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felassan · 3 months

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June 14th 2024 Developer Q&A (from the official BioWare Discord) - Complete transcript

Under a cut due to length.

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

[Link to video recording of Q&A] | [Link to equivalent post for second Q&A (August 30th)] | [Link to video recording for second Q&A]

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here. This blog post is linked in the description under the video. ( ˶´ ᵕ `˶ )

Corinne Busche, John Epler, Matt Rhodes and Community Manager Katey were the devs that were there.

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Katey: Hello!

John: Hello.

Katey: Beautiful, your mic sounds beautiful. How's everybody doing?

John: Excellent. I, just as a headsup, I have some folks doing some service, in the next room so, if I, if you hear background noise, that's what that is.

Katey: No worries at all. Well I hope that everybody who's been waiting in here is really excited, because I'm super excited. I'm Katey. I'm the Community Manager. If you don't already know, you can usually see my name at the top of this Discord server. But I'm joined here with some awesome guests that I'll let introduce themselves. Let's start with Corinne.

Corinne: Can you hear me okay?

John: Yep.

Katey: Yep, we can hear you beautifully.

Corinne: Great, perfect. I'm Corinne Busche, Game Director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

John: Awesome. I'm John Epler, Creative Director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Corinne: John!

John: Hello.

Katey: And then we've also got Matt Rhodes, who may be struggling to find the unmute button which is at the bottom left.

Corinne: Our, our resident artist-poet, Matt Rhodes.

Katey: I could unmute him, actually, I don't know if I can unmute him, but if he needs help, he can message me on the side.

John: The joys of being a giant nerd is I spend a lot of time on Discord anyway, so.

Corinne: Well there you go, right?

Katey: Fair enough. Alright, well, we have a ton of questions to answer. We probably won't be able to get to all of them today. You all have sent in so many really really great answers, sorry, questions for us to answer. And if we don't get to them today, we're hoping to be able to do things like this in the future. So without further ado, I'll get started. First question's a bit of a soft ball, I feel. If you could belong to any of the main factions shown in the game, which would you choose?

Corinne: I mean, listen Katey, you say softball, but like, this is hard! I’m gonna cheat, and I’m gonna give you two. So for fashion, the Antivan Crows, all day long. Their threads, you’re gonna love it. For vibes, though, like the ones that capture my vibe, Mourn Watch. Gimme those necromancers.

John: Those are good answers. I have, I have one for fashion, and also for, just general faction I’d like to be a part of. Veil Jumpers. Who doesn’t like a nice walk in the forest, y’know? Even if that forest is filled with horrifying monsters and terrifying anomalies, but yeah.

Katey: I love that. I know that Matt has a few technical issues – oh, he’s unmuted. There we go. Or maybe not. That’s okay, I think we can move on.

John: The Fade has taken Matt.

Corinne: That’s right, that’s right.

Katey: Yes. One quick thing, if you check your settings, the cog-wheel in the bottom left, make sure that your voice, like, your audio is all good. If you’re still hearing the music, feel free to maybe, force-quit Discord and rejoin by just joining the stage directly. And mute the music before you come in. Okay. I can move on to the next question for now. I’ve seen, so this question was from Acra. I’ve seen a lot of talk about only having two companions in your party instead of three for this game. What is the reasoning behind this and will we still get the same companion conversations and banter as seen in the previous Dragon Age games?

Corinne: Ooh, this is such a good question. Thankyou, whoever submitted this one. Yeah, I’ll guess I’ll start and then I’ll turn it over to John Epler. So, first of all, as you saw in the gameplay reveal, this is a much more intimate experience. We’ve pulled the camera in. For those that aren’t aware, the reason why is we want you to feel like you actually are in this world, right? Like, you’re walking these city streets of Minrathous, you’re looking up, seeing the buildings all around you, you’re a part of this place. So it’s much more intimate, and we believe as the narrative unfolds this creates a lot more immersion. Now, how that relates to companions is in doing this, we went back and forth on it a lot, but we actually found, with this perspective, having two companions, really allows them more visibility and presence. We’ve talked about the incredible depth and focus we’ve put on fleshing out these companions, they’re very fully-realized. So here, you really get to see them more clearly, you get to see them shine. When you see Lace Harding jump into the air and unleash a volley of arrows, you can only really get that because of that more intimate view. So I love the spotlight that’s been put on them. But, I think, in addition to the banter, one of the things that people are wondering about is, okay, but what about gameplay? So again, this has come about from our testing, working with the internal team, also our lovely Council of players. We just found that when you’re playing in the combat system, when you’re planning your strategies, two really felt like the right number to manage. So keep in mind, Rook has a lot of different types of actions, Abilities, individual attacks that are more fully fleshed-out than ever before. Timing and positioning matter a lot. So this really felt like the right balance to have. The number of inputs and actions we’re asking you as a player to take, including directing your companions, is higher than ever before. And I will also say, I engage with the companions, like I actively control what they’re doing more than I ever have before in any of the other three games. But John, I’ll toss it over to you for the banter. That’s kind of like the, we got a two-for-one there.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Corinne: I think that’s a, a great question.

John: So - it’s a great question, yeah. I mean honestly, I don’t think you could actually stop the writers from writing banter. I will say for myself, it’s, it’s one of the more light but fun things to do. You get to write little stories, little arcs between different characters. And I mean, The Veilguard is no different. Banter is still absolutely core part of it. You know, we’ve got global banter, you know, the general stuff that you get in all spaces, as well as mission-specific stuff. But, yeah, it’s definitely still a big thing. I think it’s, if anything it’s the most we’ve, we’ve ever done for pairings of companions. Beyond that we’ve also made sure, and I mean I’ve been on Dragon Age for a while, and I know there’s been issues, you know, things like, okay, well I don’t wanna miss this banter. So we’ve even added stuff like some interruptible and resumable banter as well, just to make sure that, because again, it’s a core part of the experience. Everyone loves hearing these companions talk to each other, everyone loves hearing these little stories and relationships develop over the course of the game and, as mentioned before, companions are the heart of this experience and banter is a big part of that, so, you still have it, it’s, if anything, like I said, you could not stop the writers from doing it even if we tried, so.

Corinne: That’s right, that’s right. Well, John, you know, listening to you speak, one thing that comes to mind, maybe people are wondering, with two companions in the field do I get less interaction between, that, like do I get to see my companions interacting in a broader group more often.

John: Oh -

Corinne: And, the way you’ll gather them around the kitchen table, there’s just so many of those moments where they’re all interacting with each other.

John: Well, I think –

Corinne: Those are some of my favorite parts.

John: Yeah, and I think, yeah, and actually that’s a, a good call, because I think the other side of it is, we’re not talking too much about your home or anything, but, we also want to make sure that they feel like they have a relationships and a life outside of just, the times you take a certain pair of companions out on the field. So we made sure that, they have those interactions there as well.

Katey: Love that. Let’s see. Um, Matt, are we, are we all set, are we good? Yes? No? Okay. I can continue and we can come back to some of your questions. Alright. So that, I loved the answers to those. How customizable is the backstory of Rook? Will we get to determine their past in the Character Creator? And that was asked by Briar.

John: Yeah, so. Absolutely. So, one of, each, Rook has six different backgrounds that you can choose from. Each of them is tied to one of the major factions in The Veilguard and each one sets out who Rook was before they recruited, were recruited by Varric, and. Well that sets out the broad events. As you go through the game, as you’re gonna have conversations, either with members of your faction, other characters, you can define, not just what those events were, but what they meant to you, what was your motivation, what was the kind of person you are as you build up Rook, because again, we wanna make sure that roleplaying is at the heart of this experience. And taking Rook, giving them, again, giving them background to ground them in the world but then letting you decide what that means and what that says about you is also a big part of it, so. And again, there are six different factions in this game, two which, anyone who’s played Dragon Age for a while will remember. You’ve got the Grey Wardens. You’ve got the Antivan Crows. We also have, in addition to that, we have four new ones, because we’re in northern Thedas. We have the Veil Jumpers. We have the Mourn Watch. We have the Shadow Dragons, and we have the Lords of Fortune, so. Again, a lot of different options, a lot of different background, and a lot of opportunities to really define what your, who your Rook was, and who they are now, so.

Katey: Amazing. Will crafting return? If yes, has it been improved over the system in Inquisition? Asked by Some Dude.

Matt: Testing.

Katey: Oh hey Matt!

Corinne: “Some Dude”, is that, I’m gonna assume “Some Dude” is a username. Great question.

Katey: Yes.

Corinne: Welcome Matt, the lovely Matt Rhodes.

Matt: Testing, testing.

Corinne: Welcome, welcome, hello. Alright, so, will crafting return? You can absolutely improve and customize your gear, yes, that is a big part of RPG progression, so yes you can improve and customize it. I will say, though, it’s different this time around, and it does get into spoiler territory, so I, I’m gonna be a little bit cagey about it, but there might be a mysterious entity that assists you with that that’ll be an important part of the narrative.

Katey: So mysterious.

Corinne: Oooh!

Katey: Matt, I’m gonna actually go back to our first question so that you can answer, so everyone knows.

Matt: Thank you.

Katey: What faction, what faction you would choose if you could choose one for yourself?

Matt: Absolutely, oh, for me it’s definitely the Lords of Fortune. I’ve had a chance to try out a bunch of them, but I think I’ve finally settled on them. And it’s largely just because pirate-barbarian is just such a great combination of elements, so. Treasure-hunting plus beaches and palm trees and all that stuff, it’s a, it’s a really good mix, so that’s kinda my default.

Katey: I think I’m with you there, for sure. How about this one - this one was definitely asked probably amongst the most in Discord. Axolotl asks, can we kiss or romance Manfred the skeleton?

Matt: Uh, I, I would say, not that skeleton, but we’re not saying no skeletons.

Katey: I love that answer.

Corinne: This is my favorite answer so far.

Katey: Alright, so I’m gonna get back on track here. Alright. What, what were some of the development considerations that you had to take into account to ensure that this new game flows and functions with prior games, and Dragon Age Keep, if Keep is being utilized?

Corinne: Ooh, that’s a good one too. So, first of all, I would, I would point everyone to, we did an interview with IGN that goes into some of the details there, so, like, if you want a deeper dive on it, check out that article. But just to summarize, we have taken a different approach on how you import your decisions this time around. It’s now actually been fully-integrated into the Character Creator, and kinda serves a dual purpose, to be honest. I, I playfully, it’s not called this in-game, but I playfully think of it as ‘Last Time On Dragon Age’.

Katey: I love that.

Corinne: Right? Now, when I talk about its dual purpose, it’s been ten years since the last Dragon Age game released, so it serves as a refresher on critical events as well as allowing you to re-make those decisions that are critical to you. The thing I love about it is, it’s very highly visual, it uses the familiar tarot card aesthetic, so it’s actually really visual and playful experience as you go through it. It is very much important to us that it’s built into the client, though. You can play this game entirely offline. No connection. You don’t have to link to your EA accounts, like that’s been a really big request. So, the refresher plus make those decisions in-client, I think we’re all pretty happy about that. I don’t wanna spoil anything by revealing what decisions you can import, like, look, y’all don’t want the spoilers, but I will say, it’s been a really interesting creative intersection for us, because on the one hand, this is a whole new adventure. You’re in northern Thedas, these locations that you’ve literally never been to before. So that affects some of what will matter and what we’re not using this time around, as far as decisions. But obviously there’s some very, very clear connections to existing characters. It’s no secret that the Inquisitor, our dear Inky, is gonna show up, so, that’s, that’s a factor.

Katey: Peachy asks, will this next game be an open-world game, or is it just contained to Tevinter?

John: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you are in northern Thedas, but the game only begins in Minrathous, it doesn’t stay there. I’m, I think one of the most exciting things for me, honestly, and again, to Corinne’s earlier point about spoilers, I don’t wanna get into too much spoiler detail, but getting to go to, and work with the art team, work with the narrative, work with the design team to build out these locations that we’ve talked about. Places that characters have referred to as where they’ve come from, places that characters, obviously, in previous games, have hailed from, has been absolutely exciting. So, it’s, you do start in Tevinter, you do start in Minrathous, but again, that’s not the entire game by any stretch. So yeah.

