DISCLAIMER: This article contains major spoilers for all Dragon Age games, including Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Read at your own risk.
When the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition drew to a close, my Inquisitor reunited at last with his old friend Solas, revealed to be the Dread Wolf, Fen’Harel, an ancient elven god of trickery and mischief. After pleading with him to rethink his plan to destroy the Veil, the magical fabric of reality separating the mortal world from the realm of spirits and demons called the Fade, Solas told his old companion that he had to follow through with this plan, even if it meant plunging the mortal world into darkness and infesting it with demons. He did so almost sadly, having become much closer to the Inquisitor than he had ever intended. The death that his actions would result in caused him some regret, regret exacerbated by the Inquisitor asking him why the world had to be destroyed. It was a question Solas did not have an answer to, at least not a satisfying one. Removing the Anchor from the Inquisitor’s arm to save his life and leaving his old friend with a warm farewell, Solas departed for places unknown while the Inquisitor vowed to save him from his own destructive nature.
That was back in 2014. Ten years later, at the end of October of this year, Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally released and promised to resolve Solas’s story. Almost the exact same amount of time has passed in-game, too, enough time for Solas to begin putting his plan in motion. Indeed, the opening mission of the game sees the new protagonist, Rook, accompanied by Varric Tethras, Lace Harding, and Neve Gallus, a new character, following the Dread Wolf’s trail in an attempt to stop him from completing his mission. My Rook was a female elf mage, a nice contrast to Solas. I spent just under seventy hours with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and I loved getting the chance to jump back into this world after such a long wait. I also loved the direct link to Inquisition, and how the story picked up right at the tail end of the decade-long hunt for Solas to see him smack bang in the middle of a ritual designed to destroy the Veil. There’s so much about Veilguard that I loved, enough to get me excited about a potential future replay. Sadly, though, my opinion of the game as a whole is…disappointingly mixed.
In With The New
For starters, let’s get into the things I did like about Veilguard, and there are plenty, don’t get me wrong. The combat is the best I’ve ever seen, for once depending on the player to actually continually press buttons to make the character attack. Long gone is the Dragon Age: Origins approach, where pressing the attack button once would spur the Hero of Ferelden to head into battle and keep fighting of his own volition like some kind of robot whose only purpose was to kill Darkspawn. Veilguard makes things a lot more interesting, by introducing light and heavy attacks based on which button is pressed. There is also a new unique action, which varies based on class, activated by pressing the right trigger on consoles. The old school trio of assigned and activated abilities remains as ever-present as always in this series, but the abilities themselves pack a hell of a punch, and certain ones can now be combined with one another to trigger unique status effects and explosions when used on the same enemy. The combat overall is very fast-paced and reaction times are prioritised to avoid taking damage or being staggered. It’s the most satisfying Dragon Age’s combat has ever been. It’s actually very reminiscent of recent God of War titles.
The God of War influence is all over Veilguard, in fact, with several areas initially inaccessible and requiring return journeys once the appropriate companions or abilities have been acquired to access them. Even something as small as looting chests and collecting gold from, fallen enemies feels like it was ripped straight from Santa Monica Studios’ recent masterpieces. That’s not a bad thing by any means. These elements are implemented in their own way enough to avoid being labelled as outright copying God of War. I dare say they actually suit a Dragon Age game more. Upgrading equipment is another one, where certain items and currencies must be used to rank up armour and weapons with the Caretaker, an otherworldly entity that inhabits the Fade and watches over the Lighthouse, once a refuge to Solas but now base of operations for Rook and their companions.
For the most part, Veilguard’s companions are great all around. I personally prefer Inquisition’s cast a bit more, but I think Veilguard has an objectively stronger roster overall and uses them in a more unique way. The companions are reminiscent of Mass Effect 2’s, with each one their own fully fleshed out individual with their own questline for the player to complete. In fact, the companions in Veilguard all feel like they could potentially have been in Rook’s place if circumstances were different. So well designed and implemented are they that they each could be the protagonist of their own Dragon Age game, which is what makes it easy to relate to them and become invested in their stories.
