r/masseffect • u/AsPeHeat • Sep 03 '26
NEWS BioWare doesn’t need advice for Mass Effect 4 as key OGs are still there, says designer, as long as “people get out of the way”
https://frvr.com/blog/news/bioware-doesnt-need-advice-for-mass-effect-4-as-key-ogs-are-still-there-says-designer-as-long-as-people-get-out-of-the-way/293
u/No-Weather-5438 Sep 03 '26
People forget that even the OGs change over time and might not produce stuff like they used to
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u/Gharvar Sep 03 '26
This is an important thing to think about. How many games over the years were made by ex Blizzard employees using their former glory to add validity to their current projects and how many were flops...
No king rules forever...
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u/N0ob8 Sep 03 '26
The mind’s eye ceo going from a big shot at rockstar to a crazy man screaming at the twitter clouds and coming up with a grand conspiracy involving sabotage and paid bots by rockstar.
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u/Goddemmitt Sep 03 '26
The Halo community was kinda shaken up recently by news of a take similar to this. Poorly summarized, it was something akin to even if they made the perfect sequel Halo fans wanted post Halo 3/Reach, the landscape/market has changed so drastically it probably wouldnt be very popular.
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u/Daminchi Sep 03 '26
So, I assume, they made something insanely popular now? Or just flopped?
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u/Goddemmitt Sep 03 '26
Sorry, should have clarified it was an OG Halo CE Developer that said this. Not a modern halo studios scrub.
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u/Platinum_Top Sep 04 '26
I’m just not sure if I buy that from Marcus Lehto given 343’s track with handling Halo’s game design.
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u/Yamatoman9 Sep 03 '26
We've seen many cases where the OGs of big video game studios are unable to recapture their previous success. A lot of it has to do with being in the right team at the right time and a bit of luck and it cannot be replicated.
Even if the new ME had the exact same team working on it as the originals, that was a long time ago and there's no guarantee it would be good.
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u/ExpendableUnit123 Sep 03 '26
This is DICE.
It’s also Bethesda.
Bungie.
Basically all of the ‘well known’ studios at this point.
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u/EducationalLuck2422 Sep 03 '26
Said OGs have been radio silent for five years - even Anthem had gameplay footage by now.
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Sep 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Agent_Burrito Sep 03 '26
N7 Day would probably the first time we get solid news.
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u/Jsaltal Sep 03 '26
They need to show something then
EA has new owners and will be looking at what studios are making money and which aren't
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u/Powerful_Document872 Sep 03 '26
I would bet good money they’ve wasted almost all of this time spinning their wheels in pre production.
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u/TailSwipeTypo Sep 03 '26
I believe Andromeda had gameplay footage and a trailer a year or so after it announced. I could be wrong tho
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u/spackletr0n Sep 03 '26
Andromeda also had a five-year development cycle and was well into production when it was announced, two years before its release. ME4 was announced way early to make sure the fan base knew the franchise wasn’t dead, because the last game failed and the next one wouldn’t be out for a long time. I wouldn’t compare their timelines in this fashion.
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u/TailSwipeTypo Sep 03 '26
I wasn't trying to compare them but I agree with you. I don't think they should have released that initial trailer without having a story in place.
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u/Always_tired_af Sep 04 '26
Game dev just moves at a much slower pace these days, and budgets have absolutely ballooned
That said it very much seems like most of the time since the announcement it was barely in pre-production, that and I think it's been Michael Gamble's intention to be tight lipped and vague regardless of progress on the game. Builds interest and gets the community very engaged in speculation.
I don't know, I'm not really all that concerned about a gameplay trailer, it'll release when they want to release it; I don't think a lack of one really says anything, we don't have any insight on anything
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u/EducationalLuck2422 Sep 04 '26
Yesn’t - I get wanting not to rush things again, but there’s a certain point when it goes from GTA6 to Beyond Good and Evil 2.
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u/Okurei Sep 03 '26
Still relying on the “BioWare magic” for the game to come together, huh? Doesn’t seem to be working too well these days.
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u/PIPBOY-2000 Sep 03 '26
Just get out of their way! They don't need to hear what people want.
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u/No-Contest-8127 Sep 03 '26
Frankly, people really should stop thinking it's their game to make. But, what they mean is the EA higher ups that screwed with bioware during the development of dragon age 4. You know the story, they changed it to a multiplayer game and that didn't work and they changed it back to single player again with veilguard.
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u/Pandora_Palen Sep 03 '26
That's not what the article is about. Troisi was responding to question about the advice that he would give them.
"...I don’t think that I can give them anymore advice than they already have. They know this stuff,” he said.
This article is so much of a bunch of nothing and the ads over copy make it tedious to read.
