It's a real pity what's become of Dragon Age. Once a pillar of BioWare alongside Mass Effect, the series is now in the nether regions of the zeitgeist, thanks in no small part to the commercial failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The long-gestating sequel suffered a number of issues, and one of the central creators behind the whole franchise suggests a few reasons as to why.
In a new YouTube video (below), Mark Darrah, a lead developer across every installment of the fantasy RPG series (who announced his departure from BioWare in late 2020), broke down why and how The Veilguard wound up failing. Right off the top, he points toward stretched senior staff.
"The project ran without its most senior leadership when I was on Anthem, from 2017 until 2019," he explains. Next, then, were a number of delays, where the goalposts weren't moved far enough away to adequately get the game into a shippable state.
"The game spent a lot of time really close to its perceived release date," Darrah says. "The game changed release dates a lot of times, and the consequence of that is that the team always was quite close to its current release date."
Despite Dragon Age 4 "slipping a tonne," the deadline was always pushed in "little steps" rather than given considerable room to breathe. This created a situation where the team couldn't take an eagle's eye view of the project.
"There was never a time when the project was way in the future," Darrah recalls, "and things could be brought back, looked back, burned down, and looked at in a brand new light."
These issues sprang from, and were exacerbated by, the need for BioWare to fit into EA's annualization approach. Essentially, EA wanted to publish something from the studio every year. When your remit is chunky role-playing games, you can see how this would be difficult.
At one point, he says, BioWare's slate had Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and Dragon Age 4 coming out yearly from 2013 onward. This didn't happen, and delays on each formed a domino effect that led, in part, to The Veilguard arriving in late 2024, to a muted response.
Now the future's uncertain for the studio and the series. Mass Effect 5 is apparently happening, but we've heard next to nothing for years now. Hopefully one day we see Dragon Age make a roaring return – just don't expect it any time soon.
