#EA BioWare

[odyssiaca]

you are the hero of ferelden. no matter your origin you watch those you love most be ripped from you. death becomes an endless cycle which seems to follow you wherever you go. the fate of the world rests on your shoulders as you know you can never return home. home is gone now. home is buried with your family, jailed with your closest ally, cradled by the ancestors, forgotten like your beloved, lost to time in the murky glass of the eluvian- dead in your arms, killed at your hand. you are the hero of ferelden and it is your destiny to die. when next the world falls apart, you do not come. this world does not deserve your pity.

you are the champion of kirkwall. you are a refugee, cold and hungry and sold into labour. your mother hates you, though she will never say it. it's your fault the ogre killed your sibling, your fault the taint took the other. but you are happy. you have everything, friends and family and status and riches. you defeat the people plaguing your glorious city, you are the people's hero. you will always know even as she came back, isabela left you to die. you are happy but you are alone. you have everything and then you are rocking back and forth begging please please please do not take my mother as well. you have nothing, but you for a single second, you had everything. you are the champion of kirkwall, and your ally has blown up the chantry. where is your home now that everything is your fault?

you are the herald of andraste. and you are so, so scared. these people do not trust you, do not like you, would feed you to the fade if they could. they do not care if you follow another religion, you are their herald. you can never return home because heroes do not have homes. they say home is the people you choose, but you didn't choose these people, did you? every step you take aches. thousands reach out to touch you, for safety. for comfort. you are a black hole close to destruction, and you cannot do this. you are the herald of andraste and you have not been yourself for so long now.

[rayzzamatazz]

[sha-brytols]

no offense but i genuinely can't help but wonder if most of this community is aware that bioware is a triple a gaming corporation and is perfectly capable of creating a toxic and unstable work environment without ea's help

[impuretale]

Bioware: So Dragon Age: Inquisition was a hit and we need to get working on a sequel ASAP so the hype stays fresh.

EA: We want you to work on Anthem.

BW: Nobody likes Anthem.

EA: So work on it and make people like it. Work on this other thing on the side.

BW: [Years later, ready to gear up] We have all these great ideas, look at these concepts, the fans will love it!

EA: ...But what if you made it an MMO instead?

BW: Fans don't want an MMO.

EA: But we can make extra money off microtransactions

BW: The fans don't want an MMO.

EA: You're making an MMO or this studio is being closed.

BW: [has to scrap half of what they are doing to make an MMO]

Testers: Where is our fucking single player RPG?

EA: Wouldn't you rather have an MMO?

BW/Testers: NO

EA: Bioware, make it a single player rpg. You whiners. But you have a deadline and we're not giving you anymore money so you have to make it out of this 80% finished Dragon Age MMO we definitely weren't forcing you to make.

BW: [Have no choice but to make lemonade] Wow, that's 1.5 million active players in the first two months! That's great, especially since it's so long after the last game!

EA: Yeah...but we wanted THREE MILLION.

BW: None of your games in the last ten years have had that many.

EA: AND you didn't win GOTY. We're firing the rest of your staff.

BW: Are you fucking kidding

EA: Dragon Age: The Veilguard was a total failure because it wasn't an MMO.

[hyperbali]

This was almost immediately after the interview with the EA CEO that just came out

So... lol. Lmao.

[certainly-sydney]

(has this been done yet ? 🙃)

[anneapocalypse]

For the record I feel like saying "Dreadwolf is going to suck because they laid off Mary Kirby" is like... really dramatically missing the point of what's going on here.

The next game has been in alpha for nearly a year now. Kirby's work on the game as a writer was probably mostly finished. Which does not make this better. If anything, it makes it worse.

The layoffs aren't terrible news because a game we're looking forward to might be worse because of them. They're terrible news because people who have devoted years of blood, sweat, and tears to making the game good (including the person who wrote one of the two characters on which they've been hanging the entire marketing campaign for said game thus far) have been axed now that the company has decided it can probably get by without them.