Just cinematic designer from 1 and 2 saying he didn't have advice to give the dev team (Nobody wants to hear him give advice, anyway, really). That's literally it.
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u/A_GenericUser Sep 03 '26
To be fair, gamers don't know what they want. But hearing it said aloud by a company usually isn't a great sign.
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u/FoxyGoddessX Sep 03 '26
The BioWare magic was upper management restarting development half way through because they wanted to.
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u/Okurei Sep 03 '26
Who knows how many times it’s been internally repitched and rebooted at this point. I fully expect some behind the scenes horror stories to come out no matter if it actually releases.
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u/TatterMail Sep 03 '26
There is no more Bioware. Everyone left. They are just using the name of something that was once great
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u/TailSwipeTypo Sep 03 '26
"Bioware magic" produced those god-forsaken shit excuses for endings
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u/Okurei Sep 03 '26
It only worked for so long before the consequences of such a development style caught up with them
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u/Not_My_Emperor Pistol Sep 03 '26
Flop after flop after flop and they still somehow have this attitude. I'm seriously surprised that studio wasnt shuttered after Veilguard. I don't know of any other studios that could release 3 successive multi million dollar games that fail to meet target and still stay running
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u/GundamXXX Sep 03 '26
And we cant keep blaming EA for this either
BW has its head so far up its own ass, its not even funny
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u/DisillusionedHobbit Sep 03 '26
As much ill will as I have for EA, they’ve been the most tolerable AAA publisher for a few years now. Which is still just being the shit king of the pile of shit. But still.
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u/jgoss39 Sep 05 '26
Yea as crazy as it sounds EA has been nowhere as bad the last few years as other AAA publishers (looking at you Activision.)
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u/gethplatform86 Sep 04 '26
ME4 is the real last chance. But, to be fair, Bioware is one of the two flagships of EA (the other being DICE). I'm not sure the Saudis will care though.
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u/ResidentDrama9739 Sep 03 '26
We heard this same thing with Veilguard, so I'm not holding my breath.
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u/bomboid Sep 03 '26
It shocked me to find out Veilguard flopped so hard because they were supposed to make it an online multiplayer first and then the idea was scrapped and people had to put together something in a couple of years.
I literally will never understand why the people in control of gaming companies insist on getting the worst ideas imaginable. What about Dragon Age made them think their established fanbase wanted an online multiplayer in the first place lmfao
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
It’s not about what their fanbase wants, it’s about what they think they can force their fanbase into for the benefit of the shareholders. They keep trying to push online multiplayer because it allows for microtransactions easier than a single player experience
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u/bomboid Sep 03 '26
They're a bunch of greedy and out of touch people. The arrogance in believing that because you want to appeal to both people with a sweet tooth and people who prefer savory snacks you can just make a weird mixture of sugar and salt and get x2 the profits just like that is crazy lol
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
Yeah I miss when games were made for certain player bases and not all aiming to be the next big major thing, it often flattens the game’s personality and depth in an attempt to appeal to the masses.
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u/EducationalLuck2422 Sep 03 '26
The MBAs don't care; as soon as BioWare or EA tanks, they'll jump ship to the next company with "Xteen years as Online MP Consultant with BioWare/EA" added to the CV.
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u/kael13 Sep 03 '26
It's because EA higher ups saw their sports games and oh god what's the Respawn game... Apex Legends making money hand over fist and thought 'hey, why can't we transform all our franchises into this?'
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u/Dogesneakers Sep 03 '26
Literally end up making a game for no one
Your fan base doesn’t wanted. New players have other options
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u/Putinbot3300 Sep 03 '26
Dragon age has a history of it. And it has worked.
Inquisition was a absolute step away from the tone and gameplay of Origins and Dragon age 2, but it sold better than either of them.
And while im sort of bitter about the step away from the gameplay and tone of origins, the series has been largely successful in its pivots and managed to gain new fans along the way, Veilguard not included
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u/bomboid Sep 03 '26
I would say DAI kept the core of what made Dragon Age interesting, with things like a protagonist whose presence makes sense, roughly the same setting, companions with depth that are worth getting to know and that feel like actual people, bonds with them that feel concrete, the ability to be mean to the companions and push them to make hurtful choices (even though you can't be straight up evil and commit atrocities), not to speak of the fact that you can import a summary of your previous game choices, and so on. The game also treats serious scenes with the gravity they deserve. It has serious moments and you're left to linger in them and soak up the severity of what just happened. It's true that it stepped away from the tone of DAO and even DA2 but it still felt like Drqgon Age, to me at least.
Full disclosure, I have not played Veilguard! I have only watched gameplays.
