The big Dragon Age: The Veilguard post-release interview: "It was never going to match the Dragon Age 4 in people's minds"
The reaction, the making of, and what comes next.
There's a line at the beginning of the Dragon Age: The Veilguard art book, in an introduction by art director Matt Rhodes, where he says there was more artwork created for The Veilguard than all other Dragon Age games combined - and possibly more than the Mass Effect trilogy combined as well. Extraordinary! But then, the fourth Dragon Age game project has been extraordinary for BioWare in many ways.
It's been in development one way or another for roughly a decade, far longer than any other game BioWare has worked on. The entire Mass Effect trilogy was released in half that time, and BioWare made a whole persistent online world for Star Wars: The Old Republic in half that time. Dragon Age 4 is a project that's had three major revisions, surviving a foray into live-service multiplayer at one point. That it should eventually emerge as a single-player role-playing game at the end of it feels like a minor miracle. And now here, finally, the game is.
But a month after a release, there's uncertainty around the game and series. Sales have been only okay - "solid" to use EA's term - and while some people have celebrated it as a return to form for BioWare, others have been critical of the direction the series has been taken in. It's as though there's a faultline dividing opinion on the game, and you're either on one side or the other of it. I don't know that I've seen the reaction to a BioWare game be as divided.
So where does Dragon Age go from here, and how does BioWare feel about it? As the dust settles, I sit down with two people at the heart of the project - game director Corinne Busche, and series creative director John Epler - for a chat. We talk about the reaction to the game, the making of it, and what, if anything, comes next. Note that there's one major spoiler in here as pertains to the character Varric, and you may consider some other points of conversation slightly spoilery too.
For added visibility: some spoilers lie ahead.
Eurogamer: We're roughly a month after launch now so some of the dust and nerves have settled. How did you find the launch period as people's opinions and reviews were rolling in?
Corinne Busche: The biggest thing I was feeling was a sense of curiosity. We get so close to the work - we're focused on the day-to-day of it - and of course we're playing and we're mindful of the overall experience. We know what we've got. But there's something, even when you go through preview events, or you have smaller hands-on demos - there's nothing quite like players getting it in their hands, or reviewers playing through the game for the first time. You're always curious, right. Of course, we've poured a lot of ourselves into the game, but I find, for myself, a sense of trying to let go of the personal investment and just step back and absorb what everyone else then has to say about the game experience. So for me it's curiosity.
John Epler: I'd say for me probably relief was definitely at the top of my list. I've been on the project for a very long time and there were definitely times in development where, especially early on, it felt like this day would never come. So the fact that it came out felt amazing.
I also thought it was interesting reading the reviews to see just the variety of what people were engaging with, what people were bouncing off of, maybe, and pulling some of that feedback early on. Because again, as Corinne says, we're so close to the game, so close to the project that it's hard to take that step back and look at it through that lens. So seeing other people look at it through that lens was really great.
To Corinne's other point: curiosity definitely there too. But for me: relief that it's out, relief that the reviews were coming in fairly well, and excitement for fans to get their hands on it and to start to see how they were going to react to it.
Did it surprise you at all how divisive reactions to the game were? Did you expect it?
Busche: Isn't it interesting?
Did we expect it? Yes and no. What we know is that these reactions have been a part of the Dragon Age journey with every entry. Even if you look back to Origins, it wasn't necessarily hailed at the time with the reverence that it is today, because people were still considering games like Neverwinter Nights, so we saw that through each entry. It was more-so this time than we were braced for, but we did expect it.
I also think that comes from reinvention. One of the unique - I often call it a challenge and an opportunity of the franchise, is that it does reinvent itself with each entry.
It does. I find it fascinating - all of the instalments have been significantly different.
Busche: Right? It's inherent to the DNA of the game. And what that means is you're going to have a diverse player base in terms of what parts of the IP resonate with them, what Dragon Age means to them, and ideally, you're creating an experience that is really clear in its direction but also has something for each entry's fans.
Epler: It's been a decade since the last Dragon Age game came out, and a lot of people have spent that decade imagining various versions of what this game was going to be. The reality was whatever we came out with, it was never going to match the Dragon Age 4 in people's minds and people's imaginations.
