Summary
A recentBioWare blogshowcased some of the locations we will be experiencing inDragon Age: The Veilguard. Though the lush greenery of Arlathan Forest and the mysterious nature of the Rivaini coast are appealing, fans are truly overjoyed by the cityscapes of Tevinter’s Minrathous and Antiva’s Treviso.
This is because the Dragon Age series has historically not featured large, engaging cities. Dragon Age: Origins had Denerim, a glorified marketplace that had a couple of other interesting areas that you didn’t get to experience until the late game. Ferelden is a rural place, so a dearth of big settlements and a small capital city is perhaps to be expected. Orzammar and Dragon Age: Awakening’s Amaranthine did a better job at capturing a ‘city feel’.
Dragon Age 2 was set entirely in Kirkwall but the city was presented in a compartmentalised fashion with every section of the city locked behind a loading screen. It had the effect of making Kirkwall feel smaller than it is, and more barren than it should have been.
The biggest disappointment was undoubtedly Dragon Age Inquisition’s Val Royeaux which, despite being the jewel of an empire, ended up even smaller than Denerim somehow. In a game with these massive sprawling areas, having such a paltry city to visit was a disappointment to many players.
Two Cities? Unheard Of
Minrathous is touted by the team as being of a massive scale, inspired bya line Dorian says in Inquisition about Val Royeaux- “Visit Tevinter one day. Minrathous will put your southern cities in perspective,” Dorian says off-hand during party banter.
The blog features a 20-second clip of a camera travelling through the winding streets of Minrathous. It’s impossible to know the scale of the city without getting in there and experiencing it but it does appear to be more thoughtfully designed than just plopping the player into an open marketplace sparsely populated by NPCs.
The bigger surprise is that Antiva’s Treviso also appears to be a fully-fledged city. The lantern-lit merchant city looks beautiful, and many fans have commented that Treviso is already a frontrunner for their favourite location in The Veilguard.
“A proper city? In Dragon Age? Oh it has been too long,” reads the top comment of aReddit thread on the topic. “Both Treviso and Minrathous are open areas. Two city hubs in one Dragon Age, is that even legal?” reads another.
“Treviso looks gorgeous, I can already tell that’s going to be my favourite place to run around and goof off,” writes an excited fan.
After facing disappointment in Inquisition, the community appears to be very pleased with the locations on offer in Veilguard. Goodbye Val Royeaux, hello Minrathous.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
WHERE TO PLAY
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the long-awaited fourth game in the fantasy RPG series from BioWare formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. A direct sequel to Inquisition, it focuses on red lyrium and Solas, the aforementioned Dread Wolf.