In contrast, Veilguard moved the setting away and made sure to note the old setting has been destroyed by the Blight (which could've worked if handled better), that none of your choices mattered - even those that should've had a direct impact on the current events, gave you a bunch of sitcom companions who are adorkable, tuff nonchalant, millennial with coffee addiction, and so on, who bond with each other in ways that feel more real than their bond with you - the person who's kinda just there and no one knows why, but who also calls the shots.
Which, this is something that shocked me - since there's a companion for every faction and class you can be, no matter what you are, you will be outshined by a companion who will always be deemed the default expert on a matter. You're a mage? Your companion mage is better at magic than you. Qunari? Taash has to teach you what basic qunari words mean. Rogue? I'm even better than you at roguing and stuff. You're always getting one-upped. That's crazy. Anyway
On top of that the dialogue makes it impossible to be a piece of shit. Yes, most people play nice anyway, and while I like what it says about humans that most people feel bad being mean even in a game, this explanation completely fails at understanding why removing evil options is a problem. First of all, if you're being nice because you have to that takes away the meaningfulness of choosing to be nice when you didn't have to. Second of all, it strips away the opportunities for roleplaying, and it makes it impossible to even play a flawed good person, or someone who occasionally snaps, or who has weird ideals, and the famous "this time I wanna do an evil gameplay".
The game is also terrified of taking itself seriously. The amount of horrible scenes that should leave the characters in shambles, the wasted opportunities for development and for showing you how x or y deals with a seemingly hopeless situation... nevermind, they just deal with it with silly quips. Urmmm so THAT just happened! Awkwarddd!
For all the people who complain the game is too political (lol), the lore has been ironically sterilized: you're in the heart of a slaver Imperium, but there's no mention of slaves, no real depth given to the plight of elves besides them now feeling guilty that their gods are evil (which instantly kills all the wonder and mystery of blights and Dragon Age gods, but I digress)...
Even the Crows, who were criminals who stole kids and raised them as assassins, are now chaotic good Robin Hoods. The Crows, who bought the orphaned little Zevran for five coins, enslaved him, raised him since childhood to seduce people, have sex with them whether he wants to or not, and kill them, are actually just not that bad.
And I'm gonna stop here because there's just too much to say! Let's not even speak of Varric.
I'm not saying you're defending this and even if you were, we all have our own tastes, and I'm glad there's at least some people who still enjoyed the game and now have a new addition to a series they love - but the changes in Veilguard go beyond experimenting with gameplay, they just straight up feel like a sort of weird reboot that wanted the Dragon Age name but not the Dragon Age "baggage". It's just... I don't know. It could've been great. It was... I guess it just "was" lol. If I ever have the opportunity to play the game for free I will, but I just don't feel like dropping real life money on it
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u/kael13 Sep 03 '26
Don't forget you had the contrast at the time with Veilguard vs. Baldur's Gate, a game where you can basically do whatever the hell you want and the game still takes that into account and reacts accordingly.
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u/PineMaple Sep 03 '26
Yeah, and 2 was also a change in tone and gameplay from Origins. I’m bummed they changed so much from Origins, but that sort of change between every title almost seems core to the series at this point.
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u/Yamatoman9 Sep 03 '26
I'm still bummed we never got a true Dragon Age Origins 2. Bioware has seemed to want to completely reinvent the series with each installment.
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u/Putinbot3300 Sep 03 '26
Yeah exactly, kinda the only thing same about them is the name, the lore (mostly) and varying degrees of rpg mechanics
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u/BlaineTog Sep 03 '26
Video games are in a very weird space from a business perspective. They're way less profitable than many other ventures, but people really want to make and play them. I imagine a lot of video game executives go in thinking they want to make video games, become focused on profitability just to keep the lights on, and never actually realize that their entire job has become disconnected from the creative work, all the while losing any original creative intent to greed. They still think of themselves as artists, just tragically sidelined, so they try to make these artistic decisions but don't have the proper skills and talent. You see the same thing in other media creation spaces like movies and TV. Every Hollywood Producer thinks of themselves as a writer/director/actor triple-threat that was never given the chance, which explains the majority of boneheaded top-down mandates that ended up tanking movies that otherwise showed potential.
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
Honestly a lot of time the problem is executives and producers think they’re just as good as the actual talent, the developers and writers and such, and that’s where a lot of the problem comes from.
When it comes to video games, I think the only “executives” should be on equal playing field with the developers, and they should be listening to and working in collaboration with the developers. Instead we have this model where they’re running the show similar to how an Amazon warehouse manager would.
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u/Angel_OfSolitude Sep 03 '26
The consequence of non gamers making all the game company decisions. Blame every studio founder who sold their company off to someone who didn't deserve it.
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u/daburner272006 Sep 03 '26
Money, money, money and money. I think the people making the game, and probably even the low level managers want to be creative and make a good game. But executives that makes decisions just wanna squeeze money out of the IP, that's all it is to them.