Corinne: Yeah, and the first half of it is, is it an open-world game? We’ve gone back to what we believe delivers the best, most curated –

John: Mhm.

Corinne: - intense narratives. So, this is a hand-crafted experience, it’s mission-based. Now, these locations can open up. You can go back, solve mysteries, do some really great side-content. Not fetch-quests, not grind-quests, some really great side content.

John: Mhm.

Corinne: But, I wanna be clear. It’s, it’s a really curated, hand-crafted experience.

John: And just to, just to bounce off of that very quickly. The most important thing for us, to what Corinne was saying about hand-crafted, obviously we’ve talked about how, you know, narrative, story, characters, are the most, are critical to us, and this has allowed us to build these experiences in a way that emphasize that, extremely long, while still, again, tying into the story threads and the story beats, so.

Katey: Awesome. TastefulToxel wants to know - will the companions have unique specializations like Dragon Age II, or will it be the same ones we will have access to as the player in like DA: Origins, or Inquisition?

Corinne: Oh, cool. Hey TastefulToxel. Yeah, so, cool question. I think the best way for me to describe this is that, yes, our companions will have Abilities that are truly unique to them. But also, the companions do fall into the archetypes of mage, rogue, and warrior. Like, for instance, you might be surprised to hear, because she has a bow, but Bellara is, in fact, a mage, and I, I love that. So, some of the Abilities, the bulk of the Abilities of the companions are based on their own unique personality. Like, Neve is the only mage that is an Ice Mage, so you get distinct Abilities for her. But, because she’s a mage, she does have access to Abilities that all the mages share, like Time Slow. So we really like the balance there. It’s like a good mix of representing their archetype, their class, and also their distinct specialization or personality, whatever you wanna call it.

John: Yeah, actually, I would actually say the word ‘personality’ is a really great one because that’s, again, each of these characters exists, each of these characters have a history, have a story of how they became who they were, and part of that was finding that intersection between narrative and gameplay, and making sure that, again, we, we serve the needs of gameplay but also allow these characters to breathe and exist as their own people, not just in conversation, but out of conversations, as well.

Corinne: I would also say as part of that core mage kit, healing spells are there, so any of your mages, you wanna make ‘em a healer, do that.

Katey: Lunasoul Darkmoon asks, will The Veilguard have tactical combat still?

Corinne: Ooh, such a good one, such a good one. Okay. Yes! Combat gets quite tactical, like, obviously this is an evolution of the combat system, and I talked about immersion, wanting you, to put you in the world, like you’re actually living and existing in it, but it is very tactical. And, I will say, we have a robust difficulty system. The tactics are increasingly important the higher difficulty level you go. So like, look, if you’re showing up for a highly tactical experience, I would crank that difficulty level in particular. But I wanna make clear, I’m, super, I wanna make sure I’m super clear in my answer. You saw the gameplay reveal. Our pause-time tactical mode is not overhead. It stays close to Rook. It does allow you to cycle between targets, both in and out of combat, there’s a reason for that. As the game progresses, and you didn’t see this in that opening hour of the game, but it’ll display strategic information on the enemies, so like, what are their vulnerabilities, what are their elemental weaknesses, their enhancements, what are they resistant to? So your type of Abilities, learning into elemental gameplay, matters a lot. I’d also say, this is a long answer, it’s such a good question – tactical decision-making also takes the form, I would say this is front and center, of coordinating your Ability usage between Rook and your companions to create synergies, or really devastating – we call them – detonation combos. So, let me give you a couple of examples, because it can be a little hard to visualize, so hopefully this helps. So one of the tactics that I personally enjoy in my own builds, I just recently played as a Veil Ranger, I love it, it’s one of my favorites. If I’m fighting Fade-touched enemies in Arlathan, I like to use Bellara’s Galvanized Tear to pull enemies together, it’s like a gravity well. You then Slow Time with Neve and, Slow Time affects the world around you, but it does not affect you, so you clump them up, you Slow Time, and then with Rook, I come in and do, like a devastating AOE or damage over time spell or Ability, and it’s even better if it’s a lightning-based Ability, because the Fade-touched in Arlathan are vulnerable to that. So there’s so many layers of coordination and strategy and tactics. Now we did talk about the devastating, like, detonation combos, honestly, that’s probably one of my favorite features, because that’s when you’re really leaning into explicit teamwork between your companions and Rook, or, the companions together. So when I, when I build out my team and I’m going into a mission, I try to ensure that I have at least a couple of possible synergies, detonation combo synergies within my team. Might be between Harding and Neve, or it might be between Neve and me, or it might be both. So here, I would go into battle, I’d pause time, open the Ability Wheel, get information on the enemy, and the Wheel will actually tell me that there is a synergy combo, you might have seen a screenshot that says “combo available”. It will remind you of those synergies between companions. You can queue both of those Abilities up at the same time, go, close out of the pause-time menu, they’ll both execute, both Abilities will happen, then the detonation AOE happens, applies debuffs to all the enemies in a radius of it, it’s so satisfying, it’s so satisfying, I can’t wait for y’all to see it. But the interesting thing is that too is a tactical choice. I’m choosing to use my companions to do that, and that means, in that moment, I’m not using them to heal me, or to give me that defense bonus, or to knock an enemy off a ledge, so it’s about the opportunity cost. I, I could spend the rest of the session talking about this, I, apologies for being long-winded, but this is just one of my favorite parts of, of the game.

Katey: That was a great answer. Can you choose Rook’s pronouns? If yes, being, is being non-binary an option? And also, how detailed is Character Creation?

Corinne: Hell yeah you can select your pronouns! Absolutely. You can actually select both your pronouns and your gender, because those are related concepts, but they’re not actually the exact same thing, so. It’s really cool. Yeah, you can be non-binary. We have they/them, she/her, he/him. Yes, emphatic yes. How detailed is the Character Creator? Oh my goodness, y’all. Like. Very! I don’t wanna give away too much just yet, but it’s very, very deep. It has been revealed, it’s out there in a couple of articles, about the focus on hair, the focus on skin-tones that are done respectfully, full-body customization, hell yeah, we love to see it. But we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna come back, we’re gonna show you a lot more on Character Creator, but we wanna make sure we have the time and space to, to do that.

Katey: Will there be a Photo Mode in-game?

Corinne: So that is something we’re actively looking into. We know there’s a tonne of interest, so stay tuned on that one. But we are very much looking into it.

Matt: I can add to that, is a feature that is, that, we like, we like the idea of, and, and, it’s not just player-facing but internally, it’s a really helpful thing for us as we’re, as we’re building things out to have that so it’s, it’s, we’ll let ya know.

Corinne: Yes, yeah, absolutely. We, we are as geeked on that possibility as you all are.

Katey: A lot of people were asking about Abilities. This one is from Clemmy. Abilities, I don’t think I saw this answered yet, but are we going to be limited in how many Abilities we can pick from the Wheel?

Corinne: Ah! Yes, yes, yes. So, Ability Wheel does have a capacity. You have to choose which three Abilities you wanna bring for Rook, which three for one of your companions, and which three for another companion. And what I, what I like about this is there is, kind of, an emergent gameplay depending on who you and your companions are coming into the mission with. Now the reason for that is, it actually creates really interesting balance of strategizing, having to do that strategy about your kit, your combat kit, before the mission. And then the tactical decisions once you’re in the field in combat, deciding what to do. But, I do wanna clear one thing up, because, while there are three Ability slots for Rook, there’s so much more than that. Other actions that you can perform directly from the Wheel include, you’ll have an Ultimate Ability, associated with your class or your specialization, so there’s variance there. There’s a type of items that you’ll get that function like Abilities, they’re typically like buffs and enhancements in form of Runes. So you’ll control that for Rook and/or the team from the Wheel. You may have also seen that you can direct which targets your companions will focus on, but what you might not know is that a lot of the companion gear really synergizes with that directing your companions. When you issue those commands, that too will proc based on the gear they have equipped. Really interesting and strategic effects. They can be more Ability-like, more, like, procced effects, there’s just so much from the Wheel, that once you get in and see everything working together, becomes more and more apparent.

Katey: We have another question from TastefulToxel which is, will Fireball and Cone of Cold be back as skills, or as spells in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

Corinne: Ohh, I love, all these combat questions, really good. So Fireball and Cone of Cold aren’t specifically back, however, their successors are. Frost Nova and Meteor. So these serve the exact same combat role and function as those other Abilities. I would also say, it gives ‘em quite the glow-up, so. Meteor in particular, like, so satisfying nuking a group of darkspawn with a well-placed Meteor, it’s really wonderful.

Katey: What accessibility features are available? I would love to know if there’s an arachnophobia mode. Will there be mod support?

Corinne: Oh my goodness, arachnophobia. I am wicked afraid of spiders too, my partner always laughs at me. I’m just terrified of them. That said, that’s one we’re going to save for a little bit closer to launch before we’ll go into full details about accessibility features. But I do wanna assure you, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this topic so you can play the game in a way that really works for you. I’m, I’m excited to share that with you when the time is right.

Katey: So this one is from a username named Cookie. How long is the time-skip from Inquisition to The Veilguard? I know we’ll probably get more info on this, but I’m so curious.

John: Yeah, so, anyone who’s paid attention to Dragon Age, and I can say as somebody who’s been on Dragon Age since Origins, timelines are always a little iffy. They change, and they morph over development as we see how long events taking. But, for The Veilguard, we were actually pretty consistent from the start. It’s been about ten years since the events of Trespasser. As you may or may not have noticed, Varric’s become a little bit of a silver fox. I know, I’ve heard, seen, I’ve seen a lot of comments on that on social media, but, yeah, ten years. Solas’ ritual is taken time to set up and you’re kinda coming in at the end of that hunt, so.

Katey: Siddy is asking the hardest-hitting question which is, is Solas still bald?

Matt: Yeah. I mean, if you’ve watched the gameplay thing, we can all confirm, yes, Solas is still bald, Solas is still Solas. We’ve, we’ve, I really, I really like how Solas has turned out this time around. I will say, here’s a comment on this specific question that’s gonna sound like a non-sequitur, but, once you get a chance to play it a little bit more, maybe you’ll see it. In Thedas, ancient elves, they go bald when they’re like millennia old, so. Solas wasn’t always bald. So if you were to end up, end up seeing what Solas looked like in the past, things might be a little different. You’ll have –

John: - Now, now that said, I’m sure some of you are wondering what happened to Solas’ wig from Tevinter Nights. I’m sure he still has it somewhere, so.

Katey: He’s just taking care of it elsewhere.

John: He’s just taking care, it’s, it’s his most important possession.

Corinne: The Pride there, huh?

Katey: I have another one for Matt. This is, will we be able to, will we be able to change companions’ appearances and outfits, or are they fixed, similar to Dragon Age II?

Matt: Yeah we, Dragon Age II was, we loved how the followers turned out in that but it was, it was sad given, given our constraints that we had to keep them with just one, one basic outfit. So we really tried to make some space for them this time around. So they’re, they still have, kind’ve iconic color palettes and things like that, but they do have a wider range of appearances that you can, that you can find for them. Some, some are just cool, but then there are some that are tied directly to their, to their narrative and just kinda what’s happening in their life.

Katey: Another one for ya, which is, will we be seeing or visiting Kal-Sharok? It’s, and, Tyrant says that they’ve been obsessed with it forever.

