31 Moments That Made The Dragon Age Series Unforgettable

Dragon Age: Origins begins with one of six playable opening chapters, the one you play based on the race and class of character you choose, providing a unique background for your character before they head out into the main story.

The Hero of Ferelden can be part of human nobility facing a tragic series of losses, a castless dwarf struggling to make it in the city of Orzamar, or a mage evicted from the magic school they’ve known their entire life, and those starkly different origin points are only half of the options. These origins define how your hero will be viewed in the dozens of hours that follow, and also function as a starting point for how a new player will view the franchise. I started as a Mage when I first played Dragon Age: Origins in 2009, and have always felt like a veteran of the Circle at heart. Future Dragon Age games would implement this concept of different player backgrounds with Inquisition and The Veilguard, but none would do it as thoroughly—Origins was the only time I got to see that history play out in real-time.

No character in Origins is as impactful as Morrigan, the enigmatic Witch of the Wilds. The apostate carries a sense of superiority toward the rest of the party, as well as the trials and tribulations of Thedas. When you meet her in the early hours of Origins, you still don’t know much about the world, but her commanding presence elevated by Claudia Black’s excellent voice performance tells you that she is unlike anyone or anything you’ve met so far. Morrigan is one of the few characters in Dragon Age who watches nearly every important moment in Thedas’ history unfold, so seeing her here, both enigmatic but still so young and naive, is chilling to look back on.

After you’ve picked your background and lived out whatever trauma is associated with it, Dragon Age: Origins puts you at the center of a battle with a darkspawn horde. Your job is to signal for reinforcements to help defeat an army of bloodthirsty monsters, but before the battle starts, the vibes seem off. The golden retriever King Cailain is jazzed about the incoming battle, though his father-in-law Loghain Mac Tir seems less enthusiastic. The tension between the two is tangible, but who are you to get involved in royal family affairs? However, when you signal for reinforcements, Loghain instead commands his forces to retreat, leaving everyone, including you and his own son-in-law, for dead at the hands of the Blight. Most of the preceding origin stories are full of some kind of betrayal. You might think you would get some respite from it at some point, but Origins doubles down, reminding you that you know nothing of this world and the lengths people will go to get what they want.

Origins is not an entirely grimdark fantasy drama—some of the best character interactions come from your party members hanging out with your dog companion. Though Mabari dogs are trained to be vicious combatants, your canine companion is a sweetheart. Many interactions between the party and dog give him a hard time for being a mangy mutt, only for him to be revealed as a sensitive soul who just wants to play. Examine your preconceived notions, Origins crew. The sharp fangs mask that the Mabari is actually a good boy.

There are several points in the Dragon Age series in which a party member can turn on you, but none have ever been quite as shocking as when the religious bard Leliana, and otherwise kind-hearted Wynne, turn on you if you taint the Urn of Sacred Ashes. This is a crime against one of the most prominent doctrines in all of Thedas, and bringing two of the most devout members of the party to watch is bound to cause drama, but Origins takes it a step further by having both of your teammates take up arms against you.

It doesn’t matter how far you’ve progressed through their personal stories, or even if you’re involved in a romance with Leliana; faith trumps all other emotions here, and you will have to strike down your allies. You’ll face plenty more betrayals during the Dragon Age series, but Leliana and Wynne’s heel turn is still one of the most sudden and violent.

Much like killing Leliana, Origins has a few choices whose ramifications were so earth-shattering that BioWare later had to write themselves out of the box they’d created so they could re-use characters that could be dead. One of those was the option to kill Flemeth, Morrigan’s even more enigmatic mother who allegedly wanted to steal her daughter’s body as a vessel to live longer, though the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. When Morrigan finds out about this plan, she begs you to slay the old woman in her hut in the woods. You can choose to do so or strike a deal with her to spare her in exchange for her grimoire of old spells, but choosing to slay her means fighting her in a powerful dragon form. It’s a tough fight, but doing so leaves you not with a rewarding cutscene and major story revelation, but instead an unsettling and anticlimactic quiet. You’re left with more mysteries than you had when you arrived, and the unshakable feeling that you might have killed something far beyond your understanding. Flemeth’s place in the Dragon Age universe was too significant to be silenced by something as trivial as death, but for a moment, you feel like you have driven a stake through the heart of something you cannot comprehend.

