Oh, so you think being the chosen hero makes you special now?
We already know that you’ll be able to romance all your companions in the upcomingRPGDragon Age: The Veilguard. Sounds a bit synthetic on the surface, right? Even fantastic games likeBaldur’s Gate 3suffered from this overly obliging approach to relationships. A game letting you tell your own tales is dandy and all, but those stories don’t mean much if the cast feel like input/output affection bots, ready to drop trou like a clumsy Levis temp once you’ve adequately filled their invisible bonkometer.
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However! It seems like The Veilguard’s romances won’t be as simple as spamming the dialogue option for ‘the way that darkspawn’s cursed blood on your hair reflected the moonlight was hot’. “We wanted to lean into not just the relationships the characters have with you but the relationships they have with each other,” game director Corinne Busche toldGame Informer. Those relationships extend to romances, says Busche. If you ignore a companion’s affections, it sounds like they might well turn their attention towards other members of your party.
Each companion, write GI, has their own relationship level with Rook, the player character. This will change based on conversations, sure, but also how Rook interacts with the world. I’m less enthused about the idea of ‘ranking up’ your companions' relationship level to unlock skill points. Again, it all feels dryly synthetic, like the way you’d end up effectively grinding moral choices in theMass Effectseries. Still, Busche notes that platonic relationships also contribute to the companion levels and skill points, saying that you’ll “learn who these characters are in how their romances unfold."
FormerDragon Agelead writer David Gaider recentlyshared some thoughtson The Veilguard. He was a big fan of how evocative the city of Minrathous was, saying that he wished “we could have done this for Kirkwall or even Val Royeaux. Utterly gorgeous.” Still, he expressed concern about the choice to make every character romanceable. “The Dragon Age writers realized, eventually, that as soon as you make a character romanceable it limits the type of character they can be and the types of stories they can tell. They become beholden to their romance arc and their need to, ultimately, be appealing,” wrote Gaider.
“Why is that a limitation? Because not all character story arcs are defined by being appealing to the player. Even if the appeal of an arc is for a relatively limited audience, the requirement of having appeal inherently restricts the potential stories to a fairly limited band.” The line between giving the player what they want and focusing on authorial intent is a fine ol' one indeed, but there’s no reason why we can’t have both. Probablydon’t try thatin the game though.
