D&D 5E Dragon Age lead says Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur prove publishers wrong as games can crush market trends is they’re “given time to cook”

[Charlaquin]

For me? Inquisition > Origins > Veilguard > Dragon Age 2 (never played)

DA2 is well worth playing. It still catches a lot of residual flak from its initial reception, which was harmed in part by the cut corners and in part by misalignment of expectations. It got heavily criticized at the time for being a major departure from Origins, but in retrospect it’s by far the most mechanically similar to Origins of the series. Moreover, I think it has by far the strongest character writing, and the most intimate story, with its smaller scope and scale compared to the other entries.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's quite the ordering. Personally, I've thought each game was worse than the one before, regardless of polish.

Each entry has certainly strayed further from the tactical RPG design of the original. Whether that makes them worse is a matter of taste. Most fans would either rank Origins or Inquisition first depending on how important those elements are to them, and Veilguard last, but beyond that the order varies quite a lot, because the games are so different from each other. As someone who enjoyed the games primarily for their writing and secondarily for their RPG mechanics, I actually rank DA2 first, then Origins, then Inquisition, and Veilguard last. But a linear ranking is rough because each game has very different strengths and weaknesses.

 

[JConstantine]

Each entry has certainly strayed further from the tactical RPG design of the original. Whether that makes them worse is a matter of taste.

Absolutely. By "worse", I of course mean: I liked less. And it's precisely for the observation you mentioned - straying further from the tactical combat.

Most fans would either rank Origins or Inquisition first depending on how important those elements are to them, and Veilguard last, but beyond that the order varies quite a lot, because the games are so different from each other. As someone who enjoyed the games primarily for their writing and secondarily for their RPG mechanics, I actually rank DA2 first, then Origins, then Inquisition, and Veilguard last. But a linear ranking is rough because each game has very different strengths and weaknesses.

I do think DA2 gets far more hate than is deserved. I actually welcomed the more personal, smaller scale story because I'm sick of end of the world plots.

 

[SteveC]

I do get how more time cooking is needed by a lot of games that get rushed but there's no way that the new Dragon Age game was going to work as a Dragon Age game. I think it could have worked on it's own, but for me the series was a tactical RPG along the lines of Baldur's Gate. The game play, look and feel, writing/story and depth of character building options was all terribly lacking. And I think how seriously the game flopped all showed that. I'm sure there are people who liked it, but it's the only game in the series I've watched gameplay for and decided not to go with.

So yes, I totally agree that more time in development is incredibly important. I'm just not sure that any of that would have altered the trajectory of this game.

 

[Zehnseiter]

That's quite the ordering. Personally, I've thought each game was worse than the one before, regardless of polish.

I would agree but the on some reflection I had actually more fun with Veilguard then with Inquisition. Inquisition just had so much boring boring open world filler content.

So for me its Origins - DA2- Veilguard - Inquisition

DA2 and Veilguard get too much s..t online. Inquisition imho doesn't get enough...... ;-)

 

[Charlaquin]

I do get how more time cooking is needed by a lot of games that get rushed but there's no way that the new Dragon Age game was going to work as a Dragon Age game. I think it could have worked on it's own, but for me the series was a tactical RPG along the lines of Baldur's Gate. The game play, look and feel, writing/story and depth of character building options was all terribly lacking. And I think how seriously the game flopped all showed that. I'm sure there are people who liked it, but it's the only game in the series I've watched gameplay for and decided not to go with.

So yes, I totally agree that more time in development is incredibly important. I'm just not sure that any of that would have altered the trajectory of this game.

Well, lack of time was definitely not the problem with Veilguard. The problem was terrible mismanagement. The game started out with the intention to be an RPG with a major focus on reactivity to player choices, but unfortunately BioWare decided to redirect the majority of the employees who were working on it to help get Anthem out the door. Then after Anthem was finished, EA canceled the original DA4 project and rebooted it as a live service game. Then that floundered in development hell while Anthem hemorrhaged players, and Jedi: Fallen Order proved that there is still a market for single-player action adventure games. Then COVID happened and threw a wrench in everyone’s plans, and some time around 2021 the folks at BioWare who had been pushing back against the live service mandate finally managed to convince the higher-ups to let them make DA4 single-player. But, of course, by then they were in too deep to start over from scratch AGAIN, so they just had to try to jurry-rig a single player action adventure game together out of the bones of the live service game they had been working on for the past 4 years. Only now half the writing staff who had been on the team for ages because they liked writing for single-player RPGs had left.

And, of course, it released in 2025, when every video game that dares to feature pronouns or women not designed specifically for the sexual gratification of young white men gets decried as causing the downfall of Western civilization. So that didn’t really help its reception.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would agree but the on some reflection I had actually more fun with Veilguard then with Inquisition. Inquisition just had so much boring boring open world filler content.

