One of the biggest criticisms I and many other Dragon Age fans had about The Veilguard was that it failed to carry over most of our decisions from the previous games in BioWare’s fantasy RPG series. In fact, the fourth game in the franchise only imports three choices from Dragon Age: Inquisition, a stark departure from its predecessor which used a whole separate app to let you craft a world state based on hundreds of previous decisions. While that limitation lingers over The Veilguard, BioWare says this shouldn’t signal to fans that choices from games as far back as the original Dragon Age: Origins can’t factor into a future game.
In an interview with IGN, Game Director Corinne Busche was asked if BioWare’s developers wished they’d included more choice carryover in The Veilguard. The final game only implements three decisions specifically regarding the Inquisitor, the protagonist of Dragon Age: Inquisition. These choices mainly end up affecting a few lines of dialogue, and meanwhile, The Veilguard goes out of its way to avoid actually addressing anything else the player may have done in previous games. Every returning character’s dialogue is written in a way that they could have feasibly ended up where they do in the sequel regardless of whatever choices you may have made. Some minutiae falls through the cracks, like Isabela talking as if she joined the player in Dragon Age II, when it was possible to play that game without recruiting her. But broadly, BioWare chose to take more care to not contradict players’ choices than to represent them. This was a far cry from the studio’s previous work, and while I appreciate the care the team took to not step on toes, I think most fans were surprised to find something that felt so severed from previous games, especially as The Veilguard’s story ties up so many loose ends from across the franchise.
The studio has said that it planned on using the geographical distance between the events of the southern regions of Thedas in previous games and the northern setting of The Veilguard to get narrative distance. However, Busche explained to IGN that just because a decision from Origins, DAII, or Inquisition didn’t factor into The Veilguard’s story, that doesn’t mean it can’t be imported in a future game.
“The big thing for us is we wanted to make this story, every single choice you make, feel relevant to it,” Busche said. “One thing that we could have stated more clearly or maybe alluded to more clearly in the game is the idea that just because these choices from the past library of games didn’t necessarily impact this particular story, that doesn’t mean they’re gone. This is a chance for us to really key in to what matters with these events and what’s happening in Northern Thedas. I do fully expect that these choices going clear back to Dragon Age Origins will again matter. So just wanted to be on record with that. Every one of your choices that people have made throughout their Dragon Age journey, those are still your choices. And if you’ve seen the secret 2D ending we talked about, some of these events being quite pertinent. It’s easy to see how those choices can and will be relevant into the future.”
While a hypothetical Dragon Age 5 is years away at this point, what we do know about the future of the series implies that old choices could be more relevant down the road. The Veilguard’s secret ending in particular has ramifications for the whole franchise, rather than just that game, so I could see BioWare circling around to older game decisions while plotting the series’ path forward. Will it be enough to make up for The Veilguard’s relative disconnect? We’ll see in a few years, as for now, BioWare has pivoted its focus to the next Mass Effect game.