Dragon Age is one of my favorite RPG series of all time—shout out to Dragon Age II, forever The Best One–but there is one thing about it I have consistently hated: Dragon Age loves itself some giant spiders. I’ve been an arachnophobe for much of my life, which has often clashed with my love of fantasy, shivering my way through Lord of the Rings‘ Shelob scenes and the like with my eyes peering through fingers. While I’ve gotten better at confronting that fear of both actual spiders and digital or cinematic ones, Dragon Age‘s particular flavor of spider-terror has always gotten to me. Thankfully, that’s apparently about to change with the release of The Veilguard later this month.
Earlier this week, BioWare revealed the slate of accessibility options for the fourth Dragon Age game, and my fellow eagle-eyed spider-fearers noticed that an arachnophobia mode was not among the list of toggles. Arachnophobia modes have become increasingly common in games lately as a way to try and ease people’s triggers while still allowing them to play games they would otherwise be totally fine in. Some versions of the mode remove spider enemies entirely, some replace them with different models, some allow you to even specifically modify spider and spider-like models in various degrees to match your own tolerance level. Hell, even Jedi: Survivor last year had one, for a creature that wasn’t all that spider-like compared to the (absolutely terrifying) Wyyyschokks from the first game. But I appreciated its inclusion nonetheless!
But given BioWare’s desire to promote The Veilguard as a game embracing a diversity of players—and the series’ traditional history of including giant spider enemies—people were surprised not to see a similar mode offered for The Veilguard. Sure, PC gamers could simply just wait for mods to remove spiders from the game (it’s the only way I can replay the series now, honestly), but that wouldn’t help console players without access to mods. The good news, however, is that there’s no need for an arachnophobia mode in the new game: because Veilguard is the first Dragon Age game to not have spider enemies at all. The news was confirmed in a post on the Dragon Age subreddit by a Bioware community manager Blackhairvioleteyes (via IGN), which simply stated “No arachnophobia mode because there’s no spiders!”
The move might be controversial to some Dragon Age fans. Like I said, the giant beasts have been a staple of the series’ monsters at this point, and I’m sure there’s as many people who enjoy the mechanics a creature like a giant spider can bring to combat (poison attacks, immobilizing webs, or hell, just the creep factor of being in a dingy cave when a huge, eight-legged freak starts climbing down from the ceiling towards you) as there are people who, like me, would want to fling their controller across a room every time a bunch of the damn things spawned in the Deep Roads or wherever. Some people might lament that Dragon Age‘s enemy designs will be less varied without them, but given The Veilguard‘s specific focus on the Darkspawn and the agents of the returned Elven Gods, maybe it’s fine that there’s a bit more specified encounters to be found here.
But I for one am very happy to not have to anxiously dread entering the no doubt myriad caves I’ll find in my time in The Veilguard, wondering if I’m about to get triggered by the skittering of many legs. Dragon Age‘s spiders were always particularly creepy to me, even as my own arachnophobia has softened over the years. It wasn’t just the way they moved, or their realistic depictions at a heightened scale, but Dragon Age spiders were defined to me by the ear-splitting chittering shriek they would make as they literally popped into existence in a combat encounter, descending from rooftops. It was a jump scare that always had me slamming the button to pause combat every time, even beyond the fear of having to stare these creatures down as I planned how to take them out as soon as possible. It was nasty!
Like I said, the way I’ve come to deal with it over the years is to play on PC and use mods that swapped spiders and their sounds out for other enemy models. Maybe, for the first time, the inverse can be the case for Dragon Age‘s spider-fans: it’s your turn to find a mod that will put some back in? Maybe some brave, demented soul will add that extremely cursed Spider-With-Human-Hands that was glimpsed in concept renders for the game years ago, just for you.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard releases on October 31.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
