Another December 4th, another day dedicated to all things Thedas. The Dragon Age Day 2024 is a highly special occasion since it came so close to the release of the latest installment of the franchise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and those don’t happen too often.
The developers from Bioware took to the official site with a new celebratory blog post, thanking the community and revealing some small but nice surprises.
“Today, on Dragon Age Day 2024, we want to thank you, our community. You inspire all of us with your passion and care. If you’re new to our community, welcome, and if you’re a long time fan, we’re so glad to have you along with us on this journey!“
To begin with, the team released a new update for The Veilguard. This Patch 4 introduces the iconic cosmetic outfit of Hawke from Dragon Age 2, complete with armor, body paint and face paint. It also adds two new Qunari complexions and a number of QoL changes:
- Added an in-game Setting to turn off Bloom.
- Added a “Take Photo” button on the pause screen to take screenshots during conversations and cinematics on PC.
The patch also contains a number of bug fixes, with the full list of changes available on the game’s Steam page.
Additionally, the studio released a free, stand-alone version of the Character Creator on all platforms. For those who don’t yet have Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can now create a Rook before buying the full game and transfer your character over.
The developers also released fun statistics focused on most commonly picked player choices. Going from Rook’s identity to romances to certain story beats – beware of spoilers! Check out the Tweet below or proceed to Reddit to take part in the discussion.
- 43% of all Rooks were human with another 40% choosing elves.
- The split between classes is fairly even: 40% Mage, 30% Warrior, 30% Rogue.
- 24% players chose Grey Wardens or Shadow Dragons as their faction, followed by Antivan Crows (16%) and Veil Jumpers (15%).
- Most players have romanced Neve, followed by Lucanis and Taash.
- The decision between which city to save comes almost even, with 51% players saving Treviso while 49% players help out Minrathous.
Decisions, decisions… 🤔 #DragonAge: The Veilguard is all about tough choices – so we put together this graphic to see which stories our community told!
Warning: Spoilers ahead! Which paths did you take? #DragonAgeDay pic.twitter.com/IV9Y4d2QQj
— Dragon Age (@dragonage) December 4, 2024
The team participated in a Reddit AMA on December 4th, answering some questions from the community. The entire thread is quite long and can be found here for reading at your own pace, let’s look over some of the most interesting questions and answers in a compressed state.
Dragon Age’s John Epler and Corinne Busche were on hand to answer some questions, including:
- Does Solas know about the Executors? Solas knows more about the Executors than he’s let on – in fact, he knows more about the Executors than any other living being, including the other Evanuris. But even he isn’t entirely aware of what they’re up to.
- Was the Inquisitor considered to be a protagonist at any point? The protagonist for this game was always going to be someone other than the Inquisitor.
- (SPOILERS TO THE GAME’s ENDING) Is the Blight outside the Fade cured? Does that mean Wardens no longer hear The Calling? The Blight is forever changed. It’s less perilous and less virulent than it was before, and whatever motive force was coming through the Veil to empower it at the end of the game has been severed. That said, it still exists in some form, and not everyone is going to be cured in the same way. Beyond that – the Wardens no longer hear the whisper of the Calling, but right at the edges of perception, they’re hearing something. What is it? Great question.
- If/how can the griffons be saved as a species with only one surviving clutch? In a setting with as much magic and mystery as Dragon Age, I think that’s probably the least of the problems the Griffons are going to face going forward.
- How do you think Veilguard sets up the future of the franchise? Where would you like to take it from here? As you can imagine, given a blight of this magnitude, and the revelations of the Elven gods, it’s going to have long lasting geo-political implications, and there will be those eager to take advantage of the situation. Not to mention, there is so much yet to explore in the nature of the the Dwarves and Qunari, and their relationship to the Titans and Dragons respectively.
- If Solas ritual succeeded, what would have happened to the elves? And to the humans? I think the reality is that even Solas couldn’t properly answer that question. Deep down he knew that the ritual was going to result in large-scale casualties, but he saw it as an acceptable price to pay to fix what he saw as his mistake.
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard featured a very elf-centric narrative. Can other races hope to get more attention? We’re never going to stop telling stories about the elves, but I think there are plenty of interesting stories to tell in Thedas where the Evanuris are tertiary characters at most.
- What happened to Anaris, and why was he scared of the eye? When Anaris is defeated, he’s sent back to the Void. What’s there isn’t something anyone really knows, but if you read the other Codex entries scattered around Arlathan, it’s clear that Anaris has touched something far darker and more dangerous than he expected, and now it has his scent, so to speak.
- Can we get confirmation on what happened to the other Evanuris? At best the other Evanuris are a shadow of their former selves, and at worst they’re dead. The death of their Archdemons, particularly when they were still trapped in the Fade, caused enough magical feedback that it broke their minds and bodies.
- Can we look forward to more lore-supplementary material? With all of the lore reveals in DATV, another World of Thedas is something we’d absolutely love to do. That said, they’re complex beasts and require a lot of work from a lot of people, so I can’t really promise anything, but it’s something we’re interested in, at least.
- What other player choices from Inquisition would you have liked to have implemented if you had more time and resources? Well of Sorrows. I think that’s the biggest one – and we had some ideas for what we wanted to do with it. I’d have liked to do more with the Divine as well, though with how little we touched on Andrasteism in this game I think it would’ve been a bigger challenge than expected.
- What about returning characters? Fenris is the easy answer, but it’s also the real one. Given his history, his relationship with Dorian and Mae could’ve been fun to explore, particularly depending on how you left him in DA2.
- Looking further, what parts of Thedas you personally want to explore more? I don’t think it’s any secret that I find the idea of ‘what lies across the sea’ to be fascinating. It shows up a lot in Bellara’s content – what happened in the parts of the world that weren’t Thedas? But Kal-Sharok is another place I’d love to spend more time in. It has a very unique relationship to dwarven culture, and particularly in a post-DATV world, it feels like it’d be super interesting to get more time with them.
- No plans to increase the character limit or introduce New Game+ mode.
Last but not least, the developers have also participated in a lengthy interview with IGN. It is worth reading in its entirety for the many revelations, lore and gameplay alike, that it provides, but here’s the big one about the World States and their potential future:
“I do fully expect that these choices going clear back to Dragon Age Origins will again matter. So, just wanted to be on record with that. Every one of your choices that people have made throughout their Dragon Age journey, those are still your choices. And if you’ve seen the secret 2D ending we talked about, some of these events being quite pertinent. It’s easy to see how those choices can and will be relevant into the future.”
Previous Dragon Age Days:
If you want to refresh your memory on what was offered over the last few Dragon Age Days, here you go! The articles themselves have all the respective links you need should you decide to read the provided short stories:
- Dragon Age Day 2020 – four new short stories: The Next One, Ruins of Reality, The Wake, Minrathous Shadows;
- Dragon Age Day 2021 – two more short stories: Won’t Know When & The Flame Eternal;
- Dragon Age Day 2022 – one short story: As We Fly.
- Dragon Age Day 2023 – teaser-trailer for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf (later renamed to The Veilguard)