Matt: Yeah, me too. I, I will say, what’s, what’s been really cool, so in previous games, we’ve kind’ve alluded to this before. It was a lot of fun to hint at the locations that were off the map, the mysterious places that you weren’t gonna go, you weren’t going. And so you could just bring in some props or some characters, a piece of art, things like that, and you know, even Tevinter was only vaguely hinted at and then we would just add drips and bits and pieces, so that stuff was really fun. In The Veilguard, we’re actually getting to visit, most, like a whole lot of those locations that had only been hinted at for real, so you actually do run around Tevinter and a bunch of the other locations that we’ve revealed. But this also means, like, we’re not completely filling out the map, and so that there are actually new things that we can start hinting at, that we can start drip-feeding, and so, it’s, it’s kind’ve fun. I’d say, yeah, for what we can show of Kal-Sharok, and, and other locations, it’s just, there’s, there’s more to do.

Katey: Awesome. MrFightmonster118 asks, will the dialogue wheel slash options be similar to Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda in the sense that it’s more tone-based?

John: Yeah, so, we have a number of different types of wheels in our game. All the dialogue wheels are based off the same principle. Anyone who’s played a Dragon Age game remembers what they look like. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard we have tone wheels which are, you know, again, roleplaying your character, picking consistent tone. We also have emotion wheels where you can pick specific emotional reactions. And choice wheels which are, I don’t have a strong emotional or tone tie here but I do want to make a choice based on what I do. Investigates obviously return as well, but. We do want players to understand as much as possible what it is they’re going to be picking, and understand, and again, choice and consequence is fun, we wanna make sure the choice is clear, even if, again, one of the best parts about consequence is making sure that’s not entirely clear, so.

Katey: How extensive are Rook’s decision trees for dialogue going to be with the companions and also with NPCs throughout the game?

John: Huge. I mean, again, it’s a Dragon Age game, we wanna make sure you have choices, we wanna make sure you can choose both your roleplaying but also choose outcomes of conversations, choose how events unfold, so, I mean, again, it’s a Dragon Age game, we wanna make sure that we also react to decisions you’ve made, so. For example, you may be talking to a follower who is an elf, and if you yourself are an elf, obviously you’re gonna have a different perspective on events than someone who’s not an elf. Sometimes that means different conversation options, sometimes that’s going to mean entirely deep dialogue trees, as well as based off decisions you’ve made throughout the game so, again, making sure that the game feels like it’s noticing what you’re doing is a huge part of how we’ve written out the dialogue wheel, or dialogue trees, in this game.

Corinne: Blueberry has a question for Corinne. It was mentioned that there will be, that we will be able to romance who we like. Does that mean that all companions are romanceable by all player characters regardless of race or gender, as it has been in the past?

Corinne: Yeah, yeah. So, we have talked about this in some of the interviews, I’ve seen a few articles about it, so I’d recommend everyone check out those articles. But let me just give you a quick overview. Each of the seven companions have full romance arcs and they are romanceable by all genders, absolutely. But something that’s really important to, to us on the team, so I wanna make sure that we clarify and just double-down on, that doesn’t mean playersexual. And if anyone’s unaware of what we mean by that, it doesn’t mean that they can form or twist their identities to who you the player are, like they, they won’t suddenly have a preference for men or women based on what you’re playing, right? Instead, they have their own fully fleshed-out identities, they are true and authentic to that. So in this game, they are all pansexual, with their own histories of romance. Sometimes you’ll hear about preferences, or things of that nature. And what I really love is, if you don’t pursue a romance with them, they’ll actually build their own romances with each other. So, in one of the interviews I talked about Lace Harding and Taash getting together. I give that example because honestly, it’s one of my favorites. I’m gonna put a question back to the community, though. I’ve heard we’re going with “Laash” for that ship-name? You tell me, like, what is that ship-name?

Katey: That one just rolls off the tongue, I feel like that works. This next question is from FallenArtesia. What are the markings on the faces of the elven Warden and Veil hopper?

Matt: So there’s a, quite a few, probably, I think, easily more than we’ve done before, tattoos from various, various cultures. We’re bringing the vallaslin back, of course. But there’s, yeah, ton of different options, especially when we’re, again, going into all these new regions. Each, each area has its own kind’ve visual language for that. But yeah, we are bringing the vallaslin back and then a couple of the characters have them, but we’ve kind’ve customized them a little bit, they’re a bit more specific to their personality.

Katey: And this is a question for all of you. What are you, what are you as a developer most proud of about the game, and what are you most excited for players to experience when it’s out?

John: Ooh, that’s a good question.

Corinne: Isn’t it?

John: Corinne, you wanna go first?

Corinne: Yeah, sure. Gosh. So I suspect for most of us, myself included, it is really gonna be the depth and authenticity of the companions, journeying along with them on their arcs, learning about their hardships, what they care about, being by their side, that, that authenticity is just so good. They all feel like my dear friends. But, I have to say, the closest runner-up for me, has to be the Character Creator, has to be. That Character Creator, the makeup options, the range of sliders. I’m a qunari fan, so even just the, the way you customize the horns and combine that with the really great-looking hair. Character Creator has to be my, my, like very close runner up.

Matt: Oh yeah. For me, I would say, as far as, what, what I can say I’m most proud of on this one, the, I can speak for the art team. We worked incredibly hard to make the story more visible than ever. Games are a visual medium, but, you know, it’s, sometimes it’s easier to do things in text format or written in a Codex somewhere or alluded to off-screen. But we really leaned in to trying to make sure that every design, prop, character, environment, the VFX we’re choosing, everything, all, all these choices, were putting the story on-screen so that you can really see it unfold. And I think, having worked on all of the Dragon Age games, I would say Veilguard represents one of the best attempts at that we’ve made yet.

John: I’m gonna cheat, because I’m going last and I get to do that when I go last, and kinda combine both Corinne’s and Matt’s answer. Honestly, the companions are, for me, the absolute highlight of, just, being able to work across all the disciplines, building characters who look and sound and behave in very specific and characterful ways. These are the deepest companion arcs we’ve ever done. Not just on Dragon Age, but at BioWare in general. Each, each companion has their own story arc, you can go through decisions you can make, they really do take center-stage, and I think, as you play through with them you see the care and love that the team has put into each and every one. I mean there’s, there’s moments in each arc that make you cry, make you angry, make you excited and, and the way that they integrate into the story as a whole is just, for me, something that’s been really fun. Finding ways to bring these characters together, finding ways to make this, this narrative, this story of, you know, you need to put together a team and stop the end of the world, it’s just been absolutely exciting and thrilling. And again, you see the team’s love in every single piece of it. As for what I’m most excited? For me, I’ve been, I mean Dragon Age has been part of my career, part of my life for literally the last decade and a half. I’ve worked on it since Origins and there’s something about The Veilguard that feels like a amazing mix of, novelty but also familiarity. It’s like coming home in a way that I think is going to be very exciting for people who are existing Dragon Age players, but there’s also so much here that’s just new and exciting for people, new players and old players alike. And going to parts of the word, seeing things we’ve never seen before, and just getting to take this amazing world, this amazing series and expand on it and build on it in ways that have just been, honestly, an absolute thrill, the best part of my career. And I’ve been in games for seventeen years now, this has been the absolute highlight for me, so. That’s what I’m excited about.

Corinne: John, that was, that was such a good answer, and I just, I just wanna “yes, and -” that. It, I so completely agree with you. There’ve been times in the companion arcs where even, knowing exactly what’s going to happen, we work on the game, with some of these decisions, I, I’ve had to set down the controller, let out a heavy sigh and go “oh my god, what am I gonna do here?” Yeah, the depth of them is wonderful. And, I do wanna say, I, I’d be, I wanna put this out there, when we talked about as a developer, what are we most proud of, can we just give a big shout-out to the dev team? I am so proud of them. This team has poured their heart and soul into this.

John: Absolutely.

Corinne: Anyone from BioWare who’s listening in, thank you so much, y’all are just the best.

John: Hear, hear.

Katey: I absolutely love that. I knew that question was going to have some of my best, some of my favorite answers, and it delivered, so thank you three. This one’s a fun one. Why does Varric have dark hair now? I feel like John mentioned this a little bit earlier, but.

John: Just for [inaudible].

Matt: He’s been, he’s been adventuring for a while now. His hair is, is more gray, but he’s been in very dark scenes so far, so. We’ll see him in some more contexts.

Katey: In this question, we actually took from Tumblr, because there were a few really good ones in our ask box. Will the Inquisitor be appearing in the flesh, or are we just choosing their major Dragon Age: Inquisition decisions?

Corinne: Alright! Yeah, yes! They will. The Inky does appear. We know how attached y’all are to the Inquisitor, I’ve seen the love for your OC. Yes, the Inquisitor shows up. Now, we, we’d already confirmed that in a few places, so, let me just say, you can also customize them, includes some of our new customization options, yeah, they’re gonna show up and they’re gonna be your Inquisitor.

John: And I think, I think beyond that, I mean, the story of Solas and the story of the Inquisitor, obviously are tied, they’re tied together as much as any story, so. It would have been strange for us not to bring them in for this one. They have, they’re gonna be a part of the story, so.

Katey: Will there be any planned DLC? Just curious, as I always love the DLCs. Oh, and transmog armor. This one came from Lavell.

Corinne: Oh, heck yeah, good question. So, right now, our focus is entirely on the quality of the game. Like, it’s so important at this stage for us to be all-in, all attention on, just, finishing this game and delivering on the quality, the promise of it. So honestly, like, that’s all I can really say about it. We’re 100% focused on this being the most complete game we can make it. I will say, kind’ve related to that though, and I just wanna underscore this, I wanna emphasize it. There’s not gonna be any microtransactions, there’s not gonna be any battle passes, you don’t have to connect online, our focus is making this the most complete singleplayer game we possibly can. Now, this was kind’ve a two-for question, I love when we do that. Will there be transmog? Hell yeah. I’m the kind’ve player that, that believes fashion is the real end-game. Yeah, there’s a transmog system, absolutely, it’s sick.

Katey: And then this next question is from Scott. I was asking if any of the characters will be explicitly asexual, or on the ace spectrum?

Corinne: So good. Such a good question. So, look, I’m just, I’m gonna be really forthcoming with y’all and a little bit vulnerable here. I’m ace, I’m a gray-ace, I don’t mind sharing that, I’m kind’ve public with it. I will say though, that none of our companions this time around are explicitly ace. When we look at the characters, their motivations, who they are, we always assess, like is, is this the right time? This time it wasn’t. But what I will say for everyone on the ace spectrum out there, I would love to represent an ace relationship sometime in the future when it feels like the most authentic fit for a companion, when we can do it best. Oh, and I do see some questions, you know, some questions, what do we mean by ace? Asexuality. We often refer to it as the ace spectrum.

Katey: Can mage Rook do blood magic? Will blood magic be a skill tree separate from regular magic?

Corinne: Okay. Um, this gets a little spoilery, so let me just say, Rook has some pretty good reasons to avoid blood magic. Rook is not gonna want to be interested in that. But I will say, the mage skill tree is packed with all kinds of spells, traits and perks to give you a ton of flexibility in your magic. Gonna go off-script just a little bit, because –

John: Oh no.

Corinne: I’ve seen, like, can you tell us about the specializations for mage? I’m not gonna tell you the deets, but there is a necromancer one, there is an elemental one, and there is one that’s actually more of like a combat mage, it’s my favorite.

Katey: Can we name the griffon? We also have a griffon emoji now in this Discord server.

John: Excellent. So, someone on your, in your party, again, spoilers, may have already named the griffon, but, don’t worry, Assan is a very good boy, so.

Corinne: All these griffon emojis are, y’all are killing me.

Katey: Yeah, I love that, griffons in the chat. Let's see. Will we have a camp/home/headquarters that we’ll be able to customize?

Matt: Well this time around, in Inquisition you had Skyhold. In this case you have a headquarters called the Lighthouse. More to be seen on that. But, it’s, it, narratively it, it serves kind’ve a different purpose but also the same purpose. As far as customization goes, there are elements of it that change over time, and some things that you can adjust. I, I don’t know how much we’re really going into that at the moment.

Katey: This one is –

Matt: But yeah, I would say, it’s like, there’s some, it, one thing I like about it is it definitely does start to feel very much like a home over time.

