Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the latest in BioWare’s long-running series of RPGs, and the developers have said they anticipated a mixed reaction from fans.
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In a recent interview with Eurogamer, game director Corinne Busche said of the divided fan reaction:”Did we expect it? Yes and no.”
The game was a hit with critics, achieving a Metacritic score of 82 out of 100. However, user reviews there were much lower – coming in at 3.8 out of 10.
“What we know is that these reactions have been a part of the Dragon Age journey with every entry,” Busche said.
“Even if you look back to Origins, it wasn’t necessarily hailed at the time with the reverence that it is today, because people were still considering games like Neverwinter Nights, so we saw that through each entry.
“It was more-so this time than we were braced for, but we did expect it.”
The last Dragon Age game, Inquisition, was released in 2014, so players have had a decade to anticipate this latest entry and build an idea of what they wanted from it in their heads.
“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,” said creative director John Epler.
“It’s not trying to be all things to all people. It’s trying to be itself, it’s trying to be the game that it wants to be. I think you’re going to get those much more polarised reactions that way than if you make something that tries to be a little bit of everything.
“You might still end up with the same score but it’s going to be a lot more in the middle of that spectrum of scores.”
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