Aaryn Flynn, former BioWare general manager, has criticised himself for considering CD Projekt RED’s game better than the studio’s, and he has given several reasons.

Flynn explained to USA Today‘s For The Win that Dragon Age: Inquisition suffered mainly because of the Frostbite engine DICE developed for Battlefield and that it was a cross-gen game, as they had to deal with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in addition to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which is why the currently newest Dragon Age was currently being held back.

According to Flynn, the most significant sacrifice they had to make was when they had to release Dragon Age: Inquisition for both console generations at the same time. “That crushed so much ambition because we didn’t have the team size or the time to differentiate those things, truly. So you had to develop the lowest common denominator, and as that came in, that certainly beat out some expectations and ambitions we had for certain fun features in gameplay. In contrast, CD Projekt didn’t do that with The Witcher 3 a few months later, and I think their game was better for it,” Flynn said. Geralt will soon be coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.

One significant difference is that CD Projekt RED did not have a publisher behind it, as Electronic Arts was for BioWare. “Being a programmer, I underestimated Frostbite’s difficulty presenting to our dev teams. I wish I’d done a better job communicating that to the top brass at Electronic Arts. I wish I’d understood the engine’s friction for us building a very different kind of game,” Flynn added, partially blaming Electronic Arts.

But we can understand that. It may have played a part in them not pushing their proprietary technology too hard…

Source: PSL