Who is the face of Dragon Age? It’s a simple question with a difficult answer, because there is no obvious candidate. There is no Commander Shepard running through the entire series. Each game has a different protagonist. There’s the Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins, Hawke in Dragon Age 2, and the Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition. And now there’s Rook in Dragon Age: Veilguard. Even the game’s main companions have changed. Although there is one who could fit the bill: Varric.
Varric, a wisecracking, hairy, crossbow-wielding dwarf named Bianca, was introduced in Dragon Age 2 as both the game’s narrator and a companion character. He’s also a central companion and character in Inquisition, and he features in early marketing materials for Veilguard. Varric’s face seemingly confirms something like Dragon Age.
There’s just one problem: he’s supposed to be dead. I can’t look at Varric without hearing Dragon Age creator David Gaider talk about how he wanted to kill Varric, first in Dragon Age 2 and then in Inquisition. This dwarf shouldn’t be alive, and yet somehow he is. But for how long? That’s the question on everyone’s lips, because if you rewatch the debut Veilguard gameplay trailer, you’ll see that this could be his fatal third strike.
Before we get to that, let’s rewind back to Dragon Age 2. If you don’t know, that game centers on Varric, who is forced to tell Hawke’s story while being interrogated by Cassandra Pentaghast (who becomes a companion in Dragon Age: Inquisition). Thus, Varric narrates Hawke’s life from his perspective as a close friend, and the game ping-pongs between Varric talking and you playing the story. This premise even carries over into the game’s two downloadable add-ons, Legacy and Mark of the Assassin.
But there would be a third add-on that would change this. This expansion would be called Exalted March, and it would see Varric finally step out of the interrogation room, allowing us to play in the present, so to speak. It was also here that Varric—in a climactic confrontation, the new villain Corypheus, introduced in Legacy—would die.
“So what I wanted to do with the expansion was, there’s a lot of stuff that we cut, and I really wanted to put a bow tie around the Dragon Age 2 story,” former lead writer David Gaider told me earlier this year while talking about creating the Dragon Age world for a piece on maps. “It had the confrontation with Corypheus and the whole thing. We had introduced him in a DLC, which I didn’t want to do, but we did, so I wanted to kind of wrap that up. And I wanted to kill Varric because he was the character from the perspective, and I thought, ‘This is his story, it has to end with him being killed.’
“He was the unreliable narrator, right?” he added. “I felt like it had to end with him. So we had this great moment where Corypheus uses the Red Lyrium and it gets out of hand, but [Varric is] a dwarf, so he’s kind of immune, so he can do the Wrath of Khan Spock thing and get close and destroy it. And he gets Corypheus enough that the party can take him out, but then he dies from Red Lyrium poisoning, so there’s a nice moment with him and Hawke when Hawke says goodbye. And with his death, the story ends. And I thought that was fitting for the Dragon Age 2 storyline.”
Exalted March, however, was never released. BioWare canceled Exalted March to focus the studio on the new game Dragon Age: Inquisition and the switch to the new engine Frostbite. The expansion was “cannibalized,” as Gaider put it to me, and expanded into Inquisition. For example, Corypheus suddenly became the main villain in Inquisition and Varric managed to survive.
It didn’t stop Gaider from trying to kill him again, though. “I tried to kill him in Inquisition,” he told me. “I think mostly because I couldn’t do it in [DA2]. And everyone said, ‘But The Inquisitor isn’t Hawke! It doesn’t have the same meaning.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.'”
Still, it was hard to let go. “I was a little upset,” he said, “and I remember going and saying — because they wanted to start working on Dragon Age 3 right away — ‘Well, you can let me do that, yeah, and I’ll just be the guy in the meetings who does this. [he makes a standoffish posture]. Or you can let me go home for a month or so, get this out of my system and grieve, and I’ll come back. And I swear, when I come back, I’ll be ready to go.'”
