Dragon Age: The Veilguard represents a fresh start for the fantasy series, after ten years of being absent. But despite the game striking out in a new direction, that doesn’t mean that the series' intricate web of lore and history isn’t vital to the experience. Despite the ten-year gap, Veilguard takes some surprising steps toward answering lore questions that have lingered over the entire series, and you’ll likely want to go in with some basic knowledge. In particular, if you haven’t played all the way through Dragon Age: Inquisition you should, at least, get through its vital expansions.
While you can theoretically jump into Veilguard as your very first Dragon Age game, it does directly build off of the story and characters of Inquisition, released on PS4 and Xbox One in 2014. Veilguard kicks off with Solas, an ancient elven god known as the Dread Wolf, conducting a ritual to tear down the veil that separates the mortal and spirit worlds. It’s a huge event that could integrally change the world of Dragon Age forever, but it’s far more emotional if you played Inquisition, got to know Solas as a party member, and saw the twist of him secretly being a god in the Trespasser DLC.
Trespasser is the obvious expansion that you should play before Veilguard, but the not-so-obvious one is The Descent, a piece of DLC that seems innocuous at first. You can start The Descent at nearly any point in Inquisition, and the initial setup is that earthquakes have started hitting a section of the underground network known as The Deep Roads, with worries of a new Darkspan invasion stirring.
That setup doesn’t really imply dire consequences, but The Descent is secretly a monumental lore dump that has some tremendous implications for the series at large — and now that Veilguard is here, it’s clear those lore bits are more important than ever.
It’s a bit hard to talk about why exactly you need to play The Descent without spoiling anything, but essentially it’s the biggest piece of dwarven lore the series has gotten since Dragon Age: Origins. At the start of the expansion, you accompany Shaper Valta, an official from the city of Orzammer, to investigate the disturbances. But before long you learn that there’s much more going on, as The Descent teaches you about an ancient race called The Titans.
The Titans are ancient beings that seemingly existed long before any of the various races of Thedas, and they’re quite literally made of the Earth itself. If you’ve played Dragon Age you know that idea lines right up with Dwarves themselves, who have something called “Stone Sense,” a kind of magic that lets them connect to the stone and ground of the world on an almost spiritual level.
Playing through The Descent will give you a great primer on the Titans and the lore behind them, which then becomes a pretty vital plot point in Veilguard. Of course, Veilguard has codex entries and enough context to explain things, for the most part, but having played The Descent will give you unique insights into the events that happen.
Luckily, The Descent is pretty fun outside of all its lore implications. Inquisition shifted the series to focus on open world elements, but The Descent is a tough-as-nails linear experience that really challenges your combat skills and strategy. You really need to choose your party carefully, then outfit your teammates with powerful new gear you find along the way. As you descend further into the Deep Roads the more challenge you’ll face. It’s a nice way to break up the monotony of Inquisition’s generic open world tasks, and packs in a few new interesting characters to boot.
The Descent isn’t all that long, you can beat it in just 3-4 hours, so it’s worth taking the time out, even if you want to just jump into the newest game. Veilguard finally delivers some much-needed spotlight for the dwarves and their place in Thedas, and you’ll want to go in knowing as much as possible.