The quality of the game when it finally comes out is irrelevant here. If it's amazing, it won't make this any better, and if it's awful, it won't make it any worse. What matters is the people whose labor made it exist at all are profoundly undervalued, the industry as a whole is broken and frankly abusive, and I wish everyone in it some good labor organizing.

[rpgchoices]

I made a timeline summary of this today's article (linked here) about what went wrong in Veilguard and its production (in case you are curious but don't want to read the whole article, which I do recommend)

Pre-2017 Darrah and Mike Laidlaw were already talking about Joblin (DA4) but that was paused to focus on Mass effect: Andromeda in 2017

EA started to eye live service games so in October 2017 they decided that DA4 would become a live service game too (Mike Laidlaw disagreed). Laidlaw steps down from art director and is replaced by Matt Goldman

They start working on DA4 Live service (called in code Morrison) but the team is very small as most people are working on finishing Anthem

Goldman is the one who wanted a more lighthearted entry that would be more suitable for an online game, instead of the dark DA of the past

2019 Anthem flops

In 2020 Hudson (head of studio) and Darrah (head of franchise) resigne. Gary McKay announces that DA4 will be a single story game and not a live service one

This change is done without allowing any reset of the previous work or revision at all, but the team was only given 1 year and a half to transition back to a single player and told to aim for the a big market

The article stresses that many decisions were made with no time, thinking that only a year was left till release, so rushed decisions piled over other rushed decision

End of 2022 testing of DA4 has negative reactions (lack of choices and consequences, caused by the fact that the game was thought of as a multiplayer so no choices can impact the world)

2023 new internal team from Mass Effect was added, which caused conflict as apparently they started to exclude DA leaders from the meetings

It was the Mass Effect team that added the emotional finale but the article stresses that these changes only ended up increasing animosity as the DA team was told before that they had no resources or time for such story additions, but somehow because the Mass Effect team decided it, then it happened

Mass Effect team also remarked that Goldman's snarky tone felt dated and out of style so the dialogue rewrites started (which caused tonal inconsistencies)

Mass layoff at Bioware in Aug 2023 (I think. This date was added by me) demoralized the team even more

The first trailer for Veilguard in 2024 is not well received

The game comes out to mixed reviews, and ends up with half the players EA predicted

[captain-chapish]

after reading the article about Veilguard's development-- jfc what they put the DA BioWare devs through is insane

Can you imagine shipping DAI after a tumultuous production, but your next project is looking promising but WHOOPS you're forced to work on a multiplayer vision of the next game for years, and you KNOW fans won't like DESPITE the previous game having sold millions of copies.

meanwhile your studio deliveries two other games that are generally negatively received by the public and had their own crazy ass developments, one of the sister studios (Montreal) gets canned as a result, senior leadership is resigning, and then you get asked to perform a fucking miracle with DATV by reworking it in under two years, right after suffering the pandemic AND going through a writer and actor's strike????

and then after a decade of being tossed around and ignored, the game is finally out and... you get fucking fired

jesus fucking Christ. the devs deserved so much better.

[wetsocksinbed]

the Arrival DLC is so funny because Hackett is like “hey Shepard I know you’ve been given all these insanely dangerous tasks so I’m just going to ask you to do a really easy, really simple one. I just need you to go grab someone. Routine op, in and out. Nothing dramatic.” And then you end up blowing up an entire goddamn solar system and killing billions of people

[burnouts3s3]

Rook CONSTANTLY does the hands on hips meme. It's in every other conversation. It's literally this.

[cadaveerie]

reblog for more answers? this is about all games, very broadly. even if you change it mid game or at some points, what's the one you usually play the most? feel free to make clarifications if you want in the reblogs/replies :] also, this is obviously judgement free. all options are completely fine, we're all different and have different interests.

[contessaxchaos]

How Veilguard Handled Themes and Lost its Audience

This is tagged Veilguard-critical. I didn't set out to be critical (ie disparaging) of Veilguard, I set out to be critical (ie analytical) of one crucial aspect of its writing.

