When Dragon Age: The Veilguard releases in October, it will include a first for the series — a fully-featured photo mode that will let fans capture personalized moments within Thedas. Photo modes have become a common sight in big-budget games in the years since the release of Dragon Age: Inqusition, but it nevertheless marks an important milestone for BioWare’s fantasy series.
Happily, Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s version of the popular mode has plenty of toys for fans who want to indulge their dreams of being a fantasy photographer. Here’s some of what The Veilguard’s photo mode has to offer.
Free-roaming camera, tilt, focal length, and lens distortionDepth of FieldAuto FocusDistanceF-Stop, which lets you control the lightingVignette mode, which darkens the edge of the screen and gives it a more cinematic lookBloom strength Saturation, brightness, and contrastThe ability to hide the player, the party, enemies, or NPCs
Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s photo mode owes a debt to Mass Effect: The Legendary Edition, which introduced a photo mode of its own when it was released in 2021. Director Corinne Busche credits Mass Effect: Legendary Edition producer Brenon Holmes for getting photo mode implemented into The Veilguard.
“Not only did he drive this feature, he did a lot of the work to support it,” she explained. “What I really like is the tab that lets you hide various characters. So hide character, hide party, hide enemies, hide NPCs. You can really curate the shot to your liking…You might be mid-fight with a dragon, but there’s a character in the way, so you can clear them out.”
In the slideshow above, you can see some of the pictures we were able to take using Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s photo mode, including some of its more atmosphere areas. We also grabbed a shot of a cat that we happened to run across, because we love fantasy cat photos.
Personally I’m enjoying this lady because she’s absolutely the type of characters I usually make. pic.twitter.com/WgmtltzRIp
— *CR* – Dragon Age: Status Effect (@CorbynRed) September 5, 2024
These aren’t the only images making the rounds, of course. When we posted our exclusive Dragon Age: The Veilguard footage last week, fans were quick to notice the Rooks created by myself and my colleague Alex Stedman. While they weren’t taken in photo mode, I can’t resist posting them here. The hair in particular just looks incredibly good in these shots.
We’ll have lots more coverage later this week (and throughout the month) as our IGN First for Dragon Age: The Veilguard continues. In the meantime, check out our deep dive into The Veilguard’s companions as well as our first preview featuring our impressions.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.