Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s release date trailer has revealed that Morrigan, series constant and scornful sorceress, will be making a return—which is a bit of a surprise, considering her voice actor Claudia Black said “Spoiler—I’m not in this one” back in 2022.
Well, spoiler—turns out she is. However, as posted to her Twitter, Black swears up and down that she didn’t know: “Tee hee. It sucks keeping secrets. Though I wasn’t lying. I honestly thought they were done with my fave mage.”
Which is, in all fairness, completely reasonable. Game development takes a long time. What is interesting, however, is that Veilguard—the game formerly known as Dreadwolf—was playable from “start to finish” back in October 2022, less than a month before Black made her initial tweet, implying that its story was at least in its first draft state before she knew she was going to be making a return.
This is less evidence of some grand conspiracy, and more a fun ‘how the sausage gets made’ moment. BioWare seemingly hammers everything into rough shape before getting its major voice actors on board or, at the very least, saves shorter roles for later on in the development cycle.
“On my life I didn’t know,” Black insists in a separate reply. As for what it’s like to step into the shoes of Morrigan once more, she adds: “it’s great to be asked back because she’s such a beloved character—by us all. It also brought back memories because my actual son voiced Kieran and I was a very proud mama.”
It’s great to have her back, honestly. Dragon Age: Origins was a pretty formative game for me growing up—I had both Alistair and Morrigan in my party because their completely incompatible brands of snark gave me endless joy, helped tremendously by some excellently smarmy performances from both Black and Alistair’s Steve Valentine.
As for Veilguard, I’m not completely sold just yet—but I’m hopeful that its most recent trailer is a sign of things to come. Besides, even if it’s not my cup of tea, I’m sure Morrigan will be a highlight. She’s the OG Witch of the Wilds, after all.
