The Art of Dragon Age: The Veilguard

by BioWare

Explore the world of BioWare's latest fantasy epic, Dragon The Veilguard, in-depth with this incredible, oversized art book! Uncover the secrets of Thedas, and experience the world through new eyes with stunning concept art!

See characters as you've never seen them before—from concept to final design, explore the world and varied cultures of Thedas with splash art designs and props from the beautiful locales in the game, and inspect the armory—examining in detail hundreds of weapons and armor!

Created in collaboration with the developers at BioWare, this art book showcases the painstaking detail with which Thedas has been lovingly crafted.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Video Games

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in May 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, Marcel Zeschuk and Augustine Yip. As of 2007, the company is owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.

BioWare specializes in role-playing video games, and achieved recognition for developing highly praised and successful licensed franchises: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. They proceeded to make several other successful games based on original intellectual property: Jade Empire, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series. In 2011, BioWare launched their first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful artwork and concepts organized by production stage, characters, and factions. I wish the captions were aligned so I didn’t have to angle my iPad on almost every page. One line of copy was still lorem ipsum, but the gorgeous art made up for it in supplementing the video game experience.

[messirius · Rating 4 out of 5]

minus one star for the stupid-ass texts positioning, otherwise pretty awesome

also made me super sad for all the amazing concepts and the game we could’ve had…

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Artbooks are always interesting to read: they give a great perspective on the game's development and how it evolved into what we see now. This book, however, is notable because it shows us the evolution of a game we didn't see: the original Dragon Age IV/Dreadwolf (codenamed: Joplin) that had a different story and even gameplay (going from multiplayer to single). A LOT was jettisoned in order to streamline production and give us what we have now in the Veilguard (for better or worse). Strangely enough, I can't help but feel readers will be missing what we didn't get as opposed to enjoying the concept arts of what we did.

There were a lot of fantastical ideas and as noted in the book, the art team was given free reign to dream up concepts for what was then going to be called Dreadwolf. This included a base on a moving ship (or even submarine!) and returning characters that were eventually scrapped or changed (such as DA:I's villain Calpurnia being a team member - she morphed into Neve). Intriguingly, we saw a DA:IV that would have had Solas as the main antagonist and all kinds of wonderful drawings of his machinations, betrayals, and even lieutenants. Longtime fans can enjoy cameo concepts of returning characters: E.g., an admiral Isabella that ended up being the Lords of Fortune Isabella in the game.

After the section on the scrapped Joplin/Dreadwolf, we then get the designs and theories for the world as we see it in Veilguard. From the 'triangular' design themes of the Veiljumpers to the circles for the Lords of Fortune. But most interestingly, we can see that the newest concepts always tended more towards a lighter and less grim story and look - even more departure from the first Dragon Age: Origins game (and other dark and morally ambiguous games like The Witcher or Baldur's Gate 3). In an era that gives us such dark games as those and Dark Souls, it is surprising that the Veilguard concept art is quite bright and affirming.

This is one of those art books that is arty for the sake of art - form over function. It's VERY annoying to read since the text follows items in drawings and can be sideways, vertical, at 90 degree angles, or following a staircase-like shape. Since I cannot turn my computer monitor sideways, I got a crick in my neck trying to read it. As such, pick up the book and not the digital version and save your back and neck.

In all, worth the read more for wishful fantasies about what we didn't get rather than what we did. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

[Amy Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent addition to any Dragon Age fans collection. It gave interesting insight into the different styles for factions and areas. The storyboards did give some "oh that would have been cool!" but they obviously didn't work for some reason. But one can see the evolution from original ideas to what actually ended up sticking.

[ghoulkeats · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading through this is such a bittersweet endeavour. while these pages are intricately laced with the love, care and passion of the people working on all the projects within this story's development, it is also such a shame to see all the wonderful ideas that never quite made it (not the solas tranquillises himself one, wtf!).
this hurts even more when looking at how the production of the final product that is veilguard went along and the cuts that had been made by greedy companies.

i am forever grateful to the people who created this world and all the stories in it. it was truly something magical and, to me at least, a universe that shaped my entire life in the many years it has been with me.

[Gloria Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Great photo quality. I wish the captions on the photos were all horizontally aligned. I kept having to rotate the book to read them.

[Magda]

Mourning the fact we never got project Joplin tbh. Beautiful artwork, though.