Laidlaw: Dragon Age 4's dev team was reduced to "a very small skeleton crew” [UP: ominous tweet]

[TheRaidenPT]

You know I was kidding when I said Bioware would close their doors after Anthem is a flop in terms of quality and the eventual sales.

But with how things are... I don't know, I really really want a DA4 and a new Mass Effect but obviously Anthem had to come in between the last few years and basically butcher any chance of getting any of those this gen.

It's gonna be around the 3rd or 4th year of the next gen when we get one of these games.

How about we wait until Anthem drops? They can't exactly promote other games right now.

Loved Inquisition and I can't wait to continue the story.

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Anthem is the exact problem in why we are in this situation, if this game fails Bioware won't have a say in terms of decisions moving forward.

Especially with how bad BF5 is being received, if Anthem fails to match their criteria.. EA is gonna have to explain to the shareholders wth is going on...

 

[Sgt. Demblant]

The tweet doesn't sound THAT ominous to me but maybe it's a language barrier thing. Not that I have much hope in the future of Dragon Age or Bioware in general but this doesn't change much for me.

Also, it's always been interesting to see how Dragon Age has always been perceived as less successful than Mass Effect by so many people. The giantbomb guys make that mistake every time DA comes up, it's weird.

Origins was so good and 2, while unfinished, did a lot of interesting things. I enjoyed my time with Inquisition and was getting pretty close to the Platinum but a few years later, I have retained almost nothing from that game. Doesn't mean it's bad though. DA has so much potential, it's a shame it's owned by EA.

 

[Dr. Caroll]

In all honestly 2014 did feel like a drought to me. My brother was constantly trying to find shiny games to show the PS4 strengths. Titles were still being released cross platform. Tons of people bought Watchdogs I'm sure because there was little else to play. In my opinion 2014 definitely was one of the weakest GOTY winners ever.

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And that, I think, is the rub. From a PC gaming perspective, 2014 had amazing games like Alien: Isolation, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Far Cry 4, Divinity: Original Sin, The Evil Within, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and MGS V: Ground Zeroes. Some of those games rank among the best games ever released in their particular genres, particularly Alien: Isolation. Wolfenstein: The New Order remains a high point for the series. Absolutely amazing game that the sequels haven't quite lived up to. It even had stuff like Destiny and Titanfall, although those weren't to my taste. Also stuff like Ryse and Sunset Overdrive are 2014 titles although they came to PC later. Plus 2014 had two Assassin's Creed games which were both excellent, and of course Watch_Dogs which has ended up looking more and more favorable as time as passed.

PS4 owners were dealing with a pricey console they'd recently purchased that didn't really have any high profile releases for several months, and I think that is the reason why 2014 is strangely regarded as a "weak" year despite so many incredible games releasing. Because most of the year's best games were released in the last few months of that year.

 

[ADee]

I really have liked all of the Dragon Age games. Inquisition middle was so good, I just love how it felt like all hope was lost, then they starting singing..



This was one of the greatest moment in any storytelling.
(Off topic but doesn't anyone think this song sounds like Pippin's: Steward of Gondor?)

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Came in for Papa EA, was not disappointed.

Get the grave ready...

 

[Markitron]

This is shite, I love DA

 

[KORNdog]

after inquisition and andromeda it's hard to feel any sense of loss for these series these days. obviously no-one wants to see people lose jobs like this, but it just feels like they...or ultimately EA, did this to themselves.

 

[Sherlocked]

Man the Dragon Age series is such a ride as a fan of the first title. It went so hard downwards for me. DA2 was nearly an insult after my personal built up expectations from DA1.

And Inquisition is such a weird game. It does so many things right and simultaneously wrong. The pacing is really weird and the formula feels a bit like a MMORPG with a fleshed out story.

Dunno how to rate Inquisition. It was like this:

0-10hrs: hm what is this? WoW?
10-40: omg this game is so good
40-70: omg when does this end?
... dropped.

Will try it again on PC, I think. What I really hate is that everyone wants to bang you if you were nice to them two times.

 

[Deleted member 5596]

Why did Anthem have to happen. Or better yet, ME4 should have been Anthem's spot, and Dragon Age 4 should be next year. This wait for the next Dragon Age is taking too long, Bioware may be assassinated before it happens.

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Because Division and Destiny have been very successful while focused SP Bioware games haven't been selling very well for years now.

 

[Deranged Hermit]

That'd be a fucking shame, Inquisition was the first game to get me interested in the lore.

