Dragon Age: The Veilguard will not obtain any main story DLC. It additionally ends fairly decisively, save for a couple of hints about the way forward for Thedas in a secret post-credits scene. How closing is that air of finality? Is Dragon Age going again on the shelf for the forseeable? Worry not, say recreation director Corinne Busche and collection artistic director John Epler, for the universe of Dragon Age has many yarns but to spin. The subsequent recreation will not essentially be an motion recreation with RPG trappings, both, for very similar to Ultimate Fantasy, Dragon Age exists in a state of continuous “reinvention”.
Veilguard’s neater ending is partly owing to BioWare’s need to keep away from a repeat of the scenario with Dragon Age: Inquisition, the earlier recreation from 2014, which paved the way in which for Veilguard’s premise with its DLC. Talking to Eurogamer in a prolonged postmortem chat after Veilguard’s launch, Epler commented that persevering with that recreation’s knotty storyline whereas introducing newcomers to the collection was an actual headache – although maybe not as large a headache as the preliminary battle to make a multiplayer recreation, in keeping with writer EA’s reside service ambitions on the time.
“Inquisition did finish with some pretty hefty dangling plot threads,” he defined. “Clearly there’s the post-credits scene with Solas and Flemeth, and it felt on the time – as a result of I used to be on Inquisition, I used to be on the Trespasser crew – we checked out what we already had and determined, okay, we need to do one final chapter, one final story beat. The distinction in The Veilguard is the story ends fairly conclusively. There’s, clearly, a secret post-credits scene, however that is much less of ‘right here is a right away factor that you simply now want to pay attention to’, and extra ‘here is a touch as to what the longer term shall be’.”
“We needed to be sure that this one resulted in a much less ambiguous approach, the place it is very clear that this story is completed,” he went on. “What comes subsequent, you will note, nevertheless it will not require the identical stage of ‘okay let’s catch you up on what’s occurred’. I am nonetheless happy with the crew and what they did originally of this one, however there’s quite a bit that comes from earlier video games that feed into this one.”
Busche dropped a couple of extra concrete recommendations on potential Dragon Age 5 plots. “Is not it attention-grabbing how a whole lot of the threats which were prevalent all through the franchise solely scratch on the floor of the mysteries and potentialities within the IP?” she stated. “There’s been a whole lot of exploration of the Blight, the elven gods, the elven folks, and it is fantastic material. Nevertheless, it additionally makes me curious concerning the different elements which might be much less explored and equally as attention-grabbing: the character of the qunari, what’s throughout the seas, what’s taking place with the titans, the event of the dwarven folks.
“So in some ways, I really feel like answering a few of these long-threaded mysteries which might be particular to the Blight and particular to the elves, this provides some house to discover different concepts sooner or later,” she concluded, inconclusively.
Veilguard is extra of an motion recreation than an RPG, a lot to the frustration of Inquisition diehards and crustier BioWare followers at massive. Epler and Busche focus on this within the Eurogamer interview, with Busche coyly observing that Dragon Age is “a franchise of reinvention”, and that the following sequel would possibly swap genres as soon as once more.
“In some methods there are some parallels in that regard, to say, the Ultimate Fantasy collection,” she stated. “After all, very totally different by way of selection and penalties, and so many different elements, however there are these RPG franchises that embrace that reinvention, that when a brand new one will get introduced, it actually piques your curiosity about the place are we going to go? What sort of journey is that this going to be?”
I am nonetheless making my approach by way of Veilguard. I am having fun with the fight and the costumes, however I do but yearn for Inquisition’s (horribly unwieldy) tactical planning and its gratuitous base administration. So color me hopeful that Veilguard’s successor is extra of a role-player. Nonetheless, why prohibit ourselves to the spectrum between motion recreation and RPG? I would not thoughts taking part in an immersive sim set in Thedas, or maybe a relationship recreation.
