Key Takeaways
- Dragon Age concept artist Matt Rhodes shares plans for a fourth game that he was drafting before Inquisition even launched.
- This gives us our earliest look at the game that would eventually become Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
- The Veilguard’s art book also reveals a lot of cut stories and themes, many of which appear to be darker than what we got in the final game.
While there’s a ten-year gap between Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, that doesn’t mean that the game we got was in development for that long. From what we’ve been able to gather, there were three different attempts to get a fourth Dragon Age game off the ground, with the final one being The Veilguard as we know it.
However, it turns out that plans for the sequel were being laid out before Inquisition launched. Concept artist Matt Rhodes confirmed this today, releasing some work that he drafted back in 2014, as he pitched ideas for what could happen after Inquisition’s story.
Concept Art Reveals Early Plans For A Fourth Dragon Age Game
This work has been released as part of the art book for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. While this wasn’t what the sequel was going to be called back then, the work in this book gives us a glimpse at what we could have got instead.
As we can see, there are a few abandoned plot points. For starters, there’s the Divine leading an army to track down Solas. One of three characters can become the Divine at the end of Inquisition (Cassandra, Leliana, or Vivienne), but this decision is not imported into The Veilguard.
We can also see the Inquisitor sitting on a throne, suggesting that we may have seen more of the Inquisition itself in the sequel. Further still, a caption in the artbook itself says that this is a group of people “receiving an assignment from the Inquisitor”, so we could have presumably travelled to Skyhold for that.
You can check out a bunch of preview pages from the art book here.
The art book gives us more pieces of concept art too, showing cut plans for a mobile player base, which could have been a pirate ship. There’s also a plot point that sees dwarfs leaving for the surface in droves – something many would refuse to do without a very good reason
There are several pieces of art for a concept that did make it into the game – communicating with Solas through dreams. However, it’s revealed here that there was going to be a fail state, in which Solas would be able to kill you through these dreams. In general, it seems that Solas going to be a constant hindrance, as we see art of him disrupting the players’ plans.
On top of all of this, there are also some cut character designs. One shows a former slave who fought her way to freedom and now frees others. Another is the “heir of Andraste” – the last living descendant of the figure often referred to as the bride of The Maker.
In general, this concept art shows a much darker vision of The Veilguard. In the concept art for Tevinter, we see elven slaves everywhere, and a heavy focus on war between nations. We get a bit of that in The Veilguard, but it seems that this was toned down. It even seems that there were originally more plans for companion conflict, as one piece of art shows one of our party members, presumably Taash, betraying the player.
For whatever reason, much of this was left on the cutting room floor. And while fans would have liked more conflict, The Veilguard has at least given BioWare its first win in quite some time. It remains to be seen where it takes the Dragon Age series next, considering The Velilguard isn’t getting any DLC.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the long-awaited fourth game in the fantasy RPG series from BioWare formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. A direct sequel to Inquisition, it focuses on red lyrium and Solas, the aforementioned Dread Wolf.