If you were hoping to carry over your intricate, decade-long web of choices from Dragon Age: Origins or Dragon Age 2 into The Veilguard, get ready to be disappointed. Your epic world states from previous game are not gonna make the cut this time.
Even your decisions from Inquisition are on a pretty short leash.
When preview screenshots leaked, the Dragon Age community already started to feel that familiar twinge of anxiety. Speculation ran wild—would Veilguard’s world be as reactive as the series has conditioned us to expect?
Well, according to a recent reports early access gameplay, those suspicions have been pretty much confirmed.
So, Why’s Bioware Ditching Dragon Age Keep this time?
In The Veilguard, your world state boils down to only 3 decisions: who your Inquisitor romanced, whether you disbanded the Inquisition, and whether you decided to stop or save Solas. That’s it.
For those of you who lovingly curated your Dragon Age Keep to make sure every little choice was accounted for, I feel your pain.
Creative Director John Epler explained that since Veilguard is set in Northern Thedas, BioWare decided to wipe the slate mostly clean.
This way, they don’t have to juggle hundreds of decisions from past games—because, let’s face it, trying to manage all those choices would be like trying to track down every side quest you’ve ever started in an open-world RPG.
To keep it simple, they’ve steered clear of huge decisions made in the South, like who became the Divine.
In short? BioWare’s solution to avoid story chaos is to just not mention certain topics at all. Sure, it keeps the narrative neat, but if you’ve been with the series for years, it’s easy to feel a little let down.
And Epler isn’t wrong—he points out that Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisition didn’t always address every choice either.
But, come on, when you’ve been deeply invested in your decisions since 2009, this still stings.
Furthermore, It was always going to be tricky for BioWare to keep relying on Dragon Age Keep, especially with how complicated things have gotten with each game.
Remember that agonizing decision to save Hawke or leave them in the Fade? Well, don’t worry too much about it now because Northern Thedas couldn’t care less.
Even though your past decisions may not shake Northern Thedas, there’s still a whole new region to explore and plenty of fresh storylines to sink your teeth into.
So, while this might be a tough pill to swallow, there’s still a whole new world of lore, characters, and storylines waiting to be unraveled in The Veilguard.
But at least your romance decisions still count, so hey—it’s not a total party wipe, Right?
