The Steam Spring Sale may be over but, like rain in Scotland, the discounts never truly end. If your wallet survived the tsunami of cheap games over the last couple of weeks, then you can currently grab BioWare's fantasy RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard at a 50% discount.
That's not all, either. To coincide with the sale, publisher EA is offering a free cosmetic DLC, somewhat clumsily named Rook's Weapons Appearance Offer. Annoyingly, the store page doesn't actually explain what said Weapons Appearance offer entails, simply stating that "The items will appear in Rook's Room when you log into Dragon Age: The Veilguard" for players who download it.
However, a Steam review by wicked_Italian (what a name) explains "The new weapon is called 'Watchful' and I wouldn't recommend anyone who has trypophobia to equip any of the weapon skins." Trypophobia is an aversion to repeated patterns of clusters of small holes, an aversion which, having just been bombarded with images of clusters of small holes thanks to Google, I can entirely understand.
In any case, this intriguing DLC pack is available until April 9, and is free to download for anyone who already owns the game or buys it between now and then. The discount on The Veilguard itself, however, ends March 27.
It's curious that EA is offering anything new for The Veilguard at all, with the publisher seemingly washing its hands of the game after its commercial underperformance. EA set a target of 3 million sales for BioWare's RPG sequel in its first two months, around the same number that the original Dragon Age hit in its first four months on sale.
Unfortunately, The Veilguard only reached half of that target. EA subsequently laid off at least half of BioWare's staff, while refocussing developer around a single project, the as-yet untitled Mass Effect 5. All of which suggests that EA is done with Dragon Age for the foreseeable future. The Veilguard itself received a flurry of patches in the wake of launch, but as of January's Update 5, BioWare stated the game was now in "a stable place" and as such the studio was "moving to monitor for any game breaking bugs".
So, does this cosmetic pack represent a slight change of heart? Or is it simply EA trying to coax a few more players into investing in the game? The Veilguard discount is part of a larger Dragon Age franchise sale, with the other three games in the series currently available at 80% off (Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition for £5/$6 is particularly tasty), so I reckon it's more likely to be the latter.
For what it's worth, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not a bad game by any means. Lauren thought it sanded off a few too many edges off the characters and decisions in her review, but otherwise found it a thrilling action-RPG. "The Veilguard nails action combat and exploration and visual grandeur, but in a series about defining a hero with morally ambiguous choices, the choices here are too easy to make."
Given how chock-full of games last October was, I can understand why players might have skipped The Veilguard at full price. But it's easily worth the £25/$30 that it's currently available for.
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