Dragon Age: The Veilguard's companions will still see their stories progress even if you don't sleep with them along the way.
Off the back of new information surrounding The Veilguard, a few Dragon Age fans were speculating on social media about whether players would be forced to sleep with their companions in order to progress their individual side stories. BioWare project director Michael Gamble stepped in, with the tweet below, reassuring everyone that they "won't have to engage in the romances."
You won’t have to engage in the romances and the followers will still progress as you play with them.July 9, 2024
"The followers will still progress as you play with them," Gamble also reassured in the same tweet. This puts to bed fears from players that if you turn down The Veilguard companions in their offers of romance, they'll consequently lock you out of progressing their stories, which is a pretty understandable fear from the viewpoint of players.
Although understandable, this isn't really something that RPGs of yesteryear have done. Take Baldur's Gate 3 for example, an RPG where you can frequently turn down characters, and even break up with them, without actively harming their overarching storylines. I broke up with Lae'zel for Karlach and everyone was pretty chill about it, actually.
Elsewhere for BioWare's upcoming game, Dragon Age's game director recently stated that The Veilguard was a "mature RPG," with regard to nudity and in-game romance. There's some speculation that nudity and romance could even be featured in full-on cutscenes in The Veilguard, although game director Corinne Busche didn't directly confirm that.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally launches later this year, after a very long wait, across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.