Anthem was a huge flop for BioWare and Electronic Arts, there’s no doubt about it. It had an enormous amount of hype pre-launch but was so underwhelming that
However, in a way, it turned out to be a key lesson for the development of the upcoming single player action RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Speaking to EDGE magazine (issue #401), Creative Director John Epler explained:
We’re a studio that has always been built around digging deep on storytelling and roleplaying. 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 focused on something we were not necessarily as proficient at. For me and the team, the biggest lesson was to know what you’re good at and then double down on it. Don’t spread yourselves too thin. Don’t try to do a bunch of different things you don’t have the expertise to do. A lot of the people on this team came here to build a story-focused, singleplayer RPG.
We tried a bunch of different ideas early on. But the form Dragon Age: The Veilguard has taken is, in a lot of ways, the form that we were always pushing towards. We were just trying different ways to get there. There was that moment where we really settled on, ‘This is a singleplayer, story-focused RPG – and that’s all it needs to be’.
In the interview with EDGE, BioWare also discussed why Dragon Age: The Veilguard dropped the ability to control the rest of the party. Game Director Corinne Busche said:
This is a much higher actions-per-minute game. It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried allowing you full control of your companions as well, what we’ve found is it wasn’t actually adding to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is set to launch this Fall on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. BioWare promised to reveal the actual date later this month, possibly at Gamescom Opening Night Live. Meanwhile, review all the known information in our roundup article.