They don’t just have their own one-off personal quests either, and instead boast their own full questline to be completed before they are marked a “Hero of the Veilguard”. This title is equivalent to earning someone’s loyalty in Mass Effect 2, one of two conditions that would save a companion from dying during the final mission. Veilguard follows this blueprint quite closely, as each one of Rook’s comrades must be given a role to fill during the finale. Give someone the wrong role, or fail to achieve “Hero of the Veilguard” status, and people start to meet their end pretty quickly. With Mass Effect 2 being my favourite BioWare game-my favourite game ever made, for that matter-the inspiration taken by Veilguard was very much appreciated. That isn’t all I liked about Veilguard, but I’m going to leave it there until later. For now…onto the bad stuff.
Out With The Old
I’ll start off small. Firstly, I think the way the game handles gear is a huge step down from Inquisition. This is small potatoes compared to what most people consider to be a criticism, but I’m one of those annoying people who really appreciates in-depth customisation, and places an unnecessarily heavy importance on it. The first two games were pretty standard, allowing you to equip any helmet, breastplate, gauntlets, greaves, and boots that you liked, as well as any combination of them. Inquisition is where it all changed. Not only could you create different pieces of armour and use different crafting materials to alter stats and appearance, you could also change the colour palette as well. And on top of that, there was even the facility to remove the class restriction from gear to make for some really interesting and unique looking combinations of equipment. It’s been a while since I’ve played Inquisition, but I think this went for weapons, too. It was a huge step in the right direction, almost exactly the kind of customisation I had been hoping for in a Dragon Age game, and I spent longer than I’m proud of farming and grinding for Silverite just so that I could remove the class restriction from a piece of armour initially designated “warrior only” and use it as part of my rogue Inquisitor’s ensemble. The final look I ended up with is probably my favourite outfit for any of my Dragon Age protagonists, with white and red fabrics paired with gold metals for a truly striking presence. Inquisitor Vlados Trevelyan could chew up and spit out an entire room based on appearance alone.
Then came Veilguard. I was beyond excited for this customisation to carry over into the newest entry in the series, and what is essentially a direct sequel to Inquisition at that. Sadly, BioWare have stripped these options out of the game entirely. Your outfit is now just that, a single entire outfit the appearance of which cannot be changed whatsoever. No colour changes, no swapping out the gauntlets for something flashier, nada. My heart absolutely broke upon the realisation that Inquisition’s customisation was gone(I am being a little dramatic, but this did genuinely disappoint me). What also came as an unwelcome surprise was that almost every outfit in the game was faction-specific. Gone are the unique suits of armour worn by former adventurers and explorers, and mismatched sets put together by players are a thing of the past-with the exception of helmets. Don’t get me wrong, the armour and clothing all look incredible, and are rendered in stunning detail. It was just not quite what I envisioned, a Rook who is forced to wear a random outfit designed to represent a particular faction she was not even previously affiliated with. There is a unique appearance that is unlocked after all companions achieve “Hero of the Veilguard” status, and luckily it is quite a treat to behold, and completely unique to Rook. But it is just an appearance overlayed atop whatever gear you currently have on, and has no stats of its own.
The Greatest Disappointment
Doing away with things introduced by previous games seems to be a bit of a running theme with Veilguard. I’ve seen a lot of criticisms claim the game’s tone is inconsistent with previous games, and that it is a lot more upbeat and light-hearted compared to the darker events of the story. I feel like the latter point has been largely overexaggerated. The former, however, has some credence to it. Veilguard does feel very much like its own entity, so much so that it can more often than not feel disconnected from the world fans have come know and love. It can be difficult to reconcile the events of the game with those of games past. But this isn’t all down to the tone. No, Veilguard’s biggest shortcoming is its continuity, which is all but non-existent. Every Dragon Age fan who has played more than one game in the series will know that there is usually an option to carry over your choices from previous games so that some kind of continuity can be preserved. With so many branching questlines, characters who may or may not die, and decisions surrounding the fate of the very world itself, BioWare always wanted to reflect each player’s individual playthrough in sequels. Even with Inquisition, which faced more difficulties with this when it came out on different platforms entirely, still facilitated the use of a unique website custom-built by BioWare for fans to recreate their past decisions and export them to Inquisition playthroughs. The glaring question on the minds of fans since the release date for Veilguard was released has been how will this particular entry handle choices made in previous games? In short; it doesn’t.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard had a very troubled development, and I mean very troubled. Supposedly, everything from the story to the characters and the setting totally changed several times until BioWare decided on what we got. On top of this, multiple creative minds at the company who had worked on previous BioWare games-Mass Effect and Dragon Age both-left the company altogether. In all honesty, it’s a complete miracle we got a game as high-quality and well put together as Veilguard at all, given the circumstances. And I don’t take that for granted, the fourth Dragon Age game had so much going against it, and it is genuinely incredible how good of a game it is. It just hurts a little that it isn’t quite the perfect Dragon Age 4 that many fans, myself included, waited a decade for.
