As part of ongoing coverage in Game Informer, BioWare went into more detail about its focus on companions in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Creative director John Epler emphasized that the game’s story will feel like finding family and saving the world with them.
Dragon Age has always been about characters, but in some ways it felt like we just got lucky with that. Inquisition is a story where the main character plays the biggest role. This time, we wanted to tell a story where you literally can’t save the world without these characters. More than that, we wanted to give them their own storylines that could run parallel to the main story and really give them that deep storytelling that our fans love.
They [the companions] have their own friendships, their own rivalries, and we put an emphasis on that. You’re not just putting together a group of people who will do whatever you say. You’re putting together a family, and that becomes the core of what Veilguard is. It’s about taking that group, that newfound family, and saving the world alongside them.
Mark Darrah, a former producer on the franchise who returned as a consultant on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, explained:
What’s amazing about Veilguard is that it’s the game where we finally openly said that BioWare’s greatest strength is telling stories through character. If you go back to Baldur’s Gate 1, Baldur’s Gate 2, those games told stories through character, but there was no purpose in that. And in this game, we finally put that purpose in the forefront, putting the characters front and center, building the game around that, around those character moments, which is really the best way that BioWare can tell stories.
Darrah also noted that the development team is now much more familiar with the Frostbite engine. This, combined with the vastly improved hardware capabilities, will allow for a level of visual quality that was not possible in previous games. For example, each character now moves in a specific way, rather than exactly the same as the others.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is scheduled for release this fall on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series.