If Dragon Age: Veilguard kills Varric, it will be too late

Who is the face of Dragon Age? It’s a simple question with a complicated answer because there is no obvious candidate. There is no Commander Shepard in the line running through the series. Each game has had a different protagonist. It is the Gray Warden in Dragon Age: Origins, Hawke in Dragon Age 2, and the Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition. And now there’s Rook in Dragon Age: Veilguard. Heck, even the game’s main companions have changed. Although there is one of them that might fit the bill: Varric.

Varric, a wise and fur-chested dwarf with a bow named Bianca, was introduced in Dragon Age 2 as the game’s narrator and as a companion character. He is also a companion and central character in Inquisition, and he stars in early marketing material for Veilguard. Varrik’s face seems to attest to something like the Dragon Age.

There’s just one problem with that: he has to be dead. I can’t look at Varric without hearing Dragon Age creator David Gaider tell me he wanted to kill Varric, first in Dragon Age 2 and then in Inquisition. This dwarf shouldn’t be alive, but somehow he is. But for how long? That’s the question on everyone’s lips, because if you watch the Veilguard game’s debut trailer again, you’ll see that this could be his third fatal strike.

Before we go there, let’s go back to Dragon Age 2. If you don’t know, that game revolves around Varric, who is forced to tell Hawke’s story while being interrogated by Cassandra Pentaghast (who becomes a companion in Dragon Age: Inquisition ). So Varric narrates Hawke’s life from his perspective as a close friend, and the ping-pong game between Varric talking and you playing the story. This setup also continues in the game’s two downloadable expansions, Legacy and Mark of the Assassin.

But there would be a third addition where that would change. This expansion would be called “Mars Ascended”, and here, Varric would finally come out of the interrogation room so we could play in the present day, so to speak. It was also here that Varric – in a climactic confrontation, the new villain Corypheus, introduced in Legacy – would die.

“So what I wanted to do with the expansion was: there’s a lot that we cut, and I really wanted to put a bow on the story of Dragon Age 2,” former lead writer David Gaider told me earlier this year while talking about creation. of the Dragon Age world for a section about maps. “There was the confrontation with Corypheus and everything. We had put him in a DLC, which I didn’t want to do, but we did, so I wanted to tie it in somehow. And I wanted to kill. Varric because he was the point of view character and I I say: “This is his story, it must end with his death.”

“He was the unreliable narrator, wasn’t he?” he added. “I felt like it had to end with him. So we had this great moment where Corypheus is using Red Lyrium and growing out of control, but [Varric is] a dwarf so he’s a little bit immune so he’s able to do the Wrath of Khan Spock thing and get close and destroy it. And he gets Corypheus enough that the party can get him out, but then he’s dying of Red Lyrium poisoning so it’s this beautiful moment with him and Hawke as Hawke says goodbye. And with his death, the story ends. And I felt that was appropriate for the arc of Dragon Age 2.”

However, the Exalted Mars was never released. BioWare canceled Exalted March to refocus the studio on the new Dragon Age: Inquisition game and the transition to the new Frostbite engine. The expansion was “cannibalized,” as Gaider said, speaking to me, and expanded to become Inquisition. This is how Corypheus suddenly became the main villain in the Inquisition, and how Varric managed to stay alive.

However, that didn’t stop Gaider from trying to kill him again. “I tried to kill him in the Inquisition,” he told me. “I think mainly because I couldn’t make it inside [DA2]. And they all said, “But the Inquisitor isn’t Hawke!” It lacks the same meaning.’ And I said, “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

It was a hard thing to leave, though. “I was a little upset,” he said, “and I remember going and saying — because they wanted to start work on Dragon Age 3 right away — ‘Well, you can make me do this, yeah, and I’ll just be the guy on dates who does that [he makes a standoffish posture]. Or you can let me go home for a month or so, get this out of my system and be bitter, and I’ll be back. And I swear, when I come back, I’ll be ready to go.”