The game isn’t completely devoid of any choices from previous games carrying over, and it would be disingenuous to claim as such. During the character creation, there is an option to recreate your Inquisitor, as well as to fill in three important details about them; who did they romance(if anyone), did they disband the Inquisition or hand its power over to the Chantry, and did the Inquisitor vow to kill Solas or to save him from himself. These choices do impact some minor details throughout the game, but it is certainly a far cry from the Hero of Ferelden being alive or dead, or the Champion of Kirkwall choosing one side over the other in a continent-wide war.
The official explanation given for why there is little to no emphasis on previous game decisions carrying over is that Veilguard takes place in Northern Thedas, whereas previous games were always set in the south, and the two sides of the continent would have very little meaningful crossover. I don’t want to call anyone a liar, but that reeks of a bullshit excuse made to cover up the aforementioned troubled development. Far more likely is the idea that so many changes during development and developers themselves resigning, as well as the sheer amount of variables when it comes to player choices, meant that implementing world states was just far too large and time-consuming of a task. Cutting this out altogether likely allowed for more time to be spent on crafting the finer, more unique elements of Veilguard and the story it tells.
Back in February of 2023, I had an idea for an article that never got written about how the Dragon Age series has a big problem, centred around its previous protagonists and how any potential future games would go about reintroducing them. It also would have touched on continuity, in the sense that all of these huge, impactful choices would probably get a bit hard to maintain if BioWare kept having to let people import them and make them have an effect on the game world. There was only so long that ideology was going to take the series. It looks like the buck stops with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It takes place almost twenty-five years in total after the events of Dragon Age: Origins. So not only are the choices of previous games left in the past, but most of the characters players have come to know and love are too. Cyrus Cousland, my Grey Warden and Hero of Ferelden who survived the events of the only game he has ever been in, would be middle-aged by now. If he hasn’t fallen victim to his Calling yet, age will take him out of the picture. Gregor Hawke, my Champion of Kirkwall, would be dead now if not for the Grey Warden named Stroud who I left to die in the Fade just so that Hawke could live, despite it becoming clear even then that the first two games were falling into obscurity and obsolescence. And Vlados Trevelyan, my Inquisitor, had his Inquisition, his left arm and rift-sealing abilities, and even his old friend Solas taken from him, and by Veilguard’s end he is a shadow of his former self. But he did manage to reunite with Solas one final time, before the Dread Wolf said farewell.
To Save The Dread Wolf
Veilguard has four main endings that I know of. There’s the bleak one that leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, where Solas is briefly fought and beaten by Rook and their companions before being bound to the Veil against his will, forcing his life force to sustain it as the life forces of the other Evanuris did before Elgar’nan’s death. There’s the really bleak one where all of Rook’s companions die, and Veilguard’s protagonist uses both their life force and Solas’s to sustain the Veil, disappearing with the Dread Wolf into the Fade and being effectively presumed dead by those who still live. There’s the mischievous one, which is essentially another iteration of the first one, where Rook tricks Solas into using a replica of the Lyrium Dagger to complete his ritual, exposing him to attack and causing him to be bound to the Veil before being sucked into the Fade, the only ending of these three where Solas actually respects Rook and says he met his match. And there’s the best one by a long shot, where Morrigan appears and calls upon the essence of Mythal to finally convince Solas he is doing the wrong thing and must give up on his dream of returning the world to how it was before the Veil was created, a dream born of guilt when Mythal was murdered by the other Evanuris.