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Whatever happens in the future he says, doesn't have to mean all that much. I mean it's all about Anthem for EA now but BioWare has been saying they are also working on a new DA. We'll see.

 

[gschmidl]

That'd be a fucking shame, Inquisition was the first game to get me interested in the lore.

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The first DA made me completely stop playing RPGs for years because I hated it so much. Got back in via Amalur, Witcher 1+2, and then loved Inquisition and played well over 100 hours of it.

 

[Spacejaws]

And that, I think, is the rub. From a PC gaming perspective, 2014 had amazing games like Alien: Isolation, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Far Cry 4, Divinity: Original Sin, The Evil Within, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and MGS V: Ground Zeroes. Some of those games rank among the best games ever released in their particular genres, particularly Alien: Isolation. Wolfenstein: The New Order remains a high point for the series. Absolutely amazing game that the sequels haven't quite lived up to. It even had stuff like Destiny and Titanfall, although those weren't to my taste. Also stuff like Ryse and Sunset Overdrive are 2014 titles although they came to PC later. Plus 2014 had two Assassin's Creed games which were both excellent, and of course Watch_Dogs which has ended up looking more and more favorable as time as passed.

PS4 owners were dealing with a pricey console they'd recently purchased that didn't really have any high profile releases for several months, and I think that is the reason why 2014 is strangely regarded as a "weak" year despite so many incredible games releasing. Because most of the year's best games were released in the last few months of that year.

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For all the reasons listed I agree I actually think it was a great year. I think Dragon Age getting Game of the Year was a letdown after my impressions with it because something like Wolfenstein was definitely more impressive to me.

As for the perceived 'drought' it was definitely more in the first half of the year, coupled with a few notably hyped games that had let people down. Dark Souls 2 made some fans cry (my personal GOTY), Driveclub came off the starting line lackluster, Assassin's Creed Unity was a huge shitstorm (I also absolutely loved it), Evil Within wasn't 'Resident Evil' enough, Shadows of Mordor was too easy, Dragon Age was too grindy, Destiny was shallow, Alien Isolation strangely got weirdly negative reviews and fan reception from some places that even worried me but those turned out to be bullshit because the game was amazing. I uh think that's it for the list. It just seemed like a wierdly critical period where people were waiting for the next game to blow us all out of the water.

I think the games were a bit limited if you were a paticular type of player. My brother was an open world adventure/RPG type so Watch_Doggies appealed to him but bar that he was out for awhile, doesn't like Horror, FPS or Racing and is pretty engrained in the AAA culture. He did end up getting Destiny and Far Cry 4 and enjoyed them but never bothered with Dragon Age.

 

[JoeBoy101]

I mean, they have to do something with those people once anthem is done. I don think its totally unrealistic that they would be moved back to a previous project.

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Not necessarily. I'm not as bearish on Bioware's future as many others are if Anthem doesn't take off like a rocket (no pun intended), but I also think its very believable to think that if Bioware disappoints again (despite strong sales of its last few games), then EA will reposition them or chop up the choice cuts and leave the studio as a shell of its former self (too late?).

 

[Asbsand]

Personally I loved Andromeda and would welcome more of that over Anthem. Anthem just seems like not the reason I loved Bioware's games at all. Maybe it'll surprise me, though I have almost no time at all nowadays for multiplayer type shit, so we'll see.

I wouldn't mind Bioware moving on to other series, but as I said Anthem seems far removed from why I loved Dragon Age and Mass Effect so much.

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To be honest, Anthem strikes me as being the direction they have been going towards for a while, at least the main BioWare team. ME2 departed from RPG but that felt like an innovation insofar as it being able to have Gears of War combat with full RPG dialogue trees and branching exploration. Mass Effect 3 then took the "Gears of War" style further, basically eliminating exploration, cutting back player driven branching dialogue in favor of Uncharted setpieces - their developers even claimed to have a "pacing and balancing" phase of planning main missions where they ensured the choreography was kept up and their writers claimed several times that they wanted the game to be "The Movie, of the Mass Effect series". Then they added multiplayer and it really took off.

Then the return to former dialogue elements in DAI and Andromeda felt pretty tired honestly. It felt like BioWare did it because fans asked for it and not because it excited them. Otherwise I don't get how Mass Effect 2 had this intentful direction of rich interactive cinematics only to have most of it feel completely watered down in terms of cinematics in DAI. Andromeda tried using motion capture in between here and there but the result was awkward and hated, and it was also being primarily developed by another studio while Anthem was cooking.