He kept his word, but he still wasn’t quite done trying to kill Varric. In March of last year, Gaider revealed that there were once plans for Corypheus to attack the base of the Inquisition’s mountain fortress, Skyhold. “Corypheus’ threat after Haven never really came to fruition,” Gaider tweeted. “An attack on Skyhold would have upped the ante. Maybe I could have finally killed someone… but instead, Corypheus remained a distant villain that you chased, but were rarely chased by.

“By the way,” he then added, “if you’re asking who I would have killed in Skyhold, given the chance, the answer is definitely Varric. That dwarf was meant to die in the (cancelled) DA2 expansion and escaped him. luck despite being at my point since then.” Varric survived again.

David Gaider left BioWare in 2016, after 17 years at the studio, and he had nothing to do with the making of the fourth game, now known as Veilguard. “After Dragon Age Inquisition came out, I had already left the Dragon Age team,” he told me. And with that departure, you’d think Varric might have breathed a sigh of relief.

But look again at the Dragon Age: Veilguard gameplay trailer – specifically, its ending. I’ll get it here in about 14 minutes after I draw attention to what happens. At this point, Rook, Varric and the team have found Solas, who is now the villain, performing some sort of cataclysmic magical ritual.

Varric: “Alright, I’ll take it from here.”

Rook: Are you sure?

Varric: Positive. You three keep the demons away from me while I talk to him.

Scout Harding: Varric, Solas won’t stop just because an old friend asks nicely.

Varric: Solas needs someone to sell him another option, to help justify his change of heart.

Rook: Come on, Varric, we didn’t come all this way just to talk to him.

Varric: He was my friend, Rook, I must try to reach him. But if he won’t listen to me, he will hear from Bianca.

Pillars crumble in the background and dramatic music swells as Varric moves from cover to Solas.

Varric: Rook, take care of the team for me.

This is the first major story, an exciting sequence and dramatic farewell. The action then continues as Rook searches for another way to interrupt Solas’ ritual. Varric can’t seem to get anywhere near convincing Solas to stop.

Solas: The Veil is a wound inflicted on this world. It must be healed.

Varric: Drowning the world in demons?

Solas: I’ve taken precautions to minimize damage, Varric.

Varric: Minimize-? People are dying now. You must listen.

Behind Solas’ back, Varric raises his Bianca bow.

Varric: Please.

Solas returns and destroys Bianca with a magical blast and the bow falls down the stairs to pieces.

Solas: People are always dying. This is what they do.

A loaded comment, perhaps? And it is a significant moment to see Varric’s beloved bow broken in two. What good will he be without it?

Rook eventually comes up with a plan to push a large stone pillar into the magical vortex and disrupt Solas’ plan that way. There’s a bit more between Varric and Solas — “You’ve come a long way and made a valiant effort, Varric, but this story doesn’t end with my downfall” — and then Rook makes it through. The pillar collapses, Solas magically shatters it into pieces, sending large meteors of stone shooting out from the explosion. Rook and the party are thrown back by her force, and Varric is suddenly gone. He is not on the ladder and nowhere in sight. The trailer ends as Rook watches large creatures appear behind Solas from the tear in the Veil.

What happened to Varric? Consider the beats described above: a dramatic farewell, an iconic weapon destroyed, an ending lost in action. I don’t think this is subtle and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is fate catching up with our dwarf. Consider the heroic ending that Gaider once predicted: Hawke holding Varric in their arms after his sacrifice to defeat Corypheus—that seems like a similar thing. Perhaps what we haven’t seen yet is Varric, mortally wounded by Solas’ blast, holding on long enough for the new hero Rook to take him in his arms. To hear Varric say that he’s lived a good life and made some good friends, and that he’s lasted longer than he ever expected (and David Gaider expected). That he stood for something and that Rook should too – a past cloak moment. And then, with an open-eyed gasp, he will take his last breath and Varric will be no more.