Now how closely it matched, or whether what they got was different in a good way than what they were expecting: that speaks to the very wide variety of reactions on it. But getting those kinds of reactions at least suggests that, to Corinne's point about having a direction, having a very clear vision: it speaks to you've got something that's very clearly a thing and it's not sitting in the middle. It's not trying to be all things to all people. It's trying to be itself, it's trying to be the game that it wants to be. I think you're going to get those much more polarised reactions that way than if you make something that tries to be a little bit of everything. You might still end up with the same score but it's going to be a lot more in the middle of that spectrum of scores.
How has the commercial response to the game been? I've seen stories about sales and they seem mixed - inconclusive. The game seems to be doing okay but struggling to keep pace with Inquisition before it. Has it been a success from your point of view - how do you measure that?
Busche: There's three axes we can measure this by: what the team was able to do and put together - the pride that they can take in that; every game that is made, especially in the triple-A space where you're talking hundreds of developers, timelines, is a miracle. That they executed at quality: internally we consider that a success.
We're very happy with the critical reception to the game. It's not common to have these challenging development cycles and have a team turn around and receive the critical reception that it did. In fact, in a lot of ways, that is the harder path to take. So yeah, we're quite proud of the critical reception.
Unfortunately on the sales side, that's not something we can really discuss, but of course as we know with Inquisition, that was a long burn to get to those total sales numbers.
I was surprised to hear there isn't going to be an expansion for the game, and for me, this ties into a feeling of uncertainty around the series' future. With Inquisition add-on Trespasser, there was a clear through-line to the future, but now, there's nothing - it's as though Dragon Age has just stopped and we don't know for sure whether it will continue. There are a couple of questions here: one, can you offer us any reassurance about Dragon Age's future - is there a team of sorts working on it now? And two, when did you decide not to do an expansion - presumably this was a while ago?
Busche: Oh, yes, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We toy with those ideas of course. In fact, John has an anecdote from years ago where there was a version of this where the Siege of Wiesshaupt is the conclusion of that block of story, and then we continue on from there. The decision was ultimately made that we wanted to take the approach of making this the most complete, contained, start-to-finish story that could deliver some of those answers and present new mysteries. I love [Inquisition add-on] Trespasser, [it] really feels integral to the story of Inquisition and, indeed, the larger tale of Dragon Age. You don't want your players to miss out on that [by not playing the DLC].
Epler: The other side of it, honestly, was Inquisition did end with some fairly hefty dangling plot threads. Obviously there's the post-credits scene with Solas and Flemeth, and it felt at the time - because I was on Inquisition, I was on the Trespasser team - we looked at what we already had and decided, okay, we want to do one last chapter, one last story beat. The difference in The Veilguard is the story ends pretty conclusively. There is, obviously, a secret post-credits scene, but that's less of 'here is an immediate thing that you now need to be aware of', and more 'here's a hint as to what the future will be'.
"A lesson that I've learned: don't ever try to make a direct sequel to a game 10 years later" - John Epler
A lesson that I've learned: don't ever try to make a direct sequel to a game 10 years later, because, oh my gosh, that is a challenge.
Busche: It is a challenge.
Epler: But that's the great thing about Dragon Age: you can make a sequel that does not require the same level of knowledge and investment that you would have required to go from Inquisition to the Veilguard; even though, again, we worked really hard to make it an accessible jumping-in point, it still feels like - for players who've been with the franchise - a very direct sequel in a lot of ways. We wanted to make sure that this one ended in a less ambiguous way, where it's very clear that this story is done.
What comes next, you will see, but it won't require the same level of 'okay let's catch you up on what's happened'. I'm still proud of the team and what they did at the beginning of this one, but there's a lot that comes from previous games that feed into this one.
Busche: Isn't it interesting how a lot of the threats that have been prevalent throughout the franchise only scratch at the surface of the mysteries and possibilities in the IP? There's been a lot of exploration of the Blight, the elven gods, the elven people, and its wonderful subject matter. However, it also makes me curious about the other aspects that are less explored and equally as interesting: the nature of the qunari, what's across the seas, what's happening with the titans, the development of the dwarven people. So in many ways, I feel like answering some of these long-threaded mysteries that are specific to the Blight and specific to the elves, this gives some space to explore other ideas in the future.