I reblogged a post by @meat-louse where I supported their premise ("this warped sense of history veilguard has") by pointing out how Veilguard can actually work to feel more integrated into the Thedas that we know from DAO, DA2, and DAI. Their conclusion is that:

"dragon age’s depictions of social issues were never spot-on, but at their best they encouraged the player to engage with those issues and ultimately seek to change society for the better. veilguard has no interest in changing society."

Here's my observations:

The issue is they want a game that’s simple and streamlined in its messaging. They want it focused on themes like regret and acceptance and teamwork and friendship. They hammered hard those themes, which, while it’s good practice to have strong themes, they overdid it to the point that we’re shouting “I GET IT!!!” They worked on those themes to the exclusion of nuance. To the exclusion of complexity.

Three games have trained us to look at the world and its problems, and look CLOSER because you’re not being told the whole truth. In fact there is no single truth. For every Anders, there’s a Cullen. You have the fearsome Arishok but you also have Sten, and for every hundred Sten who uphold their culture and beliefs unwavering, there’s an Iron Bull who knowingly subjects himself to reeducation in order to continue functioning in his society. And not far from him is an Adaar who is free from the Qun but faces the consequences of banishment and ostracization from their own culture and people. The game doesn’t say which side is right or wrong, you have to experience it for yourself to be able to have an opinion on the matter. My opinions on the Chantry were different when I played a Trevelyan versus as a Lavellan. Cousland has a different experience from a Tabris. That’s the point: your roleplaying changes depending on who you choose to be at the start of the game. The experience changes. The game is not interested in selling you a “correct” moral standpoint; it instead presents you a moral dilemma that unfolds through your questing, but it doesn’t give you an answer. It values a jerk Inquisitor, a stupid Warden, and a bloodthirsty Hawke as much as it values all the sarcastic, diplomatic, and traditionally heroic versions of our player characters.

But in Veilguard…

But in VG, all moral questions have already been resolved for you, either by signposting it, by not allowing you to interrogate these questions as Rook, or by completely ignoring it (no slaves, no tranquils, no alienages, no Circles, no cursed werewolves, no cults). They hyperfocused on their themes that they sacrificed nuance and complexity.

That’s why your companions and Rook only have low-impact conflict. Nothing will drive away your companions because they hold no strong convictions that clash with others. They serve the Themes. We can easily contrast this with companions from the other games: Vivienne gives you a closer look at the value of having Circles and the Chantry. Morrigan counsels expediency over do-gooding. Cassandra is has served all her life on the side of the "oppressors", but she questions the Seekers without letting it break her faith in the Maker. They have convictions. They were built from the ground up to be characters with their own agenda. They weren't built from the ground up to be your support system.

Which is what Veilguard appears to have done with their companions for the most part. I say the most part because there are three people with very clear themes, and Rook doesn't clash with them because their themes were designed to be very personal. The three are Emmrich (im/mortality and legacy); Bellara (something something preservation of the past, although I'm not sure what the point is because preserving the past at the cost of the present is not really very...cogent? Cultural/historical preservation is not exclusive to having a present and a future); and Taash (cultural and gender identity).

Talking to Taash made me reflect on my understanding of what it means to have a body you don’t agree with, perhaps even more than Krem did because with Taash, you can ask them. They will tell you. And that’s because Taash serves the Theme of Identity, both cultural and gender. BUT it’s also overdone to the point where those who don’t understand how it is to be trans feel like they’re being talked down to for not understanding.

What would have worked better is if they sparked the players’ curiosity and genuine interest in trans identity, and then allowed the players to engage with it as deeply or as shallow as they like. Instead everyone gets The Lecture as if we’re all uneducated on the matter. As if there are no allies among us. As if there are no shallow allies among us who are swayed by virtue-signalling. The Theme has swallowed what should be an invitation to talk and be curious and be enlightened.

