Dragon Age: The Veilguard's first mods fulfil the creators' true intention of letting you play as Nigel Thornberry, but spit on all that is good and decent by making everything less magenta

Nigel Thornberry as a knight of the Veilguard.
(Image credit: EA / MrBloodjack)

There's a hot new RPG out that's like a neodymium magnet for discourse, and you know what that means: time for me to bunker down and replay 2010's Red Dead Redemption until all this blows over. But if you are one of the many, many players currently knee-deep in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I've got good news: the mods are already rolling in.

There's nothing too major just yet—though I live in eternal hope for some kind of Varric VGX Snowboarder—but what there is mostly centres around people sharing tried and tested character customisation presets and mods that de-purple the game. Fancy a less mauve Thedas? Check out Less Magenta and Reduced Bloom.

That is, so long as you're comfortable being some kind of art coward. The venerable piss filter is a bit of a lost art these days after becoming so ubiquitous in the 360-era that it became pretty much a meme. Forgive us, art directors of studios past, we knew not what we did when we mocked the yellow haze that blanketed all of Tselinoyarsk and nu-Detroit. I salute The Veilguard for bringing the trend back, albeit in indigo rather than the classic piss.

But you can remove it if you choose. And while you're at it, why not play the whole game as Nigel Thornberry, since clearly no earthly transgression is beyond you?

Old Nigel is one of the frankly countless presets that people have been uploading, and probably the most interesting. All the rest are just very pretty. Especially Geralt.

With any luck, these are just the first green shoots of what will eventually be a flourishing modding scene in the vein of the one for Dragon Age: Origins. If BioWare's last release—the Mass Effect Legendary Edition—is anything to go by, that's exactly what it is.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.