Interesting; I would agree. I feel like we've been fighting Blights and demons in almost all of the games so far, and it would be refreshing to take a step away from that, or beyond it.
But you mentioned the secret post-credits ending scene there, which is something I've seen lots of reaction to - particularly from people unhappy at how abruptly it introduces a new arch villain. From their perspective, it looks like BioWare is shunting a new big-bad in because the old ones are used up. What do you say to that? How far back to these Executors - these beings - go?
Epler: That is one of those things that we'll get into in more detail in the future, but I do understand some of the reaction of 'well they're seeking a new baddie because the old ones are...' But there's a lot of ambiguity in that scene and for a very good reason, in that what people think might be the next story may not actually be what it's going to be. And I get it, it's the last piece of information people are getting, so people are going to make a lot of assumptions and guesses and theories. But it's been something that we've been talking about for quite some time.
You see them show up in Tevinter Nights [the anthology book], where Solas is very clear, 'You cannot trust them; they are dangerous.' Even to someone as powerful as Solas they are seen as a threat. They've shown up in DAI. They've also shown up - I can't remember... There's one other reference where a character talked about an Exec - about a rumour that the Executors assassinated an empress hundreds of years ago, but oh, that's just a rumour, everyone blames everything on them. So it's been a thread in the IP for a while. It's just a thread that we're now starting to pull on a little bit and lay some groundwork, lay some framework for where the story is going to go in the future.
But again, all it's meant to do is serve as a hint, as a tease - not necessarily suggest yes, next time you're definitely doing X or definitely going to Y. But yeah, I get the reaction. Again, there's very little information but that's by design: we want people to at least start filling in the blanks themselves, and then when we actually do start filling in the blanks, I think some people will be quite surprised by the direction that takes.
Busche: One of the things we say often in the franchise is that in Dragon Age, not everything is always as it seems.
Intriguing, and I loved how you casually referred to them as "execs" there - this big new villain.
[They laugh]
I want to jump back in time quickly here because I've been amazed, reading the new art book, at the revisions this project has gone through, and by the many ideas you've had for it. John, you've been on the project the whole time, I believe?
Epler: Yep.
I read that after Inquisition, there was a whole "covert commandos" theme for the game, known then as Joplin, I think, in which you'd have an underwater base - at one point a submarine, at another point, an underwater mansion - and that there would be rival teams pit against you, and Solas would summon titans and we'd ride griffons. These are incredibly exciting ideas.
Epler: So the great thing about the art book, but also the thing I always want to caution, is a lot of those ideas never made it past somebody in a meeting saying 'wouldn't it be cool if...?' Or, and I say this with full-love for [art director] Matt Rhodes: "Matt Rhodes, here is an idea," and then 45 minutes later, he has a concept piece ready for you to go. So it's one of those challenges where it's easy to look at the art book and say, if we combined all of these different ideas, it would be the coolest thing ever. But a lot of those ideas, for practical reasons or for other reasons, never make it past the 'I had a cool idea and we drew some concept art and then decided, no, this doesn't work'.
"In the game we talk about Rook as a chess piece; the deep lore secret is 'Rook' actually, originally, comes from the bird" - John Epler
Early on when we were discussing factions, Patrick Weekes and I, the lead writer, were talking about "what about a faction that represents the Free Marches? It could be Chantry-themed and this and that." And we started coming up with [ideas] and "oh this is going to be so cool", and then Matt Rhodes turns around and says, "Guys that sounds really boring." And we sat there like, "Oh, yeah." We just talked ourselves into a terrible idea because we got excited about it. I'm not saying Free Marches couldn't be cool, but the version we were coming up with was not cool. That's always the challenge: somebody might draw a piece of concept art about it, but it was never going to get past that stage.
That said, I was on Joplin, I was on early versions of what ultimately became Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and there were a lot of ideas that we played with, we tried out, we even put some of them into the game and ultimately didn't go forward with. On a project this long, and especially a project that everyone's heard about how at one point we're experimenting with multiplayer: what works in that environment is not what's going to necessarily work in a single-player RPG, so you end up with a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor because it's just it doesn't fit the vision, it doesn't necessarily fit scope, or you tried it out and it turns out it wasn't actually that great of an idea after all.
