Bioware veteran and a former long-time producer on the Dragon Age series, Mark Darrah, reckons the struggling video game industry could borrow a thing or two from the way movies make money.

In a recent video posted to his own channel, Darrah compared the way both industries go to market. Movies normally make the bulk of their revenue in theatres when people purchase tickets, but they also extend their commercial life by hitting ancillary markets like DVD sales, digital pay-per-view, or streaming services. Not to mention the product placement that sometimes makes their road to profitability a bit easier.

Games on the other hand don't have it so clean. Unless you're dealing with free-to-play titles, games are sold once and can then try to elongate the time in which they make money through microtransactions and expansions.

Darrah argues there's a difference between a movie and a game hitting subscription services because Netflix, let's say, usually pays a one-time fee to secure a movie it doesn't already own, while game services pay developers based on engagement. But as far as I could tell, Xbox Game Pass, at least, does offer a fixed fee to devs in order to secure games for a period of time - so that's a stream of revenue not too different from how movies operate.

So, what else should games be borrowing? "Product placement is a really small part of video games right now, compared to movies and television," Darrah says, pointing to how some movies almost break even this way. "Maybe it could be a larger part of development. Maybe there are relationships there that could be formed."

"I think that the over reliance on microtransactions is overemphasizing certain genres and preventing other genres from flourishing. So is it worth a think? I think that it is. Do I have a great model? I don't. Not yet. But it's something the industry should be considering because everything can't be a live service as we've, I hope, proven quite definitively over the last year and a half. And if our monetization is coming primarily from live services, we run the risk of ending up in a world where there are no AAA games that aren't live services," he concludes.

"It's a really compelling place to be left in": Dragon Age fans aren't giving up on the RPG – they're expanding it

Voice actors don't always get the credit they deserve. Despite bringing characters to life and then representing games at events, they're sometimes treated as mere footnotes in the development process. A performer on Dragon Age: Inquisition credits two stars of Baldur's Gate 3 with helping to raise the status of such contributors across the board.

"Video game acting is, at times, hard, demanding, and also challenging, and it's also joyous, and it's filled with, literally, blood and sweat and tears, especially if you're on the [performance capture] stage," Alix Wilton Regan, who voiced the female Inquisitor in Inquisition, told GamesRadar+ at the BAFTA Games Awards. "So video game actors, they deserve their flowers, because we help pull the audience in to elevate the writing, the animation, the direction, the tone."

Truer words are rarely spoken. Voice actors give nuance and personality to the cast, deepening the narrative and creating a closer connection with the audience. They can, and often do, help elevate great games into masterpieces.

"I give a massive shout-out here to the Baldur's Gate 3 crew, because they were the ones who made all the other video game actors sit up and take note and realize, 'Yeah, actually, we are loved, our work does have value, and we too deserve to stand up and be counted,' Regan continues.

"I've literally said this to, like, Jennifer English's face, or Neil Newbon. I've been up to Ben Starr, and I'm like, 'You changed the game,'" she adds. Starr, ever the charmer, turned it around on her by pointing out that she voiced the Inquisitor, a huge role in a widely-regarded RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 might be more pertinent to recent memory, but the third Dragon Age installment was the fantasy adventure du jour for a while there. It's hard to imagine any of these projects without these performers involved, and long may their success continue.

Baldur's Gate 3 was "lightning in a bottle," Astarion actor says, and "proved a lot of things" that big companies "who are just really chasing the money need to learn from"

For 16 years, Dragon Age fans have flocked to the fantasy world of Thedas. Across the series' four RPGs, players have overcome betrayal and one disaster after the next; becoming unlikely heroes with powerful allies. True to the spirit of the series, when Dragon Age's creative team was disbanded in 2025 following the launch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, those same fans quietly rallied to carry its legacy forward through a fan-made compendium.

With a decade of development hell and ballooned costs behind it, the fourth mainline Dragon Age had an uphill climb to be labeled "profitable" by EA. Hopes were high, despite the deck stacked against its developers at BioWare, but unfortunately, sales weren't high enough. Expectations were missed by half. Six months later, BioWare laid off the over 100 developers who worked on Dragon Age, effectively icing the series.

With the future of Dragon Age unclear, many took heart in a Bluesky post by writer Sheryl Chee. "There's fic. There's art. There's the connections we made through the games and because of the games," it read. "Technically EA/BioWare owns the IP but you can't own an idea, no matter how much they want to. DA isn't dead because it belongs to you now."

In February 2025, 7 fans (credited by their Tumblr handles) formed the "Mod Team," to helm an ambitious homage: a third volume for The World of Thedas tie-in encyclopedias, whose first two volumes were published by BioWare and Dark Horse Comics in 2013 and 2015.

"Creating something fun by fans, for fans, felt like embracing [Chee's words]," Dalishlicious, the founding mod, tells me. "All of a sudden we got to see more of this continent than we ever had in the three previous games combined, even if limited to one game's runtime. Which means we have a lot of new pieces to play with, but not necessarily answers to go with them," said Ser Atlantisite, the mod who led the art group. "As a fan drawn in initially by Dragon Age's theme of 'we have no answers, only legends and interpretations,' it's a really compelling place to be left in."

Every story has its heroes

During the next 10 months, the Mod Team recruited an additional 30 writers and 39 artists to produce 125 art pieces and over 100,000 words.

"It was a lot of managing in different segments by various mods and coordinating through a Discord server with deadlines, reminders, extensions, and checkpoints," formatting mod DalishRanger explains. "Not to mention various technical issues when compiling the book at different stages, which we've affectionately nicknamed Blights (a reference to the disease-like phenomenon in Thedas)."

The team didn't want the end result to be a standard fanzine, either. Meetings were held to determine how it could sit next to the original volumes authentically, in style, tone, layout, and detail. At the same time, they wanted contributors to have ownership over the project. It was a delicate balance — a "process,'" as social media mod Poppy, who saw every step as the first to join Dalishlicious, phrases it.

"It did help that there was a lot of teamwork from all parties involved," she says. "Our contributors were joined in groups to tackle their chapters and I would often see the conversations flowing and everyone was super excited. There were hurdles in our way, sometimes life happens, but in the end it all worked out."

The World of Thedas Volume 3 was completed in December. Just in time for release on Dragon Age Day, on December 4

Studying each page, it's impossible not to admire the passion holding the book together. Dragon Age may be on ice, yet for almost a year, over 70 people chose to dedicate spare time to making their love for the series tangible. It's not only an answer to Sheryl Chee's Bluesky post, but an embodiment of it.

Perhaps more importantly, it's a needed reminder that success and value ought not be solely measured by financial profit, and that executives aren't the final arbiters of artistic legacies and human worth. They may like us to believe they are; according to the State of the Industry 2026 report, one in four developers were laid off in the past two years. Ubisoft alone shut down 2 studios, canceled 6 projects in development, and laid off over 200 staff in January. Meta cut 1,500 people from its Reality Labs division. And tech companies across the board continue to gut the people who built them. The year has barely begun.

The great beyond

In this light, it's easy to ask ourselves what the point of anything is. Why invest ourselves in an industry that will not invest in us? But every now and then, something like World of Thedas Volume 3 comes along. A reminder that most people do what they do because they believe in the ability to connect, communicate with, and comfort people in their lives and people they'll never meet.

"I loved Dragon Age so much that I applied for the zine before I actually played [Veilguard]," graphics mod Epilogue shares. They ended up live-streaming their playthrough of it for their fellow mods on Discord.

Every mod cites Dragon Age's unique take on the fantasy genre, storytelling, and characters as elements of the series' values. Many of the contributors to World of Thedas Volume 3, including Poppy and Epilogue, only journeyed to Thedas after Veilguard's release in 2024. Others arrived at the fictional continent two decades ago. But it's clear that though they came for BioWare's worldbuilding, Dragon Age's ability to reflect themselves back at them and its strong fan community are what will fuel them to hang around for 2026 and beyond.

In fact, we know at least one fan who's plotting the next instalment at weekly tabletop games with friends. "As a gamemaster," DalishRanger explained, "if EA won't give us a Dragon Age 5, I will!"

Check out all the best RPGs to play while you wait for all the new games coming in 2026!

David Gaider - the lead writer on the first three Dragon Age games and the man frequently credited as the architect of Thedas - wanted people to have very strong reactions towards every Dragon Age 2 companion.

People have passionate opinions, good and bad, about every aspect of Dragon Age 2, from its action-oriented combat to its story that has less to do with saving the entire world and focuses more on a singular city's struggles. When it comes to the sequel's cast, those heated fan reactions were part of the plan.

"If some people are ambivalent about a character, I'm like, I guess I didn't really do my job," Gaider says in an interview with TheGamer looking back at the RPG. "All I want to do when I'm writing a complex character is be able to justify their world viewpoint in my head. If I can make that make sense in my head, whether it's Anders or Loghain, then I know that I've got it."

Part of that emphasis on strong, sometimes divisive characters came from Dragon Age 2's slightly stripped back stakes. "Do we really need to have a big bad? Do the stakes always need to be [that] you're saving the entire world? Can we do something that's a bit more character-driven and more about surviving?" are all the questions Gaider posed during the game's production.

"It's very hard to make a player care about a fantasy country or fantasy world, but it's easy to make them care about a person," he adds. "That's all the followers were for us, six different ways for us to get the player invested in the plot."

Dragon Age 2 was originally planned to be "much bigger" before EA made other demands, former series lead says, even though BioWare "did not know how to make a small game"

As Dragon Age 2 turns 15, because time slows for nobody, former lead writer on the series David Gaider has taken some time to reflect on the slightly troubled sequel. A victim of publisher demands, the follow-up to Origins didn't quite land how anyone hoped, due in no small part to constantly shifting goalposts.

Remembering the development of Dragon Age 2 in an interview with The Gamer, Gaider recalls the period being a "big jumble," thanks to EA. "I had started plotting out the Dragon Age: Origins sequel. I was going into the whole thing with Solas and the stuff that eventually ended up in Inquisition," he says. "And then there was a sudden change."

That "sudden change" was EA looking for something from BioWare to release during the fiscal year ending in March 2011. Star Wars: The Old Republic had been delayed, and a full game seemed too ambitious, therefore DLC for Origins became the plan.

"I was just thrown because I was like, 'Oh, what do I want to do here?' I guess I could set up the story beats to come, like, set up the exalted march on Kirkwall," Gaider says. Then, another curveball arrived: "It was only as we were starting to put that together that I remember being told, no, it's not expansion-sized. It's a full sequel that we're going to do at the time of an expansion."

Oh dear. This led to a lot of internal scrambling and long hours, as Gaider and the other lead devs pushed to make something worth shipping in a fraction of the type typically needed. BioWare's own design philosophies were part of the problem.

"BioWare as a team did not know how to make a small game. We planned for a big game," Gaider remembers. "And when we're told this is a full sequel, initially for the first four months of work, we're assuming that it was going to be much bigger."

In one instance, he talks about going into a writers' room where all sorts of quest-lines were laid out on sticky-notes, and just taking away chunks. "I had to take out half of them," he states.

This led to a smaller-feeling sequel – no open-world, more concentrated doses of exploration, and less backstory all round – but one that still resonated with some fans. We eventually got a grander, more epic sequel in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Dragon Age 2 serves as the cult entry. I consider it the Final Fantasy 8 of the series, and honestly, there are much worse results from this kind of situation.

Dragon Age and Anthem veteran argues risk-averse AAA games have become "too homogenous" and "soulless," which might lead fans to accept generative AI.

Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah, who led both the Dragon Age series and Anthem, has argued that risk-averse big-budget games are potentially prepping some people for a generative AI future.

The BioWare veteran discussed the state of AAA gaming in a new YouTube video, explaining that companies have been putting out more by-the-numbers products as budgets have ballooned in recent years. Modern blockbuster games can now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, and Darrah says the "effect of that is everything becomes more and more beige, more and more similar."

Those sometimes unsustainable budgets also mean publishers "take less and less risks" in an effort to create games that can appeal to, or at least not offend, the widest audience possible, Darrah says. But in reality, it leads to lots of products that are "too homogenous." Assassin's Creed, Horizon, and Hogwarts Legacy all largely follow the same formula, for example, despite being made by totally different companies.

"One of the reasons why some consumers may be willing to accept generative AI is… them feeling like, to some degree, a lot of media has become soulless already," he added, "that the process of squeezing art through a commercial lens has already sanded away all of the grit, all of the soul, all of the spirit of the media they consume. So, why not just have a robot create it?"

