Former Dragon Age lead writer and series creator David Gaider says he never played Veilguard and that the series was never a good match for EA
Former Dragon Age lead writer and series creator David Gaider says he never played Veilguard and that the series was never a good match for EA
33 Comments
He could only find it a disappointment. A pretty, technically-polished disappointment, but still a disappointment.
Agreed.
Ever since 8th gen consoles hit, EA has only been good for one thing; re-releases and yearly-install-slop.
Perfect case study in how corpo bullshit kills gaming legends.
Can’t imagine it’s easy to watch your baby that was once a grade A student be taken from you and watch it become a drug addict who sleeps in the local mcdonald’s dumpster
I guess it would be like any other media where the creator isn’t involved and isn’t interested in how the story progressed without them. I thought that Lucas wasn’t interested in Star Wars after the prequels and Sapkowski has bad mouthed every iteration of Witcher after his novels.
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Just admit it was a mistake to not continue building up on the DA Origins style, even if the devs had to fight for it. This series died because they abandoned the Baldur’s Gate roots, simple as that. EA through the years released a lot of unusual projects, it’s not like they flat out demand the most generic and “moneymaker” ideas all the time. Veilguard itself is an example, EA allowed the devs to make a single player rpg, a shame they didn’t had the talent to deliver something decent
I tried to play Veilguard like 30 times since I got it for free, but its so devoid of any fun I just can’t imagine what they were going for.
Gonna be real, no series is a good match for EA.
That company has been memed on for decades now, most people recognize it as a black hole of the gaming industry.
I liked the game. Haven’t liked dragon age since originals gameplay wise. They are vastly different experiences but I thought it was good for what it was trying to do.
DA has always felt like a mess of a franchise though.
I agree with Gaider on DA2, its my favorite of the series by far. It took a while to come around on it, the overall plot is messy and doesn’t really conclude, but I just ove basically all of the details and character writing in it.
Veilguard is fine. The combat can be fun, but the game rushes everything to just finish and get it over with. I don’t think Veilguard will be remembered as fondly as 2 is, it’ll just be mourned as a game that has so much potential behind it that was sadly smothered to death.
Having played DA Origins recently, BG3 is more a succesor to that game than any DA game that came after.
EA games are long dead to me. It’s sad but it’s true for many. The game quality is just bot there anymore.
As someone who did enjoy VG, I agree with what he’s saying. Every DA game after Origins feels like it’s constantly being jerked into a different direction, completely at the whims of what EA believes will help sell the game to consumers. VG also had the unfortunate pleasure of having a rough development cycle, and it’s honestly a miracle that Corienne Bush was able to right the ship within a two-year time frame (People shit on her for “ruining” DA, but remember she came in as director pretty late in development)
I think if the Dragon Age universe had a studio like Larian or Owlcat behind it, it could become one of the best fantasy worlds out there. But I guess we’ll have to settle for some good, but flawed games.
It’s not EA specifically. All the good people left; and then Casey Hudson fucked it.
Every Studio gets that one great release with EA money. After that it’s like a steady downhill ride before you become a “support” studio.
“In many ways, Dragon Age was, I think, not a good match for EA,” he tells me. “They never really knew what to make of it, or what to do with it. The expectation was always that it wouldn’t do well, and when it did do well, it took people by surprise. By comparison, Mass Effect was slick and it was action-driven and very much up EA’s alley, so they always expected that it should do better, and every time it didn’t, it got excuses like ‘oh they released in the wrong timeframe, or X, Y, and Z.’ The idea was that the potential for Mass Effect was more – it could get the action audience as well as the RPG audience. It wasn’t until Mass Effect 3 that they started to realize that ‘no, there’s an action RPG audience, like a crossover,’ but you don’t just get both audiences together.
“Even though Dragon Age only catered to the RPG audience – at least initially – [EA] kept wanting it to move into the action space as well – and maybe by Veilguard it has. I think their idea was that the ‘cap’ on the RPG audience was only so big,” he recalls. “Then Baldur’s Gate 3 comes along and proves no, it’s possible that if you lean into what a genre does really well, you can grow the audience, as it turns out.”
Extremely based. What is death compared to vindication? DA:O purists just can’t stop winning
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We like to blame EA for every problem, but Bioware’s issue is they’ve been releasing stinkers since Andromeda. They’re plagued by internal issues.
Ea ruins everything it touches, one of the actually worst companies of current gaming without a doubt
Veilguard is a solid game for what it is. I enjoyed my playthrough and will eventually do another once my backlog is cleared. Is it flawed? Absolutely but so it all the games the internet loves overrating
I don’t buy ea games anymore. Ever since they gave mass effect 3 only 18 months of dev time.
I know this is reddit and it loves cringe, but I can’t believe that there is a game set in a fantasy world and have very repeated dialogues about american domestic politics and gender identity, I never thought I would see something so extremely embarrassing to watch
Yeah no shit. EA ruined every release since Origins.
DA:O is great, anything after that was hot garbage.
BioWare alway quick to blame EA instead of acknowledging the in-house mismanagement that has plagued it basically since ME3
I still can’t get over how absolutely abysmal Veilguard is.
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced writing so bad. Nothing about it feels organic. Everything about it feels forced.
To be honest after DA1/DA2 the team did change and everyone else left after Inquisition.
Mandatory Spore beta mention.
God, social media is still focused on publishing clickbait articles dunking on this game? For what it’s worth, I 100% completed it and loved nearly every moment of it.
I mean quite frankly only the first game was good
Hot take: Veilguard was good but not a good dragonage. People were really exaggerating the poor quality of it, but it did a lot of things pretty well. Gameplay was fun, but it needed more enemy variety. Had solid pacing, plenty to do, good movement, surprisingly strong character customization in the face, zero bugs basically and I liked the art style
Well if EA (Bioware) hired the writers than yeah, definitely not a good match.
The only good match for EA is fifa and kids addicted to gambling.