Katey: Sorry for almost cutting you off there Matt. We have another very hard-hitting question, if I'm, if I do say so myself.

John: I love this one.

Katey: We need to - Same. We need to know, does pasta and noodles exist in Thedas? Thank you.

Matt: Well, and I’ll take it as a chance just to geek out about worldbuilding, because, again, we’re, The Veilguard for us is a really kinda dream opportunity to go to places that we’ve only ever heard reference to, or we’ve seen hints at. And so, in going through the worldbuilding process and trying to, trying to build these places out, not just as neat things from the IP but also as, you know, if you’ve, if you've read about this stuff, if you’ve been following along, you’ve got your own version of it in your head. You’ve imagined what it might be like, you’re, and probably hoping for something spectacular. And our brains are always far better at creating this stuff than any game developer, any artist, or anyone can really do justice to, so you really have to swing for the fences to make something very satisfying and exciting. You know, is, that can be everything as big as architecture and landscape and biomes and ecosystems, but it does get into things like art and culture, costume design, and also food, and this time around we did, you know, that was one of the many things that we, that we did, looking to, just to try to catch the character and the feel of a place to make it feel believable and lived in, so. That’s my really long answer for, yeah, I’m sure, I've, at least one place does have pasta.

Katey: I loved that. This next question is from Spectre Karro. Are we getting a mabari?

John: Ooh, that’s a good question. I will say, you’re spending most of the game in the north of Thedas. Mabari are not nearly as big of a thing up there, so. In this particular instance, no, you will not get a mabari, sadly.

Katey: Honestly, I should’ve pulled this one up to where we answered the first question about the griffon, but, can we pet the griffon?

Matt: You, I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you – nah, I’m kidding, yes you can. But it’s not even just petting the griffon. I’ve, this isn’t a spoiler, I think you can actually, I’ve actually hugged the griffon, so, that feels like, even there, a step up. Yeah.

John: There’s lots of opportunities to interact with the griffon.

Corinne: Can we see, can we see Assan in chat if we wanna see him in the Lighthouse hanging out?

Katey: Assan in chat everybody.

Corinne: Assan in chat, alright!

Katey: I love it.

Corinne: Okay, y’all this was so important to the team too. Like, this is the team’s like, just such huge support for this feature, so props to them.

Katey: This one is from Coriander. Will we get to see any of the Character Creator before the game releases?

Corinne: Yes, yes you will. We’ve got a, you’ve probably seen, we’re laying out a roadmap for, you know, what we’re gonna show and when we’re gonna talk about, so, yes you will see it as we get a little bit closer to launch.

Katey: And then we’ve got this question which is, will we be able to play as a qunari, dwarf, elf, or human?

Corinne: Hell yeah, hell yeah you will. All four, and all four have that full-body customization. I already talked a little bit about, I mean listen, I’ve always loved the qunari. I will say in Dragon Age: Inquisition it was hard to get a good-looking qunari hairstyle, so yes you can play as them, you can customize them, the horn options are rad, the hair options are rad. And also, I guess related to this, your lineage gives you a lot of really unique dialogue options, so that’s a really lovely aspect of choosing your lineage as well.

John: Yeah, I would, so to actually just to bounce off that, to an earlier question about backgrounds, each lineage, there, depending on the lineage you choose and the background you choose there are some specifics call-outs to, for example, if it’s the Mourn Watch, the Mourn Watch being a faction from Nevarra of mages, you play as a dwarf, obviously your experience in that faction is going to be different than, say, a human or an elf, so. There are also specific call-outs tailored to those combinations and, with again, giving, the intention of giving each lineage their own little flavor as to how they're, they fit into that faction as a whole.

Katey: Okay, John, I’ve got a question from someone named Joe for you. Where is Barkspawn and is he okay?

John: That’s a Great question. Barkspawn is safely gnawing on a bone next to a fireplace somewhere in Ferelden, don’t worry, he’s fine. You may question, ask yourself, but John, it’s been so long, in which I say, mabari live exactly as long as they need to.

Corinne: Getting into the deep-cut questions now.

John: Deep-cut questions, yeah.

Katey: Yeah. We are really speedin’ through these. Let’s see. Will Rook have a set of default name?

John: Yeah so, Rook’s last name is defined based on their faction, again, we wanted to tie that into your backstory, but also, there’s a, that’s a name generator that can give you a selection of first names. Obviously if you want to make your own first name, that’s definitely something we support as well. If you’re somebody who maybe has a little bit more difficulty coming up with a name, so for example you name every single character “Bob” because that’s the only name you can think of, we also give that opportunity for that generation, so.

Katey: I definitely always have trouble coming up with what I wanna name my characters, so that’s great. This next question is, when will the voice acting cast be announced?

John: So, we worked with a lot of very talented actors on this one. I am super excited to talk about the voice acting cast. We’ll be talking a bit more over the summer, we’re not quite ready to announce names yet.

Katey: And I think we have a similar answer to this next question, which was, will there be a Collector’s Edition? When can I pre-order?

John: Yeah, same answer, we have, we’ll talk more about the different editions of the game soon.

Katey: Are there any special musical guests writing the sound-track? Will tavern songs return.

Corinne: Oh my goodness, yeah. There are tavern songs. And huge credit to the audio team and performance teams because they’re pretty great. There’s one in a little tavern in Minrathous called The Swan, and the song you hear there might just, it might be, it’s up there, it might just be my favorite of the tavern songs.

Katey: Let’s see, are there any – ope, I have just asked that one. What are the required PC specs?

John: Much like the other two, we will have more information on required PC specs soon.

Katey: Saph from the Discord server noticed that two, Dragon Age II’s main theme from the soundtrack brought back much of the iconic thematic material of Origins’ main theme, but I heard less of it in Inquisition’s. Can we expect The Veilguard’s main theme to recall more or less of that original thematic material than Inquisition?

John: So we’re not, we’re not quite ready to talk about music yet in specifics, but in broad strokes I can say the process for us is always the same. Working with the composer, working, figuring out themes, figuring out what kinds of elements we want to keep, tying specific elements to, maybe specific characters. It’s a really in-depth process and a really collaborative process. We have some fantastic audio people on our team that have done an amazing work, amazing job, working with composers, and, with the team as a whole to make sure that, again, we said earlier about cohesiveness. Making sure that the music feels like a cohesive part of the experience.

Katey: And this one, I see is also for John, but I think anyone can answer this. When writing the overall story of this game, what themes did you want to have as the prominent focus?

John: I mean again, it’s interesting, so it’s interesting, because when we were writing these games, and this has been true on every Dragon Age I’ve been part of, what you start with and where you end up aren’t always necessarily the same. Sometimes you start writing out a theme, you realize actually it’s more interesting if we attack from this angle, or maybe if we twist it a little bit. I will say for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, from the beginning one of the biggest themes has been regret. How regret’s shaped peoples’ lives, how people deal with their regrets, how people maybe move past their regrets and, each of the characters, you know, the stories as a whole, have elements of this tied throughout. We really wanted to have that thematic, that cohesiveness to the game’s story and the game’s writing so.

Katey: And I know that, you know, we’ve, we've kind’ve already answered this a few times, but can we play as dwarves and does the world react to your race and backstory? Probably be good to just directly answer that one.

John: Yes you can play as a dwarf. Yes the world does react to your race and backstory. And, again, you’ll have unique dialogues or unique conversation options based on that, on that backstory and as well as that race.

Corinne: I’ll give you a little nugget here, because I saw it scrolling through real quickly. Do you have beards, like. So when I think about can I play as dwarves I think about, do we have glorious fantastic beards? Hell yeah, we do.

John: Yeah, I can say, as somebody who plays a lot of games with character creator, the beards on, I don’t know what magic the character art team did for the beards, but they feel like a beard should feel like, it’s great. They look awesome.

Corinne: Just saw somebody say “it’s beard time”, I love it. It’s beard time!

Katey: Will our heroes and companions leave us if we go against their wishes?

Corinne: Oh my good – do y’all just love pain? Do you want us to make you cry? If you go against their wishes, if you make decisions they don’t like, I will tell you, you can piss them off, you can, they might not agree with you and they, they will take some time away. That said, this is the biggest threat to Thedas we’ve ever seen, so they’re, they are always gonna be willing to show up to defend Thedas but, yeah, you can piss them off and they’ll leave for a minute. As it relates to them showing up to defend Thedas, well yeah, they will, unless…

John: No spoilers Corinne!

Corinne: Aughhh, I’ll leave it there, I’ll leave it there.

John: No spoilers.

Corinne: Okay, alright, alright. But they want it!

John: Yep.

Matt: Don’t try to stop me, Smee!

Katey: This one’s a fun one about some inspirations for the game. Dracanmo would like to know if any songs, books, movies or anything have had inspired any of the writing for the characters?

John: I mean, honestly, the thing about art is, art is always a synthesis of your own experiences both in the real world but also the art you consume, the art you pay attention to. I don’t think that any characters have what I would describe as, this character was a direct reference or direct inspiration but, I mean, yeah, they’re all inspired by the things that we do, the things, both, again, in the real world, and also in the media we consume. And you’re gonna see elements of characters that, yeah, the things that we’ve enjoyed, the things that’ve shaped us, show up in these characters. I think, for me, it’s, it comes down to, and I, I, writing is a deeply, can be a deeply personal experience, so even if you don’t intend for it to be the case, things, parts of you are going to show up in your character, I think that’s true for all the characters in The Veilguard. And, you know, sometimes it’s, exploring, exploring the, y’know, things that, about yourself that you may like or may not like, and it’s also about exploring things about characters that you like or don’t like, so. That’s kinda my long-winded way of saying yes, it’s impossible to not have that happen when you’re creating art. But I wouldn’t say that there’s one where you can say, oh this is this character, this is this character.

Katey: What was the thinking process behind making Harding a companion this time around? Was she always going to be one or did it evolve into one because she was such a lovable character?

John: Ohh, yeah. So Harding, I mean. When we released Inquisition, it was impossible not to see the love that people had for our murderous girl next door dwarf. She’s always been a fan favorite obviously, but I think beyond that, it’s something that there, that Harding’s writer wanted to explore. There was more of a story to tell there, more perspective, and beyond that, Harding obviously has a strong connection to Solas, and to the, to Varric, and to the events of the past ten years, so. I wouldn’t say it’s always been, but I’d say Harding’s probably one of the first ones we settled on as like, yes, this is a character we want and the writer had a story that they wanted to tell with her, so, it just made sense.

Matt: You know, I think actually, to piggyback on that, that’s something I hadn’t really even thought about that much, but, and it’s not a huge part of her character, but, she tends to be one of the people that have the most insight into he was.

John: Yeah, that’s exactly it, that’s exactly, and yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it too. It also provides you with a little bit of that, that perspective. For players who’ve been around, you know, who played with previous Dragon Age games, but also for new ones, who was Solas? What kind of character was, was he?

Matt: Yeah.

John: Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great, using characters to provide windows onto the world is honestly one of my favorite things.

Matt: And, and when I say was, I just mean, in Inquisition.

John: Yes, that’s, that’s exactly it, yes. Thank you for correcting that.

Matt: Yeah.

Katey: And what approach are you taking to quest and world design in The Veilguard?

John: I think for us it just comes down to relevance and narrative heft. We want to make sure that each quest provides either a perspective on the world or perspective on the characters, or feels immediately and obviously relevant to what you’re, what you’re doing here. You’re here to save the world and, again, at the end of the day, one of the things that we heard, we heard loud and clear, was some feedback about how relevant, or in this, in our case, not relevant, previous quests have felt, so for Veilguard, we really wanted to make sure that these quests felt like something that you, somebody faced with the end of the world would believe was necessary and important. So, again, there’s quests of all sorts and sizes, but all of them share that same feeling of, this is the kind of thing that The Veilguard would do. This is the kind’ve thing that my hero would do, especially faced with the end of the world.

