How Dragon Age: The Veilguard Grapples With the Series’ Wildly Expansive Lore (and Your Choices in It)

ign.com:

Somewhat famously, the fourth game in the Dragon Age series has gone through a lot of changes in the ten years since Dragon Age: Inquisition. What’s now known as Dragon Age: The Veilguard began development in 2015 and in that time, reports emerged of Dragon Age 4 going the live-service route, with a heavy multiplayer component.

The eventual confirmation that EA would let BioWare go full single-player with Dragon Age 4, keeping with the series’ history, led to a major sigh of relief from many fans. And when I got my hands on the game last month for our IGN First coverage (read my full preview here), I struggled to catch any whiffs of its multiplayer past in the gameplay, so I can only imagine the overhaul that was done behind the scenes.

But, interestingly, there was one thing that Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s creative director, John Epler, tells me never changed throughout the near-decade of development: “There was never a version of the story of Dragon Age 4 where Solas was not at the center,” he says. Basically, if you were worried that the name change from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to The Veilguard would mean we’re not focused on Solas, think again.

Solas, of course, was once the companion to the player character, the Inquisitor, in Dragon Age: Inquisition. A mild-mannered, mysterious apostate, Solas (Spoiler warning for Dragon Age: Inquisition) disappeared at the end of the base game, only for a massive reveal at the end of the Trespasser DLC: Solas is actually the elven god known as Fen'harel, or the Dread Wolf, and he has plans to tear down what’s known as The Veil in order to restore the world of the ancient elves. Doing so will destroy the world of Thedas as we know it, essentially making your once-friend (or even romantic interest) the new big bad.

The “bones” of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Epler explains, were always going to come from where that story was left in Trespasser.

“When we ended Trespasser, we felt that we were making a promise, a commitment to our fans