Dragon Age: Origins’ big moment where all your choices culminate is The Landsmeet, a political meeting where you can finally unmask Loghain for all his crimes and essentially set up the country of Ferelden’s future. Your relationships and understandings formed over the past 50+ hours of video game are put to the test, and things can change drastically depending on how the battles of wits and blades pan out. To this day, The Landsmeet is one of BioWare’s most effective showcases of its ability to sew hours of choices into a final consequence. In just one quest you solidify the future for Ferelden in a way that sends most players down the same path, but colors that result so differently that many players, especially those who don’t know every secret the game has to offer, will see something that diverges significantly from what the next player might see.

One of the last major choices you’ll make in Dragon Age: Origins comes back to Morrigan. The witch has had more than enough reasons to leave the party considering she doesn’t really get along with anyone on the team, but she sticks around long enough to give you a final choice: ending the Blight will cost you your life—unless you or Alistair undergoes a blood magic ritual that will transfer the Archdemon’s soul into an unborn child. It sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, all you have to do is lay with her for one night or convince Alistair to do it. But Morrigan is cagey with her intentions and says that whether you agree or not, she will leave the party after the final battle. This is why she’s been here this whole time, but does that mean any connection you’ve formed with her was all an act? What will become of this child? Is it going to be like any other child or will it be some darkspawn demon that could bring about just as much pain in the world as the archdemon would? Morrigan gives you nothing to go on, but makes her terms clear. Dragon Age: Origins would go on to have three sequels that would wipe away the ambiguity of this decision, but at the time, all you had to go on here was your trust of Morrigan, or lack thereof. Everything you’ve ever been told about blood magic and interrupting the natural order of the Blight should tell you to say “no,” but are you willing to risk it to save your own life? It’s a fascinating choice. Did Dragon Age do right by it? Your mileage may vary.

With Dragon Age II, BioWare started earnestly looking for a way to franchise the series. It had built itself a new cage as the “choice and consequence” studio thanks to the Mass Effect series, and Dragon Age followed suit by importing your Origins save to pepper in cameos and references to your past deeds. That includes whether or not you killed Flemeth, but since BioWare still wanted to use the mysterious witch either way, it had new hero Hawke unwittingly carry her to safety through an enchanted amulet even as she fought for her life against the Hero of Ferelden. Reviving Flemeth is one of the most effective moments in all of Dragon Age in showing how playing as different protagonists in each game could create satisfying meta moments. As she rises from the ashes, you watch the impact of one of your hero’s actions be undermined by the one you’re playing as now. Dragon Age takes place over decades, and a big part of its appeal is watching different stories you’ve helped write weave in and out of one another. It’s a course correction, but one that is still bone-chilling to watch unfold.

The second Dragon Age differs from the first in several ways, from taking place almost entirely in one city to swapping the tactical RPG battle system for more action-oriented combat. But one of the most notable and interesting changes it made was to the approval system, which integrated a Friendship and Rivalry mechanic so you didn’t have to kiss a party member’s ass to progress their relationship storyline. The difference between Friendship and Rivalry is all about how you challenge their preconceived notions. Each party member has a pretty defined view of the world; the radical mage Anders, for instance, is all about freeing magic users from the Circle at any cost, while the elven slave Fenris has an aversion to magic. Uncritically enabling them will give you Friendship points, and going against the grain will net you Rivalry points. This changes the tone of your relationships significantly, and even someone you’re in a romantic relationship with may greet you with a thorny disposition. Watching those connections gradually change is one of the most compelling parts of Dragon Age II’s writing. Romancing Fenris as a mage while being rivals was one of the most interesting, angsty relationships I’ve ever experienced in a BioWare game. It’s a shame the studio didn’t keep the system around.

Dragon Age II is all about years of civil unrest bubbling to the surface of one city, and between the conflict with the stranded Qunari and the Mage/Templar War, the former is certainly handled with more care than the latter. While early Dragon Age games had multiple crisis points in which party members can leave the party or betray you, one of the most memorable is when one party member makes a decision not to leave, but to return. Isabela is the cause of the Qunari’s extended stay in Kirkwall, and when she’s given the chance to run off with a tome they have been searching for, she takes it. If you’ve not established a solid enough friendship or rivalry with her, she will never return. If you have, she makes a big hero’s entrance just as the Qunari are about to strike down what remains of the city. She attempts to make amends, showing the growth she’s been trying her damnedest to avoid since arriving in the city. But then the Qunari leader says she still must answer for her crimes. You can give her up and betray her, or you can fight for her instead, and seeing her be big enough to not sell you and the rest of Kirkwall out for once in her life is one of Dragon Age II’s most memorable companion moments.

