the new Dragon Age will be more linear than its predecessor, but how does that affect the playing time? We’ll tell you how many hours you need to plan for.

With Dragon Age: The Veilguard some big changes are coming to Bioware’s role-playing game series. The combat system has been greatly revised and the story is also a bit more linear. However, you still don’t have to do without larger areas to explore.

Playing time of Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In an interview with content creator NorZZa, Game Director Corinne Busch and Producer Jen Cheverie revealed details about the length of The Veilguard. A “normal playthrough”, which includes the main story and a good portion of the side quests, can easily take up to 100 hours.

The developers estimate the following playing times:

  • Only the main story: 40 hours
  • One play-through with occasional to many side quests: 100 hours
  • The Complete Game (Completionist):over 150 hours

Please keep in mindthat these are only estimates of the average playing time. This can vary depending on the difficulty level or personal abilities of the players.

Given the large time differences between the duration of the main story and a 100 percent run, there seem to be many side quests and stories to discover in the new Dragon Age outside of the main quest.

How does The Veilguard compare to its predecessors?

In fact, The Veilguard surpasses its predecessors in terms of playing time. For comparison, we’ll use the information for a “normal playthrough” from the statistics page howlongtobeat.com:

  • Dragon Age Origins: 58 hours
  • Dragon Age 2: 37.5 hours
  • Dragon Age Inquisition: 87.5 hours

However, all three games have received several hours of DLC, which means that a completion run of Inquisition can also take up to 150 hours. Especially for this game, the DLC “Intruder” is almost a must, as it contains the actual end of the game.

A decision for which Bioware was criticized, by the way, and a mistake that, according to the developers, will not be repeated in The Veilguard.

We have already summarized a taste of what you can expect in the 40 to 150 hours of Dragon Age: The Veilguard in our preview. You can find the article in the box above. By the way, there you can also find out which decisions from Inquisition you can transfer to the new game.