Corinne: Yeah, that’s, that’s really good John. That’s so right. I would just, again, double-down on how hand-crafted all the quests are, and whether, whether you’re doing, like, the main story, or you’re journeying with your companions, or you’re out exploring and you encounter a mystery. Everything’s handcrafted, intentional. We spent a lot of time listening to what y’all said, and of course everyone has slightly different tastes, but, you know, you’re not gonna be gathering shards in the Hinterlands. Everything is built with intention, and, you know, a dev there lovingly handcrafting the experience.

Katey: Are there any locations in the game that can only be accessed by making specific story choices?

John: So I don’t wanna get too much into spoilers here because this does start getting into spoiler detail, but I will say that locations can fundamentally change based on decisions you make. Some of the parts of the world that you go to, you can have, the decision, the choices you make have an impact on how these spaces exist and develop, so, yeah, and again, don’t wanna too many into, into story spoilers, but, your decisions do impact how the world shows up.

Katey: And will we be able to control our companions in combat through tactical mode, or if the PC, or player character, gets KO’d, like in previous games?

Corinne: Right, so. If Rook gets KO’d, your player character gets knocked out, this time around it is time to re-load your save, or better yet, the companions have really interesting progression, you can spec them out to be able to revive you, but that’s, that’s if you’ve invested in their own progression and what they can do. And that said, I, I mentioned this earlier but I, I personally spend more time in the nature of this combat system when everything comes together, interacting and directing the companions than I have in any of the other games, so, like, like that, that interactivity between them, once you play it you’ll see how, just engaged the team is.

Katey: A user named It’s Sarah said, my real most important Dragon Age question is, will Solas still occasionally or dramatically speak in iambic pentameter?

John: You know, I was, I actually spent a little bit of time trying to figure out if I wanted to answer this question in iambic pentameter and then I very quickly gave up. Massive kudos to Patrick who, who always writes Solas so well. Again, Solas is a returning character, it’s the same Solas you know and love, or hate, depending on who you are. Same writer, so, I think, this has been, the answer is, well of, yeah, it’s Solas.

Katey: Will our decision of who in particular was left behind in the Fade be important?

John: So, while that decision does not show up, that – sorry, let me, restart. Not for The Veilguard. That decision doesn’t show up here. Now, that said, that doesn’t mean that’s that’s not a decision that will ever be important in the future, so. Again, not for this one, though.

Matt: I’m glad to hear you say that, John, because one of my favorite stories was Bob getting stuck in the web in reboot and it just feels like -

John: That’s a, that’s a deep cut!

Corinne: Very, that’s a deep cut.

John: Holy smokes.

Corinne: My goodness.

John: The sound of my childhood.

Katey: Will we have mounts again? If so, any hints to what types we’ll have?

Matt: So no, no, mounts, excuse me. Mounts were, they were, they addressed a need in Inquisition that we don’t have in Veilguard, and you’ll see why, when you get to play.

Katey: LightningStar asks, how is the side quest design? Will they be mostly story-based, or will there be a lot of radiant quests or resources or Power, like in Inquisition?

John: We talked about it a little bit earlier, but, no, they are all hand-crafted and story-focused. Again, narrative, the companions, not just the companions but the characters in the world as a whole are so much at the core of The Veilguard that, anything other than hand-crafted quests just felt like it would be a disservice to the game we were building.

Corinne: Yeah. And maybe, we can clarify as well, because, like Power was such a divisive mechanic in Inquisition. There’s no mechanic like that that blocks your progression until you fill a bar, right, like that’s just not a thing in this. You have the autonomy to engage in these, these quests as you like. There’s no, like, y'know, grind-out gates before you can progress.

John: That’s right, yeah. Again, we wanna make sure that, again, that doing this content feels as natural and part of the logical flow of the story as possible.

Katey: So, it looks like we only have time for three more questions, so I’m going to get through those. With this next one, is from someone named Jason. Will there be a similar system to the War Table missions?

Corinne: Ooh, interesting. So, we haven’t talked much about the player’s base, the Lighthouse. And we’re gonna save that for a beat, but what I will say is that the Lighthouse, your headquarters so to speak, it has its own unique purposes and functions this time. So that’s an area that we’ll, we’ll leave for you when we talk more about the Lighthouse, and then when you have a chance to hop in, you’ll be able to see what those unique purposes and functions are.

Katey: If there is dual-wield for warriors, will it rely on dexterity or strength?

Corinne: Ah, okay, yeah, yeah. So we did wanna bring dual-wielding back. It is part of the rogue kit this time. So warriors are really focused on mighty two-handed weapons, can’t wait til you see, when you swing and connect with those weapons, there’s, there’s a real heft to it. And then of course sword and shield, so. We’re leaving the dual-wielding to the rogues, but you, you can see just, the amount of hits you can get in in rapid succession dual-wielding as a rogue is really satisfying.

Katey: And the last question that we’re able to get to today, is, what have been some of the challenges and advantages of working on a single, on a single game for so many years? How did you sustain the work in yourselves and the process?

John: That is a fantastic question. I will say for myself, I’ve often joked, and I don’t know how much of a joke it actually is, that when this game is out and I suddenly don’t have to keep all these pieces of game and lore and story and everything straight in my head, I’m suddenly gonna be able to speak Latin or something because there’s gonna be a ton of brainpower freed up. But for me it’s just, you know, it's, the thing that keeps me sustained is just knowing the game that we’re building is the right one. Knowing that the beats are coming together, and knowing just how much people care about this franchise, care about these games, and how excited people are going to be when they get to see the fantastic work that the team has, has been doing. And that really is, I can say, I’ve been on this project since the start, and even today, I see things on a daily basis, I’m like holy – smokes, sorry, I almost swore, I can’t believe what the team is doing, I can’t believe the, how good this looks, I can’t believe. Because it’s a huge game. There’s pieces that I, I don’t see every piece of the game every day so, I get pleasantly surprised on a daily basis and that, I will say, you know, confession, sometimes if I’m having a particularly long day, I’ll spend about an hour late at night just watching cutscenes coming in, watching the work coming together and just, sitting back and being like, holy smokes, I cannot wait for someone who hasn’t seen this every day for so long as I have to experience this and just be blown away by the work, so.

Corinne: It's, it’s been very real, hasn’t it? And, and I will just say, speaking on behalf of the dev team, everyone’s working so hard, they’re putting so much passion, so much of themselves into it. Like this is a franchise they truly love, and seeing your support, cheering us on, it’s just meant a lot to them, so, let me just say thank you to all of you.

Katey: And I wanna say thank you to you three for taking the time to do this. I know that it matters a lot to the community to be able to, you know, get some time with you guys and, you know, make sure that some of their dying questions are, are answered, so thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to do this. For anyone who’s still listening I promise that I’m that I’m working on a way for these questions to be immortalized somewhere. Stay tuned for that so that you don’t have to worry about this, just, you know, disappearing into the ether. So, stay tuned, thank you all for your time. Anything else we wanna say before we jump off?

Matt: Thanks everyone.

John: Thank you. Yeah, I’m super excited to show more of this and, yeah, this is gonna be, hopefully this is the first of many of these opportunities to talk to you all directly. Again, it’s been a while, and getting to talk about this game has been absolutely exciting. I know for myself, as well for the rest of the team, so thank you all.

Corinne: Just thank you, it’s, the Dragon Age community, how much it means to you, how much it means to us, it’s just wonderful to see you all so invested and excited to come here and talk to us. Thank you again, truly.

Katey: We'll hopefully do something like this again soon. Okay, cool, have a great day everybody! Talk soon!

John: Bye y’all!

Matt: Bye.

[source: The dev BioWare Discord Q&A on June 14th]

Update: If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here.

#dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #solas #feels #lgbtq #mj best of

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astarion-dekarios · 3 months

Text

I did a live transcription of the Dragon Age: the Veilguard dev Q&A session today.

UPDATE/EDIT: I made a second pass of this and cleaned it up into a full/complete transcript.

Q: If you could belong to any of the main factions, which would you choose?

Corinne: Listen Katie, you say softball but this is hard. I'm gonna cheat and I’m gonna give you two. So for fashion, the Antivan Crows all day long. their threads, you're gonna love it. For vibes though, the ones that capture my vibe, Mournwatch. Gimme those necromancers.

John: Those are good answers. I have one for fashion and for just general faction that I’d like to be a part of. Veil jumpers - who doesn't like a nice walk in the forest, you know, even if that forest is filled with horrifying monsters and terrifying anomalies, but uh, yeah.

Matt: For me it’s definitely the Lords of Fortune. I’ve had a chance to try out a bunch of them, and I think I’ve finally settled on them, and I think it’s just because pirate barbarian is just such a great combination of elements. Treasure hunting, plus beaches and palm trees and all that stuff, it’s a really good mix, so that’s kind of my default.

Q: I’ve seen a lot of talk about only having two companions in your party instead of three for this game. What is the reasoning this and will we get the same companion conversations and banter as seen in the previous Dragon Age Games??

Corinne: Such a good question. Thank you to whoever submitted this one. I'll start and then turn it over to John Epler. As you saw in the gameplay reveal, this is a much more intimate experience. We pulled the camera in. For those that aren't aware, the reason why is we want you to feel like you actually are in this world, like you’re walking these the city streets of Minrathous, you’re looking up at the buildings all around you. You're a part of this place. It's much more intimate, and we believe as the narrative unfolds that this creates a lot more immersion. Now how this relates to the companions is in doing this, we went back and forth on it a lot, but we actually found that having two companions allows them more visibility and presence. We've talked about the incredible depth and focus we’ve put on fleshing out these companions, they're very fully realized, so here you really get to see them more clearly, you get to see them shine. When you see Lace Harding jump into the air and release a volley of arrows, you can only get that because of this more intimate view. So I love the spotlight that’s been put on them. But I think in addition to the banter, one of the things people are wondering about is, ok but what about gameplay. Again, this has come about from our testing, working with the internal team and also our lovely our council of players. We just found that in the combat system, when you're planning your strategies, two felt like the right number to manage. Keep in mind, Rook has a lot of different types of actions: abilities, individual attacks that are more fleshed out than ever before. Timing and positioning matter a lot, so this really felt like the right balance. The number of inputs and actions we’re asking you as a player to take, including directing your companions, is higher than ever before. And I will also say that I engage with the companions, I actively control what they're doing more than I ever have before in any of the other three games. But John, I’ll toss it over to you for the banter.

John: So banter, honestly I don't think you could stop the writers from writing banters. I will say for myself, it's one of the more light but fun things to do. You get to write little stories, little arcs between the characters, and Veilguard is no different. Banter is still absolutely a core part of it. We've got global banter, you know the general stuff that you get in all spaces, as well as mission specific stuff. But yeah. It's definitely still a big thing, if anything it's the most we've ever done for pairings of companions. Beyond that, we’ve also made sure—and I mean, I’ve been on Dragon Age for a while, and I know there’s been an issue, you know, things like, “well, I don’t wanna miss this banter.” So we've even added stuff like interruptable and resumable banter as well, just to make sure that—because again, it’s a core part of the experience. Everyone loves hearing these companions talk to each other. Everyone loves hearing these little stories and relationships develop over the course of the game, and as mentioned before, companions are the heart of this experience. So we still have it, if anything like I said, you could not stop the writers from doing it, even if you tried.

Corinne: Well John, listening to you speak, one thing that comes to mind, maybe people are wondering, with two companions in the field, do I get less interaction? Like do I get a scene with my companions interacting with a broader group more often? And the way you'll gather them around the kitchen table, there's just so many of those moments where they're all interacting with each other. Those are some of my favorite parts.

John: Yeah, and that’s a good callout, because I think the other side of it is, we aren’t talking too much about your home, but we also wanna make sure that they feel like they have relationships and a life outside of just the times you take a certain pair of companions out on the field, so we made sure that they have interactions there as well.

Q: How customizable is the backstory of Rook? Will we get to determine their past in the character creator?

