Dragon Age: The Veilguard may be best described as a disappointing entry in the series. The game earned a MetaCritic of 82 on PlayStation 5, but was review bombed by users so harshly that MetaCritic warned users about it. Few will dispute that it doesn’t live up to the legacy of previous Dragon Age games, as EA admitted its poor performance to investors, leading to the company’s stock dropping.
But, as it turns out, there’s a logical explanation for why it ended up this way.
As reported by Jason Schreier for Bloomberg, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the victim of multiple bad decisions by EA management, stacked on top of the other. But, it also stems from one pivotal year: 2017.
At this time, the industry was starting to notice the growing trend of live service games, and EA was eager to jump in. On October 2017, while part of Bioware was already working on Anthem, Mike Laidlaw told his team that EA gave the order to pivot Dragon Age to multiplayer live service. For those wondering, this was also the reason he left the company.
Replacing Laidlaw as creative director was Matt Goldman, who was previously the art director. While he was helping shape this version of the game, he also moved the game to become pulpier and more lighthearted. This was the genesis of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s jarring tone shift, but in Goldman’s defense, it would have better suited their live service push.
In 2019, after Anthem bombed in the market, EA decided to pivot the project once again. In 2020, Dragon Age once again turned into a single player game, with Gary McKay taking over Bioware and leading this new direction. This could have been where Bioware turned the whole game around, but EA didn’t do the right thing here.
Instead of allowing them to completely start over with a new budget and timetable, EA gave Bioware a year and a half to finish the project. Other missteps followed, such as friction between the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team brought in to help. However, even these issues could have been overcome if they weren’t force to work under budget and on a tight schedule.
Those of you who played Dragon Age: The Veilguard may have remembered the mixed feelings you felt about the game itself: about the things it got right and wrong, about the many changes that just didn’t make it feel like a real Dragon Age game.
You may have even wondered if this Dragon Age even had a reason to exist. It may be cold comfort now, but based on Schreier’s report, this project was made under duress from the start. And even such projects can be turned around even the final hour, but there were more things that worked against this project than for it, and that’s the reason we got Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
EA has been particularly cutthroat this year, with layoffs at Codemasters and Respawn Entertainment, and after deciding to cancel Marvel’s Black Panther and close its studio, Cliffhanger Games. We hope that Bioware is able to step back up with their new Mass Effect project and be able to turn things around.