Darrah is quick to point out that he doesn't agree with the sentiment, "but maybe that's what's been happening."

Of course, a large portion of the public isn't as willing to accept generative AI 'art.' I mean, just look at the backlash Larian Studios received for exploring AI tech in Divinity earlier this month.

Witchfire CEO says Divinity devs are "definitely not evil" for exploring AI, but the backlash stems from people wanting "to have contact with other humans through art"

One of the four actors behind Dragon Age Inquisition's protagonist reckons the character's story is done and dusted, but part of her also thinks it's possible that BioWare channels its inner Marvel Studios and pulls every hero out of retirement/The Fade for one last adventure.

Alex Wilton Regan - the actor behind Cyberpunk 2077's Alt Cunningham, Perfect Dark's (RIP) Joanna Dark, and Dragon Age's Inquisitor - told GamesRadar+ about her hopes for the fantasy series' future at MCM Comic Con London.

"I would say that the thing that kind of moves me the most is just that I'm very aware that The Inquisitor's probably not coming back, which is really sad," she lamented. "But what an ending, you know, what an ending. And what a journey for The Inquisitor."

Still, the possibility of a return isn't totally impossible in the actor's mind. "There's definitely a world in which you bring in, I would say, all of the protagonists, you know," Regan continued. "Inquisitor, Rook, Hawke, everyone."

Obviously, bringing back every Dragon Age hero is a bit more complicated than simply opening up a few Doctor Strange portals considering the Hero of Ferelden and Hawke are possibly dead by the time we reach Dragon Age The Veilguard, depending on what choices players made, but Regan doesn't mind.

"Maybe something wild and wacky like that where they all just walk out of the Fade or something and, I don't know, have to work together Avengers Assemble-style. That kind of thing."

Also, when asked about the possibility of a backstory for Dorian, she simply gushed that "Dorian's hot, guys. Dorian is hot." A woman with taste, I see.

Regardless, we might need to wait a while more before hearing anything about the series' since BioWare is all in on the development of Mass Effect 5 for the foreseeable future. It also doesn't help that Dragon Age The Veilguard kind of bombed.

Even after EA let Dragon Age: The Veilguard out of multiplayer hell, BioWare reportedly still had to rush to target "as wide a market as possible," which feels like the opposite approach of great RPGs.

Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah says that EA could potentially look to sell off its "huge repository of dormant IPs" following the $55 billion acquisition.

Assuming the acquisition is approved, EA is going private, with investment firms Affinity Partners and Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) buying the company in a deal expected to close in the first quarter of FY2027. With that, however, EA will be taking on $20 billion of debt in order to help finance it.

Responding to this news in a video on his YouTube channel (below), Darrah, who previously served as executive producer on Dragon Age 1, 2, and Inquisition, as well as Anthem, discusses the possibility of EA selling some of its IPs in the aftermath of the buyout.

Selling IPs isn't something that EA has historically done, and "the reason for that," Darrah suggests, is "in large part because the individuals who would be responsible for making those decisions, for looking for those opportunities, are actually incentivized to not take risks. They are incentivized to not be the person who sold an IP that then turned into a billion-dollar franchise." Doing "nothing," he adds, is what "keeps them from getting into trouble."

Times are set to change though, which could lead to those incentives changing, for example "to shed costs or generate revenue if at all possible," especially if it was a case of trying to "generate revenue to pay down as much debt as we can as quickly as we can" to ensure that the company isn't in "a dangerous position."

Darrah continues: "People who have spent their careers trying to keep their heads down and not do anything that might get them in trouble in the future might suddenly find themselves in a situation where what they really need to do is sell as much as they can.

"EA has a huge repository of dormant IPs that are just sitting there dormant," he continues. "It seems unlikely that the new resulting structure is going to be eager to suddenly revive a bunch of those IPs. So, one option might be to sell the whole lot of them for $100 million if you could get it, because $100 million can come off the debt. You might even see them toying with the idea of shutting some of their existing studios. Maybe they shut them down, but maybe they look for opportunities to sell off entire studios or entire groups."

But what IPs could potentially be sold? Darrah reckons that keeping EA Sports intact "makes a ton of sense," but it might not for EA Entertainment – the side of the company that deals with the non-sports releases, such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect. "You could imagine potentially all of EA Entertainment being sold off to another group with deep pockets, like, say, Sony. This deal has been in the works for a while. It is conceivable that EA's new structure was intentionally conceived with this action in mind."

Alternatively, he suggests, "you could imagine that what happens is this new EA plucks all the parts it wants out of EA Entertainment and then sells off whatever is left over," meaning we could see a "collection of studios that either haven't shipped a game ever, or in a long time, and studios which have had a lot of trouble, or studios that make games that are expensive to make, or studios that simply make the kind of games that this new company isn't interested in making anymore. And rather than shutting those studios down, it makes a lot of financial sense to try to sell those off."

Obviously, Darrah doesn't know if that's going to happen – and it doesn't mean that "suddenly the Dragon Age IP is going to be up for sale" – we'll just have to wait and see what EA's approach is.

Former Dragon Age director says it's "hard to imagine" BioWare pivoting from "very progressive messaging to having the reverse" following EA's $55 billion buyout, and public perception not being "apocalyptically bad" if it did.

Ex-BioWare veteran Mark Darrah – who served as a project director and executive producer on Dragon Age 1, 2, and Inquisition – has been discussing the potential impact of the proposed $55 billion buyout of EA, noting that it's "hard to imagine" the DA and Mass Effect studio shifting from "having very progressive messaging to having the reverse."

Assuming that the acquisition goes ahead, EA is going to be owned by investment firms Affinity Partners and Silver Lake, in addition to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), and speaking in a new video on his YouTube channel (below), Darrah suggests that there could be "changes at EA in terms of structure, in terms of the games that they're making."

Specifically, he notes, "when you look at the investments that the Saudi group has been making before now, they've been buying a lot of sports-related things." With that in mind, "EA Sports makes a ton of sense, fitting into that portfolio of investing in a lot of sports franchises" and so forth. That's on top of the fact that "EA Sports is where most of the cash is thrown off from the game making business. 75% of EA's money last year was made through live services, a ton of that were the Ultimate Teams from FIFA – or Football Club – and Madden."

However, there are also EA's other games. Even though The Sims has been "a good revenue source," for example, Darrah asks whether the series fits "into potentially the messaging desires of the three groups that are involved in the acquisition? Potentially not, but it's potentially not super out of position."

EA also has studios "that haven't shipped anything in a while, or have shipped things that didn't do very well," with Darrah adding that "the groups working on the Marvel games and, of course, BioWare, are, I think, going to be in a different position."

He continues: "If this is a PR move for the Saudi government as much as it is a financial one, the studios that don't have much of a track record, what you might do is just come in and put your thumb on the scale and push their messaging in directions that you want, in directions that make you look good, or at the very least steer them away from messaging that makes you look bad. But for the studios that have more of a track record, especially a track record that maybe doesn't line up with your own political views – again, BioWare – you're going to look at that studio and wonder how you make them fit into your new structure.

"It's hard to imagine that you have BioWare pivot from having very progressive messaging to having the reverse because it's what the government wants. It's hard to imagine that the public perception of a game that comes out of BioWare even if you do do that isn't apocalyptically bad," he suggests. "So in that case you either have to decide that you're willing to just leave it alone, or you have to think that they don't fit anymore within the goals of this new organization."

Darrah admits he doesn't know "how active this Saudi investment fund has been in pushing its politics into the groups that it invests in," but even so, he believes that "it is going to be a factor going forward."

Ex-BioWare veteran says EA's $55 billion buyout is "likely going to mean layoffs and studio closures and a dramatic reduction in people" thanks to that looming $20 billion of debt.

EA is officially going private as part of a $55 billion dollar deal led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's investment firm Affinity Partners. The deal will be partially financed by EA taking on $20 billion in debt – and as the industry wonders how the publisher will deal with that financial burden, BioWare fans in particular are terrified of what might await the beloved RPG studio in the future.

"The transaction will be funded," a press release explains, "by a combination of cash from each of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF's existing stake in EA, constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion, and $20 billion of debt financing fully and solely committed by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., $18 billion of which is expected to be funded at close."

You may have heard about leveraged buyouts funded by private equity in the past, and this is essentially how they work. An investor, or group of investors, puts up some amount of cash to buy a company, while the rest of the purchase price is funded through debt taken on by that company. In grossly simplified terms, once the deal closes, EA will have a $20 billion mortgage on itself.

No one yet knows precisely how EA will pay off that debt, but other leveraged buyouts have often been swiftly followed by money-saving efforts that, well… calling them "aggressive" would be a substantial understatement. As Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier notes on Bluesky, the EA deal "could mean mass layoffs, more aggressive monetization, and other big cost-cutting measures."

EA's success is propped up by massive franchises like its annual sports games, but the company also owns no shortage of beloved IP. Would the risk of another Titanfall happen when there's $20 billion in debt to pay off? Would a new Skate, whatever issues it might have, ever have been greenlit?

But nobody's more frightened of the possibilities than BioWare fans. The beloved studio has produced some of the most beloved RPGs of all time – the likes of Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age – but it hasn't had a bonafide hit in years. Finally getting to launch a single-player RPG last year seemed like a victory, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed financial expectations.

"It's over, Commander," as one thread on the Mass Effect subreddit laments, and you'll find a lot of similar sentiments in other comment threads across the internet. The general feeling among fans seems not to be fear about what might happen to BioWare with those financial concerns in mind – they're acting as if the studio is already dead, that Mass Effect 5 is already canceled, and they're mourning accordingly.

Goodbye BioWare, we had an exceptional run, even Andromeda. 💔

— @maisey.bsky.social (@maisey.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.201Z

If BioWare gets added to the pile of Origin, Westwood, Bullfrog, Maxis, and Pandemic, it will really help cement that EAs most meaningful legacy might be shutting down some of the greatest and most foundationally important teams in game development history. That's like killing the Avengers.

— @len.bsky.social (@len.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.215Z

I knew the future of Bioware was bleak, but I didn't think it was gonna be *this* bleak.

— @luke-garou.bsky.social (@luke-garou.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.187Z

Even if BioWare does survive whatever EA does in the future, there's one more concern with the company now owned by investors tied to Saudi Arabia and the US conservative political apparatus. Would BioWare's historic depiction of LGBTQ+ content remain intact? That's a concern even former Mass Effect and Dragon Age narrative designer Trick Weekes seems to share on social media.

Buyers: So your games... guns and football, yes?EA: Mmhmm, mmhmm, mostly guns and football, yep.Buyers: No gay stuff? No politics we're not going to like?EA: Haha, definitely not! Hey, could you give me one sec? I just need to shut down a studio real quick.kotaku.com/report-saudi...

— @trickweekes.bsky.social (@trickweekes.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T00:51:08.084Z

Of course, none of these concerns have yet come to fruition, and it's too early to tell what the future of EA will look like – frankly, it's impossible to predict what will happen because we've never seen a deal like it.

"$20,000,000,000 of debt financing is a shockingly large number to have to service," as games market analyst Mat Piscatella says on Bluesky, "while also transitioning from a public to private organization and all the implications that has on the people that work in it. We've obviously never seen anything like this at this scale in the industry before."

At least the best BioWare games will always be there.

It turns out that Dragon Age: Origins was never intended to evolve into a whole series of RPGs, as former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah reveals it was supposed to be "a standalone game."

In an interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays (below), which has been highlighted by PC Gamer, Darrah explains that this initial idea also meant that "a lot of threads" were placed in the 2009 game which ended up being a challenge for the devs to deal with later down the line when the series expanded.

"Dragon Age: Origins originally was intended as a standalone game," Darrah begins. "You can see this, if you play Dragon Age: Origins, knowing that it was intended to stand alone… There's a lot of threads that are cast out that kind of had to be abandoned because there could be werewolves all over the world. There might be a civil war happening underground in Orzammar."

Furthermore, he adds: "There's a bunch of stuff that was great to put out in a game that you never had to come back to, but then when we did come back to it, you had to sort of recover from that."

But why did the RPG end up spinning out into a whole series? The answer may not surprise you – money. "It's pretty much financial reasons more than anything," explains Darrah, before adding: "And I think that the franchise has been much more forward-looking ever since then."

