Dragon Age: The Veilguard is changing how players carry over choices from previous games. BioWare’s fantasy RPG series has previously followed in the footsteps of Mass Effect and let you import your world state so you could have some continuity in your Dragon Age II and Inquisition playthroughs. This could include choices like if you sided with a faction in a holy war, or smaller decisions like who you smooched while trying to save the world. Dragon Age II read your first game’s save file, and Inquisition had a separate online app that let you meticulously flag nearly every decision, big and small, on the off-chance that they might be relevant in a future game. The Veilguard is making things a bit more simple and will just ask you about a few key decisions in the character creator.
In an interview with IGN, creative director John Epler explained that the choice to trim things down to three key decisions was made so the team could meaningfully represent those choices. Much of The Veilguard takes place in northern areas of the series’ world rather than the ones in the south featured in the first three games, and the status of things in those other regions isn’t necessarily relevant to the new game’s story.
“Our philosophy when it comes to integrating past player choices and world states is wherever possible we want to avoid contradicting what has happened before. We never want to invalidate your choices,” he says. “For Dragon Age: The Veilguard, among many reasons why we moved to Northern Thedas is it becomes a little bit more of a clean slate for us. There’s not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what’s happening in Northern Thedas. And we don’t have to speak directly to things like who is the Divine? Because again, that’s happening in the South.”
“There’s never a sense of, ‘Oh, that decision doesn’t exist.’ But maybe we don’t touch on it in this particular title,” he says. “Much like Inquisition didn’t touch on every decision from Origins, much like DA2 didn’t touch on every decision from Origins, it’s kind of in that same vein of we’re not going to contradict it. We just may not always reference it directly.”
We got to play seven hours of Dragon Age: The Veilguard earlier this month, and part of that demo included messing around with the character creator. First, you make Rook, your new hero in The Veilguard. Second, you make the Inquisitor, the protagonist of Dragon Age: Inquisition. After you’ve finalized their appearance, you’re asked a few questions about the Inquisitor’s story so they can be properly recognized in your Veilguard playthrough. Here’s a rundown of the choices that carry forward:
Friendship and Romance
This one’s straightforward: Who did your Inquisitor have sexy sleepovers with while trying to stop the god-wannabe Corypheus? While The Veilguard won’t have any restrictions in its romance, Inquisition did back in 2014, and we can confirm that those will still be intact in the sequel. So if you’re making a male Inquisitor, you won’t be able to put that he was in a relationship with Sera, or that non-elf female Inquisitor romanced Solas. There’s also an option to say the Inquisitor didn’t get with anyone, if you, for some reason, chose the lonely road.
The Fate of the Inquisition
The next two choices specifically refer to Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, which capped off the story two years after the events of the base game. Trespasser is all about a dispute between the Inquisition, the religious institution known as the Chantry, and local governments who fear the organization is becoming too powerful as an independent, militarized force. At the end of the expansion, the player is asked to either disband the Inquisition or surrender control of it to the church. There are compelling reasons for either, as disbanding would keep the Inquisitor’s inner circle small and less open to infiltration while operating under the church would give them far more resources for the incoming threat but open them up to traitors in their ranks.
The Hidden God
In Trespasser, the Inquisitor meets with Solas, the party-member-turned-antagonist who was secretly an elven god called the Dread Wolf. The DLC reveals he plans to tear down the Veil, a barrier between the real world and the spirit world known as the Fade, in an effort to bring the elven race to its former glory. Doing so will result in death and destruction for the rest of the Dragon Age universe, but Solas believes this to be an atonement for erecting the wall in the first place to seal away the ancient, corrupt elven gods of old. In their final conversation, the Inquisitor is able to tell Solas one of two things: they will stop him by any means necessary, or they will find a way to save him from himself. How this will manifest itself in The Veilguard remains to be seen, but it’s ultimately determining whether or not your old hero still views Solas as a friend or just a threat to the world.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 31. We played a whole lot of it earlier this month, so before you go, be sure to check out our extensive preview after seven hours of playtime.
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