A lot of Dragon Age fans were left disappointed at how few decisions from previous games matter in The Veilguard, but BioWare has promised they’re still important.
One of the cool things about BioWare games back in the day is the way that your choices in a previous game would directly impact what happened in the next one. This is as much the case for Mass Effect as it is for Dragon Age, but with The Veilguard coming a full 10 years after Inquisition, there was of course the question if previous choices would matter or not. The answer? Not really! Where Inquisition let you import your saves from Origins and 2 via The Keep, The Veilguard just lets you choose a few story decisions at the beginning of the RPG, which obviously won’t have the same effect on the minutiae of it all.
But in an interview with IGN, director Corinne Busche tried to make it clear that the decisions you made in older games do matter, and that they’ll matter again at some point. “The big thing for us is we wanted to make this story, every single choice you make, feel relevant to it,” Busche explained. “One thing that we could have stated more clearly or maybe alluded to more clearly in the game is the idea that just because these choices from the past library of games didn’t necessarily impact this particular story, that doesn’t mean they’re gone.
“This is a chance for us to really key in to what matters with these events and what’s happening in Northern Thedas. I do fully expect that these choices going clear back to Dragon Age Origins will again matter.” Busche also wanted to make it clear that players that have seen the game’s secret 2D ending will see events from past games “being quite pertinent. It’s easy to see how those choices can and will be relevant into the future.”
There’s obviously an implication here that there are more games to come, or at least an intention for more games, so you’ll just have to hope that your earlier decisions do end up mattering. The Veilguard only just came out, after all – any kind of sequel is easily years away. In the meantime, you could always replay all the older games and make some new choices!