Well, at least knowing that we weren't robbed of a whole series might offer some consolation to Dragon Age fans, who from the same interview have been given the crushing news that the idea of a remastered Dragon Age trilogy was apparently turned down, along with a Dragon Age: Origins remake. You win some, you lose some.

Even after EA let Dragon Age: The Veilguard out of multiplayer hell, BioWare reportedly still had to rush to target "as wide a market as possible," which feels like the opposite approach of great RPGs.

Dragon Age fans are understandably distraught over the news that publisher EA apparently rejected developer BioWare's offers to remaster the fantasy RPG series, so they're venting their frustration by covering Scotland in vague threats in the pixel art map Wplace.

TheGamer noticed that, after former BioWare producer Mark Darrah recently revealed EA apparently squashed the developer's hopes of making a Mass Effect-style remaster collection for Dragon Age, some fans have headed to Kirkwall, Scotland – Dragon Age 2's moody setting – to release tension. Or, they're doing so in the pixel canvas world map styled like r/Place, wPlace, and leaving behind anti-EA sentiment. And pro-yaoi sentiment.

"Fenhawke <3 yaoi <3," one artist said alongside sweet portraits of elf Fenris and protagonist Hawke, who are going to get married.

"Anders did nothing wrong," another creative scribbled about the mage who – spoilers! – is a mass murderer with a lobotomy.

"Fuck EA!" says another, more righteous wPlace designer, to whom other Dragon Age players write "so true" in response. It also appears that someone has begun painting a "THANK YOU BIOWARE" mural, but it's either unfinished, or my browser won't load the entirety of wPlace. The sentiment is there.

Anyway, I can understand why some Dragon Age players feel they have no choice but to express themselves through art – even Darrah said in his interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays that he feels like, "basically," EA is "against free money" here.

"EA's historically been [...] kind of against remasters," Darrah said. "It's strange."

BioWare considered paying a team to "do a remake" of Dragon Age: Origins, former executive producer reveals, and "there were lots of pitches" around upgrading the old RPG

Dragon Age: Origins is getting pretty old – the RPG will be 16 years old this November – but according to a former BioWare executive producer, "there were lots of pitches" surrounding a potential modern upgrade for the game, including the idea of a remake, that never came to be.

Speaking in an interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays (below), Darrah explained that the team once "pretty softly" pitched the idea of turning the first three Dragon Age games into a Mass Effect Legendary Edition-style trilogy, to "probably remaster" and re-release them. After noting that EA has "historically been, and I don't really know why but they've even said this publicly, kind of against remasters," the former executive producer goes on to talk about a potential Dragon Age: Origins remake.

He recalls that "one of the very earliest things for I guess Joplin," an early version of Dragon Age 4 that was later scrapped, was "let's do Frostbite tools, and let's find a mod house that seems talented and just uplift them and pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age: Origins."

Continuing, he adds: "There were lots of pitches around 'is there a way we can bring Dragon Age: Origins forward?' And depending on what you do… A remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free, a remake you don't."

Talking about remasters again, Darrah goes on to say that Mass Effect has an advantage over Dragon Age since "if you're willing to spend money on it, you can go to an external house and they can do most of the work, which is sort of what happened with Legendary Edition."

On the other hand, "you can't really remaster Dragon Age externally. You have to probably do it internally." Perhaps this sort of ideology influenced the apparent decision not to pursue the idea of paying a team to remake Origins?

None of this is to say we'll definitely never see an Origins remake, of course, although it's rather disheartening to hear that there was apparently some hesitance around the idea before. Times change, though, and you'd think that as the RPG gets older, the argument for a remake could only get stronger, so we'll have to wait and see.

Even after EA let Dragon Age: The Veilguard out of multiplayer hell, BioWare reportedly still had to rush to target "as wide a market as possible," which feels like the opposite approach of great RPGs.

After Mass Effect: Legendary Edition reminded everyone of how darn good the best BioWare RPGs could be, it seemed almost inevitable that a similar remastered collection would be in the pipeline for the famed studio's other big trilogy: Dragon Age. Folks at the studio apparently had the same idea, but it was publisher EA that wasn't fully on board, according to the franchise's former boss.

Speaking to MrMattyPlays, BioWare veteran and former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah spoke about the possibility of a collection that included and maybe even revamped Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

"EA's historically been, and I don't really know why but they've even said this publicly, kind of against remasters," Darrah explained. "It's strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money, but they seem to be against it. That's part of it."

The other part of the reason why the original adventures in Thedas haven't been modernized is because, in Darrah's words, "Dragon Age is harder than Mass Effect to do; to some degree unknowably harder. Maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder."

The ex-exec doesn't delve into too many of the reasons why, but I imagine some of that difficulty stems from the fact that Mass Effect 1-3 all wrapped up within a few years of each other and ran on the same hardware. On the other hand, Inquisition is a full generation ahead of its older siblings and none of the fantasy epics play very similarly.

"Let's do Frostbite tools, and then let's find a mod house that seems talented and pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age: Origins. There were lots of pitches around," Darrah recalls. "A remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free, a remake you don't."

"EA's stance was probably, 'Sure, go ahead and do it, but do it with the money you already have.' And it's like, 'Well, we can't do it with the money that we already have because we're doing all these other things.'"

It would've been a good way to energize some interest in Thedas after Dragon Age: The Veilguard kinda bombed, at least.

No remaster? No worries. Here are the best RPGs to fill that Dragon Age-shaped hole in your gaming life.

In a new report chronicling the production turmoil that saw Dragon Age: The Veilguard rebooted, repeatedly delayed, renamed, and plenty more, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier notes that the format pivot at the root of the game's greatest troubles, the IP's fraught journey from single player to multiplayer and back again, saw EA give BioWare "a year and a half" to fundamentally overhaul the game and "aim for as wide a market as possible."

The report cites interviews from nearly two dozen BioWare employees, including some former employees speaking on the record, like ex-Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider. It's suggested that, after finally escaping the multiplayer hell that EA had locked the studio in in its hasty pursuit of the live service dragon, BioWare never had the space or resources to properly reassess what this new Dragon Age game would look like and how it would need to be made.

"The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build," Schreier writes. Once those elements were locked in, it seems minor delays simply prolonged the suffering, giving folks just enough time to realize they could've done more, but not enough time to actually do more.

The unrealistic turnaround already puts one elephant in the room, and the room truly overflows with trunks and tusks with the double whammy of EA's expectations.

When Dragon Age: The Veilguard sales missed the company's targets by "nearly 50%," EA CEO Andrew Wilson lamented that the game "did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market."

This assessment seemed to downplay the issues and criticisms raised by plenty of diehard Dragon Age players – the people who made the previous games in the series a success, and by rights the people who EA and BioWare should have focused on – and simultaneously imply that the solution could have been to somehow go broader. Attract more groups of people, appeal to more audiences, and – let's just say the quiet part out loud – perhaps, maybe, possibly add in some of those evergreen live service elements that we crowbarred in, hacksawed out, and will still apparently hold against you.

BioWare already barely managed to stretch a twin-sized bedsheet over a queen-sized mattress, and here comes EA rolling in a California King. This tight production timeline, coupled with a foolhardy pursuit of broad appeal for a series with historically niche appeal but a loyal following, suggests EA never really knew what it had with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, let alone how to make the most of it.

Wilson mentions a "highly competitive market," but EA didn't seem to realize that it was competing in the RPG market, a market that has seen chart-topping, industry-dominating, award-hoovering hits year after year after year. Those successful games, Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and boy, maybe EA should've just put a 3 in the title for good luck, went all-in on a very specific roleplaying vision. And it worked!

But instead of an RPG that was always built to be an RPG, as involved and reactive and crunchy as possible, EA entered this highly competitive market with an RPG that had some of the roleplaying, and arguably some of what made Dragon Age what it was, power-washed off in pursuit of broad appeal. Which is no surprise coming from a game that was incubated as a multiplayer project and then hastily brought back to reality after reality deigned to strike EA between the eyes.

Sizing up the breakout success of Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Gaider told me last month that these RPGs demonstrate what's possible when you do commit to that core RPG audience – an audience, Gaider said, that EA would historically describe as one you "didn't have to try and appeal to" because the RPG fans in their nerd cave would show up regardless. His comments seem especially relevant in the context of this new report.

"The sales for BG3 were amazing," Gaider said, "and kind of make a lie out of – I remember when I was at EA, there was a lot of investigation into how large is the RPG audience, and how large is the action audience, and so forth. And they would have an estimate, and they'd say it caps out, oh, the RPG audience caps out at about 5 million. But that doesn't seem to be true when the game is good."

"I think there's such a thing as expanding the audience, as opposed to treating the audience as this finite number of people, right?" Gaider added. "And I think that's what Expedition 33 really does. I think it manages to take the elements of JRPGs – and I don't think it's doing a lot of new things, honestly. It's taking a number of more recent trends and kind of bundling them up in an interesting way that I think makes it very accessible to people who normally wouldn't play JRPGs. And does that with fully mocapped animations that are really high quality."

In fairness, as EA also noted in its elephant-saddled assessment, the critical response to The Veilguard was actually quite good. Our own Dragon Age: The Veilguard review gives it nearly full marks, praising its companions, combat, and lore. But even our resident Dragon Age head Rollin clocked "few meaningful inflection points" where your choices mattered in the big picture, and this kind of thing seems to have been a much bigger issue for many fans. The version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard we got wasn't so much made as it was salvaged, and its immensely polarized user reviews – 69% across over 37,000 reviews on Steam alone – speak for themselves.

"When you have a publisher hanging over your head, they're looking for very specific things," Gaider also said. "They want mass appeal. They don't care about appealing very, very strongly to a specific audience. They want mass appeal. They want to feel comfortable, de-risk it by imagining how the appeal translates to many different kinds of audiences, which I think often kind of ends up diluting the very specific things a game can do. Like I said, what BG3 did and what Expedition does is, yes, they appeal very, very strongly to that one audience, but it's so strong that it ends up growing that audience. And I think that's the part where publishers could really struggle."

Dragon Age legend says even if he didn't leave BioWare 9 years ago, he still would have dipped over EA's live service Dragon Age push: "What a devil's contract that would have been."

Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition narrative lead David Gaider prefers RPG casts where everyone isn't immediately into you - and casts where some characters aren't romanceable at all.

Romance in RPGs was somewhat reignited by Baldur's Gate 3's overwhelmingly horny approach where the entire main cast was player-sexual. In other words, all of the party members were available to romance no matter what gender your character identified as, a feature also seen in Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, most recently.

And it's a topic Gaider has chimed in on in the past, but when asked about it in a recent interview with GamesRadar+, the developer said there's a "sharp divide in the player base" between people who want to freely romance everyone in the cast and players who want to be realistically rejected.

"This is one situation where you can't do it both ways," Gaider told us. "Yeah, it's got to be one or one or the other. And those players who are on either side of this argument are never going to be okay with what's going on, like, on the other side."

First things first, Gaider is clear that, despite its name, player-sexuality as a term doesn't actually refer to a sexuality - like hetero or homosexuality - it's a gameplay feature. Characters don't change their sexual orientation, they're just down to bang your character regardless of your gender.

And it's something BioWare tried out in Dragon Age 2 and quickly abandoned by the time Dragon Age: Inquisition rolled around. "That was my doing and my preference," Gaider said, "because I think it takes away an element of agency from the character, and, I mean, there are players who absolutely prefer player-sexuality and it's totally justified."

"But I think you do some get something in return for that, because when a character is player-sexual, it feels like every romance is always on the table. It means you have to craft a story for this character where romance is a possibility. And that limits the different types of stories you can do. They always have to be somebody who ultimately could romance the player. And so that is quite limiting."

Gaider argues that, sometimes, it feels like certain characters are just there to be smoochable and that takes away a certain amount of their interiority. "I wanted characters who had their own motivations [and] maybe I had to earn their friendship," he said. "Maybe there's a different path... where they could distrust me, or we could have rivalries. They could have their own motivations that didn't align with my own... And I like the idea of characters with agency, where romance is a possibility, maybe, or maybe they have their own relationships."

Former Dragon Age lead writer says being at BioWare was "glorious," but under EA it "surrendered more and more of its independence until we got to where we got to"

A Dragon Age veteran says EA liked to refer to a "cave" where RPG fans who could be trusted to buy anything the genre threw at them would dwell.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, BioWare veteran David Gaider explained that before he left BioWare, his tastes had become somewhat "old-fashioned" in EA's eyes. "I was very vocal on the Dragon Age team," he says. "I was always trying to push it to our traditional mechanics. And that wasn't very welcome in the EA sphere."

