Dragon Age: The Veilguard director says "the first thing" he asked for was a State of Decay-inspired QoL feature that fixes a long-running party chat issue

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will allow you to pick up conversations with companions right where you left off after being interrupted, a subtle but meaningful quality of life improvement the series has been sorely missing.

Over on Bluesky, Dragon Age: The Veilguard director John Epler said he first saw the feature in 2013's zombie survival game State of Decay, and he rightly pointed out that it's been a thing in numerous games since. He called it "resumable banter," which I'd reckon is about as apt a description as you can come up with.

"Resumable banter is one of my favourite little QOL features the team got into [Dragon Age: The Veilguard]. i saw it for the first time in State of Decay back in… 2013? and it’s shown up in a bunch of places since. otherwise you teach the player to stand PERFECTLY STILL the moment they hear banter."

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, for example, if you're in conversation with a companion and then something triggers either combat or a cutscene that interrupts that conversation, there's no way to resume that conversation afterward and thus, you simply miss out on that interaction and any related information.

"There are just a lot of cool little features the team put into the game to reduce friction, and they're all really quite lovely!" Epler added.

One fan replied to Epler's post with what's sure to be a relatable story for Dragon Age players, recalling many times in Dragon Age: Inquisition where they'd be frozen still during banter while a nearby enemy patrolled just inches away, hoping not to be interrupted.

"It's like when we attached an achievement in [Mass Effect 1] to reading every investigate and taught players to fastidiously exhaust every conversation," Epler responded. "I don’t die on a lot of hills but i think this was the very first thing I asked for on this project."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard still isn't an open-world game, but new gameplay footage makes the RPG look way less linear than we feared.