Dragon Age: The Veilguard will likely live and die by its companions, so it makes sense that developer BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts would dedicate an entire week to introducing them.
Starting Monday, fans got a much more detailed look at the seven companions who will accompany the player character, Rook, throughout the open-world adventure: Harding, Davrin, Bellara, Taash, Lucanis, Emmrich, and Neve.
To begin our Companions Week, let us first reacquaint ourselves with the #Veilguard.
First, we have Lace Harding – The Scout
[Caption text: Harding’s skills with the bow are unmatched – her arrows can stagger enemies and shred armor.]#DragonAge pic.twitter.com/0zyQkjij00
— Dragon Age (@dragonage) August 26, 2024
There are new, excellent character profiles over on EA’s website that include short bios and a list of abilities, but here are some highlights — or rather, my highlight. The companion I’m drawn to immediately is Neve Gallus, a private detective and ice mage with an allegiance to the Shadow Dragons. There’s also Emmrich Volkarin, who is a 2-for-1 necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred (there are no details on him just yet, unfortunately).
Fans can learn even more about the companions thanks to Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance, an eight-part podcast series that debuts this week and will feature each companion and their voice actors.
BioWare also released more fun information over the weekend. The social media team posted the results of an internal survey concerning the developers’ favorite class to play on X (formerly Twitter). Rogue was the top pick (specifically the veil ranger), followed by mage and warrior (the least popular being the champion). It seems like the newer archetypes are the most popular, which isn’t too surprising. We also got a breakdown of Rook’s warrior combat, including basics and how specific abilities work.
Do note that there are minor spoilers in all of these blog posts and videos, so if you want to go into Dragon Age: The Veilguard blind, now is the time to log off until the game releases on October 31.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.