He kept his word, but he wasn’t quite done trying to kill Varric. In March of last year, Gaider revealed that there were once plans for Corypheus to attack the Inquisition’s mountain castle base, Skyhold. “The threat of Corypheus after Haven was never really realized,” Gaider tweeted. “A raid on Skyhold would have raised the stakes. Maybe I could have finally killed someone… but instead, Corypheus remained a remote villain who stalked you, but was rarely stalked by you.
“By the way,” he then added, “if you’re wondering who I would have killed in Skyhold, if I had the chance, the answer is clearly Varric. That dwarf was meant to die in the (cancelled) DA2 expansion and escaped his fate, despite being in my sights ever since.” Varric survived again.
David Gaider left BioWare in 2016 after 17 years with the studio, and he had nothing to do with the making of the fourth game, now known as Veilguard. “After Dragon Age Inquisition came out, I had already left the Dragon Age team,” he told me. And with that departure, you’d think Varric would breathe a sigh of relief.
But watch the Dragon Age: Veilguard gameplay trailer again—specifically, the ending. I’m going to pick up here at about the 14-minute mark, calling attention to what happens. At this point, Rook, Varric, and team have found Solas, now the villain, performing some sort of cataclysmic magical ritual.
Varric: “Okay, I’ll take it from here.”
Rook: Are you sure?
Varric: Positive. You three just hold the demons off me while I talk to him.
Scout Harding: Varric, Solas isn’t going to stop because an old friend asks nicely.
Varric: Solas needs someone to sell him another option so he can justify his change.
Rook: Come on, Varric, we didn’t come all this way just to talk to him.
Varric: He was my friend, Rook, I have to try to reach him. But if he doesn’t listen to me, he’ll hear it from Bianca.
In the background, pillars crumble and dramatic music plays as Varric steps out of cover to approach Solas.
Varric: Rook, take care of the team for a moment.
That’s the first big story, a gripping sequence and a dramatic farewell. The action then continues as Rook searches for another way to interrupt Solas’ ritual. Varric seems to get nowhere in convincing Solas to stop.
Solas: The Veil is a wound inflicted upon this world. It must be healed.
Varric: By drowning the world in demons?
Solas: I have taken precautions to limit the damage, Varric.
Varric: Minimize the-? People are dying now. You have to listen.
Behind Solas’ back, Varric raises his crossbow Bianca.
Varric: Please.
Solas turns and destroys Bianca with a magical explosion, sending the crossbow crashing down the stairs.
Solas: People always die. That’s what they do.
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A loaded comment, perhaps? And it’s a telling moment to see Varric’s beloved crossbow snap in two. What will he be without it?
Rook eventually comes up with a plan to push a huge stone pillar into the magical maelstrom, disrupting Solas’ plan. There’s some more back and forth between Varric and Solas – “You’ve come a long way and put in a valiant effort, Varric, but this story doesn’t end with my downfall” – and then Rook succeeds. The pillar falls, and Solas magically rips it apart, sending huge meteors of stone shooting out from the explosion. Rook and company are thrown back by the force of it, and Varric is suddenly gone. He’s not on the steps, and he’s nowhere to be seen. The trailer ends with Rook seeing huge creatures emerge from the tear in the veil behind Solas.
What happened to Varric? Think of the beats outlined above: a dramatic farewell, an iconic weapon destroyed, an ending with no one left. I don’t think that’s subtle, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is the fate that befalls our dwarf. Think of the heroic ending Gaider once envisioned: Hawke holding Varric in his arms after his sacrifice to defeat Corypheus—this seems like something similar. Perhaps we haven’t yet seen Varric, mortally wounded by Solas’s explosion, hold on just long enough for new hero Rook to take him in his arms. Hearing Varric say that he’s lived a good life and made some good friends, and that he’s held on longer than he ever expected (and David Gaider ever expected). That he stood for something and that Rook should too—a moment where the mantle is laid aside. And then, wide-eyed, he will breathe his last and Varric will be no more.