After ten years, and my last memory of Dragon Age being my Inquisitor reuniting with his old friend and vowing to track him down and save him, I was waiting patiently for Vlados Trevelyan to appear. And at last, during this ending, he did. He was the only character, as it happens, that actually gave Solas pause and made him look doubtful about going ahead with his plan. But, Solas being Solas, he still resolved to destroy the Veil and grant the elven people their immortality that had been stripped away when said Veil was created. After Mythal talked Solas down and the Dread Wolf broke into tears, the Inquisitor assured him he was “free to find a better way.” Thus, Solas willingly shed his own blood with the Lyrium Dagger and bound his life force to the Veil to keep it intact. He attributed the praise for allowing him to see that he was wrong to the Inquisitor, before leaving and travelling to the Fade to attempt to soothe the Blight and prevent it from causing any further harm. After ten years of a wait-a time jump also reflected in-game-it unsurprisingly brought a tear to my eye, especially considering the same music that played during the Trespasser DLC in 2014 during the Inquisitor’s reunion with Solas chimed in as the Dread Wolf departed for the Fade.
Was Veilguard’s finale worth the wait? It was, and it also wasn’t. On the one hand, it was great to see the Inquisitor return and be actively involved in the story. The Inquisitor’s involvement could have been a bit more direct and it would have been nice to interact with them more often, but I can still appreciate their role all the same. I also quite like how Solas was handled, how he deceives and tricks Rook right up to the end, and takes the first opportunity he gets to attempt to destroy the Veil again after Elgar’nan is killed. It’s very on brand, and choosing one of the more interesting endings takes a lot of willpower and restraint when Solas easily makes you want to outright kill him by the end. On the other hand, the Inquisitor’s reunion with Solas does feel a little underwhelming, and they don’t actually say a huge amount to one another. With other characters present, it is also hard to give the Inquisitor the limelight to really get into it with Solas, and their entire interaction ends up feeling a bit rushed.
There’s a recent quote from John Epler, Creative Director at BioWare, that I find very appropriate at this point. It goes as follows; "It's been a decade since the last Dragon Age game came out, and a lot of people have spent that decade imagining various versions of what this game was going to be. The reality was whatever we came out with, it was never going to match the Dragon Age 4 in people's minds and people's imaginations." I know what you’re thinking. That basically describes me, sitting here writing an overlong article about how I’m not happy that Veilguard didn’t fit perfectly into the little slot in the jigsaw of my mind that I reserved for my perfect Dragon Age 4 whenever it ended up being released. And you’re right, it was probably never going to live up to what I was imagining in my head. And I acknowledge that. But I still don’t think Veilguard is above criticism, and I clearly feel strongly enough about this to continue writing after coming upon that quote. I’ve also been very vocal about how I do think Veilguard is a great game, and there is an endless list of things I liked and enjoyed about it. But it definitely wasn’t perfect, and I don’t mean just for me. It was objectively not a perfect game. No game is. And I think it’s worth exploring why.
The Protagonist Problem
Epler is right in what he says, how Veilguard was never going to live up to fan expectations. It suffers just the same as any highly-anticipated title these days, with long development cycles that cause fans to get more and more hyped as time goes on, only to find themselves disappointed that the game they’ve been waiting for somehow didn’t match the image they fabricated of it in their heads. But that isn’t the only contributing factor by a long shot. Veilguard finds itself being the only game in the series to be a direct sequel, following on from one of Inquisition’s DLCs and centring around one of that game’s main characters. Where things start to get messy is with Rook, who is a totally new character and protagonist. After spending almost seventy hours with Veilguard and researching the other endings, codex entries, and things I might have missed, I strongly believe the protagonist of Veilguard should have been the Inquisitor.
Veilguard begins with Rook meeting Varric in Minrathous, and later Harding, before regrouping with Neve Gallus and heading to the Ritual Site where Solas is about to tear down the Veil. Rook knows Varric, but it is a relatively new friendship and the two have one of a few different backstories depending on Rook’s chosen faction to explain how they met and why Rook is involved in all of this. I like Rook a lot, but since day one I have felt like they were a bit out of place in the story and never really fit in cleanly. When Solas is found, Rook interrupts the ritual and unwittingly releases Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, ancient elven gods and the two remaining members of the Evanuris. Solas is trapped in their place in the Fade while the Evanuris roam free, but he reaches out from the Fade amidst the chaos and uses a drop of Rook’s blood to form a tenuous mental link between them.
