Former BioWare lead UX designer Bruno Porrio revealed details about the development of Dragon Age: The Veilguard during a panel at Game Developer’s Conference 2025. As caught by GamesRadar, Porrio spoke about the combat system of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and feedback from the QA team that was testing the combat out.
Porrio talks about the combat system by describing the “primers” and “detonators” concept that BioWare has been using for quite a few games now, including Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem. As part of the system, players can “prime” their targets up by using various abilities; these opponents can then be “detonated” by using another ability that causes massive single-target or area damage.
He spoke about the QA testers on Dragon Age: The Veilguard being confused by some of the concepts in the game’s combat, some of which came down to how the developers had been designing the game’s interface. The original plan, according to Porrio, was: “‘okay, if we’re not obtrusive, players are not going to be overwhelmed.'” However, this ended up not working out, and players stopped noticing things on the top left and top right corners of the screen.
“So much confusion around detonation,” Porrio said. “There was a lot of confusion, and players weren’t really utilizing the detonations.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released back in October 2024 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. As its name might imply, the game is a follow-up to the Dragon Age franchise, the last game having come out all the way back in 2014 in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
While there was a fair bit of immediate success for Dragon Age: The Veilguard on release, with SteamDB indicating an all-time peak concurrent player count of almost 90,000 players, popularity of the game has fallen off quite a bit since then. At the time of writing, the RPG still has a relatively healthy player base, with a 24-hour peak of around 2,655 players.
Ultimately, EA revealed back in January that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had underperformed according to the publisher’s expectations. In an earnings report, EA revealed that around 1.5 million players had played Dragon Age: The Veilguard as of December 2024, missing projections by around 50 percent.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson believes that the lack of success of Dragon Age: The Veilguard can be attributed to the fact that it is a purely single-player title with no online features. During a quarterly earnings call, Wilson said that the game needed some “shared-world features” in order to attract an audience that seek online games.
“To break beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” said Wilson. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played; however, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”
For more details about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, check out our review. Also check out our thoughts on what happened with the RPG.
