I am deeply enamoured by Dragon Age: The Veilguard's intricate and ridiculous fashion design

4 days ago 4

I still do not like the helmets

Some extremely fresh vintage workwear that I bought for entirely practical reasons aside, I’m not exactly a fashion person. I have nobody to impress most days but my cat, and the only item of clothing she appears to have an opinion on is my Oodie, which is very comfortable for both of us and also smells like a chicken shop, which I imagine is more pleasant for her than me.

This aside, I found myself taking a whole bunch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard screenshots as I played just to capture the RPG’s various outfits. They are ridiculous. Incredibly intricate and detailed, as well as being obscenely impractical for the most part. I do not like any of them in the sense I would wear them, but I like all of them in the sense that they display artists allowed to run free like caffeinated weasels and indulge their every whim.

I do have a little bit of a conspiracy theory here, which is that these are somewhat of a holdover from a cancelled live-service incarnation of Dragon Age 4. Can’t have a live service without fancy outfits, and the sheer excess of some of them seem like the sort of thing that’s meant to grab your attention in a shop. This isn’t to suggest any sort of disposability or lack of care here, though. If anything, the meticulousness of these designs - and how they utilise the geometric themes of the game’s secondary tarot art style - makes them feel like the antithesis to that AI generated COD skin.

Anyway, here’s a few good ‘uns:

The entire Veil Jumper range (I'm calling them 'ranges' now) is probably my favourite. Lots of triangles and other flourishes. This is also the only headwear in the game that I'd wear willingly, although it does look a bit like Rook's trying to stop the FBI from reaching into his mind to steal his best screenplay ideas.

Here's one of Bellara's, also a Veil Jumper. There is no good reason for that shoulder guard, nor the extra golden bits on my Rook's outfit. We're at war here, you wastrels. That's good smelting gold!

This is Taash's least excessive outfit, and still looks like it took someone the better part of a year to knit less than a third of it.

This isn't a costume but I needed to share the giant pink flowery bow. It shoots three arrows at a time. In practise, this just means you run out of arrows too quickly, but it's the sheer abandon that counts. Speaking of abandon, I'd estimate this is only Emmrich's third most osentatious 'fit:

Disclosure: Bioware gave me one gazillion dollars for every outfit I said was cool, then took it all away when I wrote “every helmet looks stupid as fuck” in my review. I stand by it.

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