In a move so characteristic of the embattled video game studio that it almost feels like parody, after years of fan anticipation and promises of development progress, BioWare chose to reveal Dragon Age: The Veilguard to the world with perhaps one of the most off-key video game trailers perhaps of all time.
Released to the public on June 9th as part of the 2024 Summer Games Fest’s Xbox Showcase, the first trailer for the formerly titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf…well, let’s just say it echoes the worst elements of the 2016 Suicide Squad film.
Expecting a glimpse of something that looked at least remotely like a deep, character-driven RPG with intricate dialogue options, players were instead met with a montage of the game’s roster of quick-quipping heroes, each introduced with a stylized, ‘in-your-face’ title card revealing both their name and their general job title, as played over a minor key cover of the late David Bowie’s 1977 single Heroes.
These ‘personality’ shots then ultimately culminate in a brief cinematic wherein the aforementioned heroes – Harding “The Scout”, Neve “The Detective”, Emmrich “The Necromancer”, Taash “The Dragon Hunter”, Davrin “The Warden” Bellara “The Veil Jumper”, And “Lucanis: The Mage Killer” – can be seen fighting back-to-back and showcasing their own individual abilities against an encroaching horde of Darkspawn.
To the surprise of anyone with even the slightest marketing sense, rather than excite players for the next Dragon Age entry, the trailer was so bizarrely slapped-together that most walked away believing that BioWare and Electronic Arts had ultimately turned the game into yet-another-multiplayer-hero-shooter.
So much so, in fact, that as of this article’s writing, the official Dragon Age YouTube channel’s upload of The Veilguard teaser presently sits at 35K likes to 192K dislikes, as revealed courtesy of the ‘Return YouTube Dislike’ extension for Mozilla Firefox.
Unsurprisingly, the other major uploads of the trailer aren’t faring any better than their official counterpart.
On the official Xbox channel, The Veilguard trailer holds 2.9K likes to 20K dislikes.
Over at GameSpot’s main channel, the first-look has 550 likes and 4K dislikes. Meanwhile, the upload made to the site’s GameSpot Tarilers channel holds 51 likes to 346 dislikes.
Bizarrely, all of this backlash, disappointment, and probable hits to the game’s potential sales could have been avoided had someone at BioWare just read the proverbial room and recognized their audience.
Case in point, ahead of The Veilguard‘s official gameplay reveal on June 11th, BioWare released a 24-second gameplay clip wherein the player character Rook and his companion Varric can be seen in a third-person view walking and talking through the streets of the city of Minrathous – and rather than a cheap Overwatch clone, it actually looks like a Dragon Age game!
Ultimately, players can see the full extent of just how hard BioWare and Electronic Arts fumbled The Veilguard‘s marketing when its gameplay reveal goes live tomorrow at 8AM PST/11AM EST.
But regardless of how it turns out – and there admittedly exists a chance that the results are good rather than disastrous – the reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard will forever remain in the history books as an example of an objectively bad marketing move.