He says that EA considered those mechanics - the kind that shaped games like Dragon Age: Origins - to be "slow and cumbersome," rather than the "action-y and slick" presentation that the studio was being pushed toward. That meant that Gaider's views "were often not very welcome" despite his long tenure at the studio and work on many of its most famous RPGs.

That's partly because, he says, EA didn't think the traditional RPG audience was one that was worth focusing on. He claims that the overseers referred to those mechanics as being "'in the cave'". The cave, he explains, "was where nerds went. The nerds were in the cave. You made an RPG and the nerds in the cave would always show up for an RPG, because it was an RPG."

That devotion to their chosen genre, in EA's eyes, meant that "you didn't have to worry" about the nerds. "You didn't have to try and appeal to them. You had to worry about the people who weren't in the cave, which was the audience we actually wanted, which was much larger."

Really, Gaider clarifies, that was the audience that EA wanted, and it basically got what it wanted. Unfortunately for the publisher, the endpoint of that philosophy was Anthem, a live-service effort that flopped entirely at launch and was entirely abandoned within two years.

The benefit of that was that BioWare was able to refocus somewhat around its single-player RPGs, with last year's Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the eventual release of Mass Effect 5 - although with that game still in pre-production as of this year, it might be some time before we get to see it.

Whether you belong to the cave or not, here are the best RPGs you can play.

The lead writer of the first three Dragon Age games, and the man often cited as the creator of its fantasy world, has looked back on how BioWare's independence slowly degraded under EA's ownership.

David Gaider had a storied career at the iconic BioWare for 17 years, starting with writing on Baldur's Gate 2 before becoming one of the main architects behind Dragon Age, but now that he's leading his own indie team Summerfall Studios, the famed writer looked back on the RPG developer's history in an interview with GamesRadar+.

"It's really hard to talk about the years that led to my departure," he told us. "At its height, it was a glory to work there." He begins by reminiscing about what the studio was like in the late '90s, when it was pushing out Baldur's Gate 2. "It was D&D, I was fresh. They would they refer to me as the machine, because I wrote so quickly. I think I wrote half of BG 2 myself, honestly."

While he described the studio's best years as "glorious," he's also aware that things weren't entirely perfect when BioWare was still independent. Crunch was prevalent at the company, but Gaider remembers it felt like "that was just part of the job, like, I didn't think it was feasible to question it. You worked until it was done and that was just the way it was."

Still, despite the gruelling hours, Gaider says "it just felt like we made RPGs [because] that's what we were interested in making and we wanted to make them as good as they possibly could be." And in a rare turn for the industry, "BioWare's writing, our narrative team, was seen as foundational to BioWare success." As he says, the studio felt like a place where he could write stories with meaning and intent, for the love of the game.

Things slowly began changing after EA acquired the company, though. Gaider's impression was that studio co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka planned to change the publisher from the inside out - "It was the snake eating the elephant." At the time, BioWare wanted to make "prestige games" and focus on high Metacritic scores "that will lead to profits, not the other way around." And, for a while, EA leadership supported that goal.

However, changes in EA leadership meant that "suddenly, suddenly, suddenly things were different." Zeschuk and Muzyka left not long after. Gaider's "impression" was that the duo had realized their goal of changing EA from within was no longer doable. "And then things started to change more rapidly."

"Bioware had a certain amount of independence under EA," he recalls. "My impression was always that every time BioWare needed to ask EA for something, like an extension on a schedule... they had to give something." He even recounts one email that came down where BioWare cheerily announced the team would no longer get two free weeks off at Christmas to more closely align with EA policy. "But I suspect they did that [because] they'd asked for something like an extension."

"I suspect that's the way it went," Gaider adds. "And, so, slowly, by inches, yeah, BioWare sort of surrendered more and more of its independence until we got to where we got to. I mean, I can't really speak to what happened after 2016, but I think it's kind of obvious. I mean, Jason Schreier wrote a good article of what happened with Anthem, and that's pretty damning. And then you sort of can see what has come out of the company since, honestly, which is too bad because it's like... while I was there, at its height, it was, it felt glorious."

"I felt like I was at work. I was having fun... even though it was often hard, I would get out of bed and I'd be eager to go into work. There's always something really cool going on. I had a really cool job, and I was working on projects that I felt were, if not you know Shakespeare, I knew they were going to be fun and they were fun to write."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the studio's latest release, and things didn't go smoothly for the developer thereafter.

Dragon Age legend says even if he didn't leave BioWare 9 years ago, he still would have dipped over EA's live service Dragon Age push: "What a devil's contract that would have been"

The entire original Dragon Age trilogy owes a lot to David Gaider, who served as lead writer across Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisition, before eventually leaving BioWare after a stint of 17 years in 2016. Even if he'd carried on a little longer, however, he says that EA's live service plans for the series would have pushed him out pretty swiftly.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Gaider says that if he had stuck with Dragon Age rather than moving over to the doomed Anthem, "I think I would have stayed at BioWare longer than I did."

Even if he'd stuck with the series - through Joplin and Morrison, the two canned Dragon Age projects that eventually made way for Dragon Age: The Veilguard - he thinks that eventually, the departure of Mike Laidlaw, the director behind those canceled projects, would have marked the end of his time at the studio.

"I would have had no influence on that sequence of events," he says. "I would have been rolling with the punches just like everybody else. My read on what was going on internally was that the very same thing that led to Mike Laidlaw leaving would have led to me heading off at the same time. I really don't see a universe where Mike would have left the team, and I would have been like, 'Alright!'"

Gaider maintains that even if he'd been offered a senior management role on Dragon Age - something he thinks was unlikely given his relationship with EA and a desire to stand up for 'old-fashioned' mechanics - he would have made the jump.

That's mostly because of what happened after Dragon Age Joplin was canceled by EA. Nodding to another BioWare veteran, Mark Darrah, he says "I would not have survived the end of Joplin, because the end of Joplin would have been 'now we're making this live service Dragon Age'. Me, Mr. Old-Fashioned RPG Mechanics, and them coming down and saying, 'we're canning this whole narrative-focused Dragon Age thing, and we want you to make a live-service version?' I would have been like, see ya."

Gaider makes it clear that he would have been gone regardless, even if BioWare and EA had suddenly bestowed a creative director title on him after he was passed over for promotions for years. "Even if there was a world where they would have asked me to be creative director after Mike on Live Service Dragon Age - what a devil's contract that would have been."

In this universe, Gaider did depart BioWare in 2016. Somewhat bittersweetly, he got to see his opinions somewhat vindicated, the failure of Anthem pushing BioWare towards Veilguard's more traditional RPG stylings. I suppose it's just a shame that the studio had to lose so much veteran talent to make that happen.

Not just an RPG expert, Gaider also has some thoughts about JPRGs - as blacked up by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

The game that eventually became Dragon Age: The Veilguard was in development for a long, long time at BioWare, and during that period the game went from a single-player RPG to a multiplayer live-service game and back again. According to studio veteran Mark Darrah, that central pivot to live service was partly a move to shift people from Dragon Age onto Anthem.

"Part of the excuse for moving people off of Dragon Age was this pivot from a single-player game into a multiplayer live service," Darrah says in a video about how BioWare changed fundamentally in 2017. "I believe that a large part of that pivot was done entirely as rationalization – as a reason to make it make sense that we were taking everyone away from Dragon Age."

After all, Darrah notes, "there's no reason have all of these people on the project because they are going back to the drawing board, because we are making a live service game now. So we can start over again."

Darrah's timeline matches up with what we know from an extensive report on Dragon Age 4's development from Jason Schreier at Kotaku in 2019. According to that report, DA4 – then codenamed Joplin – was put on hold in late 2016 to help bring Mass Effect Andromeda over the finish line.

In 2017, Joplin was effectively canceled in favor of the new, live-service-flavored Dragon Age 4, codenamed Morrison, with much of the DA team moving to help finish the troubled Anthem, just as it had with Andromeda the previous year.

"I wish that had never happened," Darrah says in his video. "I wish that pivot had never occurred. But that's what happened. EA said 'make this a live service.' We said 'we don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.' And thus Joplin became Morrison, and myself as well as other very senior members of the team moved onto Anthem."

Darrah's video paints an unflattering portrait of latter-day BioWare, and while he acknowledges there's a certain amount of personal grievance at play here, several other BioWare veterans have been sharing the video and indicating that it aligns with their experiences with the studio at the time.

"I talked a fairly long time ago about how EA buys studios and then consumes them," Darrah concludes, "and they start to lose their culture into the overall EA culture. To me, it feels like 2017 is when EA finished digesting BioWare, which they had bought 9 years earlier in 2008."

That might not posit the most rosy idea about what we're going to get from Mass Effect 5, but Darrah has a note of optimism in the video's comments, saying that "BioWare and EA seem to be fully behind the next Mass Effect." Here's hoping that commitment remains for the long haul.

BioWare is responsible for many of the best RPGs ever made.

According to BioWare veteran David Gaider, Dragon Age and Mass Effect publisher EA had a preference for the latter series right from the get-go.

Gaider, who worked as the lead Dragon Age writer and setting creator on every game in the RPG series aside from The Veilguard, reveals as much in a recent post online, replying to a follower as part of a thread in which he shares why he left BioWare in 2016 after nearly two decades at the company. "While I was at BioWare, EA *always* preferred Mass Effect, straight up Their Marketing team liked it more," claims Gaider.

"It was modern," continues the developer, explaining why the studio might have preferred the sci-fi series over Dragon Age. "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." As someone who's been playing since Origins myself, it's a bit of a shock to hear – but other fans speculate that's why Dragon Age games vary so much.

One asks Gaider, "Is them not knowing what to do with DA the reason why every DA game was different?" The series veteran answers that it might be, but there's more to it. "Maybe in part," admits 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 overcorrected."

He adds, however, that EA's preference still played a part in this variation: "And then there was EA's influence on top of that, yes." It's disappointing to learn, if true, but it lines up with Gaider's past criticisms of EA. In February, he advised the company to "follow Larian's lead and double down on that," referencing Baldur's Gate 3's own Larian Studios, after EA said The Veilguard "did not resonate with a broad enough audience" following the RPG's reported market underperformance.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard director is leading an unannounced game for Wizards of the Coast, which recently hinted at more Baldur's Gate

One half of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's directing duo is now leading an unannounced video game at Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D and, by extension, Baldur's Gate.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard director Corrine Busche left famed developer BioWare shortly after the blockbuster sequel came out – and shortly before EA gutted more of the team – and we now know where she landed.

Speaking to The Game File (paywalled!), Wizards of the Coast's video game boss Dan Ayoub revealed that Busche is the creative lead on a project in production at newbie studio Skeleton Key. The developer hasn't released anything so far, but it was working on two games simultaneously until Wizards of the Coast "refocused the team" to work on one. In non-corporate words, it scrapped one of the two games and laid off some devs.

Ayoub said the "vast majority" of developers stayed on to work on the non-cancelled game led by Busche, but what that project could be is anyone's guess. Wizards of the Coast have four internal teams and have so far just released co-op looter Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance. Next up, another team of BioWare veterans are hammering away at Archetype Entertainment to make Exodus, set in a completely original universe.

Of course, Wizards has also licensed out some of its properties to the likes of Larian Studios, which made history with Baldur's Gate 3 before deciding not to take on Baldur's Gate 4. (Wizards of the Coast is planning more Baldur's Gate regardless, because how could it not?)

"We want to build worlds," Ayoub said, "story-driven, single-player character games." With Busche's pedigree, another RPG would be the safest bet you could make about Skeleton Key's upcoming game. Whether that ends up being a new IP, another Baldur's Gate, or a take on one of corporate owner Hasbro's other products – Peppa Pig meets Disco Elysium sounds like it'd sell – is anyone's guess.

BioWare makes a return to Dragon Age: The Veilguard with a surprise PC update, months after layoffs and a seemingly final patch

BioWare has just thrown Dragon Age: The Veilguard a lifeline.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's previous patch sure made it sound like the famed RPG studio were ready to move on from the game as it promised future updates would only focus on game-breaking bugs and such. But, to everyone's surprise, BioWare just yesterday updated the PC version of the game with a weapon pack.

The Rooks Weapons Appearance Pack brings new cosmetics to the game and is available as a freebie for the Steam version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, alongside a discounted $32/£25 price tag that's been slashed by 50%. You can only claim the pack if you already own the game or are planning to buy it before April 8, strangely enough. There's also no word on when or if it'll drop on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, too.

