Very saddened to hear the news about Bioware. As much as I was disappointed with Dragon Age The Veilguard, it was a fun game and I did not wish for the series to end. That being said, for those of you who haven't seen the artbook, I want to share the initial ideas and concepts of the team behind the game. Here's what Veilguard could have and should have been.
Characters from Previous Games
Morrigan, Dorian and Isabela were supposed to be our advisors. They also had better outfits.
Sten, Cole and Shale were some other characters featured in the artbook. An early idea for Cole was to act as a compassionate voice to Solas.
The Divine was supposed to make an appearance, sending out ships to hunt Solas in the hopes that his capture will restore peace to Thedas.
We were supposed to receive assignments from the Inquisitor.
Another idea was for us to return to the Fade and rescue whoever was left behind in Inquisition.
Solas as a True Leader
Elves from all over Thedas were supposed to answer Solas' call, as presented in the ending screens of Inquisition.
Solas' appearance was supposed to be more of a surprise.
Solas was supposed to return like a regal figure out of the distant past.
Game Mechanics
The game was focused more on espionage and sneaking around. We were supposed to go on cool missions, like infiltrating the Archon's throne room.
Another idea was for us to ride adult griffons, hunting dragons.
Or to go on secret missions in Tevinter, accurately depicted here with slaves and slavers.
Story and Setting
The dwarves were supposed to be fleeing the underground by the thousands. Cause is left unknown.
We were supposed to go to Par Vollen, the home of the Qunari.
Companions had the option to betray us.
We were supposed to go in disguise to a ball in the Necropolis.
Another idea was for Solas to interrupt our mission, wiping half of our team off the board and forcing us to make an unlikely alliance.
Solas was supposed to summon a Titan in the final battle.
We were supposed to get a happy ending with our love interests.
Headquarters
And last but not least, our base was first supposed to be a ship, sailing to all the places we would visit.
We would have a war table room, similar to Inquisition.
The ship could get stolen and we would have to get it back.
However, thematically, boats don't line up with the spy theme. They're too easy to spot and attack. So the ship was transformed into a submarine.
The submarine was already named The Dumat, after an Archdemon.
These are just the parts I found most interesting from the artbook, which has more than 200 pages. I wonder who saw all these ideas and went nah, let's scrap them. I guess we'll never know.
PROMPT : Blood Magic.
DRAGON AGE 2 ERA.
Words: 1011.
Characters: Verity Hawke x Isabela.
Trigger warning for All That Remains, basically.
At least there wasn’t any blood.
Those words, whispered from heavy lips, hung between the ears of Verity’s companions for hours, for days, for weeks after she’d uttered them in the belly of the foundry. They could not think of her without hearing them, without recalling with perfect clarity the sight of their behemoth of a leader dropping to her knees and scooping her death-pale mother into her arms. Fortune’s sobs made for a heart-wrenching undercurrent to the memory.
Verity stared down at her hands once Leandra slipped lifelessly from them. They were clean. Demons did not bleed, after all, and she’d wiped Quentin’s across her thighs before daring to touch her dying mother. But Leandra had not bled. There were no wounds.
One of my favorite things in the Dragon Age series have always been recurring cameos from past games ❤️ If we count her brief appearance in the Inquisition multiplayer, I think we can agree Isabela has had the longest run the series?
She's one of my favorite characters, the love of my Hawke ❤️ I was very happy to see her in Veilguard, but I found her character had lost all her previous charm unfortunately, being reduced to a regular NPC. I also didn't like her new look 😩
