According to the creative director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Anthem taught Bioware to play to its strengths.
In a new interview with Edge magazine (over 80 levels), John Epler explained that while he was happy with many aspects of Anthem, he did not think Bioware’s strengths were in developing an online multiplayer game.
“Our studio has always been focused on diving deep into storytelling and role-playing,” Epler explained.
“I’m proud of a lot of things about Anthem – I worked on this project for a year and a half. But ultimately we made a game that focused on something we weren’t necessarily that good at.”
Expler said that many members of the Bioware team joined because they specialized in solo adventures and therefore could not do their best on Anthem.
“The most important lesson for me and the team was to know what you are good at and then focus on that,” he said.
“Don’t overextend yourself. Don’t try to do a bunch of different things that you don’t have the expertise to do. A lot of the people on this team came here to make a story-driven single-player RPG.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is scheduled to release later this year; the release date has yet to be announced.
In a hands-on preview back in June, we said The Veilguard could be BioWare’s return to form.
“There were understandably some sour faces following Dragon Age’s unveiling at Xbox Game Showcase, but we’re happy to say that these were unfounded,” we wrote.
“Our demo was exciting and captivating and made us want to play the game for the next 50 to 100 hours. No dialogues à la Guardians of the Galaxy, no offbeat versions of pop classics, just a massive Bioware RPG, something that has unfortunately been missing from the gaming world for far too long.”
