After a nearly 10-year gap between games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally arrived at the end of October. While the previous game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, is now regarded as a classic in the genre, The Veilguard’s reception has been considerably colder from some. That’s something that the developers behind The Veilguard have already come to terms with.
“It’s been a decade since the last Dragon Age game came out, and a lot of people have spent that decade imagining various versions of what this game was going to be,” said Dragon Age creative director John Epler during an interview with Eurogamer. “The reality was whatever we came out with, it was never going to match the Dragon Age 4 in people’s minds and people’s imaginations.”
The long development of The Veilguard included a period where the sequel was re-envisioned as a live-service game before it transitioned back to a single-player experience. Given everything that went into the game, director Corinne Busche shared her satisfaction with The Veilguard in its final form.
“We’re very happy with the critical reception to the game,” said Busche. “It’s not common to have these challenging development cycles and have a team turn around and receive the critical reception that it did. In fact, in a lot of ways, that is the harder path to take. So yeah, we’re quite proud of the critical reception. Unfortunately on the sales side, that’s not something we can really discuss. but of course as we know with Inquisition, that was a long burn to get to those total sales numbers.”
EA has already stated that The Veilguard won’t be getting a DLC expansion because BioWare is shifting gears to the next Mass Effect game. However, Busche expressed confidence in the future of the Dragon Age franchise.
“There’s so many stories left, so many mysteries left unsolved, so I’ll leave that for what it is,” related Busche. “I will remain of the point of view that [Dragon Age’s ability to reinvent itself] remains our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity.”