BioWare has just revealed a pile of details on Dragon Age: The Veilguard's accessibility options, and it looks like the devs are keen to set a new standard for the venerable RPG series. I'm particular taken by the game's wide-ranging and robust difficulty options.
The Veilguard features many of the accessibility options that are becoming increasingly common in AAA games, like heavily customizable subtitles or the camera shake slider. If you've got motion sickness issues, you can add a persistent dot to the center of the screen to help your focus. There's way too much in the full blog post to list it all here, and if you have particular accessibility needs you might want to check out this rundown from accessibility advocate and consultant Steve Saylor.
The difficulty options are just as robust. The RPG features no fewer than five different base difficulty options catering to different playstyles, ranging from the "story" difficulty BioWare's always been known to include up to a "nightmare" setting for true masochists. You can change your difficulty choice at any time - unless you pick nightmare.
- Storyteller
- Here for the story.
- Keeper
- A balanced combat experience that emphasizes party composition and equipment choices over reaction times.
- Adventurer
- A balanced experience that places equal emphasis on combat, party composition, and equipment choices.
- Underdog
- Here to be pushed to the limit, requiring strategic planning and tactical decisions.
- Nightmare
- Overwhelming battles that give no quarter. Requires a mastery of combat, equipment, skills, and game mechanics to survive.
- Selecting Nightmare cannot be undone without starting a new playthrough.
- Unbound
- Customize all settings.
- Settings impact numerous aspects of gameplay. If this is your first time, consider a curated preset instead.
The custom difficulty settings let you change combat timing - presumably meaning things like parry windows - as well as enemy health and damage values, and even how aggressive the opposing AI is. Of particular note is the "prevent death" option, which lets you turn off the concept of dying entirely. These kinds of granular difficulty toggles are always nice to see, and as much as I know I'm going to just end up picking 'normal' or 'one step up from normal' as I always do, I'm glad to know the ability to break the game wide open will be there for me.
