According to Gaider, EA had a preference for the sci-fi franchise rather than Dragon Age‘s fantasy settings and more strategic gameplay. He wrote about the marketing team also having the same preference since they were unsure of how to market a dark fantasy franchise like Dragon Age, while Mass Effect‘s sci-fi trappings and more action-oriented gameplay were more marketable.

“While I was at BioWare, EA *always* preferred Mass Effect, straight up,” wrote Gaider. “Their Marketing team liked it more. It was modern. It had action. They never quite knew what to do with [Dragon Age], and whenever DA outperformed ME, ME got the excuses. If you ask me, it was always just shy of the axe since DA Origins.”

With his post, Gaider was responding to a fan of the Dragon Age franchise who commented on the sense that EA seemingly had a preference for Mass Effect even from the perspective of someone outside of the industry. A follow-up question was asked about whether the marketing team’s inability to figure out how to work with the Dragon Age franchise led to each game being quite different from its predecessor.

“Maybe in part,” responded Gaider. “I’d say the biggest reason was that, while I was there, the BioWare teams were bad at overreaction. They’d take the feedback/criticism to heart – both our own and the fans’ – and generally fixed that but also over-corrected. And then there was EA’s influence on top of that, yes.”

The first game in the Dragon Age franchise, Dragon Age: Origins, was released all the way back in 2009. Several DLC releases followed, and it also received a full-fledged sequel in 2011 with Dragon Age 2. The series then went quiet for a while as BioWare started wrapping up the Mass Effect trilogy before getting Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014.

The most recent game in the franchise was last year’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, released in October 2024 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. As for some insight into some of the game design decisions that were made around The Veilguard, check out our coverage of the UX designer’s comments on changing the game’s interface due to feedback from QA teams.

Unfortunately, Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed in the market according to EA’s earnings report back in January. EA CEO Andrew Wilson revealed in February that he believed it was because of the RPG’s lack of multiplayer and shared-world features. According to Wilson, despite its warm critical reception, the game failed to resonate with a broader audience in the competitive market.

While I was at BioWare, EA *always* preferred Mass Effect, straight up Their Marketing team liked it more. It was modern. It had action. They never quite knew what to do with DA, and whenever DA outperformed ME, ME got the excuses. If you ask me, it was always just shy of the axe since DA Origins.

— David Gaider (@davidgaider.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T07:11:01.939Z

Maybe in part? I'd say the biggest reason was that, while I was there, the BioWare teams were bad at overreaction. They'd take the feedback/criticism to heart – both our own and the fans' – and generally fixed that but also overcorrected.And then there was EA's influence on top of that, yes.

— David Gaider (@davidgaider.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T07:57:50.921Z

All of that, combined with the Dragon Age franchise’s aforementioned hiatus, meant there was a lot riding on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Now that the action RPG is out, it looks like BioWare has very much brought itself back on track. The game has, of course, not been immune to criticism following its release, but when all is said and done, it’s clear that BioWare has, at long last, once again delivered what so many of us have been hoping to see from the studio for years- a legitimately good single-player RPG. That this is the developer’s best game in a long time is abundantly clear- but how does it rank against the Dragon Age franchise’s own highest highs? Specifically, is The Veilguard good enough to surpass the legendary Dragon Age: Origins?

That’s obviously a tall order, because yes, legendary really is the right word for the 2009 classic. BioWare has delivered some insanely incredible games over the course of its illustrious history, from Mass Effect 2 to Baldur’s Gate 2 to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and without a shadow of doubt, Dragon Age: Origins belongs in that group as well. With Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition (mostly with the latter), the series has reached some pretty high highs, but as many of its fans will tell you, Origins is probably still its peak. So is The Veilguard good enough to match or even surpass those heights?

In some key areas, you can almost instantly answer that question with a resounding “no”, which is likely what some Dragon Age purists will be doing. From its stylized art style and its action-driven combat to its relatively lighter tone and more, The Veilguard differs from Origins (and other previous Dragon Age games) in ways that a sizeable portion of the series’ fanbase will tell you are a little hard to defend. The dark fantasy aesthetic and tactical CRPG-esque combat of Dragon Age: Origins had a big role to play in why that game was as beloved as it was, so to see The Veilguard deviating from that so significantly hasn’t necessarily sat well with everyone.