Regret and sunk cost and redemption are also strong themes in the game. And you know they spent a long time and a lot of effort on that because the Team does a Talk Session after every piece of regret they uncover. Again: they’re made to serve the Theme to the exclusion of nuance and complexity. Yes, they raise good points, asked good questions, engaged with what we all saw. But I will argue that it’s US—the players—who should be having THAT conversation with ourselves or amongst ourselves. The companions should be there to give their point of view as a Mourn Watch, as a Grey Warden, as HARDING. But no—we don’t get that opportunity to absorb the regrets, to interrogate it ourselves based on what we know about Solas in DAI, or just to scratch our heads and say “okay but but but the game is always saying that history is not equal to the Truth and there’s always more to the story, so who can I ask / what other codices can I possibly find to shed more light about this?” Like…nada. You don’t make insights; the game already feeds you all the CORRECT insights so that you don’t ever have to be wrong about the Theme, because the Theme is Redemption or the Cost of Regret.

You don't need to engage your brain anymore because the game has already curated that for you. It has solved for you an equation that the past games would normally leave for you to solve through another playthrough. In DAO, if you only ever play Cousland, you will not grow your understanding of the plight of elves in alienages, or the injustice of the Dwarven caste system. You understand them intellectually because you are a person existing in a society that has poverty and injustice, but it doesn't hit the same until you play in the shoes of a Tabris or a Brosca.

Many of the writers who built Veilguard have been there in the construction of the other Dragon Age games. They were there when Veilguard was still Joplin. What we all wanted, they also clearly wanted to include in the game. They know it's not their role to dictate what players should believe by the end of the game, or to make the team generally harmonious and supportive of Rook. But their views and their skills were not valued.

Anyone who can write can write complexity.

Not everyone who writes can write nuance. That shit takes experience and skill. Writing is not just putting words on paper. This is especially true for massive collaborative writing projects such as videogames.

The writers failed because they were failed by the studio, first.

[ladyjmontilyet]

the "i'll believe it when i can download it" duo

[thedaswolves]

Absolutely heartbroken by the news of Trick and Karin Weekes being laid off from Bioware by EA. They were the last true veterans and original creators of DA that were still there, and this truly feels like the final nail in the coffin for beloved studio and franchise.

The way EA systematically drained and destroyed this studio and the franchise too over the years is nothing short of criminal! it all started with that cursed Anthem, than pushing Bioware to make the kind of games it doesn't want to, scraping amazing projects, putting them through decade of development hell, chasing away half of original veteran devs and professionals, and laying off the other half over last few years.. EA's CEO talking bout how AI is at the core of their business six months ago.... It all makes me sick to my stomach! At this point I will never give another cent to EA for anything. DA franchise might be over but lives on in our hearts and through our art and fics and love for this characters and the world. that's what we have left and they can't take away from us. I hope EA crashes and burns in every way possible.

Thank you Trick Weekes for everything.. their writing credits speak for themselves....

Mass Effect (Writer) Dragon Age:Origins (Additional Design) Mass Effect 2 (Writer) Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker (Writer) Mass Effect 3 (Senior Writer) Mass Effect 3: From Ashes (Writer) Mass Effect 3: Leviathan (Writer) Mass Effect 3: Citadel (Writer)

Wrote characters like Garrus, Kasumi, Tali, Mordin, Legion, Jack, Joker…

Dragon Age Inquisition (Writer) - wrote "Wicked Eyes Wicked Hearts" and "Here Lies the Abys", wrote Solas, Cole, Iron Bull and the Chargers, also worked on minor npc's and codex entries and lore

Dragon Age Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon DLC (Lead Writer) Dragon Age Inquisition - Trespasser DLC (Lead Writer) Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Lead Writer)

Dragon Age: Masked Empire - single-handedly wrote full novel and created Felassan as original character Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights - "Three Trees to Midnight" and "The Dread Wolf Take You"

💔💔💔💔

[roarrrgame]

And when the BioWare layoff news came out, many people had no sympathy because they believed the writers were at fault for Veilguard’s failure, not the execs at the studio or at EA. Now that the EA CEO came out and used stupid corpo buzzwords to basically say, the game failed because it wasn’t a live service game, can these people see, who the fuck is more likely at fault? The writers who helped develop the good games in the franchise, or this sort of fucking money hungry clueless narcissistic business people?