Dragon Age: The Veilguard character creation, explained

Fully customize your ideal Rook.

The Rook main character in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Image via BioWare

The character creation system in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the most advanced one in the series yet. There’s a lot to it, and creating your Rook is one of the first steps you take before your journey begins.

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The choices you make in the character creator early on can impact your entire storyline and determine what your Rook looks like. It’s an important system to understand, so here’s how character creation works in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Character creation in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

A Rook in Dragon Age: The Veilguard next to some character creator information about them.
There are plenty of options. Image via BioWare

Your journey in Dragon Age: The Veilguard begins with a robust character creation system that allows you to fully customize your main character, the Rook. The choices you make in the character creator affect not only the Rook’s appearance but also many important gameplay factors.

There are three fundamental decisions you make in the character creator that heavily impact the gameplay and the main story in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This includes your class, race, and background.

  • Class: There are three classes to choose from including Rogue, Mage, and Warrior. This determines what abilities your Rook has access to.
  • Race: Your Rook can be one of four races, including Qunari, Human, Elf, and Dwarf.
  • Background: This acts as the faction and storyline you assign to your character. The choice you make unlocks unique interactions, changes how the Rook behaves in various situations, and alters how other characters interact with them. Some known options include Shadow Dragons, Grey Wardens, and Veil Jumpers, but there are more choices beyond these, too.

Outside of these three key features, the rest of the character creation system is focused on cosmetics. The cosmetic choices you make don’t affect gameplay, but they do alter what your Rook looks like.

Your Rook can have a wide variety of body sizes with many ways to fully sculpt the exact build you want. This includes your height, muscles, weight, and other such features.

The character creator has an array of lighting options you can freely switch between. This allows you to see exactly what your character will look like in all kinds of lighting so you can truly design the Rook exactly as you want them to be.

There are lots of intricate hairstyles plus tattoos and makeup you can use to give your Rook more personality. The character creator also has options for nonbinary pronouns.

A Rook holding a sword in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Your Rook is the star of the show. Image via BioWare

The choices you make in the character creator can affect how your companions view you and potentially even how they react if you decide to pursue a romance with them. All companions are open to romance with the Rook, but some options you select may make building a relationship either tougher or easier. The Mage Killer Lucanis, for example, probably won’t be easily won over if you choose to be a Mage.

As of now, it’s unknown whether you can alter your appearance after you finish using the character creator in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Considering Dragon Age: Inquisition did have a way for you to fully alter your character’s appearance through a DLC, it seems likely there will be some way to modify your look later on, although key factors like your class, race, and background are probably permanent.

Author
Image of Kacee Fay
Kacee Fay
Staff Writer at Dot Esports covering new releases and a wide array of topics including Minecraft, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Phasmophobia, general gaming, streaming, and more. She has been avidly writing and gaming her whole life and now spends her time combining the two. Kacee graduated from San Diego State University in 2021 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Certificate in Creative Editing and Publishing. She then joined Dot Esports as a Freelance Writer in 2022 before transitioning to a Staff Writer in 2023. In her spare time, she enjoys buying more books than she can read, gaming alone or with friends, drinking too much tea, attending concerts, fangirling over movies and television, listening to music, and spending time with her family, friends, and pets, who are the most important parts of her world.