Then again, a lot of that is highly subjective, because there are many who would argue that Dragon Age: Origins feels a little dated. As mentioned, its combat was widely beloved back in the day, but owing to its very nature, it’s also not the most accessible. At the same time, each new Dragon Age instalment has featured a new and overhauled combat system, which means not having Origins-style tactical combat that emphasis pausing, planning, and playing with multiple different characters isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for a significant chunk of the fanbase.

In fact, it’s for that very reason that many will likely prefer The Veilguard’s combat. Its not the deepest or most complex system, and in removing playable party members and adopting action-driven mechanics, it turns itself into more of a hack-and-slash game in its moment-to-moment gameplay than a tactical RPG. But it’s fun. It’s fun in a way that many felt Origins wasn’t, and yes, it does only get better as you get deeper into the game, unlock a wider pool of abilities, gather more companions, and get increasingly comfortable with the systems at play.

Another area where Dragon Age: Origins feels dated – in much more obvious and inarguable fashion, in fact – is its visuals, as you’d expect from a game a decade and a half old. Of course, admittedly, The Veilguard has its critics in this area, as well. In particular, the game’s stylized and more vibrant aesthetic has proven controversial with a fair few players, not least because of how much it contributes to its tonal shift compared to past titles. At the same time, however, there are also many who have definitely jived with its look, while beyond the art style, The Veilguard is easily the most technically impressive Dragon Age game to date, featuring some of the most stunning sights and sounds this series has ever delivered, and doing it all in wonderfully optimized fashion across all platforms.

Another one of The Veilguard’s strengths that bears mentioning is its cast of companion characters. That, of course, has been one of BioWare’s biggest strengths for as long as anyone can remember, but even by the studio’s high standards, Veilguard’s core cast of characters is one of the best we’ve seen in BioWare history. Dragon Age: Origins was obviously no slouch in this area either, thanks to the likes of Morrigan and Alistair and Loghain and what have you, but this may very well be that one area where The Veilguard comes out ahead without any caveats.

There are, of course, some key areas where The Veilguard does stumble in ways that hold it back. Its choice and consequence mechanics don’t feel as impactful as you want, for instance. Without going into spoilers, we can confidently say that the game has an incredible final couple of hours where player choice is heavily emphasized, a la Mass Effect 2’s beloved Suicide Mission, but that same focus isn’t to be found consistently across the length of the entire experience.

The quality of the writing, too, is decidedly a step down. From interactions between characters not always landing with the right impact to Solas not being as prominent as many would have hoped, to the main villains not being the game’s strongest points, The Veilguard’s story doesn’t always knock the ball out of the park. For many hardcore series fans, meanwhile, it’s also disappointing to see how little The Veilguard takes player decisions throughout past instalments into account. During character creation, other than a handful of Inquisition-related decisions, there’s nothing else that The Veilguard carries forward or takes into account, as a result of which it ends up feeling more disconnected to its predecessors than you would hope, often to its detriment. All of that, combined with the game’s aforementioned divisiveness with its tone, aesthetic, and what have you, does add up, especially because of how important these things are to a Dragon Age game.

So is The Veilguard good enough to be better than Origins? Though there are some areas where it is decidedly better, thanks to its undeniable shakiness in others, you cannot confidently call it a better game than Origins, which is flat out one of the greatest RPGs ever made. But is it a legitimately good Dragon Age game? It absolutely is- it’s a very different take on the franchise, yes, but it’s not an unsuccessful one. It’s certainly one of BioWare’s best games in a long time, potentially the best Dragon Age game since Origins, and definitely at least good enough to be mentioned in the same breath.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

That’s as per Jon Epler, creative director on The Veilguard, who said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that though he would “love” to see a remastered collection of the first three Dragon Age titles similar to 2021’s Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, it would be a much more “challenging” project due to engine-related issues.

Specifically, unlike the original Mass Effect trilogy – which was built entirely on the flexibility and developer-friendly Unreal Engine – the first three Dragon Age titles were not only built on different engines – with BioWare’s internal Eclipse Engine used for Origins and 2, and EA’s Frostbite for Inquisition – those engines are also more complicated to work with, especially for a remastered collection meant to bring all three games together.

Either way, Epler says you shouldn’t completely discount the possibility regardless.

