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Dragon Age: The Veilguard was fully revealed with a flurry of exciting activity this week, with BioWare releasing a trailer, some gameplay footage, and a bunch of information. But as the promotional material focused on wooing the mainstream with dazzling action shots and a cast of characters, it naturally led to one key gripe among fans: Is this still an RPG?

Naturally, we were also interested in that. The hands-on part offered glimpses of an amazing character creator, interesting dialogue choices, and some consequences for those choices – all RPG staples. But what about the battle? How about good old-fashioned RPG progression and character growth, which is in many ways the foundation of the genre?

After seeing the demo, we had a chance to chat briefly with Dragon Age: The Veilguard director Corin Boucher – who immediately revealed that he’s a true RPG systems geek. I feel like we could sit and talk about classic RPGs and their mechanics for hours; she is one of us. In our quick chat, she reveals how The Veilguard’s development, growth and skill tree work – revealing detailed information not present in the demo shown so far. Here is our chat.

RPG Site: So, can you just talk to me in general terms about… in this preview, we don’t even see the menu, right? So can you talk to me about where the game is and what it’s like in terms of this RPG progression, from a hardcore RPG fan’s perspective?

Corinne Boucher: Incredibly deep! So if I have to contrast Mass effect vs Dragon Age, for example… I really look at Mass Effect as an ARPG. Big action, little RPG. We are almost the complete opposite of that.

So after a few missions you unlock the skill tree right away. Each level up you get skill points of course. The skill tree is absolutely huge and is specific to your class. So when we talk about specializations, we know that skill trees can be overwhelming for players as well. So, what I love – I will try to paint a picture for you….

When unlocked, imagine an almost giant spider web like image. And if I’m a mage, right in the very center is the core of the Mage set.

RPG Site: So I’m going to cut you short here and say something – this may resonate with you, it may not – but when you say this, I think… Final Fantasy X Sphere Grid.

Corinne Boucher: Highly influenced! Absolutely. Final Fantasy X – one of my eternal games. I will tell you that 12, especially the Zodiac edition, is my favorite. The level of choice in abilities, passives, in our case also traits – I’d say the amount of customization is more like that. The organization is more like a Sphere Grid.

So Final Fantasy XII might be in my top three favorite games. I am heavily influenced by this when it comes to our development. But if you, if you want to paint a picture, the grid of the copy is more… it’s not an exact match, but it’s closer.

What we’ve done to make it more accessible though is that each of the specializations are on the outer edges of the grid.

RPG Site: So you start from the inside and work your way out, but you get to choose which direction to work in?

Bouche: Yes, I know where to start. I have an idea of ​​what specialization looks or sounds the coolest – and that really helps players chart their course so they don’t just get lost in the wild.

RPG Site: That’s why you bring this up in the beginning – you show not only the core classes, but also what the specialization options are, right there in the character creator, right? Because you want people to know “oh, I’m a warrior, I have this specialization up here, this one down here,” and you choose your direction.

Bouche: And we even put in some helpful labels along the way. Thus it is divided into three sections in addition to specializations. In the case of Warrior, for example, you have a section that is more defense-oriented, one that is more weapon-oriented, and one that is more ability-oriented. So what you can do trying to get to, say, the Reaper specialization is to go… Instead of going up through Defense in Reaper, I’ll go down through Ability in Reaper.

RPG Site: It’s a great, really easy way to sell it, really – talking about the license network, the spherical network… people, our audience, they definitely understand that. Can you talk about, within that, the range of skills and how often you’ll be getting new stuff?

Bouche: So skills are unique to each class. Each level you get a skill point, there are other activities on the site to get a skill point… We are very player friendly; you can refund the last amount, refund the full amount…

We have a level cap of 50. One of my frustrations with some other games that have similar skill tree systems is that going into specialization can take absolutely all of your skill points and then you have nothing else.

We are the exact opposite. You get into your specialization mid-game and then you can really branch out.

RPG Site: And what about the party members?

Bouche: They also all have unique skill trees. Now, these – we don’t want to overwhelm the players. So their skill trees are organized around their individual abilities. So when you unlock their full set of abilities, they each have a skill tree full of choices where you can get an autonomous use, or reduce the cooldown, or add extra effects to the ability.

RPG Site: What is the breadth of actual active abilities for them? For example, are the characters pretty much prescribed with a handful of basic abilities, or is it a larger number where the player chooses which ones are on the ability wheel?

Bouche: So every follower, every companion has five basic abilities. There are decisions you can make along the way that add mechanical changes to each ability.

Now, back to your question – Neve and Belara are wizards, so they share two basic magical abilities with each other, right? However, the other three are unique to a class or character. Neve is an ice mage, Bellara is not – so Neve will have ice-specific abilities that are unique to her.

RPG Site: I’m getting a signal that we’re out of time, but first, just on this topic – basic stuff. There’s a growing trend of some games making elementals just visual stuff… but you mentioned ice magic there. So are the elements a factor in combat? Or does it not matter?

Bouche: Oh yeah. Oh, it really does matter!

RPG Site: Good! Thank God for that. [laughs] Thanks for your time – hopefully we can get nerdy again before launch.