Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a BioWare RPG, which means a lot of things, including the fact that the game will feature romance. Based on what I learned during a recent visit to BioWare’s Edmonton offices for an update Game guide cover article: Veilguard will be the most romantic match for this team.
Relationship level
Every companion in the game has a relationship level tied to Rook, and the choices you make (and they’re not even specific to the companion, but to the world in general), what you say to your companions, how you aid them or don’t aid them, and more all affect that. Every time you level up a companion’s relationship, you unlock a skill point that you can spend specifically on that companion. While the companion skill trees pale in comparison to Rook’s wide-ranging tree, which includes passive skills, combat skills, and more, as well as paths to three unique class specializations, there’s still some customization here.
Each companion has access to five skills, but you can only take three into battle. As such, it’s vital to strategize about which skills to spend a skill point on and how those skills can interact with your current build on the battlefield. While I couldn’t confirm this, Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes suggests that companion issues and personal quests will affect this level of relationship and how your companion interacts with Rook.
Romance
But don’t worry, BioWare fans — romance is a key part of the game’s relationships, Busche says, noting that some of the romances will be pretty steamy. But not all of them, because “every romance has a completely different flavor,” according to Busche. Some characters are straightforward, while others are more awkward because they’ve never been in a relationship before. “You get to learn who these characters are, how their romances develop,” he says. He compares romantic and platonic relationships to another way to “level up” companions. It’s not just experience and skill points that determine Rook’s standing among his companions, but also diegetic conversations.
BioWare has already revealed that every companion in Veilguard is pansexual, which is a stark contrast to the “playersexual” social approach in some games, where NPCs adjust their romantic and sexual interests based on the player rather than their own sense of sexuality. As pansexual companions, they are attracted to people of any gender (or regardless of gender). That’s a key distinction, because in Veilguard, your companions won’t simply be competing for your affections—they may be attracted to other companions in the titular Veilguard.
Giving one companion the cool shoulder can result in them being given the sultry shoulder of someone else in the party. Busche says that companions can romance each other, though I can’t confirm whether that means Rook is blocked from romances with them.
I didn’t see anything resembling romance in my first few hours with the game. However, I did occasionally see a romantically-oriented “emotional” response in Rook’s dialogue choices, which led to my Rook flirting with the ice mage and private investigator companion Neve Gallus. Busche says that this is an option to flirt and push platonic relationships into romance territory, although Rook’s flirtatious efforts aren’t always reciprocated. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the other options—I’ve also seen dialogue choices that resemble affable, sarcastic, and direct, and I can see how these different types of dialogue probably mix and match in Rook’s relationships with his companions. It’s still a mostly mysterious system to me, but with Veilguard coming out this fall, I don’t have to wait too long to find out more, and neither do you.
To learn more about the game, including exclusive details, interviews, videos, and more, click the Dragon Age: The Veilguard button below.
