Dragon Age: The Veilguard is BioWare’s first new game in five years since the disastrous launch of Anthem. The live-service shooter was a baffling turn for the studio, which up until then had focused almost exclusively on epic single-player RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic.
Just two years after launch, EA and BioWare shut Anthem down, and it appears the studio learned from the whole process. In a new interview with Edge magazine (via 80lv), Dragon Age: The Veilguard creative director John Epler explained the tough lesson that Anthem taught BioWare.
“We’re a studio that has always been built around digging deep on storytelling and roleplaying,” Epler says “I’m proud of a lot of things on Anthem — I was on that project for a year and a half. But at the end of the day, we were building a game that focused on something we were not necessarily as proficient at.”
It’s clear to see the effect that Anthem has had, as BioWare has expressed multiple times that The Veilguard is getting back to what the studio is good at, focusing on storytelling, world-building, and dynamic companions.
At one point, Dragon Age 4 was supposed to feature a multiplayer component, but back in 2021, a report from Bloomberg stated the multiplayer mode had been removed entirely and the game, at that point called Dragon Age Dreadwolf, would be a single-player RPG. That change is echoed in the Edge interview.
“We tried a bunch of different ideas early on,” says Epler. “But the form The Veilguard has taken is, in a lot of ways, the form that we were always pushing toward. We were just trying different ways to get there. There was that moment where we really settled on, ‘This is a single-player, story-focused RPG — and that’s all it needs to be.”
The Veilguard is going to feature a few first for the Dragon Age series. It’s the first true action RPG of the franchise, not allowing players to control their companions. It’s also the first time we’ve travelled to the Tevinter Imperium, a highly advanced empire ruled by powerful mages. We also know all seven companions can be romanced and will apparently be able to romance each other if the player doesn’t.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches Fall 2024 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
