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

DA is literally the only reason why I even bother to click on a Bioware thread anymore. If they somehow mess that up then I'll be done with them for good.
 

Renekton

Member
Developing AAA SP WRPGs is a suicidal endeavor at this point, it's either Skyrim/Witcher or die. I don't think it makes sense for Bioware to make another Dragon Age.
 

Surfside

Banned
Developing AAA SP WRPGs is a suicidal endeavor at this point, it's either Skyrim/Witcher or die. I don't think it makes sense for Bioware to make another Dragon Age.

But it was a very successful series for EA. Why wouldn't they make another one?
 
No more self-contained, rewarding experiences for you. You will grind our pseudo MMOs until the end of time and you will like it.
 

dreamfall

Member
This is saddening. He’s one of the few names I really associate with Dragon Age. For all the good and bad, that man is a legend.
 

Crawl

Member
Did inquistition sell well enough? I mean it seems like these single player games to EA seem hardly worth the investment. Suprised it got greenlit - but happy it did.
 

Floody

Member
Not filling me with conference after the way ME:A went. Didn't it also have a few high profile guys leave early-ish in development?
I do think it's way easier to fuck up something like Mass Effect though, so will hope for the best.

Good luck to Mike.
 

mcfrank

Member
IMO they should be having the dragon age team do KOTOR anyway. I liked DA inquisition a lot, but I really want a new kotor.
 
The lead writer on the Dragon Age series is Patrick Weekes, who basically did everything that was great in Mass Effect 2 & 3.

I'm sad to see Laidlaw go but the series is in safe keeping as far as I'm concerned.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
IMO they should be having the dragon age team do KOTOR anyway. I liked DA inquisition a lot, but I really want a new kotor.

Considering the uproar over the romances in the past few Bioware games It seems those are a huge part of the appeal to their fanbase and I doubt they could be allowed to do the very same with the SW IP.
 
I dispute the notion the Dragon Age is still "alive."

Will they put another game? Probably. But it'll be a shambling zombie like the last.

No more self-contained, rewarding experiences for you. You will grind our pseudo MMOs until the end of time and you will like it.

You're literally already describing DA:I.
 

Sanctuary

Member
To be fair it's pretty disingenuous to pretend that people who said this kinda stuff liked Gaider or Laidlaw to begin with.

Not really following. I was never a big fan of DA anyway (I enjoyed the first game enough, but never felt like it was OMG THE BEST RPG IN FIFTY YEARS! like so many others), and only truly enjoyed the first two Mass Effect games. The last Bioware game that I really enjoyed came out over seven years ago. I think that's enough time.

I love how GAF tends to take a highly praised and awarded game and act like everyone thinks it was shit.

Shadow of Mordor got GOTY by a lot of critics. And your point is?
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Didn't really care for him after DA2. He was really selling a turd there.


DAI was okay, but eh. RIP DA?
 

Renekton

Member
The game has not held up very well. Being early in the generation let it get away with quite a bit.
How about DA:I brought enough to the table for a decent amount of people, I think we can agree with that.

Funny, i'm playing through the game right now for the first time (stalling before doing the empress assassination thingy) and i think it looks pretty good and nowhere near as catastrophic as the internet made me believe it was
GAF hyperboles a lot lol. Just look at this GAFer's description of Super Mario 2's poisonous mushroom
 

Keinning

Member
The game has not held up very well. Being early in the generation let it get away with quite a bit.

Funny, i'm playing through the game right now for the first time (stalling before doing the empress assassination thingy) and i think it looks pretty good and nowhere near as catastrophic as the internet made me believe it was
 
Funny, i'm playing through the game right now for the first time (stalling before doing the empress assassination thingy) and i think it looks pretty good and nowhere near as catastrophic as the internet made me believe it was

It's not catastrophic. People saying it's a disaster aren't being honest.

It's mediocre. It's unfortunately also something like 40+ hours of mediocrity. And that's this biggest problem.
 

MartyStu

Member
Funny, i'm playing through the game right now for the first time (stalling before doing the empress assassination thingy) and i think it looks pretty good and nowhere near as catastrophic as the internet made me believe it was

Design-wise, not visually.

I actually really liked the game until about halfway through.

It's not catastrophic. People saying it's a disaster aren't being honest.

It's mediocre. It's unfortunately also something like 40+ hours of mediocrity. And that's this biggest problem.

Very well put.

Mediocre game with decent character writing and stellar character performances.
 