John: Absolutely. So Rook has six different backgrounds that you can choose from. Each one is tied to one of the major factions in the Veilguard, and each one sets out who Rook was before they were recruited by Varric. While that sets up the broad events, as you go through the game and have conversations either with members of your faction, other characters, you can define not just what those events were but what they meant to you – what was your motivation, what was the kind of person you are as you build up Rook, because again, we wanna make sure that roleplaying is at the heart of this experience, and taking Rook, giving them a background in the world but letting you decide what that means and what that says about you is also a big part of it. And again, there are six different factions in this game. Two which anyone who’s played Dragon Age for a while would remember, you’ve got the Gray Wardens and Antivan Crows. We also have, in addition to them, four new ones because we’re in Northern Thedas. We’ve got the Veil Jumpers, Mournwatch, Shadow Dragons, and Lords of Fortune. A lot of different options, a lot of different backgrounds, and a lot of opportunities to define who your Rook was and who they are now.

Q: Will crafting return and has it been improved since Inquisition?

Corinne: Will crafting return? You can absolutely improve and customize your gear, yes. That is a big part of RPG progression, so yes you can improve and customize it. I will say though, it's different this time around, and it does get into spoiler territory so I'm gonna be a little cagey about it, but there might be a mysterious entity that assists you with that that will be an important part of the narrative.

Q: Can we kiss or romance Manfred the skeleton?

John: I would say, not that skeleton, but we're not saying no skeletons.

Q: What were some of the development considerations that you had to take into account to ensure this game flows & functions with prior games & dragon age keep, if keep is being utilized?

Corinne: We did an interview with IGN that goes into some of the details there. To summarize, we have taken a different approach on how you import your decisions this time around. It's now fully integrated into the character creator and serves a dual purpose, to be honest. It’s not called this in game, but I playfully think of it as "last time on dragon age". When I talk about its dual purpose, it's been 10 years since the last dragon age game release, so it serves as a refresher on critical events as well as allowing you to remake those decisions that are critical to you. The thing I love about it is it's very highly visual, it uses the familiar tarot card aesthetic, so it's actually a very visual and playful experience as you go through it. It is very much important to us that it's built into the client, though. You can play this game entirely offline, no connection, you don’t have to link to your EA accounts. That's been a really big request, so the refresher plus make those decisions in client, I think we're all pretty happy about that. I don't wanna spoil anything by revealing what decisions you can import. Y'all don't want the spoilers. But it's been a really interesting creative intersection for us. Because on the one hand, this is a whole new adventure. You're in northern thedas, these locations you've literally never been to before, so that affects what will matter and what we’re not using this time around as far as decisions. But obviously there’s some very very clear connections to existing characters. It’s no secret that the Inquisitor, our dear Inky, is gonna show up, so that's a factor.

Q: Will this next game be an open world game or is it just confined to Tevinter?

John: Yeah, so you are in northern Thedas, but the game only begins in Minrathous. It doesn't stay there. I think one of the most exciting things for me, and again, I don’t wanna get into too much spoiler detail, but getting to go to and work with the art team, the narrative, the design team to build out these locations we've talked about, places that character have referred to as where they’ve come from, places that characters obviously in previous games have hailed from, has been absolutely exciting. So you do start in Tevinter, you do start in Minrathous, but again that’s not the entire game by any stretch.

Corinne: And the first half of it is, is it an open world game? We've gone back to what we believe delivers the best, most curated, intense narratives. So this is a hand crafted experience, it's mission based. Now these locations can open up, you can go back, solve mysteries, do some really great side content - not fetch quests, not grind quests, some really great side content. But I wanna be clear, it's a really curated, hand crafted experience.

John: Just to bounce off of that very quickly, the most important thing for us and what Corinne was saying about hand crafted, obviously we’ve talked about how characters, story, narrative are critical to us, and this has allowed us to build those experiences in a way that emphasized that really well while still tying it into the story threads and story beats.

Q: Will the companions have unique specializations like DA2 or the same as player?

Corinne: I think the best way for me to describe this is that yes, our companions will have abilities that are truly unique to them, but also the companions do fall into the archetypes of mage, rogue, and warrior. For instance, you might be surprised to hear, because she has a bow, but Bellara is in fact a mage, and I love that. Some of the abilities, the bulk of the abilities of the companions, are based on their own unique personalities. Neve is the only mage that is an ice mage, so you get distinct abilities for her. But because she's a mage, she does have access to abilities that all mages share, like Time Slow. We really like the balance there. It’s a good mix of representing their archetype, their class, and also their distinct specialization or personality or whatever you wanna call it.

John: Yeah actually, I would say the word personality is a great one, because all of these characters exist, have a story, have a history of how they became who they were, and part of that was finding that intersection between narrative and gameplay and making sure that again, we serve the needs of gameplay, but also allow these characters to exist as their own people, not just in conversation but out of conversations as well.

Corinne: I would also say that as part of that core mage kit, healing spells are there. So if your mages, you wanna make ‘em a healer, yeah.

Q: Will the Veilguard have tactical combat still?

Corinne: Yes. Combat gets quite tactical. Obviously this is an evolution of the combat system. I talked about immersion, wanting to put you in the world like you’re actually living and existing in it, but it is very tactical and I will say we have a robust difficulty system. The tactics are increasingly important the higher difficulty that you go. So if you’re showing up for a highly tactical experience, I would crank that difficulty in particular. But I wanna make sure I’m super clear in my answer. You saw the gameplay reveal. Our pause time tactical mode is not overhead. It stays close to Rook. It does allow you to cycle between targets in and out of combat, there’s a reason for that. As the game progresses, you didn’t see this in that opening hour of the game, but it will display strategic information on the enemies, so what are their vulnerabilities, what are their elemental weaknesses, their enhancements, what are they resistant to, so your type of abilities, leaning into elemental gameplay matters a lot.

I would also say, this is a long answer because it’s such a great question, tactical decision making also takes the form, I would say this is front and center, of coordinating your ability usage between Rook and your companions to create synergies and or really devastating, we call them detonation combos. So let me give you a couple of examples, because it can be really hard to visualize, so hopefully this helps. One of the tactics that I personally enjoy in my own builds, I just recently played as a veil ranger, I love it, it’s one of my favorites. if I'm fighting fade touched enemies in Artlathan, I like to use Bellara's galvanized tear to pull enemies together, it’s like a gravity well. You then Slow Time with Neve – Slow Time affects the world around you, but it does not affect you, so you clump them up, you slow time -- and then with Rook I come in and do a devastating AOE or damage over time spell or ability. And it’s even better if it's a lightning based ability, because the fade touched in Arlathan are vulnerable to that. So there’s so many layers of coordination and strategies and tactics. We did talk about the devastating detonation combos, that's one of my favorite features, because that’s when you’re really leaning into explicit teamwork between your companions and Rook or the companions together. When I build out my team and I'm going into a mission, I try to ensure that I have at least a couple possible synergies, detonation combo synergies, between my team. It might be between Harding and Neve, Neve and me, or both. So here, I'd go into battle, pause time, open the ability wheel, get information on the enemy – and the wheel will actually tell you that there is a synergy combo, you might have seen a screenshot that says “combo available” – it will remind you of synergies between companions, you can queue both of those abilities up at the same time, close out of the pause time menu, they’ll both execute, both abilities will happen. Then the detonation AOE happens, applies debuffs to all the enemies in a radius of it. It's so satisfying. I can’t wait for yall to see it, but the interesting thing is that too is a tactical choice. I’m choosing to use my companions to do that, and that means I’m not using them to heal me, or to give me that defense bonus, or to knock an enemy off a ledge, so it’s about the opportunity costs. I could spend the rest of the session talking about this, apologies for being long winded, but this is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Q: Can you choose rook's pronouns? If yes, is being non-binary an option? How detailed is the character creator?

Corinne: Well yeah you can select your pronouns. Absolutely. You can actually select your pronouns and your gender, because those are related concepts, but they’re not actually the exact same thing. Yeah, you can be non-binary, we have he/him, she/her, they/them. Yes. Emphatic yes. How detailed is the character creator? Oh my goodness, yall. Very. I don't wanna give away too much just yet but it's very very deep. It has been revealed, it’s out there in a couple articles about the focus on hair, the focus on skin tones that are done respectfully, full body customization, hell yeah, we love to see it. But we’re gonna come back, we’re gonna show you a lot more on character creator, but we wanna make sure we have the time and space to do that.

Q: Will there be a photo mode in game?

Corinne: That is something we’re actively looking into, we know there’s a ton of interest, so stay tuned on that one, but we are very much looking into it.

John: I can add too, that is a feature that we like, we like the idea of, and it’s not just player facing, but internally it’s a really helpful thing to have that as we’re building things out, so we’ll let you know.

Corinne: Yes, yeah, absolutely. We are as geeked on that possibility as you all are.

Q: A lot of people were asking about abilities. Are we going to be limited in how many abilities we can pick from the wheel?

Corinne: Ability wheel does have a capacity. You have to choose which three abilities you wanna bring for Rook, which three for a companion, and which three for another companion. What I like about this is there is kind of an emergent gameplay depending on who you and your companions are coming into a mission with. Now the reason for that is it actually creates a really interesting balance between strategizing, having to do that strategy about your combat kit before the mission, and then the tactical decisions once you're in the field deciding what to do. I want to clear one thing up, while there are three ability slots for Rook, there's so much more than that - other actions that you can perform directly from the wheel like you’ll have an ultimate ability associated with your class or your specialization, so there’s variants there. There’s a type of items you can get that function like abilities, they’re typically like buffs and enhancements, in the form of runes, so you’ll control that for Rook and/or the team from the wheel. You may have also seen that you can direct which targets your companions can focus on, but what you might not know is that a lot of the companion gear really synergizes with that directing with your companions. When you issue those commands, that too will proc depending on the gear they have equipped, really interesting and strategic effects. They can be more ability like, more like proc’d effects, there’s just so much from the wheel that once you get in and see everything working together, becomes more and more apparent.

Q: Will fireball and cone of cold be back as spells in Dragon Age: the Veilguard?

Corinne: All these combat questions, really good. Fireball and Cone of Cold aren't specifically back, however their successors are, frost nova and meteor. These serve the exact same combat role and function as those other abilities. I would also say it gives them quite the glow up. Meteor in particular, so satisfying nuking a group of darkspawn with a well placed meteor. It’s wonderful

Q: What accessibility features are available? Arachnophobia mode? Mod support?

Corinne: Oh my goodness, arachnophobia. I am wicked afraid of spiders too. My partner always laughs at me, I’m just terrified of them. That said, that's one we're going to save for a little bit closer to launch before we’ll go into full details about accessibility features. But I do wanna assure you we have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic, so that you can play the game in a way that really works for you. I'm excited to share that with you when the time is right.

Q: How long is the time skip from Inquisition to the Veilguard?

John: Anyone who's paid attention to Dragon Age, and I can say as somebody who’s been on Dragon Age since Origins, timelines are always a little iffy. They change and they morph over development as we see how longs things are taking, but for Veilguard we were actually pretty consistent from the start that it's been about 10 years since trespasser, as you may or may not have noticed, Varric's become a bit of a silver fox. I’ve seen a lot of comments about that on social media. Yeah, 10 years. Solas's ritual has taken time to set up and you’re kinda coming in at the end of that hunt.

Q: Is Solas still bald?

Matt: Yeah. I mean if you’ve watched the gameplay thing, we can all confirm that Solas is still bald, Solas is still Solas. I really like how Solas has turned out this time around. I will say, here’s a comment on this specific question that’s gonna sound like a non-sequitor, but once you get a chance to play a little bit more, maybe you’ll – In Thedas, ancient elves go bald when they are millenia old, so Solas wasn't always bald. So if you end up seeing what Solas looked like in the past, things might be a little different. Now that said, I’m sure some of you are wondering what happened to Solas’s wig from Tevinter Nights. I’m sure he still has it somewhere, so… It’s his most important possession.

Corinne: Some pride there, huh.