Choosing to fight for Isabela’s freedom results in a somewhat silly but exceptionally satisfying fight. Dragon Age II’s action-based combat isn’t quite as snappy and tight as The Veilguard’s, but it has some spectacle that can keep it interesting in fights that don’t just pit you against waves of enemies being thrown at you. The Arishok fight can go a few ways depending on if he respects Hawke or not, but fighting the giant Qunari in a one-on-one duel is still one of the best combat sequences in the game. You may be in for a tough time if you haven’t spec’d into a class and build that can handle a solo fight, but in any case, taking down the Arishok and being crowned the Champion of Kirkwall is one of the defining moments of Dragon Age II.

One bright spot in Dragon Age II’s extremely uneven final act is the conclusion to Merrill’s story. The elven blood mage has gone against the wishes of everyone around her in a tunnel-visioned need to bring back a part of her clan’s history, even seeking out the help of a demon. Dragon Age II takes place across a decade, with Merrill at odds with her clan leader Marethari all the while, and yet the leader sacrifices herself to “save” Merrill by allowing the demon she had been working with to possess her instead. Merrill can insist this was meddling and you can be supportive of her or not, but the real people she has to answer to are the clan’s remaining members. Depending on whether you advocate for her or throw her under the bus, you may have to fight the entire clan on your way out. It’s a brutal mess that’s tied to the character with perhaps the most emotional range of any party member in the franchise. It’s such a terrifying, saddening web of contradicting feelings and subverted expectations, all leading to a stunning payoff.

I have a lot of issues with the handling of the Mage/Templar War in Dragon Age II. It creates this complicated political and religious conflict around an oppressed group of people and a tyrannical religious organization but insists that both sides are equally bad, actually. Don’t even get me started on how you can convince Anders, the radical mage who is the face of this conflict, to kill the mages he tried to save. But the moment in which Anders, worn down by a lifetime of captivity and oppression, blows up the Kirkwall Chantry is one of the few unambiguous statements the game makes in its final hours. The scene itself is dramatic and shocking and kickstarts a war that would (in theory) shake the foundations of Thedas. It requires everyone in your party to make a stand. There will be no more fence-sitting in this fight, and all your relationships will be tested as your team decides whether or not to follow you into battle. Sadly, the reveals that follow undermine any choice you make, but as a spark that ignites a flame, Anders’ act of terrorism is a statement in a game that otherwise seems unwilling to make one.

A lot of the highlights we’ve talked about are big story moments or reactions to your decisions, but one of the coolest things Inquisition does happens literally the moment the game starts. The main menu shows rows of mages and templars marching toward a building off in the distance. Despite where we left them in Dragon Age II, these two opposing sides don’t seem to be fighting, so perhaps they’re making their way to peace talks? Could the future of Dragon Age be written not in blood, but in signed treaties? Let’s press “new game” and find o-

Oh.

I have heard some fans say the moment in which members of the Inquisition start singing “The Dawn Will Come,” a hymn of the Chantry, to your main character in a moment of religious fervor is cheesy and cringe, to which I say, fuck you, it’s one of the most incredible moments in the game. Inquisition’s themes can be radically different depending on how you play the Herald of Andraste. This hero has been unwillingly made a religious figure, with hundreds of people expecting you to live as a symbol for a god you might not even believe in. If you take this approach, playing as a non-believer who actively shouts down the claims of the faithful, “The Dawn Will Come” can be an unnerving, haunting reminder of how much unwavering belief can compel groups of people even as you insist on a different, provable truth. If, on the other hand, you’re undecided or playing as a believer, it can read like a beautiful moment of hope and community. Inquisition allows you to define so many shades of who your character is and see them reflected in a world that struggles with your very existence. And sometimes, no matter how hard you kick and scream, you cannot stop the world from believing what it does. Instead, you can just awkwardly stand there while people sing to you and then complain about it later.

With each subsequent game, Dragon Age has gotten better at illustrating the closeness (or lack thereof) of your companions. Banter in the overworld is good, but seeing the crew actually get together is better. The Wicked Grace scene, in which the party gets together to play a card game, is one of BioWare’s best scenes that make use of a game’s entire core ensemble. Everyone’s personality gets a chance to shine, whether they’re playful, stuffy, horny, or just trying to wrangle all these weirdos together. It’s delightful, succinct, and has stayed in the hearts of many Dragon Age fans.

