During our trip to San Francisco to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard for the first time, we had the chance to speak with two members of BioWare’s development team: Francois Chaput, Missions and Level Design Director, and Matt Rhodes, Art Director, both of which delved into their respective areas of expertise.
As a reminder, Dragon Age: The Veilguard will launch on October 31, almost ten years after the previous installment’s release. It will be available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
I know you are taking a different approach as far as levels go. Rather than trying to build out a massive open world, you went for the hub-and-spoke iteration. Can you talk more about the hub world you are creating for this game?
Francois Chaput: Yeah, absolutely. There are two key pillars that we really wanted to have a part here in the design of this world, and one of them was to focus the experience so that we can bring players to the best content that we can as efficiently as we can. The second one was maintaining a sense of player freedom. In some cases, it’ll narrow down a little bit, and then we make sure that we open back up and give you some options. The thing we want is to present you with options as opposed to a whole buffet of everything, a menu of options that we think are all going to be good.
Matt Rhodes: Which then gave us an opportunity from an art perspective to create even more variety. We are really proud of the work we did on Dragon Age: Inquisition, in which you had a few large areas, whereas now we have many more, far more distinct areas. So it really allows us to experiment and have fun with like, the wilder tone. There’s more contrast between the necropolis and the sunshiny beach somewhere. Just that structure is actually a really great opportunity for us to focus on polishing each area and making it even more distinct from each other.
Is there a typical through line that you’re anticipating players to go through in Dragon Age: The Veilguard or will they be able to veer off and explore these different regions in a different order?
Francois Chaput: Oh, absolutely. Divergence is something that we’ve built into it. There’ll be many opportunities to go and explore at your leisure. Do everything that you want to do. As you are comfortable and as soon as you’re tired of it or once you’ve consumed it all, we bring it back together.
And there are divergent paths that are exclusive to each other. There are times where you can do A or B in any order that you want, but you can do both. So we’ve got a good variety of that and a lot of opportunities.
Do you foresee opportunities where players will have to make a divergent choice that kind of locks them out from another path?
Francois Chaput: Yes, and you’ll see some of that today.
As players grow in progression and want to revisit prior areas, will there be a sense of finality to some of these where they might be locked off and players cannot visit again?
Francois Chaput: Yeah, that’s a great question. There are some areas that you visit once for specific reasons, and you won’t have any reasons to go back to them, but that’s only a certain portion. There are many more levels that you can revisit as many times as you want. In fact, the majority of the game is freely revisited.
Will there be elements that are perhaps locked away, like teased for the players early in hour five, and that they might revisit in something like hour 40?
Francois Chaput: I’m digging into the depths of my knowledge. I think there are some opportunities. I don’t want to promise vast amounts of whole new areas that unlock that way. The game does give players a lot of freedom to explore a lot of it early on. Not all of it, however. We don’t do a lot of that, but we do sometimes.
How much does the player’s faction factor into how distinct that Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough will be for that particular player?
Francois Chaput: For me, quite a bit, and I’d like to hear Matt’s answer to this as well, but for me, the way the origins have played into my different playthroughs has been in the role-playing, of course, choosing the dialogue options that are available only to certain origins as well. So for me, there was a lot of good variation that I found was really fun.
Matt Rhodes: Yeah, especially the overall feel and tone. It comes up so often in conversations. Every faction, for example, has their base of operations, so I have found it particularly satisfying when you find a faction that you really like. There’s just something that feels cozy. It does feel like you’ve got your own hub, really, as the Veilguard. But just coming to the faction is like a home away from home, and just part of that’s reflected in how they talk to you and just how that comes up, and it’s really neat.
I’ve mentioned this one before, but one of my favorites is the Grey Wardens because the Blight is like nothing we have seen before, and seeing that from the perspective of a Warden adds that extra level of dimension to it. I think it felt to me like a whole new play through when I went as a Warden all the way through.
What difficulties did you have developing distinct visual identities for each faction?
Matt Rhodes: In some ways, the difficulties were also our biggest opportunities because we were going off the map. This is stuff that’s only been hinted at. A process that we love going through is reverse engineering. Here’s what we’ve seen in the Wardens before; here are the little scraps that we’ve seen from Tevinter, Dorian’s costumes, and some ruins in the desert, that kind of thing.
It’s cool to take what fans remember and try to reverse engineer that so that the DNA is still present, and there’s that element of familiarity. At the same time, because we were going to a completely new section of the map, it was like the sky was the limit. We could really have fun with it and set off right from the beginning. How can we give each faction a distinct shape, language, color palette, and cultural symbols and icons that we can weave through every piece and then go through?
One of my favorite things is just furniture design. What does a chair look like for the Wardens? Like, how do they make one versus how did the Lords of Fortune make one? Every little piece gets run through those filters until you’ve built up these distinct and very tonally different locations.
Aesthetically, it feels with the first reveal of Dreadwolf, it seemed like the color palettes were a lot more pronounced and a lot more vibrant, while here, they seem a little bit more muted. Can you talk about the art changes throughout the making of Dragon Age: The Veilguard?
Matt Rhodes: One of the biggest things is that Veilguard has been really about trying to be intentional artistically. Every project is, but this is really trying to say, okay, what’s the story we’re trying to tell and how can the art help support the narrative, the design, all of those elements? One of the big things about this one was we wanted a wider range of tones than we’ve seen before, which meant we wanted to be able to do grim and dark and terrifying.
