Dragon Age: The Veilguard will let you bring over your choices from Inquisition – whether you still have your save or not

It’s been a decade – 10 years! – since Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s fair to assume that you might’ve forgotten what happened during the last Dragon Age game, or some of the specific choices you made back in the misty ages of 2014. Whether you remember or not, this year’s long-awaited sequel Dragon Age: The Veilguard should have you covered, with the ability to carry over your story choices from the previous game and get a refresher on what happened last time around.

The Veilguard – which had the objectively better subtitle Dreadwolf up until earlier this month, but let’s not dwell on that – recently made a fairly big showing during Summer Game Fest, giving an in-depth look at its high-stakes fantasy drama (not as Marvel-aping as was feared) that Edwin found to be happily Mass Effect 2-evoking in tone and properly single-player RPG in form.

IGN caught up with director Corinne Busche to ask about some of the specifics of directly following Inquisition’s story – in which the player’s Inquisitor takes a starring role, of course – and how The Veilguard will pick up the various branches of narrative woven by players’ differing choices in its decade-old predecessor.

Busche was upfront in admitting that plenty of players might not even remember Inquisition’s story, revealed that The Veilguard’s character creator will open with an interactive recap that the dev dubbed “Last Time on Dragon Age”.

The refresher will let players remake decisions from Inquisition using a set of tarot cards – Busche assured there’ll be appropriate context to the potentially weighty choices you’re making, so you’re not just ticking a random box and hoping for the best – that then set the stage for The Veilguard to continue certain plotlines and hark back to the last game. Busche also shied away from confirming that every major character from Inquisition would appear in The Veilguard: “I won’t say everybody, but yes, some of them.”

You’ll need to go through the interactive recap whether you’ve still got your Inquisition saves to hand or not, Busche added, saying that the change in technology – again, it’s been 10 years – was significant enough that the team decided to handle the ‘importing’ solely within the new game itself. (That also implies that Dragon Age Keep, Inquisition’s save importer from Origins and Dragon Age II, won’t be used.)

Once you’ve recreated your choices from Inquisition, The Veilguard’s character creation should then let you recreate your hero from the last game too, with Edwin noting that the character creator has been notably expanded with a choice of body shapes, improved hair styles and other visual knobs to play with (speaking of knobs: there’s also a custom bulge size option).

The Veilguard will finally release this autumn, after a decade in the works. Just about enough time to replay Inquisition if you’re after a more in-depth reminder, I’d wager.