Dragon Age: The Veilguard will see the return of Inquisition's protagonist, and you'll be able to customize their appearance and voice
Not the first time we've gotten to do this, but it's exciting to see it again.
An IGN video preview of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's character creator included a pretty shocking revelation about how it will account for our choices in previous games: The protagonist of Dragon Age: Inquisition will appear in the game, and we'll be able to customize their voice, background, and appearance to match our original saves.
The relevant section comes at the 4:36 mark of IGN's preview video, showing a portion of a "Customize World State" menu in The Veilguard. We'll be able to select from the major character background choices from Inquisition, even choosing which of the four potential voice actors from that game will represent them. Class selection notably seems to be absent, but we'll be able to tweak their appearance using the same character creator as for Rook, Veilguard's new protagonist.
It looks like the Inquisitor will have a nifty little Guts robot hand to account for primeval trickster god and worst friend ever Solas having chopped it off at the end of Inquisition's capstone Trespasser DLC, and won't that be an awkward reunion? My money is on the Inquisitor being a major home base NPC like Cullen or Leliana in Inquisition, and I gotta say I love that they're rocking a variation of the same awful grey jim jams they wore as a casual outfit back in their home game.
Their story hardly seemed finished with Trespasser, but given the time elapsed and how customizable they were, I'm still surprised and impressed to see BioWare implement the character like this. Having the Inquisitor's various potential voice actors return is particularly cool, implementing four different performances for the same character when they aren't even the game's protagonist this time around. This isn't the first time this has happened in Dragon Age, though: Dragon Age 2's Hawke played a major role in Inquisition's story, and could similarly be customized in that game. You can also check out our preview of six early hours in The Veilguard—spoiler alert: It's looking pretty good.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard devs talk redesigning the game after BioWare bailed on the whole live service thing in 2021: 'I never personally saw it as a reboot'
While Dragon Age: The Veilguard's romances might not reach bear-tier, its game director promises they'll be appropriately saucy: 'You may or may not wake up in a coffin'