Former Steam darling Dragon Age Veilguard failed over EA's erratic strategy

A rather unprecedented look behind the scenes of the Electronic Arts’ Dragon Age: Veilguard production process has now revealed why did BioWare’s long awaited title went from boom to bust in the span of weeks.

While it sounds like the typical story of a corporate behemoth swallowing an indie game studio that didn’t fit its culture, it was actually EA’s haphazard approach to reinventing itself that led to the downfall of the latest Dragon Age title.

EA, which is mostly known for ultrapopular sports game franchises that form the bulk of its multibillion revenue, bought BioWare for $860 million with the hope to diversify its sports-heavy portfolio.

In the process, however, it meddled with the Dragon Age concept and execution so much, that the BioWare team couldn’t follow all the corporate twists and turns and was left scrambling for time and artistic freedom.

Instead of the brooding narrative of the semi-open Dragon Age universe that brought EA the first big hit with BioWare's Inquisition sequel that sold 12 million copies, EA decided to make it a live-service game.

The departure from the fast and heavy atmosphere of the previous Dragon Age titles tried to replicate the financial success of lighter online games like Overwatch and was met with skepticism by the BioWare team. They felt that EA was only making them create "Anthem with dragons," referring to another game developed under the EA tenure that flopped.

While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn’t die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay.

Consequently, the heads of the BioWare studio and the Dragon Age franchise both resigned in protest to where the team’s efforts were heading, but were quickly replaced by EA and the new lead ordered another pivot.

This time, EA wanted BioWare to go back to the single-player format that brought the Dragon Age franchise its initial success. The team, however, was tasked with building a whole new narrative on the multiplayer fundamentals it already had in order to finish the game in a year and a half, instead of rewriting everything from scratch as is typical with such grand pivots.

EA even brought in the Mass Effect team to head the development to completion, while the Dragon Age leads were sidestepped at every turn when it came to crucial decisions about the tone and character of the game. The Mass Effect chiefs, for instance, pushed for rewriting the whole dialogue from the typical multiplayer banter to a more serious note with mixed success.

As a result, Dragon Age: The Veilguard lacked both the live-service narrative it was intended for, and the deep and engaging single-player storyline with impossible choices that made fans wait for the previous editions with bated breath.

Still, Dragon Age: The Veilguard went to be an initial hit on Steam with professional critics and new players liking it enough to make it an instant chart topper, knocking Call of Duty off its top spot. Just as legacy Dragon Age players gasped at EA's trailer of the game, though, they never warmed up to it after the release either.

In a cautionary tale, EA had to issue an unprecedented sales forecast revision that sent its shares in a tailspin and has now left the BioWare team’s future in the Electronic Arts corporate structure in limbo.