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u/Melancholy_Rainbows Sep 03 '26
It's worse than that, it started as a single player game, then EA had them scrap that in favor of a multiplayer live service game because EA is constantly chasing that infinite money machine. And then Anthem flopped hard and Jedi Fallen Order sold gangbusters, so they canceled the live service game and had them reboot the entire thing as a single player game.
But they only gave them a year to put it together and a shoestring budget. And when that, understandably, failed to come together in time, they gave control to the Mass Effect team and gave them the extra time and budget they wouldn't give the Dragon Age team.
So Veilguard reads like a rough draft because it is a rough draft, pieced together from the corpse of live service slop in record time. It's a minor miracle the game was as good as it was.
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u/IllyriaCervarro Sep 03 '26
I enjoyed Veilguard for what it was but when I found out that the entire development of the game was basically a 3 year long string of ‘you have 6 months to finish this game and you can’t go back and change anything’ that kept getting extended another 6 months it really was no wonder it came out the way it did.
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u/ScorpionTDC Sep 03 '26
EA didn’t make them scrap it out of nowhere, actually. Casey Hudson is the one who pitched scrapping it and going all in on MMO Live Service BioWare. He was the brains behind Anthem too
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u/juniperleafes Sep 03 '26
He was also the one that locked himself and the head writer in a room to hash out the original ME3 ending and then left to start his new company, didn't produce anything, and then closed the studio, suffice to say I don't think Hudson has had his mojo for a very long time.
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u/crazycat690 Sep 03 '26
Probably not gonna get better, IIRC the lesson EA took from Veilguard is that it failed because it didn't have enough live service elements. Because people just love that sort of thing in their singleplayer RPG's, that's what was missing to make that game really great.
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u/norway_is_awesome Sep 03 '26
Veilguard was rebooted twice, and the Mass Effect team basically took over. It's a miracle we got anything at all.
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u/Germerican88 Sep 03 '26
Considering the damage it did to the brand, they would have been better off not releasing anything.
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u/Funkybag Sep 03 '26
You know whats wild about that though? Thats not even why veilguard sucked so bad.
Ill be honest, the moment to moment gameplay of veilguard wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, but i thought the combat actually nailed its attempt at a synergy between mass effect and melee oriented action combat.
But dear god the writing.... the writing was actually so bad it made the rest of the game unpalatable. It was like a Disney sequel that they knew would be a stinker halfway through and just stopped caring.
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u/sapphic-boghag Sep 03 '26
EA staged a hostile takeover of Bioware's management and put the Dragon Age team through hell in a lot of ways.
Veilguard was cobbled together in around eighteen months and the writing team wasn't given time, space, or resources to reevaluate the script. EA's demands forced out what is essentially a first draft as a final product.
The Past and Present of Dragon Age 4, 2019
Perhaps the saddest thing about Dragon Age 4’s cancellation in 2017 for members of the Dragon Age team was that this time, they thought they were getting it right. This time, they had a set of established tools. They had a feasible scope. They had ideas that excited the whole team. And they had leaders who said they were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The plan for Joplin was exciting, say people who worked on it. First and foremost, they already had many tools and production pipelines in place after Inquisition, ones that they hoped to improve and continue using for this new project. They committed to prototyping ideas early and often, testing as quickly as possible rather than waiting until everything was on fire, as they had done the last time thanks to the glut of people and Frostbite’s difficulties.
“Everyone in project leadership agreed that we couldn’t do that again, and worked to avoid the kind of things that had led to problems,” said one person who worked on the project, explaining that some of the big changes included: 1) laying down a clear vision as early as possible, 2) maintaining regular on-boarding documents and procedures so new team members could get up to speed fast; and 3) a decision-making mentality where “we acknowledged that making the second-best choice was far, far better than not deciding and letting ambiguity stick around while people waited for a decision.” (That person, like all of the sources for this story, spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their experiences.)
Another former BioWare developer who worked on Joplin called it “some of the best work experiences” they’d ever had. “We were working towards something very cool, a hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth,” they said. “I’m sad that game will never get made.”
Inside the ‘Dragon Age’ Debacle That Gutted EA’s BioWare Studio, 2025
One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved.
“I wish that pivot had never occurred,” Darrah would later recount on YouTube. “EA said, ‘Make this a live service.’ We said, ‘We don’t know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.’”
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In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age’s tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible.
This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they’d be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working.hu
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
It’s so interesting cause some people really try to defend the writing/voice acting and direction/etc. but it is quite clearly extremely subpar compared to the rest of the series trajectory. I could not get immersed at all because of how the characters spoke and what they said. It was completely different from the previous games in a way that didn’t fit the series, or the story.
