Dragon Age: The Veilguard adds new twist to beloved BG3 romance system

Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s companion system promises to surprise players with its own twist where NPCs won’t necessarily choose to share their romantic lives with you.

Baldur’s Gate 3 companion storylines gave players’ journey a more intimate narrative, where they could feel close to their party through emotional cutscenes. Larian Studios’ romance system sets the bar high for other RPGs, which is why learning about how Dragon Age: The Veilguard plans to handle relationships has become a priority for players.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is preparing an overhaul in their system, as the devs explained that their characters won’t be “playersexual” like in Baldur’s Gate 3, but rather, pansexual. According to Corinne Busche, Dragon Age: The Veilguard Game Director, this means that they can get into relationships with other characters, but their romantic lives won’t only be focused on the player.

“Their past experiences or partners, they’ll reference them and indeed who they’ll become romantic with,” Busche described in an IGN interview.

Players have been pleased to hear about this system, as they explained that being able to romance every character despite their personality usually requires the additional depth that comes from a storyline.

“Oh my god, I’m so happy they referenced the party members being able to romance each other. That was ABSOLUTELY my favorite part of DAI! It made the characters feel so alive, that they were making decisions of that caliber that didn’t involve the player,” read a comment in the Dragon Age subreddit.

Crafting perfect medieval fantasy romance stories shouldn’t be hard for BioWare, especially since the studio was responsible for popularizing this system in Western RPGs.

Both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises are known for giving players deep and sometimes spicy relationships with NPCs, although their system couldn’t go beyond the predictable as time went by.

While BioWare’s new system sounds like a more organic approach to romantic dynamics between characters, Baldur’s Gate 3 indeed popularized a system that managed to cater to most players’ fantasies. Keep your eyes peeled for the Dragon Age: The Veilguard release in the Fall of 2024.