Sure, it's only a few weapons, but the addition of any new Veilguard content feels like a slight miracle considering, well, everything that's happened to its developer since launch.

Shortly after release, EA announced that the fourth Dragon Age game had missed its sales target by 50%. The publisher then laid off more BioWare developers, shuffled some to other EA teams, and said Mass Effect 5 would be the team's sole focus - nearly killing the fanbase's hope for any substantial future Veilguard updates.

To really hammer the point home, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is practically being given away to millions of PlayStation Plus subscribers as a free monthly game

For more games like Dragon Age, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RPGs.

It's not even been four full months since Dragon Age: The Veilguard released, but the RPG is already heading to PlayStation Plus as one of the three monthly games that subscribers will be able to claim and keep next month.

Announced in a post on the PlayStation Blog today, Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be available to claim from March 4 for PS Plus subscribers, no matter what tier they're paying for. After claiming it, you'll be able to download and play the RPG at any time as long as you're still subscribed – it's not like the library of games available to PS Plus Extra members, where titles occasionally disappear from whence they came.

Earlier this month in an earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated that despite The Veilguard's "high-quality launch" and being "well-reviewed by critics and those who played," the RPG ultimately "did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market." In the same call, EA's chief financial officer, Stuart Canfield, stated that the game "underperformed."

It seems pretty wild to make the RPG available to keep via a subscription service so soon after its release, but at least it'll hopefully give more players the chance to try it out, and perhaps introduce it to that broader audience that EA was hoping for. In our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review, we said it was "an approachable, expansive action-oriented RPG and feels like a true end to whatever the franchise was before," and while it's "undoubtedly different in many ways from its predecessors and takes lessons learned from Mass Effect to heart, there's a lot to love."

Also on March 4, PS Plus subscribers will be able to claim Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (which includes a selection of 13 TMNT games from Konami) as well as Sonic Colors: Ultimate, making for a trio of incredibly solid offerings. Subscribers will have until March 31 to grab them, so don't miss out.

For more games like Dragon Age, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RPGs.

Dragon Age and Anthem veteran Mark Darrah has encouraged fans to channel frustrations constructively and to the appropriate place rather than let lose on random developers "because you don't know the circumstances that resulted in the thing that you're mad at."

In a new video titled 'Your $70 Doesn't Buy You Cruelty,' the former BioWare executive comments on the harassment of developers within the games industry – from the celebration of layoffs to more targeted personal attacks.

To start things off, Darrah makes clear what the video is not about. People don't have to like a game because they spent $70 on it and can certainly be critical about it. They spent a lot of your own money on it, after all. That said, there's a difference between airing grievances where it's most likely to make an impact and just being cruel to a random human.

"If you are mad at that Ubisoft game, be mad at Ubisoft," he says. "Express your anger to Ubisoft or the studio that made the game. But you cross a line when you start being cruel about it."

So what's wrong with being cruel? First off, why would someone ask that? Darrah says you "don't need to go out of your way to cause harm to other people because of a video game."

"When you celebrate layoffs at a studio because the game that you don't like didn't do that well, you're crossing a line into being cruel, and fundamentally, you should have more grace for other human beings," Darrah says.

Secondly, fans don't know who is actually to blame. Darrah throws up a hypothetical that someone might not like how an actor delivered a line. Sure, it could well be down to the actor, but it also might be down to who was directing them, how the writer asked their work to be delivered, or maybe that was the only take they got.

But even then, it's not so simple. Continuing with the hypothetical, if the actor's funky delivery was down to the writer, that doesn't necessarily mean someone should seek them out to be mean. You don't know what kind of time crunch they were under, how many rewriters were required due to shifting game direction, and so on.

"All of this isn't to say that you aren't allowed to have your own opinions to not like the things you don't like," he says. "It's specifically to point out that you being angry at a specific person, you attacking a specific person is often misdirected."

So, who can someone blame? Darrah says that if yelling at the corporate or studio Twitter accounts isn't doing it, don't go lower than the first person you see on a game's credits, as sad as feeling the need to do so is.

Typically, you'll see the executive producer, which, in the case of Anthem, was Darrah himself. While someone can and should go higher than that to the heads of a company, factors like social media presence and availability likely mean you'll end up with a senior developer.

That's not to say that an executive producer has a magical sense of insight into every design decision that happens, but they do get paid a decent salary to "theoretically" be in charge and protect their team. And again, as Darrah explains, it's better for leadership to take a complaint on the chin than a more junior developer who possibly wasn't even responsible for someone's grievance. Obviously, the ideal situation is that no one is harassed, but if someone truly must, Darrah says the higher they go within the organization, the better.

Finally, even if fans don't feel like they're being listened to, Darrah says they very much are.

"Be aware that this stuff is carefully scrutinized," he explains. "Not just by the social media teams, also by the teams themselves. Arguably, in a lot of cases, to too great of a degree. The team is listening, I would say, often too much to what you're yelling about and complaining about."

Darrah also encourages players to remain constructive. If someone is actively celebrating layoffs and being cruel to strangers on the internet, they're not giving anyone any means of creating what they like – because what is that, exactly?

"You are entitled to your opinion," he says. "You are entitled to be angry about a game that you bought – you paid good money for it. But try to remember that it's just a game. Even more importantly, when you are expressing your complaints, stay away from cruelty. Stay away from targeting individual people, stay away from trying to cause harm, [and] stay away from celebrating harm done to actual human beings.

"Express your opinion to the company that made your game. Tell them what you like, tell them what you don't like. Be specific. It will help you get games that are more like what you want. But when you are personally attacking individual devs, you are crossing a line, and you're probably attacking the wrong person anyway."

Darrah's video comes after layoffs at BioWare following the launch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, though the message has been echoed across the industry, especially in the past few months. If you're up for more listening or reading, I'd point you toward Fallout creator Tim Cain's own video about the difficulty of delivering what fans want when they aren't entirely sure of it themselves.

Also related - After a "personal attack" of a Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail English VA, MMO boss Yoshi-P says if you have "any sort of criticism, bring it to me, I'm the one approving this material."

Former BioWare veteran Mark Darrah has revealed that the storied studio's oft-forgotten, seemingly random Sonic RPG uses the same under-the-hood dialogue system as Dragon Age: Origins - or, rather, because of the order of release, maybe Dragon Age uses Sonic's code stack.

The former long-time Dragon Age executive producer revealed the interesting tidbit in a new YouTube video, calling 2008's Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood his "favorite" project to work on because there was something "magical about leading a team as small as this game was - it never got much above 20 people."

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood "actually uses Dragon Age: Origins' dialogue system," Darrah said. "Heavily streamlined to fit on the Nintendo DS, but it's still at its base the same code stack. I guess if you really wanted to try, you could make the argument that, because Sonic Chronicles shipped in 2008 and Dragon Age: Origins didn't ship until 2009, that Dragon Age: Origins actually shipped using the Sonic Chronicles dialogue system."

The Sonic RPG team eventually moved on to the cancelled Mass Effect DS game that was planned to have you pirating across the fringes of the galaxy in first person. The spin-off was scrapped due to the economics of shipping games on the Nintendo DS, though.

BioWare now doesn't have the bandwidth for any quirky projects like Sonic Chronicles, though. The entire studio now reportedly employs around 100 people after EA cut even more roles from the team. The publisher blamed the layoffs on Dragon Age: The Veilguard's performance, but one wonders how much more "agile" a team can get.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer slams EA’s BioWare layoffs as “a short-term cost-cutting measure” that “doesn’t solve a long-term” problem.

Three months have now passed since BioWare finally saw the long-awaited release of its new RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the game has reportedly failed to meet EA's sales expectations since then – series veterans say that doesn't mean it should've launched as a live service title.

Speaking in a recent online thread after EA's quarterly earnings call in which the publisher insisted that The Veilguard "did not resonate with a broad enough audience" to meet sales expectations, former creative director Mike Laidlaw appears to disagree with games going the live service route to ensure financial success –  a sentiment fellow BioWare veteran David Gaider shared himself following EA's conference.

"Look," writes Laidlaw, "I'm not a fancy CEO guy, but if someone said to me 'the key to this successful single-player IP's success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin-off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game' to me, I'd probably, like, quit that job or something." He continues his thoughts in separate replies, stating that he's "just thinking out loud, of course."

Laidlaw doesn't sugarcoat his words, though: "Who'd be silly enough to demand something like that? ...twice." It's an understandable stance to take, especially when considering EA's own implications during the company's quarterly earnings call, as well as the layoffs across BioWare following The Veilguard's underperformance. Despite not hitting sales expectations, however, EA admitted the RPG "was well-reviewed by critics and those who played."

As layoffs reportedly hit BioWare, Former Dragon Age writer tells fans not to worry: "DA isn't dead because it's yours now"

Just three months have passed since BioWare finally saw the long-awaited release of its new RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a launch that reportedly wasn't as successful as publisher EA initially hoped it would be – but series veteran David Gaider has some advice for the company.

Speaking in a recent thread online, the original lead writer and creator of the beloved Dragon Age setting begins by addressing EA's quarterly earnings call in which the publisher insisted that The Veilguard "did not resonate with a broad enough audience" to hit sales expectations. Gaider explores the notion that the RPG would've performed better had it been a live service game, as executives "who don't don't actually know much about games" might think.

"If I really dig into my empathy, I can kinda see the thinking here," he writes. "Like, let's say you don't actually know much about games. You're in a big office with a bunch of other execs who also don't know much about games. What are they all saying? 'Live games do big numbers! Action games are hot!' Your natural response? 'We should make more action games, and all our games should have live service!' Cha-ching, right?"

Gaider continues: "Then some uppity devs spoil your buzz by saying 'that doesn't apply equally to all games' or 'we have an established IP with an audience that has certain expectations.' You frown. You go look at their sales. Good, sure, but not as spectacular as live service and action games! Profit's great, but what's the point if you're not #1 in the charts? If you're not making headlines? If the devs can't make it work, this is THEIR failure."

He goes on, looking at the hypothetical situation through the lens of a AAA publisher eyeing up "the future of gaming," who he suggests will eventually "ask yourself why we (the company) even bother with those other games. Like single-player games. It's a question you've asked aloud before. The fans bristle, but you're not here to supply every audience what they want. You're here to make money and increase share value."

The writer admits he might sound "unkind" but says there are lessons publishers like EA can learn from big releases like The Veilguard. Although he adds he's yet to play it himself, he suggests: "'Maybe it should have been live service' being the takeaway seems a bit short-sighted and self-serving."

Although he suggests that the company won't "care," Gaider concludes with some direct advice to EA. "You have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right? Look at what it did best at the point where it sold the most."

What better example to use then than Baldur's Gate 3 and its own developers, who were recently outspoken about the reported layoffs across BioWare, and Gaider does just that. "Follow Larian's lead and double down on that," he concludes in his unofficial message to EA at the end of the thread. "The audience is still there. And waiting."

As layoffs reportedly hit BioWare, Former Dragon Age writer tells fans not to worry: "DA isn't dead because it's yours now"

Dragon Age 2 was rather infamously developed within an extremely tight 16-month time frame, and director Mark Darrah says that's partly because BioWare was desperately trying to make up the financial gap being created by repeated delays to the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.

BioWare made the decision to work on Dragon Age 2 in December 2009, between the November launch of Dragon Age: Origins and the March release of the expansion pack Awakening. "I think it was the last day we were working before the Christmas break. That's the time when the leadership of the Dragon Age franchise had the meeting where we were going to make Dragon Age 2," Darrah recalls in a new YouTube video breaking down 30 years of BioWare history.

"We were going to essentially jump on the grenade that was being placed in front of BioWare and try to fill the revenue gap that was left by Star Wars: The Old Republic moving in 2010," Darrah explains. By this point, The Old Republic had already been in development for years, and, according to an old LA Times article, the MMO ended up eating nearly $200 million in development costs. If that figure's accurate, The Old Republic would remain one of the most expensive games ever developed to this day.

With that financial albatross hanging over BioWare, it's easy to imagine why the studio might have been pressured to pump out a Dragon Age sequel in a hurry. By 2010, BioWare was "trying to make Dragon Age 2 in a really fast rush," Darrah continues. "We have started working on it before Dragon Age: Awakening has even shipped. What's happened is that Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO, has slipped again, and EA is basically telling BioWare to make up the revenue. So we are trying to create a product in a very restricted timeline in order to do what EA wants, which is to fill a revenue gap."