Q: Will we be able to change companions appearances and outfits or are they fixed, similar to Dragon Age 2?

Matt: Dragon Age 2 was, we loved how the followers turned out in that, but it was sad given our constraints that we had to keep them with just one basic outfit. We really tried to make some space for them this time around. They have iconic color palettes and things like that, but they do have a wider range of appearances that you can find for them, some are just cool but then there are some that are tied to directly to their narrative and just kind of what’s happening in their life.

Q: Will we be seeing or visiting Kal’Sharok?

Matt: What’s been really cool, so in previous games, we’ve kind of alluded to this before, it was a lot of fun to hint at the locations that were off the map, the mysterious places you were not going, and so you could just bring in some props, some characters, a piece of art, things like that. Even Tevinter was only vaguely hinted at and we’d just add drips and bits and pieces, so that stuff was really fun. In the Veilguard we’re actually getting to visit a whole lot of those locations that had only been hinted at for real, so you do actually run around Tevinter and a bunch of the other locations that we’ve revealed. But this also means that we're not completely filling out the map, and that there are new things we can start hinting at and we can start drip feeding. It’s kinda fun, I’d say for what we can show of Kal’Sharok and other locations, there’s more to do.

Q: Will the dialogue wheel/options be similar to Inquisition and Andromeda in the sense that it's more tone based?

John: We have a number of different types of wheels in our game. All the dialogue wheels are based off the same principle, anyone who’s played a dragon age game and remembers what they look like. In Dragon Age: the Veilguard, we have tone wheels which are roleplaying your character picking consistent tone. We also have emotion wheels where you can pick specific emotional reactions, and choice wheels which are, I don’t have a strong emotional or tone tie here, but I do want to make a choice based on what I do. Investigate’s obviously return as well. We want players to understand as much as possible what it is they are going to be picking, we want the choice to be clear even if one of the best things about consequence is making sure that’s not entirely clear.

Q: How extensive are Rook’s dialogue decision trees?

John: Huge. Again, it’s a Dragon Age game. We wanna make sure you have choices, we wanna make sure you can choose your roleplaying, but also choose outcomes of conversations, choose how events unfold. Again it’s a Dragon Age game, we wanna make sure we also react to decisions you’ve made. So for example, you may be talking to a follower who is an elf, and if you yourself are an elf, obviously you'll have a different perspective on events than someone who’s not an elf. Sometimes that means different conversation options, sometimes that’s going to be entirely new dialogue trees, as well as based off decisions you’ve made throughout the game, so again, making sure the game feels like it notices what you’re doing is a huge part of how we’ve written out the dialogue wheel and dialogue trees in this game.

Q: All companions romanceable by all player characters regardless of race and gender?

Corinne: Yeah, yeah. We have talked about this in some of the interviews, I’ve seen a few articles about it, so I'd recommend everyone check out those articles, but let me just give you a quick interview. Each of the seven companions has full romance arcs and they are romanceable by all genders. Absolutely. But something that’s really important to us on the team, and so I just wanna make sure and double down on, that doesn't mean playersexual. If anyone’s unaware of what we mean by that, it doesn’t mean they conform or twist their identities to who you the player are. They won’t suddenly have a preference for men or women based on what you’re playing. Instead they have their own fully fleshed out identities. They are true and authentic to that. So in this game they are all pansexuals, they all have histories and romances, sometimes you’ll hear about preferences and things of that nature. And what I really love is if you don’t pursue a romance with them, they’ll actually build their own romances with each other. So in one of the interviews I talked about Lace Harding and Taash getting together. I give that example because it’s one of my favorites. I’m gonna put a question back to the community though. I’ve heard we’re going with Laash for that ship name? You tell me what is that ship name?

Q: What are the markings on the faces of the elven warden and veil hopper?

John: So there’s quite a few, I think more than we’ve done before, tattoos from various cultures. We're bringing the vallaslin back of course but there's a ton of different options, especially when we’re going into these new regions. Each area has its own kind of visual language for that. We are bringing the vallaslin back and a couple characters have them, but we've customized them a bit. They’re a bit more specific to their personality.

Q: What are you as a developer most proud of and excited for players to experience?

Corinne: I suspect for most of us, myself included, it's the depths and authenticity of the companions journey along with on their arcs, learning about their hardships, what they care about, being by their side. That authenticity is just so good, they all feel like my dear friends. But I have to say, the closest runner up for me has to be the character creator. Has to be. That character creator, the makeup options, the range of sliders... I'm a Qunari fan, so even just the way you customize the horns and combine that with the really great looking hair. Character creator has to be my very close runner up.

Matt: As far as what I can say I’m most proud of on this one, I can speak for the art team, we worked incredible hard to make the story more visible than ever. Games are a visual medium, but sometimes it's easier to do things in text format or written in a codex somewhere or alluded to off screen, but we really leaned into trying to make sure that every design, prop, character, environment, that the effects we’re choosing, all these choices were putting the story on screen so you can see it unfold, and I think having worked on all the dragon age games, I'd say Veilguard represents one of the best attempts at that we’ve made yet.

John: I’m gonna cheat and kind of combine both Corinne’s and Matt’s answers. Honestly the companions for me are the absolute highlight. Just being able to work across all the disciplines, building characters who look and sound and behave in very specific and characterful ways. These are the deepest companion arcs we've ever done, not just on Dragon Age but in BioWare in general. Each companion has their own story arc you can go through, decisions you can make. They really do take center stage. As you play through them, you see the care and love that the team has put into each and every one. I mean, there’s moments in each arc that make you cry, make you angry, make you excited, and the way they integrate into the story as a whole for me is something that’s been really fun. Finding ways to bring these characters together, ways to bring this story, this narrative, of you know, you need to put together a team and stop the end of the world, has been absolutely exciting and thrilling. And again, you see the team's love in every single piece of it. As for what I’m most excited, Dragon Age has been part of my career and part of my life for literally the last decade and a half, I’ve worked on it since Origins, and there's something about the Veilguard that feels an amazing mix of novelty and familiarity, it’s like coming home in a way that I feel is going to be very exciting for people who are existing Dragon Age players, but there’s also so much here that’s just new and exciting for people, new players and old players alike. Going to parts of the world, seeing things we’ve never seen before, and just getting to take this amazing world and series and expand on it and build on it in ways that I’ve just been, honestly an absolute thrill, the best part of my career, and I’ve been in games for 17 years now and this has been the absolute highlight for me, so that’s what I’m excited about.

Corinne: I just wanna yes and that. I so completely agree with you. There’ve been times in companion arcs where even knowing what's going to happen, we work on the game, with some of these decisions, I've had to set down the controller, let out a heavy sigh, and go “oh my god, what am I gonna do here?” The depth of them is wonderful. I do wanna put this out there, when we talk about as a developer what we are most proud of, can we just give a big shout out to the dev team? I am so proud of them. This team has poured their hearts into this. Anyone from BioWare who’s listening in, thank you so much. Y’all are just the best.

Q: Why does Varric have dark hair now?

Matt: He's been adventuring for a while now. His hair is more gray, but he's been in very dark scenes so far, so we’ll see him in some more contexts.

Q: Will the Inquisitor be appearing in the flesh or are we just choosing their major DAI decisions?

Corinne: Yes they will. The Inky does appear. We've know how attached y’all are to the Inquisitor, we’ve seen the love for your OC. Yes, the Inquisitor shows up. We'd already confirmed that a few places, so let me just say you can also customize them and it includes some of our new customization options. Yeah they’re gonna show up and they’re gonna be your Inquisitor.

John: And I think beyond that, the story of Solas and the story of the Inquisitor obviously are tied together as much as any story, so it would have been strange for us not to bring them in for this one. They’re gonna be a part of this story.

Q: Will there be any planned DLCs and transmog armor?

Corinne: Right now our focus is entirely on the quality of the game, it's so important at this stage for us to be all in, all attention on finishing this game and delivering on the quality and the promise of it. So that's all I can really say on it, we're 100% focused on this being the most complete game we can make it. I wanna emphasize, there's not gonna be any microtransactions or battle passes, you don't have to connect online. Our focus is making this the most complete single player we possibly can. Now this was kind of a twofer question. Will there be transmog? Hell yeah. I’m the kind of player that believes fashion is the real endgames. Yeah there’s a transmog system, absolutely. It’s sick.

Q: Will any of the characters be asexual?

Corinne: Such a good question. So, look I'm gonna be really forthcoming with yall and a little bit vulnerable, I'm ace. I'm a gray ace, I don't mind sharing that, I’m kind of public with it. I will say though that none of our companions this time around are explicitly ace. We look at the characters, their motivations, who they are, we always assess is this the right time. This time it wasn't. What I will say for everyone on the ace spectrum on there, I would love to represent an ace relationship sometime in the future when it feels like the most authentic fit for a companion, when we can do it best. And I do see some questions, what do we mean by ace? Asexuality. We often refer to it as the ace spectrum.

Q: Can mage Rook do blood magic? Will blood magic be a skill tree separate from regular magic?

Corinne: OK, this gets a bit spoilery, so let me just say, Rook has some pretty good reasons to avoid blood magic. Rook is not gonna wanna be interested in that. But I will say, the mage skill tree is packed with all kinds of spells, traits, and perks to give you a ton of flexibility in your magic. Gonna go off script just a little bit because I’ve seen “just tell us about the specializations”. I’m not gonna tell you the deets, but there is a necromancer one. There is an elemental one, and there is one that’s actually more of like a combat mage. It’s my favorite.

Q: Can we name the griffon? We also have a griffon emoji in this Discord server.

John: Excellent. So, someone in your party, again, spoilers, may have already named the baby griffon, but don’t worry, Assan is a very good boy.

Corinne: All these griffon emojis, y’all are killing me.

Q: Will we have a camp/home/headquarters that we’ll be able to customize?

Matt: Well this time around, in Inquisition you had Skyhold. In this case you have a headquarters called the Lighthouse. More to be seen on that, but narratively it serves kind of a different purpose, but also the same purpose. As far as customization goes, there are elements of it that change over time and some things you can adjust. I don’t know how much we’re really going into that at the moment. One thing I like about it is that it definitely does start to feel very much like home over time.

Q: We need to know, does pasta and noodles exist in Thedas?

Matt: I’ll take it as a chance just to geek out about worldbuilding. Again, the Veilguard for us is a really kind of dream opportunity to go to places we've only ever heard reference to or we’ve seen in set. In going through the world building process, and trying to build these things out not just as neat things from the IP, but also as, if you’ve read about this stuff, you've got your own version in your head, you’ve imagined what it might be like and you're probably hoping for something spectacular, and our brains are always far better at creating this stuff than any game developer or any artist can really do justice to, so you really have to swing for the fences to make something very satisfying and exciting. That can be everything as big as architecture and landscape and biomes and ecosystems, but it does get into things like art and culture and costume design, and also food. This time around that was one of the many things we did look into to try to catch the character and feel of a place to make it feel believable and lived in. So that’s my really long answer for yeah, I'm sure at least one place does have pasta.

Q: Are we getting a mabari?

Matt: Ooh, that’s a good question. I will say you’re spending most of the game in the north of Thedas. Mabari are not nearly as big of a thing up there, so in this particular instance, no, you will not get a mabari, sadly.

Q: Can we pet the griffon?

John: You, I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you—Nah, I’m kidding, yes you can. It's not even just petting the griffon, I've actually hugged the griffon, so that feels like even there a step up.

Matt: There’s lots of opportunities to interact with the griffon.

Corinne: Can we see Assan in chat if we wanna see him in the Lighthouse hanging out? And hey, y’all, this was so important to the team, too. Like this is the team’s like, just huge support for this feature, so props to them.

Q: Will we get to see any of the character creator before the game releases?

Corinne: Yes. Yes you will. You've probably seen we are laying out a roadmap for what we're gonna show and when we’re gonna talk about it. You will see it as we get a little closer to launch.

Q: Will we be able to play as a qunari dwarf elf or human?

