As Veilguard hype builds, Larian boss says "I was in love with Morrigan in Dragon Age" and suddenly I understand why Baldur's Gate 3 is filled with bad girls
Lae'zel and Shadowheart suddenly make so much more sense
If you're hyped for the return of Morrigan in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it seems you're in good company. Larian boss and Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke says he was in love with the RPG genre's quintessential witchy woman.
"I was in love with Morrigan in Dragon Age," Vincke tells BAFTA, and really, weren't we all? The shapeshifting sorceress throws her ire on pretty much everybody around her, but those goth mommy vibes are tough to resist. A decade-and-a-half later, her character archetype seems to live on in the likes of Baldur's Gate 3's own Shadowheart and Lae'zel, and I can't help but wonder if Vincke's Dragon Age crush informed the modern game's party. Or, more likely, society has simply elevated to the point where we've rightly begun to love women who hate us.
Vincke mentioned Morrigan because he was asked about his favorite character, but he's quick to note that she's not actually at the top of his list. The video subtitles his considerations as "intense rumination," which pretty much sums it up. "Mario, obviously, was a big one," Vincke says, clearly struggling for an answer. "Pac-Man was a big one when I was a kid."
Then Vincke pulls a pick so left-field that I can't help but admire it. "One of my favorite characters in games is the drunk general in Civilization," he says. "Whenever you had a major victory, he came with his tankards and he said, 'Ho-oh! We defeated them!' I love that guy. I wish they brought him back." Right on, Swen. Here's hoping Civ 7 brings justice for the tankard guy.
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.