EA's financial year ends in March, and that ended up being the deadline for BioWare. "In the case of Dragon Age 2 we were always aiming at March, just to get something in the fiscal year because of what was happening with Star Wars: The Old Republic," Darrah concludes. All that work took its toll on the developers too. In an older interview with Eurogamer, designer Mike Laidlaw admitted that the studio worked under pretty brutal crunch conditions.

Dragon Age 2 met with broadly positive reviews when it launched in 2011, but the signs of its accelerated development schedule showed even at the time, with critics and players both annoyed by the game's recycled dungeons. Still, the game has its fans, and many of its characters would become fan-favorites who'd crop up repeatedly in the series entries that followed.

Darrah's rundown of BioWare's past is a fun history lesson, but it comes at bittersweet time for fans of the studio. Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally launched last year after an agonizing wait, but underperformed EA's financial expectations. Now, BioWare is being restructured in the lead-up to Mass Effect 5, and layoffs loom over the studio.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was loved by "those who played," EA insists, but "it did not resonate with a broad enough audience."

Three months have now passed since BioWare finally saw the long-awaited release of its new RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard – and despite favorable reviews from critics, EA states that the game failed to reach a "broad enough audience."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard reportedly didn't meet its publisher's expectations, with sales previously said to be "down nearly 50%" from what EA had initially hoped for and subsequent layoffs reported across BioWare. Speaking in a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms as much, explaining that the overall sales EA's published games saw this past quarter didn't hit "the financial performance we wanted or expected." He goes on to name The Veilguard.

Describing the company's "blockbuster storytelling strategy," Wilson says that Dragon Age "had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played" – but this wasn't enough to keep the title afloat. "However," he admits, "it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market." Later on during the financial call, chief financial officer Stuart Canfield agrees that The Veilguard "underperformed."

"Historically," Canfield describes, "blockbuster storytelling has been the primary way our industry brought beloved IP to players." This approach didn't work for The Veilguard, with Canfield noting a changing market. "The game's financial performance highlights the evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate resources towards our most significant and highest potential opportunities."

A majority of the call is spent discussing EA Sports FC 25, but as a longtime fan of the Dragon Age series myself, EA's words on The Veilguard are difficult to process – as are the recent developer layoffs. Our own Dragon Age: The Veilguard review dubbed the game a "true return to RPG form for BioWare," with many others expressing a similar sentiment, and believing it was one of the best RPGs of 2024.

As layoffs reportedly hit BioWare, Former Dragon Age writer tells fans not to worry: "DA isn't dead because it's yours now"

Several key Dragon Age: The Veilguard developers have reportedly either been let go from BioWare or moved to other studios within EA, but senior writer Sheryl Chee has some words of hope.

Chee was also moved out of BioWare, but they post: "I'm now with Motive. It's been a hard two years seeing my team get chipped away and having to still keep going. But I'm still employed, so there's that."

Layoffs have hit the industry hard these last few years. Record growth occurred during the COVID lockdowns, but since that growth has slowed, companies have been cutting costs by firing their most talented developers.

Despite it all, Chee still seems hopeful. They write: "So a cool French woman dropped a cool quote from Camus on me today: 'In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.' (I mean, who does resistance like the French, right?) We're going through it right now. It's a lot, everywhere…"

Many of us may feel like the games we love are dying. Games aren't made by companies, after all, they're made by people. "But DA isn't dead," Chee writes. "There's fic. There's art. There's the connections we made through the games and because of the games. Technically EA/BioWare owns the IP but you can't own an idea, no matter how much they want to. DA isn't dead because it's yours now."

Although a lot of the original team has been moved on to other studios and projects, you can still replay the games, write your own stories in the world, and read the tales others tell.

Chee adds to their thread: "someone just reposted my thing saying they'll write a giant AU and that's what I'm talking about. If DA has inspired you to do something, if it sparks that Invincible summer, then it's done its job, and it has been my greatest honor to have been a part of that."

If you're feeling down about this news, I hope you find some comfort in the community Dragon Age has fostered. Check out our list of the best BioWare games if you want to take a stroll down memory lane.

Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director Michael Douse is calling out EA for continually laying off BioWare staff, in this case after the less-than-expected performance of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, arguing that it's the publisher's duty to find a "viable strategic direction" for a struggling studio.

Earlier this week, publisher EA declared its commitment to Mass Effect 5 while stating the project doesn't yet "require support from the full studio." So, it announced that some roles at BioWare had been shuffled around to other EA teams. What the publisher didn't say was that several developers, including writers who had been with the studio throughout the entire Mass Effect trilogy, like Trick and Karin Weekes, had been outright laid off.

"To make it absolutely clear, what I hate about the way layoffs are carried out is that they are done *before* decision makers know what do do with a studio, and not as a result of figuring out a direction," Douse tweeted in reaction to the news. "This is consistently true. It is a short term cost-saving measure at a huge human expense that doesn’t solve a long term problem. (A lack of a viable strategic direction defined at an executive level). You can probably figure it out if you trust your developers instead of firing them. On a positive note, I’m seeing a slight shift in this direction. In the low-stakes arena of remasters and remakes, but they are the foundation of something bigger."

Douse also argues that slimming down teams in the face of a disappointing project only deepens the problem since "retaining that institutional knowledge is key for the next [game]." And you can even point to Dragon Age: The Veilguard as evidence of this. More than a year before the game even shipped, EA slashed around 50 jobs at the studio, which again included veteran technical directors and writers, some of who had been working on storied BioWare RPGs for over 20 years.

"The delta between [venture capital] and unemployed game developer is fascinating because where one falls upwards the other in parallel velocity tumbles downwards," Douse continued. "You can tank an entire multi-billion dollar initiative and head upwards, while an incredibly talented artist, engineer, QA, etc can head into poverty... On a pirate ship, they’d toss the captain overboard. Video games companies should be run like pirate ships."

What’s ahead for BioWare after this news? See everything we know about Mass Effect 5 to find out. 

A weird week for BioWare just got a little weirder, as EA reveals in its new quarterly financial statement that Dragon Age: The Veilguard unperformed sales expectations by 50% for the company's 2025 fiscal year third quarter.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard game director Corinne Busche, an 18-year veteran of EA, left the company voluntarily last week, not even three months after the release of the long-awaited sequel. Meanwhile, unsubstantiated rumors surfaced claiming EA was planning to shut down BioWare's Edmonton studio, although industry insiders including Jeff Grubb shut those rumors down. At the same time, Mass Effect 5 project director Michael Gamble appeared to assure fans the RPG is in safe hands.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson touched on both Dragon Age: The Veilguard and FC 25's sales shortcomings in the financial statement.

"During Q3, we continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio; however, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations," Wilson said, adding that updates to FC 25 yielded "positive player feedback" and saying, "We remain confident in our long-term strategy and expect a return to growth in FY26, as we execute against our pipeline."

As far as we know, the only big project happening at BioWare after Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Mass Effect 5, but studio veteran Mark Darrah, who left in 2021 after nearly 24 years, recently said he doesn't think the sequel is at a point yet where it can provide work to that many developers.

At a time when the video game industry is shedding talent all of the time, it's only natural to read information like this with some concern for the developers at BioWare. EA let go of nearly 700 workers back in February 2024 amid a year that saw "one in 10" game developers lose their jobs to layoffs. All I can say with any certainty is that BioWare is probably really keen on making a big hit out of Mass Effect 5.

Former BioWare devs' new RPG Exodus will potentially age your loved ones while you're away: "Decisions a player makes will compound over a significant period."

Almost three months have passed since BioWare finally saw the long-awaited release of its new RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a decade-long project led by game director Corinne Busche.

Busche is now reportedly departing from BioWare following her 18-year-long career at EA, where she worked as both a designer and design director on various entries within The Sims series including The Sims 4. The news was initially revealed by journalist Jeff Grubb in an online post and later confirmed by Eurogamer. According to the outlet, "BioWare itself is otherwise unaffected by any other changes, contrary to rumor."

Alongside creative director John Epler, Busche was responsible for helping oversee the development of the most recent Dragon Age title, The Veilguard, from early 2022 onward until its launch this past October 31. The series' latest entry was well-received by longtime fans and critics alike, arguably standing as one of last year's best new games with our own The Veilguard review dubbing it a "true return to RPG form for BioWare."

While The Veilguard topped sales charts and broke Steam records for BioWare, Eurogamer states that "there's also been a suggestion that sales have not exceeded expectations." Despite this, the outlet "understands The Veilguard's commercial performance was not a direct factor in Busche's departure." Not much else is known regarding the lead's move away from EA, but both Eurogamer and Grubb write that BioWare itself isn't affected.

"I don't think EA is closing BioWare Edmonton," as per Grubb. "Was told there is nothing solid about that part of the rumor." As for BioWare's future releases, Mass Effect 5 is still in the works and is being led by a separate team of several studio veterans. As Busche previously revealed, there are no DLC plans for The Veilguard, it's likely that the Dragon Age side of things will remain relatively quiet aside from patch drops.

Craving more BioWare-esque fun? Here are some of our favorite games like Dragon Age to play right now.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's main baddie and Inquisition's major party member Solas is bald. That's no big deal - it suits his regal look. Most fans just assumed it was because of the fact he's, like, thousands of years old, but the game's co-director has now confirmed that he lost his hair due to the immense stress of trying to bring down the Veil and seemingly ruin the world.

During a recent Reddit Q&A with The Veilguard's directors, most fans seized the chance to ask about the state of Thedas, the implications of the game's ending, and all the things that might have been included in the DLC we're not getting. Of course, the internet also did what it does best (dig up nonsense) and one fan was nosey enough to ask about Solas' hair loss.

"If Solas is bald because the ancient elves just go bald during their immortal lifespans, then why does Elgar'nan have hair?" one question reads, referring to the other ancient elven god that plays a central role in the game. "I think maybe it's more accurate to say that Solas lost hair because of stress," creative director John Epler explains.

"Elgar'nan, on the other hand, doesn't feel stress - he makes other people feel stress. And, honestly, Elgar'nan is incredibly vain. Something that doesn't show up until the end game is that he's also very vain. The reason he doesn't look blighted and corrupted throughout the game is he uses a portion of his magic to remain looking the way he does."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is undoubtedly one of the best RPGs this year, so check out where it lands on our 25 best games of 2024 list, and our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review to find out why it's so dang good.

BioWare still doesn't plan to release any new "story content" or expansions for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but the game's co-directors have revealed what they would've added in the hypothetical DLC that we're never getting. 

In a new Reddit AMA with directors John Epler and Corinne Busche, Dragon Age fans were keen to know more about the most niche lore tidbits, what the sequel's ending means for the series' future, and, of course, whether or not we'll be getting more stuff in the future.

"Our focus was to tell a complete story with the release of Veilguard," Busch reiterates. "Beyond the quality of life improvements and a couple new armor sets we're doing to support the game, we won't have any new story or gameplay content coming to the game." That didn't stop the directing duo from delving into the ideas still left floating around their joint noggins that they would've loved to add in some form of post-launch release.

Busch says that she had thought about adding new classic options "directly related to the environments and story" by revisiting Origins' Bard specialization. The Veilguard's lead writer previously said that the Blood Mage specialization was missing because its "nasty" parts weren't where BioWare wanted the hero to walk, but Busch now says that she's "long felt in the context of Veilguard the best way to handle player-controlled blood magic would have been to build a unique 'Blood Mage' class for it" - rather than having it be a road in which normal mages can walk.

John Epler instead focused on all the possible locations Dragon Age could still touch upon. "I don't think it's any secret that I find the idea of 'what lies across the sea' to be fascinating," he wrote. "It shows up a lot in Bellara's content - what happened in the parts of the world that weren't Thedas? But Kal-Sharok is another place I'd love to spend more time in. It has a very unique relationship to dwarven culture, and particularly in a post-DATV world, it feels like it'd be super interesting to get more time with them."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard got a free standalone character creator as BioWare celebrated Dragon Age Day with a patch adding nostalgic armor to the RPG. 

BioWare has only released four new games in the last ten years, and two of them didn't do very well, so it drew upon its old successes for Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

"I think for us, where we've been, the last two projects we've released, Andromeda and Anthem, we wanted to make sure that this one landed in a way that was satisfying, that told a good, cohesive story, could tell a good, coherent story," creative director John Epler tells GamesRadar+.

