Dragon Age fans have long known the identity of the series newest big bad, but Bioware has cemented Solas’s evil identity with the title of the fourth entry: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
Solas entered the series as a companion to Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Herald of Andraste, but he was revealed as Fen’Harel the Dread Wolf during the conclusion of Inquisition’s main campaign. Solas presented himself as an elf who had acute knowledge of the old elven kingdoms by camping out at historic sites and dreaming the lives of the inhabitants. While a strange habit, within the world of Dragon Age access to that sort of knowledge through The Fade was not entirely unheard of, however, Solas’s knowledge was always a bit too specific, a bit too certain to be something gained in a dream.
For Daelish Inquisitors, this often led to conflict as Solas often set himself against Daelish tradition about the history and culture of their shared ancestors. This could make him a tricky companion, though certainly not enough to indicate his inevitable betrayal.
Given his specific knowledge of ancient Elven culture, something lost to even the Daelish, the reveal that Solas himself is one of the elven deities makes a decent amount of sense. Finding knowledge of the past through the Fade is something players have seen before, primarily in Dragon Age: Origin‘s Circle of Mages questline. However, the Fade is beset with various demons and does not abide by the typical laws of gravity, leaving the shades there unreliable informants at best. Solas’s uncompromising attitude about his information on forgotten elven history and custom doesn’t quite match up with his story. However, if he were one of the elven gods, that attitude makes a certain amount of sense.
That Solas is Fen’harel in particular makes him an even more intriguing villain. Deceit and betrayal are baked into Fen’harel’s identity as he is seen as the elven god of betrayal and rebellion. According to the in-game codex entry about him, The Dread Wolf betrayed both the Creators and the Forgotten Ones of the elvish pantheon, leaving them all sealed away from their people. Perhaps that was a good thing, perhaps not. But it seems BioWare is going to give us the chance to find out for ourselves in Dreadwolf, as the title implies.
The developer announced the official title and logo in a blog post today, which included some fun speculation about Solas’s motives:
Solas, the Dread Wolf. Some say he might be an ancient elven god, but some say not. Others say a betrayer of his people…or a savior who now seeks to rescue them at the cost of your world. His motives are inscrutable and his methods sometimes questionable, earning him a reputation as something of a trickster deity—a player of dark and dangerous games.
Whether you’re new to Dragon Age™ stories or you’ve experienced them all, using Solas’s namesake no doubt suggests a spectrum of endless possibilities on where things may go. But at the core of this, like every past game, is you. If you’re new to Dragon Age, you have no need to worry about not having met our antagonist just yet. He’ll properly introduce himself when the time is right, but we did hint at his return when we announced #TheDreadWolfRises back in 2018.
blog.bioware.com
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is not scheduled to release this year. However, the title and logo reveal hints that further news on that front may be coming our way soon. The game is reportedly on schedule, so in the meantime, here’s the original teaser trailer for Dreadwolf from The Game Awards 2020 to tide you over.