This results in many scenes throughout the game where the two converse, and Solas will piece by piece reveal the backstory of the Evanuris and what the additional purpose of his ritual was after the destruction of the Veil. Seeing as the Inquisitor is still alive and kicking after a decade, and how they have an existing relationship with Varric and investment in stopping Solas, it seems almost absurd that they don’t serve as the protagonist of Veilguard. The conversations with Solas, the later reveal that Varric has been dead for the entire game, and especially the finale, they all would have carried much more emotional weight and impact had the Inquisitor been in Rook’s place.
I know there are some obstacles with this notion. First and foremost among them would be the character creator, and how it’s a Dragon Age tradition at this point to allow players to create a brand new hero with each new game. But in all honesty, when we’re asked to recreate the Inquisitor at the beginning of Veilguard and populate some choices from Inquisition anyway, it seems like much of a muchness. I can’t imagine it would have been too difficult to implement an Inquisitor protagonist in that sense. The real difficulty comes with the aforementioned choices, as many more of them would have to be picked at the beginning and, by extension, they would then be required to have a visible or noticeable impact on the game world and the Inquisitor’s relationship with some returning characters. Still, it definitely would have been doable if BioWare were so inclined. I think the whole Northern Thedas thing, and the lack of most of the previous games’ choices being carried over, really hampered the possibility of the Inquisitor coming back as the protagonist. It’s a real shame, given Veilguard’s status as a sequel to Inquisition and Rook’s very interesting dynamic with Solas during their conversations.
Answers
One of Veilguard’s most groundbreaking aspects comes in the form of the backstory it reveals, and the new lore crafted by BioWare that has extreme implications for the world of Thedas. One thing I really appreciate is how almost every mystery, and all of the different main plot threads that had been dragging along for three games previously, get nicely tied off and explained. It is always a fear heading into a new entry in a series that prides itself on a range of lore-centric mysteries and a deep, complex storyline. BioWare could have left things up in the air or chosen not to explain what was happening as clearly as they did, but Veilguard truly has that feeling of a proper series finale and does its utmost to provide longtime fans with answers to the questions they’ve been holding onto for just under two decades. To really understand the gravity of these answers, you first have to understand the story thus far at the time of Veilguard’s release.
Less than two millennia before the events of Dragon Age: Origins, the nation of the Tevinter Imperium was founded. Tevinter was an authoritarian conglomerate comparable to the Roman Empire of real-life history. Their governance was based on a system of mages-known as magisters in Tevinter-ruling strictly in conjunction with one another. Tevinter also has a sinister history steeped in the slave trade, and slavery is still legal there by the events of the first game. Some eight-hundred or so years after the founding of the Imperium, seven powerful individuals that would come to be known as the Magisters Sidereal came together with a shared goal. Each one identified as a priest or priestess to one of the Old Gods of Tevinter, mysterious entities often depicted as dragons. The Magisters Sidereal claimed to have been spoken to from the Fade by the Old Gods and came together to break into the Fade and commune with their deities directly. Their actions resulted in the unleashing of the Blight, and the beginning of the First Blight which saw hordes of monstrous humanoid creatures known as Darkspawn set loose upon Thedas. Darkspawn are always lead by an Archdemon during a Blight, a dragon that has been corrupted by Darkspawn blood and operates as one of them. The Archdemons are also named after the Old Gods, and are assumed to actually be corrupted Old Gods. As there are only seven of these deities, it is presumed there will only ever be seven Blights.
By the events of the first game, the Chantry is the largest and most widespread religious organisation, and they tout the worship of one single god known as the Maker, accompanied by his wife Andraste. While the Maker is a mysterious otherworldly figure worshipped by many of the humans of Thedas, Andraste was a real human woman whose religious significance and connection to the Maker is often scrutinised. The events of Old Tevinter have been reinterpreted by the present day. The Chantry teaches that the Magisters Sidereal were powerful mages who breached a sacred place called the Golden City, the seat of the Maker himself. Breaching its holy borders corrupted it and turned it into the Black City. The Blight is viewed by the Chantry as a divine punishment, unleashed in response to mortals attempting to break into what is essentially Dragon Age’s version of Heaven, and the Maker is said to have abandoned mortals for this sin. The Old Gods of Tevinter remain trapped deep underground, and they are periodically located by the Darkspawn hordes and corrupted to turn them into new Archdemons. With a new corrupted Old God comes a new Blight, and Dragon Age: Origins follows the events of the Fifth Blight.