The Dragon Age series has always been explicitly queer. For all the diaper-shitting about The Veilguard’s queer themes, Inquisition was examining the life and times of a Thedas gay long before Taash learned the term “non-binary.” Dorian Pavus’ personal quest remains one of the most memorable in all of BioWare’s canon. It drops combat for one incredibly well-acted cutscene between the Tevinter mage and his estranged father, where it’s revealed that, to continue their bloodline and climb his way up the Tevinter political ladder, Dorian’s father planned to use a blood magic equivalent to conversion therapy in order to force his son into an arranged marriage. I’ve spoken to many Dragon Age fans over the years about what decision they made here, as you’re able to help the two reconcile, or to get Dorian out of there. I’ve never once considered telling Dorian to hear his father out. It’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of a game adapting the queer struggle to a fictional culture. Dorian becomes a radical because he has seen how low even those he loves will go to maintain power in Tevinter, and it all ties into his identity as a gay man. It’s a stunning scene that tells you so much about Dorian and where he came from, and lets you gently nudge history as you stand beside him.

Blackwall goes under the radar for a lot of players. He’s quiet, keeps to himself, and is even in a pretty out-of-the-way spot in your base in Skyhold. A lot of people think the Grey Warden warrior is boring, but they’re wrong; the big reveals you experience in his companion missions are outstanding. Blackwall tells you he’s a Warden but is secretive about the organization which, if you played Origins, may nudge you to think back to your own experience playing as one. You know why they’re all tight-lipped on the inner machinations of the faction, so you don’t question it. But it turns out, he’s actually not a Warden at all, and is instead an imposter on the run for war crimes he committed years ago. Eventually, the guilt eats at him and he turns himself in to save others from answering for his orders with a hangman’s noose. This man duped you for dozens of hours, and you’re left with the power to decide his fate. Blackwall’s quest can go one of several ways, whether you leave him to rot, pardon him, or send him to the Wardens to let them decide what happens to an imposter. Whatever you choose, Blackwall’s quest leaves an impression as one of BioWare’s most surprising and subversive. Y’all need to quit calling characters you don’t even talk to boring. This shit rips.

Even as someone who likes Mass Effect more than Dragon Age, I have a hard time thinking of a singular quest in the sci-fi series that matches up to Inquisition’s Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts. While you will unsheathe your weapons a few times, this mission is all about politics, charming the worst people you’ve ever met, and working the crowd. Running around the Winter Palace, meeting the most powerful players in Orlais, and manipulating the politics of an entire country to your whims is more intriguing than anything you do with a sword or staff. Mechanically, the mission is surprisingly elegant as it codifies social status and attention into something that can be measured by a video game, and it’s intriguing learning more about the figureheads you can rally to your cause. There are several outcomes at the end of this mission, and getting what you want might come down to blackmail, reuniting long-lost lovers, or a betrayal of your own. It’s unlike anything else in the Dragon Age series, and I haven’t seen many studios pull off something like it since.

At one point, it seemed as if Flemeth might be the throughline connecting all of Dragon Age. For two games, she was presented as a manipulator, lurking in the shadows and moving the pieces of Thedas’ chess board to her liking. Then all her machinations finally came to a head in Inquisition when she, Morrigan, and perhaps the child the player helped conceive two games prior, all gather in the Fade. Flemeth seemingly has control of the situation, appearing to hold her grandson Kieran hostage and using him as leverage against her daughter who has been on the run since Origins. But as anger gives way to truth-telling and the moment softens, the two find not total reconciliation, but at least an understanding that neither is in danger from the other. It is a series-best performance from Black and Flemeth actor Kate Mulgrew, bringing together three games of choices and history into one incredible confrontation. I’m still unsure how I feel about the final echoes of this moment in The Veilguard, but Flemeth and her family reuniting and acknowledging the struggle of love and fear for one another that they’re caught in remains one of the most memorable interactions in all of Dragon Age.

