You might think that after spending a summer talking about kissing bears in Baldur’s Gate or gods in Hades2 that my main concern for Dragon Age: The Veilguard — a game from a studio known for its expressive characters and romantic companions — would be what I would choose to kiss. But after three games spanning nearly two decades, I wanted to hear about the next Dragon Age was a skin tone that matched my own and didn’t look like I’d never seen a bottle of moisturizer before.
So I know there is a maker who loves me, as one of the very first features that Game Director Corinne Busche showed me, all the different skin tones were in Veil Guard‘s character creator.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about skin tone,” she said. In the character editor, after you’ve chosen a race and adjusted your features – including the ability to change your height for the first time in the series – you can review your work in different lighting conditions. The character we created, a black elf, seemed to glow in the bluish light of a night scene, and in the bright sunlight I could see the intensity of his color.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about skin tone.”
“We want to make sure that the skin tone is reproduced authentically,” said Busche.
The second feature that caught my eye—and I insisted Busche show it to me, risking the little precious time I had with this hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest—was the hair options.
“We have dozens and dozens of hair types,” she said. “And they are completely influenced by physics.” The quality and variety of choices I saw thrilled me. The rows of bouncy, luxurious-looking hair of all curl types and textures (and yes, the annoyingly ubiquitous “Killmonger cut” was among the options, what can you do?) brought the biggest smile to my face in the hour I spent with Busche and The Veil Guardian.
“A very important part of our philosophy is that everyone, no matter who they are, can achieve their potential in this game,” Busche said, and I think they hit the nail on the head.
In the hour I had with the hands-off demo, I could only see so much, but all of it was really encouraging, as a long-time Dragon Age Fan. Minrathous, the city we explored in the demo, was dark and gloomy with its blood mage cultists, but at the same time flooded with the colors of magical symbols like the neon lights of a big city.
For some, this splendor of color, combined with a reveal trailer that had a more stylized artistic direction, led to grumbling on social media that The Veil Guardian does not feel like a “real” Dragon Age Game. Critics complain that the new stylization looks too cartoonish and deviates too much from the series, in whose blood-splattered trailers Marilyn Manson’s “This Is the New Shit” could once be heard.
Busche understood the criticism and offered a two-pronged explanation. The first part was simply that Dragon Age, as a series has always changed. “What we have seen over the years is an evolution of the visual aspects of the franchise,” Busche said. “Dragon Age has never really had its own visual identity.”
Busche explained that the team wanted to give players a game where the settings had as much personality as the characters. “That meant creating a contrast between dark and dilapidated areas and magically lit areas,” Busche said.
Another reason The Veil Guardian looks so different from others Dragon Age games is because the locations themselves are unlike anything the franchise has seen before. The first three Dragon Age The games took place in the southern parts of the world, where magic and its users were brutally suppressed.
For the locations in Veil Guard“This is a part of the world where magic has been embraced,” Busche said. “It’s a society of magicians and magic is inherently colorful in this world. So whether we see them using magic for everyday purposes like signage or using it as spells, that color really comes through.”
It’s been a long and potentially agonizing time for fans of the series, who first got to see the new game when it was announced at The Game Awards in 2018. In the years since, there have been a few “proof of life” updates, including news that the game had undergone a massive scope change as BioWare scrapped plans to add live service multiplayer elements to instead focus on a pure single-player experience.
But while the news was generally greeted with enthusiasm, optimism about the game’s future was tempered by constant news of layoffs and high-profile departures. After decades at the studio, BioWare CEO Casey Hudson and Dragon Age Executive producer Mark Darrah left the company in 2020. Creative director Matt Goldman left the company in 2021, 19-year BioWare veteran Mac Walters left the company in 2023, and that same year the studio announced the layoffs of over 50 people, including several longtime BioWare employees.
Needless to say, Veil GuardThe development of was plagued with problems. And an hour of gameplay downtime is not enough to completely dispel lingering concerns that the game’s torturous development cycle has compromised its quality. But I know that the Dragon Age series, and based on the conversations I’ve had and the little I’ve seen, despite the turmoil, I feel like BioWare still got it right.
I will have to make the final judgment only when I can finally play the finished product, when Veil Guard will be released this fall. But seeing all the character creation possibilities, knowing that we’ll finally get a dwarven companion to start a romance with, and knowing that we’ll finally get to visit places like Weisshaupt and the Nevarran Necropolis – desires and places that have dominated Dragon Age Fandom discussions for decades — Veil Guard feels like it’s on the right track.