Why Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Hair Looks So Darn Good

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has introduced some striking visual changes to the world of Thedas, and while the new art style has been met with mixed reception, there’s one aspect of the game’s aesthetic that most players seem to agree on: The hair looks really, really good.

EA and BioWare appear to share the sentiment, and have revealed the recipe for high-quality hair animations via a new blog post that examines every individual strand of The Veilguard’s glorious collective locks. According to the post, each of the game’s hairstyles–of which there are over 100–contain 50,000 individually rendered strands of hair. EA and BioWare credit the Frostbite engine for the high-quality results.

Frostbite has been working on realistic hair tech for a while now, but the engine’s progress truly shines in Veilguard, and it’s not simply due to the number of hairstyle options or the amount of hairs on each character’s head–length plays a major role, too. The Veilguard features a number of waist-length hair options (curly or straight) that move in combat, realistically responding to momentum, wind, blasts of magic, changes in direction, and other variables. But getting there wasn’t easy.

“With hair attachments that move seamlessly and the decoupling of simulation and render tessellation, this is the first EA game to offer such detailed, physics-driven long hairstyles,” the blog post explains. “The Frostbite team increased maximum hair length from 63 points to 255, and implemented a new system for complex hair structures like braids.”

Changes to the Frostbite engine’s lighting also played a major role in mastering Veilguard’s hair physics, but it wasn’t all fun and games–BioWare faced various challenges while working to perfect the way hair moved in-game. The main culprit? Horns.

“While Strand Hair is present in other EA games, the BioWare team had to push the limits even further for Dragon Age: The Veilguard,” the post continues. “For example, implementing Strand Hair technology for characters who have waist-length hair with horns on their head presented some unique challenges.”

Veilguard’s beautifully rendered hair options haven’t been overlooked by players, many of whom are very pleased with the game’s well-animated cosmetic offerings and spent hours perfecting their Rook in the game’s character creator. In a medium where “long hair” often translates to “shoulder-length at best,” Dragon Age: The Veilguard seems to represent the industry’s first major step in finally perfecting the art of realistic, complex hair structures in games. That’s good news for everyone, especially Mass Effect fans, who will likely have access to similarly realistic hair options when the next entry in the franchise finally arrives.

For more info on BioWare’s latest fantasy RPG, check out GameSpot’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard review-in-progress.