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u/bomboid Sep 03 '26
I watched a few videos about a few romances and it was so fucking bad. So fucking bad. And I love Dragon Age so I wanted to love this game, I went in with an open mind but my god. The cringe. There is for real more chemistry between my Baldur's Gate 3 character and the corpse they're interrogating than Rook and Bellara or whomever. The dialogue is ahead of its time in the way that it sounds like this medieval setting has ChatGPT at its disposal
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u/SaoirseSeersha Sep 03 '26
The writing was so bad it made the 2 previous games worse, simply because of plotholes Veilguard introduced.
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u/pnt510 Sep 03 '26
That argument would hold more water if the game sucked because it played like some weird stripped down multiplayer game where they pivoted to single player at the last minute. But Veilguard plays fine, arguably it players better than some of BioWare’s more beloved classics. The problem with Veilguard is the writing is absolute trash and it drags the whole experience down.
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u/Melancholy_Rainbows Sep 03 '26
It’s exactly why the writing was rough, though. They had to write fast and didn’t have time for revisions and editing because EA gave them an insane deadline to meet and they were starting the story over more or less from scratch.
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u/ScorpionTDC Sep 03 '26
I will say this is true of Dragon Age 2 also and the writing is still lightyears ahead. I think it’s part Column A and part Column B - the writers and execs were choosing to go in the wrong direction and the dev schedule made it impossible to pull the wrong direction off well
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u/Melancholy_Rainbows Sep 03 '26
In fairness, the writing could take longer for DA2 because dev times were shorter in those days, and that’s doubly true when you’re reusing a bunch of assets and code from a previous game. Some things are held up by writing, so it needs to be, if not finished, at least fully drafted out before other work can proceed. With DA2 they could take longer with the writing because the art and coding would take less time. But in modern game development, the time to make the more complex systems and high fidelity assets is longer, so the quicker the writing was done the more likely they’d hit the deadline.
Also, Act III of DA2 has some pretty terrible writing, so while I agree it’s overall stronger, it’s still not great in parts.
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u/ScorpionTDC Sep 04 '26
Fair point on the coding and development. Still, I think this is partially a writing philosophy angle too. 2’s characters flat out have rougher edges and the game embraces darker tone and gray morality in a way Veilguard actively avoids, and no amount of extended dev time is going to change that because that’s the tone they wanted to go with. You can tell Veilguard’s writers wanted everyone to be likeable (leading to most of them feeling bland and sorta same-y) while 2 didn’t hesitate to feature characters who would be polarizing like Fenris and Anders, and the ensemble was far more interesting for it
I definitely agree 2 has a shitload of flaws (particularly in act 3 where you can tell they just ran out of time and budget + used some duct tape to stick together an ending without an actual act that builds up to it). Still, the writing quality is night and day compared to Veilguard even with said flaws IMO.
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u/Old-Ordinary-6194 Sep 03 '26
The thing about Veilguard is that the cooks are the same, many of the writers (before they got laid off that is) are familiar names, but I doubt anybody could save a game that went through such a troubled development.
The game went through 2 reboots, one into a live service before getting rebooted back into single player RPG, so it's no wonder it turned out the way it is.
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u/osingran Sep 03 '26
Well, certain parts of Veilguard were developed under the direction of Mass Effect team (the final mission for instance) and these parts were almost universally praised as the highlights of the game. So at the very least there's some hope for the next Mass Effect game - if it's not gonna be cancelled that is.
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u/Alert_Row717 Sep 03 '26
This^
The absolute one saving grace of Veilguard was the final mission and anyone who played BioWare games from the past, knew that was all the ME team. They still have the juice, it’s just a matter of corporate interference
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u/GodDamnTheseUsername Sep 03 '26
they have the juice perhaps, but they were actually given time and money by the execs, as compared to the DA team, who had repeatedly requested time and money, only to be denied.
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u/Ziatch Sep 03 '26
That is not what we heard about development of Veilguard? All info we had was that it was a troubled game that switched focus in a major way a couple of times and that different parts of the team were clashing in terms of priority?
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u/sapphic-boghag Sep 03 '26
EA staged a hostile takeover of Bioware's management and put the Dragon Age team through hell in a lot of ways.
Veilguard was cobbled together in around eighteen months and the writing team wasn't given time, space, or resources to reevaluate the script. EA's demands forced out what is essentially a first draft as a final product.
The Past and Present of Dragon Age 4, 2019
Perhaps the saddest thing about Dragon Age 4’s cancellation in 2017 for members of the Dragon Age team was that this time, they thought they were getting it right. This time, they had a set of established tools. They had a feasible scope. They had ideas that excited the whole team. And they had leaders who said they were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The plan for Joplin was exciting, say people who worked on it. First and foremost, they already had many tools and production pipelines in place after Inquisition, ones that they hoped to improve and continue using for this new project. They committed to prototyping ideas early and often, testing as quickly as possible rather than waiting until everything was on fire, as they had done the last time thanks to the glut of people and Frostbite’s difficulties.
