In a response to an article written for Bloomberg by Jason Schreier investigating the ten year “development turmoil,” lead level designer Brian J. Audette refutes the notion that the game was “compromised” in a post on their bluesky account.
The full post reads:
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I’m damn proud of it and the team. We couldn’t have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one.
That’s just being in denial. The game killed the series. A better Dragon Age would make the Antivan Crows a lot more interesting and integrate in elven communities with the elven gods rather than the venatori. It’s not a good Dragon Age game
I’d argue the dragon age series died with dragon age: origins and everything since then has been a pale imitation. A “good dragon age game” is a solid CRPG with branching quests and story decisions. Which we haven’t had since DA:O.
Also the combat. DA:O was already quite streamlined when compared to other CRPGs of the time, and they only dumbed it down further and further with each new iteration.
Dragon Age fans could always grasp at the developing lore that David Gaider was trying to hold together through branching paths game to game. Fans even put up with Inquisition’s CW soap drama quest lines as long as they got interesting darkspawn, elven, mage/templar/chantry reveals done well. Veilguard is where fans got nothing to cheer about even. Fans now wax poetic about what could have been reading the Veilguard art book that showed concepts of the game that didn’t get made