And we also really wanted to be able to portray a world that’s worth saving. We wanted it to be, you’re fighting evil gods and all these monsters because this is actually a really nice place and it would be a shame if it fell to evil. It’s an attempt to broaden the palette to allow us to get the range that I think the story required.
So much of the world feels lived in rather than just like sterile, fresh civilization out in the middle of nowhere.
Matt Rhodes: That’s good. I’m glad that comes through. We have an incredibly talented team. One of my favorite parts is just how much they love sprinkling story everywhere. There’s these gems of rooms where you can almost tell who lives there, even though you’ve never seen them, just because of how it’s decorated and how things are organized and it’s really fun.
Is there anything that you would consider required reading or playing leading up to Dragon Age: The Veilguard to fully enjoy the story?
Matt Rhodes: Absolutely not. There’s a neat comic book series that kind of gives you more context about how Varric and Harding got to Tevinter, at least a snippet of their journey there that shows why Varric might seem a little more tired than he did last time.
But it’s not necessary. This really has been about like, ideally, if you played Inquisition and you have context, if you played all the way to Origins, this should be the continuation of that awesome story. And yet at the same time, I think there’s a lot of people that hopefully this is their first Dragon Age game and that it inspires them to maybe go back and check out the older ones and catch up.
Francois Chaput: Yeah, accessibility was a big focus point. The one thing—and it’s maybe a bit of a plug—but we have the companion podcasts coming out every weekend. They’re fairly accessible, and I think they’re pretty cool. While not required, if you’re interested in this game, I would recommend the podcasts.
For players that did experience all of Dragon Age: Inquisition, especially the Trespasser DLC, how much does that lead into Veilguard?
Francois Chaput: Quite a lot. As I said, accessibility was a big point. We try to bring players up to speed, but really Trespasser was the launch pad for this narrative that we were doing here.
What can we expect in terms of length for this game, both for the main quest and the side quests?
Francois Chaput: I don’t think we’re speaking about length yet.
Alright. Are the side quests more or less woven into the main story rather than standalone?
Francois Chaput: Yeah, definitely. We have a range of different types of content and missions. Variety is a key thing for us. The way that the side quests work is that none of them exist unless they’re contributing to part of the narrative of the world, at the very least.
Some of them will be woven into larger stories, larger narratives, like some of your followers’ arcs. There’s a variety of these. It’s all about deepening the character relationships. Davrin, for example, really cares about this one thing, and if you care about Davrin back, you should do that.
Dragon Age The Veilguard is going heavily into accessibility for players of all skills. Conversely, what options exist for those interested in making the combat as challenging as possible?
Francois Chaput: There’s a lot. What I am happy to tell you is that we’ve got customizable difficulty. We’ve also got a very difficult Nightmare mode that is possible, but is challenging in its own right. So there’s quite a lot in there. I won’t be able to do a good job of telling you what all the options are. Corinne (Busche, Game Director) could, if you can get hold of her. But we do have that.
For players who find themselves attracted to two key characters throughout the story, are there any options that might be helpful?
Francois Chaput: So, we do have romances. We’re trying not to talk about them today. We want to keep them mostly a surprise. But what I believe we have said is we don’t support multiple romances in this game, so you can’t romance multiple people. But I think that’s as far as we can go on that topic for now.
I know that there is a wide range of weapons and armor choices for customizing your companions. Is there also going to be some sort of wardrobe selection, where they might have transmogrified armor, where they wear one for stats but another for looks?
Matt Rhodes: I can’t remember if companions can transmog. I gotta check on that, actually.
With combat, it feels like it’s been very streamlined. There are limited options as far as healing goes as well as your number of skills in there. What challenges did your team have with balancing the combat with only having a few choices to bring into each encounter?
Francois Chaput: That’s probably another good question for Corinne, but I can answer it and hopefully it’s still interesting for you. I can’t comment on the number of healing options.
For the challenge of balancing it, we’ve had a dedicated team look at that and give recommendations on whether these encounters are balanced or should be harder or easier, as well as on the variety of encounters and making sure that the pacing is correct. As you’ve probably seen, we have green pots around and we had to make sure that’s placed and paced correctly as well. So we had a dedicated team doing just that, playing through the entire game.
How many dragons are in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?
Francois Chaput: There’s at least all the ones you’ve seen in the trailer.
Matt Rhodes: I’m very proud of the dragons in this game. With Inquisition, I thought we had done a great job, but I feel like this really builds on what we were able to do. Just the experience of fighting them has really improved.
I will also say I think we found quite a few dragons tied in narratively. We got some really great stuff, we’ve got some big dragons. I don’t think we’ve done them on this scale before.
Have you guys talked about what your DLC content plans will be for the game?
Francois Chaput: We have not. This is what the focus is on right now.
For either of you, what’s your favorite Origin and class choice for the first playthrough?
Francois Chaput: I really like the Rogue. I know there’s a huge diversity of answers that I get from my coworkers, but for me, it’s the Rogue. And the backstory that I’ve liked the most has been the Veil Jumpers. Particularly thanks to their amazing transmog options. Everybody gets the same transmog options, but just roleplaying to their faction and looking like a Tevinter person is something I enjoy.
Matt Rhodes: Rogue is a really great starting place, and Arcane Mage is solid, too. I would say they weren’t my favorite originally, but the Crow faction has just become my go-to now. It’s like living in the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Batman opera that is Antiva and being a part of their group and running around on rooftops.
Thank you for your time.
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