Heading into Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a bit of a shock for longtime fans who have been following the fantasy franchise since its earlier days. The game doesn’t use the Dragon Age Keep, an app that players could use to track their past decisions made in other Dragon Age games — decisions that could end up paying off in unexpected ways in a new title. This browser app allowed players to whip up a save state by going over both major and minor decisions that could then influence events in a forthcoming game. But Veilguard has abandoned the Keep altogether, narrowing the world state down to three major questions. This ended up working out narratively better than I expected, and it’s less of a loss than I feared.

The Keep tracked the decisions made by the Hero of Ferelden (the protagonist from Dragon Age: Origins) and Hawke (from Dragon Age 2), which could set up some very different........

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