Dragon Age Shouldn't Have Had Sequels In The First Place

It’s been 16 years since I’ve last played Origins. Before that, I’ve played a couple of their old games, going way to Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate to KOTOR. Everything BioWare, I was playing it, to me Dragon Age: Origins was leaps and bounds beyond.

There was an interview done by MrMattyPlays with Mark Darrah, the executive and project director for all the Dragon Age titles, his talk about Veilguard draws so much ire, especially from a close fan like me who has accepted that beaten horse of a once great studio is dead. Maybe should’ve been years ago, after Dragon Age: Inquisition. Something really was off about that game, despite the success and how many enjoyed it, at its core, the world building, story and open world map was lacking.

Years after dumpster fires like ME: Andromeda and Anthem, after Veilguard, it hit me, as to why they never made a sequel to anything they’ve worked on, outside of Baldur’s Gate before the acquisition. They were a creative tour de force, made the best games with amazing success. Each project was something of their own making, before the collective whole worked on it, made it better. There were a lot of love.

Then their founders leave, and older developers follow them in droves, each dealing with a giant brick wall that is EA. A husk that is being run by current egos, and at some point, not a dissimilar story to what happened to Bungie. But it’s more like the big reason why all of it came crashing down is corporate meddling.

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BioWare didn't want Dragon Age to be a franchise, and I'll tell you how that became the case. The sequel; Dragon Age II, came out 2 years after DA:O. It wasn’t as well received, and was the token “leftover DLC turned to game” result. But funny enough, the story beats, themes, and gameplay were, to some degree, actually better than Inquisition. Ask the fans, they know very well.

This was sort of at the turning point, they released Mass Effect 2 a year ago, that was the blockbuster success that their parent company wanted. Mass Effect 3 and then later DA:I is where some of the cautionary tales have started to sprout. BioWare’s sister division in Austin, was busy with Star Wars: Old Republic, the popular MMO that actually somewhat was giving what they wanted, as well as stability

Anthem then came around, this was a personal new passion project that BioWare tried hard to pitch for years, before getting anything working in the last 2–3 years till 2019. Casey Hudson left in 2014, only to come back at the last minute to salvage the project. No one knew what they wanted it to be, it was a hodgepodge of creative ideas all dissolved into this brand-new idea, it was becoming more ambitious, they knew this one would stand out in the test of time. That was the case, and I would know since I played it, but it was a short-lived success. BioWare had another subdivision, Montreal, which worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda before having an entire structural change and disconnect from their big sister to being EA Motive. Edmonton kind of screwed up, so most of it was relegated to their Austin division instead. Darrah opened up a lot about Anthem’s development history in this separate video.

Video game studios go through tumultuous development processes, this happens to everyone, but when your parent company refuses to acknowledge being the contributing factor to the creative control, and final product of their own works, with poor communications, and forcing standards, end result is a studio that doesn’t know what they should be doing. When their autonomy, and ideals are constantly put on the line. Anthem was a big mess, it lacked a proper identity, roadmap and delivery, it only had the cool idea, and addictive gameplay loop to keep going for so long. Hudson’s role was kept more elusive, and favoritism from the corporate heads.

Every single game they’ve made as an independent were adaptations and original games of their own making. It was clear from the start that they thrived on their own works, not so much on making sequels because they weren’t really into that. Plus, following trends and thinking that was the big shift in success, no offense Darrah. This now leads us to the biggest elephant in the room, the absolute grotesque insult to what the BioWare magic is supposed to be about; Veilguard.

For the record, I’m glad this one came out. I didn’t have much hope in playing another Dragon Age game because I was too closed out from all the development parties hamfisting their projects out. Anthem was the last straw, and I stood corrected when this game came out the way that it did.

The arrogance in its demeanor to assume because it got an entire personality makeover that it redeems and earns its success. This could have been a whole different game, instead of banking on the established IP’s older success. Needless to say, it didn’t sell well, and it wasn’t because of the progressive ideologies, it was how the agenda was front faced and didn’t earn the merit due to all kinds of problems. Lackluster character development, lore changes, unappealing designs, terrible dialogue, story decisions, and somewhat meager gameplay. You have EA’s marketing to thank for the deception, but I wasn’t eating the cake.

But the reason I was elated about this game, because it told me all I needed to know about their upcoming Mass Effect game. You can’t have too many second chances, and this studio was like a zombie fitted with an auto-defibrillator and guiding hand to talk and walk like we would want it to. To end this, I find it weird that Darrah says EA doesn’t like remastering, they did that with the Command & Conquer games. I wouldn’t mind for Dragon Age: Origins, just don’t change anything unless you have to.

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