It’s difficult to discuss the nextMass Effectwithout discussing the lastDragon Age. The two cousins have always been close, practically sisters raised under the same roof, but these days it’s more than a shared studio and similar character ethos that bindsBioWare’sbig hits together. They feel less like they lift each other up, and more like they threaten to drag each other down.
After Dragon Age: The Veilguard fizzled, there is a sense thatBioWare’s next game could well be its last. Dragon Age’s failure to deliver puts more pressure onto Mass Effect. Not only to revive the series after a decade in the wilderness (and the disappointment ofAndromeda), but now to course correct after the -possibly overblown-criticism DATV endured, and also to save the studio. I can’t help feeling like if things had been reversed, the pressure would not be quite so oppressive.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Borrows Heavily From Mass Effect
The best things aboutDragon Age: The Veilguardare how close it is to Mass Effect. While some fans will mourn the more tactical, methodical approach to combat and the lack of opportunity to play as companions to try out different classes, I felt The Veilguard’spower wheel combat with combo detonations was one of its high points. It made the game feel faster and more active, and the aggression suited the tighter maps that were clearly leftovers fromthe original live-service direction.
But it could also be said that the worst of The Veilguard came directly from Mass Effect, too. Mass Effect has always been a much narrower series - we see the entire trilogy through the eyes of one soldier and their crew, with many aspects of the background lore (drell migration, batarian genocide, any non-military politics of the universe) left firmly in the background. Mass Effect relies on sharp character relationships and individual moments rather than the richer, slowburn lore of Dragon Age with secrets around every corner.
In a way, this reflects their genres. Mass Effect is a sci-fi action game, and puts emphasis on a single quest (albeit one with the aim of saving the universe). Dragon Age is a fantasy epic, spanning different heroes,vast regions, and democratic upheaval. While your goal in each game is still relatively singular, they differ greatly across games in ways Shepard’s goals do not, and also see you team up with much broader casts in wider-reaching stories with decisions that feature louder, longer echoes that touch lives in more specific ways than Shepard merely saving them.
Dragon Age Was The Wrong Game At The Wrong Time
Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched at a bad time. The series has always been very progressive, as has Mass Effect, and there is an undercurrent of rage and misery fighting against seeing that in gaming. This movement is not as effective as it thinks it is - look atthe success of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, or the flipped script on the likes ofMonster Hunter WildsorSpace Marine 2- but it has a special talent for smelling blood in the water, andDragon Age was bleeding.
But that always felt part of a deeper issue with Dragon Age’s bad timing. Again, possibly owing to its live-service roots, The Veilguard felt very shallow. Character dilemmas were either weightless, obvious, or led to the same outcome. Consequences of anything were rare. Lore was thinned out to make it more digestible, clearly aiming for a breezier pace it seemed like audiences were moving towards. Characters were reduced to kissing simulators who occasionally told you some background info wrapped around tropes designed for AO3 writers to sink their keyboards into. This, it seemed, was the sort of lowest common denominator fantasy writing players wanted. ThenBaldur’s Gate 3launched.
It is unfair to say Dragon Age should have matched up to Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian’s RPG will emerge from the 2020s as one of, if not the, best game of the decade. It’s unreasonable to suggest all games in its genre must be at its level. But the older Dragon Age games could have given it a run for its money. Not quite as mechanically layered, not quite as full of surprises, but with casts just as endearing and complex. The Veilguard chose to move away from this identity and embrace amore hand-holding, cupcake softnessjust when audiences were desperate for games like the older Dragon Age titles, and online thugs were armed with virtual baseball bats to target any game walking home alone at night.
The ironic thing is if the release order were reversed, things could have been different. Mass Effect, being less reliant on world-spanning lore, probably could have made a better job of a game built more obviously around character interaction and fast-paced action in small arenas. Likewise, if Dragon Age were now following Mass Effect, it would have more distance from Baldur’s Gate 3 and the rest of the toxicity.
Ultimately, Dragon Age failed because it didn’t respect itself or its audience enough to actually be Dragon Age. It’s easy to say that on reflection, but it’s clear there was a feeling at the studio (at least at some level) that the modern world would not love Dragon Age back, and that it needed to adapt. I can’t shake the feeling that Mass Effect would have fared better in the face of that struggle. All we can do now is hope that it fares well enough in the face of its own struggle - the struggle of reviving a legendary series, redeeming BioWare’s reputation, and saving thousands of jobs. No pressure.
