Dragon Age: The Veilguard developers discuss redesigning the game, after BioWare abandoned the live service in 2021. 'I personally never saw it as a remake'

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is either good or bad depending on who you ask in the PC Gamer staff. We're all a little divided on it and have varying degrees of grumpyness and age about the whole thing. The game comes with the usual preorder bonuses, but I'm still relieved that it isn't live service.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard had been originally intended to have significant multiplayer live service components. After the disastrous failure of BioWare’s Anthem, EA decided that the sequel would be stripped of all its multiplayer features, and focus instead on making a one-player RPG.

Even though I don't know much about game development, it sounds like a big operation. Gary McKay, the studio general manager, and Corinne Busche, the director, confirmed to IGN that yes, it is.

McKay says: "Of Course," McKay explains, "As an online multiplayer concept, at that time, the battle system was oriented towards, 'What's it like to play alongside other players?' As you can imagine, companions were not as prominent as they are today. Your coordination was centered around other players."

It's interesting to hear that. In The Veilguard we were told that your companions each have their own gear and skills, which are meant to work together. They seem more like back-up dancers than fully fledged RPGs under your control. One has to question whether the primer-detonation game is a remnant of the multiplayer roots.

McKay insists, however, that the switch was not a "reboot" of the game because it happened so early in the production process to be classified more as a realignment. "I don't view it as a restart. No, I do not see it in that way. I saw it as a matter of making sure we are laser focused on leveraging the things we see as successes, things we have had success in and learning from those that we saw some challenge in.

Busche says that despite this, they still had to tear the thing apart and rebuild it from the bottom up: "Our wonderful narrative team already had an outline of what the story would be. We had already done some voice casting. The bones of the game still exist, but the progression systems have been reworked, and the combat system has been completely reworked. It was built from scratch."

It makes sense. Thankfully, The Veilguard's live service roots were still fresh enough in 2021 to allow it to pivot. John Epler, the creative director, says that the story was not much more than a sketch. I sense a little relief from the fact that they didn't need to figure out the needle of a story that would be a live service.

"It would have definitely had its challenges... Even when we still were more multiplayer-focused we still wanted to tell a tale about Solas. It became more difficult because multiplayer games and single player games have different requirements, different pressures as a project or story. "And once you add in other people's perspective, it becomes more challenging."

I'm still a little nervous about this part. I'm a big fan of dialogue and, like with Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail, I notice it the moment it starts to deteriorate. The demos haven't reassured me. Neither has our own Lauren Morton who played around six hours and found that, while generally having a good time with it, she couldn't avoid the feeling that the game was "desperately chewing my food for me." We haven't seen the whole picture yet, but I'm eager to see if the studio has pulled off its 180 gracefully.