Going directly from ME3 to Anthem I think it's easy to see why its focused in the areas its focused. Maybe not the GaaS part or the Destiny cloneness, but the slimmed down focus on interactive narrative and increased focus on fun, multiplayer and good mechanics? That's all the evolution the main Edmonton team has been growing (or regressing) into for a while to be honest.

 

[Tibarn]

I don't really like Origins, half the story arcs are excruciating to play (deep roads, fade) and i'm not very fond of the characters.
Inquisition is too long and filled with boring open-world useless things but i like the story (apart from the bad guy) and the characters.
DA2, despite the rushed final act, the ninjas enemy spawns and the endlessly recycled caves and rooms has a more interesting story and the better cast. To my taste at least.

I'm kinda bored of the "saving the world" hero trope and i found super refreshing to just play a character who just works for him/her and only save a city.

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I agree with some of your points, some sections in Origins are too long and boring, and some of the arcs drag a little bit, but gameplay-wise I think it's the best Dragon Age. It feels like a streamlined and more direct (and limited, yeah) version of older CRPG games, while DA2 and D:I felt to me like bad "action" games. Random enemy respawn, lack of depth, and especially DA:I has a serious lack of attack impact.

I can't believe that an enemy archer wouldn't even flinch when hit with a two-handed sword (I played the game using a two-handed sword and the lack of enemy feedback when using auto-attacks is the worst thing ever).

 

[Phellps]

Maybe we're reading too much into that tweet. He's just saying that not matter what happens in his future, he will be proud to have been part of the team.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

Sales dont equal quality.

DA:I is widely disliked by a ton of Dragon Age fans, all my friends who like the series hate Inquisition.

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I love and played every DA games several times and Inquisition is pretty good, its only mistake was that power point thing for main quests.

Maybe we're reading too much into that tweet. He's just saying that not matter what happens in his future, he will be proud to have been part of the team.

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I don't really think that it(s a common mindset to have when everything Is going smoothly.

 

[Phellps]

I don't really think that it(s a common mindset to have when everything Is going smoothly.

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It could go all the way from "BioWare is shutting down!" to "Weekes might have plans to leave BioWare". Would be a terrible loss, still, but not as doom as gloom as the former.

 

[ChrisJSY]

As much as I am slightly excited for Anthem, the more I learn about it the more objectively I feel it won't be received well.
We've seen next to nothing involving the game-play loop aside from dead-end boring horde mode camps scattered across the world.

I feel like it's going to bomb hard and lately I feel a lot of AAA Devs across the board have been attempting to put less effort into their games, thinking they can garner the same success and we're finally starting to see it backfire.
I expect Div 2 to be more successful. I say these things with absolutely no horse in this race, I want both to succeed and plan to play both but, eeehhhh. Anthem isn't looking great now.

I feel this is happening for DA4, like they think the game itself is good enough to throw out the door with little working on it.
We'll see....

 

[Wulfram]

Dragon Age Inquisition is the most fanficced video game on Archive of Our Own, though Overwatch may overtake it.

 

[golem]

As much as I am slightly excited for Anthem, the more I learn about it the more objectively I feel it won't be received well.
We've seen next to nothing involving the game-play loop aside from dead-end boring horde mode camps scattered across the world.

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Bioware really seems dead set on repeating the same mistakes Bungie made launching Destiny. I suppose it sort of worked out for Bungie (especially sales-wise) so what can I say.

 

[Kouriozan]

It's pretty crazy that after a successful game that won GOTYs, a sequel is uncertain.
What the hell happened.

 

[The Emperor]

It's pretty crazy that after a successful game that won GOTYs, a sequel is uncertain.
What the hell happened.

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Greed happened

EA wants more and more. Anthem is the result of that

 

[Almagest]

Of course.

Mike Laidlaw loved Dragon Age, he pulled through with DA2 when EA gave the team a shitty schedule and a 17-month dev cycle, then he spearheaded Inquisition which regardless of some people's feelings is still a GoTY winner and a really good content-packed RPG which shakes things up and sets the bases of the next big Thedas story.

When he left I knew it was over. There's no way he would have if he didn't know EA had for all intents and purposes killed the series or was trying to render it unrecognizable. This fucking publisher.

 

[BrassDragon]

Sorry for the large bump, but thought this didnt really deserve its own thread. One of the writers posted this onto twitter, seems potentially ominous from the way its written

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Thanks for the update.

