Marc

Reminder: - EA cancelled the Single Player Dragon Age 4 in development from 2015-2017 - Pushed them to create a live service Dragon Age because of trend chasing. They considered multiplayer the future of gaming, "nobody plays single player games anymore" except then Jedi Fallen Order released with huge success and they pivoted again. - After 3 years of development on Live Service Age from 2018-2021, EA & Bioware decide to remove the Multiplayer component but instead of rebooting a second time they gave them 18 months to rip out all that live service work and have them make it a single player game AGAIN, at a significant disadvantage to meet expectations. - Six years of wasted development now, when a lot of the series veterans had been laid off or quit out of frustration with EA along with numerous management and staff changes. Among these names are David Gaider, Mike Laidlaw, and later before Veilguard's release Mary Kirby. Her departure was an abysmal sign for the future of DA before this next game had even released. - This resulted in the announcement of Dragon Age Dreadwolf in 2022, later renamed Veilguard which retained the scars of it's live service development when it released in 2024 and was never the true game Bioware would have given us if they hadn't been constantly fucked around. We could and should have had the intended Dragon Age 4 before 2020, instead it took almost a DECADE for the follow up. The worst things these companies do is trend chase something, with zero foresight on temporary trends. By the time you release that game public opinion has shifted. Rocksteady's Suicide Squad as a clear example of this too. Just let creative people make something they are passionate about and stop putting them in boxes. Let developers make something real by giving them time and resources to deliver something memorable with a clear goal, not a post mortem example like Anthem on how not to develop a game. EA has been fucking over Bioware basically since they acquired them. Issues with Andromeda, Anthem, Veilguard aside as yes all three have their issues and you'll even have people going back to Mass Effect 3/DA2/Inquisition with issues as well; a lot of this comes from a long long period of EA pushing Bioware into a corner and then watching them be a punching bag for it. It also comes from internal schisms within Bioware where there was a strange Mass Effect vs Dragon Age rift and David Gaider said they may as well have been two different studios with how the culture was different, plus the writers getting fucked over at every turn. People taking the lowest hanging fruit possible and are gonna just say it was Veilguard, it was Anthem, it was Andromeda etc that sealed their fate when in actual reality it was a long list of issues going back 15+ years that led to the issues within those games in the first place.