Veilguard completely recontextualises all of this. The actual events of Thedas’s history, the true and factual explanations revealed by viewing the memories of Solas, are as follows; a very long time ago, there existed great beings called Titans. The Titans would wander and shape the earth, and they created the dwarves. This is a history lost to the dwarves of modern day, and records of the Titans have been either misinterpreted or intentionally destroyed. When Titans bled, they bled Lyrium, a substance of pure and raw magic found in the Fade and deep underground. A group of spirits from the Fade used the blood of the Titans to forge corporeal bodies for themselves so that they could walk the earth. These were the first elves, and would come to be known as the Evanuris. The Elven Gods. The elven people at large are either descended from them or created by them directly. For their use of Lyrium, an act of desecration and violation, there was a war between the Titans and the Evanuris. The war ended when Solas, reluctantly but of the opinion that he had little choice, used a dagger crafted from pure Lyrium to sever the Titans from their wondrous dreams, an act which left them Tranquil-essentially, braindead. The Titans were pacified and wiped out. Their dreams, however, were not. Their dreams were angry and violent, and became what we now know as the Blight. The Blight was sealed away in a remote region of the Fade. The Black City.
Elgar’nan, the leader of the Evanuris, refused to step down from his position of military leadership after the war. In fact, he-along with his kin-decided leadership was not enough. They decided they wanted to be gods to the elven people. Solas opposed this, which is why he is labelled a rebel and a traitor. Far down the path of darkness and tyranny, the seven main members of the Evanuris captured a High Dragon each, sealing a portion of their own essences within these dragons and effectively making themselves immortal. If they were to be killed, their corresponding dragon had to be killed first to render them mortal again. The Archdemons, then, are not Old Gods, or anything of the sort. They are the personal dragons of the Evanuris, corrupted by Darkspawn to serve as leaders of Blights. The Evanuris, trapped within the Fade after Solas rebelled against them, called out to the Magisters Sidereal through the Old Gods-their dragons-and implored them to breach the Fade so that they may escape. While they were unsuccessful, a portion of the Blight was unleashed on the world instead, resulting in the First Blight lead by Dumat, Old God of Tevinter and dragon of one of the Evanuris.
A Worthy Resolution
So that’s it, that’s the backstory of the entire series, and the explanation for what has been happening all of these years. The Blight, the Evanuris, the Maker, even the origins of the races of Thedas and their gods. And honestly? I actually love it. I think BioWare really knocked it out of the park with the story’s resolution and answers to Dragon Age’s many mysteries. The idea that the dreams of the Titans could become so…visceral and almost sentient on their own is terrifying, a horror twist of Lovecraftian proportions. The backstory of the elves and how they were originally spirits is also fantastic, and it makes a lot of sense. The elves have always had some strange air about them, something we weren’t quite clued in on up to now that made them inexplicably special. And mentions of their gods have been ever present throughout the series since the beginning, with their significance and importance only revealed with Veilguard. It’s also quite the ballsy revelation that the Maker doesn’t actual exist, and likely never did. But it is something that has been teased for a long time, most recently in Dragon Age: Inquisition. In his quest to become a god, Corypheus drops the most chilling quote of the series; “Beg that I succeed. For I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty.” It turns out he was right. There were no gods, neither the Maker nor the Old Gods of Tevinter. Only the Evanuris, and even they are revealed to not have been gods in the traditional sense, instead finding their origins as simple spirits of the Fade. And speaking of Corypheus, he managed to find a way to make himself immortal by using Red Lyrium-regular Lyrium corrupted with Blight-to enslave a dragon and store some of his power within it, ensuring he could continue to use his ability to be reborn through other Blighted creatures nearby should his body perish. It’s a wonderful twist to learn that the secret of storing one’s essence within an enslaved dragon to achieve immortality was first mastered by the Evanuris when they created the Old Gods, which were no more gods than the Evanuris themselves.
