Summary
It sucks to admit this, but it feels likeDragon Agehas been taken out back and shot. Ever since it was revealed thatDragon Age: The Veilguardmassively underperformedand didn’t meet EA’s expectations, there’s been an almost acceptance from fans of the series that we won’t be seeing any more for the foreseeable future. It’s now all hands on deck forMass Effect, a series that many believe EA cares about a lot more.
Dragon Age and EA have had a complicated relationship over the years, with high-profile developers like Mark Darrah claiming that the team behind the serieshad to constantly fight for attention and support. Former lead writer David Gaider has also been critical of EA’s treatment of Dragon Age in the past,and in a recent interview with PCGamesN, claimed that the series was likely never going to work with EA.
Dragon Age’s David Gaider Says The Series Wasn’t “A Good Match” For EA
In the interview, Gaider talks a little bit more about EA’s relationship, claiming that the publisher never really knew what to do with Dragon Age. He also reckons that EA always expected Dragon Age to perform poorly whenever a new game was released, and that excuses were made for Mass Effect whenever it didn’t do too well, once again referring tothe preferential treatment EA’s sci-fi shooter got.
“They never really knew what to make of it, or what to do with it,” says Gaider. “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.'”
Gaider then goes on tosing the praises of games like Baldur’s Gate 3 again, and its ability to expand a genre that many believed was niche for so long, wishing that EA had “the vision that Larian had” and doubled down on Dragon Age’s RPG elements. I’m pretty sure every Dragon Age fan out there wishes the same.
