As the information got here in that Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed its gross sales projections by almost 50%, with writer EA saying that it ‘underperformed our expectations’, I wasn’t the one one on the PC Gamer group who out of the blue felt we could have seen the final entry in a once-legendary fantasy RPG collection.
Then, as yesterday introduced the information that BioWare was restructuring purely round Mass Effect 5, with employees from all different tasks redistributed or let go, and that The Veilguard had nearly definitely obtained its final ever replace with no DLCs deliberate, it felt like the ultimate nail within the Dragon Age collection’ coffin being banged into place. Like numerous different players, I felt I’d seen this coming.
Ever since our official Dragon Age: The Veilguard overview dropped, confirming its close to complete conversion right into a Marvel-i-fied action-RPG that shed a lot of the collection’ authentic identification, I’ve felt like we’re all quietly, undramatically, watching the loss of life of the Dragon Age collection (definitely as a AAA fantasy RPG) play out in sluggish movement. Regardless of how a lot you personally did or did not like The Veilguard, the sport’s underperformance within the eyes of its personal writer and BioWare’s complete restructuring across the subsequent Mass Effect means we’re very in all probability not going to see one other big-budget Dragon Age for a hell of a very long time: If in any respect.
Veilguard’s troubled growth, rife with challenge reboots and key employees leaving the corporate, ended with the event group being completely disbanded. I simply do not see how EA and BioWare double down and, as soon as once more, spend money on what would most definitely be round half-a-decade’s value of growth to make one other Dragon Age recreation, and positively not a conventional, full-fat RPG like the unique launch. They’ve moved so far-off from that I simply can’t see it, and the developer’s new one-game focus technique mainly confirms it. If Mass Effect 5 is successful, then I count on BioWare to simply proceed making Mass Effect video games. If Mass Effect 5 flops, is BioWare then going to return to a collection that, final day out, underperformed by nearly 50 per cent? Can it even survive that?
For me personally, although, what has been most dispiriting about these developments has been watching my worst fears for the Dragon Age collection come to cross. That The Veilguard can be the ultimate act within the fantasy RPG collection, and the complete cease on a few of my gaming life’s most golden recollections. Fans like me who’d been blown away by Dragon Age: Origins’ mature, advanced and difficult gaming expertise at all times held onto the silly hope that this long-awaited instalment wouldn’t solely appropriate among the wrongs of Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition however, like a returning king, present the best way ahead for not solely the collection however the RPG style. The actuality has been removed from that and, trying again now, it appears inevitable.
I’d been fearful about The Veilguard within the run as much as its launch, writing that the factor that scared me most about its impending launch was “it may very effectively be a deflating send-off for a collection that began with such immense promise and that, in my thoughts, has by no means absolutely had that promise dropped at fruition. The promise that it may need been a collection that might have been as impactful and cemented in PC gaming tradition and legend as Baldur’s Gate has been.”
And now I feel most would agree that, no matter the way you view The Veilguard itself, Dragon Age has by no means achieved the greatness it as soon as appeared destined for after the game-changing, genre-topping authentic. Ever since Dragon Age: Origins the collection moved more and more away from the identification that made it a fantasy RPG phenomenon till, on the finish, there was hardly something left, both tonally or mechanically.
The passing of an age
When making an attempt to distill my emotions in the direction of the Dragon Age collection just lately I’ve not been capable of shake the speech delivered by King Théoden of Rohan in J.R.R. Tokien’s The Lord of the Rings, who when confronted with the previously nice race of males’s impending, seemingly inevitable doom, laments that:
“To no matter finish. Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have handed like rain on the mountains. Like wind within the meadow. The days have gone down within the west. Behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this?”
The quote captures my very own disappointment and incapability to grasp how one thing that was as soon as so sensible and beloved within the gaming business, one thing that was not simply one other RPG however the shining exemplar of the entire style, may find yourself being became one thing so faraway from that. I’m not even speaking about high quality, however identification. Thinking of collection which have gone downhill after a groundbreaking authentic recreation is straightforward, however I can not consider many who so fully shed their very own identification within the course of. Who made these choices? Who sat down following every Dragon Age recreation and determined to maneuver additional away from the celebrated authentic expertise that outsold the unique Mass Effect? It’s baffling.
And this transformation hits particularly arduous within the mild of Baldur’s Gate 3’s triumphant, genre-pushing launch, one which continues to shine monumentally brightly. Here was a recreation that, removed from shedding the full-fat, advanced and mature RPG identification that made Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn two of the very most interesting fantasy RPGs ever made, embraced it absolutely, whereas additionally including in loads of evolving newness, too. And it did so after an enormous hole in recreation releases as effectively.
In retrospect, it was the sport I feel I’d at all times wished the following Dragon Age to be, one other Dragon Age: Origins second the place the fantasy RPG style was proven the best way ahead with a launch of immense high quality and foresight. But it was Larian Studios who heeded the decision, gloriously, whereas BioWare and EA fumbled within the darkness.
Théoden’s traces seize the inevitability round Dragon Age coming to an finish, even when we do not know that for positive but. The glory is pale, the exploits and memorable tales consigned to a special gaming period and endlessly locked away previously. Time has handed. Players are over a decade and a half older than we had been when Dragon Age: Origins first graced our screens, which solely provides an additional degree of despondency to this complete affair. I’ve lived via the age of Dragon Age and, as I write in 2025 a few future the place I’d by no means play one other new Dragon Age recreation once more, I discover myself melancholy and surrounded by nothing however the whispers: The ‘if solely’ and ‘what ifs’ of the paths not taken, the worlds unexplored, and the adventures we by no means knew.
