Dragon Age veteran defends studio's attempt to make something different with Anthem: "BioWare's always been changing"

Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who had been at BioWare for over two decades working on iconic games, recently defended the studio's swing (and miss) with Anthem, the exosuit-boasting looter shooter that was both a massive departure for the developer and a big failure.

When asked if he wanted to set the record straight about anything, in an interview with Destin Legarie reflecting on Anthem's recent shutdown, Darrah mentioned how a lot of people would come "out of the woodwork" around launch to say things like, "'See, I told you so'" and "'BioWare should have never made Anthem because they are a single-player RPG maker.'"

"My feeling is that BioWare's always been changing," he explained, pointing to every other successful pivot the studio's made. "I mean, by that argument, we should have never made Neverwinter Nights because we were a 2D RPG maker. We should never have made Mass Effect because we were a tactical RPG maker, not an action RPG maker. So, I don't know that that argument holds a lot of weight for me. Studios evolve and they try new things. Was Anthem too big of a reach? Yeah, for sure. But could you tell at the time? I don't know. I don't know that you could."

Elsewhere, he said that "it's easy to blame EA and certainly they deserve a bunch of blame for Anthem, but it's not all their fault."

The maligned BioWare looter shooter met its unfortunate end this week at the hands of a server shutdown, prompting the Stop Killing Games initiative to further speak up about its campaign: "You as the customer should have the final say as to when you're done with a game, not the company."

Dragon Age veteran says scrapped Anthem Next "could have been" up there with No Man's Sky's legendary turnaround