It would be the euphemism of the year to say that for BioWare, a lot is riding on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The once revered maker of roleplaying games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age has stumbled severely with its last two games, Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem.
The latest installment in the sci-fi franchise wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either, and it didn't sell as well as BioWare's parent company, Electronic Arts, wanted. The real catastrophe was Anthem, though. The new intellectual property was designed as a live service game that would be updated for ten years post-launch, but it ended up getting only a couple of patches before the overwhelmingly negative reception from critics and fans alike essentially halted that content roadmap. For a while, BioWare attempted to concoct a major overhaul (dubbed Anthem Next) that could resurrect Anthem, but EA ultimately chose to abandon the project and let the studio focus on its core franchises: Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
Anthem also had a big influence on the fourth Dragon Age game. At some point, the idea was to make another live service game with coop, and reporter Jason Schreier even said the developers internally referred to it as 'Anthem with dragons.' Luckily, the magnitude of Anthem's failure, combined with the success of Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, proved to Electronic Arts...
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