BioWare would have tried to use the franchise’s past in this way in the episode released on October 31st, but it didn’t happen.
The scrapped plan was announced by Matt Rhodes, BioWare’s art director, on Twitter. We’ve seen some pretty interesting stuff from him on more than one occasion. We’ve seen early concept art for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the abandoned concept for Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, or the multiplayer characters… and now the protagonist of Dragon Age: Origins has been revealed. They could have been in Dragon Age: The Veilguard!
Rhodes shared some concept art from the Anderfels region of Thedas, home to the Wardens’ Weisshaupt Fortress and the Veilguard’s Hossberg Wetlands. The third image is the truly shocking one, showing a cloaked figure covered in bandages, his skin mottled and purplish-gray where it is exposed. Sitting on a throne with a Warden bodyguard behind him, this figure appears to be unable to speak, relying instead on a pen and a pile of parchment to communicate. One such message is held out to the viewer: “Don’t let her see me like this.”
“No one else seemed to like the ‘Leper King’ direction, but I thought it would be cool. The Hero of Ferelden has been procrastinating on ‘The Calling. The Blight takes more each year, but there’s still too much to do on the surface,” Rhodes wrote in the caption, referencing the historical Baldwin of Jerusalem, memorably portrayed by Edward Norton in Kingdom of Heaven, who also inspired the leper in Darkest Dungeon.
It would have been disgusting to see the character in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Dragon Age’s anti-Blight Grey Wardens nibble on some of the stuff to get their powers to kill the Archdemons, but it also starts a countdown of about 20 years before they hear the call and start turning into crazy ghouls. Once it looks like they’ve already bought their ticket, the Wardens must travel underground to the Darkspawn’s home turf and do battle. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the State of the World Codex stuff said that Ferelden’s hero was looking for the antidote to the Call — so they weren’t around to help.
Rhodes doesn’t say it explicitly, but it seems that the protagonist of Dragon Age: Origins protagonist was supposed to be the first Inspector of Order in this scenario, but they ended up being led by a belligerent fellow straight out of the main cast of a filibustering police captain, voiced by none other than Nicholas Boulton, Hawke’s actor from Dragon Age 2.
This was a big change.
Source: PCGamer
