Fear of emptiness and cancellation
We know that there have been a lot of shakeups within BioWare in recent years and the studio was probably planning to release this new Dragon Age earlier. This is why Mark Darrah does not specifically take as an example Dragon Age: The Veilguard in its rhetoric, but addresses a more global observation which applies to the entire industry.
In a video posted on his channel Youtube (transcribed by Eurogamer), he first raises the subject of longer developments for the games of our time. He does not essentially agree with the fact that developments are lengthening to the extent that for him, it is the pre-production which extends over several years, not the development itself :
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“ [En pré-production] There might be a small fledgling team, but in reality, no work is being done for quite a long time. Studios can be somewhat misleading about this, saying things like “we've started working on Elder Scrolls 6”, or they might even produce a trailer for the game even though the current team size is less than 10 people. So they make it seem like it's a side development, that the team is working on this game, when in fact it's just a few people getting together and there's not much going on. »
This is probably also what happened with Dragon Age: The Veilguard and probably Mass Effect 5. Why do this then? For Mark Darrah, it is above all to reassure the public, but also so that the studio reassures itself and can protect itself more easily from a cancellation :
“ There may be reasons why it is important for the studio or publisher to get this game out to the public. Maybe it's because the publisher's line-up is a little weak and they want the audience to remember that they still have important things coming. This may be because the studio wants the game announced because they fear the publisher will cancel it. »
Canceling a project already announced is necessarily more complicated from a public image point of view, even if we still have examples today, like Life by You recently. We could also add to this that in certain cases, projects are announced in advance to better control communication and avoid leaks, while recruiting more effectively.
And after all these years of waiting, Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be released this fall, on PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PS5 and Xbox Series.