PCG Article Dragon Age 4's senior creative director has left BioWare

[Zed Clampet]

Dragon Age 4's senior creative director has left BioWare

His exit was "mutually agreed."

www.pcgamer.com

It's time to abandon all hope you might have been clinging to for this game. And probably for Mass Effect. And probably for Bioware's future. EA is in full ruin mode.

 

[mainer]

Very depressing. I read that article this morning and it left me with a feeling of dread for two of my favorite RPG series. How many creative directors, project leads, writers, and other members of Bioware have left in the past few months? Way too many.

Bioware has been on a slow, downward spiral since the EA acquisition. It feels like there is constant friction between what EA wants from a game, and what Bioware wants to create. The teaser for ME4 was encouraging (to me), but other than that, what have we seen for either DA or ME in the past four years? There's been no gameplay footage at all. It doesn't bode well, though a part of me tries to remain hopeful even when the bombs are falling.

 

[Zloth]

Meh. I've seen plenty of games where a few "leads" left and the game came out fine, and plenty where none left and the game came out weak. I'll stay in 'cautiously optimistic' mode.

I don't think Bioware is in a slow, downward spiral. It seems more like they jumped down a few pegs when EA forced the quick release of DA2 and have been hanging out at around that level ever since.

 

[mainer]

Meh. I've seen plenty of games where a few "leads" left and the game came out fine, and plenty where none left and the game came out weak. I'll stay in 'cautiously optimistic' mode.

I don't think Bioware is in a slow, downward spiral. It seems more like they jumped down a few pegs when EA forced the quick release of DA2 and have been hanging out at around that level ever since.

I consider myself to be "cautiously optimistic" as well, or maybe it's "blind optimism"; I just can't completely write off one of my favorite RPG developers. It's the "EA Effect" and influence that bothers me, a corporation that pushes that "profit above all else" mentality, and often disregards the single player RPG game with a deep story that Bioware is known for.

I understand the need to make a profit, the gaming industry has become increasingly brutal over the past few years with rising production costs and the need to sell a certain amount of "game units" just to break even. Which is even harder on the smaller game developers that don't have corporate funding.

It just feels to me that the seemingly constant departure of creative talent of Bioware reveals a conflict of interest between Bioware & EA. And as you stated, creative leads leaving a studio doesn't always mean that a game will be bad, but too many have left Bioware recently for me to feel comfortable.

While ME Legendary and the ME4 teaser gave me some optimism, both ME4 & DA4 have "supposedly" been in development for years, and we've yet to see any actual gameplay footage or even images. That, to me, doesn't bode well. But I will maintain a certain level of optimism, blind or not, that maybe these games series will continue.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Very depressing. I read that article this morning and it left me with a feeling of dread for two of my favorite RPG series. How many creative directors, project leads, writers, and other members of Bioware have left in the past few months? Way too many.

Bioware has been on a slow, downward spiral since the EA acquisition. It feels like there is constant friction between what EA wants from a game, and what Bioware wants to create. The teaser for ME4 was encouraging (to me), but other than that, what have we seen for either DA or ME in the past four years? There's been no gameplay footage at all. It doesn't bode well, though a part of me tries to remain hopeful even when the bombs are falling.

It's been a couple of years since I read the article, so this may well be wrong, but didn't EA force them to scrap what they had done and start working on making the next Dragon Age a live service game? And then maybe they scrapped that around the time that their Destiny-like game bombed? I need to see if I can find an updated article on the history of DA4's development and EA's meddling. I don't see how it's possible for Bioware to produce quality work in that environment.

 

[mainer]

It's been a couple of years since I read the article, so this may well be wrong, but didn't EA force them to scrap what they had done and start working on making the next Dragon Age a live service game?

I remember reading that somewhere, maybe PCG, but I'm pretty sure there were starts, stops, and redirections involved with the development of DA4, which may be why we haven't seen much beyond concept art, and certainly no gameplay footage.

 

[Withywarlock]

"Rest assured our commitment to a high-quality Dragon Age game has not waivered, and we will not ship a game that is not up to BioWare's standards."

Given how low BioWare's standards are, this isn't optimistic. Honestly, I worry that the same thing will happen to Dragon Age 4 that did Anthem. Instead of redesigning it from the ground up, they umm and arr about the parts they want to keep to the point where it's coming up to deadline and nothing's actually changed. This news only gives credence to the idea that Dragon Age: Origins should have been the beginning and end of that IP.

Scorn aside, I do honestly hope their mental and physical health has been seen improvement. They're only human after all.

 

[JCgames]

Well i loved DA:3, and i actually thought andromeda was extremly solid and in many ways better than the trilogy, so honestly I'm not all that worried. That could be because i played as Sara the first time, I did not like Scott anywhere near as much. The hopeful pathfinder sara was so much better. Bioware has been doing great with SWTOR as well, honestly i have never had any issue with the newer bioware stuff. . Maybe i won't enjoy it, but i think i will. Even DA2 with the things i didn't like i thought it did some things even better than DAO. the 10 years in the city, the characters having motivation outside of camp side stories. Andromda's blasting around the planets laughing at banter but how the games are no where near as static as the old ones like BG.

People just got to realize a 300m budget needs to appeal to a wide audience which means sometimes things get a bit tropey and been there done that, but i try to focus on the fun and positive. .