I could just throw the entirety of the Trespasser DLC in here and it would be in the running for best “moments” in the series. The final expansion BioWare released for Inquisition in 2015 isn’t just an epilogue for the RPG, but is pretty much the true ending. You say goodbye to all the companions with some silly, heartfelt scenes, engage in some politics, and fight some really memorable battles, but the meat of the DLC is in its final 10 minutes. Solas, the elven apostate who abandons your team at the very end, reveals that he is the Dread Wolf, the trickster god who led a rebellion against the rest of the elven pantheon. He plans to tear down the barrier between the real and spirit worlds, which he believes will revitalize the old world of the elves, granting them immortality once more and destroying everyone else in the process. But you’re given two choices that (before The Veilguard, at least) felt incredibly meaningful as a final word for the Inquisitor: Do you think Solas is beyond saving? And is your organization in a state to fight him? Ultimately, neither of those choices mattered in The Veilguard, despite them being imported into the game at the beginning. But back in 2015 it felt like a victory lap, a final declaration by a character you probably wouldn’t get to play again.

BioWare has always been held up as a studio that spearheads inclusive design, but The Veilguard takes this one step further by letting you explicitly determine that your protagonist Rook is trans. This isn’t just a cosmetic choice like giving them top surgery scars or picking a voice; it can be part of your character’s backstory that you talk about from time to time with other characters. Few games have been this thorough about letting you define your character’s identity, and The Veilguard approaches it with a great deal of care.

The Veilguard continues the trend, started with Mass Effect: Andromeda, of BioWare hiding some of a game’s biggest lore reveals behind an optional collectathon, but this time they are so far-reaching and important that I can’t believe some players may never see them. Collecting wolf statues throughout The Veilguard reveals Solas’ regrets. These are murals depicting memories from the elven god’s long life, and essentially write the creation myth of the Dragon Age universe. When I first played The Veilguard, I did these quests pretty late and they started to turn me around on the game entirely. I had mostly considered The Veilguard less a meal than a series of really good sides, but this was when I as a long-time fan felt like I was really eating. Each reveal was juicier and more surprising than the last, bringing connective tissue to a universe that had often felt disparate and disconnected. God, I can’t believe they’re optional.

A lot of The Veilguard’s choices are binary, but most of them are still pretty compelling. The first world-altering choice comes when you must decide which of two cities to save from incoming dragon attacks: Minrathous or Treviso. There’s a lot of emotion tied up in this choice, as well as tactical considerations to make. Your Rook might be from Minrathous, but pursuing a relationship with Treviso native Lucanis. You may be trying to develop partnerships with the radical Tevinter group the Shadow Dragons and feel like you should help them defend their city to not burn bridges. Whatever your reasoning and whatever the consequences, you have to choose right then and there. Your teammates are looking to you for an answer, and you realize that a mere few hours of gameplay ago you were just a contractor helping Varric track down Solas. Rook’s arc is all about them confronting the leadership role that has been thrust on them by circumstance and Varric’s expectations. This is the moment it becomes clear that they might not be cut out for the decisions they have to make, but they’ll have to learn to live with those choices one way or another.

The Mourn Watch necromancer Emmrich is The Veilguard’s best marriage of character and faction culture. He is fascinated by death because he has an all-consuming fear of the end. Emmrich’s goal is to become a Lich, an immortal keeper of the dead, willing to watch life begin and end forevermore. But as his personal quests unfold, his assistant Manfred, a reanimated skeleton, is killed in a battle with a rival Lich. Using his powers, he could bring Manfred back, but doing so would disqualify him from achieving the immortality he desires, as it would show an inability to accept death. How can you be immortal and watch everything live and die in an endless cycle if one death of a loved one compels you to defy the natural order? I’ve heard people make cases for allowing Emmrich to become a Lich, but I chose to advise him to bring Manfred back and leave Lichdom behind. The Lich order may believe his inability to leave Manfred behind as a weakness, but I saw it as an asset. It’s proof that he loves too strongly to spend an eternity watching everyone he cares about disappear over and over again. Still, I see the argument for the other side. No other choice in The Veilguard so succinctly nails the companion-first format BioWare wanted while saying so much about the world in the process.

The Grey Warden headquarters of Weisshaupt has been referenced since the very beginning of Dragon Age, and after all those years hyping it up, our first experience of it is one hell of a followthrough. The Veilguard’s mission at the fortress is an action-packed and narratively rewarding setpiece packed with reveals about the state of the Grey Wardens and demonstrating just how much of a threat the remaining elven gods pose. Meanwhile, the drama it stirs between your team of usually harmonious heroes is a peak moment for the whole series, and holy shit, that boss fight at the end might be the most challenging BioWare’s ever created.