“Everyone in project leadership agreed that we couldn’t do that again, and worked to avoid the kind of things that had led to problems,” said one person who worked on the project, explaining that some of the big changes included: 1) laying down a clear vision as early as possible, 2) maintaining regular on-boarding documents and procedures so new team members could get up to speed fast; and 3) a decision-making mentality where “we acknowledged that making the second-best choice was far, far better than not deciding and letting ambiguity stick around while people waited for a decision.” (That person, like all of the sources for this story, spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their experiences.)
Another former BioWare developer who worked on Joplin called it “some of the best work experiences” they’d ever had. “We were working towards something very cool, a hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth,” they said. “I’m sad that game will never get made.”
Inside the ‘Dragon Age’ Debacle That Gutted EA’s BioWare Studio, 2025
One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved.
“I wish that pivot had never occurred,” Darrah would later recount on YouTube. “EA said, ‘Make this a live service.’ We said, ‘We don’t know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.’”
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In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age’s tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible.
This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they’d be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working.hu
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u/BLAGTIER Sep 03 '26
They have some leads from Mass Effect 1. But not all of them. And when you actually check the departments they lead in Mass Effect 1 almost everyone there has left Bioware.
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u/dunderdan23 Sep 03 '26
I dont think this game is ever coming out
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u/EDF1919 N7 Sep 03 '26
"As long as people get out of the way." Tell that to the 46 layers of HR, market studies, Jeff and Karen, new devs, AI stakeholders, and the Saudi ownership.
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
didn’t a bunch of key OG’s actually leave the company?
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u/FoxyGoddessX Sep 03 '26
Several did. And several were fired as a result of Veilguard.
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u/g00fyg00ber741 Sep 03 '26
so it’s pretty worrisome that the remaining “key OG’s” are speaking about themselves like they’re the only key OG’s and pretending a bunch of them didn’t leave the company. not a good sign. sounds like inflated ego
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u/LeekingMemory28 Sep 03 '26
Casey Hudson most notably in my opinion.
Director of KOTOR and the Mass Effect Trilogy.
While a game director is hardly the only important person on a project the best ones provide vision, leadership, creativity, and decision making that can keep a game on task and moving forward to completion.
Hideo Kojima, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, and Casey Hudson are arguably the most famous game directors, most of them are still creating. Some of them are known for unique creative visions that read almost like an auteur filmmaker.
As an aside, I do think we as a society need to move away from "auteur theory" in gaming and movies a little, but a great director (Casey being one) does help projects cross the finish line and be well received. Directors, film, television, stage, or gaming aren't working alone. The best ones are just experienced enough or go in with enough of a vision to be able to solve problems and answer questions when they come up, and are able to provide other teams with guidance and focus for what they need to accomplish.
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u/sapphic-boghag Sep 03 '26
Casey Hudson is the reason we got Dragon Age Veilguard instead of Dragon Age 4 (Joplin).
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u/RogueHippie Sep 03 '26
Casey's also the one who wrote the pre-Extended Cut ending to ME3, and got EA to move people that were working on Joplin(project name for DA4's original singleplayer project) over to help on his dream game Anthem (lol).
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u/ulape00 Sep 03 '26
Depends who the "OGs" are. Technically Veilguard head writer Trick Weekes was a Dragon Age OG... worked on Origins and did a lot of good writing work on Inquisition. Veilguard still wound up being Veilguard.
Bioware hasn't released a decent game since Inquisition. That's the more pertinent fact here. I hope they pull it off, because if Bioware blows Mass Effect, that has to be it for them as a studio so maybe they'll pull through?
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u/Big_Try3731 Sep 03 '26
Weekes wasn’t an Origins writer. Before Veilguard, they worked on Mass Effect 1–3, elevator dialogue in ME1, major writing on ME2–3, then Inquisition.
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u/ulape00 Sep 03 '26
Weekes did "additional design" on Origins before moving to the Mass Effect team. I expect it was something extremely minor and not writing specifically. Hence the "technically an OG".
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u/Latter-Block132 Sep 03 '26
Trick weekes was a writer on Mass effect 1. Origins came out after mass effect 1.
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u/UtkuOfficial Sep 08 '26
Trick kind of lost his mind over the years.
Happens to a lot of writers.
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u/I_sh0uld_g0 Sep 03 '26
Nuh-uh. Frankly, seeing Liara in the promo made me think that they're going to try and ride the nostalgia gravy train because they have no faith in making an original story in the universe.
