Who is the face of Dragon Age? It’s a simple question with a complex answer because there is no obvious candidate. There is no Commander Shepard throughline running through the series. Each game had a different protagonist. There’s the Gray 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. Heck, even the game’s main companions have changed. Although there is one among them who would fit the bill: Varric.
Varric, a hairy-chested wise dwarf with a crossbow named Bianca, was introduced in Dragon Age 2 as the game’s narrator and as a side character. He is also a central companion and character in Inquisition and stars in early marketing material for Veilguard. Varric’s face seems to authenticate something like Dragon Age.
There’s only one problem with that: he should be dead. I can’t look at Varric without hearing Dragon Age creator David Gaider tell me that he wanted to kill off Varric, first in Dragon Age 2 and then in Inquisition. This dwarf shouldn’t be alive, yet somehow he is. But for how long? That’s the question on everyone’s lips, because if you re-watch Veilguard’s debut gameplay trailer, you’ll see that this could be his fatal third strike.
Before we go there, let’s go back to Dragon Age 2. If you don’t know, this game revolves around Varric being forced to tell the story of Hawke while being interrogated by Cassandra Pentaghast (who becomes a companion in Dragon Age: Inquisition). So Varric narrates Hawke’s life from his perspective as a close friend, and the game ping-pongs between Varric talking and you playing out the story. This setup even continues in the game’s two downloadable expansions, Legacy and Mark of the Assassin.
But there is a third supplement coming up where that will change. This expansion was going to be called Exalted March and here Varric was going to finally step out of the interrogation room so we could play in the present day so to speak. It was also here that Varric – in a climactic confrontation with the new villain Corypheus, introduced in Legacy – was to 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 into the story of Dragon Age 2,” former lead writer David Gaider told me earlier this year when we chatted about creation. from the world of Dragon Age for a piece about maps. “It had the Corypheus confrontation and the whole thing. We introduced him in the DLC, which I didn’t want to do, but we did, so I wanted to tie it in somehow. And I wanted to kill.” Varric, because he was a focal point and I’m like, ‘This is his story, it has to end with his death.’
“He was an unreliable narrator, wasn’t he?” he added. “I felt like it had to end with him. So we had that great moment where Corypheus uses the Red Lyrium and it goes out of control, but [Varric is] dwarf so she’s kind of immune so she’s able to do the Wrath of Khan Spock thing and get in close and destroy her. And he gets enough of Corypheus for the group to take him out, but then he dies from Red Lyrium poisoning, so there’s this nice moment with him and Hawke as Hawke says goodbye. And with his death the story ends. And I felt it was appropriate for the Dragon Age 2 arc.”
However, Exalted March never came out. BioWare canceled Exalted March to allow the studio to refocus on the new Dragon Age: Inquisition game and transition to the new Frostbite engine. The expansion was “cannibalized,” as Gaider said when she spoke to me, and expanded to become the Inquisition. That’s why Corypheus suddenly became the main villain in Inquisition and how Varric managed to stay alive.
However, this did not stop Gaider from trying to kill him again. “I tried to kill him in the Inquisition,” he told me. “I think mainly because I didn’t make it [DA2]. And everyone said, ‘But the Inquisitor isn’t Hawke! It lacks the same meaning.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.'”
Still, it was hard to get rid of. “I was a bit upset,” he said, “and I remember going and saying – because they wanted to start working on Dragon Age 3 straight away – ‘Well, you can make me do it, yeah, and I’ll be the guy in the meetings doing it [he makes a standoffish posture]. Or you can let me go home for a month or so, get it out of my system and grieve and I’ll come back. And I swear when I get back I’ll be ready to go.”
He kept his word, but he still wasn’t done trying to kill Varric. In March of last year, Gaider revealed that Corypheus had once planned to attack the Inquisition’s mountain castle base, Skyhold. “The threat of Corypheus after Haven was never really realized,” Gaider tweeted. “Attacking Skyhold would have upped the ante. Maybe I could have finally killed someone… but instead Corypheus remained a distant villain that you chased but rarely chased.”
“By the way,” he added, “if you’re asking who I’d kill in Skyhold if given the chance, the answer is obviously Varric. That dwarf was supposed to die in the (cancelled) DA2 expansion and escaped his fate, though I’ve been in the hunt ever since .” Varric survived again.
David Gaider left BioWare in 2016, after 17 years at the studio, and had nothing to do with the creation of the fourth game, now known as Veilguard. “After Dragon Age Inquisition came out, I already left the Dragon Age team,” he told me. And with that departure, you’d think Varric could have breathed a sigh of relief.
But take another look at the Dragon Age: Veilguard gameplay trailer – specifically the ending. I’ll pick it up here in about 14 minutes when I’m alerting what’s going on. At this point, Rook, Varric and the team found Solas, who is now a 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 keep the demons away from me while I talk to him.
Scout Harding: Varric, Solas won’t stop just because an old friend asks him nicely.
Varric: Solas needs someone to sell him another option to help justify his change of heart.
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 get to him. But if he won’t listen to me, he’ll listen to Bianca.
Pillars crumble in the background and dramatic music spills as Varric moves from cover to Solas.
Varric: Rook, take care of the team for me.
That’s the first big story, a thrilling sequence and a dramatic farewell. The action then continues as Rook looks for another way to interrupt Solas’ ritual. Varric doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere near convincing Solas to stop.
Solas: The Veil is a wound inflicted on this world. It must be cured.
Varric: By drowning the world in demons?
Solas: I’ve taken precautions to minimize damage, Varric.
Varric: Minimize-? People are dying right now. You must listen.
Behind Solas, Varric raises his Bianca crossbow.
Varric: Please.
Solas turns and destroys Bianca with a magical blast and the crossbow scatters down the stairs.
Solas: People die all the time. That’s what they do.
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Maybe a loaded comment? And it’s a significant moment to see Varric’s beloved crossbow split in two. What good will it be without it?
Rook eventually comes up with a plan to push a huge stone pillar into a magical vortex, disrupting Solas’ plan. There’s a bit more back and forth between Varric and Solas – “You’ve come a long way and made a valiant effort, Varric, but this story doesn’t end with my downfall” – and then Rook makes it. The pillar collapses, Solas tears it apart with a spell, and huge stone meteors fly out from the explosion. The tower and party are thrown back by the force of it and Varric is suddenly gone. He’s not on the stairs or anywhere in sight. The trailer ends as Rook watches huge creatures appear behind Solas from a rift in the Veil.
What happened to Varric? Take the above beats: the dramatic farewell, the iconic weapon destroyed, the ending lacking in action. I don’t think it’s subtle, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if fate catches up with our dwarf. Consider the heroic ending Gaider once envisioned: Hawke holding Varric in his arms after sacrificing himself to defeat Corypheus—it seems like a similar thing. Perhaps what we haven’t seen yet is Varric, mortally wounded by Solas’ blast, holding on just long enough for new hero Rook to take him in his arms. To hear Varric say that he’s led a good life and made good friends and that he’s lasted longer than he ever expected (and David Gaider expected). That he stood for something and that Rook should too – the passing of a moment. And then, wide-eyed, he exhales for the last time, and Varric will be gone.