Mass Effect: Andromeda launched to mixed reviews from critics. "Not a disaster, but definitely not the fresh start this series needed," is what we wrote for our review of the sci-fi sequel.

Anthem fared a lot worse. This was BioWare's attempt at making a live-service shooter, quite far out of its wheelhouse. "Empty, utterly frustrating, and genuinely makes me sad," we said in our review of the short-lived game.

BioWare instead looked at its back catalog of beloved games for The Veilguard. "A lot of that came down to, okay, let's look at what's worked in the past," Epler says. "Let's look at what we've done before. Not copy from it, but draw inspiration."

The strategy appears to have worked wonders. We wrote that The Veilguard is "A true return to RPG form for BioWare" in our review of the latest Dragon Age installment. After waiting 10 years for it, fans seem to love it, too, as it's currently sitting on mostly positive reviews on Steam.

With a catalog comprising the original Mass Effect trilogy, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the first two Baldur's Gate games, there's certainly a lot of successful history to draw upon, so it's nice to see BioWare back on form.

Read more from our interview: "It felt like we needed to do something": How Varric Tethras went from nearly being left out of Dragon Age: The Veilguard to becoming a foundational character.

While I appreciate the calm after the Black Friday storm, it's always a bit of a downer to no longer have a ton of savings at your fingertips. Especially when there's still a lot of time to go until the holidays. Most of the best deals are either out of stock or have returned to their full price, so Santa has to look elsewhere. However, over in the UK, Amazon has some limited-timed deals that are even better than what Black Friday had to offer.

Dragon Age The Veilguard saw a tasty discount during last month's sale extravaganza, where the latest installment in the series went down to around the £60 mark. For a game that only just released this October, any debut discount was a great sight to behold, but now it's dropped again to just £35.99 at Amazon for a limited time.

Not only is that a saving of £34 for a game that's barely a couple of months old, but it's also almost half-price off. Amazon in the UK went from dropping the price by around £10 to taking off a massive 49%, which almost seems too good to be true. It's also perfect timing as Christmas Day isn't that far away. (If you can believe it or not.) So if you have a Bioware fan in your life who hasn't yet grabbed the latest Dragon Age game, I recommend taking Amazon UK up on this PS5 game deal while you still can.

Should you buy Dragon Age The Veilguard?

I'll admit I haven't yet played Dragon Age The Veilguard for myself. Not because I'm not itching for another incredible Bioware RPG, but because I'm already juggling far too many games as it is. But as much as I want to get through my current backlog, this limited-time UK deal feels incredibly hard to ignore.

I put in a massive 300 hours into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I didn't even finish all the content the DLC had to offer. On my PlayStation 5 profile, the game proudly sits next to Fallout 4 and Skyrim as my most played games, and I even recently bought it again for another playthrough for my Steam Deck. So seeing The Veilguard, the latest game in the series, for almost half price off has got me hovering over the 'add to basket' button.

It's not just the limited-time discount that has me intrigued either. Our very own Rollin Bishop noted in his Dragon Age The Veilguard review that the game is a "true return to form" giving it almost a full five stars out of five. Rollin praised the fantasy RPG for its "surprisingly satisfying combat mechanics and lovingly crafted narrative arc" which is something I adored from Inquisition. While I appreciate the combat has changed slightly this time around, leaning more into the action and far away from its tactical RPG roots, it nevertheless sounds like another game in the series I will easily sink a ridiculous amount of hours into.

Any discounts on recent 2024 game releases are also great in my eyes. With games being more expensive than ever, and affording these luxuries being harder than ever, big price drops are a treat. Now, I can add Dragon Age: The Veilguard to my PS5 backlog while saving money in the process. All I need to fear is having enough free time to actually play it.

If you've been hesitant about picking up the latest Dragon Age, or know a big Bioware fan in your life, I highly recommend grabbing this while it's still cheaper for a limted time. Just make sure you too have enough hours free to spare.

The biggest sales event of the year may be over but there's still a ton of the best PS5 game deals to take advantage of in time for the holidays.

Today is Dragon Age Day, and BioWare certainly hasn't forgotten about it - in fact, the team has a lot in store for its most recent RPG, The Veilguard, in celebration.

December 4 marks the arrival of Dragon Age Day, the equivalent of Mass Effect Day for fans of BioWare's fantasy RPGs. It's not going to be small this year like its sci-fi sibling's day was, however - developers are adding some exciting features to The Veilguard, a title that arguably stands as one of this year's best RPGs, as well as a free character creator on all platforms. For longtime fans of the series, there's an especially exciting addition.

Along with Patch 4, the latest update for The Veilguard, comes a Dragon Age 2 goody - the ever-iconic protagonist Hawke's armor, body paint, and nose blood smear. All are dropping as free cosmetics, as well as new Qunari complexions and a game-changing photo tool to make use of during cutscenes. There are also over 20 bug fixes rolling out with the patch, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't personally looking forward to the cutscene tool above all myself.

Dragon Age Day is especially exciting thanks to BioWare's release of a free standalone The Veilguard character creator, too, which allows players to mess about with Rooks and potential fans to test the waters without committing to the full game until they're certain about it. Any character created in this free download can also be transferred to The Veilguard seamlessly, with no limit attached - perfect for those of us with a character creator addiction.

If you're already well into The Veilguard yourself, be sure to visit the Lighthouse after Patch 4 is downloaded to snag your free Hawke cosmetics. If you're new to the game or series, give the character creator a whirl. Be careful, though, it's addictive - streamer "breebunn" spent over 21 hours in the character creator alone, an admittedly relatable situation that I'd say speaks to the creation portion of the game's quality.

Craving more BioWare-esque fun? Here are some of our favorite games like Dragon Age to play right now.

Going into 2024, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was probably one of the most anticipated games of the year. This is a long-standing franchise with a lot of loyal fans who have been hungry for a new game since 2014's Inquisition. It's probably safe to say that for those fans, the wait has been a rather anxious one as Bioware has been sailing some tempestuous seas in the meantime.

Call it a Black Friday miracle, or EA feeling the burn of one of its biggest releases of the year receiving no nominations at The Game Awards, but the PS5 version has just taken its first price cut at Amazon. This brings it down to $54 (was $69.99) just under a month after its official release.

I'm not sure I've seen reviews for a big AAA game in 2024 be so divisive as the ones for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Most critics, including our own Rollin Bishop, really enjoyed their journey back into Thedas, but other critics, most notably SkillUp, were quick to highlight its shortcomings. A few hesitant review points were bolstered by user reviews on Metacritic which are currently at 63% Negative at the time of writing.

Should you buy Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

As someone who has never played a Dragon Age game, I'm going to crack my knuckles, shake off some of the late-shift rust from covering Black Friday gaming deals, and attempt to call this as cleanly down the middle as possible. Honestly? I think that might be a good thing because, with long-running, beloved gaming franchises like this, it can be very hard for long-term fans to separate themselves from the nostalgia of games gone by, and that's where a lot of the most heated opinions arise from.

In preparation for this, I've read as many reviews as possible, and I've got a lay of the land for who might enjoy their time with The Veilguard, and who probably won't. If you're a fan of Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or Bioware's games more generally, you will probably enjoy this game, which we awarded a 4.5 out of 5 in our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review. There's so much deep lore in this world that fans of previous games will love to dive back into, so if you're a long-term fan who couldn't afford a full-price game last month, you've been blessed.

At the same time, if you've been wanting an open-world, fantasy RPG to enjoy lately, but the idea of a game with hundreds of hours of quests and a never-ending map fatigues you, Veilguard might be perfect for you thanks to its approachable writing and fairly easy-to-pick-up gameplay. The main story takes the majority of players around 24 hours of gameplay to complete, and a completionist run will last around 60-70 hours.

The same is true of the other side though - even if there's a lot of depth to player creation and the lore, a lot of complaints about the game have been focused on how the gameplay and writing can feel a bit shallow.

Hopefully, this all gives you a better idea of whether the latest Dragon Age game is for you or not. For more PS5 game deals, check out the window below.

There are plenty of bargains to be had right now, from Black Friday Meta Quest deals, to Black Friday gaming PC deals, to Black Friday gaming chair deals.

Tim Cain created Fallout, so he knows what it takes to make a good game that influences artists, developers, and players for decades. That means Cain also knows what a bad game is like. He says as much in a recent YouTube video.

"I'm going to talk about what I would consider to be [...] the worst RPG you could possibly make," Cain says. It involves beautiful, but unskippable, cutscenes, an unexplained stats system with too many numbers, and minigames.

"Pretty much, if you do it out of combat, there's a minigame for it," Cain says, vindicating minigame haters (me) worldwide. 

Cain abhors limited combat styles, too, along with linear storylines, and generally anything that prevents a player from forming a unique, personal bond with a game. But even though Cain began his video with the assertion that this mythically awful RPG is something he invented in his head, many gleeful commenters tried guessing what real game or developer Cain might be referencing. 

"Square Enix corporate watching this: 'WRITE THIS ALL DOWN! WRITE IT DOWN NOW!!!'" one popular comment says.

"Sounds like Tim played [Dragon Age: The] Veilguard last night," says another reply, which echoes many other commenters' belief that Cain is undoubtedly talking about the newest Dragon Age title. 

Cain resists these comments, and comments like them, in a follow-up video posted on YouTube Shorts. 

"Many, many people left comments saying, 'Oh, I know! You're talking about this RPG!'" Cain says. "So, if you're asking me [if you were] right, is this the game I was thinking of? Well, if it helps you make a better game: you're right."

"I KNEW you were talking about Madden 2008!" says a top reply. 

Be sure to check out our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review to find out why it's one of 2024's best RPGs.

One of the two actors behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard's lead character says he was heavily inspired by another classic BioWare RPG in his younger years.

Alex Jordan's voice was recently all over BioWare's latest fantasy epic as he stepped into the shoes of Rook, the wise-cracking and generally good-natured hero of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. But despite playing a classic hero in the game, one of Jordan's most cherished gaming memories comes from stepping into the Dark Side in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. 

In an episode of 'The Games That Made Me,' Jordan says he was "fascinated by the game's moral choices and the seductive power of the dark side." So much so that it was, yes, one of the games that 'made him.' He continued: "I just got hooked by it and how it let you just totally roleplay as you go. If I wanted to feel like Darth Maul, I could create a build that makes me feel like Darth Maul. Or if I wanted, I could make a build that makes me feel like the Emperor, or a build that makes me feel like Luke Skywalker." Jordan gushes that that freedom of expression and "feeling of power" in BioWare's earlier RPGs was "seductive" at the time. "I was like, man, I'm all in."

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is still available to buy on every major platform - PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile storefronts - but the KOTOR remake is supposedly still "alive and well" after being stuck in development hell for a few years, if you'd rather wait for a more modern version.

Be sure to check out our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review to find out why it's one of this year's best RPGs. 

So many things can keep you motivated through all of life's highs and pitfalls: hobbies, hope, and in the case of Dragon Age: Origins lead writer David Gaider, a profound hatred for pigeons. Gaider's pigeon problem is so deep, so powerful that it almost single-handedly saved a character from being cut from Dragon Age. 

"I don't recall how Shale began," Gaider writes in a recent Bluesky thread. "I have this vague memory of us wanting a 'weird' party member who didn't conform to the normal classes." 

The gargantuan stone golem Shale is sarcastic and confident, with a strong appreciation for both shiny gemstones and spilling blood. Because of how unapologetically Shale moves around her stormy world, she's become a fan favorite character despite — or, perhaps, because of — the fact that she loves murdering pigeons. 

Pigeons. That's what it all comes back to. In his Bluesky thread, Gaider recalls that Shale was close to getting cut when he was assigned the character. At the time, he was writing in an office with a view of a neighboring roof, which Gaider describes as "POOP FAUCET city" from all the pigeons that collected on it.

"Not only that," he continues. "The pigeons used the HVAC like some kind of sex den. Angry, ugly pigeon sex." 

Faced to confront the pigeon apocalypse outside his window every day, Gaider poured his anger into writing Shale. Ultimately, the golem did get cut, but the Dragon Age team appreciated the anti-pigeon vigilante Shale so much that they turned her into DLC anyway. 

In the end, "I have a soft spot for Shale," Gaider says in his thread. "She has no soft spot for anyone, being... you know... made of rock."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out now - be sure to check out out Dragon Age: The Veilguard review to find out why it's one of this year's best RPGs.