At this point, just let the franchise die. Maybe someday, actually talented people will get a chance to work on the IP
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u/Putinbot3300 Sep 03 '26
And maybe just letting it die should be the end of it. Its a story told in entirety and I know that nostalgia is hell of a drug, but demanding new installments to series that already concluded is just asking for slop. I much rather they start developing a new story and world i can immerse myself in that keep waiting for Dragon Age 10 or Mass effect 7 to disappoint once again.
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u/Mihta_Amaruthro Sep 03 '26
They obviously do need advice considering what they did with Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda.
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u/SineMora_ Sep 03 '26
And Veilguard
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u/Popular-Beautiful875 Sep 03 '26
Veilguard didn't stand a chance with how much EA interfered with development. It might not have been great anyway, but EA screwed any chance of it being good.
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u/Putinbot3300 Sep 03 '26
I dont know, the writing was so garbage that even if there was studio meddling I would be ashamed to put my name on the game as writer. There are tolerable ways of writing what they were going for, but they managed to compine the worst of the Marvel sanitized snark and Tumbler speak.
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u/ScorpionTDC Sep 03 '26
To be fair, this wasn’t the original direction when it was Joplin. EA forced the MMO switch then BioWare lost their minds and made a bunch of terrible decisions as a result more or less
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u/Arthurian_Guanche Sep 03 '26
This. They speak like those were even half as good as ME2 and patting their backs for it (Andromeda was less than half, ME3 was ok except for the dumb ending with the stupid kid).
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u/PhilosopherNo8418 Sep 03 '26
After releasing one failure after another and putting the entire studio in jeopardy, I would think Bioware would welcome some advice.
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u/Flippy042 Sep 03 '26
Lol ok.
How many of our favorite game/movie franchises have been driven into the dirt in the last decade?
I have zero hope for this project. I would love a great Mass Effect game, but I absolutely do not expect one. I've been disappointed way too many times to be hopeful about new projects as parts of long-standing IPs
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u/KingAardvark1st Sep 03 '26
Sure, and I'll be getting my pet unicorn and estate in the Candy Kingdom any day now.
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u/ThinGold2115 Sep 03 '26
Bioware magic. ME4 will be same shit as Veilguard with their shitty mind set
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u/BagOfSmallerBags Sep 03 '26
Respectfully, without Casey Hudson the idea that "OGs are still there" is at best an exaggeration and at worst intentionally misleading.
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u/chaamp33 Sep 03 '26
Just don’t really have any excitement for this.
BioWare hasn’t made a good game in- a while.
One of the best parts of mass effect is your decisions mattering across games. So what, we have to wait 10 years minimum to see the story play out with modern game dev times? No thanks.
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u/WDBoldstar Sep 03 '26
A lot of people who wrote some of my favorite parts of the original Mass Effect trilogy either left or were laid off, so I ain't holding my breath.
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u/PersonaDelSol4 Sep 03 '26
lol “get out of the way”.
I wish I could tell these developers ( Jim Carey voice from Liar Liar)
“STOP SELLING OUT, ASSHOLES!”
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u/Ryurovere Sep 04 '26
Personally, I think this franchise should just stay dead. Andromeda had decent combat, but it was a step down in every other aspect, and Veilguard was an absolute abomination. The old BioWare is gone. With the veterans long left, new devs are just wearing the studio's name like a skinwalker.
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u/Talonqr Sep 03 '26
So what "people" got in the way when they made Anthem, ME Andromeda and Veilguard?
Because none of those games are up to par with what many would refer to as "Bioware" magic
Did these key OGs go on a decade long holiday or something? I dont buy it.
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u/EducationalPhysics55 Sep 03 '26
LOL, has EA stopped getting in the way now? No more forcing it to be a live service hero shooter?
It's the same people who have produced nothing but poorly written shit for the last 12 years though isn't it?
Or at least 12 years, i didn't like Inquisition much but the writing wasn't too bad, apart from some of the characters (Sera and Iron Bull).
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u/mdr241 Sep 03 '26
I watched a video of banter from the game last night and had forgotten how much I despise Sera. She answers the question of whether elves can be white trash and I have no clue why you’d want her in your group.
Bull seems way too far off what a qunari should be. I hate how we went from Sten and the Arishok, completely alien badasses, to him
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u/EducationalPhysics55 Sep 03 '26
I think Iron Bull was just someone writing their personal gay BDSM-daddy fetish into the game.
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u/Braunb8888 Sep 03 '26
BioWare needs all the advice since their last 9 years have been a fucking dumpster fire. Some of their best were on veilguard and it was a disaster.
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u/Slavchanza Sep 03 '26
Key OGs are still there? Did I miss Drew Karpyshin returning to Bioware?
