Another character creator with a jumpscare at the end.
Crafting your hero in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is something to take time over. I spent nearly two hours in the sprawling character creator myself, making sure my Rook looked just right, and I don’t regret a minute of it.
What I would’ve liked a heads up on, though, is that Veilguard pulls the same character creator jumpscare as Baldur’s Gate 3—that is, after you’ve spent all evening painstakingly shaped every tiny detail of your character and you’re finally satisfied, it surprises you by asking you to do it again right away with another character…
Rather than a mysterious dream visitor, Veilguard asks you to build from scratch your Inquisitor—the hero of Dragon Age Inquisition. Like Hawke’s cameo in that game, the Inquisitor shows up for a small role in Veilguard, so you’re given the chance to design their appearance and choose their gender, species, and voice, as well as make a couple of broad choices about what happened to them.
I have a lot of fond memories of Inquisition, so it was nice to see such a direct link to that game—but at the same time, it’s been about 10 years since I played it. If I’d known I’d have to recreate my Inquisitor from memory, I might’ve gone back and refreshed myself on some of the details. Instead, I’ve ended up with a sort of hazy I-think-that’s-right version of them. Good enough for a cameo, I suppose, but if I’m honest they don’t really feel like my Inquisitor.
If you want to avoid making the same mistakes I did, it’s worth going back now and taking a look at your old Inquisitor—and, if you’ve done multiple playthroughs, choosing which one you want to be canon. Take some screenshots for reference, even. And when you do come to start Veilguard, make sure you’ve got a whole evening free to tinker with the looks of not just one saviour of Thedas, but two.
It may be worth watching a recap of the game’s story, too—the choices you have to make about your Inquisitor are brief and quite vague, but they do still require remembering some late-game choices. The three questions are:
- Who did your Inquisitor romance?
- Was the Inquisition ultimately disbanded, or absorbed into the Chantry?
- Did your Inquisitor vow to stop Solas, or to try and redeem him?
Unfortunately that does mean all your many other choices, both in Inquisition and in previous Dragon Age games, don’t seem to carry forward in any way. But it has been quite a long time—if I can’t remember what choice I made in an old quest, maybe that’s probably a sign I don’t need to see reference to it now? We’ll certainly have more thoughts on choice and legacy in Veilguard in the days to come.
Of course, if you didn’t play Inquisition, then it’s a lot easier—you can pick a preset appearance and the choices that sound most interesting to you, or just leave everything as default. The only thing you’ll need to prepare for is being slightly baffled why everyone seems so impressed when the Inquisitor turns up later.
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