Can you control your party members in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

BioWare gamesare loved for many reasons, but ask anyone who their favorite party member is and you’ll be treated to a soliloquy about Garus, Iron Bull, Morrigan, or any of the other fantastic companions we’ve had the pleasure of meeting. You could easily argue that the companions are the real main characters of the games beyond the actual created protagonist. We get so much more personality and insight into them through conversations, and occasionally romance, that it is hard not to grow attached.

Unlike Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition both let you assume direct control of your party members in battle to take full advantage of the gear, skills, and abilities. Considering you are always stuck as the class you pick for your main character, this gives you a way to experience other playstyles easily without having to start the game over. We already know that The Veilguard is mixing things up with its class system, but can you test out how other characters play by controlling your party members? Let’s take a look.

Can you control your party members in The Veilguard?

Sorry, but you’re stuck as Rook

Sadly, BioWare has officially confirmed that you will not have full control over any of your other party members in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Game director Cornnie Busch spoke to Edge Magazine about the issue, stating that “We very much wanted the companions to feel like they, as fully realized characters, are in control of their own actions…I will admit that, on paper, if you just read that you have no ability to control your companions, it might feel like something was taken away.” Bush goes on, “But in our testing and validating with players, what we find is they’re more engaged than ever.”

While it is true that The Veilguard will be a much more action-focused title, it does still allow for players to pause the action to select skills at their own pace. Whether or not you take BioWare at its word when it claims that the choice was made to lend more personality and believability to its characters, or if there was some other reason this feature didn’t return, will be up to you.

Another reason Busch points to for cutting this feature is based on the more complex combat system. They state that The Veilguard “is a much higher actions-per-minute game. It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried allowing you full control of your companions as well, what we’ve found is it wasn’t actually adding to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character.”

We have seen other games, such as Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, manage to pull off a fully controllable party in a complex combat system, but BioWare is sticking to its guns that this is the best decision for the game. Whether you agree or not, this won’t be a decision that will be changed later.

You will still have some input on companions

A system much like Mass Effect

While you can’t fully control and direct your party in The Veilguard, you can still issue orders for them to use specific skills or abilities at your command. When pausing the action and bringing up the skill wheel, you will have a full list of both your and your two companions’ skills. From there, you can direct them to trigger it as soon as the action resumes. This will let you pull off coordinated combo moves that sound similar to the system used in Mass Effect where hitting an enemy with multiple abilities could multiply the damage dealt.

The rest of the time, your companions will be fully AI controlled and totally autonomous. We just hope they’re up to the task, and we don’t end up shouting at the screen for someone to heal us like a certain infamous duck mage.