After a decade of anticipation from Dragon Age fans, the most-recent sequel, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, arrived last fall and was promptly labeled a disappointment by EA. Despite Dragon Age: Inquisition winning several game of the year awards 10 years earlier, The Veilguard simply wasn’t as well-received among fans. Now, a new report is shedding light on The Veilguard’s troubled development and why it failed.
Bloomberg has offered a comprehensive look back at Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but perhaps the most surprising thing is how much of the story was already known. One of the most common refrains in the report is that BioWare was hamstrung by the initial plans to make The Veilguard a live-service title. Even switching back to a single-player game didn’t allow the team to recapture the fully-realized stories and options that the previous titles had.
The report also appears to confirm the account of former Dragon Age series lead writer David Gaider, who previously spoke about tension between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams at BioWare. Even when the two teams were brought together for The Veilguard, the tribalism remained.
“As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings,” states the report. Bloomberg also notes that the Dragon Age team was infuriated when the Mass Effect team were allowed to make “big, ambitious swings,” while the former was told there wasn’t the budget or time to do so.
“It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,” Gaider told Bloomberg. “But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.”
In the aftermath, BioWare laid off staff and reassigned some developers to other teams inside EA. A much smaller team at BioWare is currently working on the next Mass Effect game.
