It’s obvious that to them “line must go up”, and that having a game be successful is not enough money anymore.

Dragon Age 4 was the obvious item for me for EA. Here was a game that had fans frothing at the mouth. DA3 (Inquisition) was very good, and while the story wrapped up well, there was a huge cliffhanger at the end that always left us wondering. It’s story was written years earlier in 2007 with DA:Origins. Now, nearly 20 years later, finally the stunning conclusion.

Except EA decided that that wasn’t enough. It had to be bigger. It had to attract not just RPG gamers, not just fans of the series, for those are small potatoes. They needed every gamer on the planet to play this game. So they changed the story to make it more “appealing” to a “broader audience”, which of course means they watered it down and didn’t make it too scary for any specific group. They removed all real stakes, and removed all actual connection. It was written with Marketing and HR in the room, dictating that you can’t say this or that, and it ended up being the most bland and soulless game in the entire series. ( While it did resolve all the plotlines, you found yourself playing to figure out the ending, not because you were enjoying it. By making a game for everyone, they made a game for noone.

Seriously, you could not piss off your companion. You could destroy their personal world, and they would at most sad face for the next conversation. In DA:O your company would literally walk away from you and try to take you kill you later, but in 4, just pouty face and then back to “You’re the bestest boss ever!”

So this is just so obviously corporate overreacting. “We made a game for everyone and no one bought it!”. So do they go back, think about what happened? Do they realize what they did wrong and pivot so that they can come back stronger with a true heartfelt story-rich game? Of course not. It needs ads now.

DA is just one of EA’s hundreds of properties of course, but it’s such a telling story for me. Inquisition literally gave me goosebumps, it made me tear up, I felt connected with the game. I rooted for the characters, I became friends with them. DA4s characters were all straight up like I was having a meeting with my HR representative.

Rinse and repeat for Mass Effect 5 now, and their shock that Andromeda didn’t do well.