The Art of Dragon Age: The Veilguard preview pages Part One, under a cut due to spoilers. Preview pages come from Google Books.
Life in the Tevinter Imperium.
Part One: Post-Inquisition
Top: Returning to Rivain with a precious quest object.
Middle: Exploring Par Vollen, the home of the Qunari.
Text: Halfway through the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition we created a series of illustrations we called “beat boards” (intended to cover a major moment or “beat”, they are more polished than a storyboard). They proved to be helpful as we brought the game together. As Inquisition was coming to a close, and a sliver of attention was being paid to the next game, we wanted to try doing beat boards right at the start of the game, rather than the middle. With a few general ideas like “We’re going north” and “Maybe there are Titans” and a sense of story momentum, we started creating exploratory beat boards, asking ourselves the simple question: “What would be cool?”
Top: On a secret mission in Tevinter.
Bottom: Receiving an assignment from the Inquisitor
Top: An old Warden that was avoiding the Calling.
Bottom: The first attempt at designing Weisshaupt Fortress.
Text: Northern Thedas - Designing the cultures of northern Thedas was like a fun speculative-archaeology project. We were starting with fragments. There were occasional props, characters, or journal entries that hinted at these cultures, and we had to reverse-engineer living, breathing societies from those fragments. The most important aspect was to design them in a way that respected our fans’ engagement with the material but also attempted to exceed their imaginations (or at least do them justice).
Top: In an ancient magical city, some buildings that would have collapsed centuries ago are kept frozen in time.
Bottom: Infiltrating the Archon’s throne room.
Middle: One of the first ideas for a player base was a secret lair in Minrathous’s forgotten undercity.
Bottom: The very first concept art of Minrathous. Trying to capture the elegance and pride of the Imperium.
Top: The Divine sends out ships to hunt Solas in the hopes that his capture will restore peace to Thedas.
Bottom: A Tevinter magister, a Chasind witch, and a Ben-Hassrath commander plot against the player.
Top: A war room in the captain’s quarters.
Bottom: We explored making the player base mobile. It would give us water access to most of the regions in northern Thedas.
Top: Early on we explored the return of the griffons – in this case, using them as mounts to hunt dragons.
Bottom: Something in the depths has scared the dwarves enough that they’re fleeing to the surface by the thousands.
A coastal town in Rivain.
Top: Elves from all over Thedas answer a mysterious call to Arlathan Forest.
Bottom: Exploring a possible endgame scenario where Solas has summoned a Titan in the middle of Minrathous.
Top: Solas returning like a regal figure out of the distant past.
Bottom: What if we return to the Fade and rescue whoever was left behind? How would their time in that alien landscape change them, and what insights could they offer into Solas’s plans?
Top: The part runs into their Tevinter counterparts, and they have to work together to survive.
Bottom: Solas interrupts your mission, wiping half your team off the board and forcing you to make an unlikely alliance.
Top: Your ship is stolen, and you have to sneak into enemy territory to get it back.
Middle: Journey to the heart of darkness to find Colonel Kurts… er, Solas.
Bottom: We created piles of sketches and line work to explore story beats. We could iterate quickly and throw things away if necessary.
Top: There are multiple factions in Veilguard. To make sure they were always recognizable, from their buildings to their belt buckles, we began with shape.
Middle: We had explored Tevinter’s shape language in Inquisition, so in their case, it was a matter of expanding on what was established. Some shapes just felt right (like Wardens and the pointed arch).
Bottom: A residential Tevinter interior.
Various captions on this page:
An upward-pointing triangle for the mages’ college.
We explored some sturdy shapes for the dwarves.
The Wardens’ pointed arch could be turned upside down into a shield.
Rivain has a been a neutral faction, so the circle worked well.
The Necropolis factions started with a half-circle “crest”.
A downward-pointing triangle for Tevinter.
Ben-Hassrath started with an X shape language.
A wealthy Tevinter mansion. To show off, most of the house is built on top of a floating stone slab veined with lyrium. Visitors try not to think about what would happen if the magic was interrupted.
Slice-of-life illustrations like this weren’t prescriptive, but they helped to explore the feel of certain regions we had only ever heard references to.
Rivain is a trade center. It’s one of the places where you’ll see the greatest overlap of cultures.
Tevinter is a complicated place. While there are lofty towers and powerful magisters, we also wanted to explore what the daily life of Tevinter might be.
Top: Peaceful beginnings, gentle giant gardeners, and curious spirits.
Middle (1): The spirits saw the dwarves as they tended to the Titans, and they wanted to try making bodies for themselves.
Middle (2): The spirits made physical bodies for themselves from the “flesh” of the Titans. The first elves were born, and the first war began.
Bottom: A brutal war raged on between the elves and the Titans, only ending when one elf (Solas) rendered the Titans “tranquil”, capturing their souls.
Top: The elves brought a powerful war trophy home.
Middle (1): With the Titans rendered tranquil, dwarves lost their connection to magic. They fled into the bodies of their fallen homes.
Bottom: With the power that came from the captured Titan souls, the elves built the greatest empire Thedas would ever see.
Top: Solas fought against the self-proclaimed gods, earning the title “the Dread Wolf”.
Middle: The gods drew upon the power of the Titans’ souls to gain more power. The imprisoned souls became twisted with rage. This became the Blight.
Bottom: To contain the Blight outbreak, Solas performed a desperate blood-magic ritual. He bound up the magic of the world behind a Veil and powered it with the blood of the evil gods.
Text: Black Codex – There was a top-secret document on BioWare’s network that contained the objectively true history of Thedas called the Black Codex. Each culture had its perspective, its own emphasis and style, and over time more was added and taken away. It was decided to reveal a lot of truth in this game, so early on we wanted to illustrate the Black Codex. This would help to act as a visual guide to the events that formed Thedas as we know it.
Top: What remained of the elven empire collapsed. The early human empire of Tevinter discovered it in shambles.
Bottom: Eons later, the Blight reached out to power-hungry Tevinter magisters through their dreams. They were lured to the Golden City, but the magisters found it already blackened by the Blight.
Various captions on this page:
At this stage, just about anything goes. Writers and artists both have ideas for what kind of characters they’d like to try, so we dump them all out on the table.
We created some comics to explore the tone of the story. Some of these characters were designed specifically for that purpose.
The Heir of Andraste: Finding the last living descendant of Andraste, a rough-around-the-edges warrior living among the barbarians.
The Gladiator: A Tevinter gladiator that has earned her freedom. Her arm’s protected by mail made of keys from all the slaves she has rescued. She wears her former shackles as rmor: a reminder and a threat.
Various captions on this page:
The academic and the mage college scholar forced into the field.
Initially we work from very simple premises, often only a couple of words, like “happy necromancer” or “Qunari assassin”.
An awakened darkspawn mercenary.
Text: Early on we thought about creating a new set of advisors for your ship. It’s satisfying to revisit characters from previous games, especially if time has passed. It’s a chance to try and make their story visible. In this case, we see a Morrigan that has embraced her new gift, who can offer insights into the mysteries of magic and the ancient elven world. This version of Dorian is like Mathis from Casino Royale, someone who can advise you through all the ins and outs of Tevinter culture. Smuggler Admiral Isabela can get you into and out of just about any port in Thedas.
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