Dragon Age: The Veilguard Continues One Of The Series' Biggest Problems

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As the long-awaited fourth game in the series, has some fans split on whether it's a worthy sequel — especially after a 10-year wait since the initial release of in 2014. For all of 's perceived merits and flaws, however, there's one area in particular where it can't quite live up to the promise of a BioWare RPG, as it inherits one of the series' long-running flaws that hampers its ability to tell a continuous story between games.

Since even before the start of BioWare's two biggest franchises, and, the studio's RPGs have lived by the promise that player choice would heavily impact the games' narratives, deciding the course of major events, relationships between characters, and even which characters live or die. As the games have gone on to receive multiple sequels, however, they no longer just have to account for the decisions made in their own stories, but also for decisions in past games, in an attempt to create a long-running, series-wide story that the player can influence across multiple different titles.

Unfortunately, while the decisions in can influence the game's story in important ways, the same can't be said for decisions from past games. In total, only implements three major decisions from , all of which can be set during character creation, and none from either or. The result is that many of 's references to past games are frustratingly vague, particularly when it comes to legacy characters, like 's versions of Morrigan and Dorian, whose histories are unspecified.

allows players to set three choices from during character creation, along with customizing the Inquisitor — which character the Inquisitor romanced, the final fate of the Inquisition as a whole, and the Inquisitor's intentions towards Solas, leaving out important decisions like who drinks from the Well of Sorrows or which character becomes the Divine of the Orlesian Chantry.

So, while players might have certain versions of 's past companions in mind, when they appear in, they can't be