The Fade – the inherently unknowable spirit world that lurks at the corners of awareness in BioWare’s Dragon Age series of games – fascinates me. It’s a twisted and dreamy place of great magical power that people seek but which misleads and corrupts those who look for it. Anything that’s happened in Dragon Age is linked to it, whether it’s a hulking Archdemon from the Fade leading a Blight across the land, as in Dragon Age: Origins, or if it’s a mage with a Fade spirit inside them igniting a war as in Dragon Age 2. Then of course in Dragon Age: Inquisition the sky tore open and the barrier between the Fade and the waking world was sundered, causing all kinds of mayhem. And now here we stand on the precipice of a fourth adventure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which takes place the Fade itself, and which teases answers to some of the biggest questions in the game’s universe. These are no trifling matters! We’re talking about the creators of the world here, the gods, and the ancient secrets they hold.
It’s a tantalising prospect, and yet on the other side of that excitement is some trepidation, because as much as I want to know the answers to the mysteries, what if I equally don’t want to know them, because what then? What if the pleasure in a mystery is the hours spent thinking about it and mulling it over and coming up with theories of our own – I’ve certainly come up with a few. What if the answers are actually anathema to the mystery itself such that when we get them, they disperse the mystery entirely.
It’s a paradox stories always have: they have to end because otherwise we feel strung along and our attention abused, and yet as we’ve seen with TV series like Lost, which slow-drip revelations, stories are never more popular than when we’re desperate to know the outcome of them. Look at the TV adaptation A Game of Thrones as another example: the clamour surrounding the final series was deafening; millions and millions of people needed to know what happened at the end. It’s a collective hunger that binds entire communities together, and I feel a similar thing happening with me and Dragon Age now.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Watch on YouTube
I’ve never cared so much about the game’s lore before. I only really cared who I was making moves on around the campfire or mountain castle that night, but in the lead-up to The Veilguard, I’ve been nose-deep in Dragon Age encyclopaedias, Wikis, subreddits, scouring any and all for the answers I sought. What had other people missed?