The studio has also said that the team was devastated by the failure of Anthem, which brought the team to its knees, but that they were able to learn from their mistakes.

In EDGE magazine issue 401 (at least that publication is still alive, but the same can’t be said for Game Informer…), we interview several members of BioWare about Dragon Age 4. One important topic is the role of the game’s protagonist, Rook. She will be the only one we will be able to control, which will be a significant change from previous installments in the franchise. Battles will be more fast-paced, with characters throwing spells at high speed and moving back and forth acrobatically. It might even remind us of Mass Effect, which bodes well for the new ME…

“We wanted you to feel like you’re Rook – you’re in this world, you’re really focused on your actions. We really wanted the companions to feel like they were fully realized characters in control of their own actions. I will admit that on paper, when you just read that you have no ability to control your pets, it might feel like something has been taken away. But in our testing and validation with players, what we’re finding is that they’re more engaged than ever.

This is a game with a lot more action per minute. It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried to give you full control of your companions, we found that it didn’t really add to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character,” said Game Director Corinne Busche.

But what about Anthem? It was a huge embarrassment for BioWare five and a half years ago, and two years later the studio stopped development. BioWare’s creative director John Epler told EDGE that it was a tough lesson for them, but they learned a lesson: stick to what they knew, and it was genre and style very different from what the studio was known for (Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic…):

“We are a studio that has always been built around deep storytelling and role-playing. 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 making a game that focused on something that we were not necessarily that good at. The biggest lesson for me and the team was to know what you’re good at and then double down on that. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Don’t try to do a bunch of different things that you don’t have the expertise to do.

A lot of people on this team came here to make a story-driven, single-player RPG. We tried a lot of different ideas early on, but the form that The Veilguard took is in many ways the form that we were always pushing towards. We just tried different ways to get there. There was a moment where we really settled on, ‘This is a single-player, story-driven RPG – and that’s all it needs to be,'” Epler said.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be released sometime this fall for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Source: PCGamer, PCGamer