Corinne: hell yeah you will. All 4. And all 4 have that full body customization. I already talked a little bit about, I’ve always loved the qunari, I will say in Dragon Age: Inquisition it was hard to get a good looking qunari hairstyle. So yes you can play as them, you can customize them, the horn options are rad, the hair options are rad. And also related to this, your lineage gives you a lot of really unique dialogue options. So that’s really one aspect of choosing your lineage as well.

John: So actually just to bounce off that, earlier questions about backgrouds. Each lineage, depending on the lineage you choose and the background you choose, there are some specific callouts to, for example, if it’s a Mournwatch, Mournwatch being from Nevarra and mages, if you play as a dwarf, obviously your experiences in that faction is going to be different from, say, a human or an elf, so there are also specific callouts tailored to those combinations and, with the intention of giving each lineage a little flavor as to how they fit into that faction as a whole.

Q: Where is barkspawn and is he ok?

John: Barkspawn is safely gnawing on a bone next to a fireplace somewhere in Ferelden. Don’t worry, he’s fine. You may ask yourself, “but John, it’s been so long.” To which I say, Mabari live exactly as long as they need to.

Q: Will Rook have a set of default name?

John: Yeah, so Rook’s last name is defined based on their faction, again we wanted to tie that into your backstory, but also there's a name generator that can give you a selection of first names, obviously if you wanted to make your own first name, that’s definitely something we support as well. If you’re somebody who maybe has a little more difficulty coming up with a name, so for example you name every single character Bob because that’s the only name you can think of, we also give that opportunity for that generation.

Q: When will the voice acting cast be announced?

John: We worked with a lot of very talented actors on this one. I am super excited to talk about the voice acting cast, we’ll be talking about it more over the summer, we’re not quite ready to announce names yet.

Same answer for collectors editions and preorders, and required PC specs.

Q: Any special musical guests? Tavern songs?

Corinne: Yeah there are tavern songs and a huge credit to the audio team and performance teams, because they’re pretty great. There’s one at a little tavern in Minrathous called the Swan, and the song you hear there might just be my favorite of the tavern songs.

Q: DA2's main theme brought back motifs from DAO main theme. Can we expect DAV to recall more or less of that original thematic material than inquisition?

John: We are not quite ready to talk about music yet in specifics. But in broad strokes I can say that the process for us is always the same. Working with the composer, figuring out themes, figuring out what kinds of elements we want to keep, tying specific elements to maybe specific characters, it's very in depth process and a very collaborative process. We have some fantastic audio people on our team that have done some fantastic work, that have done an amazing job working with composers and with the team as a whole to make sure that again, we said earlier about cohesiveness, making sure that the music feels like a cohesive part of the experience.

Q: When writing the overall story of this game, what themes did you want to have as the prominent focus?

John: Again, it’s interesting. When writing these games, and this has been true on every Dragon Age I’ve been a part of, what you start with and where you end up aren't always necessarily the same. Sometimes you start writing a theme, you realize actually it’s more interesting if you attack it from this angle, or maybe it ends up twisted a little bit. I will say for Dragon Age: the Veilguard, from the beginning one of the biggest themes has been regret. How regret shapes people’s lives, how they deal with their regrets, how maybe people move past regrets. Each of the characters and the story as a whole have elements of these. We wanted to have that thematic, that cohesiveness to the game’s story and the game’s writing.

Q: Can you play a dwarf and does the world react to your race and backstory?

John: Yes, you can play as a dwarf. Yes, the world does react to your race and backstory. And again you’ll have unique dialogues or unique conversations based on that backstory as well as that race.

Corinne: And to give you a little nugget here because I saw it scrolling through real quickly, you have beards. So when I think of dwarves, I think about glorious, fantastic beards. Hell yeah we do.

John: Yeah I can say, as somebody who plays a lot of games, the character creator—I don’t know what magic they did, but the beards, they feel like a beard should feel like, it’s great, they look awesome.

Q: Will our heroes and companions leave us if we go against their wishes?

Corinne: Do y’all just love pain? Do you want us to make you cry? Um... if you go against their wishes and make decisions they don't like, I will tell you, you can piss them off, they might not agree with you, and they will take some time away. That said this is the biggest threat to Thedas we've ever seen, so they will always be willing to defend Thedas, but yeah you can piss them off and they’ll leave for a minute. As it relates to them showing up to defend Thedas, well yeah they will, UNLESS…

John: No spoilers, Corinne. No spoilers.

Corinne: Alright, alright. But they want it!

Q: Did any songs, books, movies, or anything inspire character writing?

John: Art is always a synthesis of your own experiences both in the real world but also the art you consume, the art you pay attention. I don't think that any characters have a direct reference or inspiration, but yeah, they're all inspired by the things we do both in the real world and in the media we consume. And you’re gonna see elements of characters that yeah. The things that we’ve enjoyed show up in these characters. For me it comes down to, writing can be a deeply personal experience, so even if you don't intend for it to be the case, parts of you will show up in the characters. I think that’s true for all the characters in the Veilguard. Sometimes it's exploring things about yourself that you may like or may not like, and sometimes exploring things about characters you like or don't like. So that’s my longwinded way of saying yes, it’s impossible to not have that happen when you’re creating art, but I don’t think there’s one where you can say, “oh this is this character, this is this character.”

Q: What was the thinking process behind making Harding a companion this time around?

John: When we released Inquisition, it was impossible not to see the love that people had for our murderous girl next door dwarf. She has always been a fan favorite obviously. But I think beyond that, it's something that Harding's writer wanted to explore, there was more of a story to tell there and more perspective. And beyond that Harding also has a strong connection to Solas, to Varric, and the events of the last 10 years. So I wouldn’t say it’s always been but I’d say Harding’s probably one of the first ones we settled on as like yes, this is a character we want, and the writer had a story that they wanted to tell with her, so it just made sense.

Matt: You know, actually, to piggy back on that, that’s something I hadn’t even thought about that much and it’s not a huge part of her character, but she tends to be one of the people that have the most insight into who he was.

John: Yeah that’s exactly—that’s a great way of looking at it, too, it also provides you with a little bit of perspective, for players who’ve been around for previous Dragon Age games, but also for new ones, who was Solas? What kind of character was he? Yeah it’s a great, using characters to provide windows into the world is honestly one of my favorite things.

Matt: And when I say was, I just mean in Inquisition.

John: Yes, that’s exactly, yes. Thank you for correcting that.

Q: What approach are you taking to quest and world design in the Veilguard?

John: I think for us it just comes down to relevance and narrative heft. We wanna make sure that each quest provides either a perspective on the world, a perspective on the characters, or it feels immediately and obviously relevant to what you’re doing here. You’re here to save the world. At the end of the day, one of the things that we heard loud and clear was the feedback about how relevant, or in our case not relevant, previous quests have felt, so for Veilguard, we really wanted all quests to feel like something somebody faced with the end of the world would believe was necessary and important. So again, there’s quests of all sorts and sizes, but all of them share that same feeling of, this is the kind of thing that the Veilguard would do. This is the kind of thing that my hero would do. Especially faced with the end of the world.

Corinne: That’s really good, John. That’s so right. I would just again double down on how hand crafted all the quests are. Whether you’re doing the main story or you’re journeying with your companions or you’re out exploring and you encounter a mystery, everything's hand crafted, intentional, we spend a lot of time listening to what yall said, and of course everyone has slightly different tastes, but you're not gonna be gathering shards in the Hinterlands. Everything is built with intention and they’re lovingly handcrafting the experience.

Q: Are there any locations in the game that can only be accessed by making specific story choices?

John: So I don’t wanna get too much into spoilers here, but I will say that locations can fundamentally change based on decisions you make. Some of the parts of the world that you go to, you can have, the choices you make have an impact on how these spaces exist and develop.

Q: Will we be able to control companions in combat?

Corinne: If Rook gets KO'd, the player character gets knocked out, this time around it is time to reload your save, or better yet, the companions have really interesting progression. You can spec them out to be able to revive you, but that’s if you’ve invested in their progression and what they can do. And that said, I mentioned this earlier but I personally spend more time in the nature of this combat system when everything comes together, interacting and directing the companions than I have in any of the other games. So like that’s interactivity between them. Once you play it you’ll see just how engaged the scene is.

Q: Will Solas still occasionally or dramatically speak in iambic pentameter?

John: I actually spent a little bit of time trying to figure out if I wanted to answer this question in iambic pentameter, and then I very quickly gave up. Massive kudos to Patrick who always writes Solas so well. Again, Solas is a returning character. It's the same Solas you know and love or hate depending on who you are. The same writer. So I think this is, the answer is yeah, it's Solas.

Q: Will our decision of who was left in the fade be important?

John: While that decision does not show up—not for the Veilguard, now that said, that doesn’t mean that’s not a decision that won’t ever be important in the future. Not for this one.

Matt: I’m glad to hear you say that, John, because one of my favorite stories was Bob getting stuck in the web in Reboot.

John: That’s a deep cut! The sound of my childhood.

Q: Will we have mounts again?

Matt: No, mounts were, they addressed a need in Inquisition that we don't have in Veilguard, and you’ll see why when you get to play.

Q: How is the side quest design? Will they be mostly story based or will there be a lot of radiant and quests for power like in Inquisition?

John: We talked about this a bit earlier, but they are all hand crafted and story focused. The narrative, the companions, not just the companions but the characters and the world as a whole, are so much at the core of the Veilguard that anything other than handcrafting quests just felt like it would be a disservice to the game we were building.

Corinne: And maybe we can clarify as well, because with power was such a devisive mechanic in Inquisition, there’s no mechanic like that that blocks your progression until you fill a bar. That’s just not a thing in this. You have the autonomy to engage in these quests as you like, there’s no grind out gates before you can progress.

John: That’s right. Again we want to make sure that doing this content feels as natural and part of the logical flow of the story as possible.

Q: Will there be a similar system to war table?

Corinne: We haven't talked much about the player's base, the Lighthouse, and we're gonna save that, but what I will say is that the Lighthouse, your headquarters so to speak, it has its own unique purposes and functions this time. So that's an area that we'll leave for you when we talk more about the Lighthouse and when you have a chance to hop in, you’ll be able to see what those unique purposes are.

Q: If there is dual wield for warriors, is it dex or str?

Corinne: So we did wanna bring dual wielding back. It is part of the rogue kit this time, warriors are really focused on mighty two handed weapons, I can’t wait until you see, when you swing those weapons there's a real heft to it, and then of course sword and shield. So we’re leaving the dual wielding to the rogues, but you can see, the amount of hits you can get in in rapid succession dual wielding as a rogue is really satisfying.

Q: What have been some of the challenges and advantages of working on a single game for so many years?

John: That is a fantastic question. I have often joked, and I don’t know how much of a joke it is, that when this game is out and I suddenly don't have to keep all these pieces of game and lore and story and everything straight in my head, I'm suddenly gonna be able to speak Latin or something because there’s gonna be a ton of brain power freed up. But for me it’s just, the thing that keeps me sustained is just knowing the game we're building is the right one. Knowing that the pieces are coming together, and knowing just how much people care about this franchise, care about these games, and how excited people are going to be when they get to see the fantastic work the team has been doing. I’ve been on this project since the start, and even today I see things on a daily basis that I’m like holy smokes I can't believe what the team is doing, I can’t believe how good this looks. It's a huge game and I don't see every piece every day, so I get pleasantly surprised on a daily basis. Sometimes if I’m having a particularly long day, I'll spend about an hour late at night just watching cutscenes come in, watching the work coming together, and just sitting back and being like, holy smokes, I can’t wait for someone who hasn’t seen this every day as I have, to see this and just be blown away by the work.

Corinne: It's been very real, hasn’t it? I will just say speaking on behalf of the dev team, everyone's working so hard and putting so much passion, so much of themselves into it. This is a franchise they truly love and seeing your support cheering us on has meant a lot to them. So let me just say thank you to all of you.

#dragon age #dav #dragon age: the veilguard #da4

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