Summary
Dragon Ageveteran David Gaider has recently claimed that, if he hadn’t leftBioWareback in 2016 duringAnthem’s development,EA’s live-service plans for Dragon Age and the departure of Mike Laidlaw would have caused him to quit.
Although Dragon Age seems to have met anuntimely and cruel end following the mixed reception to last year’s The Veilguard, there was a time when the series was one of EA and BioWare’s crown jewels.The days of Dragon Age: Origins, DA2, and The Inquisition were partly such a big successdue to lead writer David Gaider,who has remained vocal about the series in the years since.
Despite his massive impact on the series,Gaider unfortunately parted ways with both BioWare and Dragon Age all the way back in 2016during Anthem’s development. Even though Gaider hasn’t been involved with the series for a long time, it seems like he wouldn’t have had the chance to make an impact on The Veilguard if he had stuck around past Anthem’s release.
EA’s Live-Service Plans Would Have Been Too Much To Bear
Earlier today,GamesRadar+ shared an interview with Gaider where the Dragon Age veteran admits that he would have stayed at BioWarefor longer if he hadn’t moved over to Anthem during its development. While Gaider being involved in Dragon Age sounds like a blessing, he also noted that he wouldn’t have been around for The Veilguard’s development.
In this hypothetical world where Gaider didn’t leave BioWare,he would have been working on Morrison, the well-documented Dragon Age live-service gamethat BioWare had in the works after Joplin was rebooted and before The Veilguard was a thing. Gaider notes that he would have had “no influence on that sequence of events” and that the departure of Mike Laidlaw would have been a big reason for him to leave.
I would not have survived the end of Joplin, because the end of Joplin would have been ‘now we’re making this live service Dragon Age’. - David Gaider
Gaider then notes that he probably wouldn’t have even stuck around through Morrison’s development,as the cancellation of Joplin would have been too much for him. Going from a single-player project to a live-service multiplayer one like Morrison would have caused Gaider to simply say “see ya”, since that’s a direction he didn’t want the series to go in.
Overall, it sounds like no matter what happened with Anthem, Gaider’s time with BioWare and Dragon Age would have come to an end long before The Veilguard was in development. Sadly, that means that no matter how much you might hope that Gaider could have saved the project, it seems like it was never meant to be.
