Reading the official Dragon Age: The Veilguard art book is kind of maddening, honestly. I adored the fourth game in BioWare’s fantasy RPG franchise despite my many, many issues with the series going in but each time I look at the art book, which is full of concepts that didn’t make it into the final game, I find myself mourning the moments we never got. One of the biggest problems many fans, myself included, have had with The Veilguard is that so few choices from earlier games carry over, and it seems like BioWare had grand plans during development for more decisions from old games to make an impact. One choice in particular would have brought an old protagonist into the mix: Dragon Age II’s Hawke. Spoilers for Dragon Age: Inquisition follow.
Much like The Veilguard does with the Inquisitor, 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition lets you recreate your version of Hawke so they can appear for a quest line. The final mission, called Here Lies the Abyss, ends with a big decision between leaving Hawke or a Grey Warden ally in the spirit realm called the Fade to fight a demon as the rest of the team escapes. Depending on choices made in Dragon Age: Origins, that ally can potentially be Origins party member Alistair, Origins villain Loghain, or Stroud, a supporting character from Dragon Age II. The person who stays behind is presumed dead, but according to The Veilguard’s art book, BioWare considered bringing whoever you chose back as an ally.
One piece of concept art in the book shows someone—a pretty generic character who I would not immediately recognize as Hawke or any of the potential Grey Wardens—in what looks like the Fade. The character has glowing yellow eyes and a wolf approaching them, and the caption reads: “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?”
If this had come to pass, anyone who’d left Hawke in the Fade back in Inquisition would get two old heroes showing up in their Veilguard playthrough. The Inquisitor’s role changed throughout development, as evidenced by early concept art of players working for the Inquisition protagonist, but they always seemed to be part of the story. Hawke, however, doesn’t appear at all in The Veilguard, and is only mentioned in passing a few times so as to keep their fate in Inquisition ambiguous. This is in line with BioWare’s previous messaging that The Veilguard would write around old choices instead of contradicting them, but now we get to add a potential Hawke appearance to the pile of interesting concepts that didn’t make it into the game. I suppose it could still happen in a future game, but we don’t know much about the future of Dragon Age beyond The Veilguard’s ominous post-credits scene.