Dragon Age: The Veilguard Doesn’t Protect Its Most Precious Little Guys

As bad as Assan dying is the fact that we aren’t given any chance to stop it. We just see him swoop down into a raging red hellmouth in pursuit of Davrin’s lifeless body, never to return. The other party members, who have fought alongside and come to love both Davrin and Assan, treat the griffon’s death almost like an afterthought. This weirdly casual dismissal of a beloved animal family member feels especially off given how dominant the whole “but can you pet the dog?” movement has been in games over the last several years; at a time when interaction with any domesticated beast, even random ones you pass once during a game, have been prioritized throughout the industry, it’s almost shocking to see a major game so cavalierly dispose of a pet who’s also a genuine member of your party.

Compare it to an earlier inflection point in Veilguard. Depending on your choices, you can lose Manfred, the skeleton valet with jewels for eyes who’s always down for a round of Rock Paper Scissors, during the finale of Emmrich’s storyline. You make a choice: sacrifice Emmrich’s lifelong dream of becoming a lich (which, frankly, is an incredibly unusual goal for a hero of a game, given that games have taught us to hate liches for as long as games have existed) to save Manfred, or let the goofy little bone man die again forever. Anybody who chooses to let Manfred rot is a psychopath. Manfred and Assan are easily the game’s most lovable characters, and after putting one of them through the ringer so thoroughly I totally assumed the other wouldn’t have to worry about anything the rest of the game. It’d basically repeat the same story beat if we had to make a choice about Assan, too.

Maybe that’s why Bioware didn’t let us make that choice at all. But the result is a pointless death that violates an unspoken agreement with the player. Assan didn’t have to die, and if he did it should’ve been for a reason, like Manfred’s potential death. You can say there’s something touching about Assan futilely diving to his own death in order to save his already gone master, but I don’t know how realistic it is; as much as I’ve known that the dogs I’ve owned over the years have loved me, I have no doubt that every single one of them would eat my corpse as soon as they felt the first hunger pang. And then they’d go snuggle up and act all cute and cuddly with whoever their next human was. 

To hammer home why Assan’s death isn’t good storytelling, let’s look at Disney’s animated movies—perhaps the greatest stockpile of weird (but cute) little buddies in cinematic history. Somebody dies in almost every Disney movie, and other than one example that really sticks out when you watch it, it’s never the cute sidekick. And the one time I can think of it happening, with the firefly Ray in The Princess and the Frog, it was because of a sacrifice that the entire climax hinged upon. (It also helps that Ray was a secondary sidekick, too, less important than the trumpet-playing alligator Louis, and that there’s a whole swarm of almost identical fireflies to keep Ray’s memory alive, assuming fireflies have memories at all; if they do, it’s probably of grubby little Southern kids like me trying to force them into empty pickle jars.) Assan is both more of a central character in Veilguard—he’s more prominent than Manfred for most of the game, making him its premier sidekick—and dies for absolutely no reason.

In real life, obviously, a loss of a friend and loved one will usually make a deeper impact than the loss of an animal, no matter how beloved they are. It makes sense for Rook, Neve, Lucanis, and Davrin’s other partners to grieve his loss more than Assan’s. Veilguard is not real life for us, though. You expect some, or all, of these fantasy stock types fighting evil Elven gods to die in the end. You don’t expect their furry and feathery cock-eared friend to meet an unceremonious end as a footnote to another character’s story. It left a bad taste in my mouth, is all. 

To Assan: one of the cutest little guys I’ve met this year. I’ll definitely forget you, but not as quickly as I’ll forget every other character in Veilguard. Now Bioware needs to get working on that spinoff starring you and Manfred solving mysteries ASAP.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.