Dragon Age: Inquisition’s final expansion would have forced us to blow up the home base in order to kill a fan-favorite Origins companion

Matt Rhodes, the art lead at BioWare, continues to reveal new information about the Dragon Age franchise. Eurogamer reported that Rhodes shared concept art for Dragon Age Inquisition Trespasser's DLC, which shows a darker, more ominous ending to the expansion.

"An earlier version the story." Sten would come to arrest you for interfering with magic, but Dagna reverse-engineered their explosives," Rhodes explained on Twitter the series of four conceptual pieces. "You've set up a trap to catch them when they return. You sacrificed Skyhold."

Trespasser has a lot of plot twists. The Inquisitor loses their hand (and power), the Inquisition disbands or gets absorbed into the Chantry and Iron Bull could betray the party to the Qun. The destruction of your Normandy home base, along with the political and symbol death of the Inquisition, would have been the cherry on top.

Sten was one of my favorite digital friends, not only from the Dragon Age series but also from BioWare's back catalogue. In Dragon Age: Origins it is possible for Sten not to appear or to be missed entirely by the player. However, in the comics, it is established that Sten helped save Ferelden, before returning to his people to become the new Arishok and replacing the one seen in Dragon Age 2. Ironically, this would also mean that "Sten" wouldn't even be his name anymore since that was his rank. But come on, it's Sten.

Stenishok appears in several codex entries and survived the Antaam revolt against him, which is a major part of the story in The Veilguard. It's amazing to think that he was originally going to be a major villain in Inquisition. His death along with the destruction of my base was a spectacular event.

This would have been a horrible, heartbreaking decision, just like the decision to kill the Warden in Origins or Hawke in DA2, which was ultimately cut from Inquisition. It's understandable that the team chose a different path. Sten's possible death via the Dragon Age Keep world-state complicates matters, requiring a stand-in character like Grey Warden Stroud, or any other characters from Mass Effect 3. Inquisition is also BioWare’s best-selling title, so all those new players will have no context as to who Sten is.

It's a relief to not have to betray Sten in this way, but I would still have loved to see him. Rhodes' concept artwork shows a partially disfigured, burned Sten fuming inside the Skyhold throne. This would have been much more impactful to learn about Sten from comics and codex entries.

Rhodes has been sharing concept art and development stories from the Dragon Age Series on social media. He has a lot of Trespasser concept art on Artstation, in addition to the stuff he shared on Twitter. Rhodes previously shared some of the first concepts for The Veilguard as well as rejected designs from multiplayer characters in Inquisition.