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u/ScorpionTDC Sep 03 '26
Still doing Exodus, which I’m generally excited for. He’s never coming back lol
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u/YakEmbarrassed8887 Sep 03 '26
I want to believe that this game will be amazing but I'm still afraid
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u/Anxious_Specific_165 Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Were these OGs key/irreplaceable members of the old team? And are they as sharp, creative and hungry as back in the day? (Think rockbands, quite a difference between 20-30 yrs old and 40-50)
Will these OGs’ vision persuade the other majority of devs that managed to release VG (some of them ‘oh so proudly’) to go in a better direction? Do they even know themselves what “better” is? Did they bother to read the constructive feedback online and stop to think that they dropped the writing-ball with that game?
ME-trilogy is one of the best, if not the best in gaming. I truly hope so, but I highly doubt it.
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u/Maplicious2017 Sep 03 '26
God I hope so. If management and HR stop butting their noses into the creative portion of the game and the devs can just make what they want that would be so nice.
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u/vshredd Sep 03 '26
Other developers give us more. Look at what Pearl Abyss is doing with Crimson Desert or what CDPR is doing with Witcher 3 and 4.
We've moved on, Bioware. You took too long and other companies actually deliver.
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u/ShingetsuMoon Sep 03 '26
There’s a difference between “they don’t need my advice” and “they don’t need any advice from anyone whatsoever” and this comes off more as the latter.
If anything, this just feels like more of the✨ Bioware magic ✨ attitude that has plagued so many of their game releases before.
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u/DoctorEmperor Sep 03 '26
I think I generally have delusional optimism over this, in the sense that people wouldn’t be teasing this if they truly didn’t think there was something to tease
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u/KiwiThEGaymer Sep 03 '26
When it comes to BioWare I’m now in a “I’ll believe it when I see it” mindset with them. We had this exact same bluster when Veilguard was coming out and well we all know how hard the writing shit the bed in that game.
The mismanagement of BioWare and the mismanagement of both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises is one of the biggest tragedies in gaming.
I hope ME4 comes out and is good, but hope and realistic expectations are not the same thing.
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u/AttonJRand Sep 03 '26
I just hope the development is not ai focused.
Its bizarre that people argue its okay to use it in concept art for example, literally one of the most important stages where being creative matters.
The art book for the original trilogy is amazing, so much gets lost by using ai.
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u/candyman505 Sep 03 '26
12 years since BioWare has released a quality product and even then I could argue against dai. I hope it’s good but I’m not holding my breath
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u/Spoon_o_jelly Sep 03 '26
They know this is like their last chance right? Another failure will absolutely end the mass effect franchise. Honestly I'm surprised we are even getting another installment. If this is not good I honestly think they will finally get the axe.
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u/DiscoDanSHU Sep 03 '26
After the shitshow that was Veilguard, I dunno man. It's hard to have faith.
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u/Nullspark Sep 03 '26
If Bioware had made games like they used to, they'd be making money hand over first.
Baldur's Gate 3 made soooo much money. All we want is a solid turn based RPG where a yellow skinned lady tells us our scent makes her ravenous.
Bioware is gonna make more mediocre action games with "Broad Appeal" even though everyone bought BG3 and the broads in it are appealing.
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u/aRocketMadeofTacos Sep 04 '26
At least they stopped calling it 5 and remembered Andromeda was a spinoff
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u/Clavos_Rojos Sep 04 '26
Let's trust the Mass Effect Andromeda OGs.
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u/linkenski Sep 04 '26
Exactly. There's a core team of 5 who worked on the trilogy but the rest of the "veterans" are literally people who went off to do other projects within EA after BioWare Montreal folded, and now they've been reassigned to the new game. It has the same marketing producer, the same galaxy map designer and more. And no offense to MEA's beautiful galaxy map rendering, but it was badly designed. It's supposed to be a map GUI not a self contained Space Tour.
Also a reallllll fucking shame it's Armando Troisi giving it his blessing. That man is the reason the cinematics and conversation system was so good especially in Mass Effect 2. He briefly worked on 3 for the E3 footage and then quit. He's precisely the kind of guy this game needs.
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u/Chewy_ThatGuy Sep 03 '26
ME4 is Bioware's actual last chance so we'll see if they can cook up anything actually great. I won't hold my breath since almost everything recent Bioware has put out has been some ass
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u/notheretoarguee Sep 03 '26
OGs in this context is hilarious. You’re writing code you’re not a gangster lmao
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u/OchreOgre_AugerAugur Sep 03 '26
If anything Bioware needed more people "in the way" when some OG's decided to lock themselves in a room to write the original ME3 endings.
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u/Key-Huckleberry-2551 Sep 03 '26
What is with game devs thinking they're better than their customers?
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u/hkf999 Sep 03 '26
I would really love to believe this, I really would.