Dragon Age: The Veilguard was a disappointment in the eyes of longtime fans of the series and the higher ups at EA themselves. The game struggled to stand out to players while failing to meet internal expectations after its October 2024 release. Now, in a new report published on Wednesday, there’s more insight into what might be to blame for the lackluster release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that many of the game’s problems seem to stem from executive decisions that saw that scope of the game change multiple times.
The game originally began as a standard BioWare single-player title before EA executives forced a pivot to it becoming a multiplayer live service game. When that decision was made, creative director Mike Laidlaw, who disagreed with the decision, resigned from the studio. Matt Goldman took over for Laidlaw, and began work on the new online multiplayer version of the next Dragon Age title.
After multiple years of working on the multiplayer version of the game, it was then decided to move back to it being a single-player title. When the switch back happened, Schreier says, it was done without any sort of reset on development. Instead development was to continue development while changing “the game’s fundamental structure and recast[ing] the entire story”.
When it returned to single player, the team at BioWare was given a year-and-a-half to finish, which forced rushed decisions.
“This strict deadline became a recurring problem,” the report reads. “The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build.”
In addition to the changes to the game’s focus, the tone of the dialogue was a big problem point. According to those who took part in an alpha playtest, the game featured a “lack of satisfying choices and consequences”. It was also said that the game’s tone left people unsatisfied, leading BioWare to create a rewrite of the game’s dialogue to include a more serious tone.
Lastly, Schreier says that the future of BioWare remains a concern within the studio. A team of a “few dozen” employees are working on the next Mass Effect game, which could be the last chance for the 30-year-old studio to turn things around.
Schreier says that EA declined to comment for the story.
What do you think of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s struggles and the report regarding it being restarted and pivoted multiple times? Let us know down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums.
For more Insider Gaming forums, read about the Nintendo Switch 2 becoming the fastest-selling console in company history. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Insider Gaming newsletter.
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
More from Mike Straw
Comments