“I think I’m one of about maybe 20 people left at BioWare who’s actually used Eclipse,” he said. “It’s something that’s not going to be as easy Mass Effect, but we do love the original games. Never say never, I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

Meanwhile, Epler has also confirmed that BioWare has no plans for post-launch DLC for The Veilguard, with BioWare now shifting its full focus to the next Mass Effect as its main project. Read more on that through here.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

Block Your Shots

In some shooters, like Left 4 Dead, the AI is intelligent enough to move out of the way of your shots. In others, like the infamous Daikatana, your companions, Superfly Johnson and Mikiko, will run in front of your shots. Friendly fire is also enabled, so they can take damage and fall amid their stupidity, which is probably their least annoying trait.

Responding to an article by The Guardian about a game demo making use of AI-generated dialogue, Gaider says that every time a team he worked with believed that they could make use of AI-generated dialogue for games, it turned out lackluster.

“Each time, the team collectively believed – believed down at their CORE – that this was possible,” says Gaider in a lengthy Tweet thread about the subject. “Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was… lackluster. Soulless.”

Gaider goes on to talk about how the fault doesn’t lie with the dialogue itself, but rather, the fact that procedural generation of quests for games result in what he describes as “something *shaped* like a quest”. Rather than employing much in the way of storytelling or game design, these quests largely come down to simplistic ones, like asking players to kill X number of Y enemies.

Gaider describes the content generated by AI as superficial content that does little more than cover the bases of being a quest, but doesn’t go any further.

Each time, the team collectively believed – believed down at their CORE – that this was possible. Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was… lackluster. Soulless.

— David Gaider (@davidgaider) May 29, 2023

Taking to Twitter, Gaider said that, even in 2016, he felt a resentment from other parts of the studio.

“Even BioWare, which built its success on a reputation for good stories and characters, slowly turned from a company that vocally valued its writers to one where we were… quietly resented, with a reliance on expensive narrative seen as the ‘albatross’ holding the company back,” Gaider said on Twitter.

David Gaider worked with BioWare for 17 years before his departure back in 2016. Gaider worked as the lead writer for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. BioWare is currently working on its fourth Dragon Age game, titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.

Recently, former BioWare veteran Mark Darrah returned the studio as a consultant to help development on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. EA is also reportedly bringing in the Mass Effect team to help on the game’s development.

Maybe that sounds like a heavy charge, but it's what I distinctly felt up until I left in 2016. Suddenly all anyone in charge was asking was "how do we have LESS writing?" A good story would simply happen, via magic wand, rather than be something that needed support and priority.

— David Gaider (@davidgaider) May 3, 2023

It seems, however, that BioWare Points are being retired. A Reddit user posted an email from the publisher which stated that BioWare Points would no longer be available on Origin from October 11th. As a result, DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 are now free to claim. This doesn’t apply to Multiplayer Packs for Mass Effect 3 and currencies like Crystals and Platinum for other titles remain.

Those with points remaining can use them to purchase Multiplayer Packs in Mass Effect 3. However, after October 11th, packs must be purchased with Credits. And yes, those who already purchased content with BioWare Points will still have access to them.

While not technically an official announcement, I can confirm that paid single-player DLC for Mass Effect 3 – like Citadel, Omega and Leviathan – can now be claimed for free. The same applies to Mass Effect 2 with its Lair of the Shadow Broker, Kasumi – Stolen Memory, Overlord, Arrival, and so on. So if you’ve never played the DLC for either of these games or the first two Dragon Age titles, now is the time.

On November 18th, Exo One, Fae Tactics, My Friend Pedro and Undungeon arrive for cloud, consoles and PC while Deeeer Simulator and Mortal Shell debut for all three platforms on November 23rd. Evil Genius 2: World Domination closes out the month, releasing on November 30th for cloud, consoles and PC.

Of course, a number of titles will also be leaving on November 30th, both on Xbox Game Pass and EA Play so subscribers are advised to play them now while they can. Said titles include:

• Call of the Sea (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• FIFA 19 (Console and PC)
• Football Manager 2021 (PC)
• Football Manager 2021 Xbox Edition (Console and PC)
• Haven (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Hello Neighbor (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Morkredd (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Va-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC)

Meanwhile, Destiny 2: Beyond Light is set to leave cloud and consoles on December 8th.