Mark Darrah, the former executive producer for the Dragon Age series of games has stated in a recent video in his Youtube channel that he believes the team responsible for the development of Dragon Age: Veilguard didn’t get the proper support from both EA and Bioware, at different stages of the game’s development. He explained in the video that despite being a major IP, Dragon Age was severely ignored in favor of other projects after several events that took place in 2017 led to a significant change in the direction that Bioware was headed to.
According to Mark Darrah, 2017 had been “the most impactful 12 months in BioWare’s history”, as this was the time period of the final stages in development of Mass Effect Andromeda and the early development of the game which later became Dragon Age: Veilguard. And Darrah says that at this time the Dragon Age team had “no support from BioWare or EA” and they felt “jerked around”.
“This was the first time where we had this leadership discontinuity, where the person in charge of a project left that project to help someone else, some other project, while the project continued to run,” Darrah continued. “In the cast of Mass Effect: Andromeda, I don’t think the impact to Dragon Age was huge. It wasn’t very long, but it did set this precedent as this being a thing that we could do, and it’s not a good thing to do. It is incredibly dangerous to have a project run while it’s missing some of its core leadership.”
He also said that during 2017 the development team of Dragon Age was informed that studio veteran Casey Hudson, who were a vital part in the development of the original Mass Effect trilogy, would be returning.
“You have to remember: I am the second most senior person at BioWare,” Darrah said. “Casey was interviewed, and hired, and prepared to be brought back entirely without me being consulted in any way. Would me have being involved in the process have changed the decision? No, I don’t think it would have, but there is an immense amount of disrespect involved in making a hire of this impact, in making a decision of this import, without involving the second-most senior person at your studio in any way.”
Of course, it was already known that Dragon Age: Veilguard turned out the way it did largely due to EA rather than Bioware. But still it’s quite alarming to find out that both EA and Bioware wouldn’t lend proper support to the Dragon Age team which the game really needed during multiple phases of it’s development period.
Dragon Age: Veilguard came out on 31 October 2024 for the Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
