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Mike Laidlaw (Dragon Age Creative Director) leaves BioWare [Up: DA still alive]

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
You will remember him best as a Lead Writer on Jade Empire, then as one of the three Lead Designers on Dragon Age: Origins, and then he effectively became Creative Director for the entire series afterwards.

He's one of the people you always saw in interviews along with Mark Darrah (who was the Executive Producer, which on EA's biggest games, is often akin to a Game Director roll as well).

DL9669JU8AMk87k.jpg:large


Source: https://twitter.com/Mike_Laidlaw/status/918588012119826432

Edit:

So it is worth noting that I can't find any of the Dragon Age Franchise jobs on BioWare's job page anymore. Not 100% confirmed Dragon Age 4 is canceled, but there is reason to be suspicious.

Edit 2:

Apparently Dragon Age is still on: https://mobile.twitter.com/BioMarkDarrah/status/918601537600987136
 

bluexy

Member
Whoa now. Does this mean that the Dragon Age thing Laidlaw was hyping in June isn't going to be anymore? I can't imagine him leaving if there was an active DA project still going on.

Edit: Ah, got ahead of myself. Gotta say Laidlaw is a legend. Hard to believe he's leaving BioWare and I really do wish him the best. Hope he's not done with games. I'll follow him to his next project, for sure.
 
Oh shit! DA4's gotta be in early production by now right? I wonder what this says about that. Did he lay the foundation, or did they hit a roadblock and decided to go a different way after what happened with ME:A?

Crazy stuff. I liked the games he worked on, so he's definitely be missed on my end.
 
"As I've jokingly said, I am the creative director for the Dragon Age franchise and they haven't fired me yet," he explained.

welp

(pretty clear from his goodbye he burnt out, good that he didn't feel the need to stay tbh)
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Whoa now. Does this mean that the Dragon Age thing Laidlaw was hyping in June isn't going to be anymore? I can't imagine him leaving if there was an active DA project still going on.

Edit: Ah, got ahead of myself. Gotta say Laidlaw is a legend. Hard to believe he's leaving BioWare and I really do wish him the best. Hope he's not done with games. I'll follow him to his next project, for sure.

The game is still going. There's a zillion job postings for it on BioWare's website.

Edit:

Hmm, actually those have disappeared.
 

thumb

Banned
He's a veteran at Bioware and was leading one of their tentpole series. It makes me a bit concerned about Dragon Age 4.
 

jonjonaug

Member
So that's both Marc Laidlaw and David Gaider gone from Bioware.

With Patrick Weekes and Lukas Kristjanson still there I'm not too worried, but man that stings as a Dragon Age fan.
 

CheesecakeRecipe

Stormy Grey
Dragon Age totally fell out of relevancy for me after Inquisition, but this is definitely an end of an era. One of those names you always heard in the same breath as the studio itself.

Hope he loves whatever comes next!
 

Surfside

Banned
He's is one of the last veterans at BioWare. Really the end of an era. Feels weird! He pretty much symbolized BioWare for me.
 
I mean, DAI wasn't good and DA2 was worse. What would "trouble" mean here.

I thought Inquisition had a terrible ending and DA II was hot garbage. Inquisition has the right things going until they made your army so pointless at the end. DA4 could just be another Andromeda for all we know.
 
I mean, DAI wasn't good and DA2 was worse. What would "trouble" mean here.

Yeaaaaah....

I mean I enjoyed Inquisition more than 2, which isn't saying a whole lot.

I feel like being a "fan of dragon age" means "I loved Origins and did my best to tolerate 2 and Inquisition."

And by that metric, I'm definitely a fan of Dragon Age :p
 

thumb

Banned
89 on Metacritic wasn't good? I know many on Gaf hate the game but it's not a fact that it wasn't good. But hey it's your opinion.

Indeed, I enjoyed DAI. I understand some of the critiques I read on GAF, but it was still an enjoyable game that I sunk many hours into.
 

Surfside

Banned
Yeaaaaah....

I mean I enjoyed Inquisition more than 2, which isn't saying a whole lot.

I feel like being a "fan of dragon age" means "I loved Origins and did my best to tolerate 2 and Inquisition."

And by that metric, I'm definitely a fan of Dragon Age :p


Inquisitons story wasn't bery good, just like Origins. I liked many characters in both games though.
 
S

Steve.1981

Unconfirmed Member
It's a bit disappointing to hear, but I wish the guy all the best for his future endeavours.

Really looking forward to Dragon Age 4, so hopefully somebody new is ready to step up and take advantage of the opportunity that presents itself with Mike Laidlaw stepping aside. Fingers crossed.
 

EDarkness

Member
I uh... I'm not 100% certain we're going to be playing any Dragon Age characters.

Maybe if there's someone called a Warden in Anthem or Star Wars?

Neither am I, but he was always saying that we wouldn't go back to the Warden even though there were many threads on their forums about bringing back that character. With him gone, maybe that means we'll finally get our Warden back...well, assuming they go back to that franchise. :(

89 on Metacritic wasn't good? I know many on Gaf hate the game but it's not a fact that it wasn't good. But hey it's your opinion.

In my opinion an 89 on Metacritic doesn't mean anything. It's the only Dragon Age game I couldn't bring myself to finish. The story was bad and the questing was even worse. When they started singing somewhere at the beginning of the game, I knew my time with the game was going to be limited.
 
Inquisitons story wasn't bery good, just like Origins. I liked many characters in both games though.

True, I did enjoy characters from both games.

That said, I only played through DA:I once, vs the 4+ playthroughs of Origins I had. It just didn't grab me that much.

maybe I'm due for an Inquisition playthrough, it's been a few years...
 
Certainly doesn't inspire a lot of positive thoughts on what the next Dragon Age game might be, espcially without his creative story and world-building input driving things forward.

It also seemingly comes out of nowhere. He appeared to be pretty happy on twitter for a while now and most people (including myself) believed he would at least be around to see the next entry in the series to completion.

I wonder if there was some critical shift in the way things have been ongoing at BioWare lately that's driving all these people away regardless of how many years they've been there.

If I find out that Anthem development is fucking siphoning resources and negatively impacting the development of Dragon Age like it did to Mass Effect I'm going to be livid.
 

Zafir

Member
=/

Disappointing to hear, makes me even less excited about Bioware as a company considering I only really cared about Dragon Age from them at this point.
 
So at this point what do Bioware have left?

Mass Effect - dead
DA - possibly dead
New IP - Alive and kicking

Did they have a Star Wars game coming? This would be a disastrous situation to land in if not as they'd be basically hinging on the new IP success while having none of their heritage to fall back on.

I really hope they do have something SW in the works. If they only have the new IP and it flops I could see that being the end of the road for Bioware tbh.
 

Patryn

Member
The one question I'd ask those who did not enjoy Inquisition's story: Did you play Trespasser?

If we're left with THAT as a cliffhanger, seriously.... fuck you EA.

So at this point what do Bioware have left?

Mass Effect - dead
DA - possibly dead
New IP - Alive and kicking

Did they have a Star Wars game coming? This would be a disastrous situation to land in if not as they'd be basically hinging on the new IP success while having none of their heritage to fall back on.

I really hope they do have something SW in the works. If they only have the new IP and it flops I could see that being the end of the road for Bioware tbh.

They had 4 teams: The original ME team (now on Anthem), the DA team (which was supposedly on DA4), Montreal (which after MEA is now gone) and Austin (which is on SWTOR). They didn't have resources for a Star Wars game.

That being said, if DA4 is being canned I'd guess that the resources are either being diverted to Anthem or possibly to a Star Wars game.
 
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