After you see all of Solas’ regrets, you meet a visitor in the Lighthouse: Morrigan. She gives you one last big lore dump, finally putting a bittersweet bow on the tragic story between her and her mother. She also reveals to you that the figure that has been looming over their hit-and-run relationship is Mythal, the elven god of love who once led the pantheon. Mythal is long dead, but her memories have transferred from host to host in the millennia since. Morrigan is the keeper of her memories now, and believes that if even a fraction of the old god were able to release Solas from all his regret, it might be enough to take him off this violent path. Morrigan’s epilogue is introspective and melancholy, but as she directs you to one of the last pieces of Mythal’s soul trapped in the fade, all that family drama is given some meaning. The conversation in which you try to convince Mythal to help you is one of the best in The Veilguard. It branches into multiple topics, giving you several footholds to perhaps convince her that your cause is just. Who your Rook is can play into how effective you are in making your case, and if you can’t persuade her, you can always fight her for her favor. Whatever route you choose, this is one of those moments in which you can feel Dragon Age history changing with every dialogue option you pick.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s final missions are a kind of greatest hits of BioWare’s best tricks. It’s got everything: unavoidable sacrifice, avoidable losses determined by whether or not you know your team well enough to assign them tasks befitting their talents, and a culmination of all the strategic relationships you’ve built with different factions. It might not be as interactive as Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission, but as a series of interlocking decisions bringing you to a myriad of mini conclusions, it far exceeds anything the studio has done in the past 20 years. I was nervous and shaking making those choices, and it’s all portrayed with a level of cinematic finesse that goes beyond anything BioWare’s done before.

When The Veilguard reaches its climax, it becomes clear that all the while, you’ve been caught in a battle of ideals between Varric’s hope and Solas’ cynicism. Rook has been a pawn (no pun intended) for Solas. The elf has been manipulating them the entire time in hopes of trapping them in the Fade and resuming his plan. He’s done this by projecting a vision of Varric who hypes Rook up until they can be cut off at the knees, falling into a state of regret so consuming it traps them within the spirit realm. Here, they’re guided by Varric through the prison until they discover the truth: Varric died at the beginning of the game, and Solas used his image to nudge Rook along the entire game.

The reveal is incredible because you realize BioWare pulled off a Sixth Sense. No one else speaks to Varric the entire game, but he’s placed naturally enough in each scene that you don’t really question that no one else responds to him. You realize that you’ve been fooled by Solas just as much as Rook has, and when they mourn their mentor’s loss, they’re effectively a stand-in for you, the Dragon Age fan. But as despondent as they might be, they still have a job to do, and Varric reminds them that they’ve done everything up to this point by themself. They don’t need Varric’s guidance. They already have everything they need.

As frustrated as I was with The Veilguard’s decision to leave the Inquisitor behind for a new protagonist, this twist was what made Rook work for me. The whole game essentially emerges from Varric betting on someone to finish the job he couldn’t. His belief in Rook is what keeps the game going, even as Solas tries to manipulate it to his own advantage. It may have been sad to watch Varric go from a city dwarf just trying to make it to a victim of Solas’ pride, but his belief in others lives on.

After four games, pretty much everything Dragon Age has ever been leads to one final conversation with Solas. The Veil is coming down, the rest of Thedas will be burned to ash in the aftermath, and the only way to stop it is for the trickster god himself to bind himself to it. No matter what you do, Solas will end up using his immortal life force to keep Thedas and the Fade separate. But the tenor of your decision still matters. You can knock him senseless and forcibly cast the blood magic spell to hold him there, you can trick him so his magic backfires and leave him helpless as you bind him to the Veil, or you can take the third option. Bringing Mythal’s essence out allows her to release him from her service, letting him lay down a lifetime of regret. It’s the culmination of learning all the secrets left in this world, and once you have all that understanding, it feels like the most appropriate way to cap off a cliffhanger whose resolution we’ve been awaiting for ten years.

After everything that’s happened to BioWare in the months following The Veilguard’s launch, what sticks out to me most is how much the game leans into finality. Closure is a key pillar of its storytelling, even if there are hints toward a sequel we may never get. And if this is the note we leave off on, I won’t be upset. I hope most of the team that was at BioWare at any point during the series’ development won’t be either.