Man, I felt David Gaider leaving the lead writer position was a huge loss for the franchise (he's the spiritual father of the setting after all) but Weekes seemed like a great replacement at the time.

I feel that both Mass Effect and Dragon Age really need to nail their narrative direction above all. (Possible) shake-ups at the writer level are cause for concern.

 

[Chuchubabe]

I predicted this, Anthem have no hype , it will bomb so fucking hard its not even funny and after that its bye bye Bioware. My hearth bleeds for this studio that last gen was my favorite. I will never see the ending of dragon age IP...

EA corrupts everything holy shit, we knew this studio was in bad shape everyone that is good dev jumped from this sinking ship long ago.

 

[DevilMayGuy]

RIP Dragon Age

 

[edo_kid]

Great just fucking great, after that last big revelation and a great dlc epilogue we are now never getting to see none of that.

It's pretty crazy that after a successful game that won GOTYs, a sequel is uncertain.
What the hell happened.

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It's fucking EA, nothing more needs to be said.

 

[GSG]

Wish there was a way for BioWare to split from EA like Bungie did with MS. Then we might actually have a chance to get good BioWare games again.

As far as I'm concerned, The DA franchise is already dead. The only good game in the franchise was Origins.

 

[Phellps]

I predicted this, Anthem have no hype , it will bomb so fucking hard its not even funny and after that its bye bye Bioware. My hearth bleeds for this studio that last gen was my favorite. I will never see the ending of dragon age IP...

EA corrupts everything holy shit, we knew this studio was in bad shape everyone that is good dev jumped from this sinking ship long ago.

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Yeah, except Anthem is tracking really well. Also, implying that everyone else that stayed at BioWare isn't good? Come on.

 

[Mivey]

I predicted this, Anthem have no hype , it will bomb so fucking hard its not even funny and after that its bye bye Bioware. My hearth bleeds for this studio that last gen was my favorite. I will never see the ending of dragon age IP...

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After Star Wars TOR, which was not a flop, but certainly didn't come anywhere near EA's massive expectations, I wonder who greenlit Anthem. In such a crowded market, pushing for a massive online shooter seems insane. It's almost comical how all big publisher are releasing the same type of game (first it was the MMO train, now it's lootbox-y online shooty games), and are surprised when the market cannot sustain all of them, no matter how big and expensive each one of them is.
BioWare was successful with single-player RPGs, with a natural extension to co-op multiplayer. Why does EA push them to do stuff they have no experience with? It's asinine.

 

[Sargerus]

I predicted this, Anthem have no hype , it will bomb so fucking hard its not even funny and after that its bye bye Bioware. My hearth bleeds for this studio that last gen was my favorite. I will never see the ending of dragon age IP...

EA corrupts everything holy shit, we knew this studio was in bad shape everyone that is good dev jumped from this sinking ship long ago.

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Classic ERA-bubble post.

 

[SofNascimento]

It's such a shame so many great IPs are owned by a company that seemingly have no interest in major single player games.

 

[Linus815]

Classic ERA-bubble post.

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Honestly, I don't think so.
The hype for Anthem seems pretty muted. It didn't make that big of a splash at E3, and the recent developer stream had surprisingly low viewership. It'll be interesting to see how much the hype gets going closer to release as marketing ramps up.

 

[Son of Sparda]

Sorry for the large bump, but thought this didnt really deserve its own thread. One of the writers posted this onto twitter, seems potentially ominous from the way its written

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I didn't expect EA to let them make a single player focused RPG anymore tbh but at the very least I think we'll get something Dragon Age with tons of focus on online and "live experiences" if Anthem does good.

 

[Almagest]

I didn't expect EA to let them make a single player focused RPG anymore tbh but at the very least I think we'll get something Dragon Age with tons of focus on online and "live experiences" if Anthem does good.

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Yeah, like salt in a wound.

It's kinda sad to think that one of my all-time favorite series will probably go out with a whimper. At least ME had its trilogy completed and Andromeda was an actual single player RPG even if it wasn't very good.

 

[BossAttack]

That's like saying Grammys give awards to good music.

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Sales dont equal quality.

DA:I is widely disliked by a ton of Dragon Age fans, all my friends who like the series hate Inquisition.

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Sales don't equal quality.
Awards don't equal quality.
Review scores don't equal quality.

So, what does indicate quality besides you and your friends opinion?

