The state of Bioware has been something to shake your head at, and you wonder if it is ever going to change. In the beginning, Bioware made its name by making all-time classic RPGs across multiple universes. Even when certain early games didn’t “land,” you could see the building blocks of what was to come. Then, the developer went off the rails in the worst way, and it’s still trying to recover all the goodwill that it lost. The process to get Dragon Age The Veilguard out was one of the many hurdles that the team faced. Yet, in their minds, this was the turning point for them to try and get “back to their roots.”
Dragon Age The Veilguard co-director Corinne Busche noted on the My Perfect Console podcast that while times were hard in the making of the new RPG, Bioware had the support of publisher Electronic Arts throughout, especially as the team shifted away from live service and back to the team’s “original style” of game development:
“I felt very supported through this by BioWare and EA. I’ll tell you, it’s intimidating to buck the trends in an era where it feels like almost every game must be an open world. It’s [being able to say], you know what – that works for those titles. For us, the way in which we tell the best stories and stay true to our roots – a more handcrafted, intimate solution is appropriate. And just to have that support from within, around getting back to those elements we do best, was fantastic.”
Fellow co-director John Epler noted that for him, the new RPG was a true chance to showcase what Bioware does best:
“For The Veilguard we just wanted to get back to those things that made the studio what it was, that contributed to what I would call the Golden Age of BioWare, when there was hit after hit being turned out. The Veilguard was a very conscious return to that with a focus on characters, storytelling and being just this really bombastic single-player RPG.”
Here’s the thing, while it’s nice to hear them say that, the “results” of Bioware’s latest RPG are still up for debate. Specifically, the game’s sales aren’t fully known yet, and there have been conflicting reports about what it actually is.
Furthermore, while critics may have been behind the title, fans have not been so kind. They made it clear that Bioware made numerous mistakes across the lore, characters, and more. So, based on all this, Bioware has a lot of work to do to truly say it’s “back to how it used to be.”
