It’s a shame that BioWare has decided to go the “no dlc” route for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Not only was Veilguard pared down to a bare minimum as far as any sort of icing on the cake goes, but the game itself is perfect for a DLC release format.

It is absolutely impossible to talk about why without the sort of spoilers that will ruin the end game for you. Likewise, talking about possible next chapters in the Dragon Age saga is impossible without talking about where Thedas is at Veilguard’s conclusion.

If you read past this point, I’m assuming you’ve either finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard, or don’t care whether the ending is spoiled for you or not. Either way, if you read something you wish you hadn’t just don’t get all saucy with me, Béarnaise.

That’s a Wrap

The gist of DAV’s ending is that everything you knew before is over. The cataclysm that the events of Veilguard unleashed upon Thedas has ended, but there’s a lot of clean-up to be done. The larger powers that be are now powers that were, or are entirely focused on keeping themselves together.

At least one presumes…

One presumes this because DAV really pivoted from sweeping epic with kingdoms moving across the map to a core group of specialists handling the jobs no one else will. When Never Gallus is present, the quests in particular take on something of a “who done it?” air. Like one could expect the Minrathous version of Sherlock Holmes to walk out of the mists.

In many ways, Rook’s group is a lot like we’re led to believe “Bull’s Chargers” was in Dragon Age: Inquisition. They might not be motivated by the same payday philosophy, but then again, by the end of Inquisition neither was the Iron Bull.

And what of Rook himself? Will he be the protagonist going forward? The ending of DAV suggests that he might be the narrator of the new generation of Dragon Age games; presuming there will be one.

With Varric dead, Solas now fueling the Veil’s very existence (and thus essentially dead to further involvement in the story without reality ripping apart), and Harding most likely killed in action (though… she is filled with Titan magic and she did fall into the stone) it’s a lot like the DAV writers watched Endgames a few too many times before having a go at the script.

Whatever the case, as the narration after the ending of DAV switches from the voice of Varric to Rook, BioWare flat out says: stories end. Stories change. Get over it.

Three Possibilities

Assuming Dragon Age players get over the drastic changes brought about by Veilguard enough to warrant a continuation of the series, then I see three likely possibilities.

The first is… nothing. This was the end of Dragon Age completely. The “stories change” is sort of a “we’ll leave it up to your imagination what happens next” deal. Part of me thinks this because of all the fat trimming I mentioned earlier. Romances pared down to a severe minimum and with a completely useless “nudity” toggle in the settings, you have to wonder what they had planned. Perhaps someone had already noted a trending similarity to copy successful concepts from other games, like Baldur’s Gate 3 and even Hogwart’s Legacy (look at the equipment collection screens and the general UI.) Perhaps somebody mentioned that this was all well and good, but remember the stink over Jack in ME2?

I’m not complaining. This is the Internet. If I need to see nudity then I’m surely come to the right place. Still, very sparse romantic conversations, absolutely no chance to just randomly engage any of your party in conversation, no group activities that aren’t part of driving the story forward really. No parties or soirees, or movie nights… and absolutely no post-end game payoff. Perhaps BioWare was simply signing off.

I can’t be the only person to think that 10-12 years between releases makes for stale story progression. If BioWare kills Dragon Age in favor of Mass Effect, it can focus on one epic saga and perhaps release DLCs in between new games as it has in the past.

The second option involves BioWare really not changing much except the style of the game. In which case, we’ll see another Dragon Age in a decade or so, and it will be all about Lace Harding. She’s fallen into the stone pierced with arrows. But stone’s pretty much her thing now. Is she dead? Probably. But if there’s a continuation of the story then my money is on Harding. Either Rook and the gang will have to save her from herself as she moves towards Titan-hood, or run screaming from the rage of the Titans she becomes.

Or not…

The third option goes back to Neve Gallus and the destruction of all the old factions of power at work in her part of Thedas.

Einstein once wrote that he didn’t know with what weapons mankind would fight World War 3, but World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones. In a way, it feels like Veilguard is steering the Dragon Age story in that direction. The Wardens? Gone. The Inquisition? Long gone, and the Inquisitor busy picking up pieces in the South.

Dorian Pavus is the Archon of Minrathous now (presumably), which leaves little for Rook or any subsequent friends of Rook to have many problems with Tevinter, unless they’re swept into the war with the Qunari. Though the Antaam and the Venatori also seem to have taken heavy hits.

All that’s left are sticks and stones.

So what if the next Dragon Age game was less of a vehicle to move the player from old to new, but a framework? The City of Minrathous, for example. We’ve already seen some pretty intense action in Minrathous, and the basic city model already exists. Add a few neighborhoods, and there’s plenty of room to create a full Dragon Age story, but one that maybe isn’t about the movement of nations and gods.

We have new allies now: The Mourn Watch, the Veil Jumpers, the Shadow Guard, and the Antivan Crows. All much smaller organizations made smaller after DAV. It’s possible the next generation of Dragon Age games takes the fighting to the streets, with a heavier concentration on more personal quests and story lines, like the serials Bellara liked to read in the papers.

In which case, a likely scenario has Bellara, Emmrich, Taash, and Lucanis reach out on behalf of their perspective groups to seek aid from the best detective in Minrathous: Neve Gallus herself.

It’s unlikely BioWare would pin us down to playing a preset character, though. Even likelier is that the world of Thedas remains much as it is at the end of Veilguard, with Rook or whomever continuing to use Solas’ Lighthouse as a base of operations. Without each chapter necessitating driving forward an interwoven saga involving everything that’s come before, it seems like coming up with newer, more intimate, and (more importantly) more modular stories that don’t take a decade to produce might be a possible agenda here. A season in Minrathous with Neve, for example.

And Veilguard is modular af. Meaning it should be easy enough to snap new maps, merchants, and NPCs right into an existing system. Perhaps that explains some of the indexing errors players are experiencing now; BioWare has yet to perfect the modularity of its systems.

If EA and BioWare are moving in the same direction with Mass Effect, then this next stretch of cold dark space could be the last time you could put a kid through school between updates.

Only time will tell. Hopefully not too much of it.