What you need to know
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a new Dragon Age action RPG from BioWare that's scheduled to release on October 31, 2024. It's available for $59.99, and is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5.
- On Thursday, NVIDIA announced it's also launching on GeForce NOW, the company's cloud gaming service.
- It also revealed that from now until October 30, there's a special promotional offer available that gives you the game for "free" if you purchase a six-month subscription to the GeForce NOW Ultimate tier for $99.99.
- Ultimate is the most expensive version of GeForce NOW, and gives you access to RTX 4080-powered rigs and servers, the option to stream games at 4K and 120 FPS, use DLSS 3 and NVIDIA Reflex while doing so, and play for up to eight hours in each game session.
What might end up being one of 2024's best new roleplaying games (RPGs) is officially heading to one of the industry's best game streaming services, and you can even get it for "free" if you take advantage of a special promotional offer.
Thursday, the technology firm NVIDIA announced that from now until October 30, copies of the upcoming, highly anticipated action RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be included with six-month purchases of GeForce NOW Ultimate — the most expensive tier of the company's cloud gaming service. First launched four years ago, it's grown to become one of the most popular options for streaming games you own on PC platforms, including Steam, the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, the Microsoft Store, the EA app, and GOG. You can sign up for it here (note that both new and existing members can take advantage of this deal).
On top of giving you Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the Ultimate $99.99/six months of game time offer lets you stream your games from RTX 4080-powered rigs and servers, complete with the ability to use NVIDIA DLSS 3 for performance-boosting upscaling and frame generation and NVIDIA Reflex for low-latency gaming. You can also play at up to 4K resolution and 120 FPS, with no ads to deal with and a very lengthy session length cap of eight hours.
Considering that Dragon Age: The Veilguard itself costs $59.99 to buy standalone, this is a great way for anyone who enjoys gaming on the cloud to pick up the latest entry in BioWare's beloved fantasy franchise. Note that the game's release date is scheduled for October 31, so it'll be available to play immediately after NVIDIA's offer is taken off the table in a few weeks.
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Notably, The Veilguard is the first new Dragon Age game in a decade, and a direct follow-up to the award winning 2014 title Inquisition. First announced in 2022 as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, it was renamed The Veilguard earlier this year and is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC through Steam, the EA app, and now GeForce NOW. NVIDIA's service will also allow you to play it on Mac, TVs, iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.
Little is known about the game's overall story, though the gist of the plot is that you and seven companions — dubbed "the Veilguard" — are tasked with stopping a pair of malevolent eleven gods from destroying the world over the course of an action-packed adventure. In typical action RPG fashion, players use a combination of melee attacks, magic spells, and defensive actions like dodging or parrying to overcome their foes, with three different classes and a variety of specialization subclasses giving them lots of playstyle options.
- DEAL: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3-month pre-paid cards are just $25.89 at CDKeys, giving you three months for the price of two even after the recent price increase to $19.99/month
All in all, it definitely has the potential to be one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games, and I'm looking forward to checking it out as someone who's never actually played Dragon Age, but has always been curious. I probably won't take advantage of this offer to get it since I have a very capable gaming PC and have no need for cloud gaming, but if you do, it's worth considering.
You won't be able to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard on the competing Xbox Cloud Gaming service at launch since the game won't be available through Xbox Game Pass. However, if The Veilguard eventually makes its way to the standard tier of EA Play (it's very likely that it will), it will become Xbox Cloud Gaming-compatible since Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gives you access to EA Play. This may also happen if it's included as part of the upcoming Xbox Cloud Gaming "Bring Your Own Games" rollout at some point, though as my colleague Jez Corden wrote in that linked article, there will likely be certain limitations.
