Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

Well given recent events in the gaming industry (like uh, Microsoft acquiring a goddamn isometric RPG dev) I wonder if they might not be ready to try something different, but we'll see.

 

[RapineDel]

Well given recent events in the gaming industry (like uh, Microsoft acquiring a goddamn isometric RPG dev) I wonder if they might not be ready to try something different, but we'll see.

The only way I could see that happening is if EA sees what Microsoft are doing with game pass and look long term with EA Access (unlikely). The reason Microsoft bought Obsidian and Inxile is the same reason Netflix etc. produce niche shows along with the mainstream ones, they need a large variety of different content to keep everyone subscribed all year round.

As much as Microsoft producing the Xbox was up there with the worst things to ever happen to gaming, ironically they might play a part in improving it. I'm not sure what the plan is overall but they think a Netflix style module is the way forward and is relies on a vast amount of content with a lot of variety, if it succeeds and other publishers want their own game pass then they'll have to do the same and that means doing something different instead of the same old Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty year after year with nothing else.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

I'm really curious to see what shit will they invent this time.

If Anthem fails Bioware will probably be taken out back and done in paradox style. I doubt this new dragon age will ever see the light of day.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I would love to see a Vision Statement for the original Dragon Age. Knights of the Somewhat Oriental Fantasy. I think they planned mongols instead of zombieorkspawns.

I think they had something of vision statement on it years ago on their site along with those pictures. I want to saw Conan the Barbarian was brought up on there, I remember what I thought it'd be turned out very different than what they released years later.

 

[Roguey]

bethesda and cd projekt have a fraction of the number of developers bioware has(probably had now considering all the layoffs they've had over the past couple years)

Bethesda, sure. CDP? Nah, Witcher 3 had over 250 employees and they currently have over 500. Bioware has "just" over 300 in Canada.

but I'm sure bioware shuttering multiple studios over the past few years(& refocusing Austin from a brand new IP to damage control "enhancements on existing titles") is definitely a good sign.

All those studios were just EA abusing the brand. The only one that ever mattered was Edmonton.

 

[Atlantico]

I'm not so sure a new Dragon Age wouldn't be a more single player focused title actually.

These days corporate demands all games to be multiplayer (with lootboxes) to catch the long tail customers and get a steady income from the same product.

The decline is real.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

bethesda and cd projekt have a fraction of the number of developers bioware has(probably had now considering all the layoffs they've had over the past couple years)

Bethesda, sure. CDP? Nah, Witcher 3 had over 250 employees and they currently have over 500. Bioware has "just" over 300 in Canada.

but I'm sure bioware shuttering multiple studios over the past few years(& refocusing Austin from a brand new IP to damage control "enhancements on existing titles") is definitely a good sign.

All those studios were just EA abusing the brand. The only one that ever mattered was Edmonton.

Their Edmonton studio has at least 350 employees. They definitely had far more employees than cdprojekt until very recently.
https://edmontonsun.com/2017/03/01/...nies/wcm/3419550a-dbda-4e80-9134-c612f5f2011f

His company, owned by Redwood City, Calif.-based Electronic Arts, has 350 workers at its Edmonton headquarters along with 100 people in Montreal and 150 in Austin, Texas.

 

[Infinitron]

All those studios were just EA abusing the brand. The only one that ever mattered was Edmonton.

The Austin studio also counts as "real BioWare" IMO (founded before EA buyout)

 

[Xeon]

Doesn't Austin only handles SWTOR? Can't imagine the team that big, barely anything new on SWTOR.

Wonder if they will end up handling Anthem as well later.

 

[Roguey]

Their Edmonton studio has at least 350 employees. They definitely had far more employees than cdprojekt until very recently.
https://edmontonsun.com/2017/03/01/...nies/wcm/3419550a-dbda-4e80-9134-c612f5f2011f

Don't believe Edomonton has ever had much more than that though. Yeah Bio had more back when CD Projekt made Witcher 2 with around 100, but that hasn't been true for a while. Cyberpunk was announced in 2012 with that Personal Responsibility trailer released in January 13 2013.

Disagree with this, the Austin studio also counts (founded before EA buyout)

As far as Volourn was concerned, that was always Bioware Fake https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...s-the-best-rpg-ever.54097/page-2#post-1474417

 

[Riddler]

I appreciate this guy being so open about his desire to use video games as a vehicle for leftist propaganda. And from his perspective, it makes perfect sense: alienate a majority of your audience, cram Dragon Age 4 full of politicized bullshit, and if it crashes and burns (and takes Bioware down with it), who cares? You can always get another job in the industry doing the exact same thing, because you're on the Right Side of History. (Then again, is Gaider employed?) But I've never understood why EA allows this to happen. Do they value being pozzed more than making money? For all the shit EA gets over being a soulless, creatively bankrupt megacorp that micromanages their studios to death, Bioware could have been churning out semiannual ME2s for the past 10 years and they wouldn't be one flop away from oblivion.

Why Disney keeps Catlyn Kennedy after Last Soy Boy and Soyo were both commercial disappointments Comrade? There is no rift between Corporate upper Managment and SJWs at this point Comrade they share the same blend of globalist predatory capitalism and cultural Marxism aka Trotskysm from at least middle 2000s. They are now perfectly willing to loose some profits to achieve (((their))) goals. After all with social medias purged from any thought crime there will be none to ridicule their overpriced micro-transactions and game as service filled crap.

