Dragon Age: Inquisition could have had a drastically different ending

What could have been.

Image via Bioware

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A recent trend on Twitter has been developers sharing their confessions about hidden mechanics and other tidbits that they couldn’t share with players when their game first launched. A handful of developers who worked on Dragon Age: Inquisition have done just that. Writer David Gaider shared that the Epilogue for Inquisition was originally planned to de dramatically different from the final product that shipped to fans, and this playable section would have had player choices influencing what transpires.

Gaider shared the original plan for Inquisition’s ending following the confessions of creative director John Epler, who revealed to players that the horse sprinting didn’t do anything as a “useless fact” about the game.

Going through my old DAI files and came across the original plan for a playable post-credits Epilogue… which, due to time constraints, eventually got down-scaled to the post-credits cutscene you saw on release. A lot of the meat here was, I believe, resurrected for Trespasser. pic.twitter.com/JkEYLzDq5y
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) February 3, 2023

Gaider shares that he had been pushing for a legitimate conclusion rather than leaving it as a cliffhanger. However, the team pushed back against Gaider’s choice, as this would have taken a great deal of effort for the developers and would have been rather costly, taking up resources that could have gone elsewhere. In the end, Gaider understood, given how few players made it to this point in the game, unfortunately.

Gaider’s efforts were not in vain, as much of what he shared and worked with his team made it over to Trespasser, a DLC for Inquisition that many see as the actual, final ending for the game. The ending features a distinct connection to the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.

For some fans, it might be disappointing to learn what could have been a proper ending for Inquisition. However, Gaider reassures those reading his tweets that the development for this ending never made it beyond the planning stages, and he’s pretty satisfied with the game’s final ending. However, fans are still angry at the appearance of final antagonist Solas, who reveals himself to be the mythical Dreadwolf, and how he dispatched Flemeth, another legendary character that had appeared in all three Dragon Age games.

With Dragon Age: Dreadwolf officially in development at Bioware, arriving at an unknown date nearly a decade after Inquisition came out, fans can tie up the loose ends they left with Solas and conclude the story with this villain.