On one hand, I loved DA INQ so that's too bad that he's left the team. On the other hand, I've seen enough criticism from others for both of the last two games -- the last 2/3rds of the entire series -- that maybe some new creative input is a good thing. I mean, if you liked DAO when he was 1 of 3 leads, but didn't like the next 2 DAs where his role increased, then if anything this could mean at least a 'change' in the creative input going into the next game.
 

gogosox82

Member
Funny, i'm playing through the game right now for the first time (stalling before doing the empress assassination thingy) and i think it looks pretty good and nowhere near as catastrophic as the internet made me believe it was

I don't think anyone said the game was ugly looking and people had issues with the design. The mmo fetch quests, power mechanic, game is pretty easy even on nightmare, Corypheus is pretty one note and boring as a result, the story kind of falls flat at the end. I wouldn't say its bad because its not but I wouldn't call it great either. Its medicore. For DA4, if they want to make it an 100 hour game, let's not have us picking up resources for 20 hours of it.
 

Chhem

Member
Mike Laidlaw is a pretty cool guy. I’ve met him at Pax and have seen him multiple times there. He’s always made it a point to reach out to his fans, sign autographs etc. Looking forward to what he does next.
 

carlsojo

Member
Yeah DA4 is still coming for sure, Inquisition was a success by any metric. Here's hoping they don't mismanage it into fucking oblivion like they did with Mass Effect.
 

Some Nobody

Junior Member
Yep. Just make it a Hero action game where your co op buddies are the characters in your party and then regularly release expansions/DLC episodes that continue to tell the story you were telling.

Leave the heavy RPG elements, trim the co-op so I've got a full party with characters, and you can release expansions and DLC episodes all you want so long as each "episode" is a complete tale of 20-25 hours.
 

Lucreto

Member
Got a scare there for a second.

If they did drop Dragon Age and with Mass Effect on break there is absolutely nothing from EA worth buying.
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
Folks, DA4 is still coming, and it's relatively safe to presume some of Mike's input will exist within its DNA. This is still kind of shitty, though, but honestly I've felt like he's wanted to delve into indie for a long time. He has such passion for it. I think it probable that's where we'll see him next.

Dragon Age Inquisition was my 2014 GOTY.

Same.
 
Dragon Age origins is one of my favorite games, but DA2 and Inquisition were incredibly bad games in my opinion. If DA4 is close to Inquisition I will skip it.
 
This is a loss. I really enjoyed Inquisition, flaws and all, and reading Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier gave me a renewed appreciation for the obstacles overcome by Laidlaw and the other Dragon Age leads. He was also engaging, open and honest when presenting his team's work and doing press for them.

Don't really have a handle what he was doing prior this announcement so it's hard to say how this will impact the next Dragon Age.

With all these BioWare veterans leaving, Casey Hudson really needs to recruit, shape and empower the next generation of leads.
 

Ralemont

not me
As a big Dragon Age fan who even went so far as to write a lore thread about it, Dragon Age 4 being the last one isn't exactly a bad thing. There's something to be said for series finishing and not just running out the clock on their relevance until it gets cancelled with an unfinished storyline. Trespasser gave it the momentum it needed, now DA4 can see that through.

But if DA4 hadn't happened, that would have been awful.

Also, people, please get over yourselves with the "nobody liked DA3!!!" thing. It won numerous critic and reader game of the year awards (it doesn't matter if it was a weak year. People don't actively vote for things they don't like) including NeoGAF voting it Best RPG over Shadowrun and Divinity. It was popular, even if Witcher 3 later overshined it.
 

BouncyFrag

Member
At the end of Dragon Age 2 we were teased with both the Warden and Hawke mysteriously disappearing. It then turned out to be absolutely nothing, much like the handling of the Dark Ritual decision in the first game. The prospect of also meeting the Warden was dashed when all you got from him or her is a post card.

I finished the game and that was it which felt odd as I almost always replay Bioware games to try out different classes and decisions, but not anymore. I'm not even mad, just painfully indifferent.
 

Lnds500

Member
At this point I hope someone will make a game that scratches that DA itch, because my hopes for a good DA game have completely evaporated.
 

Marcel

Member
Unless that tanks, then BioWare is probably dead.

Hopefully it does well, even if it's not at all what I was looking for from Bioware.

Bioware is the living dead already. Anything else bad that follows would just be putting a directionless zombie out of its misery.
 

Rellik

Member
At the end of Dragon Age 2 we were teased with both the Warden and Hawke mysteriously disappearing. It then turned out to be absolutely nothing, much like the handling of the Dark Ritual decision in the first game. The prospect of also meeting the Warden was dashed when all you got from him or her is a post card.

I finished the game and that was it which felt odd as I almost always replay Bioware games to try out different classes and decisions, but not anymore. I'm not even mad, just painfully indifferent.

They really did back themselves into a corner by making the warden a mute in Origins. How do they fix that problem? Just slap a random voice on them that everyone will bitch about? Have them nod in conversation?

And the whole Hawke character creator thing was terrible. Mine looked nothing like my Hawke from DA2 and there was no way to make her look like that either.

Still a great game that I've 100% completed multiple times, but that character creator gets me mad.
 
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