So for me its Origins - DA2- Veilguard - Inquisition

DA2 and Veilguard get too much s..t online. Inquisition imho doesn't get enough...... ;-)

Depends on who you ask. Even as someone who ranked Inquisition last before Veilguard came out, I think it was over-hated within dedicated fan circles.

 

[Burnside]

Well, lack of time was definitely not the problem with Veilguard. The problem was terrible mismanagement. The game started out with the intention to be an RPG with a major focus on reactivity to player choices, but unfortunately BioWare decided to redirect the majority of the employees who were working on it to help get Anthem out the door. Then after Anthem was finished, EA canceled the original DA4 project and rebooted it as a live service game. Then that floundered in development hell while Anthem hemorrhaged players, and Jedi: Fallen Order proved that there is still a market for single-player action adventure games. Then COVID happened and threw a wrench in everyone’s plans, and some time around 2021 the folks at BioWare who had been pushing back against the live service mandate finally managed to convince the higher-ups to let them make DA4 single-player. But, of course, by then they were in too deep to start over from scratch AGAIN, so they just had to try to jurry-rig a single player action adventure game together out of the bones of the live service game they had been working on for the past 4 years. Only now half the writing staff who had been on the team for ages because they liked writing for single-player RPGs had left.

And, of course, it released in 2025, when every video game that dares to feature pronouns or women not designed specifically for the sexual gratification of young white men gets decried as causing the downfall of Western civilization. So that didn’t really help its reception.

And you know what? I'd argue that Veilguard is STILL quite good, particularly once you get past the first 10 hours. Certainly it doesn't at all deserve the vitriol its received online (not really from actual critics, who generally liked it, but from the usual suspects).

Part of the problem is that games can't be accepted as "solid" or "very good" anymore. They either have to be brilliant masterpieces or the worst abominations ever. We can't accept that Veilguard is like an 7.5 or 8 out of 10.

And PS the Siege of Weishaupt is arguably the best executed set-piece action sequence out of all four Dragon Age games.

I personally find the prospect of replaying Veilguard more appealing than replaying Inquisition with all its fetch quests, collection quests and (ugh) shards.

 

[Charlaquin]

And you know what? I'd argue that Veilguard is STILL quite good, particularly once you get past the first 10 hours. Certainly it doesn't at all deserve the vitriol its received online (not really from actual critics, who generally liked it, but from the usual suspects).

Part of the problem is that games can't be accepted as "solid" or "very good" anymore. They either have to be brilliant masterpieces or the worst abominations ever. We can't accept that Veilguard is like an 7.5 or 8 out of 10.

And PS the Siege of Weishaupt is arguably the best executed set-piece action sequence out of all four Dragon Age games.

Agreed! At its best, Veilguard is a really great cinematic action-adventure game. And at its worst, it’s a very well-polished but somewhat forgettable cinematic action-adventure game. Which is a bit weird as what’s likely to end up being the final entry in what started out as a tactical RPG series, but, you know. Game development is weird like that sometimes.

I personally find the prospect of replaying Veilguard more appealing than replaying Inquisition with all its fetch quests, collection quests and (ugh) shards.

That’s reasonable.

 

[I'm A Banana]

the series was a tactical RPG

I think part of what the article is saying is that a lot of publishers believe that the audience for a "tactical RPG" in limited. That in order to have mass appeal, you need to be a different kind of game. And given Capitalism's whole thing, mass appeal is ultimately what publishers NEED to have. So the data folks will show that historically tactical RPGs have sold around X or Y but that, say, ACTION RPGs have a much better and bigger potential based on some of the datapoints. And then you have a situation where you can't make a "tactical RPG" if you're working with a big, risk-averse publisher - you need to make the thing that will make the money, and if that's a live service action RPG or whatever, then that's what you will make, because CREAM.

And BG3 and Clair Obscur serve as counterpoints to that, because they are very very popular games in supposedly "niche" gameplay genres. And y'know, once is a fluke, but twice is a pattern!

This problem crops up time and again across a lot of creative industries because the people who make funding decisions aren't as good at data analysis as most of them think they are, and the investors are ultimately the real customers.

Which isn't to say there's no truth in the pull toward mass appeal. Clair Obscur isn't Lisa or even Pathologic. It's got a LOT of mass appeal potential. D&D 5e is probably more targeted at mass appeal than 3e and 4e were, and it was probably a good decision given how successful the edition's been. There's just something to be said for not sacrificing identity on the altar of appeal. (D&D forgets this sometimes, too, ie: 2024 Command vs. 2014 Command)

Also, when you're analyzing market data to identify what could be the most profitable choices to make, it's probably good to remember that the data is inherently backward-looking. It tells you what has been the case so far, in the past. Times change, trends wax and wane, and if you only ever chase what looks like a "safe" investment, you're going to be caught with your pants down when the audience shifts. There's not a formula for catching lightning in a bottle.

One of the things that Veilguard's development shows is that chasing trends can very much be a losing battle.

Anyway, like Sonic says