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:
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