« To be frank the Mass Effect team is going to be able to point to The Veilguard and say ‘we should steer away from some of these things, because look what happened’. »
The future of BioWare has never looked murkier.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard proved the latest highly divisive release from a studio that hasn’t had a launch unmarred by controversy since Mass Effect 2 in 2010. Over which time a huge number of key developers have left or been unceremoniously laid-off.
Now BioWare, formerly always a multi-project studio, has focused all its efforts on only one: a new Mass Effect sequel, hoping to dispel the lasting shadow of Andromeda and forge a new path forward for the series.
But that new structure will make the project « less messy », according to Mark Darrah—a longstanding BioWare veteran who served as executive producer on Dragon Age until he left in 2020, and consulted on Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
In an interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, he describes how past BioWare projects have struggled against and « cannibalised » each other, hampering key titles and in some cases preventing proper post-launch support as staff have been swiftly moved off projects deemed to be struggling in development or failed at release.