The former lead writer for the Dragon Age series, David Gaider, has been giving fresh insight into a bunch of the RPG series' beloved characters, and has admitted that he "probably shouldn't have" written the one new follower he did for Dragon Age 2, even though "it'll make his fans mad" to say it. 

Sorry, Fenris fans, but it's your favorite elven warrior. In a new thread on Bluesky, Gaider explains that when creating the RPG series' followers, he would let the other writers pick who they wanted to write first. However, Fenris didn't seem particularly popular. "In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want," he says. "It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him."

This in itself doesn't mean that Fenris was "a bad character," but Gaider describes him as "an idea that probably deserved some re-examining." Unfortunately, given the rush to make the game in the first place (he says that the team had "just over a year and a half"), "there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me." He speculates that had this happened, "maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity." 

Alas, this wasn't to be, and he admits that he "struggled, at first" writing the character, and felt that Fenris being a guy who "hates everything, all the time" had "felt very one-note" to him. However, Gaider ended up focusing on Fenris's trauma, noting that "I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before.

"It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts."

All in all, Gaider concludes that "Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad." In the end, the one real regret the lead writer shares is having Fenrir "live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update." With all that said, he adds that we'll probably "never see Fenris in a future DA" since his lyrium tattoos require an "expensive" custom body. However, at least he "lives on" since Gaider's fourth Dragon Age novel – which would have killed the elven warrior – ended up being canceled.

With Dragon Age: The Veilguard out now, be sure to check out our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review to find out why it's one of this year's best RPGs.

BioWare has released patch notes for Dragon Age: The Veilguard Patch 3, and with how chuckle-inducing and silly they are, you'd almost think you were reading Baldur's Gate 3 patch notes.

EA says the patch includes "multiple quality of life changes and many bug fixes," and indeed, there are a handful of updates that should make life in Thedas just a little bit easier. For folks on PC, "arrow keys can now be bound to input mappings," and for everyone else, filters have been added to photo mode, "it is now easier to identify where an Enchantment has been applied to a companion’s equipment," and "new rings can now be compared against both equipped ring slots."

By far the most amusing lines of Patch 3 are hidden amongst a laundry list of bug fixes. You can read the full notes here, but I'd like to quickly highlight a few that made me literal LOL:

• "Rook's body shape no longer changes unexpectedly after a cutscene with Emmrich"
• "Adjusted an odd facial expression when Rook first meets Emmrich"
• "Mage Rooks no longer shift to the right awkwardly after performing an extended dodge"
• "The Grey Warden 'Recruit’s Simple Tunic' appearance no longer clips uncomfortably through Rook’s neck"
• "The Mayor of D’Meta’s Crossing no longer appears in two places at once during the Lives Spared quest"
• "Fixed a place in Arlathan Forest where Rook could get stuck in a drowning loop"
• "Fixed instances where Rook forgot they already had the lyrium dagger and could not interact with treasure chests and altars"

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is something of a comeback moment for BioWare and EA, launching on Halloween to largely glowing reviews following much less positively received releases like Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda. BioWare creative director John Epler recently stressed the studio's ambition for Dragon Age: The Veilguard to return to the studio's "very real strength" of character-building and storytelling and admitted its other recent projects "didn't center that strength as well as they could have."

Once you've had enough of Thedas, why not pick something new from our expertly curated list of the best RPGS?

David Gaider, the legendary narrative designer and writer behind the first three Dragon Age games, has revealed how Claudia Black became the voice of Morrigan - and it's probably not how you think she got the role.

Speaking in a new thread online following BioWare's release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Gaider looks back at the iconic series' history and its beloved characters. When developers were envisioning Morrigan, the shapeshifting Witch of the Wilds, Gaider says she started "as a bit of Morgan le Fey (hence the Dark Ritual) mixed with Delirium from Sandman." This idea of her eventually morphed into one "more cynical, wanting to connect but unable to."

Before Black joined the voice cast as Morrigan, devs "were looking for a Middle Eastern actress to play her, as Shoreh Aghdashloo was slated to play Flemeth, and we wanted a similar-sounding voice - but it was a real struggle, and then Shoreh unfortunately had to drop out to do a movie. " At that point, the team "suddenly" had "nobody for either character!" That's when Black enters the picture with what might just be the best audio tape to ever exist.

"Then, one day, Caroline (our VO Director) comes in with a recording sent by a rep for Claudia Black - who hadn't done game VO back then but wanted to get into it," continues Gaider. "And it was Claudia doing a slow *beat poet* rendition of Baby Got Back. I kid you not. I was already a fan, so I lost my goddamn mind." Yes, that Baby Got Back - and Gaider still has the original recording, too - but no, "you cannot have it" yourself.

"Naturally, we jumped on that immediately," admits the writer, despite facing some initial "resistance from higher up." Gaider didn't mind that she "sounds like she smokes three packs a day" - in fact, he said it's "what I like about her!" Once the team allowed Black to work her own magic and act as she would naturally, all felt right. "We loved her performance so much we had the feeling that the team would love it too and forget their nonsense. They did."

Gaider then shares his favorite memory of Black, when he first met her and unintentionally compared her to Helena Bonham Carter. According to the Dragon Age mastermind, she would joke about being "a very cheap version of Helena Bonham Carter" after his comment and laugh. "So Wicked. I love her instantly and forever." In the end, Gaider says "Morrigan became a real touchstone for me, the heart of DAO. Way beyond her initial inspirations."

This is certainly not the origin story I was expecting as a longtime fan myself, but it's safe to say I absolutely love it. Black recently returned to voice Morrigan once more in the series' long-awaited fourth game, a title that as our The Veilguard review describes is one of this year's new games that fans won't want to miss. While she isn't a companion as she was in Origins, it's almost impossible to not fall in love with the shapeshifter immediately.

Craving more BioWare-esque fun? Here are some of our favorite games like Dragon Age to play right now.

BioWare creative director John Epler says it was important for Dragon Age: The Veilguard to return to the studio's "very real strength" of character-building and storytelling as other recent projects "didn't center that strength as well as they could have."

Speaking on the My Perfect Console podcast alongside fellow The Veilguard director Corinne Busche, Epler says BioWare was able to return to its roots with publisher EA's blessing after seeing its focus diluted by chasing industry trends.

"You know, I love Mass Effect: Andromeda, but there was also - we had open-world that was a big thing in the industry at the time, and that starts to dilute your focus," Epler says (thanks, Eurogamer). "We had Anthem - live service dilutes your focus.

"So for us, it was really understanding what it is that people come to the studio to do - they work here for a reason, they want to make big stories that allow you to be a big hero of your own creation, but also a focus on characters, a focus on that experience of living in a different world."

Epler goes on to say that the studio wanted Dragon Age: The Veilguard to get back to those very things, as that's what made the studio what it was during the "golden age" of BioWare where we saw hit after hit. "The Veilguard was a very conscious return to that with a focus on characters, storytelling, and being just this really bombastic single-player RPG," he adds.

As our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review declares, the team has certainly been successful in getting back to its roots. We gave the game a near-perfect score, calling it "a true return to RPG form for BioWare."

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out now.

For more games like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RPGS.

At this point, there's basically nothing left for me to do in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This isn't a brag; I reviewed the game ahead of launch, generally quite enjoyed myself, and spent around 80 hours in BioWare's latest RPG across nine days. I left no meat on that bone – except for a couple quests that failed at a narrative juncture, which I have since gone back to do in another playthrough. And yet, I already want more.

This isn't necessarily meant as a knock against Dragon Age: The Veilguard, either. I stand by my Dragon Age: The Veilguard review score and general thought that while it's certainly not what Dragon Age was, it very much is what Dragon Age, well, is in the here and now. But there are seemingly no plans for significant DLC, and so now I'm left at a bit of an impasse. My desire for more is perhaps a bit churlish to say, but it's honest.

Given that my only real concern about Dragon Age: The Veilguard earlier this year was how it might impact one of my several tabletop campaigns set in Thedas, it is likely little surprise to learn that I inhaled everything the new game has to offer already. I am absolutely an outlier, and I recognize this, but I'm also already wistfully looking at the calendar and wondering exactly when EA might let the developers at BioWare play in this particular sandbox again. If the space between this and Dragon Age: Inquisition is any indication, I'd be closer to 50 than not, and Maker knows I don't need that existential crisis kicking around in my head.

Dragon middle-aged

Don't get me wrong; there are still some parts of the game that'll take me a good chunk of time to see. The various permutations of teams all seem to have unique dialogue interactions, and while I've heard just about everything there is for Harding and Bellara to say to each other and to a lesser extent Emmrich and Taash, every other possible combination would effectively be new to me. And each companion has at least one significant choice I could play out differently.

Also, my big review playthrough was a Warrior, leaving two entirely different classes to mess around with and 50 or more skills to grab each – not to mention the fact that I've only really done one specialization, leaving eight more to experience. I'm not a particularly gifted mathematician, but that's quite a few potential builds, statistically speaking. (I'm pretty sure.)

There's something to be said, however, about going through the absolutely grueling process of reviewing a giant RPG ahead of launch and coming out the other side going, "please, sir, can I have some more?" I could nitpick narrative choices or the structure of the game – the official art book has some pretty wild details about three different, distinct versions of what Veilguard could have been, all of which I've salivated over – but this is less that I wasn't sated by Dragon Age: The Veilguard and more that I didn't realize I'd previously been starving.

Now that I know there is sustenance to be had, nourishment to be gained in the form of official Dragon Age stories, I'm left wondering when my next "meal" will be. For now, it looks like I'll be left to tell stories among friends, which is far from the worst thing in the world, but if BioWare could deliver something, anything in half the time it took to get Veilguard to market… I wouldn't complain.

If you don't want to wait for more Dragon Age, you could always check out one of the best RPGs instead.

Following Dragon Age: The Veilguard's long-awaited release at the end of October, BioWare's art director has been sharing pieces of concept art from early in the game's development, including the very first piece he did for the project.

Games these days take a long time to develop, and that was especially true for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with developers like then concept artist, now art director Matt Rhodes already thinking up ideas for the follow-up to the not-yet-released Dragon Age: Inquisition. One such piece, shared by Rhodes on Twitter, shows off the first piece of concept art he made for Veilguard, featuring a magister, slaves, and an adventurer in a foggy cityscape.

Along with many of the pieces recently shared by Rhodes, he confirmed that it was from 2014 and that before Inquisition had been released, he and the team were already coming up with ideas for where the series would go after that. "All the way back in 2014, before Dragon Age: Inquisition had even shipped, I started sketching out what cool things might come next. We had momentum, so these quick mock ups explored where some of the unfinished story threads might lead." he wrote on Twitter.

10 years after the initial concepts were made up by Rhodes and other BioWare artists, it seems fair to say that the forward planning has paid off, with the game receiving plenty of positive attention from players and critics alike—our own review included.

If you've finished Veilguard, you might want to check out our list of the best RPGs for an idea of what to play next.

Shortly after the launch of his own long-awaited RPG, BioWare creative director and Dragon Age: The Veilguard lead John Epler praises Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima for his ability to bring whatever he has envisioned to the screen as a solid video game.

Speaking in a recent post on BlueSky in response to a Washington Post article on Kojima, Epler shares his thoughts on the fellow creator's reputation and work. "Generally I resist the idea of auteurship in games," writes the Dragon Age director, "because so much of how a game turns out is out of the control of any individual person." According to Epler, Kojima, however, "is one of the few people that I think earns it."

He continues his reply in a thread, explaining why Kojima stands out among other designers, using his experience with The Veilguard's release as an example. "As someone who just went through shipping a AAA game in a leadership role," continues Epler, "having a vision is easy. Clearly communicating that vision and doing so in an actionable way? That's the hard part, but he's done it multiple times."

Epler also goes on to say that "Death Stranding is unlike anything else I've ever played and while I don't know if I love it, I admire it a lot." Kojima's surreal action game is "a very good game to disassociate to" and while he admits that he doesn't "actually know what the story is intended to be," its "moment-to-moment gameplay loop just works for me so well" - a fair point of view, if you ask me.

With the ever-mysterious OD still in the works, there's no telling what Kojima has in store for the future after Death Stranding and its upcoming sequel, either. As Epler seems to put it, however, one thing is for certain - Kojima's new projects are sure to shine the way that all of his previous work does, in a strange yet beautiful fashion that perfectly encapsulates their creator's "vision."

Craving more BioWare-esque fun? Here are some of our favorite games like Dragon Age to play right now.