After ten years of waiting for a sequel to Inquisition, after seventeen years of being invested in this series, this was the series of revelations that really felt worth the wait. I’ve always been a big advocate for the literary merit of Dragon Age’s lore. As far as I’m concerned, it might as well be as highly regarded as Tolkien’s works. The first three games did a wonderful job of presenting us with some of the most tantalising mysteries and unexplained occurrences ever seen in games, only to finally stick that landing with Veilguard and give us a good old fashioned exposition dump that genuinely had my jaw on the floor. And what makes it even sweeter is that it all fits neatly into the world of Dragon Age. The Evanuris have been an established piece of the backstory of the elves since the first game, and the exact origins and reasons for the Blight were intentionally left unclear and unexplained from day one. The Titans, too, are a more recently fleshed out addition to the series, but they fit the role of the dwarves’ creators and these primordial entities whose very blood oozes raw magic. Even if the new lore in Veilguard was only invented as a way to explain all of these mysteries, it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like this has always been the story from the beginning, and we’ve just been slowly drip-fed pieces of it throughout the years. And if that isn’t the case, that just makes it more impressive.
The Future
During Taash’s personal questline, it is discovered that the qunari people came to Thedas from a land across the ocean. It is also revealed that they came to Thedas to escape something known as “The Devouring Storm”. It is left unclear what this is, but it may relate to a secret ending for Veilguard that can be unlocked if Rook finds three mysterious magical artefacts known as Circles. Each Circle is hidden in a different location, usually interactable after defeating a powerful boss. Collecting all three will result in a bonus ending slideshow to play after the game’s credits have rolled. As an unidentified voice speaks of how they and their associates have “whispered” and so on, images appear onscreen of characters from previous games, namely the villains, being…influenced…by unknown parties. Teyrn Loghain is seen with someone over his shoulder before the betrayal of the Grey Wardens at Ostagar. Bartrand Tethras eyes the Red Lyrium Idol with a second of these people nearby. And Corypheus, the Elder One, finds himself similarly manipulated. These strangers, cloaked in white, are implied to have been behind the events of the series thus far, or at the very least they have been nudging the villains in certain directions in order to make certain things happen. Maybe they are this Devouring Storm, or have some link to it. And this one…well it falls pretty flat and hard for me.
From what I have gathered, this secret ending reveals a bit more about a shadowy group known as “The Executors”, an organisation from across the sea who have a history of meddling in the affairs of Thedas. They appear briefly, though not physically, in Inquisition as the subject of a War Table mission. Whether Cullen or Leliana are trusted with investigating them, the outcome is more or less the same; the Executors identify themselves as representing “powers across the sea” and advise they are not the enemy of the Inquisition…for now. They also imply the world is larger than the Inquisition realise, which is par for the course when a newly introduced yet highly resourceful group from an unseen land begin meddling in matters of gods and evil magisters. The Executors supposedly play a larger role in some of the Dragon Age books and comics, but my knowledge of those is very limited. The main takeaway here is that this organisation supposedly orchestrated the events of the first three games, with Veilguard implied to be the culmination of their plan as the unknown speaker during the secret ending says “the poisoned fruit ripens”. The Executors, then, must be the new villainous group for the future of the series. I don’t have a huge amount to say about this as of right now, but I do feel like their supposed involvement in such pivotal events with perfectly well-established motivations as the betrayal at Ostagar just needlessly undercuts and dilutes the stories we have come to know. Did Teyrn Loghain have someone else in his ear telling him to betray the Wardens? Maybe so, but he sure as hell didn’t need that to be the case, as he had plenty of his own reasons for doing so. But alas, this seems to be where BioWare want to go with the series in future. I reserve judgement until then.
Dareth Shiral, Fen’Harel
I evidently have more than a few problems with how Dragon Age: The Veilguard turned out, but at the same time I accept it for its imperfections. It isn’t a game catered specifically to me, and that’s okay. It is still not a bad game, and the good easily makes up for the bad. After finishing it, I look forward to replaying it in future, and that’s the golden stamp of approval for a BioWare game where I’m concerned. The Inquisitor got his reunion with his old friend, the Dread Wolf. Solas got his redemption and is seeking atonement for the things he has done. And us, the fans, got our answers after seventeen years. This story has ended. It won’t be the last one, but it was the first and the most special for me. Dragon Age will always be one of my favourite series’ of games. Veilguard hasn’t changed that. If anything, it’s enhanced that feeling and allowed me to play through these games with a fresh perspective and understanding of the wondrous world BioWare have painstakingly crafted. I’ll always appreciate Veilguard for what it was; the perfect way to say goodbye. Dareth shiral, Dragon Age. I’ll see you again sometime soon.
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