With a 10-year gap between 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition , the most recent entry in the series, and the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard , the latter has a lot going for it. It’s both a sequel to a beloved game from a decade ago in one of BioWare’s most beloved franchises, and the first BioWare game since 2019’s Anthem , the live-action multiplayer game that EA ended less than two years later.
With the pressure of Veilguard’s launch looming, I spoke with BioWare about the lessons learned from Inquisition’s sequel and what it’s like to return to the series after so many years.
“We start in pre-production,” BioWare CEO Gary McKay tells me when I ask about BioWare’s guiding principle in creating Veilguard. “We spent a lot of time iterating and experimenting and innovating on different things. At one point, it was multiplayer—we looked at multiplayer a lot, but we felt like we couldn’t go back to the roots. And when we asked ourselves, ‘What kind of game do we want to make?’ we really wanted to go back to the roots, which was incredible storytelling. It’s about these unforgettable characters. And the ability to impact the world.
McKay says Veilguard is bringing seasoned veterans together with modern voices and perspectives, and “that’s really important for the game.” For example, people like former Dragon Age producer Mark Darrah, who left the studio in 2021 but is now a consultant on Veilguard, and imaginative director John Epler have decades of combined experience at BioWare. They work with people like game director Corinne Busche, who joined BioWare shortly after Anthem launched (but brings her love of Dragon Age from the series’ early days in 2009), every day to develop the game we’ll be playing this fall.
Darrah has been involved with BioWare in some capacity since the early days of Baldur’s Gate, and when I ask him about the studio’s progression from that series to the next Dragon Age, he says it’s incredible. “What’s so amazing about Veilguard is that it’s a game where we finally said out loud that BioWare’s greatest strength is telling stories through characters. If you go back to Baldur’s Gate 1, Baldur’s Gate 2, those games were telling stories through characters, but there was no intention to do that. And with this game, we’re finally putting that intention first, we’re putting characters first, we’re building the game around that, around those character moments, which is really the best way BioWare knows how to tell stories.”
I ask Darrah if Veilguard is doing something BioWare wanted to do in previous games but couldn’t, and he says, “Telling a story through animation.” In previous games, every character moved “exactly the same way,” and everyone was consistent in that regard, he says. “If you put on the armor and put it on Alistair, you looked exactly the same standing next to each other.
“Now we can preserve the character’s character in the visuals and movement even as you adjust them, which wasn’t possible before.”
About the Inquisition
With a 10-year gap between Inquisition and Veilguard, BioWare has to find a balance between pleasing longtime fans of the series and newcomers jumping in for the first time. Epler says the studio worked difficult to make Veilguard feel respectful and nodatory to previous games without feeling like you have to have played Inquisition, Dragon Age II, or Origins to fully understand what it’s all about.
“So while there are references, there are moments where we have callbacks, it really is its own story, its own sequel with a different cast, with different characters,” he says. “Historically, Dragon Age has always had a different cast in each game, so it gives us a lot of freedom in terms of what we want to build on from the past and what we really want to introduce that is new and forward-looking.”
Darrah adds that the events of Veilgaurd are happening with a narrative goal for the future of the series. “It’s a game that takes the ball that Inquisition had, puts its own spin on it, has its own characters, takes its own direction, but continues on a path forward into the future,” he says.
For Busche, balancing newcomers and fan expectations in Veilguard is about managing the lore. He says Veilguard takes place in a part of Thedas that BioWare has only hinted at. The team has talked about the Grey Warden stronghold of Weisshaupt, the depths of Arlathan Forest, the Rivain Shores, the Great Nevarran Necropolis, and Minrathous, but now players will finally get to travel to the locations from those stories.
Epler tells me that Veilguard is different from Inquisition and other Dragon Age games in that Rook, the player character, can’t save the world without the heroes he meets along the way.
While he’s biased for obvious reasons, Epler says Veilguard is his favorite Dragon Age game he’s worked on (and he’s worked on every single one, starting as a QA tester on Origins). He says part of the reason is the storytelling in characters, companions, and relationships.
“They have their friendships, they have their rivalries, and they lean into that concept,” he tells me. “You’re not just gathering a group of people who are going to do whatever you tell them to do. You’re creating a family, and that becomes the heart of what Veilguard is. It’s about taking that group, that found family, and saving the world, shoulder to shoulder with them.”
To learn more about the game, including exclusive details, interviews, videos, and more, click the Dragon Age: The Veilguard button below.
