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my paper and other links from the PAX East 2025 Dragon Age panel

  • themakermage
  • May 12, 2025
  • 3 min read

Thanks to @comrade.america and @full_velvet, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a panel at my beloved local gaming con. Our idea was to create an academic conference type of panel with individual mini-papers on Dragon Age, drawing on our work and interests as academics and gamers. I personally prefer when panels are dense and informative, with an expert or otherwise specialized perspective, so I was really excited and grateful to give that a try. My contribution focused on The Veilguard’s costume design through the lens of postmodernism and nostalgia.


Official description of the panel:

"If You'll Excuse Me I Have a World to Save... Again": a Dragon Age series retrospective (13+)

The "Dragon Age" series spans sixteen years four games and multiple multimedia spinoffs. This panel will be conducting a deep-dive scholarly analysis of this iconic Bioware series exploring its ludo-narrative design elements in an attempt to determine what contributed to the series' lasting appeal as a fan favorite. Among the elements this panel will analyze will be the visual and artistic design; fashion design; music and scoring; writing (both character and story); and user interface and back-end design.

Panelists:

Alexandre Abdoulaev (he/him) [Professor, West Chester University]

Caitlin Farthing (she/her) [Art conservator, Polygon Restoration]

Maker Mage (she/her) [Professor]


For those interested:


My sources are included both at the end of the paper and at the end of my slides.


Please credit appropriately and respect sharing norms if you choose to circulate these materials.


Feel free to comment here or message me on Insta if you have any questions or comments! I'd love to hear your take.


Also please consider "buying this book" for a couple dollaroos on Ko-fi if you liked this lil self-publishing.


Finally, please shout out our panel in the official PAX post-show survey if you'd like to see more of this!


Title and abstract

Pastness without Past: The Semiotics of Nostalgia in the Costume Design of The Veilguard

Abstract:

In fantasy media, costume design functions not only as aesthetic embellishment but as a vital narrative tool that, when fully exploited, efficiently communicates cultural, temporal, and personal dimensions of a fictional world. This informal critical essay explores the shifting semiotic role of costume design throughout the four Dragon Age games, positioning them within broader theoretical frameworks of postmodernism and nostalgia. Drawing on Fredric Jameson, I argue that The Veilguard exemplifies a postmodern nostalgia mode in which costume no longer anchors characters within a coherent world, but instead circulates as fragmented signifiers without material or historical referents. While earlier entries in the Dragon Age series used costume to construct character relationships, class dynamics, and cultural contrasts, The Veilguard favors visual motifs and aesthetic repetition, emphasizing brand recognition and player customization over narrative cohesion. In doing so, The Veilguard detaches costume from the socio-political frictions that once grounded character identity, transforming design into a symbolic system divorced from material or ideological struggle. This shift reflects a broader trend in contemporary game design, where digital fashion participates in systems of consumer collectibility and symbolic overload. Despite this, the game achieves a richly stylized visual identity, evoking affect and memory even as it resists historical anchoring. Ultimately, I contend that The Veilguard reveals both the appeal and futility of nostalgia: a longing not for the past itself, but for a stylized Dragon Age “pastness” that aestheticizes memory while eluding return.


Three cosplayers sit behind a table, ready to present a panel.
with my fellow panelists!

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