You mentioned the multiplayer version of Dragon Age 4 there, which was codenamed Morrison, I believe. I've seen this described as a Fantasy Anthem - is there any truth in this?
Busche: I don't know that we should spend a lot of time getting into it, but what I will say is that I joined as we made the shift to single-player, and anecdotally, I'll say the multiplayer game that we had when I joined, as a Dragon Age fan, didn't look a lot like a Dragon Age game to me. That said, some fantastic work and thoughts, ideas, the outline of the narrative, some of the beats we wanted to hit, some of the ideas behind the locales, were very informative to us.
I'm particularly interested in the moment Morrison is benched and you're told you're making a single-player Dragon Age game again. When you sit down and look at what you've got, then, and begin, what's there - what would I recognise as a player of Veilguard?
Busche: What would you recognise? My goodness.
There are a few mission concepts that survived. We knew we wanted to do the Siege of Weisshaupt, and though the level and execution of the mission is quite different from where it was at that time, that beat - the general structure of it, the emotion, the tension that we wanted to evoke - very much still present.
Of course there was some wonderful technology to build off of. We've spoken about how at this point we feel quite comfortable with Frostbite and it finally matches our ambition in that regard. So a lot of great tech to work with, and a lot of pre-work that had gone into the art and characters, particularly the work that allowed us to unlock the range of options within the character creator. We couldn't have gotten there in the time we had without that pre-work.
Epler: I'd also say, broad strokes, companions were... You would have recognised at least parts of the companions, if not necessarily who they ended up being in the final game.
Oh, what, all of them?
Epler: All the companions we at least knew that we wanted to build out their arcs, but their arcs were not done, their stories weren't told, and we still hadn't necessarily decided personality quirks and traits for all of them, since we hadn't had that chance to sit down with a full cast. So they existed, some of them were close to what you see in the final game, others were pretty far away from what you would eventually see.
Busche: And along those lines, John, the factions were in a similar boat. The factions survived. And in fact, in switching to single-player, we were able to resurrect some of the factions that had been cut.
When did Rook emerge as a character, and did you ever consider having the Inquisitor as the main character again?
Epler: Definitely early - very early on - we talked about the Inquisitor, but even on Joplin, the Inquisitor was abandoned pretty quickly in favor of a new character at the time. Originally, we had a handful of different names for Rook. There was Shrike - it was all bird names, I don't remember specifically why. But Rook was the one who ultimately survived. In the game we talk about Rook as a chess piece; the deep lore secret is "Rook" actually, originally, comes from the bird.
Rook as the main character was always kind of where we were going, but different versions of Rook. Part of the thing with building a game over the timeline that Veilguard has been built over is what worked at one time doesn't necessarily work for a character concept later on. And we found, as we went through development, Rook was feeling a little bit more like a relic of a previous time period. One of the big pushes was getting Rook to feel a little bit more competent, a little bit more like someone who is, very clearly, very good at their job and just isn't quite sure about leadership yet. But yeah, they were always going to be the protagonist, it's just different versions of them emerged throughout development.
Busche: One of the big questions that came up frequently - to John's point - is why is Rook in charge? Reflecting on it, we probably put a little too much stock in the endorsement of Varric on the next in line, so a lot of work in who Rook is to, as John mentioned, create that sense of competency, of history.
Speaking of Varric, when did you know he was going to die?
Epler: That actually came in surprisingly early. It's funny because, and this is the joys of a lengthy development cycle: early on, one of the concerns we had was we need to make it clear the stakes of what Solas was trying to do, and also make it clear that Solas is not not necessarily the nicest and friendliest person in the world, because there's a concern with people being like, "Oh yeah but Solas is still my friend-"
I romanced Solas in Inquisition so I felt this exact way.
[Corinne gestures to indicate she did too.]
Epler: So we talked about having Solas kill Varric. But then we ran into the other problem which is what I describe as the DA2 problem: in the first 45 minutes of that game, we kill one of your siblings, and you've had zero time with them at all. So killing Varric would have been super-impactful for people who played Inquisition and DA2, but for the new fans - especially as we get to 10 years past DAI - it becomes a bigger problem. "Why do I care about this Varric guy? He's been there for 45 minutes."
