Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a game about choice and consequence. One of the decisions that has the most immediate impact happens at the beginning of the game’s final quest. The effect this decision has on the remainder of the game and, presumably, any future Dragon Age games, has devastated fans in the kind of “hurts so good” way hard choices in video games do. But some fans are not so sure things are as they seem at the end of the game. Is it cope, or is there reason to believe an affected character could still appear in a future Dragon Age?
If you’ve finished The Veilguard, then you know we’re talking about party members Davrin and Harding. At the beginning of the game’s final set of missions, the player will choose either the elven warrior or dwarven rogue to lead a second team as the party assaults the tyrannical elven gods’ base on Tearstone Island. Eventually, as you finish a boss fight against the blighted elven god Ghilan’nain, the leader you choose will sacrifice themself to create an opening for the killing blow. They’re impaled by the elf’s tentacles and fall into a chasm,presumably killed in action. Some fans, however, are holding onto hope that the doomed character could be found alive in the next Dragon Age based on a few key clues.
The main reason for this is because the game itself gives BioWare an out to bring either character back. There are references to there being “no trace” of a body after the fight, implying that they might have survived and disappeared somehow. Could they have been scooped up by some other entity we don’t know about? Maybe they patched themselves up and are alone trying to make their way back to the team? It’s certainly possible, but all we can do is speculate right now, and that’s enough to give Dragon Age fans some hope.
Some datamined content also gives fans another reason to hold out hope. Dataminers have found letters you seemingly were able to read at some point after this quest that imply that no matter the choice you make, someone is hopeful that Davrin or Harding is alive and out there. A letter Harding sends to her mother if Davrin sacrificed himself hopes that he and his griffon son are “not dead, just gone, for now.” The letter you get if Harding leads the team is from her mother, who says she has to believe she’ll “see [her] daughter walk through [her] front door again. One day.” As of this writing, these are presumed cut or bugged, but they’re a slight glimmer of hope that Davrin or Harding could show up in whatever the fifth Dragon Age game turns out to be.
It’s an interesting theory, and it would be a compelling spin on the final hours of The Veilguard, which can end with any combination of your party dying in the last mission. In a roundabout way, the one “death” that seems unpreventable could turn out to be the thing that ensures they make it to the next game. But it’s all speculation and we’ll have to sit with it for a while because BioWare has no plans to make DLC for The Veilguard as it focuses on the fifth Mass Effect.