Dragon Age: Veilguard lead level designer Brian J. Audette responds to criticisms on Bluesky: "We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one."
Dragon Age: Veilguard lead level designer Brian J. Audette responds to criticisms on Bluesky: "We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one."
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a _better_ Dragon Age, only a _different_ one. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
In a response to an article written for Bloomberg by Jason Schreier investigating the ten year "development turmoil," lead level designer Brian J. Audette refutes the notion that the game was "compromised" in a post on their bluesky account.
The full post reads:
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one.
That's just being in denial. The game killed the series. A better Dragon Age would make the Antivan Crows a lot more interesting and integrate in elven communities with the elven gods rather than the venatori. It's not a good Dragon Age game
I'd argue the dragon age series died with dragon age: origins and everything since then has been a pale imitation. A "good dragon age game" is a solid CRPG with branching quests and story decisions. Which we haven't had since DA:O.
Also the combat. DA:O was already quite streamlined when compared to other CRPGs of the time, and they only dumbed it down further and further with each new iteration.
Dragon Age fans could always grasp at the developing lore that David Gaider was trying to hold together through branching paths game to game. Fans even put up with Inquisition's CW soap drama quest lines as long as they got interesting darkspawn, elven, mage/templar/chantry reveals done well. Veilguard is where fans got nothing to cheer about even. Fans now wax poetic about what could have been reading the Veilguard art book that showed concepts of the game that didn't get made
Embarrassing thing to say even if the game was actually good.
Could've just said "We tried our best and I'm proud of the game and what our team accomplished." and it wouldn't have sounded needlessly antagonistic.
This is the exact same kind of late stage denial, that Ubisoft people are going through. They didn't make a Dragon Age game. They just made generic slop with a Dragon Age branding. All these Assassin's Creed games after the series reboot have been experiencing the exact same treatment. With 0 doubt in my mind, if the next Mass Effect ever comes out, it'll be like this too.
Stop supporting these people. Spend your money on something actually good, especially if it's made by an indie dev
The reaction of diehards wasn’t close to golden. You had the lore-aficionados that found the game as whitewashed, the shippers thought every relationship was shallow and role players thinking it jumped the shark even more than previous games with anachronism. The game was stable. Not buggy. That is its elevator pitch for why it’s good
Maybe it was the best Veilguard that could have been made.
Veilguard is kinda ass though
I have no reason to disagree that the game released was ultimately the best version of itself, but to say that—in the context of the whole development cycle—the game that was released was not compromised in any way feels disingenuous and dishonest to me.
Veilguard was quite good 👍
I'm not sure they could have given the the fact the game started development as a live service game and shifted mid development, C-suite meddling and stank is all over this game and it probably killed the franchise forever. The game went from full price to free on ps plus 3 months after release.
Serious cope from Brian Audette tho.
Ok
I thought the game was alright overall, but it certainly did not feel like a Dragon Age game. The overall story was decent, however a lot of the dialogue was hamfisted. The real problem was that the gameplay felt like Jedi Survivor without the refined combat mechanics. As a result, combat quickly became tedious and repetitive. I also found that the NPCs were more or less fungible, and it really didn't matter who was in your party. This is a stark contrast with previous Dragon Age games where the whole fun was in scripting the behavior of different characters and coming up with clever ways of combine their abilities. Simply having kept the original mechanics, warts and all, would've resulted in a far better game in my opinion.