While it has been no secret that the development of 2024 RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard was a troubled one, more details have been revealed thanks to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. In a new report, Schreier managed to talk to some of the people working at BioWare at the time to get more information on about the game leading up to its release.
One of the key reasons for Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s troubled development period seems to stem from the fact that the title, originally envisioned as a single-player game, was pivoted into being a multiplayer live-service game before once again being pivoted into being a narrative single-player title.
The initial switch to multiplayer came about because of EA’s executives looking at other live-service games in the market like Overwatch and Destiny, and wanting its own IP to capitalise on the gold rush. This ultimately led to BioWare working on Anthem, which had its own troubles during development before coming out to a negative critical and commercial reception.
Before Anthem’s release, however, EA had also decided to turning Dragon Age into a live-service game. According to Schreier, creative director Mike Laidlaw made the announcement to the development team in October 2017, before also revealing that he was resigning from the company. Laidlaw’s position was then taken up by former art director Matt Goldman. Development resumed on the Dragon Age game, which was internally titled Morrison.
While Anthem was ultimately released to then flop in the market, the Morrison project was still being worked on. According to Schreier, some of the employees at BioWare started referring to Morrison as “Anthem with dragons”.
In 2020, the decision was once again made to turn the next Dragon Age back into a single-player game. However, this decision came with a caveat. Instead of giving the development team time to go back to pre-production and lay some important groundwork for the title that would eventually become Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the studio was instead forced to change the game’s core structure and figure out other aspects of making a single-player game on the fly.
An internal test build of the Dragon Age game also led to quite a few causes for concern. Playtesters noted dissatisfaction with the lack of meaningful choices that players could make. This was largely because, in its previous form as a multiplayer game, the Dragon Age title couldn’t offer players too many diverging choices. This led to the game being delayed a few times, and in 2023, the team behind the next Mass Effect game was also brought in to help finish development of the title.
The addition of this team, however, led to other problems revolving around internal problems between personnel at the office. The Mass Effect directors, for instance, believed that the leadership behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn’t doing a good enough job, and started excluding them from important meetings. The Mass Effect team also started making sweeping changes to the game.
This friction between the two teams harkens back to when former lead writer David Gaider spoke about EA preferring the Mass Effect franchise over Dragon Age. “It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,” said Gaider. “But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.”
Playtesters, as well as the leadership behind Mass Effect, also ordered a full rewrite of the story in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, complaining about the original tone of the game being too snarky. This would also lead to inconsistent tone in the game’s writing, which was another one of the criticisms that would be levelled at the RPG. Towards the end of the game’s development, BioWare was also hit with layoffs, which would have further adverse effects on the studio’s morale.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard came out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details.
