Navigating the Unseen: Embracing Life’s Nuances
13th December
Greetings! Welcome back to our well-established segment where we share a brief overview of some of the most significant video games we’ve been enjoying recently. This week, we appreciate temporary rule modifications within a game, explore a real-life advent calendar in some fashion, and work towards the conclusion of a lengthy fantasy journey.
Catch up on previous installments of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox Series X
This week, I’ve been reviewing my Xbox version of Spotify Wrapped—the tool that lets you see how much time you’ve spent playing video games this year and which titles are your favorites. While my preferences weren’t a huge surprise (an astonishing amount of Fortnite and another 90 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3, obviously), I was quite astonished by the amount of time I’ve already invested in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
To be clear, I haven’t yet finished The Veilguard. I fully plan to, possibly next week when I manage to carve out some free time, but at this moment, based on Eurogamer’s handy list of main missions, I believe I’m only about halfway through. And I’ve already clocked in at 45 hours. Have I seriously spent nearly two whole days playing? I suppose so—I’ve averaged about an hour each evening for many of the past month. But what exactly have I been doing? Is everyone else taking this long?
I feel like I’m progressing through The Veilguard at a leisurely pace, not just in the immediate context of my gaming sessions squeezed in between life’s other delightful distractions, but also in how I navigate its universe. I do sprint occasionally, of course, because traversing the Crossroads and locating the right Eluvian portal to each location would be absurdly time-consuming. However, when I do find myself walking through these environments, I genuinely stroll, unlike many other games where I feel pressured to run.
The Veilguard is visually stunning, and its expansive areas are skillfully crafted to guide players towards specific locations while conveying a sense of freedom. This isn’t truly an open world, unlike the Inquisition’s format, where you might climb a hill and find no meaningful rewards. The Veilguard’s locations feel curated, their confined spaces heightened by a spectacular view whenever you’re making your way to something significant.
Additionally, I am, of course, participating in all the side quests. I have a fairly solid idea of where the game is heading—I can see the faction reputation bars that I need to fill, and I’m somewhat of a completionist, particularly when it comes to BioWare games. So, sure, 45 hours in and definitely another 45 to go. But that’s perfectly fine—I’m enjoying my exploration! I really don’t want it to end.
-Tom
Path of Exile 2, PC
I’m very excited about Path of Exile 2 (as you may have gathered from my early access review of Path of Exile 2). There’s so much thoughtful design in the game. One element I’m currently alternating between enjoying and feeling frustrated with are the Trials of the Sekhemas, which are challenges you need to complete in order to unlock your ascendancy—your class specialization—because they encapsulate so much of what the game embodies.
Firstly, they have a captivating environment. The Trials are situated in an enigmatic temple carved into a dark canyon, from which the braziers emit light as you move through, akin to what furnishings typically do in frigid temples. There’s little to no explanation regarding how it functions upon your arrival, which might be a feature of early access or perhaps a defining trait of Path of Exile 2—it’s hard to ascertain (I’m perfectly okay if it’s the latter). You just encounter an equally mysterious NPC—who you recently battled against—and venture in. It’s eerie, it’s dark, it’s ominous.
Secondly, the Trials alter the rules, and I love this. ARPGs can become tedious when gameplay loops get too repetitive, so finding a way to introduce variability works exceptionally well.
The Trials turn the game into a sort of Roguelike experience where you must complete various types of trials across a series of rooms that you navigate through on an adjacent map, culminating in a boss fight at the end. However, instead of merely losing health in a traditional sense, you also lose Honor, which is a resource essential for the Trials. And should your Honor drop to zero, you will fail. It doesn’t matter if you have a full health bar—you’ll still fail and have to start over.
I still haven’t defeated the main trial—these processes scale up directly into the endgame as you progress. It has taken me a considerable number of attempts to grasp how it all works and the best way to approach each room and understand the effects (buffs) and afflictions (debuffs), and experiencing the game as a melee character adds another layer of complexity to the final boss fight.