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EA boss reckons with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare is finally returning to 'BioWare-type games' after the failure of Anthem
EA CEO Andrew Wilson praises Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a return to BioWare's strengths, emphasizing rich worlds, nuanced characters, compelling stories, and impactful choices, highlighting a shift away from Anthem's experimental approach.
As reviews for Dragon Age: The Veilguard pour in and praise the RPG as a return to form for BioWare, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson describes the new game similarly himself - as a title that marks its developer's return to the things that made it "great."
Speaking at EA's most recent earnings call, Wilson begins with a "look back over BioWare" and the beloved studio's arguably less successful releases, like Anthem. "Anthem is probably the one that people remember most for not really living up to the expectations of what a BioWare game should be," he explains. Anthem was also, however, "BioWare trying to do something very, very different than what would typically be known as a BioWare game."
The 2019 shooter "was really about building different mechanics and different modalities that play into a BioWare world," as Wilson describes it. Despite the game receiving praise for some of its features, though, the studio's step away from its more familiar formula simply didn't work as well as developers had expected: "The pieces of the puzzle just didn't quite come together in the way that I think BioWare had hoped."
Ever since Anthem, Wilson says "a big shift happened after that, which was BioWare really returning to BioWare-type games - really returning to BioWare strength." The new Dragon Age entry stands as an example of this return and of how "the BioWare team has really rallied around what made BioWare a fan-favorite studio and a fan-favorite brand" in the first place - and everything that ensured past BioWare games were so well-received, too.
The "incredibly rich worlds, incredibly nuanced characters, really powerful and compelling stories with comradery and friendship and relationships, and decisions that matter in the context of gameplay" - Wilson states that's all a part of the "return to what made Bioware great" in new games like the upcoming Dragon Age. Our own The Veilguard review highlights such elements, too, dubbing the RPG "a true return to RPG form for BioWare."