We wanted to have him kill Varric but we also wanted the player to get to spend more time with Varric or, in this case, their memory of Varric, and develop that attachment before we use that beat and Solas betraying you to really hammer home who Solas is, and what the stakes are that you're dealing with in this adventure.
Busche: Earlier we spoke about the idea of this being a continuous thread, a chapter of the Dragon Age saga that we've experienced through these first four games, and in many ways, Varric had become the narrator - the one who was telling the tale of this particular arc. It was a great way to continue that.
Epler: The passing of the torch as well - that's the other thing. Varric had - I love Varric, I've worked on Varric's content since DA2 - and this felt like a natural point for Varric to pass the torch, pass the buck onto someone else to serve as the new storyteller in DA.
I'm also interested in at what point the climactic - I'm going to call it the suicide mission because I think that's how people refer to it. At what point did you know you wanted to do this, and how influenced was it by Mass Effect 2? Because there's so much about the game that feels influenced by Mass Effect 2.
Busche: The answer might surprise you: that it was relatively late. We hit our alpha at a time that allowed us to play through the entirety of the game, start to finish, and that's really the moment that I look for where you can take a step back and really assess what you've got. It's very difficult to assess a body of work piecemeal or out of order. So while we had time to react, we really needed that moment to see the game start to finish and assess, and have other people provide feedback as well.
"In many ways, it is a love letter to what makes a BioWare game a BioWare game, so we absolutely looked at Mass Effect 2" - Corinne Busche
It was shortly after alpha we realised the intensity and the stakes - internally we call it the consequence factory - needed some strengthening. One of the unique things about Veilguard is we really viewed that as our opportunity to revisit a lot of the history and concepts of all BioWare titles. In many ways, it is a love letter to what makes a BioWare game a BioWare game, so we absolutely looked at Mass Effect 2. It was really a privilege to be able to be inspired by what we consider one of the greatest - in the case of Mass Effect - science-fiction stories ever told.
Epler: The other side of it was we were building a game that was focused on companions and characters, and the best example of that in BioWare's history is Mass Effect 2. Not that we don't focus on it in other games, but Mass Effect 2 does not exist without the companions and the companion stories. And even earlier - even before we started talking about the suicide mission - we had already talked about using Mass Effect 2 as this formula, this vision, for what we wanted to achieve with Dragon Age. Again, really building in these strong companion stories, these - we don't have loyalty missions but you have these arcs that bear a lot of resemblance [to them] and borrow a lot from Mass Effect 2.
Even beyond that, in the moments where you go with companions on non-combat adventures, we borrowed that - we looked at the scenes in Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC and also, honestly, Trespasser, where you get to spend these little moments with these followers that aren't focused around fighting things or killing things, and taking that and expanding on it, because they resonate so much with people when they play through those.
My time is up so let's end with a look to the future. Firstly, I suppose, is there a future for the series, and then secondly, if there is, what might it look like? There are those who want it to go back to its CRPG roots, and there are those who know it as a more action-like game. Which way do you turn?
Busche: There's so many stories left, so many mysteries left unsolved, so I'll leave that for what it is.
As for what the next iteration becomes, what that looks like, what style of game that is: well as I said, it's a franchise of reinvention. In some ways there are some parallels in that regard, to say, the Final Fantasy series. Of course, very different in terms of choice and consequences, and so many other factors, but there are those RPG franchises that embrace that reinvention, that when a new one gets announced, it really piques your curiosity about where are we going to go? What kind of adventure is this going to be? So again, I will remain of the point of view that it [Dragon Age's ability to reinvent itself] remains our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity.
Epler: There's lots of stories I still want to tell in this setting. There's a lot of threads that - we answered a lot of questions in Veilguard but I think we also planted a few new seeds, and new thoughts and threads. I just love the franchise. I love the storytelling and I love the characters in it, and I am just excited to, ideally, keep telling stories in this world.
A big thanks to John Epler and Corinne Busche for taking the time to talk to me, and to EA for organising the interview.