author: Jonasz Gulczynski
Dragon Age Veilguard Was Supposed to Feature Consequences of Choices From Previous Installments, but Idea Was Abandoned
Another untapped idea has been discovered. In the game's files, content was found which would bring the consequences of choices from previous installments of the game to The Veilguard.
The dust from previous leaks hadn't even settled yet when the community discovered something new. The light of day saw the unexploited idea of transferring choices from previous installments of the Dragon Age series to The Veilguard.
Untapped potential
The user of platform X with the nickname amirdrassil shared his discovery about unused content hidden in the game files. A dataminer has published a screenshot of a Google file she maintains, which currently contains as many as 26 pages of information about characters from the BioWare game. One of the sections focuses on returning characters, with one of them expected to be directly linked to the consequences of previous decisions.
The fragment focuses on a character from Dragon Age 2. Isabela was set to return in the latest installment of the series as a brutal, experienced warrior, and her appearance was to depend on the decisions made by the player in the previous installments. The comment only specifies the cosmetic layer of the character, but it implies that we were supposed to feel the consequences of Hawke's choices in the game in some way. After the release of the RPG, the studio was hit by a wave of dissatisfaction caused by too few such decisions, and the presence of Isabela in the game, regardless of our choices from the second part, was one of the prime examples.
Digging in the files continues
Among the information found, there are also issues related to other characters. Most of them are additional details explaining the concept of characters and describing, for instance, their accent, most important character traits, or age. The discovery of this detail has sparked the imagination of players eagerly awaiting the revelation of more abandoned ideas for connecting Veilguard to previous installments in the series, with the most excitement being caused by the aforementioned Isabela.
It's worth reminding that in the studio's official statement before the premiere, there was information that the game was supposed to be devoid of connections with the previous parts of the series on purpose, to reach new players and refresh the image of the series. In the comments on the posted thread, there are also voices suggesting that perhaps the studio employees had a desire to develop consistency, but there wasn't enough money or time to do so.
I am 10000000% sure this was a time constraint issue. They had to build, optimize, and ship out a working game scavenged from the corpse of the live service base they had and get it done in 3 years. I feel awful for them because I am so certain this wasn't their original vision.
-CaffeineMomSloth
This is probably not the end of interesting facts from Thedas. Unused motifs seem to work against the studio, which loses in the eyes of the series' fans with each new discovery. Time will tell how the final reception of The Veilguard will change in light of the abandoned ideas that fans believed could only help.