Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the big loser, locked out of not just GOTY but RPG, Performance, and Narrative. Otherwise, there were few surprises in TGA’s picks.
The Game Awards aren’t known for much in the way of shock and surprise, and so it proved with the 2024 nominees — a fairly well-rounded list in which most of the year’s best-reviewed and best-loved games got some love.
But there was one title very striking for its (almost) complete absence: Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
The Game Awards’ voting jury snubbed BioWare’s latest game in a series of key categories where it would have been expected to compete. It secured just one nomination, for Innovation in Accessibility, which is decided by a specialist jury.
This is a surprise; as a narrative-led blockbuster in a famous series with slick production values, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is exactly the kind of game that tends to do well at The Game Awards. Its predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, won Game of the Year in TGA’s inaugural year, 2014.
Granted, the reception to The Veilguard has been mixed — and with its Metacritic rating settling at 82, a nomination for Game of the Year seemed beyond its reach (even though that is one point higher than Black Myth: Wukong, which did make the cut).
