I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am bullish on “Dragon Age: The Veilguard” and I am not ashamed to defend its honor. Yes, BioWare had years of stagnation. Yes, many prominent people left BioWare's studios. Larian and the CD project sort of ate BioWare's lunch during that time. And yes, the first trailer was a bit disconcerting. Despite that, the underlying game always looked solid to me. However, if EA and BioWare had released something like today's release date trailer for The Veillguard, which will be officially announced in June, it would have saved a lot of doubt. ......

DA lovers on the PCG team are all saying that this is more Dragon Age than anything The Veilguard has ever done. The surprise return of Claudia Black as Morrigan helps to link The Veilguard to the rest of the series, and most importantly, I think it helps that this video shows more of the game. Instead of introducing us to yet-unattached companions without context or playing through the prologue, which is often the most difficult part of an RPG, this latest trailer delivers a core sample from deep within the game.

And I like what I see! There seems to be a necropolis-level sickness in the ranks of the stylish necromancer, a giant skeletal baddie straight out of Dark Souls 3. We may get our first look inside Black City, a 16-year-old staple of Dragon Age skyboxes and Codexes. I also like the great variety of fantasy environments: in addition to Minrathous, there are at least two other urban environments, autumnal elven ruins, and rocky desert areas, reminiscent of the diverse world of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but, according to the developers, with the addition of the “Veilguard,” which is a newer version of the “Veilguard. The Veilguard will not have the MMO-style open-world bloat of Inquisition.

This would have made a much better first impression of The Veilguard than what we saw in June. Even the game's companion, which got a lot of attention in the first trailer, makes a better impression here. In contrast to the heist movie-like roll call, we are introduced more organically to how we interact with them in the game, along with small snippets of how we interact with them.

This latest trailer concludes with a final pleasant surprise: an October 31 release date. This is on the early side of EA's projections earlier this month, and I had expected something as early as mid-November. We won't know for sure until we finally get our hands on the game, but the changing atmosphere of support for Vale Guard is taking root in our collective unconscious.