our audience, they certainly understand that. Can you tell us about the scope of your skills and how often you will get new things?

Busch: Skills are therefore unique per class. At each level you get a skill point, there are other activities on the site to get skill points… We are very player friendly; you can pay off your last one, pay it all off…

We have a level cap of 50. One of my frustrations with some other games that have similar skill tree systems is that going to specialization can take absolutely all of your skill points, and then you have nothing else.

We are the exact opposite. You get into your specialization around the middle of the game, and then you can really branch out.

RPG website: And what about party members?

Busche: They also all have unique skill trees. Now, these, we don’t want to overwhelm the players. Their skill trees are therefore organized around their individual abilities. So when you unlock their full suite of abilities, each has a skill tree filled with choices where you can get standalone use, reduce cooldowns, or add additional effects to the ability.

RPG website: What is the extent of their real active capabilities? For example, are characters fairly prescribed with a handful of base abilities, or is it a larger number as the player chooses which ones are on the ability wheel?

Busche: So, each follower, each companion has five main abilities. There are decisions you can make along the way that add mechanical changes to each ability.

Now, back to your question: Neve and Bellara are both mages, so they share two basic mage abilities, right? However, the other three are unique to a class or character. Neve is an ice mage, unlike Bellara. Neve will therefore have ice-specific abilities of her own.

RPG website: I am advised that we are out of time, but first, just on this topic – basic things. There has been a growing trend in some games to make elementals just a visual thing…but you mention ice magic here. So, are the elements a factor in combat? Or does it not matter?

Busch: Hell yeah. Oh, this is really important!

RPG website: GOOD! Thank God for that. (laughs) Thank you for your time. Hopefully we can have some fun again before launch.