First, let me be clear: I owe EA, BioWare, and the Dragon Age series absolutely nothing. Just because I have played all of the Dragon Age series to date and consider this series to be one of the great video game events of my life does not entitle me to anything, and it is certainly not up to me to decide what direction the next installment in the series, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is going in any direction is certainly not up to me. [But after seeing the new trailer, my personal concerns about this sequel have reached DEFCON 1. I am worried, deflated, and in fact, thanks to my hopes and wishes, asking myself if I matter in the roadmap for this series to continue to be financially successful, and at the same time praying to the makers right now that this cinematic introduction of "The Veilguard" is not representative of the actual game

PC Gamer colleague and Dragon Age fan Robin Valentine, upon seeing the trailer, asked, "What's the point of having a trailer for a game that is so good? And he's certainly right. In fact, it's fair to say that it looks like a Battle Pass expansion for a game tied to a Marvel movie. For example, what's up with the trailer's cartoonish, Pixar-like art style? The cheesy freeze-frame superhero-style intro. Or the overall tone, which is at best bland and at worst comedic. It's so far removed from previous Dragon Age cinematic trailers that if they hadn't shown Varric and Scout Harding for a moment and one of them had said "Darkspawn," I wouldn't have thought this was actually a Dragon Age game. So that's what the plan was: did BioWare and EA want to use this release to recalibrate the series into something completely different, to give it a clean slate?

I'm not misremembering either. Compare it to the trailer for Dragon Age: Origins - Sacred Ashes and the trailer for Dragon Age: Inquisition - The Hero of Thedas. The difference in art style, music and tone is striking. Not only is the art style a far cry from the cartoon style, being darker and more mature, but the atmosphere conveys a world of danger and consequence that is consistent within the fiction. In these trailers, the threats within the story seem very real and serious, thus immersing the viewer in the characters and plot of the game. The trailer for Marilyn Manson's Dragon Age: Origins actually showed the game and kept the experience consistent, even if the choice of music was a major mistake.

The trailer for "Vale Guard," on the other hand, has a teen-oriented feel, with superhero-like cartoon characters performing Technicolor feats of non-threatening heroism and cheerfulness. When Bella, the new character nicknamed "Veiljumper," is pulled back into the Fade by a Cthulu-style tentacled superbeast, as if dragged to a terrible doom, we see her face comically wide-eyed and open-mouthed in shock, but this There is no sense that this actually matters. Ha. Yeah, she'll be fine.

Or, and this is another laugh-out-loud performance, there's a moment when a skeleton with cartoonishly glowing eyes ambushes the two unknowing warriors from behind. Ha ha. He's behind you. Or there's the scene where the player character, the unnamed hero, gets jumped by 10 guards all at once, causing a pile-up, and then all the guards are crushed by the falling chandelier, but the hero escapes unscathed. Ha ha... Ha.

Look, things change. To keep things fresh, things should definitely evolve. But even so, there are moments when something changes so much that it no longer has the same identity (or potential quality) as the thing that started it and feels alien to its heritage. For me, watching the trailer for "Veil Guard", that moment feels like it is rapidly approaching.

When I saw the trailer for last year's groundbreaking fantasy RPG and PC Gamer's highest scoring game of all time, "Baldur's Gate 3," I immediately felt at home, even though the visuals had changed dramatically from "Baldur's Gate II" and the characters had been redesigned. I felt like I was back at home. Larian Studios understood the brief very well and created a game that felt fresh while still paying homage to its vast heritage and beloved world, characters, and lore. It was a game that could be enjoyed by those, like myself, who played "Baldur's Gate I" and "Baldur's Gate II" many years ago, as well as by completely new players.

However, when I saw this trailer for "The Veilguard," I did not get that feeling at all. Not only did I feel that this game would be a completely different experience from anything I had played before, but the game was clearly not made for me, a legacy gamer on the roadmap to the economic success of The Veilguard, but for hero shooters and superhero movies, but for gamers much, much younger than I am. And that's pretty cool. There are some really great games and movies in those genres. I've enjoyed a few myself. But Dragon Age has never been one of those, and it remains to be seen if "The Veilguard" will resonate with gamers who like that kind of thing. If Dragon Age adopts their character and tone, and in the process, abandons some of its own identity, will that be enough to win their hearts and minds?

Maybe I am wrong and this trailer is not that representative of the actual gameplay of The Veilguard. Needless to say, I will be channeling the first gameplay of "The Veilguard" when it is released tomorrow at 8 am PST.