Noone wants her job. Several people were asked and all turned it down, most likely until at least the end of the trilogy.

This is well known

 

[Vulpes]

At this point, anyone who's stupid enough to even consider pre-ordering a Bioware game should look into surgical castration. They're a lost cause. All that's left is to stand back and watch as EA rapes what's left of their corpse

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm not so sure a new Dragon Age wouldn't be a more single player focused title actually. If Anthem is BioWare's multiplayer game then they wouldn't want to compete against themselves, right?

Well given recent events in the gaming industry (like uh, Microsoft acquiring a goddamn isometric RPG dev) I wonder if they might not be ready to try something different, but we'll see.

EA is all about "games as a service" nowadays, so even in a singleplayer game, they will integrate monetization options typical for multiplayer games.

Buy Leliana a lyrium-powered dildo strapon for $4.99

 

[Lhynn]

DA:I did fine. It just didnt do as well as they were expecting, which was probably skyrim levels of sales.

 

[Xeon]

Wonder if EA will try and act good, since BF5 didn't do well and their stocks are down, wonder if they will try and act good or something.

Anthem doesn't seem to be gaining much attention as well I think, so yeah wonder if they will try and do something different or decide to go too aggressive with game service thing.

 

[Atlantico]

Wonder if EA will try and act good, since BF5 didn't do well and their stocks are down, wonder if they will try and act good or something.

EA will double-down on their strategy. Games as a service and pandering to the danger-hairs, balls deep.

 

[Lhynn]

Got sales numbers to back that up?

Nope. But everything points out to the game being profitable but not even close to what they were aiming for.

 

[imweasel]

DA:I allegedly had a very strong start, but it failed to chart in NPD Top 10 when it was released.

Dragon Age: Inquisition didn’t chart during November 2014. [...] I’d guess that it hit somewhere around the 400,000 mark. However, most games earn the bulk of their sales during the first month, and Dragon: Age Inquisition didn’t even come close to the all-important one million milestone.

https://www.mandatory.com/culture/7...duty-decline-nintendo-xbox-one-ps4-gta-v-halo

Everything points to it probably not being a financial disaster but not being a money maker either. It probably only made a small profit, which is why the series was put on hold for four years.

 

[Frozen]

BioWare wont exist in 3y so this game is dead.

 

[LESS T_T]

Well EA's games as a service strategy includes subscription services (EA Access on Xbox, Origin Access on PC) and upcoming streaming service. They're funding single-player indie/AA games for that. (They might want to be a platform holder when/if hardware becomes irrelevant.) I imagine those can be an argument in favor of single-player RPG too.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

EA does this with every other dev, but not Bioware for some reason. DA:O and ME2 were Bioware's two most successful games, and they decided to make games in those series that were like neither of them. EA seems to think that Bioware can do Bethesda numbers--or Witcher numbers, based on how often TW3 was name-dropped in Andromeda PR--if only they ignore their strengths and jump on the latest AAA fad, when the exact opposite has been true in practice. (Although I wouldn't say Bioware has any strengths at this point.)

I don't get the idea that EA thinks BioWare can do anything close to Bethesda or Witcher numbers. The numbers that came out for, I think it was some Mass Effect game, when that stuff about the Dead Space games came out a while back were way too small...much smaller than I'd previously thought they were before that point. I get the idea that EA (at least did) look at them as some kind of prestige brand. At least that's the impression I got while John Riccitiello (who came in again with BioWare) was the president of EA.

Larger environments isn't exactly a latest AAA fad thing, and at least the idea of that was there in the first Mass Effect despite it being a pretty shit half assed inconsistent left hand stab at it. Given how BioWare talked about Mass Effect before release, as well as big environments being old hat in RPGs, I was actually pretty surprised when I first started up Mass Effect on release and the opening section was a tiny outdoors corridor level.

 

[Simple Simon]

The fact that the executive producer has not really spent time on this project yet indicates to me that this trailer is being released just to gin up interest among old Bioware fans for the new project, Anthem. See 1:20 of this video.

"See, we haven't forgotten you! Try this new game to tide you over until we give you what you actually want." As others have noted in this thread, I think there is a decent chance Anthem bombs (who exactly is asking for another Destiny/Division clone?) and DA4 never sees the light of day.

 

[Ibn Sina]

More likely this project will fail because the people they trying to pander to ( Socially awkward homosexuals and sex-starved house wives) are not a big of a demographic to warrant a full AAA budget and yet they keep trying again and again regardless of previous losses.

 

[Vulpes]

I still maintain that Inquisition was an excellent game, and the lore developments in that title set the stage for a highly exciting sequel.

Spoiler

 

[Kem0sabe]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/a4yxd5/i_think_dragon_age_4_has_a_good_chance_of_being/

I think Dragon Age 4 has a good chance of being game of the year (self.gaming)

submitted 16 minutes ago by ButterflySpartan92

Dragon Age Inquisition was leagues ahead of Andromeda. I heard an inexperienced team in Montreal made Andromeda while the real Bioware was working on Anthem and DA4.

The story of the next Dragon Age sounds exciting. I think if Bioware plays their cards right Solas has the chance of becoming a memorable and legendary villain like Saren.

If they can get the same caliber of writers as DAI, it will be in the bag! I remember the game came out in November and was named game of the year. And game informer gave it like a 9.5. So they have a lot to live up too and none of the people that made the story so amazing.

So I’m worried, but hopeful.