Dragon Age: The Veilguard came out yesterday, and it certainly seems like there was no shortage of folks looking to dive back into Thedas, as BioWare’s big fantasy thing quickly stole the crown to become BioWare’s biggest ever Steam release.
No doubt to the delight of CEO Andrew Wilson, who was banging the drum for Veilguard having “breakout potential” earlier this week, the game hit a concurrent player high of 70,414 yesterday according to SteamDB. That outdid BioWare’s previous best of Mass Effect Legendary Edition with 59,817, and some of EA’s recent single-player high marks, like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s all-time peak of 67,855.
As of writing, Veilguard sits at 31,439 concurrent players and is just outside the top 25 of Steam’s most played games list, ahead of games like Baldur’s Gate 3, EA Sports FC 25, and Helldivers 2. These numbers are, as ever, only for one storefront on one platform, so we’ll have to wait and see what things look like on console.
Among the players who’ve jumped in so far, it looks like there have been some long, hard hours put into the game’s character creator, with both Twitter and Reddit being home to a whole bunch of Rooks that could very easily pursue modelling careers if the whole leading a party of adventurers thing doesn’t work out for them.
Don’t worry though, not everyone’s managed to create someone that should be showing you what you’d look like in some very expensive trousers or a jumper that somehow has three separate v-necks. I’m glad to report that at least some players have had to run straight to a mirror after realising they’ve made some unfortuate mistakes in their face-sculpting.
The most common malady? Seemingly weird forehead/nose bridge ripple that looks and bit-vaginaey and can suddenly become more prominent in cutscenes. “Had this happen with my Rook too,” one player wrote in a thread about the phenomenon, “Went to the mirror and made the brows slightly further apart and it helped greatly. Don’t have to move them much either, just a little.” Another suggested that they’d dealt with their by “playing around with the nose bone slider”. So, your Palpatiney vibes should only have to be temporary. Phew.
If you’re in need of a bit of helpful guidance in terms of building your Veilguard character, make sure to consult our guides to the best starting classes and factions to pick, and if you’re still on the fence about playing the game, check out our review of it.