While Dragon Age: The Veilguard has its fans, it's not a scalding take to say that the latest--and likely final for a very long time--entry in the series did not hit like it was supposed to. And while everyone has had six months to try to pin the blame on someone or something, from writing to *spooky voice* diversity, a new report on Bloomberg points the finger at a familiar culprit: gross mismanagement from upstairs.
In news that will shock absolutely nobody, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says that Veilguard began life as a singleplayer RPG, was then transformed into an online multiplayer title once EA's leadership saw the kind of money games like Destiny were making (despite Bioware already working on Anthem!) and then, when Anthem tanked, it became a singleplayer RPG once more.
That's disastrous, reactionary management, which even at the best of times would have resulted in enormous costs as teams rotated through staff and rebuilt systems. These weren't the best of times:
In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age’s tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible.
Compounding the game's woes were internal politics between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams (the latter were brought on to assist in the final months), strict limitations placed on the singleplayer game's structure because of its multiplayer roots and some emergency rewrites that led to huge tonal inconsistencies throughout the game.
It's a miracle the game came out at all. Beset by so many problems, it's easy to say the game was simply in development hell, but it's a hell of EA's making: The publisher bought Bioware in 2009 because the studio could make hit RPGs, yet under EA's leadership there hasn't been a smash Bioware game in over a decade. And with decisions like these impacting the teams--every hurdle the game's final iteration had to overcome was a result of EA's earlier strategic blunders--it's no wonder Veilguard couldn't buck that trend.
Here's an idea, EA: whatever is left of Bioware, a studio famous for singleplayer RPGs, maybe just leave them alone and let them make a singleplayer RPG in peace.
