According to Dragon Age series writer David Gaider, the franchise has always faced an uphill battle at Electronic Arts, which never hid its preference for the Mass Effect series.
Last year’s release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard turned out to be a disappointment. As a result, Electronic Arts effectively disbanded the team in charge of this game — many employees were let go, and the remaining staff were reassigned to other groups.
So, it can be safely assumed that the brand has been shelved, and EA will not decide to revive it anytime soon. Right now, BioWare studio is exclusively working on the Mass Effect series. Such a turn of events doesn’t surprise David Gaider (before he left the studio, he worked on the scripts for Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate, and Neverwinter Nights).
- Gaider claims that the publisher always favored Mass Effect over Dragon Age.
- Both the CEOs of EA and the company’s marketing department were supposed to prefer Mass Effect. This brand was considered more «modern», and its additional advantage over Dragon Age was the fact that the gameplay mechanics strongly resembled action games.
- Even when Dragon Age was doing better than Mass Effect (DA: Inquisition sold over 12 million copies, making the game the biggest hit in BioWare’s portfolio), EA found some excuses to justify ME and diminish the success of Dragon Age.
- Gaider claims that the Dragon Age series was always one step away from being abandoned by EA, and the publisher never knew what to do with this franchise.
Of course, these are just the words of one former studio employee, but his information fits with what ultimately happened with BioWare. Considering the financial success of Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s surprising that instead of developing another classic installment of the EA series, they first tried to turn the brand into a game-service (especially since Anthem, which belonged to the same category, turned out to be a flop). Only when this project didn’t work out, they decided to quickly turn its remnants into what eventually became The Veilguard.
The fourth installment in the series faced criticism from many fans for dropping the strategic combat system in favor of more action-oriented fights, raising the question of whether Electronic Arts made this change to make the game more like Mass Effect.
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review: A New Entry That Could Bring More to the Table
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard — official website