 

[Arsene no Kiseki]

ok? meanwhile myself and a huge contingent of people disagree and love Inquisition. It sold a gorillion copies and got great reviews. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

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I never said it didn't? All I'm saying is that its a highly polarizing title between fans, I enjoyed it myself, but It gets a LOT more hate compared to the first two.

 

[Servbot24]

Sales don't equal quality.
Awards don't equal quality.
Review scores don't equal quality.

So, what does indicate quality besides you and your friends opinion?

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I'm not sure what you mean by besides opinion. Obviously opinion is the most important thing.

 

[dgrdsv]

It's such a shame so many great IPs are owned by a company that seemingly have no interest in major single player games.

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What games are EA even interested in these days anyway?

 

[EatChildren]

There's a looot I hate about Inquisition and I could never, ever get into the Dragon Age universe as a whole. But man Solas is like...one of my favourite BioWare characters ever, and single handily made me interested in the narrative's future and bits and pieces of the background lore. The game he's in isn't one I'd write home about, but yeah. Will say though, I did at least muster the energy to see Dragon Age through to completion, and bought that epilogue DLC. Same can't be said for Andromeda.

All eyes at EA would be on Anthem. Can't even begin to imagine the pressure at BioWare.

 

[BlackManLovesKUF]

I am really interested in hearing about Bioware's roadmap for Anthem and how they plan to keep people engaged long term. I've read about the struggles Bioware have endured since switching to Frostbite and for a more service oriented AAA new IP what makes me believe Bioware has a handle on those tools to supply the content this game needs to succeed long term. Since EA is unlikely to delay the game again, I'm" really curious to see how the game looks at launch and how quickly players complete that content. I've read the issues Bungie had with Destiny, Massive with The Division having a rough launch as well, they both turned it around but Bioware doesn't have nearly the manpower of those studios to bounce back from a bad launch. Where are they going to find the time and additional manpower for a big budget, GAAS Dragon Age 4? EA is banking too much on Anthem.

 

[Imerty]

Considering that Bioware is royally fucked if Anthem bombs, it's not surprising to see that every other project is on hold or was reduced to a really small team until they see what's going to happen with the company.

 

[BrassDragon]

I am really interested in hearing about Bioware's roadmap for Anthem and how they plan to keep people engaged long term. I've read about the struggles Bioware have endured since switching to Frostbite and for a more service oriented AAA new IP what makes me believe Bioware has a handle on those tools to supply the content this game needs to succeed long term. Since EA is unlikely to delay the game again, I'm" really curious to see how the game looks at launch and how quickly players complete that content. I've read the issues Bungie had with Destiny, Massive with The Division having a rough launch as well, they both turned it around but Bioware doesn't have nearly the manpower of those studios to bounce back from a bad launch. Where are they going to find the time and additional manpower for a big budget, GAAS Dragon Age 4? EA is banking too much on Anthem.

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Barring catastrophic launch issues or quality problems, Anthem is going to achieve some success. The real question is how much success can BioWare handle.

I speculate the narrative content at launch will be fairly lightweight and exhausted quickly, which might turn off a subset of BioWare fans and dominate a lot of the game's coverage (especially on ERA and social media), even if the systems and progression loop capture a sizeable audience.

It's very unlikely to fail but the worst scenario might be where it's just successful enough to keep going... but having flaws that need a lot of retooling, rebalancing and massive content updates, effectively turning BioWare into the Anthem studio as it keeps draining resources from other IPs.

 

[Strafer]

It feels like they got a lot riding on Anthem. I don't wanna see them fail.

 

[Deleted member 35598]

Oh dear ! This thread is not going to end well...

 

[Mass_Pincup]

I'm not sure what you mean by besides opinion. Obviously opinion is the most important thing.

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Sales is an indicator that the product seemed attractive enough for the customer to buy it.
Awards and reviews means that the peers as well as the gaming press' opinion was positive.

Those two shape a picture of the overall consensus surrounding the game.

 

[Ketkat]

I'm not sure what you mean by besides opinion. Obviously opinion is the most important thing.

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The thing is, all three of those things are how companies tell the general opinion on the game. It won awards, it sold really well, and it received good reviews. Some random person who didn't like the game is not going to have nearly the same impact or visibility to EA or Bioware as those three things combined.

 

[gschmidl]

If Anthem fails, Bioware goes bye.

If Anthem succeeds, Bioware makes Anthem-like games.

Both are uninteresting outcomes for people interested in single-player RPGs.