It’s nearly impossible to talk about Dragon Age: The Veilguard on certain sectors of social media without being overrun by people who have a vested interest in seeing the game fail. There are plenty of criticisms to levy at the fourth entry to BioWare’s fantasy RPG series, such as its lack of choice continuity from previous games and Whedon-esque quips sprinkled through its dialogue. And if you’re a CRPG diehard, you’re probably not too thrilled by it pivoting hard into an action RPG. But most of the time, these criticisms are buried under (or wielded by) people who are being pretty blatant that their real issue is that The Veilguard features queer characters who are actively presenting as such. To which, I have to ask, have you played a Dragon Age game? If you think this is a sudden pivot, I’m doubtful we played the same games.
If you open up the user reviews on critic aggregate site Metacritic, you’ll find dozens of reviews from people calling The Veilguard every variation of “forced woke propaganda” a thesaurus would provide. Google user reviews are pretty much the same. There’s not even an attempt to intellectualize the bigotry. Some other platforms like Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation’s storefronts fare much better and notably require you to own a game before you can rate it, so it’s not quite so easy to drop a hateful comment drive-by. I imagine the average bigot isn’t willing to pay $60 to $70 just to post something hateful that will get taken down or caught in moderation. But some of the most readily available user review platforms on the internet are being bombarded with reviews from people who don’t even mention any other problems they might have with a game. The mere existence of queer characters is enough to merit one-star reviews. Metacritic even released a statement to Eurogamer about the clear review bombing going on
I won’t entertain the notion that queer characters existing in a game is a negative as a good faith critique. Even the attempts to intellectualize such criticism via claims that its “ahistorical” to include modern-day terminology like “non-binary” in a fantasy setting falls apart: Dragon Age is an entirely fictional universe with flying lizards and people with horns. Is there perhaps a discussion to be had about how the story of Taash, the non-binary Qunari party member who is figuring out their identity, was handled? Sure, but I think it’s probably queer people that are trying to have that conversation, rather than the ones who are calling it “woke” and dogpiling on queer people who so much as mention The Veilguard on social media.
But what I do want to address is the revisionist history that Dragon Age wasn’t always writing stories that not only included queer characters but actively engaged with their storylines in a way that built out the world of Thedas. The first game, Dragon Age: Origins, included two same-sex romance options in Leliana and Zevran, with both acting as conduits through which we learned about the intersections of sex, religion, and gender as early as 2009. Dragon Age II is one of the most prolific examples of the “playersexual” romance that makes all its romance options bisexual. Dragon Age: Inquisition has an entire questline about a gay man nearly being subjected to a magical form of conversion therapy, while also including the series’ first exclusively gay companions and a prominent trans side character. Each of these games has progressively included queer characters and, perhaps even more notably, queer struggle within its world. Having a trans party member and the ability to confirm your protagonist is trans is the natural progression of a series that has only gotten more queer as the real world has.
That progression of visibly queer characters and storylines has been in the face of years of pushback from prejudiced criticism. A lot of this came from people who claimed to be fans often believing that queer people getting roleplaying options were somehow taking away from straight people. This perspective ignores the fact that BioWare’s franchise has aspired to create an equal playing field for its queer players for years. BioWare even responded to that line of thinking, saying Dragon Age II’s free-for-all romances “are not for ‘the straight male gamer’. They’re for everyone.” Dragon Age is no stranger to queerness, but it’s no stranger to controversy surrounding it, either. Many of us who have been around BioWare’s orbit for decades have seen the way bigots have expressed faux concern as a thinly-veiled effort to strip Dragon Age of its queer legacy.
It’s funny to watch scenes like the above, in which Iron Bull has a frank discussion with Krem, a trans man, about how trans people are viewed in Qunari culture in the world of Dragon Age, knowing that The Veilguard would be having a trans Qunari wrestling with those questions themself. It doesn’t attempt to muddy the reality of what it’s talking about and even gives you a good slap on the wrist if you try to misgender Krem through your dialogue choices. It’s no less overt than what The Veilguard does. So what’s different now, 10 years later? The answer is not Dragon Age. In a way, it’s not angry bigots online, either. It’s the way the internet has allowed entire businesses to thrive on faux outrage by painting a video game as a boogeyman worth mobilizing against.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard hasn’t even been out a week and it’s become such a minefield to talk about. As people who weren’t even going to play the game in the first place make it a battleground, it’s got fans of the series so resistant to criticism for fear that it will become ammunition for hateful people to use against it.
The internet is broken, and when it feels like we have no power to fight about anything else, people resort to fighting about a video game like it’s activism. Those problems extend far beyond BioWare’s latest, but let’s not pretend the criticisms that Dragon Age “wasn’t like this before” are anything other than what they are. If you think The Veilguard’s portrayal of a non-binary character finding who they are, a protagonist capable of being explicitly trans, and a party of queer characters who are smooching between missions is in any way “new” for the franchise, you haven’t been paying attention.