Both Anthem and Veilguard are examples of exactly what the article is talking about - Bioware, a studio famous for scripted single player RPGs where the focus is on story, being pushed by EA into making live service games for an audience which have "skip dialogue" as a reflex reaction to anything that isn't more shooting or optimising DPS.
I had heard elsewhere that the decision to give live service a go came from Bioware’s own leadership and was not thrust upon them by EA.
I can imagine a universe where Bioware stuck with scripted single player RPGs and faded along with the genre. In which case we might have been at the same point by now, just with a different list of games to use as conversation fodder.
I heard elsewhere - I forget the name of the journalist - that the real root cause was that EA pushed for a yearly release cadence like they’re used to with their sports and sim titles. That version of the story has Bioware juat generally struggling to adapt, and the specific questionable decisions are just symptoms of the underlying problem.
I like it because it fits nicely with the immediate situation: 50 people working on a game that will need a huge headcount ramp-up and multiple years to ship, and EA just deciding they would rather put their money into a more immediate payoff.
> I can imagine a universe where Bioware stuck with scripted single player RPGs and faded along with the genre.
Has the genre really faded? Larian seems to have done quite well with BG3 and the Divinity predecessor games. Owlcat games with Pathfinder series and Rogue trader has also done well.
I would have much rather Bioware tried to do a similar last hurrah with an isometric RPG or any RPG for that matter. I suppose they have, with Andromeda, but that is 9 years old already.
Ultimately, I think Bioware's problem is much simpler - the greatest talent has already left by the time Andromeda released, and the leftovers were too busy checking boxes on corporate cultural requirements rather than making an actual game.
There was probably a huge cultural shift in the years that followed the EA purchase, which was already a decade before Andromeda. Frankly I struggle to justify Bioware's relevance after the ME Trilogy was concluded. I could not get into a single one of their games past that, started a few, but never finished.
err, at least for Veilguard you're missing the point that the dialogue was preachy and stupid. It was a doomed concept when they started forcing bullshit into the game.
